One of Ours
Book V: "Bidding the Eagles of the West Fly On"
Chapter VI
The next morning Claude awoke with such a sense of physical well-being as he
had not had for a long time. The sun was shining brightly on the white plaster
walls and on the red tiles of the floor. Green jalousies, half-drawn, shaded the
upper part of the two windows. Through their slats, he could see the forking
branches of an old locust tree that grew by the gate. A flock of pigeons flew
over it, dipping and mounting with a sharp twinkle of silver wings. It was good
to lie again in a house that was cared for by women. He must have felt that even
in his sleep, for when he opened his eyes he was thinking about Mahailey and
breakfast and summer mornings on the farm. The early stillness was sweet, and
the feeling of dry, clean linen against his body. There was a smell of lavender
about his warm pillow. He lay still for fear of waking Lieutenant Gerhardt. This
was the sort of peace one wanted to enjoy alone. When he rose cautiously on his
elbow and looked at the other bed, it was empty. His companion must have dressed
and slipped out when day first broke. Somebody else who liked to enjoy things
alone; that looked hopeful. But now that he had the place to himself, he decided
to get up. While he was dressing he could see old M. Joubert down in the garden,
watering the plants and vines, raking the sand fresh and smooth, clipping off
dead leaves and withered flowers and throwing them into a wheelbarrow. These
people had lost both their sons in the war, he had been told, and now they were
taking care of the property for their grandchildren,—two daughters of the elder
son. Claude saw Gerhardt come into the garden, and sit down at the table under
the trees, where they had their dinner last night. He hurried down to join him.
Gerhardt made room for him on the bench.
"Do you always sleep like that? It's an accomplishment. I made enough noise
when I dressed,—kept dropping things, but it never reached you."
Madame Joubert came out of the kitchen in a purple flowered morning gown, her
hair in curl-papers under a lace cap. She brought the coffee herself, and they
sat down at the unpainted table without a cloth, and drank it out of big
crockery bowls. They had fresh milk with it,—the first Claude had tasted in a
long while, and sugar which Gerhardt produced from his pocket. The old cook had
her coffee sitting in the kitchen door, and on the step, at her feet, sat the
strange, pale little girl.
Madame Joubert amiably addressed herself to Claude; she knew that Americans
were accustomed to a different sort of morning repast, and if he wished to bring
bacon from the camp, she would gladly cook it for him. She had even made
pancakes for officers who stayed there before. She seemed pleased, however, to
learn that Claude had had enough of these things for awhile. She called David by
his first name, pronouncing it the French way, and when Claude said he hoped she
would do as much for him, she said, Oh, yes, that his was a very good French
name, "mais un peu, un peu. . .romanesque," at which he blushed, not quite
knowing whether she were making fun of him or not.
"It is rather so in English, isn't it?" David asked.
"Well, it's a sissy name, if you mean that."
"Yes, it is, a little," David admitted candidly. The day's work on the parade
ground was hard, and Captain Maxey's men were soft, felt the heat,—didn't size
up well with the Kansas boys who had been hardened by service. The Colonel
wasn't pleased with B Company and detailed them to build new barracks and extend
the sanitation system. Claude got out and worked with the men. Gerhardt followed
his example, but it was easy to see that he had never handled lumber or
tin-roofing before. A kind of rivalry seemed to have sprung up between him and
Claude, neither of them knew why.
Claude could see that the sergeants and corporals were a little uncertain
about Gerhardt. His laconic speech, never embroidered by the picturesque slang
they relished, his gravity, and his rare, incredulous smile, alike puzzled them.
Was the new officer a dude? Sergeant Hicks asked of his chum, Dell Able. No, he
wasn't a dude. Was he a swellhead? No, not at all; but he wasn't a good mixer.
He was "an Easterner"; what more he was would develop later. Claude sensed
something unusual about him. He suspected that Gerhardt knew a good many things
as well as he knew French, and that he tried to conceal it, as people sometimes
do when they feel they are not among their equals; this idea nettled him. It was
Claude who seized the opportunity to be patronizing, when Gerhardt betrayed that
he was utterly unable to select lumber by given measurements.
The next afternoon, work on the new barracks was called off because of rain.
Sergeant Hicks set about getting up a boxing match, but when he went to invite
the lieutenants, they had both disappeared. Claude was tramping toward the
village, determined to get into the big wood that had tempted him ever since his
arrival.
The highroad became the village street, and then, at the edge of the wood,
became a country road again. A little farther on, where the shade grew denser,
it split up into three wagon trails, two of them faint and little used. One of
these Claude followed. The rain had dwindled to a steady patter, but the tall
brakes growing up in the path splashed him to the middle, and his feet sank in
spongy, mossy earth. The light about him, the very air, was green. The trunks of
the trees were overgrown with a soft green moss, like mould. He was wondering
whether this forest was not always a damp, gloomy place, when suddenly the sun
broke through and shattered the whole wood with gold. He had never seen anything
like the quivering emerald of the moss, the silky green of the dripping beech
tops. Everything woke up; rabbits ran across the path, birds began to sing, and
all at once the brakes were full of whirring insects.
The winding path turned again, and came out abruptly on a hillside, above an
open glade piled with grey boulders. On the opposite rise of ground stood a
grove of pines, with bare, red stems. The light, around and under them, was red
like a rosy sunset. Nearly all the stems divided about half-way up into two
great arms, which came together again at the top, like the pictures of old
Grecian lyres.
Down in the grassy glade, among the piles of flint boulders, little white
birches shook out their shining leaves in the lightly moving air. All about the
rocks were patches of purple heath; it ran up into the crevices between them
like fire. On one of these bald rocks sat Lieutenant Gerhardt, hatless, in an
attitude of fatigue or of deep dejection, his hands clasped about his knees, his
bronze hair ruddy in the sun. After watching him for a few minutes, Claude
descended the slope, swishing the tall ferns.
"Will I be in the way?" he asked as he stopped at the foot of the rocks.
"Oh, no!" said the other, moving a little and unclasping his hand.
Claude sat down on a boulder. "Is this heather?" he asked. "I thought I
recognized it, from 'Kidnapped.' This part of the world is not as new to you as
it is to me."
"No. I lived in Paris for several years when I was a student."
"What were you studying?"
"The violin."
"You are a musician?" Claude looked at him wonderingly.
"I was," replied the other with a disdainful smile, languidly stretching out
his legs in the heather.
"That seems too bad," Claude remarked gravely.
"What does?"
"Why, to take fellows with a special talent. There are enough of us who
haven't any."
Gerhardt rolled over on his back and put his hands under his head. "Oh, this
affair is too big for exceptions; it's universal. If you happened to be born
twenty-six years ago, you couldn't escape. If this war didn't kill you in one
way, it would in another." He told Claude he had trained at Camp Dix, and had
come over eight months ago in a regimental band, but he hated the work he had to
do and got transferred to the infantry.
When they retraced their steps, the wood was full of green twilight. Their
relations had changed somewhat during the last half hour, and they strolled in
confidential silence up the home-like street to the door of their own garden.
Since the rain was over, Madame Joubert had laid the cloth on the plank table
under the cherry tree, as on the previous evenings. Monsieur was bringing the
chairs, and the little girl was carrying out a pile of heavy plates. She rested
them against her stomach and leaned back as she walked, to balance them. She
wore shoes, but no stockings, and her faded cotton dress switched about her
brown legs. She was a little Belgian refugee who had been sent there with her
mother. The mother was dead now, and the child would not even go to visit her
grave. She could not be coaxed from the court-yard into the quiet street. If the
neighbour children came into the garden on an errand, she hid herself. She would
have no playmates but the cat; and now she had the kittens in the tool house.
Dinner was very cheerful that evening. M. Joubert was pleased that the storm
had not lasted long enough to hurt the wheat. The garden was fresh and bright
after the rain. The cherry tree shook down bright drops on the tablecloth when
the breeze stirred. The mother cat dozed on the red cushion in Madame Joubert's
sewing chair, and the pigeons fluttered down to snap up earthworms that wriggled
in the wet sand. The shadow of the house fell over the dinner-table, but the
tree-tops stood up in full sunlight, and the yellow sun poured on the earth wall
and the cream-coloured roses. Their petals, ruffled by the rain, gave out a wet,
spicy smell.
M. Joubert must have been ten years older than his wife. There was a great
contentment in his manner and a pleasant sparkle in his eye. He liked the young
officers. Gerhardt had been there more than two weeks, and somewhat relieved the
stillness that had settled over the house since the second son died in hospital.
The Jouberts had dropped out of things. They had done all they could do, given
all they had, and now they had nothing to look forward to,—except the event to
which all France looked forward. The father was talking to Gerhardt about the
great sea-port the Americans were making of Bordeaux; he said he meant to go
there after the war, to see it all for himself.
Madame Joubert was pleased to hear that they had been walking in the wood.
And was the heather in bloom? She wished they had brought her some. Next time
they went, perhaps. She used to walk there often. Her eyes seemed to come nearer
to them, Claude thought, when she spoke of it, and she evidently cared a great
deal more about what was blooming in the wood than about what the Americans were
doing on the Garonne. He wished he could talk to her as Gerhardt did. He admired
the way she roused herself and tried to interest them, speaking her difficult
language with such spirit and precision. It was a language that couldn't be
mumbled; that had to be spoken with energy and fire, or not spoken at all.
Merely speaking that exacting tongue would help to rally a broken spirit, he
thought.
The little maid who served them moved about noiselessly. Her dull eyes never
seemed to look; yet she saw when it was time to bring the heavy soup tureen, and
when it was time to take it away. Madame Joubert lad found that Claude liked his
potatoes with his meat—when there was meat—and not in a course by themselves.
She had each time to tell the little girl to go and fetch them. This the child
did with manifest reluctance,—sullenly, as if she were being forced to do
something wrong. She was a very strange little creature, altogether. As the two
soldiers left the table and started for the camp, Claude reached down into the
tool house and took up one of the kittens, holding it out in the light to see it
blink its eyes. The little girl, just coming out of the kitchen, uttered a
shrill scream, a really terrible scream, and squatted down, covering her face
with her hands. Madame Joubert came out to chide her.
"What is the matter with that child?" Claude asked as they hurried out of the
gate. "Do you suppose she was hurt, or abused in some way?"
"Terrorized. She often screams like that at night. Haven't you heard her?
They have to go and wake her, to stop it. She doesn't speak any French; only
Walloon. And she can't or won't learn, so they can't tell what goes on in her
poor little head."
In the two weeks of intensive training that followed, Claude marvelled at
Gerhardt's spirit and endurance. The muscular strain of mimic trench operations
was more of a tax on him than on any of the other officers. He was as tall as
Claude, but he weighed only a hundred and forty-six pounds, and he had not been
roughly bred like most of the others. When his fellow officers learned that he
was a violinist by profession, that he could have had a soft job as interpreter
or as an organizer of camp entertainments, they no longer resented his reserve
or his occasional superciliousness. They respected a man who could have wriggled
out and didn't.