"Now listen to me," he said: "you know Lieutenant Honeysuckle, the goat expert? Well, I never wish to see him again. I order you to go and find a new farm with him. I forbid you to find it. If you can manage to drown him, to run over him with my car, or to get him eaten by the goats, I will recommend you for the Military Cross. If he reappears here before my huts are finished, I will have you shot. Be off!"
A week later Lieutenant Honeysuckle broke his leg by falling off his horse in a farmyard. The Territorial from Marseilles was sent back to his corps. As for the goats, one fine day they stopped dying, and no one ever found out why.
CHAPTER XXI
One morning, Aurelle, seeing an English Staff officer come into his office in a gold-peaked hat with a red band, was surprised and delighted to recognize Major Parker.
"Hullo, sir! I am glad to see you again! But you never told me about that"—and he pointed to the signs of authority.
"Well," said the major, "I wrote and told you that Colonel Bramble had been made a general. He now commands our old brigade and I am his brigade major. I have just been down to the Base to inspect our reinforcements, and the general ordered me to pick you up on the way back and bring you in to lunch. He will send you back this evening. Your colonel is quite agreeable. We are camped for the moment next to the village where the padre was killed; the general thought you would like to see his grave."
Two hours later they drew near the front and Aurelle recognized the familiar landmarks: the little English military village with a policeman holding up his hand at every corner; the large market town, scarcely bombarded, but having here and there a roof with its beams exposed; the road, where one occasionally met a man in a flat steel helmet loaded like a mule; the village, the notice boards, "This road is under observation," and suddenly, a carefully camouflaged battery barking out of a thicket.
But Major Parker, who had seen these things every day for three years, discoursed on one of his favourite themes:
"The soldier, Aurelle, is always done in by the tradesman and the politician. England will pay ten thousand a year to a lawyer or a banker, but when she has splendid fellows like me who conquer empires and keep them for her, she only gives them just enough to keep their polo ponies. And again——"
"It is just the same in France——" began Aurelle; but the car stopped suddenly opposite the church of a nightmare village, and he recognized H——. "Poor old village, how it has changed!" he said.