"How is the sentry-box to-night?" asked Hilda.
"Draughty," said the Commandant, with a shiver; "it rocks in the wind."
"You must have some rag-time," prescribed Hilda, and seated herself at the piano.
It was Pervyse's only piano, untouched by shell and shrapnel, and nightly it sounded the praise of things. The little group drew close about the American girl, as she led them in a "coon song."
"I say," said Hilda, looking up from the keys, "would any one believe it?"
"Believe what?" asked Mrs. Bracher.
"The lot of us here, exchanging favorites, with war just outside our window. I tell you," repeated Hilda, "no one would believe it."
"They don't have to," retorted Mrs. Bracher, sharply. She had grown weary of telling folks at home how matters stood, and then having them say, "Fancy now, really?"
The methodical guns had pounded the humanity out of Pervyse, and, with the living, had gone music and art. There was nowhere in the wasted area for the tired soldiers to find relief from their monotony. War is a dreary thing. With one fixed idea in the mind—to wait, to watch for some careless head over the mounded earth, and then to kill—war is drearier than slave labor, more nagging than an imperfect marriage, more dispiriting than unsuccessful sin. The pretty brass utensils of the dwellings had been pillaged. Canvas, which had once contained bright faces, was in shreds. The figures of Christ and his friends that had stood high in the niches of the church, had fallen forward on their faces. All the little devices of beauty, cherished by the villagers, had been shattered.
One perfect piano had been left unmarred by all the destruction that had robbed the place of its instruments of pleasure. With elation and laughter the soldiers had discovered it, when the early fierceness of the attack had ebbed. Straightway they carried it to the home of the women.