"You are kind to those English fellows, Alice," a dry, sarcastic voice said suddenly, close behind her.
The woman gave a start, and the hand that patted and folded the last of the tunics shook ever so slightly. Her pale, wan face looked almost ashen in hue in the dim light of the lamp. She turned and looked at the newcomer, a tall, lean fellow with touzled dark hair and unshaven chin, who lolled under the lintel of the door, chewing the stump of a cigar and gazing at her with a kind of indulgently sarcastic expression in his deep-set eyes. At sight of him she seemed reassured. It was only Lucien—Lucien the vagrant, the picker-up of unconsidered trifles, attached as porter to one of the American hospitals somewhere close by. So everybody round about here understood. But no one ever inquired further than that; everyone was too busy to trouble about other people's affairs; and Lucien was useful and willing. Though he had a game leg he would do anything he was asked—run errands, repair a derelict car, clean boots, anything. Lucien l'Américain they called him. "The Yank" the English flying boys from the aerodrome at Guillaumet had nicknamed him.
And they rather liked the Yank. Though he was as ugly as sin, swarthy, most days unshaved and dirty, he was very amusing, had a fund of good stories to relate, and was always ready for a gamble or a bit of fun. He seemed plentifully supplied with money, too—tips, probably, which he collected from the French or English officers over at the hospital—and was very free with it in the way of drinks and cigarettes for the boys. Latterly his open courtship of Alice Gerbier had caused considerable amusement in Guillaumet. Alice was a good sort, of course, but so jolly ugly, and not so young as she once was. It was difficult to imagine any man wanting to make love to Alice Gerbier. But Lucien l'Américain must have done it after a fashion of his own, before Alice became his abject slave, fetching and carrying for him, working her fingers to the bone, and sitting up half the night sewing shirts and knitting socks for him. He took it all as a matter of course, and treated her as if she were so much dirt.
"The only way to treat women," he would remark cynically, whenever his harshness toward poor Alice roused the indignation of one of the men.
It was a curious courtship, and the boys who were quartered in old mother Gerbier's house often wondered how it would end. Poor Alice! It was her one chance. If she lost this undemonstrative admirer of hers she would never get another. No doubt she felt that, poor thing, for at times her eyes would look pathetically wistful, when she caught sight of Lucien making himself agreeable to other women.
Lucien l'Américain lolled into the room and came to a halt close beside Alice's chair; with the air of a condescending pasha he patted her thin shoulders.
"You are kinder to these fellows," he said, "than you are to me. Why the dickens you should work so hard for them I don't know. You look dog-tired, and it's swelteringly hot to-night. We shall have a storm, I think."
"The boys were saying they thought a storm was coming on," Alice said in a tired, toneless voice, "and they were hoping it would soon be over."
"Off as usual in the morning, I suppose," Lucien remarked curtly.
The woman nodded.