In the scorching heat of a summer afternoon, Petite Simunde was washing some linen outside her cottage home. The silence, like the heat, was oppressive, and seemed more so by contrast with the noise of the troops who had been there a week before. An apple falling from a tree to the ground; the restless pounding of a horse's hoof in its stall; the distant hum of an aeroplane; the rumble of guns, faint but ominous—these and the sighs of the little woman at her task, were the only sounds that broke the stillness of the air.
She heard footsteps, and her heart, more than her eyes, told her that the man she dreaded had come. Her face blanched, and she caught her breath with a spasm of pain.
"Simunde"—Campbell's voice was gentle but firm—"where is Jacque?"
She continued her work without looking up.
"Simunde"—again the quiet monotone—"where is Jacque?"
She shook her head. "No compree" she faltered, falling into the jargon of war.
"Simunde!" There was an inflection in his voice, an almost imperceptible note of severity, that set her heart throbbing with fear. This was a new person to her, this calm, stern, blue-eyed man who showed no excitement, no anger, only a quiet, kindly severity that gave her no chance for subterfuge. She hated him for his calmness—because he was English—because he was unfair. If he had only shouted or gesticulated—but this brown-haired giant! To oppose him was like trying to stem the incoming tide.
She looked up suddenly, and her dripping hands were clenched in a fever of supplication. Madly she pleaded for her lover, as a woman will plead only for the man she loves or for her child. Tears ran down her cheeks, and her voice was choked with sobs.
Patiently he listened, gathering from the anguish more than from her words the story he had already guessed. In a climax of grief, she groped for him with her hands and would have cried on his breast. But he made no move; only his eyes were very grave and tender.
"Simunde," he reiterated in English, "where is Jacque?"