“Yes,” he said.
He did not say any more. She rose with a flounce. The anger was tight on her brow. There was no more laughing and card-playing that evening, though she kept up her motherly, suave, good-humoured way with the men. But they knew her, they were all afraid of her.
The supper was finished, the table cleared, the stranger did not go. Two of the young soldiers went off to bed, with their cheery:
“Good-night, Ma. Good-night, Maryann.”
The stranger talked a little to the sergeant about the war, which was in its first year, about the new army, a fragment of which was quartered in this district, about America.
The landlady darted looks at him from her small eyes, minute by minute the electric storm welled in her bosom, as still he did not go. She was quivering with suppressed, violent passion, something frightening and abnormal. She could not sit still for a moment. Her heavy form seemed to flash with sudden, involuntary movements as the minutes passed by, and still he sat there, and the tension on her heart grew unbearable. She watched the hands of the dock move on. Three of the soldiers had gone to bed, only the crop-headed, terrier-like old sergeant remained.
The landlady sat behind the bar fidgeting spasmodically with the newspaper. She looked again at the clock. At last it was five minutes to ten.
“Gentlemen—the enemy!” she said, in her diminished, furious voice. “Time, please. Time, my dears. And good-night all!”
The men began to drop out, with a brief good-night. It was a minute to ten. The landlady rose.
“Come,” she said. “I’m shutting the door.”