“I forgot you didn’t know,” and Ruth told him of Grand’mère Bergues’ tree. “When I convinced her at last,” Ruth added, “that the Boche had broken through and were coming again, she had a stroke; but even so she would not let us carry her until I had brought her a twig of the tree—a twig which was green, and budding, and had sap, though last year the Boche called that tree destroyed. That now must be her triumph.”
Ruth restarted the motor and, when they proceeded, Gerry sat without inquiring again of what dangerous, indefinite business this girl was going to do. While he watched her driving, a queer, pulling sensation pulsed in his breast; it associated itself with a vision of a young Englishman, who now undoubtedly was dead, standing behind this girl while she played a little organ with three octaves and they all sang. This was not jealousy, exactly; it was simply recognition of a sort of fellowship which she could share which he would have liked to have discovered himself. It suggested not something more than he had had with Agnes Ertyle; but something quite different and which he liked. He tried to imagine Agnes playing, and singing Clementine, and Wait for the Wagon; and—he couldn’t. He tried to imagine her crying because someone had called to her, “Good old England”; and he couldn’t. Agnes cried over some things—children who were brought to her and badly wounded boys who died. But Agnes could have told him all that Cynthia had without any emotion at all. Agnes would have told it quite differently, of course.
They were coming in sight of a flying field. “Let me off here, please,” Gerry asked when they were opposite it.
When Ruth stopped the car Gerry called for one of the old Frenchmen to give him a shoulder and he stepped down. “You don’t need much leg muscle to fly,” he assured Ruth when she observed him anxiously. “If I can’t steal a ship over there, at least they’ll take care of me.” He hesitated, looking up at her, unable simply to thank her for what she had done.
“Where are you going?” he asked. During their drive they had discussed various destinations for their party; but could decide upon none. The final halting place must depend upon the military situation, and nothing was more unsettled than that. But Gerry was not referring now to the halting place of the whole party; he knew that during the last minutes she had formed determinations which would take her as soon as possible to her other tasks; and she accepted that in her answer.
“I’m going to Montdidier—unless it seems better to make for Amiens; then to Paris as soon as I can.”
“I see.” He gazed away and up in the air where machines with the tricolor circle of the allies were flying; and hastily he offered Ruth his hand. “Good-bye, Cynthia,” he said.
“Good-bye, Gerry.”
“Cynthia, when you’re in Paris you’ll stay there?”
“I don’t know.”