“Nothing draws me away from the front,” he added, with a melancholy smile, “and I was intending forthwith to return to my corps; but the doctor is flatly opposed to it.”
He confessed it was not without pleasure that he looked forward to spending the period of convalescence in the Château de S——, which autumn adorned so nobly.
From the second week, in spite of the state of my wound on my shoulder, I was given permission to walk a little. Dauche helped me with a brotherly tenderness, and it was through his encouragement that I was able soon to venture in the avenues of the park.
The doctor who looked after us both said to me in rather an embarrassed tone:
“You are going out with Lieutenant Dauche? See that you don’t go too far.”
This doctor was of a reticent nature. I did not ask for explanations; I was confident in my recovered strength. It never struck me—naturally enough—that the doctor was in fact thinking of Dauche.
Several days went by, blessed with all that is warm, young, affectionate in a growing friendship. The war, among a thousand other miseries, has compelled us to live occasionally in the company of men whom in time of peace we should have carefully avoided. It was, then, with a trembling joy that I recognised in Dauche those qualities which would move my nature to love and affection—a nature which had ever perhaps been unduly difficult and uneasy. I thought that a deep predestined purpose operated there: the men of this age who can become my friends are marked, and determined, in the universe with the same mysterious sign; but I may not know them all, and perhaps I shall never be fated to meet my best friend.
The times when it did not rain we passed in long conversations on the hillside, under a plantation of pines and beech trees. My young friend perceived and judged natural objects with the innocence, freshness and originality of a child. He spoke of his scattered family with a stubborn faith in their safety—a faith that usually is found only in religious fanatics or in men unbalanced by fame or success.
In the evening, when the approach of darkness tended to bring back to the mind the awful things one had experienced and made one withdraw into oneself, he used cheerfully to ask me to have a game of chess, and this game of skill took us on to the threshold of sleep.