"You've gone and spoiled the whole war for me!" she called to him.
* * * * *
The war, too, had been spoiled for Private Cowan. He was unable to keep his mind on it. Of the Second Battle of the Marne he was to remember little worth telling.
Two nights later they came to rest in the woods back of St. Eugene, in the little valley of the Surmelin, that gateway to Paris from the farthest point of the second German drive. It was a valley shining with the gold of little wheat fields, crimson-specked with poppies. It recalled to Private Cowan merely the farmland rolling away from that old house of red brick where he had gone one day with Sharon Whipple—yesterday it might have been. Even the winding creek—though the French called theirs a river—was like the other creek, its course marked by a tangle of shrubs and small growths; and the sides of the valley were flanked familiarly with stony ridges sparsely covered with second-growth timber. Newbern, he kept thinking, would lie four miles beyond that longest ridge, and down that yellow road Sharon Whipple might soon be driving his creaking, weathered buggy and the gaunt roan. The buggy would sag to one side and Sharon would be sitting "slaunchwise," as he called it. Over the ridge, at Newbern's edge, would be the bony little girl who was so funny and willful.
They moved forward to the south bank of the Marne. Beyond that fifty-yard stream lay the enemy, reported now to be stacking up drive impedimenta. The reports bored Private Cowan. He wished they would hurry the thing through. He had other matters in hand. A woman clothed with the sun, and under her feet the moon, and upon her head a crown of—he could not make the crown of stars seem right. She was crowned with a nurse's cap, rusty hair showing beneath, and below this her wan, wistful, eager face, the eyes half shutting in vain attempts to reason. The face would be drawn by some inner torment; then its tortured lines melt to a smile of sure conviction. But she was clothed with the sun, and the moon was under her feet. So much he could make seem true.
The dark of a certain night fell on the waiting regiment. Crickets sounded their note, a few silent birds winged furtively overhead. Rolling kitchens brought up the one hot meal of the day, to be taken to the front by carrying parties. Company commanders made a last reconnaissance of their positions. For Private Cowan it was a moment of double waiting. Waiting for battle was now secondary. In a tiny slit trench on the forward edge of a railway embankment Private Brennon remarked upon the locomotion of the foreign frog.
"Will you look at 'em walk!" said Spike. "Just like an animal! Don't they ever learn to hop like regular gorfs?"
Said Private Cowan: "I suppose you saw that girl back there the other day?"
"Me and the regiment," said Spike, and chewed gum discreetly.
"She's a girl from back home. Funny! I'd never taken much notice of her before."