After lunch came two visitors to talk. They were sisters, friends of Madeleine. For two years and a half they had been prisoners in a French town held by the Germans, near Albert, and had been liberated only a month before by the German evacuation. They told pitiful tales of German ill-usage, though not of a physiological nature. But constantly the Boches demanded food and never paid, so that they themselves went hungry daily. Also, they worked for Germans under compulsion, and never were paid; and worked very hard. The German soldiers they described as not unkind, though discourteous, but the officers were invariably brutal. Maintenant vous êtes chez nous was the German officers' formula, with its implied threat of violation; which was never executed, however.
We rose to go, and made to pay. This was smiled at indulgently. "Au revoir, messieurs! Bonne chance!" cried le père. "Quand vous voudrez," said Madame. "Quand vous voudrez," echoed Madeleine. So we went—like Christian—on our way rejoicing.
CHAPTER II
THÉRÈSE
I was sitting on a log at the crest of the splendidly high La Bouille ridge gloating over the Seine Valley. Here, from the grounds of La Maison Brûlée (now raucous with revellers in the late afternoon) you have a generous sweep of the basin and of its flanking forest slopes. A Frenchman and his wife sauntered past with their daughter and took a seat beyond. The daughter was beautiful, with an air of breeding that sorted well with the distinguished bearing of the old man and the well-sustained good looks of her mother. They sat for half an hour, and as they re-passed on the return mademoiselle said: "How do you like the view?" in excellent English. This was justification enough for inviting them to share my log. We talked a long time, mademoiselle and I; the old people hadn't a word of English. She had had a two years' sojourn in Birmingham about the age of sixteen, and had acquired good English ineradicably. She had got caught into Joseph Chamberlain's circle; he used to call her Sunny Jim. The name sat well upon her: the facetious aptness of it was striking. She was of the "fire and dew" that make up the admirable French feminine lightness of spirit-vivacity, frankness, sunniness, whimsicality, good looks, and litheness of body.
The end of it all was that I was to come down to Sahurs (over the river) the next Sunday and see their home and get taught some French in an incidental fashion. There was no manner of doubt of every need of that.
And there was no manner of hesitancy in accepting such an invitation. She flashed a smile behind as they left, and I resumed the log, wishing to-morrow were Sunday, as distinct from Monday. This was a damnable interval of waiting. As I was repeating this indictment over and over, watching them disappear into the forest, she waved. I lapsed into a profane silence, and brooded on the flight of time, and reviewed in turn all the false allegations of its swiftness I could call to mind.