And sitting there she sought to give me the impression, singing his song in a cracked voice:
"A part les Anglais, Américains,
Espagnols, Anamit's, Italiens,
Les Russes, Les Hollandais et les p'tits Japonais—
En France y a qu' des Français!
Ah, but he is an original, he!"
"But why then was he not of the clientèle last night?" I asked.
"I do not know, M'sieu'. Perhaps he was a little souffrant. It was Madame who made les emplettes last night; ordinarily it is he, and oh, M'sieu', M'sieu', pour les occasions!... She took her bicycle which reposes behind the door there, and was gone scarcely a little half-hour, and then she replaced the bicycle and mounted straight to him in the room that is above."
"Did you see them go out this morning?"
("Then, chère Madame," I thought to myself, "do not be surprised if you do not see them return this evening.")
For this was newly disturbing. Apparently for three nights he had made the purchases, as I had anticipated he would; then on the fourth night he had sent her. For three nights he had sat in that half-underground room, laughing and talking with the evening customers; then on the fourth he had buried himself upstairs. I looked round the kitchen again. I tried to see the picture—the incredulous poilus, questioning, cross-questioning, demanding who was on his regiment's right, who on its left, what division was in support, under whose command. Quite possibly Caporal Robert had been had in specially to check his accuracy. What a stroke of luck for him that he had actually served at a point of contact between the British line and the French! And here in this room he had sat, pulling their legs, as he had pulled mine in the Boulevard Féart, Alec Aird's at Ker Annic. The cool impudence of his song! "Only Frenchmen in France!" How he had laughed in his sleeve! Well might Madame Carguet shake her head and say that he was impayable, he!
But—it (you know what I mean by "it") happened in the night; and what was the appalling position now that his nights were shared with another? Her too I tried to picture again in that lamplighted kitchen, clumsily sewing, burning herself with the iron, with the poilus, grave and respectful, but making the very utmost of their moustaches and stealing covert glances at her as her head was down hung over the ironing-board. "Une fuite"—obviously an elopement. Anyone could see that with half an eye. But to what had she fled? To yet another of his transformations? Slight though any transformation must now be, she knew every line of his beautiful face, and what must be her consternation, what her alarm, did but a single line alter, though it became more beautiful still?