He was too engrossed to see me, having his arm round a girl who was standing with him under an unlighted lamp-post. She was looking up into his face on which the moonlight shone—a pretty creature, I thought.
“Je t’adore!” she murmured, as I passed quite close; and Clatworthy kissed her.
I knew the boy’s mother and sisters, and wondered what they would think of him if they saw him now with this little street-walker. To them Cyril was a white knight sans peur et sans reproche. The war had not improved him. He was no longer the healthy lad who had been captain of his school, with all his ambition in sport, as I had known him five years before. Sometimes, in spite of his swagger and gallantry, I saw something sinister in his face, the look of a soiled soul. Poor kid! He, too, would have his excuse for all things:
“C’est la guerre!”
XII
It was five o’clock on the following evening that I saw the girl Marthe again. The doctor and I had arranged to go round to her lodging after dinner, by which time we hoped to have a letter for her from Pierre, by despatch-rider. But Brand was with me in the afternoon, having looked into my billet with an English conversation-book for Hélène, who was anxious to study our way of speech. Madame Chéri insisted upon giving him a glass of wine, and we stood talking in her drawing-room a while about the certain hope of victory, and then trivial things. Hélène was delighted with her book and Brand had a merry five minutes with her, teaching her to pronounce the words.
“C’est effroyable!” cried Hélène. “‘Through’... ‘Tough’ ‘Cough ‘... Mon Dieu, comme c’est difficile! There is no rule in your tongue.”
Madame Chéri spoke of Edouard, her eldest boy, who had disappeared into the great silence, and gave me a photograph of him, in case I should meet him in our advance towards the Rhine. She kissed the photograph before giving it to me, and said a few words which revealed her strong character, her passionate patriotism.