This thought came to Bertram as he went up a road past the ruined village of Barisis. The moon had risen in a pale sky, still blue, and its light silvered the wooden crosses in a military graveyard. Row by row they stood above the neatly ordered graves. For scores of miles, for hundreds of miles, across France, the moon illumined cemeteries like this, crowded with French and British dead.
“God, give us Peace!” said Bertram, aloud, as he bared his head in salute to old comrades with whom he had trudged these roads.
An immense fear invaded his spirit, and a kind of shudder shook him, for he seemed to hear again the march of youth advancing to another Armageddon in these fields—the last youth of Europe.
He was glad to get into the warmth of the wooden estaminet. An enormously fat Frenchman greeted him jovially.
“Monsieur is hungry, beyond doubt! My wife has cooked an excellent chicken.”
The wife, a pretty, thin-faced woman, with merry black eyes, addressed him as “mon capitaine” and spread a napkin as a cloth on a deal table.
She had been in St. Pol during all the war. Did he know St. Pol, not far from Hesdin—? Yes? Then surely he must have known, among English officers who had been friends of hers, le capitaine Jenkins, le lieutenant O’Mally, le commandant Stuart? She had un très bon souvenir of the English Army. Sometimes her husband was jealous when she praised the English officers so much!
“Without cause, I’m sure!” said Bertram, with a smile.
The woman laughed, and her black eyes danced.
“In time of war there are many temptations!”