“Even if we get there this evening,” he added, “I don’t know how I am going to get out to the camp. They don’t allow officers to sleep in the town, you know. They know I’m on the way because I sent all my luggage on ahead.”
“Perhaps there is a train back very soon,” I suggested. “We’ll get off at Orleans and I will inquire.”
We did, the lieutenant carrying my suit-case, and both of us hurrying as fast as we could to the ticket office. What was the next train for Y——? The next train was about to start. “Hurry, hurry, madame and monsieur. You will miss it unless you run. It is necessary to change at X,” mentioning the very junction where our unfortunate lives had been joined.
We ran, without stopping to buy tickets, and scrambled breathlessly aboard the moving train. Nobody asked us for any tickets, and we actually traveled the entire distance back to X without paying the French government a single sou. We arrived about seven o’clock, dusk, with our final destination still forty-five miles ahead. Moreover, there was no train before midnight.
The young lieutenant was very blue, but he agreed that there was no use worrying, and we might as well go up-town and get some dinner. We would have to go together, whether we liked it or not, because he couldn’t get along alone. We had a good dinner, and by the time it was finished it selfishly occurred to me that I had had about enough of that strange young man’s society. It was obvious that he had had enough of mine, because it is a little bit dangerous for an American officer to be seen in a lady’s company in France. Officers are not supposed to have women friends or relatives on that side of the ocean, and if a member of the military police were to see him carrying a woman’s suit-case through a civilian town the policeman soldier might develop a little curiosity. And what a fishy story we had to tell after all. Childish!
“I think,” said I to the lieutenant, “that you can get along all right now. I am very tired and I believe I will take a room in this hotel and stay over until to-morrow.”
He brightened up amazingly and said that it was a capital idea. But when I asked for a room the little patronne declared that she didn’t have a bed in the house. Perhaps I could get one at the hotel opposite the station. I couldn’t, nor did I find a room vacant in any one of the other hotels.
“Well,” I said, “I’m not going to get into Y—— after midnight. It’s a small place, and I am not sure I can get a room there. I’m going back to Bourges. There are large hotels there, and there’s a train at ten.”
“I can’t get to Y—— after midnight either,” gloomed the lieutenant. “There won’t be any place for me to stay, and at that hour I couldn’t telephone the camp to send an ambulance for me. I’ll have to go to Bourges, too.”
To Bourges we went, and in addition to getting a room for myself I had to take the lieutenant along and get a room for him. Why had I ever met the man? Why had he ever met me? Would we never get rid of each other, or were we tied for life?