The next day we met at an early luncheon and again we set out for X. “Remember,” I warned him, “we shall have barely time at the junction to make that other train. I know which track it is on now. We’ll all be ready to jump when this one stops.”
But our train was shunted on to a side track a little way out of Bourges, in order to let some troop trains pass. We were late, and we got into X just in time to see the train for Y—— disappear around a curve.
“See here,” I said to the pale and despairing man, “I do not propose to spend the rest of my life traveling between this wretched junction and the city of Bourges. I have already spent twenty-four hours traveling thirty-five miles. At this rate I might die of old age before I got back to America. You go up-town and find a motor-car, anything that will go, and we’ll finish the journey in that.”
“How can I expect to find a motor-car?” cried the lieutenant. “You know as well as I do that no pleasure automobiles are allowed to run in France, and this hole won’t have any taxi-cabs. Besides a taxi down to Y—— would set us back two or three hundred francs.”
“Never you mind about that,” I retorted. “You do what you are told. You go straight up-town and look for a car.”
We quarreled by this time, like a real married pair, and with quite the air of a defeated husband he departed on his quest. In a short time he came back. Of course, there was no motor-car to be had, he reported, but he had had some luck. A colonel’s limousine had broken down somewhere in the neighborhood and it was being towed down to Y—— by an army truck. He had heavily subsidized the doughboys who were accompanying the truck, and they had agreed to stop on a certain corner long enough for us to surreptitiously get into the limousine.
It was a beautiful car, apparently in pre-war days the property of some woman of fashion. The upholstery was pale French gray and there were all sorts of scent bottles, tablets and flower holders in silver and cut glass. But it was a terribly open limousine, all windows, and the lieutenant and I were conspicuous objects. The old truck that towed us made a lot of noise, and at every village we passed through the people ran to the doors and windows and cheered vociferously with delighted laughter.
The worst was getting into the camp at Y——, but here the bit of luck appeared. It began to rain just before we arrived, and when we rolled in the rain was coming down in such sheets that everybody except the men on guard were under cover. Nobody saw us but the soldiers who examined our passes. So the lieutenant’s military career was saved.
We never met again. The lieutenant, I am sure, hopes we never shall.