Other men had scrambled over his body, and, now that the war had set him on his feet again, he was possessed by a great yearning to begin life over again, to make some success of the years that were to come. He wanted to feel the grip of a new self-respect, the stiff back of a new manhood. He wanted to think that he mattered, that there was yet some measure of rich blood in him that could make some other creature happy. He was curiously humble over it, boyish and innocent. And yet as he foot-slogged it along those muddy winter roads, a pilgrim in search of his second chance, he became possessed by a vague yet spiritual conviction that he would find that chance somewhere in poor, battered, devastated France.
It was on the road from Avesnes to Maroilles that Brent met the girl with the black shawl. It was no more than an incident in his pilgrimage, but an incident that flushed him with the warm red wine of humanism.
He was sitting on the butt of a broken telegraph pole when the girl came along the road. She was pretty and dark and rather slender for a French peasant, and Brent was aware of her as an eager and hurrying figure with a black shawl folded over her shoulders, and the end of it held so as to cover her mouth. She came quickly towards him. Her eyes were big and bright with hope, the desperate hope that her man had come at last.
Brent saw her falter. Then the light died out of her eyes. Her face seemed to grow more sallow, and very sad. Yet she approached him, smiling with a sudden pity, a compassionate friendliness that warmed to all those lonely ones who returned.
“You are going home, monsieur?”
Brent raised his cloth cap.
“If I find a home.”
She sighed, dropped the shawl from her mouth, and sat down beside him. Brent felt that she had suffered very much; she looked ill, her soft eyes were growing old with watching.
“I thought you might be my Jean,” she said, with the simplicity of one who had lived in days of great sadness.
“I am sorry,” said Brent, “has he not come home yet?”