Doggie had been out a long time. He had seen many places, much fighting and endured manifold miseries. After one of the spells in the trenches, the worst he had experienced, A Company was marched into new billets some miles behind the lines, in the once prosperous village of Frélus. They had slouched along dead tired, drooping under their packs, sodden with mud and sleeplessness, silent, with not a note of a song among them—but at the entrance to the village, quickened by a word or two of exhortation from officers and sergeants, they pulled themselves together and marched in, heads up, forward, in faultless step. The C.O. was jealous of the honour of his men. He assumed that his predecessors in the village had been a “rotten lot,” and was determined to show the inhabitants of Frélus what a crack English regiment was really like. Frélus was an unimportant, unheard-of village; but the opinion of a thousand Fréluses made up France’s opinion of the British Army. Doggie, although half stupefied with fatigue, responded to the sentiment, like the rest. He was conscious of making part of a gallant show. It was only when they halted and stood easy that he lost count of things. The wide main street of the village swam characterless before his eyes. He followed, not directions, but directed men, with a sheep-like instinct, and found himself stumbling through an archway down a narrow path. He had a dim consciousness of lurching sideways and confusedly apologizing to a woman who supported him back to equilibrium. Then the next thing he saw was a barn full of fresh straw, and when somebody pointed to a vacant strip, he fell down, with many others, and went to sleep.
The réveillé sounded a minute afterwards, though a whole night had passed; and there was the blessed clean water to wash in—he had long since ceased to be fastidious in his ablutions—and there was breakfast, sizzling bacon and bread and jam. And there in front of the kitchen, aiding with the hot water for the tea, moved a slim girl, with dark, and as Doggie thought, tragic eyes.
Kit inspection, feet inspection, all the duties of the day and dinner were over. Most of the men returned to their billets to sleep. Some, including Doggie, wandered about the village, taking the air, and visiting the little modest cafés and talking with indifferent success, so far as the interchange of articulate ideas was concerned, with shy children. McPhail and Mo Shendish being among the sleepers, Doggie mooned about by himself in his usual self-effacing way. There was little to interest him in the long straggling village. He had passed through a hundred such. Low whitewashed houses, interspersed with perky balconied buildings given over to little shops on the ground floor, with here and there a discreet iron gate shutting off the doctor’s or the attorney’s villa, and bearing the oval plate indicating the name and pursuit of the tenant; here and there, too, long whitewashed walls enclosing a dairy or a timber-yard stretched on each side of the great high road, and the village gradually dwindled away at each end into the gently undulating country. There were just a by-lane or two, one leading up to the little grey church and presbytery and another to the little cemetery with its trim paths and black and white wooden crosses and wirework pious offerings. At open doors the British soldiers lounged at ease, and in the dim interiors behind them the forms of the women of the house, blue-aproned, moved to and fro. The early afternoon was warm, a westerly breeze deadened the sound of the distant bombardment to an unheeded drone, and a holy peace settled over the place.
Doggie, clean, refreshed, comfortably drowsy, having explored the village, returned to his billet, and looking at it from the opposite side of the way, for the first time realized its nature. The lane, into which he had stumbled the night before, ran under an archway supporting some kind of overhead chamber, and separated the dwelling-house from a warehouse wall on which vast letters proclaimed the fact that Veuve Morin et Fils carried on therein the business of hay and corn dealers. Hence, Doggie reflected, the fresh, deep straw on which he and his fortunate comrades had wallowed. The double gate under the archway was held back by iron stanchions. The two-storied house looked fairly large and comfortable. The front door stood wide open, giving the view of a neat, stiff little hall or living-room. An article of furniture caught his idle eye. He crossed the road in order to have a nearer view. It was a huge polished mahogany cask standing about three feet high and bound with shining brass bands, such as he remembered having seen once in Brittany. He advanced still closer, and suddenly the slim, dark girl appeared and stood in the doorway, and looked frankly and somewhat rebukingly into his inquisitive eyes. Doggie flushed as one caught in an unmannerly act. A crying fault of the British Army is that it prescribes for the rank and file no form of polite recognition of the existence of civilians. It is contrary to Army Orders to salute or to take off their caps. They can only jerk their heads and grin, an inelegant proceeding, which places them at a disadvantage with the fair sex. Doggie, therefore, sketched a vague salutation half-way between a salute and a bow, and began a profuse apology. Mademoiselle must pardon his curiosity, but as a lover of old things he had been struck by the beautiful tonneau.
An amused light came into her sombre eyes and a smile flickered round her lips. Doggie noted instantly how pale she was, and how tiny, faint little lines persisted at the corners of those lips in spite of the smile.
“There is no reason for excuses, monsieur,” she said. “The door was open to the view of everybody.”
“Pourtant,” said Doggie, “c’était un peu mal élevé.”
She laughed. “Pardon. But it’s droll. First to find an English soldier apologizing for looking into a house, and then to find him talking French like a poilu.”