After a few yards she glanced over her shoulder to see whether he was following. But Doggie remained by the railings.
Presently he shrugged his shoulders and went off to a picture palace by himself and thought wistfully of Jeanne.
And Jeanne? Well, Jeanne was no longer at Frélus; for there came a morning when Aunt Morin was found dead in her bed. The old doctor came and spread out his thin hands and said “Eh bien” and “Que voulez-vous?” and “It was bound to happen sooner or later,” and murmured learned words. The old curé came and a neighbour or two, and candles were put round the coffin and the pompes funèbres draped the front steps and entrance and vestibule in heavy black. And as soon as was possible Aunt Morin was laid to rest in the little cemetery adjoining the church, and Jeanne went back to the house with Toinette, alone in the wide world. And because there had been a death in the place the billeted soldiers went about the courtyard very quietly.
Since Phineas and Mo and Doggie’s regiment had gone away, she had devoted, with a new passionate zeal, all the time she could spare from the sick woman to the comforts of the men. No longer restrained by the tightly drawn purse-strings of Aunt Morin, but with money of her own to spend—and money restored to her by these men’s dear and heroic comrade—she could give them unexpected treats of rich coffee and milk, fresh eggs, fruit…. She mended and darned for them and suborned old women to help her. She conspired with the Town Major to render the granary more habitable; and the Town Major, who had not to issue a return for a centime’s expense, received all her suggestions with courteous enthusiasm. Toinette taking good care to impress upon every British soldier who could understand her, the fact that to mademoiselle personally and individually he was indebted for all these luxuries, the fame of Jeanne began to spread through that sector of the front behind which lay Frélus. Concurrently spread the story of Doggie Trevor’s exploit. Jeanne became a legendary figure, save to those thrice fortunate who were billeted on Veuve Morin et Fils, Marchands des Foins en Gros et Détail, and these, according to their several stolid British ways, bowed down and worshipped before the slim French girl with the tragic eyes, and when they departed, confirmed the legend and made things nasty for the sceptically superior private.
So, on the day of the funeral of Aunt Morin, the whole of the billet sent in a wreath to the house, and the whole of the billet attended the service in the little church, and they marched back and drew up by the front door—a guard of honour extending a little distance down the road. The other men billeted in the village hung around, together with the remnant of the inhabitants, old men, women and children, but kept quite clear of the guarded path through which Jeanne was to pass. One or two officers looked on curiously. But they stood in the background. It was none of their business. If the men, in their free time, chose to put themselves on parade, without arms, of course, so much the better for the army.
Then Jeanne and the old curé, in his time-scarred shovel-hat and his rusty soutane, followed by Toinette, turned round the corner of the lane and emerged into the main street. A sergeant gave a word of command. The guard stood at attention. Jeanne and her companions proceeded up the street, unaware of the unusual, until they entered between the first two files. Then for the first time the tears welled into Jeanne’s eyes. She could only stretch out her hands and cry somewhat wildly to the bronzed statues on each side of her, “Merci, mes amis, merci, merci,” and flee into the house.
The next day Maître Pépineau, the notary, summoned her to his cabinet. Maître Pépineau was very old. His partner had gone off to the war. “One of the necessities of the present situation,” he would say, “is that I should go on living in spite of myself; for if I died, the whole of the affairs of Frélus would be in the soup.” Now, a fortnight back, Maître Pépineau and four neighbours—the four witnesses required by French law when there is only one notary to draw up the instrument public—had visited Aunt Morin; so Jeanne knew that she had made a fresh will.
“Mon enfant,” said the old man, unfolding the document, “in a previous will your aunt had left you a little heritage out of the half of her fortune which she was free to dispose of by the code. You having come into possession of your own money, she has revoked that will and left everything to her only surviving son, Gaspard Morin, in Madagascar.”
“It is only just and right,” said Jeanne.