Part 34 (2/2)

”Have you heard from Jack again, Mamzelle Maryette?”

The girl blushed:

”I hear from Djack by every mail,” she said, with all the transparent honesty that characterized her.

Smith grinned:

”Just like that! Well, tell him from me to quit fooling away his time in a hospital and come and get you or somebody is going to steal you.”

The girl was very happy; she stood there in the September suns.h.i.+ne leaning on her hoe and gazing half shyly, half humorously down the river where a string of American mules was being watered.

Mellow Ethiopian laughter sounded from the distance as the Baton Rouge negroes exchanged pleasantries in limited French with a couple of gendarmes on the bank above them. And there, in the suns.h.i.+ne of the little garden by the river, war and death seemed very far away. Only at intervals the veering breeze brought to Sainte Lesse the immense vibration of the cannonade; only at intervals the high sky-clatter of an airplane reminded the village that the front was only a little north of Nivelle, and that what had been Nivelle was not so very far away.

”If you were _my_ girl, Maryette,” remarked Smith, ”I'd die of worry in that hospital.”

”_You_ might have reason to, Monsieur,” retorted the girl demurely. ”But you see it's Djack who is convalescing, not you.”

She had become accustomed to the ceaseless banter of Burley's two comrades--a banter entirely American, and which at first she was unable to understand. But now all things American, including accent and odd, perverted humour, had become very dear to her. The clink-clank of the muleteer's big spurs always set her heart beating; the sight of an arriving convoy from the Channel port thrilled her, and to her the trample of mules, the shouts of foreign negroes, the drawling, broken French spoken by the white muleteers made heavenly real to her the dream which love had so suddenly invaded, and into which, as suddenly, strode Death, clutching at Love.

She had beaten him off--she had--or G.o.d had--routed Death, driven him from the dream. For it was a dream to her still, and she thought she could never be able to comprehend the magic reality of it, even when at last her man, ”Djack,” came back to prove the blessed miracle which held her in the magic of its thrall.

”Who's the guy with the wheelbarrow?” inquired Sticky Smith, rolling a cigarette.

”Karl, his name is,” she answered; ”--a Belgian refugee.”

”He looks like a Hun to me,” remarked Glenn, bluntly.

”He has his papers,” said the girl.

Glenn shrugged.

”With his little pink eyes of a pig and his whitish hair and eyebrows--well, maybe they make 'em like that in Belgium.”

”Papers,” added Smith, ”_can_ be swiped.”

The girl shook her head:

”He's an invalid student from Ypres. He looks quite ill, I think.”

”He looks the lunger, all right. But Huns have it, too. What does he do--wander about town at will?”

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