The Girl Philippa

He was inclined to become loquacious, too, whenever a shell exploded across the river.

"Baoum – baoum!" he sneered. "Tiens! Another overripe egg! The Bosches will starve themselves with their generosity! Pan! Pouf! V'lan! Zoum – zo – um! That is shrapnel, M'sieu', as you know. As for me, I do not care for it. Anything else on the carte du jour, but not shrapnel for Bibi! No! For the big shells, yes; for the machine guns, yes; for the Démoiselles Lebel, all right! But no shrapnel, if you please – "

Sister Eila looked at him in smiling surprise.

"You would do well in the wards, with your cheerfulness," she said. "I always was certain that I should find in you some quality to admire."

Asticot looked at her, mouth open, as though thunderstruck. Then, to Sister Eila's amazement, a blush turned his expressive features scarlet.

To be spoken to like that by a Sainte of Saint Vincent de Paul! To be admired by a Sister of Charity! He, Asticot, was commended, approved of, encouraged!

It was too much for Asticot. He turned redder and redder; he started to relieve his terrible embarrassment by cursing, caught himself in time, choked, passed his red bandanna over his battered visage, tried to whistle, failed, and turned his ratty and distressed eyes upon Warner for relief.

"Cheerfulness is a virtue," said Warner gravely. "You seem to possess others, also; you have physical courage, you have exhibited gratitude toward me which I scarcely expected. It is a wonderful thing for a man, Asticot, to be commended at all by Sister Eila."

Sister Eila smiled and flushed; then her face became serious and she leaned forward and looked up at the Bristol biplane. Under it the white fleece of the shrapnel was still floating.

The ambulance stopped; hussars came riding on either side of it; an officer gave an order to the driver, who turned out among some trees.

The road ahead was crowded with infantry deploying at a double – a strange, gaunt, haggard regiment, white with dust, swinging out to whistle signal into the patches of woodland and across the willow-set meadows to the right.

Sullen sweating faces looked up everywhere among the bayonets; hard eyes, thin lips, bullet heads, appeared through the drifting dust.

Here and there an officer spoke, and there seemed to be a ringing undertone of iron in the blunt commands.

They came running in out of the stifling cloud of dust like a herd of sulky vicious bulls goaded right and left by the penetrating whistle calls and the menacing orders of their officers.

"One Eye!" yelled Asticot, waving his cap vigorously. "He! Mon vieux! How are you, old camp kettle?"

A soldier looked up with a frightful leer, waved his arm, and ran forward.

"C'est un vieux copain à moi!" remarked Asticot proudly. "M'sieu', voilà le Battalion d'Afrique! Voilà Biribi qui passe! Tonnerre de Dieu! There is Jacques! Hé! Look yonder, M'sieu'! That young one with the head of a Lyceum lad! Over there! That is the gosseof Wildresse!"

"What!"

"Certainly! That is Jacques Wildresse of Biribi! Hé! If he knew! Eh? Poor devil! If he knew what we know! And his scoundrel of a father out there now in those woods! C'est épatant! Quoi! B'en, such things are true, it seems! And when he looses his rifle, that lad, what if the lead finds a billet in his own flesh and blood! Eh? Are such things done by God in these days?"

An officer rode up and said to the chauffeur:

"Pull out of there. Back out to the road!"

But, once on the road again, they were ordered into a pasture, then ordered forward again and told to take station under a high bank crowned with bushes.

No shells came over, but bullets did in whining streams. The air overhead was full of them, and the earth kept sliding from the bank where the lead hit it with a slapping and sometimes a snapping sound, like the incessant crack of a coach whip.

Firing had already begun in the woods whither the Battalion of Africa had hurried with their flapping equipments and baggy uniforms white with dust. In the increasing roar of rifle fire the monotonous woodpecker tapping of the machine guns was perfectly recognizable.

Branches, twigs, bits of bark, green leaves, came winnowing earthward in a continual shower. There was nothing to be seen anywhere except a few mounted hussars walking their horses up and down the road, and the motor cyclists who passed like skimming comets toward Ausone.

Sister Eila and Sister Félicité had descended to the road and seated themselves on the grassy bank, where they conversed in low tones and looked calmly into the woods.

Asticot, possessed of a whole pack of cigarettes, promenaded his good fortune and swaggered up and down the road, ostentatiously coming to salute when an automobile full of officers came screaming by.

The military chauffeur dozed over his steering wheel. Two white butterflies fluttered persistently around his head, alighting sometimes on the sleeves of his jacket, only to flit away again and continue their whirling aerial dance around him.

For an hour the roar of the fusillade continued, not steadily, but redoubling in intensity at times, then slackening again, but continuing always.

Hussars came riding out from among the trees. One of them said to Warner that the ambulances across the Récollette were very busy.

Another, an officer, remarked that the Forest was swarming with Uhlans who were fighting on foot. Asked by Asticot whether the Battalion d'Afrique had gone in, the officer answered rather coolly that it was going in then with the bayonet, and that the world would lose nothing if it were annihilated.

After he had ridden on up the road, Asticot spat elaborately, and employed the word "coquin" – a mild explosion in deference to Sister Eila.

More cavalry emerged from the woods, coming out in increasing numbers, and all taking the direction of Ausone.

An officer halted and called out to Sister Eila.

"It goes very well for us. The Bat. d'Af. got into them across the river! The Uhlans are running their horses! – Everywhere they're swarming out of the woods like driven hares! We turn them by Ausone! A bientôt! God bless the Grey Sisters!"

Everywhere cavalry came trampling and crowding out of the woods and cantering away toward the north, hussars mostly, at first, then chasseurs-à-cheval, an entire brigade of these splendid lancers, pouring out into the road and taking the Ausone route at a gallop.

More motor cycles flashed past; then half a dozen automobiles, in which officers were seated examining maps; then up the road galloped dragoon lancers, wearing grey helmet slips and escorting three light field guns, the drivers of which were also dragoons – a sight Warner had never before seen.

An officer, wearing a plum-colored band of velvet around his red cap, and escorted by a lancer, came from the direction of Ausone, leaned from his saddle, and shook the ambulance chauffeur awake.

"Drive back toward Saïs," he said. "They are taking care of our people across the river, and you may be needed below!" He saluted the Sisters of Charity: "A biplane has fallen by the third pontoon. You may be needed there," he explained.

Sister Eila rose; her face was ashen.

"What biplane, Major?" she asked unsteadily.

"I don't know. British, I think. It came down under their shrapnel like a bird with a broken wing."

He rode on. Warner aided the Sisters of Charity to their seats. Then he and Asticot jumped aboard.

As they turned slowly, two wheels describing a circle through the dusty grass of the ditch, half a dozen mounted gendarmes trotted out of the woods with sabers drawn.

Behind them came four mounted hussars. A man walked in the midst of them. There was a rope around his neck, the end of which was attached to the saddle of one of the troopers.

At the same moment a sort of howl came from Asticot; he half rose, his fingers curling up like claws; his expression had become diabolical. Then he sank back on his seat.

The ambulance rolled forward faster, faster toward Saïs, where a biplane had come down into the river.

But Asticot had forgotten; and ever his blazing eyes were turned backward where, among four troopers, Wildresse walked with a rope around his neck and his clenched fists tied behind him.

CHAPTER XXXVII

The hussars conducted him toward headquarters. His huge hands were tied behind him; there was a rope around his neck, the other end of which was fastened to a hussar's saddlebow.