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Page 30
He turned impatiently away. Why couldn't they stop at such a time? As
for himself, he would think of Julie, and a very handsome, tanned young
man looking into the glass over the dresser smiled, although it was not
at his own reflection. Then he bathed his face and hands, straightened
out his hair with the small pocket comb and brush that he, like most
other young officers, carried, and felt as if he had been made over.
He hung up his hat and heavy overcoat, and, resuming his place on the
sofa, waited until Julie should announce her readiness. But she took
more than a half-hour. He had not expected anything else. Truly a girl
in her position was entitled to at least an hour if she wanted it. So he
continued to wait with great patience. Besides it was very comfortable
there on the sofa, and the swish of the driving snow against the
window-panes was soothing. Now and then the low mutter of the guns came,
but it did not disturb him.
"I'm ready if you are, Mr. John," called a clear voice, and springing
from the sofa he joined Julie in the hall. She had smoothed her hair and
her Red Cross dress, and the rest had restored all her brilliant color.
She was as calm, too, as if they were not alone under the cloud of war,
and the hotel was full of real guests. It was her courage as much as
her beauty that appealed to John. At no time in all the dangers through
which they had gone had he seen her flinch. He had heard much of the
courage shown by the women in the great Civil War in his own country,
and this maid of France was proving anew that a girl could be as brave
as a man.
"May I take you down to dinner, Mademoiselle Lannes?" he asked.
"You may, Mr. Scott," she replied, and they walked together down the
hall and the stairway into the great dining-room. Antoine, a napkin on
his arm, ceremoniously held open the door for them and Suzanne showed
them to opposite seats at a small table by the window.
"We have found an abundance, Mademoiselle," she said, "and you shall be
served as if you were real guests."
The memory of that dinner will always be vivid in the mind of John
Scott, though he live to be a hundred. Julie and he were invincible
youth that always blooms anew. War and its horrors and dangers fell from
them. Their sportive fancy that they were guests in the hotel and
nothing ailed the world just then held true. As Antoine and his daughter
served the excellent dinner that Suzanne had prepared these two found
amusement in everything. The barrier of race that had been becoming more
slender all the time melted quite away, and they were boy and girl
looking into each other's eyes across a narrow table.
Picard and Suzanne even felt a touch of their fantastic spirits.
Suzanne from the north of France, powerful in her prejudices, a
Frenchwoman to the core, had viewed John from the first with a distinct
hostility, softening slowly, very slowly, as time passed. It was not
that she disliked his voice, his figure, his manner, or anything about
him. He was a brave and true young man and he had rendered great service
to the contemporary house of Lannes, but he was not a Frenchman.
But it seemed to Suzanne, as she served the courses and watched with an
eye which nothing escaped, that Monsieur Jean the Scott was becoming a
Frenchman--almost at least. She had seen young Frenchmen act very much
as the young American was acting. The Frenchman, too, would lean forward
to speak when the girl to whom he was speaking was as lovely as her
Mademoiselle Julie. No, that was impossible! None other was as lovely as
her Mademoiselle Julie. The glow that illumined his face was just the
same, quite of the best French manner, too. She had seen people who
_were_ people and she knew. She admitted, too, that he was very
handsome, with the slenderness of youth, but strong and muscular, and
above all, his face was good.
Antoine with the napkin over his arm did most of the serving, and being
a man the conventional differences did not seem to him so great as they
did to his daughter.
"A handsome pair," he said to her.
But while willing to admit much to herself, Suzanne would not admit it
to her father.
"Aye, handsome," she replied in a fierce whisper, "but not well
matched. He comes from an uncivilized continent on the other side of the
world, and soon he'll be going back there. I would that her brother,
Monsieur Philip, were here where he ought to be. Perhaps he'd be
foolish, too, because he likes the strange American, but it would
relieve us of care."
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