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Page 98
The country was much more heavily forested than usual. At points, the
woods turned into what John would almost have called a real forest. Then
they could not see very far ahead or to either side, but the road was
good and the carts moved forward, though not at a pace too great for the
walkers.
Picard carried a rifle over his shoulders, and John had secured an
automatic. All the soldiers were well armed. John felt a singular
lightness of heart, and, despite the forbidding glare of Suzanne, who
was in the last cart, he spoke to Julie.
"It's too fine a morning for battle," he said in English. "Let's pretend
that we're a company of troubadours, minnesingers, jongleurs, acrobats
and what not, going from one great castle to another."
"I suppose Antoine there is the chief acrobat?"
"He might do a flip-flap, but if he did the earth would shake."
"Then you are the chief troubadour. Where is your harp or viol, Sir
Knight of the Tuneful Road?"
"I'm merely imagining character, not action. I haven't a harp or a viol,
and if I had them I couldn't play on either."
"Do you think it right to talk In English to the strange young American,
Mademoiselle? Would Madame your mother approve?" said Suzanne in a
fierce whisper.
"It is sometimes necessary in war, Suzanne, to talk where one would not
do so in peace," replied Julie gravely, and then she said to John again
in English:
"We cannot carry out the pretense, Mr. Scott. The tuneful or merry folk
of the Middle Ages did not travel with arms. They had no enemies, and
they were welcome everywhere. Nor did they travel as we do to the
accompaniment of war. The sound of the guns grows louder."
"So it does," said John, bending an ear--he had forgotten that a battle
was raging somewhere, "but we're behind the French lines and it cannot
touch us."
"It was a wonderful victory. Our soldiers are the bravest in the world
are they not, Mr. Scott?"
John smiled. They were still talking English. He liked to hear her
piquant pronunciation of it, and he surmised too that the bravest of
hearts beat in the bosom of this young girl whom war had suddenly made a
woman. How could the sister of such a man as Lannes be otherwise than
brave? The sober brown dress, and the hood equally sober, failed to hide
her youthful beauty. The strands of hair escaping from the hood showed
pure gold in the sunshine, and in the same sunshine the blue of her eyes
seemed deeper than ever.
John was often impressed by the weakness of generalities, and one of
them was the fact that so many of the French were so fair, and so many
of the English so dark. He did not remember the origin of the Lannes
family, but he was sure that through her mother's line, at least, she
must be largely of Norman blood.
"What are you thinking of so gravely, Mr. Scott?" she asked, still in
English, to the deep dissatisfaction of Suzanne, who never relaxed her
grim glare.
"I don't know. Perhaps it was the contrast of our peaceful journey to
what is going on twelve or fifteen miles away."
"It is beautiful here!" she said.
Truly it was. The road, smooth and white, ran along the slopes of hills,
crested with open forest, yet fresh and green. Below them were fields of
chequered brown and green. Four or five clear brooks flowed down the
slopes, and the sheen of a little river showed in the distance. Three
small villages were in sight, and, clean white smoke rising from their
chimneys, blended harmoniously into the blue of the skies. It reminded
John of pictures by the great French landscape painters. It was all so
beautiful and peaceful, nor was the impression marred by the distant
mutter of the guns which he had forgotten again.
Julie and Suzanne, her menacing shadow, dismounted from the wagon
presently and walked with John and Picard. Lieutenant Legar� was stirred
enough from his customary phlegm to offer some gallant words, but war,
the great leveler, had not quite leveled all barriers, so far as he was
concerned, and, after her polite reply, he returned to his martial
duties. John had become the friend of the Lannes family through his
association with Philip in dangerous service, and his position was
recognized.
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