Over the Seas for Uncle Sam Part 17

Before he climbed the stairs to bed, he sought me. I was smoking and thinking, on a little bench beneath the trees. Louis sat beside me and laid his hand on my knee.

"Well, my friend, I leave before you. For a little while we part, is it not so?--then, G.o.d willing, we meet again."

I tried to tell him what my visit had meant to me. What a place France and her people would for ever more occupy in my heart. All those things I struggled to say, but when it comes to expressing that which lies close to our heart, I find we are a halting, tongue-tied nation!

Then I spoke of Angele. I wanted him to know before he left how much I cared for her. I was afraid he might be displeased, but, instead, he pumped my hand with joy.

"This is American fas.h.i.+on," he laughed, then he leaned over and kissed my cheek. "Since you love a French girl you will have to get used to her brother's greeting," he said.

I told him I had not spoken to Angele. I had not dared to. I could not hope she would care for me.

"But you must speak to-night, before I go," he shouted. "Let me prepare her first. Oh, but this is of a great happiness to me!"

And before I could stop him, he hurried away.

After a long silence, while my heart thumped against my ribs and I felt myself growing hot and cold by turns, his voice sounded through the darkness.

"Come here, my friend, and see what you can do to make this child change her mind."

I ran toward him. I saw the flash of Angele's white gown, but when I reached her side, Louis had gone. She awaited me. Somehow she looked like the poppies at twilight, when their petals are folded... .

We were there together so long, that at length Louis' voice broke in upon us and startled us. He shouted that he must leave in six hours--that a brother returning to the Front had some claim upon his sister's time. Angele flew to his side, begging him to forgive her selfishness, but he pinched her cheek and laughed at her, br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with happiness at the romance for which he claimed he was responsible.

"But you must not take her away until after the war," he pleaded. "I want her here to greet me when I come home. I am a selfish brute, I know, but I would have nothing to return to if my little sister were gone."

I promised him. I would have promised anything that night I was so happy. It did not seem, as I stood in that quiet, leafy garden, with Angele's hand in mine, that there could be pain and anguish in the world--that cannons could be roaring and star sh.e.l.ls bursting less than a hundred miles away!

Louis left at daybreak. We drove to Paris with him and to the station.

It was a gay morning with a red sun rolling up from the east.

Angele was all smiles and animation, full of eager plans for his next leave. She submitted to his teasing with a laugh, but, for all that, her eyes looked as though they held a world of unshed tears, and I saw her, once or twice, press her lips together as though to choke back the sobs.

The station was full of men returning to the Front. They called eagerly to one another--they compared packages, and boasted of the good times they had had. Louis caught my hand and wrung it. Then he laid Angele's in it.

"She is all I have," he said; "it is fitting I leave her in the care of our beloved ally."

He kissed her and teased her about capturing an American in seven days, saluted us smartly and stalked through the great gate, turning to wave and smile and kiss his hand.

I never felt such a sense of loss in my life. It seemed as though the sun had gone out of the day.

"I cannot bear it," Angele whispered, so I took her away.

We spent the few remaining days of my leave planning our life after the war. She will not marry me until then. She and Louis are coming to the States to live and we three are to be as happy as the days are long. We will be, too. I know it.

I have been across seven times since and I have seen her four of those times in the past year. If there is any man on earth who wants this war to end it is I--and the reason is a certain flower-like girl in France.

Good Lord! you don't know what waiting for her means!

We've got to finish those Germans quickly and thoroughly so that Louis and Angele and I can set sail for America. If that is not a reason for ending this war, find me a better one!

THE END