Pimpernel and Rosemary

This was in July 1916.

The woman sat alone in the room downstairs, stitching, stitching, by the flickering light of a small oil-lamp that stood on a ricketty deal table close beside her. By the side of the lamp there were some half-dozen khaki tunics, and the woman took up these tunics one by one, looked them over and patted them and turned them about and about: then she took up the scissors and undid a portion of the lining. After which she stitched that portion of the lining up again, but not before she had inserted something--something that was small and white and crisp and that she took out from a fold in the bosom of her dress--between the lining and the cloth.

And this she did to each of the half dozen tunics in turn.

The room was small and bare, the paper hung down from the walls in strips, but it happened to have a ceiling that had only partially fallen in during the last bombardment, and so it might be termed a luxurious room, seeing that there were very few ceilings left in Guillaumet now. There was no roof to the house, and not a pane of glass anywhere, but as it was very hot this July, this was really an advantage. Quite a pleasant draught stirred the tattered curtain that masked the broken window and fanned the woman's dark, unruly hair about her damp forehead.

She sat in ragged bodice and petticoat, her sleeves tucked up above her elbows, her bodice open, showing throat and breasts that were not unshapely.

"You are kind to those English fellows, Alice," a dry, sarcastic voice said suddenly, close behind her.

The woman gave a start, and the hand that patted and folded the last of the tunics shook ever so slightly. Her pale, wan face looked almost ashen in hue in the dim light of the lamp. She turned and looked at the newcomer, a tall, lean fellow with touzled dark hair and unshaven chin, who lolled under the lintel of the door, chewing the stump of a cigar and gazing at her with a kind of indulgently sarcastic expression in his deep-set eyes. At sight of him she seemed reassured. It was only Lucien--Lucien the vagrant, the picker-up of unconsidered trifles, attached as porter to one of the American hospitals somewhere close by. So everybody round about here understood. But no one ever inquired further than that; everyone was too busy to trouble about other people's affairs; and Lucien was useful and willing. Though he had a game leg he would do anything he was asked--run errands, repair a derelict car, clean boots, anything. Lucien l'Américain they called him. "The Yank" the English flying boys from the aerodrome at Guillaumet had nicknamed him.

And they rather liked the Yank. Though he was as ugly as sin, swarthy, most days unshaved and dirty, he was very amusing, had a fund of good stories to relate, and was always ready for a gamble or a bit of fun. He seemed plentifully supplied with money, too--tips, probably, which he collected from the French or English officers over at the hospital--and was very free with it in the way of drinks and cigarettes for the boys. Latterly his open courtship of Alice Gerbier had caused considerable amusement in Guillaumet. Alice was a good sort, of course, but so jolly ugly, and not so young as she once was. It was difficult to imagine any man wanting to make love to Alice Gerbier. But Lucien l'Américain must have done it after a fashion of his own, before Alice became his abject slave, fetching and carrying for him, working her fingers to the bone, and sitting up half the night sewing shirts and knitting socks for him. He took it all as a matter of course, and treated her as if she were so much dirt.

"The only way to treat women," he would remark cynically, whenever his harshness toward poor Alice roused the indignation of one of the men.

It was a curious courtship, and the boys who were quartered in old mother Gerbier's house often wondered how it would end. Poor Alice! It was her one chance. If she lost this undemonstrative admirer of hers she would never get another. No doubt she felt that, poor thing, for at times her eyes would look pathetically wistful, when she caught sight of Lucien making himself agreeable to other women.

Lucien l'Américain lolled into the room and came to a halt close beside Alice's chair; with the air of a condescending pasha he patted her thin shoulders.

"You are kinder to these fellows," he said, "than you are to me. Why the dickens you should work so hard for them I don't know. You look dog-tired, and it's swelteringly hot to-night. We shall have a storm, I think."

"The boys were saying they thought a storm was coming on," Alice said in a tired, toneless voice, "and they were hoping it would soon be over."

"Off as usual in the morning, I suppose," Lucien remarked curtly.

The woman nodded.

"And like a good soul you are putting a few stitches to their clothes, eh?" the man went on, and jerked a grimy thumb in the direction of the pile of tunics.

"There's no one else to do it for them," the woman rejoined in the same toneless, listless voice.

"Rather a futile task," he rejoined drily. "What is a hole more or less in a tunic? How many of these fellows will come back from their raid to-morrow do you suppose? Most of these carefully mended tunics will supplement the meagre wardrobes of our friend Fritz over the way, I'm thinking."

"Perhaps," the woman assented with a weary sigh.

"How many of them are going to-morrow?" he asked.

"I don't know. All the men in this house are going."

"And how many will come back do you think?"

The woman shuddered and pressed her thin, colourless lips more tightly together. The Yank gave a harsh laugh and shrugged his lean shoulders.

"These English flying men are very daring," he said lightly; "even Fritz will admit that much. They'll take the maddest risks! I don't think that you will see many of these tunics back here at close of day to-morrow."

The woman, however, remained obstinately silent. Whilst Lucien threw himself into a broken-down armchair that groaned under his weight, she rose and gathered up the pile of tunics.

"What are you doing with the things?" he asked querulously. "Can't you sit still for once and talk to me?"

He stretched out a long, muscular arm, succeeded in grabbing her dress, and drew her with sudden violence towards him. She tried to resist and to clutch the tunics tightly against her breast, but they fell out of her arms in a heap on the floor. She would have stooped to pick them up, but in a moment Lucien had her by the shoulders, forcing her to turn and to look at him.

"You are kinder to those fellows," he reiterated with his harsh laugh, "than you are to me. Leave those things alone, I say, and get me something to drink. What have you got in the house?"

But Alice for once was obstinate. As a rule even an unspoken wish from Lucien was a law unto her, but this time she wrenched herself free from his grasp, and getting down on one knee she started picking up the tunics from the floor. Lucien watched her for a moment or two through half-closed lids, with an undefinable expression on his lean, swarthy face, and a strange line, almost of cruelty, around his firm lips. Apparently he was not accustomed to seeing his whims thwarted, and no doubt he was impelled by the very human desire to probe his power upon this fond and foolish woman, for suddenly he jumped up, gave the tunics that were still on the floor a vigorous kick which sent them flying to the farthest corner of the room, and roughly grabbed the others which Alice was hugging to her breast.

"I told you," he said with a savage oath, "to leave those things alone and to get me a drink."

For the space of a few seconds, Alice still hesitated; she looked up at him with a pathetic expression of wistfulness and subjection, while she wiped the palms of her moist hands against her tattered apron. Lucien's eyes, meeting hers, lost their savage gleam; he looked almost ashamed of his brutality.

"That's all right, my girl," he said with an indulgent smile. "I didn't mean to be unkind. Get me a drink, there's a good soul. Where did you want to put these things?" he added, as he condescended to stoop and collect the scattered tunics.

Alice's wan face at once beamed with a joy as pathetic as her anxiety had been just now. She even contrived to smile.

"Never mind about them, Lucien," she said, and with rather jerky movements she wiped the top of the table with her apron. Then she turned towards the door: "I'll put the things away presently. I can get you a bottle of that wine you brought in the other day. Would you like that?"

"Yes, I should," the Yank rejoined. "And then you can come and sit still for a bit. That eternal stitch-stitching of yours gets on my nerves. Now," he went on, and, having collected all the tunics, he placed them back upon the table, "why you wanted to fiddle with these tunics I can't imagine. They can't have needed mending. Why, they are practically new."

He turned them over one by one: they were as he said, almost new--beautiful khaki tunics, smart and well-cut, such as the British government loved to serve out to its magnificent airmen. Then, as Alice had suddenly come to a halt by the door, he half-turned to her, and added in his usual harsh, peremptory tone:

"Are you getting me that wine or are you not?" For a few seconds after Alice had finally left the room Lucien l'Américain remained standing by the table, his grimy hand upon the pile of tunics, motionless, his eyes fixed upon the narrow doorway through which Alice had disappeared, his ear bent, listening to her retreating footsteps. As soon as these had died away down the stone steps which led to the cellar his whole attitude changed. He threw the stump of his cigar away and, picking up one of the tunics, he felt it all over scrupulously--all over, and with both hands, until in one spot his sensitive fingers felt something that had a slightly crackling, crisp sound about it when handled.

Whereupon Lucien l'Américain drew a deep breath, and in his deep-set eyes there came a quick flash of triumph. One by one, more quickly now and more surely he picked up the tunics and felt each one in turn all over until his fingers encountered the something crisp and crackling which appeared hidden between the cloth and the lining, and while he did so his face, never prepossessing, looked positively hideous; a cruel, almost animal look distorted it, the lips drew back against the gums, showing white teeth, sharp and gleaming like those of a wolf.

"That's it, is it?" he muttered once or twice. "Not bad for a woman. Did she think of it, I wonder."

Suddenly his sharp ears detected the sound of Alice's tired footstep coming up the cellar stairs. He laid the tunics back upon the table in a neat pile, then he went to the window, drew the curtain slightly aside and gave a low, prolonged whistle, which was almost immediately answered by another from somewhere out in the darkness.