Part 170

"Yes, if you don't mind."

Sister Eila picked up a brassard bearing the conventional emblem, and tied it around his left arm above the elbow.

He had not yet noticed the other figure in the ambulance; now he looked around, stared, and suddenly a violent desire to laugh seized him.

"Asticot!" he exclaimed.

"Oui, c'est moi, M'sieu'," replied that smirking gentleman, with a demureness that struck Warner as horrible.

"But why?" he asked, in frank amazement.

"Ah," rejoined Asticot complacently, "that is the question, M'sieu'. I myself do not know exactly why I am here."

But he knew well enough. First of all, he had gotten all over any terror of bullets in Africa. Five years and fifty skirmishes had blunted that sort of fear in him.

What he wanted to do was to see what was going on. More than that, the encounter with One Eye in Ausone had strangely moved this rat of the Faubourgs. He desired to find that Disciplinary Battalion again--the Battalion which had been for him a hell on earth--but he wanted to look at it, pushed by a morbid curiosity. If One Eye were there, perhaps other old friends might still decorate those fierce and sullen ranks.

There was a certain lieutenant, too--gladly he would shoot him in the back if opportunity offered. He had dreamed for months of doing this.

But there was still another reason that incited Asticot to offer his services to Sister Felicite as a bearer. The ambulance had been called to the Ausone Forest. Somewhere within those leafy shades lurked Wildresse.

Never before had such a hatred blazed in the crippled intellect of Asticot as the red rage that flared within him when he learned that he had been employed by a spy who had sold out France.

Anything else he could have understood, any other crime. He was not squeamish; nothing appalled him in the category of villainy except only this one thing. Scoundrel as he was, he could not have found it in his heart to sell his country. And to remember that he had been employed by a man who did sell France aroused within him a passion for revenge so fierce that only a grip on the throat of Wildresse could ever satisfy the craving that made his vision red as blood.

He wore a brassard, this voyou of the Paris gutters, set with the Geneva cross. And in his pocket was an automatic pistol.

From the rear seat Sister Eila could still see the Bristol biplane in the sky, circling now high over Ausone Forest and the cultivated hills beyond. She never removed her eyes from it as the ambulance rolled on through the dust beside the slower moving line of lorries.

Later the motor lorries turned east; a column of infantry replaced them, trudging silently along in the sun, their rifles shouldered. Then they passed a battalion of chasseurs-a-pied in green and blue, swinging along at a cheerful, lively pace toward the crash of rifles and machine guns.

Across the river they saw the first German shells explode in the fields, and dark columns of smoke rise and spread out over the bushes and standing grain.

For some time, now, Warner had recognized the high whimper of bullets, but he said nothing until Sister Eila mentioned the noises, guessing correctly what were the causes.

Asticot shrugged and cuddled a cigarette which Warner had given him, enjoying it with leering deliberation.

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 Demoiselles 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.