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 tonight. 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 tomorrow 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 tomorrow?” 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 tomorrow.”
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
