t all. Perhaps, when this great affair was
over, he would buy a little farm and stay here for the rest of
his life. That was a project he liked to play with. There was no
chance for the kind of life he wanted at home, where people were
always buying and selling, building and pulling down. He had
begun to believe that the Americans were a people of shallow
emotions. That was the way Gerhardt had put it once; and if it
was true, there was no cure for it. Life was so short that it
meant nothing at all unless it were continually reinforced by
something that endured; unless the shadows of individual
existence came and went against a background that held together.
While he was absorbed in his day dream of farming in France, his
companion stirred and rolled over on his elbow.
"You know we are to join the Battalion at A--. They'll be living
like kings there. Hicks will get so fat he'll drop over on the
march. Headquarters must have something particularly nasty in
mind; the infantry is always fed up before a slaughter. But I've
been thinking; I have some old friends at A--. Suppose we go on
there a day early, and get them to take us in? It's a fine old
place, and I ought to go to see them. The son was a fellow
student of mine at the Conservatoire. He was killed the second
winter of the war. I used to go up there for the holidays with
him; I would like to see his mother and sister again. You've no
objection?"
Claude did not answer at once. He lay squinting off at the beech
trees, without moving. "You always avoid that subject with me,
don't you?" he said presently.
"What subject?"
"Oh, anything to do with the Conservatoire, or your profession."
"I haven't any profession at present. I'll never go back to the
violin."
"You mean you couldn't make up for the time you'll lose?"
Gerhardt settled his back against a rock and got out his pipe.
"That would be difficult; but other things would be harder. I've
lost much more than time."
"Couldn't you have got exemption, one way or another?"
"I might have. My friends wanted to take it up and make a test
case of me. But I couldn't stand for it. I didn't feel I was a
good enough violinist to admit that I wasn't a man. I often wish
I had been in Paris that summer when the war broke out; then I
would have gone into the French army on the first impulse, with
the other students, and it would have been better."
David paused and sat puffing at his pipe. Just then a soft
move
|