“It looks as though mine were a bit bigger than yours.”
They stopped in the middle of the road and made scrupulous comparisons, right foot against right foot.
“A good three sizes bigger!” said Deodat.
They resumed their steady march in the direction of Claquebue. keeping step as before. Ernest was a little downcast about his feet. He said with a false air of detachment:
“It may be because you walk like a dismounted gendarme.”
Deodat misunderstood the allusion and was at first rather gratified:
“No one has ever told me that before. A gendarme gets oyer the ground pretry well, eyen when he is dismounted.”
“Oh, yes, he gets along all right. It’s just the way he walks that's a bit comic.”
Ernest then went on to talk about something else, confident of haying shaken his companion. Deodat scarcely listened. He was anxiously studying his own feet and those at his side.
“Well, but then how do you think a dismounted gendarme walks?”
“He conics down on his heel, as anyone will tell you, instead of — well, w atch the way I walk.”
Ernest went ahead a few paces, and said over his shoulder:
“You see what I mean? My toe comes down first and the heel afterwards, and then I use the toe to carrv me on. The gendarme puts his whole foot down at once. It’s a thing you have to learn. One gets all sorts in the regiment. I’ve seen auxiliaries that were completelv flat-footed.”
"But I'm not flat-footed!”
“Em not saying you are. I’m just saying some feet are different from others.”
They continued in silence, and doubt now gnawed at Deodat. Perhaps he didn’t know how to walk after all. For an instant he regretted never having been in the armv. An infantryman was bound to know all about feet on account of seeing so many and having to take care of them. Ernest meanwhile was gazing ahead at the crest of the Montee-Rouge, w here the point of the Claquebue church spire and the tops of its highest trees were just appearing. Deodat nudged him with his elbowr,
“I’ve heard it said that men often get sore feet in the army.”
“That’s true enough.”
“Well, I’ve never had a sore foot in mv life! I sweat just the right amount and no more, and as for getting blisters or anything of the kind — no, mv bov, never! So there vou are!”'
As they reached the first houses they encountered Honore, who had come to meet his son, very happy at his arrival. He hugged him, looked him in the eyes for an instant, and then stood back the better to admire him. Deodat remarked:
“He’s come home on leave.”
The three of them wrent on together. Honore did not march in step, and the other two were slightly put out by it. After a brief silence Ernest said to him:
“The wife of General Meuble died yesterday morn; g. We heard the news yesterday evening. She was fifty-three.”
“That’s not old,” said Honore.
“Not at all old,’" said Deodar. “Well, I must leave you here. I've got letters for quite a lot of houses.”
Being alone with his father, Ernest asked after the family. Honore gave him the latest news briefly, and with a kind of impatience which rather surprised him. When they came to the fork in the road they paused and argued about which way to go. Ernest wanted to make a detour to pass by the Vinards’ house.
“You won’t find Germaine at home,” said Honore. “The Vinards are all out saving the corn.”
“But I'm sure she'll be there. I wrote to tell her I was coming.”
‘'Do you write to her often?” asked Honore, with a troubled glance at him.
“Well, I write to her.”
“And does she answer?”
“Yes.”
Honore digested this. So now the lad was writing letters, him and his epaulettes!
“When you’re serious about a girl I’ve a right to say what I think, haven’t I?”
“I was going to talk to you about her.”
“Well, that’s all right. But you can see her later. First you must come and see your mother, it’s the least vou can do.”
Ernest could not refuse. He followed his father with some reluctance.
“I told you I'd put my shoulder out, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” said Honore, remorseful at not having mentioned it himself. “Is it all right now?”
“Yes, it’s quite all right, but it hurt a bit the first few days.”
Ernest described the accident in detail. It was the adjutant, whose gloves he had been fetching when he slipped on the stairs, who had got him his five days’ leave.
“The sick-bay corporal told me the major didn’t want to let me have it. He said farmers are all the same. If you let them go home on sick leave they strain themselves working in the fields and come back worse than when they left.”
“Well, he’s right, I daresay. But don’t you worry, you haven’t come home to work.”
“You don’t think I’m just going to stand around and watch you getting in the corn when there’s nothing more the matter with me?”
“None of that!” said Honore jovially. “You’re here to enjoy yourself. A young chap your age wants a bit of fun now and then, and I’m not the one to stop you.”
He went on to talk about the seductive attractions of uniform, and the coolness and shade of the woods. His son said calmly:
“Doing a bit of work won’t stop me going to see Germaine. She has her work too, you know.”
Exasperated by this unresponsiveness, Honore said angrily:
“Zephe’s daughter’s just arrived for a stay of three weeks. A pretty bit of goods she is, and plenty in her bodice and knows what she wants, you’ve only got to look at her! Well, I’d like to know why they gave you epaulettes, if you can’t even. .”
Ernest was not uninterested. He gazed over the river-meadows, the woods crowding down upon the ponds gleaming like metal in the sunshine; the green and yellow fields between the river and the woods, where the trees swelled up like the breasts of women. He had never before observed it in this way, even since he had been at Epinal. Honore stopped still and muttered beneath the sun:
“To be twenty!. . That’s what I’d like, to be able to go back!. . I’m telling you about the Maloret girl just so you’ll know — so you won’t pass by without even seeing her, the pretty wench that she is — and if the sight of her doesn’t warm you up a bit then what’s the good of you being the age you are?.
Ernest gazed at his father in astonishment. If he thought of him at all in relation to sexual love, it was simply in terms of hearth and home, father and mother, an everyday matter, a domestic fact suitably and finally bestowed in its own corner of the house. But now he saw him suddenly possessed by an amorous dream which he flaunted upon the highroad, cherished outside the home, and with so much youthfulness that the very look of the countryside seemed changed.
“I’m sure she’s pretty,” he said with a little sigh. “Even before she went to Paris-”
“That was nothing. There’s no comparison,” Honore said.
Taking his son by the arm he described Marguerite to him in detail and with rapture.
“And so. . well, what more do you want?. . You know all the Maloret women look good to us!”
Then he dropped the subject. They went on to talk about the family, the harvest and life in the army, talking now without constraint and without calculation. And Ernest was happy, finding at length the happiness he had expected upon his return to Claquebue. Honore joined in his gaiety, laughing at the woods and the river as though to say:
“This is my son, my eldest son, in uniform! Twenty years ago that I got him, and now here he is, strong as a voung man of twenty, and clever with his hands like he is with his head — able to drive you a six-in-hand just with whistling to them! It’s me that taught him everything, and now he thinks he can teach it all back to me, and that’s a young man all over!”