______

[note 1:] The word is likely to become of international usage.  It stands for the use of paint in blotches of different colors, and of branches and other things to disguise almost any object that may be visible to hostile aircraft.—­Tr.

[note 2:] Non-combatant.—­Tr.

[note 3:] Akin to the British A.S.C.—­Tr.

8

On Leave

Eudore sat down awhile, there by the roadside well, before taking the path over the fields that led to the trenches, his hands crossed over one knee, his pale face uplifted.  He had no mustache under his nose—­only a little flat smear over each corner of his mouth.  He whistled, and then yawned in the face of the morning till the tears came.

An artilleryman who was quartered on the edge of the wood—­over there where a line of horses and carts looked like a gypsies’ bivouac—­came up, with the well in his mind, and two canvas buckets that danced at the end of his arms in time with his feet.  In front of the sleepy unarmed soldier with a bulging bag he stood fast.

“On leave?”

“Yes,” said Eudore; “just back.”

“Good for you,” said the gunner as he made off.

“You’ve nothing to grumble at—­with six days’ leave in your water-bottle!”

And here, see, are four more men coming down the road, their gait heavy and slow, their boots turned into enormous caricatures of boots by reason of the mud.  As one man they stopped on espying the profile of Eudore.

“There’s Eudore!  Hello, Eudore! hello, the old sport!  You’re back then!” they cried together, as they hurried up and offered him hands as big and ruddy as if they were hidden in woolen gloves.

“Morning, boys,” said Eudore.

“Had a good time?  What have you got to tell us, my boy?”

“Yes,” replied Eudore, “not so bad.”

“We’ve been on wine fatigue, and we’ve finished.  Let’s go back together, pas?”

In single file they went down the embankment of the road—­arm in arm they crossed the field of gray mud, where their feet fell with the sound of dough being mixed in the kneading-trough.

“Well, you’ve seen your wife, your little Mariette—­the only girl for you—­that you could never open your jaw without telling us a tale about her, eh?”

Eudore’s wan face winced.

“My wife?  Yes, I saw her, sure enough, but only for a little while—­there was no way of doing any better—­but no luck, I admit, and that’s all about it.”

“How’s that?”

“How?  You know that we live at Villers-l’Abbaye, a hamlet of four houses neither more nor less, astraddle over the road.  One of those houses is our cafe, and she runs it, or rather she is running it again since they gave up shelling the village.

“Now then, with my leave coming along, she asked for a permit to Mont-St-Eloi, where my old folks are, and my permit was for Mont-St-Eloi too.  See the move?