THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
husband had been killed on the Yser. Her face was full of sorrow, but like her mistress she blamed no one, and accepted her loss because it "must" be so.
Soon a non-commissioned officer came in, followed by a woman in deep mourning, a little boy, and an elderly man; I learnt afterwards that they were the sergeant's wife, his son, and his father. I saw his profile, and noticed that he seemed to stare fixedly. He declined a place at the back of the room, and came toward the window. "I need plenty of light now," he said in an odd voice. He and his family had just seated themselves when one of the guests at the long table d'hôte rose with an exclamation of surprise and came over to him, saying: "Why, are you out again? How well you look!" "Yes," said the sergeant; "but all the same this one is glass," pointing to his right eye, and in a few words he told how it had been knocked out by a bullet in the Argonne. "It was such a pity," he said, "for we were all so glad when the fighting began, and we got out of the mud and water in the trenches." "You are all just like that in the army!" said his friend, "all so plucky and so simple! We old fellows were only amateurs compared to you! What was the war of 1870 to this one?" This time there will be a different ending." "There must be," said the sergeant, "not only for us but for the Belgians, who gained us so much time." And he repeated, laying his hand on his boy's head, "Yes, for these little chaps also it must be so."
Presently I found a chance to ask the maid what she knew about the soldier who had been speaking. "That sergeant? He is a Paris shopkeeper. His wife's brother has been killed." I watched these people at table, so serious, so sorely tried, but so full of dignity, and the words which the half-blinded man had pronounced seemed to make even his ordinary gestures impressive.
All along the road, for the rest of that journey the "it must be" of the hotel-keeper and the sergeant seemed to be written over the whole country-side. It was harvest-time, and women, lads and little girls were working in the fields, replacing absent husbands, fathers and brothers.
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