The Girl from Alsace: A Romance of the Great War, Originally Published under the Title of Little ComradeStevenson, Burton Egbert
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The Girl from Alsace: A Romance of the Great War, Originally Published under the Title of Little Comrade
Stevenson, Burton Egbert
Alsace (France) -- Fiction; War stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
On one side of the road was a level pasture affording no shelter; on the
other side, a rolling field mounted to a strip of woodland.
"At the edge of those trees would be the best place," he decided, and
the girl agreed with a nod.
Laboriously they clambered over the wall beside the road and set off
toward this refuge. The field was very rough and seemed interminable,
and more than once Stewart thought that he must drop where he stood; but
they reached the wood at last and threw themselves down beneath the
first clump of undergrowth.
Stewart was asleep almost before he touched the ground; but the girl lay
for a long time with eyes open, staring up into the night. Then, very
softly, she crawled to Stewart's side, raised herself on one elbow and
looked down into his face.
It was not at all the face of the man she had met at the Kölner Hof two
days before. It was thinner and paler; there were dark circles of
exhaustion under the eyes; a stubbly beard covered the haggard cheeks,
across one of which was an ugly scratch. Yet the girl seemed to find it
beautiful. Her eyes filled with tears as she gazed at it; she brushed
back a lock of hair that had fallen over the forehead, and bent as
though to press a kiss there--but stopped, with a quick shake of the
head, and drew away.
"Not yet!" she whispered. "Not yet!" and crawling a little way apart,
she lay down again among the bushes.
* * * * *
Again Stewart awoke with the sun in his eyes, and after a moment's
confused blinking, he looked around to find himself alone.
The dull pain in his shoulder as he sat up reminded him of his wound.
Crawling a little distance back among the bushes, he slipped out of his
coat. His shirt was soaked with blood half-way down the right side--a
good sign, Stewart told himself. He knew how great a show a little blood
can make, and he was glad that the wound had bled freely. He unbuttoned
his shirt and gingerly pulled it back from the shoulder, for the blood
had dried in places and stuck fast; then he removed the folded
handkerchief, and the wound lay revealed.
He could just see it by twisting his head around, and he regarded it
with satisfaction, for, as he had thought, it was not much more than a
scratch. A bullet had grazed the shoulder-bone, plowed through the
muscle and sped on its way, leaving behind, as the only sign of its
passage, a tiny black mark.
"You are wounded!" cried a strangled voice, and in an instant his
comrade was on her knees beside him, her face pale, her lips working.
"And you did not tell me! Oh, cruel, cruel!"
There was that in the voice, in the eyes, in the trembling lips which
sent Stewart's heart leaping into his throat. But, by a mighty effort,
he kept his arms from around her.
"Nonsense!" he said, as lightly as he could. "That's not a wound--it is
just a scratch. This one across my cheek hurts a blamed sight worse! If
I could only wash it----"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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