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
"I am at your service, sir," he said. "First you must rest a little, and
have some clean clothes, and a bath and food. I can see that you have
had a hard time. Then we will set out."
An hour later, more comfortable in body than it had seemed possible he
could ever be again, Stewart lay back among the deep cushions of a
high-powered car, which whizzed southward along a pleasant road. He did
not know his destination. He had not inquired, and indeed he did not
care. But had he known Belgium, he would have recognized Landen and
Ramillies; he would have known that those high white cliffs ahead
bordered the Meuse; he would have seen that this pinnacled town they
were approaching was Namur.
The car was stopped at the city gate by a sentry, and taken to the
town-hall, where the chauffeur's papers were examined and verified. Then
they were off again, across the placid river and straight southward,
close beside its western bank. Stewart had never seen a more beautiful
country. The other shore was closed in by towering rugged cliffs, with a
white villa here and there squeezed in between wall and water or perched
on a high ledge. Sometimes the cliffs gave back to make room for a tiny,
red-roofed village; again they were riven by great fissures or pitted
with yawning chasms.
Evening came, and still the car sped southward. There were no evidences
here of war. As the calm stars came out one by one, Stewart could have
fancied that it was all a dream, but for that dull agony of the spirit
which he felt would never leave him--and for that strand of lustrous
hair which now lay warm above his heart--and which, alas! was all he had
of her!
Yes--there were the two letters which rustled under his fingers as he
thrust them into his pocket. He had looked at them more than once during
the afternoon, delighting to handle them because they had been hers,
imagining that he could detect on them the faint aroma of her presence.
He had turned them over and over, had slipped out the sheets of
closely-written paper, and read them through and through, hoping for
some clew to the identity of the woman he had lost. It was an added
anguish that he did not even know her name!
The letters did not help him. They contained nothing but innocent,
careless, light-hearted, impersonal gossip, written apparently by one
young woman to another. "My dear cousin," they were addressed, and
Stewart could have wept at the irony which denied him even her first
name. They were in English--excellent English--a little stiff,
perhaps--just such English as she had spoken--and the envelopes bore the
superscription, "Mrs. Bradford Stewart, Spa, Belgium." But so far as he
could see they had nothing to do with her--they were just a part of the
elaborate plot in which he had been entangled.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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