Soldiers -- Fiction; War stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
Andrews walked off, vaguely angry. There were many soldiers on the
Boulevard Montparnasse. He turned into a side street, feeling suddenly
furtive and humble, as if he would hear any minute the harsh voice of a
sergeant shouting orders at him.
The silver in his breeches pocket jingled with every step.
Andrews leaned on the balustrade of the balcony, looking down into the
square in front of the Opera Comique. He was dizzy with the beauty of
the music he had been hearing. He had a sense somewhere in the distances
of his mind of the great rhythm of the sea. People chattered all about
him on the wide, crowded balcony, but he was only conscious of the
blue-grey mistiness of the night where the lights made patterns in
green-gold and red-gold. And compelling his attention from everything
else, the rhythm swept through him like sea waves.
“I thought you'd be here,” said Genevieve Rod in a quiet voice beside
him.
Andrews felt strangely tongue-tied.
“It's nice to see you,” he blurted out, after looking at her silently
for a moment.
“Of course you love Pelleas.”
“It is the first time I've heard it.”
“Why haven't you been to see us? It's two weeks.... We've been expecting
you.”
“I didn't know...Oh, I'll certainly come. I don't know anyone at present
I can talk music to.”
“You know me.”
“Anyone else, I should have said.”
“Are you working?”
“Yes.... But this hinders frightfully.” Andrews yanked at the front
of his tunic. “Still, I expect to be free very soon. I'm putting in an
application for discharge.”
“I suppose you will feel you can do so much better.... You will be much
stronger now that you have done your duty.”
“No... by no means.”
“Tell me, what was that you played at our house?”
“'The Three Green Riders on Wild Asses,'” said Andrews smiling.
“What do you mean?”
“It's a prelude to the 'Queen of Sheba,'” said Andrews. “If you didn't
think the same as M. Emile Faguet and everyone else about St. Antoine,
I'd tell you what I mean.”
“That was very silly of me.... But if you pick up all the silly things
people say accidentally... well, you must be angry most of the time.”
In the dim light he could not see her eyes. There was a little glow
on the curve of her cheek coming from under the dark of her hat to her
rather pointed chin. Behind it he could see other faces of men and women
crowded on the balcony talking, lit up crudely by the gold glare that
came out through the French windows from the lobby.
“I have always been tremendously fascinated by the place in La Tentation
where the Queen of Sheba visited Antoine, that's all,” said Andrews
gruffly.
“Is that the first thing you've done? It made me think a little of
Borodine.”
“The first that's at all pretentious. It's probably just a steal from
everything I've ever heard.”
“No, it's good. I suppose you had it in your head all through those
dreadful and glorious days at the front.... Is it for piano or
orchestra?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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