Chapter 9

"Before you went to Saloniki, I see you fought at Verdun."

"Yes, sir."

"And at Beausejour?"

"Yes, sir."

"And Vauquois?"

"Yes, sir."

The eyes of the two veterans met; the officer's glance seeking to pierce that of the soldier in front of him. Then suddenly, in an irresistible burst of sympathy and respect, he thrust out his hand and caught up one of Cyprien's bandaged pair.

"I was there, too," was all he said.

Instantly sobered, our hero straightened up and literally crushed his superior's fingers in his mighty fist.

"Come with me," said the officer; "I know a place where you can rest until it's time to leave. And you boys here," said he turning towards them, "you'll see to it that he doesn't miss his train."

Night, inky black, fathomless night, had now settled about us. In the distance one could just discern the red and green signal lamps--at closer range the burning tip of a cigar or cigarette. The soldiers turned up their collars. The wind shifting to the north was piercing cold. One had to walk briskly up and down to avoid becoming chilled. Way at the other end of the platform the flare of fugitive matches revealed shadows moving about as though searching for something upon the ground.

"What are you looking for?"

"A third-class return ticket for Royan. That old lady over there has lost hers."

We turned about to see a poor old wrinkled soul, in her native Norman costume, wringing her hands in distress.

"What a misfortune! Oh dear, oh dear, what a misfortune! What will become of me now? What shall I do?"

And to each inquisitive newcomer she babbled forth her story of a wounded grandson whom she was on her way to visit. The curate and another man of her village had seen to her expenses. They had purchased her ticket and handed it to her with strict instructions not to lose it. For safety's sake she had knotted it in the corner of her handkerchief--and now it wasn't there!

The inquirer then examined her handkerchief, made her stand up and shake her clothing, turn her pockets inside out, empty her baskets and her handbag; and still not willing to trust the thoroughness of his predecessors he would begin looking all over the immediate vicinity, match in hand. So presently nearly two hundred men, forgetting their soreness and fatigue, were down on their knees scouring every nook and cranny. The sleepers were awakened, the drinkers routed out and put to work, scanning every inch of ground.

A loud and persistent ringing of an electric bell sounded on the air.

"Hey there, fellows!" called a tall Zouave. "Get together, the train is announced, and since we can't find grandma's ticket we can't leave the old girl alone in the dark, so come on, chip in--we'll make it up to her. She says it cost forty-two francs and ten centimes. Are you ready?"

And removing his helmet he started to make the rounds. In an instant coppers and silver rang in the steel recipient.

"Stop! that's enough."

They retired to count.

"Chic--there's some left over!"

"Never mind, she'll buy something for the kid with it."

Some one purchased the ticket.

"There now, grandma, a new ticket and enough to buy your boy a cake with, so you should worry! But as you're too young to travel alone, we're going to take you in with us. We just happen to be going your way. Here Ballut, Langlois! Quick there--take her baskets. Now then, don't let go my arm--here comes the train. Sh! don't cry, there's nothing to bawl about, we're all good fellows--all of us got grandmas who'd make just as big fools of themselves if they had to travel."

And with infinite care and tenderness a dozen hands hoisted their precious burden into the dimly lighted wooden-benched compartment.

Yes, travelling in France under such circumstances is to me more interesting than ever, for when it is not one's fellow passengers who hold the attention, there are always those thousand and one outside incidents which the eye retains involuntarily. War factories and munition plants sprung from the ground as though by magic; immense training camps in course of construction, aviation fields over which so cleverly hover those gigantic, graceful war birds, who on catching sight of the train fly low and delight the astonished passengers by throwing them a greeting, or, challenging the engineer, enter into a race.

But above all, there is the natural panorama; that marvellous succession of hills and vales, hamlets and rivers, fields and gardens, so wonderfully harmonious beneath the pearl tinted sky. How it all charms and thrills, and how near the surface is one's emotion on hearing a soldier voice exclaim:

"What a country to die for!"

So the hours sped by, and at length we reached our destination. P---- is a flourishing little city, perched on the side of a rocky hill, with a broad landscape spreading out at its feet.

The best hotel is called "L'hotel des Hommes Illustres"--and its façade is adorned with the statues of the above mentioned gentlemen carved in stone. The proprietor, who built the edifice and paid the bill, having been sole judge in the choice of celebrities, the result is as astonishing as it is eclectic, and though absolutely devoid of beauty, thoroughly imposing.

We arrived before our luggage, which was conveyed by so old and puffy a horse that we considered it criminal not to leave our cab and finish the hill on foot. At the top of a monumental staircase we entered the hotel office, behind whose desk were enthroned two persons of most serious aspect; the one, stout and florid of complexion with a long nose and an allure worthy of Louis XIV, proudly bore upon her head such an extraordinary quantity of blond hair arranged in so complicated a fashion that I trembled to think of the time required to dress it. The other, sallow faced, with a long curved chin, might have been taken for a Spanish Infanta, pickled in vinegar and allspice.

The formality of greetings accomplished, princess number one produced a book in which we were to sign our names. The dignity and importance she attached to this ceremony would certainly not have been misplaced in a Grand Chamberlain preparing the official register for the signature of Peace preliminaries.

This, together with the manner in which she took note of our names, drying them with a spoonful of gold sand, gave me the illusion that I had just performed some important rite.

"One or two rooms?" she queried.

"One big room, Madame."

"With or without bath?" demanded the co-adjutor, whose voice possessed a contralto quality utterly out of keeping with her pale blond hair and complexion.

"With bath, please."

A new register was opened. Both bent over it closely, each showing the other a different paragraph with her fore finger. Finally they murmured a few inaudible syllables and then shook their heads.

"Would you prefer number six or number fourteen?" finally asked the Infanta.

We looked at each other in astonishment, neither being superstitious about numbers, but it would have been painful to announce to these ladies that the matter was totally indifferent to us. They had been so condescending as to allow us a choice.

"Number six has a balcony and two windows. Number fourteen has one window and a bathroom," the princess informed us.

"But," continued the Infanta, "it is our duty to inform you that hot water has been forbidden by the municipal authorities, and that cold water is limited to two pitchers per person, per room."

I said I would take number six, which arrangement terminated the ladies' mental indecision, and seemed to please them greatly. They smiled benignly upon us.

The smaller one, whom I have called the coadjutor, because her throne was less elevated than the princess', put her finger on a button and a violent ringing broke the silence of the vast hallway. No one answered.

Three times she repeated the rings, with an imperious movement.

"Be kind enough to go and call Monsieur Amédé, Mademoiselle Laure."

On her feet, Mademoiselle Laure was even smaller than when seated. She crossed the vestibule, opened a door, and her strong voice resounded along an empty corridor from which issued the odour of boiling cauliflower.

"Monsieur Amédé!" she shouted anew, but not even an echo responded.

"Mademoiselle Laure, ask for the head waiter."

Mademoiselle Laure recrossed the vestibule and opening a door diametrically opposed to the other, called:

"Monsieur Balthazard!"

Monsieur Balthazard appeared, his shirt sleeves rolled up beyond his elbow, wiping his hands on a blue gingham apron. He was a little slim man who may have been sixty years old. A glass eye gave him a sardonic, comic or astonished air, according to the way he used his good one, which was constantly moving, at the same time that it was clear and piercing.

"Monsieur Balthazard--what an attire for a head waiter!"

"Madame, I was just rinsing the wine barrels."

"And how about the errands for the people in rooms twenty-four and twenty-seven."

A noise at the hall door attracted our attention. It was as though some one were making desperate and fruitless attempts to open it.

"There he is now," exclaimed Monsieur Balthazard. "I'll go and let him in. He's probably got his hands full."

Monsieur Amédé, literally swamped beneath his bundles, staggered into the vestibule. To the different errands confided to his charge by the hotel's guests had undoubtedly been added the cook's list, for an enormous cabbage and a bunch of leeks completely hid his face, which was uncovered only as he let them fall to the ground.

When he had finally deposited his treasures, we discovered a small lad about fourteen or fifteen years of age, dressed in a bellboy's uniform which had been made for some one far more corpulent of stature. The sleeves reached far down over his hands, the tight fitting, gold buttoned jacket strangely resembled a cross between a bag and an overcoat, and though a serious reef had been taken in the trousers at the waist line, the legs would twist and sway--at times being almost as ample as those worn by the Turkish sultanas.

Our coachman now arrived with our luggage.

"Monsieur Amédé, take this luggage and accompany Monsieur and Madame to number six."

The child gathered up his new burden and started upstairs.

We followed, helping him pick up the various objects which successively escaped his grasp.

"Goodness, it seems to me you're awfully young to be doing such heavy work!"

"Oh," said he, wiping his brow, "I'm very lucky. My mother is cook here, and Monsieur Balthazard is my uncle. With old fat Julia, the maid, and Mathilde, the linen woman, we're all that's left. All the men have gone to war, and the women into the powder mills. We keep the hotel going, we do."

Monsieur Amédé was full of good will, and a desire to help me all he could. He explained to us that he was now building the solid foundation of a future whose glories he hardly dare think, so numerous and unfathomable did they seem. Unfortunately, however, we were obliged to note that he seemed little gifted for the various occupations to which he had consecrated his youth--and his glorious future--for in less than five minutes he had dropped a heavy valise on my toes, and upset an ink-well, whose contents dripped not only onto the carpet but onto one of my new bags. In trying to repair damages, Monsieur Amédé spoiled my motor veil and got several large spots on the immaculate counterpane, after which he bowed himself out, wiping his hands on the back of his jacket, assuring us that there was no harm done, that no one would scold us, nor think of asking us for damages.

We saw him again at dinner time, when disguised as a waiter he passed the different dishes, spilling sauce down people's necks, tripping on his apron and scattering the handsome pyramids of fruit hither and yon. Lastly he took a plunge while carrying out an over-loaded tray, but before any one could reach him he was on his feet, bright and smiling, exclaiming:

"I'm not hurt. No harm done. I'll just sweep it up. It won't stain."

In the meantime quiet, skilful Uncle Balthazard strained every nerve in a herculean effort to keep his temper and serve thirty persons all at once.

It was touching to hear the old man murmur, "Gently, boy--go gently," as his youthful protégé stumbled from one blunder to another. "Go gently, you can be so clever when you're not in a hurry!"

Monsieur Amédé almost caused us to miss the train next evening in spite of the numerous warnings from the princess behind the desk, who had arranged the hour of our departure. That brilliant young man who had been sent ahead with our luggage was nowhere to be found when our train was announced. My husband, a woman porter, a soldier on furlough who knew him, started out to scour the immediate surroundings of the station, finally locating him in a backyard near the freight depot, his hands in his pockets, excitedly following a game of nine-pins at which a group of convalescent African soldiers was playing.

Of course he immediately explained that there was no harm done since the train was twenty minutes late, and when finally it arrived and he handed our baggage into the compartment, he accidentally let slip a little wooden box containing an old Sevres vase, which I had purchased at an antiquity dealer's that very morning.

He picked it up, exclaiming:

"Lucky it's not fragile."

And lifting his cap, on whose visor one might read "Hotel des Homines Illustres," he cheerfully wished us a _Bon voyage_.

IX

Before the war it used to be Aunt Rose's victoria that met us at the station; a victoria drawn by a shiny span and driven by pompous old Joseph, the coachman, clad in a dark green, gold-buttoned livery and wearing a cockade on his hat. Aunt Rose's coachman, and the Swiss at Notre Dame were classed among the curiosities of the city, as could be attested by the numerous persons who hastened to their doorstep to see the brilliant equipage pass by.

But this time we found the victoria relegated beside the old "Berline" which Aunt Rose's great-grandmother had used to make a journey to Italy; the horses had been sent out to the farm, where they were needed, and Joseph, fallen from the glory of his box, attired in a striped alpaca vest, and wearing a straw hat, half civilian, half servant, seemed a decidedly puffy old man, much aged since our last visit.

"Monsieur and Madame will be obliged to take the omnibus. Will Monsieur kindly give me the baggage check?"

Then as I fumbled in my purse--

"Monsieur and Madame will find many changes, I fear."

But in spite of his prophecy to us there seemed little difference. The rickety old omnibus rattled and bumped noisily over the pointed cobble pavements, the tiny city merely seemed asleep behind its drawn blinds and its closed shutters. At the corner of the square in front of the château the old vegetable vendor still sold her products seated beneath her patched red cotton parasol; the Great Dane watchdog lay in exactly the same place on the tinker's doorstep. Around the high church tower the crows circled and cawed as usual, while the bell of its clock which, as we passed, slowly struck three, was echoed by the distant hills with the same familiar sound.

The omnibus deposited us at the entrance to the big roomy edifice which Aunt Rose called "home."

The broad façade, evenly pierced by its eighteen long French windows, had a genial, inviting appearance, while the soft rose colour of the bricks, the white stone trimming, the iron balconies, mingled here and there with bas-reliefs and sculptures, were in perfect harmony with the tall slanting slate roof and majestic chimneys, the whole forming one of those delightful ensembles constructed by local architects during the 17th century for the pleasure and comfort of a large French bourgeois family.

Aunt Rose herself, leaning upon an ivory-headed cane, but bright eyed and alert as ever, awaited us at the top of the steps. From her we soon learned that we had missed our friends the M.'s by but a day, and that little André, son of our cousins in Flers, had announced his visit for the following Monday.

At this point Friquet, her old Pomeranian favourite, crept down from his cushion and approached us.

"He doesn't bark any more, so you know he must be getting old," smiled Aunt Rose, caressing her pet.

"My poor Victoire is getting on, too, I fear. Her nephew is stone blind since the battle of the Marne. Joseph has lost two of his grandsons; of course, he didn't tell you--he doesn't want any one to speak of it--but he's very much upset by it. Nicholas and Armandine do nothing but worry about their poor little Pierre, who hasn't given a sign of life for three months now--so I fear you will have to be very patient and very indulgent guests."

The delightful old lady led us to our room, "the psyche room" we, the youngsters, used to call it on account of the charming grisaille wall paper, dating from the end of the Empire period, and representing in somewhat stiff but none the less enchanting manner the amorous adventures of that goddess.

I have always had a secret feeling that many a time, urged by her confessor, Madame de C. had been upon the point of obliterating or removing those extremely chaste nude images. But at the last moment rose up the horror of voluntarily changing anything in the homestead, transforming a whole room that she always had known thus, and perhaps the unavowed fear of our ridicule and reproach, had made her renounce her project.

"Brush up quickly, and come right down to tea. We've got so many things to talk over. You've so much to tell me!"

So a quarter of an hour later, tea-cup in hand, we must needs go into the details of our trips, inform her of our hopes and fears, tell of all the different things we had seen--what America was going to do--what it had already accomplished. And with her marvellously quick understanding, her vivacious intelligence, the old lady classified the facts and the anecdotes, asked us to repeat dates and numbers, that she might the better retain them in her splendid memory.

All through dinner and the long evening she plied us with questions, kept the conversation running along the same lines, returning now and then to a certain theme, or certain figures, and asking us to go into even more detail.

"I know I'm an abominable old egoist," at length she apologised. "But you'd forgive me if only you realised how much happiness your stories will bring, and to how many people. I imagine that you haven't had much time for correspondence with our family--but that's all an old woman like myself is good for these days."

"Our family" consisted in relationship to the 'nth degree of all the H's, de C's, B's and F's that were then in existence, some of them such distant cousins that Aunt Rose herself would never have recognised them had they met. And besides these people there were her friends, her servants, her farmers, possibly a group of three hundred persons with whom the good soul corresponded, giving news of the ones to the others, announcing misfortunes or joys--a living link between us all.

Left a widow when still quite young, Aunt Rose had lived with and respected the memory of her husband. Though she had had many an offer, she had never cared to remarry. But unable to stand the damp climate of Normandy, she had returned to her family homestead in this little city of the Bourbonnais, in whose suburbs she possessed quite a fortune in farm lands. Alone in the world, with no immediate family, she had devoted herself not only to her own, but to her husband's relatives. Her home had always been the _havre de grace_, known and venerated by them all; a meeting place for reconciliation between persons whose self-control had escaped them; the shelter for prodigal and repentant sons who awaited the forgiveness of their justly wrathful sires; the comforting haven that seemed to assuage the pangs of departure and bereavement. But above all it was the one spot for properly celebrating family anniversaries, announcing engagements, and spending joyous vacations.

The war had been the cause of a great deal of hard work in this respect.

"Why, I receive more letters than a State functionary," Aunt Rose informed me when I came upon her early the next morning, already installed behind her huge flat-topped desk, her tortoise-shell spectacles tipped down towards the end of her very prominent nose.

"For nearly four years I've been writing on the average of twenty letters a day and I never seem to catch up with my correspondence. Why, I need a secretary just to sort out and classify it. You haven't an idea the different places that I hear from. See, here are your letters from the United States. Léon is in the Indo-Chinese Bank in Oceania. Albert is mobilised at Laos, Quentin in Morocco. Jean-Paul and Marcel are fighting at Saloniki; Emilien in Italy. Marie is Superior in a convent at Madrid; Madeline, Sister of Charity at Cairo. You see I've a world-wide correspondence.

"Look," she continued, opening a deep drawer in one side of her desk, "here are the letters from my _poilus_ and, of course, these are only the answered ones. The dear boys just love to write and not one of them misses a week without doing so. I'm going to keep them all. Their children may love to have them some day."

Then she opened a smaller drawer, and my eye fell upon a dozen or fifteen packages, all different in size and each one enveloped in white tissue paper, carefully tied about with grey silk ribbon.

"These were written by our dear departed," she said simply.

In an instant they passed before my eyes, those "dear departed." Big, tall William, so gay and so childish, he who used to play the ogre or the horse, or anything one wished: a person so absolutely indispensable to their games that all the little folk used to gather beneath his window early in the morning, crying in chorus: "Uncle William! Uncle William! do wake up and come down and play!"

Jean-François, the engineer; Philippe, the architect; Honoré, whom we dubbed "Deshonoré," because he used always to return empty-handed when we went hunting together. Gone, gone forever!

Aunt Rose picked up one of the smaller packages.

"These were from little Jacques." And two bright tears trembled on her lashes.

"You remember him, of course, my dear. He was an orphan, he never knew his mother. I always supposed that is what made him so distant and reserved. Jean, his guardian, who is very severe, used to treat him as he did his own children--scolding him often about his indolence, his lack of application to his studies.

"I used to have him here with me during his vacations. He loved this old house--and I knew it. Sometimes when you would all start out for some excursion I'd see him coming back towards the gate:

"'You're not going with them then, Jacques?'

"'No, thank you, Aunt Rose, it's so nice in your drawing-room.'

"When he was just a little baby I often wanted to take him onto my lap and laugh and play with him. But he was so cold and distant! A funny little mite, even with boys of his own age. Nobody seemed to understand him exactly; certain people even thought that his was a surly nature.

"He spent his last furlough here, and I found quite a change in him. He was more robust and tanned. A splendid looking fellow, and I was so proud of him.

"'Aunt Rose,' he asked even before we embraced, 'is there any one else stopping with you?'

"'Why no, child, and I'm afraid you'll find the house very empty. If only I'd known you were coming I most certainly should have invited your cousins.'

"'Oh, I'm so glad you didn't! I much prefer being alone with you.'