AIR RAIDS
I
Where the grey gas-bags failed, Taubes often succeeded. At first they
came "in single spies," but later "in battalions." And after one of
the early and abortive raids which did no damage--a mere bagatelle of
three bombs and one soldier with a cut over his eye--posters of such
exquisite import were plastered over the walls that I must tell you
about them.
They emanated from the Mayor, kind father to his people, who told
us--we thrilled to hear it--"that in these tragic hours--of war--we had
known how to meet the dangers that menaced us with unfailing calmness
and courage" (I translate literally), and that "our presence of mind
in the face of such sterile manifestations would always direct our
moral force." Very flattering. We preened feathers quite unjustifiably,
since admittedly the occasion had called for no emotion save that of a
limited, feminine, and quite reasonable curiosity.
Then, still glowing, we read on. Mayoral praise is sweet, but mayoral
instructions hard to follow. The wisest course to pursue when hostile
aviators aviate is, it seems, to take refuge in the nearest house and
not to gaze at the sky--surely that Mayor had never been born of
woman!--or, should there be no house, "to distance oneself rapidly and
laterally."
We ceased to glow. We remembered we were but dust. Distance oneself
laterally? Good, but suppose one was walking by the Canal? With an
impenetrable hedge on one side, were we to spring to the other? I have
seen the Canal in all its moods. I have never felt the smallest desire
to bathe in it. I have still less desire to drown--suffocate!--in
it. And if one doesn't know in which direction the bomb is going to
fall?... How be lateral and rapid before it arrives? Suppose one jumped
right under it? Suppose one waits till it comes? "Too late. Too late;
ye cannot _distance_ now."
Some one suggests that we ought to practise being rapid and lateral.
"My dear woman, I don't know what being lateral means." Thus the
unenlightened of the party.
"Study the habits of that which can be lateral to all points of the
compass at once when you try to catch it," was the frivolous reply.
Well, opportunities were not wanting. We decided to take lessons. And
then promptly forgot all about Taubes. That is one of the unintentional
blessings incidental to their career. When they are not showering bombs
on you, you eliminate them from consciousness. Perhaps, in spite of
all the damage they have done, they are still too new, too unnatural
to be accepted. A raid is just an evil nightmare--for those who suffer
no bodily harm. It brings you as a nightmare does to the very edge of
some desperate enterprise; you feel the cold, awful fear; you are held
in the grip of some deadly unimagined thing that holds you, forces you
down, something you cannot see, something you do not understand, but
that you know is hideous, terrible in its happening. The noise breaks
on your brain, the noise that is only the symptom of the ill.... Then
silence shuts down ... and you awake....
Once, at least for us, the awakening was a tragic one. Ascension Day.
A clear, warm summer sky, windless, perfect. Dinner just over in the
town. Shops opening again. Life stirring in the streets. An ideal
moment for those who are quick to take advantage of such. There was
no signal to warn us of what was coming, no time for pedestrians to
distance themselves laterally or otherwise. Death found them as they
walked through the streets, or gossiped in the station yard. The Place
de la Gare became a shambles. Women--why dilate on the horror? Forty
people were killed outright, over a hundred were wounded, and of these
many subsequently died. In our cellar we listened to the storm, then
when it was over we went through the town seeking out our people,
anxious to help. We saw horses, mangled and bleeding, lying on the
quay-side, a tree riven near the Pont Nôtre Dame, blood flowing in
the gutters, telegraph wires lying in grotesque loops and coils on
the roadway or hanging in festoons from the façades of houses. (An
underground wire was laid down after this.) Glass--we walked on a
carpet of glass, and in the houses we saw things that "God nor man ever
should look upon."
Saw too, then and in subsequent raids, how Death, if he has marked you
for his own, will claim you even though you hide, even though you seek
the "safe" shelter you trust in so implicitly, but which plays the
traitor and opens the gate to the Enemy who knocks. Madame Albert; the
old sick woman. Now the eldest Savard girl, a tall, graceful, handsome
creature, just twenty years of age. With a number of others including
her mother, younger sister, and several soldiers (oh, yes, soldiers
"cower" too, and are not always the last to dive to shelter), she fled
to the nearest cellar when the raid began, but the entrance was not
properly closed, and when a bomb burst in the yard outside, splinters
killed five of the soldiers, and wounded her so cruelly she died that
night.
Then there was Madame Bertrand, pursued by a malignant spirit of evil.
Twice a refugee, she came to Bar in February, drifting from the market
to the Maison Blanpain, where within six weeks of her arrival two of
her three children had died. (Her husband was a soldier, of course.)
One contracted diphtheria, the other was struck down by some virulent
and never-diagnosed complaint which lasted just twenty-four hours.
Expecting shortly to become a mother again, Madame was standing at her
house door that sunny June day when a bomb fell in the street. She was
killed instantly.
A fortnight later the little boy who brought parcels from the
_épicerie_ died. He, like Mademoiselle Savard, was in a cellar, but
a fragment of shell came through the tiny _soupirail_ (ventilation
grating)....
II
In June, the town looked as if it were preparing for a siege. The stage
direction, "Excursions and alarums," was interpolated extravagantly
over all the drama of our life. If we had been rabbits we might have
enjoyed it, there being something slightly facetious, not to say
hilarious, in the flirt of the white bob as it scurries to cover, but
as actors in the said drama we soon ceased to find it amusing. It
interfered so confoundedly with our work! Worst of all, it unsettled
our people.
The sang-froid of some of the shopkeepers, however, was magnificent.
They simply put their shutters up, pinned a label on the door and went
south or west, to wait till the _rafale_ blew over. Before going,
Monsieur was always at pains to inform us that he, for his part, was
indifferent, but Madame, alas, Madame! Nerves.... An eloquent shrug
that in no way dimmed the brilliance of Madame's smile as she gazed
at us from behind his unconscious back. We, for our part, blushed for
our sex. Then he asked us if we, too, had not fear? Saying no, we felt
unaccountably bombastic. We read braggart in his eye, we scarcely dared
to hope he would not read _froussard_ in ours. Politely he hoped that
when he returned our valuable custom would again be his? Reassured, he
stretched a more or less grimy hand over the counter, we laid ours upon
it, suspicions vanished! With the word _devouée_ gleaming like a halo
round our unworthy heads, we stepped again into the street, there to
admire a vista of shutters.
(It may be of interest to psychologists that shopkeepers without wives,
and shopkeepers without husbands, generally elected to remain in the
town. They kept, however, their shutters down. Monsieur X., running out
to close his during a raid, was blown to atoms. One learns wisdom--by
experience--in the War Zone.)
Stepped out to admire, too, a fantastic collection of boxes and bags
ranged close against the walls at irregular intervals. Since the
affair of the _soupirail_ gratings were no longer left unguarded. Tiny
though they were, almost unnoticeable specks just where the house wall
touched the pavement, they could be dangerous. Consequently, bags of
sand, boxes of sand, and big rockery stones were propped against them
to be a snare to the unwary at night, and, as the hot summer sped
by, to testify (as our shy member cogently remarked) to the visiting
proclivities of the dogs of the town. The bags burst, they added to
that composite Ess Bouquet that rose so penetratingly in warm weather,
but the sand and the stones remained. In the winter, snow buried them.
Then the snow froze. Coming round the corner of the Rue Lapique one
dark Laplandish night, I trod on the edge of a heap of frozen snow....
There are six hundred and seventy-three ways of falling on frozen snow,
and I practised most of them that winter, but, as an accomplishment,
am bound to admit that they seem to be devoid of any artistic merit
whatever.
Following the sandbags came _affiches_. Every cellared house--and
nearly every house had its cellar--blazed the information abroad.
"Cave voutée" (vaulted cellar), 20 _personnes_, 50 _personnes_, 200
_personnes_, even 500 _personnes_, indicated shelter in an emergency.
In a raid every man's cellar is his neighbour's. Once we harboured some
refugees, and that night at dinner the shy member (perhaps I ought to
say that the adjective was entirely self-bestowed), gurgled suddenly.
We looked at her expectantly.
"I was only thinking that Miss ---- (No. I shall not betray her!) is
not supposed to smoke when the refugees are about, but in the middle of
the raid she came swanking down to the cellar to-day with a cigarette
in her mouth."
As one not unremotely connected with the incident I take leave to
disqualify "swank." Professional smokers never swank, it is the
attribute of the mere amateur.
So many precautions were taken, it would seem that any one who got
hurt during a raid had only himself to blame, and for those who may
think warnings superfluous, I may add that never again was the casualty
list as high as on that unwarned Ascension Day. Indeed, in subsequent
raids--while I was in Bar, at least--it decreased in the most arresting
manner. True, the day and night were rendered hideous with noise. To
the _sirène_ was added the steam-whistle at the gas-works, but these
being deemed insufficient, a loud tocsin clanged from the old Horloge
on the hill. I have known people to sleep through them all, but their
names will never be divulged by so discreet a historian.
Though the danger was lessened, the nerve-strain unfortunately
remained. Mothers with children found life intolerable. It was bad
enough to spend one's days like a Jack-in-the-box jumping in and out
of the cellar, but infinitely worse to spend the night doing it.
Flight was--I was going to say in the air! It was at least on many
lips. People were poised, as it were, hesitant, unwilling to haul up
anchor, afraid to face out upon the unknown sea, yet still more afraid
to remain. Then, as I have told you, eight warnings and two raids in
twenty-four hours robbed over-taxed nerves of their last ounce of
endurance. The Prefecture was besieged, and in one day alone three
hundred people left the town. Those who had friends or relatives in
other districts were, as is usual in all such cases, allowed to join
them, others were herded like sheep, and like sheep were driven where
shepherd and sheep-dog willed. Nearly all the Basket-makers fled. The
Maison Blanpain turned its unsavoury contents out of doors. Many of our
fastest and firmest friends came to say good-bye with tears in their
eyes; it was a heartrending time, and one which, if continued, would
have seen an end to all our labour. This fear was happily not realised,
for as fast as one lot of refugees went away another lot drifted in,
and the following winter was the busiest we were to know.
To all who came to say good-bye, clothes were given, and especially
boots, America having come again to our rescue with some consignments
which, if they added to our grey hairs--I would "rather be a dog and
bay the moon" than assistant in a boot-shop--added in far larger
measure to the contentment and happiness of the fugitives.
Boots were, and no doubt still are, almost unobtainable luxuries, for
those who try to make both ends of an _allocation_ meet. As a garment,
it may be said that the allocation (I change my metaphor, you notice)
just falls below the waist-line, it never reaches down to the feet.
How could it when even a child's pair of shoes cost as much as twelve
francs? and are _du papier_ at that.
Our boot-shop was a dark, damp, refrigerating closet at the end of the
hall where boots of all sizes were of necessity piled, or slung over
lines that stretched across the room. What you needed was never on a
line. But the line's adornments beat you about the head as you stooped
to burrow in the heaps underneath.
To add to your enjoyment of the situation, you were aware that the
difference between French feet and American feet is as wide as the
Atlantic that rolls between.
Nevertheless, those that came were shod. I personally can take no
credit for it. My plunges into the refrigerator only served as a rule
to send the temperature up! The miracles of compression and expansion
were performed by the Directrice of the establishment, who will, I
hope, forgive me if I say that I deplore an excellent sportswoman lost
in her. She had the divine instinct of the chase, and when she ran her
quarry to earth her eyes bubbled. At other times, she tried to hide the
softest heart that ever betrayed a woman under a grim exterior, that
only deceived those who saw no further than her protecting pince-nez.
III
Yes, they were going. Old friends of over a year's standing, many of
whom we had visited again and again, and of whom we shall carry glad
memories till the final exodus of all carries us beyond the Eternal
Shadows. Madame Drouet, our _femme de ménage_, was wavering; pressure,
steadily applied, was slowly driving her to the thing she dreaded and
disliked. Then, as you know, the blow fell.
She was gone, and we gazed at one another in consternation. Where would
we find such another? Hastily we ran over a list of names, and then,
Eureka! we had it. Madame Phillipot, of course. On with our hats, and
hot foot at top speed to the rue de Véel. An agitated half-hour--Madame
was diffident, she was no cook, she could never please Les Anglaises--a
triumphant return, all her scruples overruled, and the inauguration
of a reign of peace and plenty such as we shall not see again. There
is only one Madame Phillipot in this grey old world. Only one, and
we loved her. Loved her? Why, we could not help it! Picture a little
robin-redbreast of a woman, short and plump, with pretty dark eyes and
clear skin, and the chirpiest voice that ever made music on a summer
day. I can hear her now lilting her "Bon Soir, Mesdemoiselles," as she
came to bid us good-night. The little ceremony was never forgotten,
nor was the morning greeting. She rarely talked, she chirped, and
she chirped the long day through. The coming of every new face was
an adventure. No longer did the uninterested "C'est une dame," hurl
us from our peace. No. In five minutes, in five seconds Madame,
interviewing the new-comer, had grasped all the salient points of her
history, and we went forth armed, ready to smite or succour as occasion
demanded. And dearly she loved her bit of gossip. What greetings the
old stone staircase witnessed! What ah's and oh's of delight! We would
hear the voluble tide rising, rising, and groan over rooms undusted,
and beds blushing naked at midday. But it was impossible to be angry
with Madame. The work was done sooner or later, generally later,
and when we sat down to her _ragoût_, or her _bœuf mode_, or her
_blanquette de veau_ in the evening her sins put on the wings of virtue
and fluttered, silver plumed, to heaven.
Now, I am a mild woman, but there are hours in which I yearn to murder
M. Phillipot, and Pappa, and Mademoiselle Clémence, for they hold
Madame to the soil of France. If she was a widowed orphan, perhaps we
might console our lonely old age together, but no one could be really
lonely when Madame was by. Is one lonely in woods when birds are
singing?
It was the ambition of her life to be a milliner, but Pappa--you shall
hear about him presently--said No. So she married M. Phillipot instead,
and became the wife of a _commis-voyageur_ who did not deserve to get
her. For he had as mother an old harridan who insisted on living with
him, and who, bitterly jealous of Madame, made her life a burden to
her. The _commis-voyageur_ having a soul like his bag of samples, all
bits and scraps, always sided with his mother.
Once Madame asked me to guess her age. I hazarded thirty-eight quite
honestly, and she flushed like a girl. "Ah, mais non. She was older
than that. She was...." (I shan't "give her away." Am not I, too, a
woman?)
"You don't look it, Madame," I answered truthfully.
"Ah, but if only Mademoiselle had seen me before the war. When I was
dressed in my pretty Sunday clothes. Ah, que j'étais belle! And fresh
and young. One would have given me thirty."
Her speech was the most picturesque thing, a source of unfailing
delight. Once in that awful frost, when for six weeks there was ice
on the bedroom floor and a phylactery of ice adorned my sponge-bag,
when the moisture that exuded from the walls became _crystallisé_,
and neither blankets, nor fur coat, nor hot water bottle kept one
warm at night, Madame, seeing me huddle a miserable half-dead thing
over the stove, cried, "It is under a _cloche_ we should put you,
Mademoiselle Day." And the three villains who shared my misery with
ten times my fortitude chuckled with delight. My five-foot seven and
ample proportions being "forced" like a salad under the bell-glass of
intensive culture! No wonder we laughed. But I longed for the _cloche_
all the same.
As for her good humour it was indestructible. When people came, as
people inconsiderately will come, from other work-centres demanding
food at impossible hours, Madame sympathised with the agonies of the
housekeeper and evolved meals out of nothingness, out of a leek and a
lump of butter, or out of three sticks of macaroni, one _gousse d'ail_
and a pinch of salt. The clove of garlic went into every pot--was it
that which made her dishes so savoury? When the gas was shut off at
five o'clock just as dinner was under way, she didn't tear her hair and
blaspheme her gods; she cooked. Don't ask me how she did it. I can only
state the fact. On two gas-rings, with a tiny hot-plate in between, she
cooked a soup, a meat dish, two vegetables and a pudding every night,
and served them all piping hot whether the gas "marched" or whether it
did not.
If we wanted to send her into the seventh heaven we gave her a
"commission" in the town, or asked her to trim a hat. We would meet
her trotting up the Boulevard, her basket on her arm, her smile
irradiating the greyest day, and know that when she returned every
rumour--and Bar seethed with rumours--every scrap of gossip--it was a
hotbed of gossip--on the wing that day would be ours for the asking.
She never held herself aloof as Madame Drouet did. She became one of
the household, and it would have done your heart good to see her on
Sunday morning trotting (she always trotted) first from one room and
then to another with trays of coffee and rolls, keeping us like naughty
children in bed, ostensibly because we must be tired, we worked so hard
(O Madame! Madame!), but actually we believed to keep us out of the way
while she scuttled through her work in time for Mass.
Her dusting was even sketchier than Madame Drouet's, and when she
washed out a room she always left one corner dry, but whether in
pursuance of a sacred rite or as a concession to temperament, I cannot
say.
Meantime she lived in one room in the rue de Véel, sharing it with her
father and Mademoiselle Clémence. M. Phillipot, his existence once
acknowledged, faded more and more surely from our ken. He was not in
Bar-le-Duc, he was in a misty, nebulous somewhere with his virago of a
mother. We felt that wherever he was he deserved it, and speedily put
him out of our existence. But he occurred later. Husbands do, it seems,
in France.
Frankly, I believe that Madame forgot him too. She never spoke of him,
and she was devoted to M. Godard and Clémence, who are of the stock
and breeding that keep one's faith in humanity alive. Monsieur was a
carpenter, an old retainer of the château near his home. A well-to-do
man, we gathered, of some education and magnificent spirit. When
the Germans captured his village they seized him, buffeted him and
threatened to shoot him. Well, he just defied them. Flung back his old
head and dared them to do their worst. Even when he was kneeling in
the village square waiting the order to fire he defied them. He told
me the story more than once, but the details escaped me. Heaven having
deprived him of teeth, he had a quaint trick of substituting nails,
with his mouth full of which he waxed eloquent. Now, toothless French
causes the foreigner to pour ashes on her head and squirm in the very
dust, but French garnished with "des points" ...!
Of course I ought to have mastered it, as opportunities were not
lacking, but Monsieur, who worked regularly for us, was unhappily
slightly deaf. So what with the difficulty of making him understand me,
and the difficulty of making me understand him, our intimacy, though at
all times of the most affectionate nature, rested rather on goodwill
than on soul to soul intercourse.
A scheme for providing the refugees with chests in which to keep their
scanty belongings having been set afoot, Monsieur was established in
the wood-shed with planes, hammer and nails, and there he became a
fixture. We simply could not get on without him. We flew to him in
every crisis, flying back occasionally in laughter and indignation,
with the storm of his disapproval still whistling in our ears. He
could be as obstinate as a mule, and oh, how he could chasten us for
our good! In the intervals he made chests out of packing-cases, which
he adorned with hinges and a loop for a padlock, while we painted the
owner's initials in heavy lettering on the top. So highly were they
prized and sought after, our stock of packing-cases ran out, and those
who wanted them had to bring their own. It was then that Monsieur's
gift of invective showed itself in all its razor-like keenness. For,
grievous to relate, there are people in the world who presume upon
generosity--mean people who will not play the game. Every packing-case
in process of transformation made serious inroads on Monsieur's time,
and upon the small supply of wood at his disposal, so their cost was
not small. But if you had seen some of the boxes brought to our door!
"That?" Monsieur wagged a contemptuous finger at the overgrown
match-box one despicable creature planted under his enraged eyes.
"That? A chest to hold linen? Take it away. It will do to carry your
prayer book in when you go to Mass."
Or, "It is a chest that you want me to make out of that? That? Look at
it. C'est du papier à cigarette. Your husband can roll his tobacco in
it."
We chuckled as we blessed him. No doubt we were often imposed upon, and
Monsieur had an eye like a needle for the impostor.
In process of manufacture, marks of ownership sometimes became erased,
and then there was woe in Israel.
"That my caisse? Mais je vous assure Mademoiselle the caisse that I
brought was large, grande comme ça"--a gesture suggested a mausoleum.
"Yes, and I wrote my name on it with the pencil of Monsieur, there,
dans le couloir. He saw me write it, Vannier-Lefeuvre. Monsieur will
testify."
We gazed at Monsieur. "Vannier-Lefeuvre? Bon. Regardez la liste. C'est
le numero twenty-two."
"But there is NO number twenty-two, Monsieur."
"Eh bien, il faut chercher."
This to a demented philanthropist who had already wasted a good hour
in the search. (The hall was piled ceiling high with the wretched
cases, you know.) Madame Vannier-Lefeuvre lifted up a strident voice
and sang in minor key a dirge in memory of the lost treasure. Its size,
its beauty, its strength, the twenty-five sous she had paid for it at
the _épicerie_.... No, it was not that, nor that. We dragged out the
best, even some special treasures bigger and better than anything she
could have produced. All in vain. "Monsieur." We appealed to Cæsar.
Boom, bang, boom. With his mouth full of nails, humming a stifled song,
Cæsar drove a huge nail into the case of Madame Poiret-Blanc. Five
minutes later Madame Lefeuvre-Vannier--"or Vannier-Lefeuvre ça ne fait
rien," marched off with our finest _caisse_ on her _brouette_, woe
on her wily old face and devilish glee in her heart. And we, turning
to pulverise Monsieur, whose business it was to mark every case in
order to prevent confusion, found ourselves dumb. We might rage in the
Common-room, but in the wood-shed we were as lambs that baa'ed.
And we forgave him all his sins the day he, with a look of ineffable
dignity just sufficiently tinged with contempt, brushed aside a huge
gendarme at the station. Some one was going away, and Monsieur had
wheeled her luggage over on the _brouette_.
"It is forbidden to go on the platform." Thus the arm of military law,
an _Avis_ threatening pains and penalties hanging over his head.
"Forbidden? Do you not know that I am the valet de ces dames?"
Have you ever seen a gendarme crumple?
IV
Twenty degrees, twenty-two degrees, twenty-five degrees of frost. A
clear blue sky, brilliant sunshine, a snow-bound world.
"Pas chaud," people would declare as they came shivering into our room.
Not hot! Are the French never positive? I think only when it rains, and
then they do commit themselves to a "quel vilain temps."
The ice on the windows, even at the sunny side of the house, refused
to thaw; the water pipes froze. Not a drop of water in the house,
everything solid. Madame put a little coke stove under the tap, and
King Frost laughed aloud. The tap thawed languidly, then froze again,
and remained frozen. A week, two, three weeks went by. Happily there
was water in the cellar.
It was _ennuyant_, certainly, to be obliged to fetch all the water in
pails across the small garden, through the hall and up the stairs, but
Madame endured it, as she endured the chilblains that tortured her
feet, and the nipping cold of her kitchen. Even the frost could not
harden her bubbling good humour.
King Frost gripped the world in firmer fingers, the sun grew more
brilliant, the sky more blue. The Canal froze, the lock gates were
ice palaces, the streets and roads invitations to death or permanent
disablement. Still Madame endured. A morning came when the cold
stripped the flesh from our bones, and we shook as with an ague. The
Common-room door opened, desolation was upon us. Madame staggered
in, fell upon a chair and, lifting up her voice, wept aloud. She was
_désolée_. For two hours she had laboured in the cellar, she had
lighted the _réchaud_ (the little stove), she had poured boiling water
over the tap, she had prayed, she had invoked the Saints and Pappa,
but the water would not come. _Pas une goutte!_ And every pipe in the
Quartier was frozen, there was no water left in all the ice-bound world.
Madame in tears! Madame in a _crise de nerfs_! She who had coped with
disasters that left us gibbering imbeciles, and had laughed her way
through vicissitudes that reduced me, at least, to the intelligent
level of a nerveless jelly-fish! We nearly had a _crise de nerfs_
ourselves, but happily some hot tea was forthcoming, hot tea which
in France is not a beverage, but an _infusion_--like _tilleul_, you
know--and with that we pulled ourselves together. We also resuscitated
Madame, whose long vigil in the cellar had frozen her as nearly
solid as the pipes. Later on, she complained of feeling ill, _un
peu souffrante_. Asked to describe her symptoms, she said she had
"l'estomac embarrassé." Before so mysterious a disease we wilted. But
the loan of a huge _marmite_ from the Canteen restored her; there was
water in the deep well in the Park, Pappa would take the _marmite_ on
the _brouette_ and bring back supplies for the house. He brought them.
As the _marmite_ made its heavy way up the stairs, some one asked where
the queer smell came from.
"That? It is from the water," he replied simply.
Sanitary authorities, take note. We survived it. And we kept ourselves
as clean as we could. When we couldn't we consoled ourselves by
remembering that the washed are less warm than the unwashed. M. l'Abbé
told me that he dropped baths out of his scheme of things while the
frost lasted. Were we not afraid to bathe? We confessed to a reasonable
fear of being found one morning sitting in my square of green canvas,
a pillar like Lot's wife, but of ice, not salt. He brooded on the
picture I called up, I slid like a bag of coal down the hill.
Having administered comfort to "l'estomac embarrassé," we rationed our
supply of water, we prayed for a thaw, Madame began to chirp again,
the world was not altogether given over to the devil. But peace had
forsaken our borders. Going into the kitchen one morning I found Madame
in tears. M. Phillipot had occurred. The deluge was upon us.
Wearying of life in the South, he had come back to Révigny, his mother,
of course, as always, upon his arm, and there, possessed of a thousand
devils, he had bought a wooden house, and there his mother, with all
the maddening malice of a perverse, inconsiderate animal, had been
seized with an illness and was preparing to die.
And she had sent for Madame. No wonder the heavens fell.
"All my life she has ill-treated me," the poor little woman sobbed,
"and now when I am si heureuse avec vous, when I earn good money, she
sends for me. Quel malheur! What cruelty! You do not know what a rude
enfer (hell) I have suffered with that woman. And chez nous, one was so
happy. With Pappa and Clémence all was so peaceful, never a cross word,
never a temper. Ah, what sufferings! Did not the contemplation of them
turn Clémence from marriage for ever? Because of my so grande misère
never would she marry. La belle-mère, she hated me. It was that she was
jealous. But now when she is ill she sends for me. But I will not go.
No, I will not."
"But, Madame, if she is ill? We could manage for a few days." She was
riven with emotion, then the storm passed. Again we reasoned with her.
She must go. After all, if the old woman was dying....
Madame did not believe in the possible dissolution of anything so
entirely undesirable as her _belle-mère_, but in the end humanity
prevailed. She would go, but for one night. She would come back early
on the morrow.
"Ah, Mademoiselle, c'est un vrai voyage de sacrifice that I make." She
put on her Sunday clothes, she took Clémence with her, she came back
that night. Two days later a letter, then a telegram urged her forth
again. We had almost to turn her out of the house. Was not one voyage
of sacrifice enough in a lifetime of sorrow? And the _belle-mère_ would
not die. She, Madame, knew it. Protesting, weeping, she set out, to
come back annoyed, sobered, enraged, _bouleversée_. _La belle-mère_ had
died. What else could one expect from such an ingrate?
And now there was M. Phillipot all alone in the _maudite petite maison_
at Révigny. "Is it that he can live alone? Pensez donc, Mademoiselle!
I, moi qui vous parle, must give up my good place with my friends whom
I love, to whom I have accustomed myself, and live in that desert of
a Révigny. Is it that I shall earn good money there? Monsieur? Il ne
gagne rien, mais rien du tout. Pas ça." She clicked a nail against a
front tooth and shot an expressive finger into the air.
"Then he must come to Bar-le-Duc."
But--ah, if Mademoiselle only knew what she suffered--Monsieur was
possessed of goats--deux chèvres, that he loved. They had followed him
in all his journeyings; when they were tired the soldiers gave them
rides in the _camions_. To the South they had gone with him, back to
Révigny they had come with him. To part with them would be death. You
do not know how he loves them. But could one keep goats in the rue de
Véel?
One could certainly not. We looked at Madame. Physical force might get
her to Révigny, no other power could. Assuredly we who knew her value
could not persuade her. The _impasse_ seemed insurmountable. Then light
broke over it, showing the way. If Monsieur wanted his wife he must
abandon his goats. It was a choice. Let him make it. _Rien de plus
simple._
He chose the goats.