"Never let your husband have a grievance," said Madame Marcot,
stirring the lump of sugar that she had brought with her to put into
her cup of tea. "It destroys the happiness of the most admirable
households. Have you heard of the distressing case of the de
Blanchets--Victor de Blanchet and his wife?"
We had not.
"Very dear friends of mine," said Madame Marcot vivaciously, delighted
at the chance of an uninterrupted innings, "and belonging to a family
of the most distinguished. They were a truly devoted couple, and had
never been apart during the whole of their married life. As for
him, he was an excellent fellow. If he had a fault, it was only that
perhaps he was a little near; but still, a good fault, is it not? When
he was called to the Front his wife was desolated, simply desolated.
And then, poor M. de Blanchet--_not_ the figure for a soldier--of a
rotundity, Mesdames!" And Madame Marcot lifted her eyes heavenwards,
struck speechless for a moment at the thought of M. de Blanchet's
outline. "However, like all good Frenchmen, he made no fuss, but went
off to do his duty. He wrote to his wife every day, and she wrote to
him.
"All at once his letters ceased, and then, after a long delay, came
the official notice, 'Missing.' Imagine the suspense, the anxiety! For
weeks she continued to hope against hope, but at last she heard that
his body had been found. It had been recognised by the clothes, the
identity disc (or whatever you call it), and the stoutness, for, alas,
the unfortunate gentleman's head had been nearly blown away by a shell
and was quite unrecognisable. Poor Madame de Blanchet's grief was
terrible to witness when they brought her his sad clothing, with the
embroidered initials upon it worked by her own hand. One thing she
insisted on, and that was that his body should be buried at A----, in
the family vault of the de Blanchets, who, as I have said before, are
very distinguished people. "This meant endless red tape, as you may
imagine, and endless correspondence with the authorities, and delays
and vexations, but finally she got her wish, and the funeral was the
most magnificent ever witnessed in that part of the world. You should
have seen the '_faire part_,'" said Madame Marcot, alluding to the
black-bordered mourning intimations sent out in France, inscribed with
the names of every individual member of the family concerned, from the
greatest down to the most insignificant and obscure. "Several pages, I
assure you; and everybody came. The cortège was a mile long. M. l'Abbé
Colaix officiated; there was a full choral mass; and she got her
second cousin once removed, M. Aristide Gérant, who, as you know,
is Director of the College of Music at A----, to compose a requiem
specially for the occasion; and he did not do it for nothing, you may
believe me. In fine, a first-class funeral. But, as she said, when
some of her near relations, including her stepmother, who is not of
the most generous, remonstrated with her on the score of the expense,
'I would wish to honour my dear husband in death as I honoured him in
life.'
"After it was all over she had a magnificent marble monument erected
over the tomb, recording all his virtues, and with a bas-relief of
herself (a very inaccurate representation, I am told, as it gave her
a Madonna-like appearance to which she can lay no claim in real life)
shedding tears upon his sarcophagus."
Madame Marcot paused for breath, and, thinking the story finished, we
drifted in with appropriate comments. But we were soon cut short.
"Ten months afterwards," continued the lady dramatically, "as Madame
de Blanchet, dressed of course in the deepest mourning, was making
strawberry jam in the kitchen and weeping over her sorrows, who should
walk in but Monsieur?"
"What--her husband?" cried everybody.
"The same," answered Madame Marcot. "He was a spectacle. He had lost
an arm; his clothing was in tatters, and he was as thin as a skeleton.
But it was Monsieur de Blanchet all the same."
"What had happened?" we shrieked in chorus.
"What has happened more than once in the course of this War. He had
been taken prisoner, had been unable to communicate and at last, after
many marvellous adventures, had succeeded in escaping."
"But the other?" we cried.
"Ah, now we come to the really desolating part of the affair," said
Madame Marcot. "The corpse in M. de Blanchets clothing, what was he
but a villainous Boche--stout, as is the way of these messieurs--who
had appropriated the clothes of the unfortunate prisoner, uniform,
badges, disc and all, in order, no doubt, to get into our lines and
play the spy. Happily a shell put an end to his activities; but by the
grossest piece of ill-luck it made him completely unrecognisable, so
that Madame de Blanchet, as well as the officers who identified him,
were naturally led into the mistake of thinking him a good Frenchman,
fallen in the exercise of his duty."
"What happiness to see him back!" I remarked.
"I believe you," said Madame Marcot, "and touching was the joy of M.
de Blanchet too, until he observed her mourning. He was then inclined
to be slightly hurt at her taking his death so readily for granted.
However, she soon explained the case; but, when he heard that a
nameless member of the unspeakable race was occupying the place in the
family vault that he had been reserving for himself for years past at
considerable cost, he became exceedingly annoyed; and when, through
the medium of his relations, he learned of the first-class funeral,
and of the oak coffin studded with silver, and the expensive full
choral mass, and the requiem specially written for the occasion, and
the marble monument, his wrath was such that in pre-war days,
and before he had undergone the reducing influence of the German
hunger-diet, he would certainly have had an apoplectic seizure. To a
man of his economical turn of mind it was naturally enraging. But the
thing that put the climax on his exasperation was the bas-relief of
his wife, 'ridiculously svelte' as he remarked, shedding tears over
the ashes of a wretched Boche.
"The situation for him and for the family generally," concluded
Madame Marcot, "is, as you will readily conceive, one of extreme
unpleasantness and delicacy. The cost of exhuming the Hun, after the
really outrageous expense of his interment, is one that a thrifty man
like M. de Blanchet must naturally shrink from; indeed he assures me
that his pocket simply does not permit of it.
"In the meantime he can never go to lay a wreath upon the tombs of his
sainted father and mother, or pass through the cemetery on his way to
mass (he is a good Catholic), without being reminded of the miserable
interloper and all the circumstances of his magnificent first-class
funeral. Hence he is a man with a grievance--an undying grievance,
I may say--for he is practically certain to have a ghost hereafter
haunting the spot that ought to be its resting-place but isn't. Still,
it is _chic_ to have a ghost in the family. The de Blanchets will be
more distinguished than ever."
* * * * *
[Illustration: "'OW'S YOUR SON GETTIN' ON IN THE ARMY, MRS. PODDISH?"
"FINE, THANKEE. THEY'VE MADE 'IM A COLONEL."
"OH, COME----"
"CAPTAIN, THEN."
"GO ON. YOU MEAN CORPORAL, P'RAPS."
"WELL, 'AVE IT THAT WAY IF YOU LIKE. I KNOW IT BEGAN WITH A 'K.'"]
* * * * *