I looked for the sunken road that we used to hold in support, with
its row of little shelters in the bank and the carved oak saints
above them here and there that had survived the church in Croisilles.
I could have found it with my eyes shut. With my eyes open I could
not find it. I did not recognize the lonely metalled road down which
lorries were rushing for the little lane so full of life, whose
wheel-ruts were three years old.
As I gazed about me looking for our line, I passed an old French
civilian looking down at a slight mound of white stone that rose a
little higher than the road. He was walking about uncertainly, when
first I noticed him, as though he was not sure where he was. But now
he stood quite still looking down at the mound.
“Voilà ma maison,” he said.
He said no more than that: this astounding remark, this gesture that
indicated such calamity, were quite simply made. There was nothing
whatever of theatrical pose that we wrongly associate with the
French, because they conceal their emotions less secretly than we;
there were no tragic tones in his voice: only a trace of deep
affection showed in one of the words he used. He spoke as a woman
might say of her only child, “Look at _my_ baby.”
“Voilà ma maison,” he said.
I tried to say in his language what I felt; and after my attempt he
spoke of his house.
It was very old. Down underneath, he said, it dated from feudal
times; though I did not quite make out whether all that lay under
that mound had been so old or whether he only meant the cellars of
his house. It was a fine high house, he said, as much as two storeys
high. No one that is familiar with houses of fifty storeys, none even
that has known palaces, will smile at this old man’s efforts to tell
of his high house, and to make me believe that it rose to two storeys
high, as we stood together by that sad white mound. He told me that
his son was killed. And that disaster strangely did not move me so
much as the white mound that had been a house and had had two
storeys, for it seems to be common to every French family with whose
fathers I have chanced to speak in ruined cities or on busy roads of
France.
He pointed to a huge white mound beyond on the top of which someone
had stuck a small cross of wood. “The church,” he said. And that I
knew already.
In very inadequate French I tried to comfort him. I told him that
surely France would build his house again. Perhaps even the allies;
for I could not believe that we shall have done enough if we merely
drive the Germans out of France and leave this poor old man still
wandering homeless. I told him that surely in the future Croisilles
would stand again.
He took no interest in anything that I said. His house of two storeys
was down, his son was dead, the little village of Croisilles had gone
away; he had only one hope from the future. When I had finished
speaking of the future, he raised a knobbed stick that he carried, up
to the level of his throat, surely his son’s old trench stick, and
there he let it dangle from a piece of string in the handle, which he
held against his neck. He watched me shrewdly and attentively
meanwhile, for I was a stranger and was to be taught something I
might not know—a thing that it was necessary for all men to learn.
“Le Kaiser,” he said. “Yes;” I said, “the Kaiser.” But I pronounced
the word Kaiser differently from him, and he repeated again “Le
Kaiser,” and watched me closely to be sure that I understood. And
then he said “Pendu,” and made the stick quiver a little as it
dangled from its string. “Oui,” I said, “Pendu.”
Did I understand? He was not yet quite sure. It was important that
this thing should be quite decided between us as we stood on this
road through what had been Croisilles, where he had lived through
many sunny years and I had dwelt for a season amongst rats. “Pendu”
he said. Yes, I agreed.
It was all right. The old man almost smiled.
I offered him a cigarette and we lit two from an apparatus of flint
and steel and petrol that the old man had in his pocket.
He showed me a photograph of himself and a passport to prove, I
suppose, that he was not a spy. One could not recognize the likeness,
for it must have been taken on some happier day, before he had seen
his house of two storeys lying there by the road. But he was no spy,
for there were tears in his eyes; and Prussians I think have no tears
for what we saw across the village of Croisilles.
I spoke of the rebuilding of his house no more, I spoke no more of
the new Croisilles shining through future years; for these were not
the things that he saw in the future, and these were not the hopes of
the poor old man. He had one dark hope of the future, and no others.
He hoped to see the Kaiser hung for the wrong he had done to
Croisilles. It was for this hope he lived.
Madame or señor of whatever far country, who may chance to see these
words, blame not this old man for the fierce hope he cherished. It
was the only hope he had. You, Madame, with your garden, your house,
your church, the village where all know you, you may hope as a
Christian should, there is wide room for hope in your future. You
shall see the seasons move over your garden, you shall busy yourself
with your home, and speak and share with your neighbours innumerable
small joys, and find consolation and beauty, and at last rest, in and
around the church whose spire you see from your home. You, señor,
with your son perhaps growing up, perhaps wearing already some sword
that you wore once, you can turn back to your memories or look with
hope to the future with equal ease.
The man that I met in Croisilles had none of these things at all. He
had that one hope only.
Do not, I pray you, by your voice or vote, or by any power or
influence that you have, do anything to take away from this poor old
Frenchman the only little hope he has left. The more trivial his odd
hope appears to you compared with your own high hopes that come so
easily to you amongst all your fields and houses, the more cruel a
thing must it be to take it from him.
I learned many things in Croisilles, and the last of them is this
strange one the old man taught me. I turned and shook hands with him
and said good-bye, for I wished to see again our old front line that
we used to hold over the hill, now empty, silent at last. “The Boche
is defeated,” I said.
“Vaincu, vaincu,” he repeated. And I left him with something almost
like happiness looking out of his tearful eyes.