I
At noon that day Claude found himself in a street of little
shops, hot and perspiring, utterly confused and turned about.
Truck drivers and boys on bell less bicycles shouted at him
indignantly, furiously. He got under the shade of a young plane
tree and stood close to the trunk, as if it might protect him.
His greatest care, at any rate, was off his hands. With the help
of Victor Morse he had hired a taxi for forty francs, taken
Fanning to the base hospital, and seen him into the arms of a big
orderly from Texas. He came away from the hospital with no idea
where he was going--except that he wanted to get to the heart of
the city. It seemed, however, to have no heart; only long, stony
arteries, full of heat and noise. He was still standing there,
under his plane tree, when a group of uncertain, lost-looking
brown figures, headed by Sergeant Hicks, came weaving up the
street; nine men in nine different attitudes of dejection, each
with a long loaf of bread under his arm. They hailed Claude with
joy, straightened up, and looked as if now they had found their
way! He saw that he must be a plane tree for somebody else.
Sergeant Hicks explained that they had been trudging about the
town, looking for cheese. After sixteen days of heavy, tasteless
food, cheese was what they all wanted. There was a grocery store
up the street, where there seemed to be everything else. He had
tried to make the old woman understand by signs.
"Don't these French people eat cheese, anyhow? What's their word
for it, Lieutenant? I'm damned if I know, and I've lost my phrase
book. Suppose you could make her understand?"
"Well, I'll try. Come along, boys."
Crowding close together, the ten men entered the shop. The
proprietress ran forward with an exclamation of despair.
Evidently she had thought she was done with them, and was not
pleased to see them coming back. When she paused to take breath,
Claude took off his hat respectfully, and performed the bravest
act of his life; uttered the first phrase-book sentence he had
ever spoken to a French person. His men were at his back; he had
to say something or run, there was no other course. Looking the
old woman in the eye, he steadily articulated:
"Avez-vous du fromage, Madame?" It was almost inspiration to add
the last word, he thought; and when it worked, he was as much
startled as if his revolver had gone off in his belt.
"Du fromage?" the shop woman screamed. Calling something to her
daughter, who was at the desk, she caught Claude by the sleeve,
pulled him out of the shop, and ran down the street with him. She
dragged him into a doorway darkened by a long curtain, greeted
the proprietress, and then pushed the men after their officer, as
if they were stubborn burros.
They stood blinking in the gloom, inhaling a sour, damp, buttery,
smear-kase smell, until their eyes penetrated the shadows and
they saw that there was nothing but cheese and butter in the
place. The shopkeeper was a fat woman, with black eyebrows that
met above her nose; her sleeves were rolled up, her cotton dress
was open over her white throat and bosom. She began at once to
tell them that there was a restriction on milk products; every
one must have cards; she could not sell them so much. But soon
there was nothing left to dispute about. The boys fell upon her
stock like wolves. The little white cheeses that lay on green
leaves disappeared into big mouths. Before she could save it,
Hicks had split a big round cheese through the middle and was
carving it up like a melon. She told them they were dirty pigs
and worse than the Boches, but she could not stop them.
"What's the matter with Mother, Lieutenant? What's she fussing
about? Ain't she here to sell goods?"
Claude tried to look wiser than he was. "From what I can make
out, there's some sort of restriction; you aren't allowed to buy
all you want. We ought to have thought about that; this is a war
country. I guess we've about cleaned her out."
"Oh, that's all right," said Hicks wiping his clasp-knife. "We'll
bring her some sugar tomorrow. One of the fellows who helped us
unload at the docks told me you can always quiet 'em if you give
'em sugar."
They surrounded her and held out their money for her to take her
pay. "Come on, ma'm, don't be bashful. What's the matter, ain't
this good money?"
She was distracted by the noise they made, by their bronzed faces
with white teeth and pale eyes, crowding so close to her. Ten
large, well-shaped hands with straight fingers, the open palms
full of crumpled notes.... Holding the men off under the
pretence of looking for a pencil, she made rapid calculations.
The money that lay in their palms had no relation to these big,
coaxing, boisterous fellows; it was a joke to them; they didn't
know what it meant in the world. Behind them were shiploads of
money, and behind the ships....
The situation was unfair. Whether she took much or little out of
their hands, couldn't possibly matter to the Americans, couldn't
even dash their good humour. But there was a strain on the
cheesewoman, and the standards of a lifetime were in jeopardy.
Her mind mechanically fixed upon two-and-a-half; she would charge
them two-and-a-half times the market price of the cheese. With
this moral plank to cling to, she made change with conscientious
accuracy and did not keep a penny too much from anybody. Telling
them what big stupids they were, and that it was necessary to
learn to count in this world, she urged them out of her shop. She
liked them well enough, but she did not like to do business with
them. If she didn't take their money, the next one would. All the
same, fictitious values were distasteful to her, and made
everything seem flimsy and unsafe.
Standing in her doorway, she watched the brown band go ambling
down the street; as they passed in front of the old church of St.
Jacques, the two foremost stumbled on a sunken step that was
scarcely above the level of the pavement. She laughed aloud. They
looked back and waved to her. She replied with a smile that was
both friendly and angry. She liked them, but not the legend of
waste and prodigality that ran before them--and followed after.
It was superfluous and disintegrating in a world of hard facts.
An army in which the men had meat for breakfast, and ate more
every day than the French soldiers at the front got in a week!
Their moving kitchens and supply trains were the wonder of
France. Down below Arles, where her husband's sister had married,
on the desolate plain of the Crau, their tinned provisions were
piled like mountain ranges, under sheds and canvas. Nobody had
ever seen so much food before; coffee, milk, sugar, bacon, hams;
everything the world was famished for. They brought shiploads of
useless things, too. And useless people. Shiploads of women who
were not nurses; some said they came to dance with the officers,
so they would not be ennuyés.
All this was not war,--any more than having money thrust at you
by grown men who could not count, was business. It was an
invasion, like the other. The first destroyed material
possessions, and this threatened everybody's integrity. Distaste
of such methods, deep, recoiling distrust of them, clouded the
cheesewoman's brow as she threw her money into the drawer and
turned the key on it.
As for the doughboys, having once stubbed their toes on the
sunken step, they examined it with interest, and went in to
explore the church. It was in their minds that they must not let
a church escape, any more than they would let a Boche escape.
Within they came upon a bunch of their shipmates, including the
Kansas band, to whom they boasted that their Lieutenant could
"speak French like a native."
The Lieutenant himself thought he was getting on pretty well, but
a few hours later his pride was humbled. He was sitting alone in
a little triangular park beside another church, admiring the
cropped locust trees and watching some old women who were doing
their mending in the shade. A little boy in a black apron, with a
close-shaved, bare head, came along, skipping rope. He hopped
lightly up to Claude and said in a most persuasive and confiding
voice,
"Voulez-vous me dire l'heure, s'il vous plaît, M'sieu' l'
soldat?"
Claude looked down into his admiring eyes with a feeling of
panic. He wouldn't mind being dumb to a man, or even to a pretty
girl, but this was terrible. His tongue went dry, and his face
grew scarlet. The child's expectant gaze changed to a look of
doubt, and then of fear. He had spoken before to Americans who
didn't understand, but they had not turned red and looked angry
like this one; this soldier must be ill, or wrong in his head.
The boy turned and ran away.
Many a serious mishap had distressed Claude less. He was
disappointed, too. There was something friendly in the boy's face
that he wanted... that he needed. As he rose he ground his
heel into the gravel. "Unless I can learn to talk to the CHILDREN
of this country," he muttered, "I'll go home!"