and a quarter years. Jacobs and the veterans got orders to proceed to
Courtrai, and continue the good work of cleansing the ornamental waters
of that town from the use to which the German officers had put them.
This disturbance of her source of labor gave Madeleine some moments’
thought, but the sight of the Dequidt family, trudging back to their
farm on foot, having been returned from evacuation in the Cherbourg
district, opened up a new means of dealing with the problem. Her farm
was nearly in order, her house more or less intact, her larder stocked
with the good tinned stuff of the British Expeditionary Force Canteen.
Theirs would not be so. She would give of her ample store, in return for
work. There was one duty with which, however, she preferred to trust the
two veterans, rather than any of her neighbors. Now that they were
going, she thought of them in the terms in which she had once thought of
a lieutenant called Skene. They were willing and well behaved. Moreover,
they were going back to England (indicated by their saying to her, “What
Ho, for Blighty,” many times a day), so that they were safe. With smiles
and encouraging words she led them to the foot of the shot tower. It was
badly cracked by the shell that had hit the top, and great lumps of
brickwork, a yard cube, had fallen, blocking the door; elm beams a foot
square lay jammed across the broken floor. It took three hours’ hard
work to effect an entrance. Then Madeleine kneeled down, put her arms
through the broken boards, and fished up a length of stout iron chain.
“Pull,” she commanded, handing it over. The veterans, spitting on their
hands, and setting their heels against the cobbles, called “Heave-ho!”
as the chain emerged link by link. Finally, with a clatter and smash, a
great iron box was retrieved. Madeleine unhooked it from the chain and
bade them carry it to the house.
Once she had it on the kitchen table, having wiped the worst of the
muddy water from it, and assured herself it was intact, she gave a sigh
of relief. It was the savings of her father’s lifetime, that had been
withdrawn from the Savings Bank, when Hazebrouck was first bombarded,
and hidden thus by her. Seeing it before her, Madeleine made what the
French call a “gesture”--one of those actions prompted by emotions
deeper than reason--in this case by the only genuine feeling at the base
of the otherwise politician-manufactured Entente Cordiale. She had found
the English friends in need, not too exacting, fairly ready to pay for
what they wanted. They had been a comfort at the beginning of, through
the long length of, and now at the daily growing aftermath of
disillusionment with, the War. She took two notes, 20 francs each, from
her purse, and distributed them to the veterans. Those members of
England’s Last Hope pocketed the money, exclaiming with one voice,
“Thank you, Maddam,” winking solemnly at each other.
That evening Jacobs took his leave, and she charged him for exactly what
he had had. He departed into the darkness, to catch the newly
established train service over the hastily repaired line, the veterans
wheeling his valise and their own packs on a salved Lewis-gun hand cart.
* * * * *
With the departure of that party the British Army in Flanders finally
left the Spanish Farm, after four years. The longed-for golden reign of
Peace was re-established. And anything less golden cannot be imagined.
Madeleine lost no time in getting into touch with the evacuated
neighbors now returning to their farms. They were nearly all women, and
though they were willing enough to work, they had neither the dexterity
nor the resources of the British Army. Madeleine wished indeed, before
many weeks were over, that the War had lasted longer. There was the big
kitchen window, not to mention sundry other panes broken by
carelessness, or by concussion of bombing and shelling, to be re-glazed.
There were leaks in the roof to mend, there was the shot tower to
rebuild--unless indeed she built some other stowage room for all the
things it used to hold--sacks, “fertilizer,” tools, roots, grain, hops,
spare cart covers, timber. There were nineteen gates missing, endless
lengths of hedge and ditch practically to be made over again. The
hurdles were all gone, and worst of all, the great fifteen-feet
hop-poles and stout wire. As was usual throughout French Flanders, the
British Army had burned every piece of wood upon the farm. Madeleine did
not blame them. A French or any other army would have done the same.
There was, however, one good job that the War had done: the tall elms
round the pasture had been completely barked by the numerous mounted
units that had succeeded each other. They would die, and the proprietor
(the Baron, to wit) would do well to sell them at once, while the price
was so high. The ground would be disencumbered, more grass would grow
and the great roots would no longer suck up all the manure one put down.
The only loser would be the Baron. It was his affair.
* * * * *
For already Peace had brought that endless attempt to go one better than
one’s neighbor, which, for four years, had been hidden under the more
immediate necessity to go one better than the Bosche. Thus Madeleine,
perceiving that whatever the eventual scheme of compensation, she must
pay, in the first instance, nearly all the loss occasioned, began
actually to grudge the English their demobilization. Had they (and their
dumps of material) remained in the neighborhood, she would have got them
to do plumbing and glazing, ditching and joinery, and to give her good
telephone wire, aeroplane canvas, oil, paint and nails. Instead of
which, every day that she went as far as the Lille road, she saw
trainloads of useful English, singing and cheering on their way to
Dunkirk, where they were being demobbed by thousands a day. So she grew
bitter, and having no one else to blame (for who could blame old Jerome,
wandering helpless like a worn-out horse) she began to blame the English
for going away. Madame la Baronne had returned to the château. Placide
was once more functioning, and the Baron was only seen at the farm on
his walks, as before the offensive of 1918. So that there was absolutely
no one but the English to blame for having departed so inopportunely.
There was nothing exceptional in Madeleine’s case. It was, indeed, the
common feeling in all those French and Flemish farms on the border of
what had been the trenches (the frontiers of civilization) and was now
the Devastated Area (something no one wanted, and everybody was tired of
hearing about). This being so, the Government, depending upon votes, saw
that something must be done to retain those sources of its power and
emoluments, less they be filched by Bolsheviks, Germans, Socialists or
other enemies--in fact by persons who might come to wield the power, and
enjoy the resulting advantages, which every government looks upon as the
permanent reward of the endless corruption by which it has maintained
itself in power.
Thus, about this time, Madeleine began to hear of things called
“Reparations,” that the Germans were going to be made to pay. She was
invited to inscribe at the Mairie the list of damage done by the War to
the farm. She went to see Monsieur Blanquart, and furnished him with a
list that totaled 131,415 francs 41 centimes (the total market value of
the farm in 1914 being about 120,000 francs). Monsieur Blanquart
inscribed the lot. He did more. Like every one else, he felt that he had
had an atrocious time for many years, and that nothing was too good for
him. Keeping in close touch with his daughter Cécile, at Amiens, he had
been quite sharp enough to see how things were shaping. He had hung in
the windows of his little parlor, and all round the mayoral office at
the Estaminet de la Mairie, in place of the patriotic appeals by M.
Deschanel to fortitude and patience, in place of lists of conscripts,
and of ever-mounting food prices, little cards inscribed “Blanquart,
financial agent”; “Blanquart, bonds, shares, assurances.” He unfolded
golden schemes to Madeleine, who listened with her special “stupid
peasant” expression that she kept for the occasions when she was
thinking hard. Her list of war damages was based not so much on facts
and figures as on her one idea of any monetary transaction--namely, to
ask twice as much as a thing is worth, in the certainty that you will be
beaten down by at least a quarter. She was no more deceived by the talk
in the papers than by Blanquart’s “financial operations.” She knew how
difficult it was for her to part with money or money’s worth, and judged
the Germans, and Blanquart’s stocks and shares, by her own standards.
Pay! Not likely, Germans or Royal Dutch, not if they could help it. But
standing hatless and vacant-faced before Blanquart, she was working out
in her mind one of her slowly conceived plans, so much less simple than
one would have supposed from her appearance. She had enough cash in the
iron box to buy two horses and get along until harvest.
“Look here, Monsieur Blanquart, I’ll take 50,000 francs’ worth of your
bonds, and pay you when I get my ‘Reparations.’”
But Blanquart had not lived in the village all those years for nothing.
“You comprehend,” he replied, “your reparations are subject to
discussion!”
“No doubt; but I suppose one will pay us something!”
“Undoubtedly, but how much?--That’s the point!”
Madeleine got up and moved toward the door. “Oh, well, it’s a pity!” she
said.
Blanquart hated to see her go. She was one of the richest “heiresses” in
the village (as heiresses go in France), and there was only Marie to
divide it with her when old Jerome died. Moreover, she had quite a
reputation for the part she had played in the last phases of the War,
and it would be a great help to be able to say to the others: “Madeleine
Vanderlynden has taken 50,000.” He offered: “Look here, I’ll buy your
reparations for 40,000!”
“No, nothing to be done,” was the answer, hand on the latch.
In his heart Monsieur Blanquart pested the sacred peasants. But
something must be arranged. “Very well, I sell you 40,000 worth of
securities, and you can pay me when you get your ‘Reparations’!”
Madeleine left the doorway and came back to the table. Looking through
his stocked portfolio she chose only bearer bonds (coupons appealed to
her; the less tangible dividend warrant or inscribed or registered stock
did not), some national, some industrial, some lottery. Thus armed, she
returned to the farm.
* * * * *
Thus came what Politicians called “Peace,” but mostly French people,
realists in a sense that the English public never is, spoke of it as the
“era of La Galette”--the cake which one could eat and yet have again,
the pie in which every one’s finger might be--the lucky-bag into which
all might dip.
Upon the mentality of France, with its dominant peasant outlook, only
one deep impression was made. The Germans were beaten. Therefore their
money could be got at. Anyone who did not get at it was a fool, simply.
This was not piracy. The Germans had invited a contest, and lost. The
loser pays--that is logic as well as human nature. When the first hints
were dropped that there might be delays, even a dwindling of the golden
stream that was to flow from Berlin--public feeling became so strong
that Government had hastily to vote sums “on account of” the Reparations
to be exacted. In every village, men, and more often women, asked each
other: “What have you estimated your damages at?” “What have you
received on account?” In place of the War-time watchwords “La Patrie est
en danger” and “On les aura,” there might very reasonably have been
displayed another: “La Galette”--The Cake that every one might take.
“L’assiette au beurre”--The butter-dish to grease every itching palm.
“Le pot au vin”--The loving-cup that was ever full.
* * * * *
Before she could put the War finally away from her, Madeleine had to go
through a process which might be called in English, the laying of
ghosts. Without active belief in the supernatural, and prone to
laughter at those who dared not pass the Kruysabel, after dusk, without
crossing themselves (this superstition was one of the safeguards that
had kept her meetings with Georges secure), she preserved to the full
the clear feeling of all primitives, that the Living are connected with,
influenced by, the Departed. The most immediate case was that of her
father. Jerome Vanderlynden had never recovered his reason, but had
recaptured a few words, and most of his bodily functions. What had been
done, or not done, to him, during his eight months behind the German
lines, will never be known. A neighbor, also swallowed up by the swift
invasion of April, 1918, had seen him, near Lille, working in a field,
under German direction, but had not been recognized. At that date, even,
the old man had lost his senses. He bore no particular signs of
ill-usage, other than the common starvation caused by blockade, and,
after weeks of loving care, Madeleine, nearest to him, most like him of
all people on earth, managed to make out what he mumbled to himself,
with that scared look, when his food was set before him: “There’s
nothing left to eat!” he whispered, with a frightened glance around.
Then, when coaxed, he would eat, rapidly, defensively.
Madeleine, no theorist, came to the conclusion that the fact that he had
been interrupted in the middle of sowing his potatoes, and had then
found the stock of food at Marie’s farm destroyed or taken, had unhinged
his mind. At that she had to leave it, and although the old man’s iron
health did not vary, she had sorrowfully to admit that, as father and
parent, as companion and guide, he was gone from her, just as
effectively as though she had buried him in the churchyard, beneath the
battered, spireless old church, that filled all one side of the grande
place of the village. So strongly did she feel this, that she refused to
let the curé worry him about his soul.
Thus was one ghost laid.
* * * * *
There was another ghost, one that haunted her with no material presence,
did not inhabit the farm, but hovered, a dim gray figure at the back of
her mind.
About Christmas, 1919, in the dead slack of the year, when most of the
clearing of the land was done, when the autumn sowing was over and it
was too early for the spring one, she had leisure to go up to the
Kruysabel. She had neglected this ceremony since the invasion of 1918,
chiefly because the disappearance of her father had left the whole
weight of the farm on her shoulders, partly because, steadfast as she
was, she changed as must every living thing, and Georges was receding
from her, with the past. She knew that the place had been fortified into
a “strong point,” and had she not known, she would have guessed from the
fact that the wooden-gate was gone, and the alley that led up the hill,
beaten into pulp by military traffic. She scrambled up among the
undergrowth, untouched save for shell-holes, and a few places where the
vegetation had fired, or hung gray and sickly, reeking of gas. This made
her frown and put on her expression as of one about to smack a naughty
child. At the top, treading some barbed wire, she came out into the
little clearing, leapt a half-decayed trench, and stood by the hunting
shelter. Outwardly it was not much changed. A woman, looking at it with
the eyes of Madeleine, could see that it was no longer the same place,
although its greeny-gray woodland color, and shape that blurred into the
surrounding undergrowth, had been carefully preserved, so that it was
probably imperceptible to the best glasses a few hundred yards away.
The door was undone, and she pushed it open, stood and gasped. Nothing
in the previous four years and a half had quite prepared her for what
she found. The place had been skilfully gutted. Not only the glass from
the windows, the whole of the rugs, cushions, seats, and fittings were
gone, but the actual partitions had been removed, leaving the brick
chimney-piece alone supporting an empty shell. The trap of the cellar
had been forced, and in the aperture left was a steel and concrete
“pill-box,” its machine gun embrasures level with the window-sills. At
the opposite end, just where there had stood the divan on which she had
held Georges in her arms, the floor had been torn up, the earth dug
away, to make room for a similar erection. The only recognizable remains
of the furniture were some of the animal heads and photographs of
hunting groups, all adorned with mustaches or other attributes, obscene
or merely grotesque, in army indelible pencil, or fastened with field
telephone wire. It took Madeleine’s plodding mind a moment to size it
all up, from the gas-gong hanging from a nail, to the painted wooden
notice-board, in English: “Any person found using this Strong Point as
a latrine will be severely dealt with. C.R.E. Defence lines.”
Then she let the door swing to, turned her back on the place, and walked
away. It was not in her to philosophize. What had been done, she felt
like a personal injury. If the place had merely been dirtied and damaged
by billeting or shell-fire, she would have shrugged her shoulders and
put it straight. But this systematic conversion struck deep at her sense
of personal possession. They had challenged her right to something she
felt to be most deeply her own. For once she was at a loss, was done,
beaten, did not know how to adjust herself, hit back. Georges seemed
smaller, further off, than she had ever felt him. Her love for him now
seemed almost ridiculous, temporary, and forever done with. She was
aroused from her reverie by the thick undergrowth that barred her steps,
and realized that she was walking down the northeastern slope of the
wood, with her back to the farm. That recalled her to herself. She
retraced her steps, skirted the clearing, dodged the trenches and wire,
and descended the hill towards home, head up, face impenetrable,
mistress of herself. But in her heart she was banking up the slow
burning fires of resentment. The less easy it was to find legitimate
fuel for them, the more she fed them with the first thing or person that
came to hand, feeling herself wronged and slighted by all the world.
* * * * *
There remained one more ghost to be laid, one thin wraith that Madeleine
hardly noticed, hovering at the back of her war-memories. She did not
call up this last apparition, it came to her.
As gray January slid into February, she became aware, amid her
engrossing preoccupation with the farm, that a Labor Corps battalion was
working on the clearance of the neighboring trenchlines. They were
composed of German prisoners and Chinese, officered by a few English.
Presently an orderly called, a German orderly, sent to buy eggs. She
sent him about his business, curtly. This brought an officer, fair,
bald, thickset, speaking little French. He smiled at her with an
irritating cocksureness, and inquired for her father. Then she
recognized him. It was the Lieutenant Millgate who had come to the farm
late one night in 1915 with Lieutenant Skene, to join the Easthamptons.
She found him some eggs for old times’ sake, charged him a pre-war
price and forgot him again. He was no ghost; he was an insignificant
fact, and did not haunt her.
But there came a gray day when he reappeared, and not alone. Another
officer in khaki, taller but slighter, was riding behind him, and tried
to greet old Jerome, who ignored the greeting. Before she knew what had
happened, Geoffrey Skene stood before her. Almost mechanically, for she
could not say what she felt, she bade him enter and sit down. Once he
was seated, following her with his eyes, all her vindictiveness found
vent in the words:
“Will you have some coffee? The Allies stole all our wine!” Then she
softened again, and gave him good coffee, because, like all women, she
had a tender spot somewhere for a man who had once desired her. But it
was only for a moment. He sat there, unaltered, just as he had sat when
she had sent him to deliver a message to Georges. And the thought that
Georges had gone out of her life, and that this lesser man of hers was
on his way to England, to go out of her life just as effectually, hurt
her possessive and domineering instincts. She said bitterly, “I lost my
fiancé, after all!” and as he murmured some condolence her spleen
overcame her, and she lashed out with her tongue at all the damage done
to the farm and to her father, the destruction of her brothers and
Georges, at all the work there was to do, and no one to do it.
She saw Millgate fidget, heard him say in English, “Come on!” Then she
saw Skene rise, bid her good-bye, and go. She moved to the door, but for
the life of her she could not say if she wanted him to go or stay.
Then, as he swung his leg, in its soiled army clothes, over his horse’s
back, straightened up, and clattered away, she knew. She did not want
him, had never wanted him, nor any Englishman, nor anything English. He
was just one of the things the War, the cursed War, had brought on her,
and now it, and they, were going. Good riddance. Nor was her feeling
unreasonable. The only thing she and Skene had in common, was the War.
The War removed, they had absolutely no means of contact. Their case was
not isolated. It was national.
* * * * *
So Madeleine remained in the Spanish Farm, and saw no more English, for
the Labor Corps soon broke up and went, and she did not care. She was
engrossed in one thing only: to get back, sou by sou, everything that
had been lost or destroyed, plundered or shattered, by friend or foe,
and pay herself for everything she had suffered and dared. And as there
was a Madeleine more or less, widowed and childless, bereaved and
soured, in every farm in northeastern France, she became a portent.
Statesmen feared or wondered at her, schemers and the new business men
served her and themselves through her, while philosophers shuddered. For
she was the Spanish Farm, the implacable spirit of that borderland so
often fought over, never really conquered. She was that spirit that
forgets nothing and forgives nothing, but maintains itself, amid all
disasters, and necessarily. For she was perhaps the most concrete
expression of humanity’s instinctive survival in spite of its own
perversity and ignorance. There must she stand, slow-burning revenge
incarnate, until a better, gentler time.