France again--France at last! As the cliffs grew green across the bay he
could have knelt to greet them--as he hurried down the gang-plank with
the eager jostling crowd he could have kissed the sacred soil they were
treading.
The very difficulties and delays of the arrival thrilled and
stimulated him, gave him a keener sense of his being already a humble
participant in the conflict. Passports, identification papers, sharp
interrogatories, examinations, the enforced surrendering of keys and
papers: how different it all was from the old tame easy landings, with
the noiseless motor waiting at the dock, and France lying safe and open
before them whichever way they chose to turn!
On the way over many things had surprised and irritated him--not least
the attitude of some of his fellow-passengers. The boat swarmed with
young civilians, too young for military service, or having, for some
more or less valid reason, been exempted from it. They were all pledged
to some form of relief work, and all overflowing with zeal: "France" was
as often on their lips as on Troy's. But some of them seemed to be
mainly concerned with questions of uniform and rank. The steamer seethed
with wrangles and rivalries between their various organisations, and now
and then the young crusaders seemed to lose sight of the object of their
crusade--as had too frequently been the case with their predecessors.
Very few of the number knew France or could speak French, and most of
them were full of the importance of America's mission. This was
Liberty's chance to Enlighten the World; and all these earnest youths
apparently regarded themselves as her chosen torch-bearers.
"We must teach France efficiency," they all said with a glowing
condescension.
The women were even more sure of their mission; and there were plenty of
them, middle-aged as well as young, in uniform too, cocked-hatted,
badged and gaitered--though most of them, apparently, were going to sit
in the offices of Paris war-charities, and Troy had never noticed that
Frenchwomen had donned khaki for that purpose.
"France must be purified," these young Columbias proclaimed. "Frenchmen
must be taught to respect Women. We must protect our boys from
contamination ... the dreadful theatres ... and the novels ... and the
Boulevards.... Of course we mustn't be hard on the French, for they've
never known Home Life, or the Family ... but we must show them ... we
must set the example...."
Troy, sickened by their blatancy, had kept to himself for the greater
part of the trip; but during the last days he had been drawn into talk
by a girl who reminded him of Miss Wicks, though she was in truth
infinitely prettier. The evenings below decks were long, and he sat at
her side in the saloon and listened to her.
Her name was Hinda Warlick, and she came from the Middle West. He
gathered from her easy confidences that she was singing in a suburban
church choir while waiting for a vaudeville engagement. Her studies had
probably been curtailed by the task of preparing a repertory, for she
appeared to think that Joan of Arc was a Revolutionary hero, who had
been guillotined with Marie Antoinette for blowing up the Bastille; and
her notions of French history did not extend beyond this striking
episode. But she was ready and eager to explain France to Troy, and to
the group of young men who gathered about her, listening to her piercing
accents and gazing into her deep blue eyes.
"We must carry America right into the heart of France--for she has got a
great big heart, in spite of _everything_," Miss Warlick declared. "We
must teach her to love children and home and the outdoor life, and you
American boys must teach the young Frenchmen to love their mothers. You
must set the example.... Oh, boys, do you know what my ambition is? It's
to organize an Old Home Week just like ours, all over France from
Harver right down to Marseilles--and all through the devastated regions
too. Wouldn't it be lovely if we could get General Pershing to let us
keep Home Week right up at the front, at 'Eep and Leal and Rams, and all
those martyr cities--right close up in the trenches? So that even the
Germans would see us and hear us, and perhaps learn from us too?--for
you know we mustn't despair even of teaching the Germans!"
Troy, as he crept away, heard one young man, pink and shock-headed,
murmur shyly to the Prophetess: "Hearing you say this has made it all so
clear to me----" and an elderly Y.M.C.A. leader, adjusting his
eye-glasses, added with nasal emphasis: "Yes, Miss Warlick has expressed
in a very lovely way what we all feel: that America's mission is to
contribute the _human element_ to this war."
"Oh, good God!" Troy groaned, crawling to his darkened cabin. He
remembered M. Gantier's phrase, "Self-satisfaction is death," and felt a
sudden yearning for Sophy Wicks's ironic eyes and her curt "What's the
use of jawing?"
* * * * *
He had been for six months on his job, and was beginning to know
something about it: to know, for instance, that nature had never meant
him for an ambulance-driver.
Nevertheless he had stuck to his task with such a dogged determination
to succeed that after several months about the Paris hospitals he was
beginning to be sent to exposed sectors.
His first sight of the desolated country he had traversed three years
earlier roused old memories of the Gantier family, and he wrote once
more to their little town, but again without result. Then one day he
was sent to a sector in the Vosges which was held by American troops.
His heart was beating hard as the motor rattled over the hills, through
villages empty of their inhabitants, like those of the Marne, but
swarming with big fair-haired soldiers. The land lifted and dipped
again, and he saw ahead of him the ridge once crowned by M. Gantier's
village, and the wall of the terraced garden, with the horn-beam arbour
putting forth its early green. Everything else was in ruins: pale
weather-bleached ruins over which the rains and suns of three years had
passed effacingly. The church, once so firm and four-square on the hill,
was now a mere tracery against the clouds; the hospice roofless, the
houses all gutted and bulging, with black smears of smoke on their inner
walls. At the head of the street a few old women and children were
hoeing vegetables before a row of tin-roofed shanties, and a Y.M.C.A.
hut flew the stars-and-stripes across the way.
Troy jumped down and began to ask questions. At first the only person
who recognized the name of Gantier was an old woman too frightened and
feeble-minded to answer intelligibly. Then a French territorial who was
hoeing with the women came forward. He belonged to the place and knew
the story.
"M. Gantier--the old gentleman? He was mayor, and the Germans took him.
He died in Germany. The young girl--Mlle. Gantier--was taken with him.
No, she's not dead.... I don't know.... She's shut up somewhere in
Germany ... queer in the head, they say.... The sons--ah, you knew
Monsieur Paul? He went first.... What, the others?... Yes: the three
others--Louis at Notre Dame de Lorette; Jean on a submarine: poor
little Félix, the youngest, of the fever at Salonika. _Voilà_.... The
old lady? Ah, she and her sister went away ... some charitable people
took them, I don't know where.... I've got the address somewhere...." He
fumbled, and brought out a strip of paper on which was written the name
of a town in the centre of France.
"There's where they were a year ago.... Yes, you may say: _there's a
family gone--wiped out_. How often I've seen them all sitting there,
laughing and drinking coffee under the arbour! They were not rich, but
they were happy and proud of each other. That's over."
He went back to his hoeing.
* * * * *
After that, whenever Troy Belknap got back to Paris he hunted for the
surviving Gantiers. For a long time he could get no trace of them; then
he remembered his old governess, Mme. Lebuc, for whom Mrs. Belknap had
found employment in a refugee bureau.
He ran down Mme. Lebuc, who was still at her desk in the same big room,
facing a row of horse-hair benches packed with tired people waiting
their turn for a clothing-ticket or a restaurant card.
Mme. Lebuc had grown much older, and her filmy eyes peered anxiously
through large spectacles before she recognized Troy. Then, after tears
and raptures, he set forth his errand, and she began to peer again
anxiously, shuffling about the bits of paper on the desk, and confusing
her records hopelessly.
"Why, is that _you_?" cried a gay young voice; and there, on the other
side of the room, sat one of the young war-goddesses of the Belknap
tennis-court, trim, uniformed, important, with a row of bent backs in
shabby black before her desk.
"Ah, Miss Batchford will tell you--she's so quick and clever," Mme.
Lebuc sighed, resigning herself to chronic bewilderment.
Troy crossed to the other desk. An old woman sat before it in threadbare
mourning, a crape veil on her twitching head. She spoke in a low voice,
slowly, taking a long time to explain; each one of Miss Batchford's
quick questions put her back, and she had to begin all over again.
"Oh, these refugees!" cried Miss Batchford, stretching a bangled arm
above the crape veil to clasp Troy's hand. "Do sit down, Mr.
Belknap.--Dépêchez-vous, s'il vous plaît," she said, not too unkindly,
to the old woman; and added, to Troy: "There's no satisfying them."
At the sound of Troy's name the old woman had turned her twitching
head, putting back her veil. Her eyes met Troy's, and they looked at
each other doubtfully. Then--"Madame Gantier!" he exclaimed.
"Yes, yes," she said, the tears running down her face.
Troy was not sure if she recognized him, though his name had evidently
called up some vague association. He saw that most things had grown far
off to her, and that for the moment her whole mind was centred on the
painful and humiliating effort of putting her case to this strange young
woman who snapped out questions like a machine.
"Do you know her?" asked Miss Batchford, surprised.
"I used to, I believe," Troy answered.
"You can't think what she wants--just everything! They're all alike. She
wants to borrow five hundred francs to furnish a flat for herself and
her sister."
"Well, why not?"
"Why, we don't lend money, of course. It's against all our principles.
We give work, or relief in kind--that's what I'm telling her."
"I see. Could I give it to her?"
"What--all that money? Certainly _not_. You don't know them!"
Troy shook hands and went out into the street to wait for Mme. Gantier;
and when she came he told her who he was. She cried and shook a great
deal, and he called a cab and drove her home to the poor lodging where
she and her sister lived. The sister had become weak-minded, and the
room was dirty and untidy, because, as Mme. Gantier explained, her
lameness prevented her from keeping it clean, and they could not afford
a charwoman. The pictures of the four dead sons hung on the wall, a
wisp of crape above each, with all their ribbons and citations. But when
Troy spoke of old M. Gantier and the daughter Mme. Gantier's face grew
like a stone, and her sister began to whimper like an animal.
Troy remembered the territorial's phrase: "You may say: _there's a
family wiped out_." He went away, too shy to give the five hundred
francs in his pocket.
One of his first cares on getting back to France had been to order a
head-stone for Paul Gantier's grave at Mondement. A week or two after
his meeting with Mme. Gantier, his ambulance was ordered to Epernay, and
he managed to get out to Mondement and have the stone set up and the
grave photographed. He had brought some flowers to lay on it, and he
borrowed two tin wreaths from the neighbouring crosses, so that Paul
Gantier's mound should seem the most fondly tended of all. He sent the
photograph to Mme. Gantier, with a five hundred franc bill; but after a
long time his letter came back from the post-office. The two old women
had gone....