MME. GABRIELLE
Every village, everywhere, has its stronger characters, to whom the
community looks up, perhaps unconsciously. Canizy, having been deprived
of its normal leaders in the Curé, a prisoner, and the teacher,
transferred to the school at Hombleux, looked up in this way to Mme.
Lefèvre and Mme. Gabrielle. The former was the especial friend of our
medical department. In fact, she rented one of her two rooms for our
use as a dispensary, and her flagged kitchen was always open to her
neighbours and to us. Here I measured out milk to half the village, or
distributed the loaves of bread which we ourselves purveyed from the
crabbed Garde Champêtre at Hombleux. Or, had I neither the time nor the
patience, Mme. Lefèvre herself made the distribution, and gave me a
list of the recipients, and always the correct amount of neatly stacked
coppers in change. A shrewd face had Mme. Lefèvre, wrinkled by humour
as well as by sorrow. She had been taken away by the Boches in their
retreat, but later, for some reason unknown, was allowed to return. Her
three daughters, however, and her husband, all were in the hands of the
enemy. She lived alone, therefore, and busied herself in her late-planted
garden, and in her neighbours’ affairs.
[Illustration: —_C’est pas moi!... c’est lui._
[I didn’t do it ... _he_ did!]]
Most of them, it seemed, were related to her in one way or another, all
the Genses being of her kin. Of these there were Mme. Gense-Tabary,
already mentioned, and her swarming family of eight, bright and pretty
as pictures, and dirty as little pigs. She, lodged near the bank of
the canal, really had no excuse for this chronic condition, and was
encouraged to scrub by object lessons, clean clothing, and gifts even
of long bars of _savon marseilles_. I remember her yet, two or three
children tagging at her skirts, knocking at the door of my _baraque_ of
a Sunday morning, to tell me that she must have more soap. All the way
from Canizy she had walked to get it; and she did not go back without.
Mme. Gense-Tabary’s eldest daughter, known as Germaine Tabary, was the
sorrow of the village, even more than its daughters who had gone into
captivity; for she had become an earlier victim of the invaders, and with
her unborn baby was left behind. Mme. Marie Gense, another unfortunate,
was a niece by marriage of Mme. Lefèvre’s. Her husband was a soldier.
She had lived in a little cottage whose blue and white tiled floor I
often had occasion to admire, next the church. But being left with two
growing boys, and no resources, what was she to do? What she did was to
add to her family a Paul, and one bitter winter night which our doctors
and nurses well remember, a Paulette. “What would you?” she expostulated.
“I had no bread for the children; in this way they were fed.” That two
more months were added, and that her lean-to of ten feet by twelve could
not accommodate them, were facts which did not seem to concern her. And
of all good children, her two boys, Désiré and Robert, were certainly
the best. But Aunt Lefèvre looked upon her niece’s conduct as a scandal.
She was forbidden the kitchen, and it was even known that the quarrel
had come to the point of knives. With the children, that was different.
“Yes,” said Mme. Lefèvre on the arrival of the new baby, “Désiré may
sleep in the Dispensary if you so wish. It is your room; you pay for
it.” That Désiré did, though I had a bed put up for him, I misdoubt. But
Robert, happy-go-lucky Robert, with his head cocked on one side and a
smile rippling his brown eyes, even Aunt Lefèvre could not help loving
him. There was no question of his sleeping out, however, he being nurse
to the babies and to his mother as well. Another wayward connection of
Mme. Lefèvre’s was a sister of Mme. Marie Gense’s, known as Mme. Payelle.
She had three children as cunning as you could wish to see, clean—as
were Marie’s—and sunny-tempered. Their parentage also was a mystery.
But this blot did not rest by rights on the village escutcheon. Mme.
Payelle had been installed there by one of her admirers, a soldier _en
permission_; she really did not belong to Canizy.
To keep her social position in the midst of these misfortunes was a
tribute to Mme. Lefèvre’s worth. She was always doing kindnesses, and
speaking to us on her neighbours’ behalf. Beneath her shed stood one of
the four _chaudières_, or washing cauldrons, which survived the general
destruction. These, varying in capacity from 50 to 250 litres, are an
indispensable utensil of housekeeping in Picardy. In them, week by week,
the soiled clothes are boiled. Not even the lack of a pump—and there was
only one left in the village—was so much deplored as the loss of the
cauldrons. In view of these two handicaps and the dearth of soap, the
squalor of the village on our arrival seems excusable. Mme. Lefèvre, at
least, did her share toward remedying it. Without charge, her _chaudière_
was in constant use, and her shed became a neighbourhood rendezvous.
It will be seen that all the Genses were by no means a bad lot, Mme.
Lefèvre being one herself. Of an older generation, and I know not of
what degree of kinship to her, is Mme. Hélène Gense, grandmother to Mme.
Gabrielle, that energetic, substantial young Widow, not Mme. Thuillard
nor yet Veuve Thuillard, but Mme. Gabrielle to all Canizy. In pre-war
times, she owned, through her parents and not by marriage, the most
central homestead in the village. There remain now only the arched gate
into the courtyard, the brick rabbit hutches, a heap of débris, and a
tottering wall. She and ten-year-old Adrien lodge, therefore, in the
first house on the left as you come past the Calvary, with Grand’mère
Gense. This ell, flanked though it is by the ruin of the main building,
is the most cheerful spot in the village. The narrow yard before the
door is swept; a row of geraniums blossoms beneath the windows. Above
all, there _are_ windows, two of them, and curtains at each. Outside the
door, if you are fortunate in the hour of your call, will stand two pairs
of worn sabots. Or perhaps the door may be open, framing Grand’mère,
bent almost at right angles, Mme. Gabrielle, and Bobbinot. Bobbinot is
a dog, iron-grey, smooth-coated, with a white band on his breast and a
white vest. He has no pedigree, his mistress assures me, but his brown
eyes and his square, intelligent head bear out her statement that he is
“_très loyal_.” All three welcome me; a chair is proffered near the fire.
Grand’mère sinks carefully into her low seat, Mme. Gabrielle sets on a
saucepan of coffee, and we sit down to chat.
It is a pleasure to look about as we talk. On the mantel, to give a note
of colour, are laid a row of tiny yellow pumpkins; the floor is red, and
through the window peer red geraniums. In a cupboard beyond the stove is
a modest array of pans and dishes. Two panes of glass, like portholes,
pierce the wall to the rear. Beneath stands a sideboard, and a little to
one side, a round table. Not until the coffee was heated did I notice
that cups were set for four.
“But have you another guest?” I inquired, as Mme. Gabrielle poured first
some syrup from a bottle, and then the steaming drink. “But no, only
Adrien. _Adrien, come!_” She raised her voice. Then for the first time
I saw the boy, head propped on elbows, poring over a book. The mother
regarded him indulgently. “It is a pity for the children that we have
no school. Adrien is apt; when the Germans were here, he understood
everything, everything. And when the Scotch came, he learned, too. I
myself try to learn English.” She brought forth from the sideboard an
English-French phrase book. “This I found in a house after the English
soldiers went away. It would be easy, but there is the pronunciation.” “I
will teach you,” I said, and we took up the words one by one, Grand’mère
laughing the while, pleasant laughter, like a cracked, old bell. But
the boy kept on reading and hummed a tune. “The children,” broke in the
mother, “they sing; it is well.” But presently the boy shuts his book
with a sigh and draws a chair to the table. “Did you like it, the story?”
I inquire. “Yes, it tells of America.” On the table, clear now save for
Adrien’s belated cup, is revealed an oilcloth map in lieu of a linen
cover. “Where, then, is America?” His finger traces the colored squares.
“Here is France, here England, here Italy, here Russia,—but America, it
is so far one cannot see it.” “But yes,” rejoins his mother, “so far that
never in my life did I expect to see an American. Once in my childhood I
remember looking at a picture of M. Pierpont’s bank in New York—a great
bank. But now I have seen Germans, Russians, English, Moroccans,—and you.
The war teaches many things.”
“You have seen Russians?”
“Very many; the Germans worked our fields with Russian prisoners. A
strange people! You and I converse; we come from different countries,
but we have ideas in common. The Russians were like dumb beasts; they had
no _esprit de corps_.”
“It is the fault of their government,” I venture.
“Yes,” she replied, “France and America are republics. It is not that our
government is perfect. There are many beautiful things in France, but
there is much injustice also, much.”
I knew of what Mme. Gabrielle was thinking, then; of the wheatlands of
Canizy, where not one furrow had been turned for the next year’s harvest,
while the _grands cultivateurs_ and the petty politicians looked out for
themselves; and of the school building, long promised and still delayed.
But Mme. Gabrielle looked beyond the confines of her small village
and its grievances. Love for _la belle plaine_ and _la belle France_,
unreasoning, passionate, pulsed in her. Hatred of the Germans was its
corollary. “Mademoiselle, during the occupation, we were prisoners,” she
said. “We had to have passes to go one fourth of a kilometre from our
village. My mother was sick at Voyennes,—and I could not go to see her.”
It came out that Bobbinot had been her constant companion. “But I should
think,” I said, “that the Germans would have taken him away.” “They dared
not; he would have bitten them!” was the spirited response.
At Mme. Gabrielle’s table, with the map upon it, I was destined to sit
often, sometimes for luncheon and sometimes for dinner, while we took
counsel over village affairs. For Mme. Gabrielle, together with Mme.
Lefèvre, and the former school teacher, became an informal advisory
committee to me. Through punctiliously served courses of soup, stew,
salad, wine, cheese and coffee, Mme. Gabrielle offered her information,
or, when asked, her opinion. It was she who reassured me on the point of
selling rather than of giving the smaller articles we distributed. “I
understand completely; it is better for us. The American Red Cross did
the same when the Germans were here. They sold the food, but very cheap.
Without their help, we should have starved. We are grateful to America,
which saved our lives.” It was she who advised in regard to a baby whom
its half-witted mother had placed in a crèche: “For the mother,” she
said, “it would doubtless be better that the child returned. But for the
child—and I am a mother myself who speak—let it remain.” On the good
sense and the good heart of Mme. Gabrielle one came to rely. Even as far
as Hombleux she was known and respected. “O yes,” the women there told
me, “Mme. Gabrielle, we know her. She is _une femme très forte_.”