A LA FERME DU CALVAIRE
Midway between Hombleux and Canizy, at the crossing of the highway, stood
on one side a Calvary, and on the other a demolished farm house. The
lane here emerged from a hollow, so that both objects rose distinctly
against the sky. About the Calvary, the poplars were shattered by
shell-fire; back of the farm sloped an orchard, whose every tree had
been lopped. Across the road and into the fields ran a zig-zag trench,
where could be found even yet blue coats and rusted helmets; the line of
defence evidently for the highway, against the German advance. A square
declivity, formerly a clay pit, perhaps an hectare in area, bordered road
and trench. Its banks were green with grass, and in the bottom land was
a little orchard. At one side, half-hidden, was a hut.
A solitary farm is rare in these rural communities, where the houses as
a rule cluster in villages. I was undecided at first as to whether the
Farm of the Calvary belonged to Hombleux or Canizy. But in the yard were
two obvious reasons for calling and inquiring. Higher than the hut rose
a heaped hay stack; at its base the apples from the orchard had been
gathered in a mound of red and white. I ran down the path, too steep for
walking, and knocked at the door. It was opened by a gaunt, dark man
of perhaps forty-five. At a table sat his wife paring apples; and in a
corner, quite unabashed, his daughter, pretty Colombe, finished lacing
her bodice before she stepped forward to greet me. So small a room, in
any of our villages, I had never been in. A double bed took up all the
space except for a border of about two feet. The roof was so low that the
man seemed to have acquired a perpetual stoop.
“_Entrez! entrez!_” was the hospitable entreaty; but not seeing how this
might be possible, I remained on the threshold.
“I come from the Château,” I began.
“But yes, you are one of the _Dames Américaines_, eh! We have often seen
you cross the fields. Colombe, here, goes to the sewing class with you.”
Colombe smiled a recognition.
“I should have called before, perhaps; but I was not aware that a family
lived in so small a place, until I saw the smoke from the chimney to-day.”
“Yes, it is small,” admitted the wife.
“A Boche hut, eh!” agreed her husband. “Yonder, across the road is my
farm. Not one stone left; all destroyed. I have asked for a _baraque_.”
I measured the interior with my eyes. “You would not have room for
another bed——”
“If it folded, yes, and we would thank you. Colombe, she sleeps now on
the ground.”
[Illustration: —_C’était là, notre maison._
[Our house used to be there!]]
The bed being promised, I inquired as to fodder. Could I see if it were
suitable to feed our cows? Assuredly; and the brown sides of the stack
were rudely pulled apart that I might see and smell the sweet hay within.
How much would it weigh and how much would it cost? A bargain was finally
concluded for eight hundred francs.
This was the first of many visits to the hut beside the road. Going or
coming, sharp eyes spied me, and friendly voices called me in. Once it
was for a bumper of sparkling cider.
“I make it myself, from the apples. But I have to take them to Mme.
Marié’s in Hombleux because my press the Germans broke. Ah, the Germans!”
he continued. “It is only a month and a half since I returned, eh!”
“Were you then taken to Germany?”
“To Belgium; and I worked, always. And hungry, always hungry; one has
nothing, eh! to eat.”
On another occasion I was offered apples; not the small, sour ones from
which cider was made, but luscious golden globes that adorned the narrow
beams of the hut like a frieze.
“See,” said Monsieur. “I will put them in this sack, so that you can
carry them the more easily.”
But I, thinking of the long miles yet ahead of me, ventured to suggest
that I call on my return.
“Very well, only, look you, I shall not be here. But wait, I will hide
them. Behold, in the _chaudière_,” and suiting the action to the word he
lifted the cover of the cauldron and placed them within. “No one will
think to look for them there. Au revoir, until you return.”
But a rain set in that afternoon; a slant mist which made Corot-like
effects of brown autumn copses and shut one in from the sometimes too
lonely sweep of the plain. At the same time, it beat persistently on my
face, and made heavier at every step my woollen uniform. I did not stop
therefore for my apples, and wondered for a few days what had been their
fate. But not for long.
One morning at breakfast I was told that I had a caller. Now callers
about this time of a morning had become frequent, ever since Monsieur
le Maire of the commune told his villagers that they must apply to us
rather than to him for beds and stoves and cupboards. I visualised the
waiting crones of Hombleux whom in America we should have thrust into an
Old Ladies’ Home. Not so the French Government, which respected their
sentiment and built for each on her own plot her own _baraque_. Knowing
well that we had no cupboards, and no prospect of getting any, I rose
with a sigh. But my face brightened at the sight of M. Guilleux.
Over his back hung a sack, nor was it empty.
“You did not come for your apples,” he began. “I hope that you wish them,
however.” He unslung the sack, opened it, and disclosed the golden fruit.
I thanked him. “But the sack, you wish it back?”
“Yes, for look you; it is a little souvenir.” And at that he showed
me certain crosses and darts and letterings in German script which
indicated by number and description the prisoner, Guillaume Guilleux of
the commune of Hombleux and the farm _du Calvaire_. “I took this with me,
eh! I would not part with it.”
“Not to me, Monsieur? To me also it would be a souvenir, to take to
America.”
“O no, Mademoiselle, never,” and his hands clutched it involuntarily.
“The souvenir and the memory, they are mine. Both my grandchildren shall
remember also in the years to come.”
But the sack was not the only souvenir contained in the little hut. I
spied one day three tiny teacups depending from nails upon the wall. They
were even smaller than coffee cups, and delicately flowered.
“Oh, how pretty,” I exclaimed. “May I look?”
Mme. Guilleux took them down with fumbling fingers and a suddenly altered
face. For the first time, I noticed the sharp indrawn wrinkles about
mouth and eyes which tell of suffering.
“They belonged to Solange, Colombe’s sister,” and not able to continue,
she hid her face in her apron. “They were her tea-set,” she went on in
broken sentences. “Her father and I bought them for her on her thirteenth
birthday, and she always kept them. _Mon Dieu_, how lovely she was!
Curls, and long lashes, and skin like apple blossoms, and eyes blue like
those flowers! She was my oldest, and good as she was pretty. But on the
night when the Germans came, they tore her from my arms. Why do I live?”
she broke into sobs. “Solange, Solange!”
She wiped her eyes at length, and regarded the little cups. “When we
returned, I searched the ruins. I was fortunate, for I found these. They
were all that I did find. Everything else had been destroyed. Nor did I
save anything, for look you, after the soldiers seized Solange, I ran
hither and thither distracted, and knew not what to save.”
She rose, took the cups from my hands, and rehung them on the wall.
How do they live, I wondered, as I passed out and over the fields? How
do these mothers keep their reason, who have seen their daughters taken
into a captivity upon which shuts down a silence deep as death? One
understands the comment of Mme. Charles Thuillard, who in spite of her
sharp tongue has a most human heart. She was showing me the picture of
her daughter one day; an enlargement such as all the world makes of its
dead. “Thank God,” she said, “she was happy; she died before the war.”