road from the camp and a little to one side. From here she could see
across the plains to the hills in the east, and also that part of the
flying field from which the planes sprang into the air or hoveringly
landed. She sat in the clover; it was peaceful here; the baby slept; her
own soul drowsed. An old farmer across the way ploughed slowly behind
his one old horse; now and then a lark went high up in the air and sang.
It was hard to remember that in the low hills beyond, pretty as opals,
red carnage boiled and men died.
From those far hills the planes came winging back late in the
afternoon. Far-fixed eyes of mechanics on the field, a pointing finger
here or there, were the first signs to Célestine.
She saw dots, small and incredibly high. They became moths,
shining--white--and quick as thunder the fliers were near. They came
from great battles, and jousts, and fabulous adventures; and as they
neared, with hearts seemingly full of a secret joy at terrible pranks
they had played, they gambolled and capered and tumbled along the skies.
Usually they came in by fives, in arrow formation, but there were two
that always went paired. Célestine learned to distinguish these two. One
was a young Frenchman who, on the ground, wore the dark blue of an
Alpine chasseur; but the other, in a drab uniform, was a foreigner.
These two homed it later than the others: so late that sometimes
Célestine could not wait and had to go away without seeing them. When
they alighted, the pilots who had come in ahead, and the mechanics who
stayed on the ground, strolled to the two planes; they asked questions
and looked amused, and sometimes laughed loudly. One day Célestine heard
herself resume to herself in words the effect this daily scene had upon
her. “These two are the favourites,” she said to herself. “They are the
Benjamins of the camp!”
The civilian onlookers, loitering about the camp, called the one in
yellow uniform “l’Américain” and credited him with great deeds.
“_There’s_ a rough boy!” they would say. “_There’s_ one who does tricks
in the air!” For him Célestine felt a secret preference. The way he
landed delighted her. As his plane, swirling down, touched the earth, he
looked, in his leather helmet and armour, like some fabulous knight of
the air; but even as his plane still rolled along the ground, he
snatched off the leather helmet and became a red-headed boy. He always
landed thus. While still rushing along the ground at tremendous speed,
he snatched off his helmet and became a boy with carrot-red hair. Then
something laughed within Célestine, and a bubble of tenderness burst
softly in her heart.
Years ago, when a little girl in her native village in Brittany, she had
loved secretly the neighbour’s son, whose hair was just like that. Now,
whenever the plane landed, she saw her native village; she saw the small
port, the stone mole, the painted boat heaving, the blue sea.
Gradually Célestine’s life, her drab beastlike life, became lit with a
dim radiance as from a shaded lamp; her life centred itself altogether
on the flying field. In the morning she kept running to her garret room
as she worked; and, if she had any luck, saw the planes depart, five by
five, five by five, then two. In the afternoon she was at her post in
the clover field across the road from the camp. The farmer ploughed over
there, a lark singing over his bent head. Farther, the hills were like
opals in the sun. And on the other side of those hills the war was going
on. She imagined the two fliers in the sky over there. Holding her eyes
shut, she saw them in the great heights, wheeling and circling, falling
and rising, in a cloud of enemy planes. She saw them, in manœuvres
abrupt as lightning, pierce again and again the hostile envelopment--and
planes fell, many, falling slowly, like snow drifting.
Late in the afternoon the two came home. The others came first, by
fives, sometimes in quick succession, sometimes with long waits between.
Sometimes, instead of five, there were four, the winged squadron was
broken and on the field there would be much agitation, runnings to and
fro, anxious questionings. But the two for whom Célestine waited usually
came last, and came always in joy, tumbling like clowns down the skies.
The American struck the earth--fabulous and formidable like a god. He
snatched off his helmet--and he was a boy, a laughing red-haired boy.
Through Célestine’s tired body a dull thud of tenderness went resounding
deliciously.
About this time the enemy began to bomb the town at night. When came the
first of these air raids Célestine did not know what was happening. She
was awakened by a rapping of machine guns, by a boom-rrump, boom-rrump
of upward shooting cannon, and, leaning out of her garret window, saw
pretty cracklings of light up in the sky, as of many fireflies flashing
into life suddenly and then dying. Then came an enormous single
explosion, and everything went quiet. Célestine slid out into the black
silent streets which were ghostily filling with whispering, shivering
people; and following them came to a place, near the railroad track,
where a little house had stood which she knew very well. The house was
no longer there; where it had stood was only a great black hole.
But next night was worse. As, awakened again by the machine guns,
Célestine stood uncertain in the narrow hallway outside of her room, a
great explosion pressed both walls against her flanks as if they were
going to meet, and another, following still nearer, shook the inn as if
it were coming down like a pack of cards. Explosion followed explosion
for hours as the malevolent birds buzzed in the dark sky overhead; and
when at last they had gone, in the light of dawn Célestine saw that a
whole block of houses near by lay ripped open, with red-quilt shreds of
pulverized beds waving slowly in the cold morning wind.
The people of the town began to go out into the fields every night. By
five every afternoon the iron shutters of all the shops clattered shut
simultaneously, and along the streets went processions of women,
children, babes, and old men, carrying their blankets out to the fields
for the night; by sundown the city was an empty city. Célestine remained
in her garret room and, lying on her back in her narrow bed, shook to
ecstasies of fear and exulting vision. Lying there, rocked by terrific
concussions, the whole world seemingly going to pieces beneath and about
her body, small kernel in a cosmic chaos, she looked upward out of her
soul into the night’s black inverted bowl and saw her champions flying
there. In thunder-swift chargings, they darted to and fro among the
night-enshrouded invaders. The American led all. For a time she saw him
as pilot of a plane; then suddenly the wings attached themselves to his
body, and he was an archangel with terrible swift sword; then again he
was a boy, a laughing red-headed boy--and her withered heart, compressed
layer and layer upon itself, opened out like a flower in the midst of
her ignoble terror.
Just as abruptly as the night raiding had begun, it ceased for a time,
and one evening the two fliers appeared at the inn and took rooms for
the night. They had a ten-days’ leave, were going to Paris on the early
morning train, and were very gay. Célestine watched them from her work
with beating heart as they sat at their table in the court, lingering
over their wine; and when finally she understood that they had taken
rooms and were to be here for the night, a great excitement possessed
her. She ran up to the rooms, although she had made them up early in the
day, and made them up all over again; and when they had retired she
stationed herself in the dark hallway, to await a possible call for
service, hopeful at once and afraid.
After a while the door opened, light splashed out into the hall, and a
voice called.
She rushed to answer it. The young Frenchman stood in the doorway.
“_Dis-donc_, Madelon,” he said lightly, giving her the name of the song.
“_Dis-donc_, Madelon, you know, we are freezing in this big tomb of
yours!”
She ran swiftly down the three flights to the cellar, and came back with
kindling and paper; she ran down once more and returned with a basket
full of small logs. She squatted before the hearth and built up a fire.
She felt, rather than saw, the two armchairs behind her, spread side by
side before the hearth as for a vigil of friendship. The young Frenchman
was in one; the other was empty. Her heart gave a queer jump as she
heard a step approach. It came from the other room, approached, stopped;
there was the creak of crushed springs. He was there too, now, the other
one, the American, in his big chair. She tried to strike a match, and
failed.
The young Frenchman began to twit her amorously. Seen from behind, she
was attractive enough, with firm white neck upon which strayed ringlets
of her yellow hair. He rose, he stooped, he was near her. “_Allons_,
Madelon, my lass--a little kiss. Just one small one, there where thy
hair makes shadow!”
At another time probably she would not have been displeased: it was so
seldom a man mistook and made love to her. But, somehow, the American’s
being here made a difference. Somehow, this was not the way she wished
to be seen by the American. She turned toward her gay persecutor the
mask of her face--usually this was enough. But this time, perhaps
because of the wine, or because of the frolic in his veins at the
thought of his leave from Death’s incessant haunting, or merely because
the flame of the fire left her in shadow, the boy did not quit, but
rather increased his half-mocking demonstration of a half-assumed order,
and finally, unconsciously, she turned to the other the eyes of one
harassed. He sat there at ease, half smiling, but immediate
communication leaped to him from her. “Come,” he cried, “Pierre! Quit
this--you’re an utter nuisance!”
And smiling at her, he added, enunciating very slowly and carefully:
“One must pardon him, mademoiselle: he is a little _saoul, vous savez_.”
The contrast between his scrupulous manner and his use of that word
“saoul,” supposed to be uttered only by such low-class people as she,
and not by gentlemen like him; the funny mewing drawl of his “voo-oo-ah
saaav-ez”; and something so simple about him--these things suddenly
created in her a tender delight, and she broke out laughing. He joined
in, laughing at himself; the other joined in: all three were laughing.
The young Frenchman, content with himself, and rather glad to have been
stopped, let her be.
But then, after they had laughed, there was no more reason for staying.
The fire was now drawing finely; everything about the room was in order;
the two friends, in their chairs, were lighting their pipes. Célestine
tiptoed out and closed the door.
She was out in the dark cold hall once more, all alone. But something of
them was there. Their boots. They stood at the door, two pairs of them;
one pair standing up stiff, as if at attention, the other pair careened
over, as if tired. She gathered them up to her bosom, and took them up
to her room to clean them.
By the light of the candle, reflected in her cracked mirror, she looked
at them long after she had set them up on her washstand. One pair was
light, of fine leather moulded to slender leg, and just a little fussy
with many hooks; the other two were heavy and honest, and with enormous
feet--ah, enormous!
She held the boots up before her eyes to realize fully the enormity of
those feet, and laughed delightedly--then passed her hands over them in
caress.
She now set to work and scrubbed and polished with adoration till late
into the night.
They left early in the morning, and she did not see them. Once they
called for hot water, but seized the pitcher with disembodied hands that
reached out at the end of bare arms thrust through the door’s narrow
crack. And when they came downstairs, all ready to go, her first
intention, which had been to view them in their lustrous boots,
dissolved into a sudden panic which sent her scurrying into the farthest
depths of the black corridor.
So she did not see them, and when they returned they did not stop at the
inn, but reported directly to the camp. The first she knew of their
return was when, from her daily stationing in the field, she saw them,
winged once more, swooping down like thunder out of the drifting
opalescence of a sunset sky. The old relation reëstablished itself;
every afternoon, in the field across the way from the Fliers’ Camp,
Célestine stood and waited, and watched them as they homed.
As she stood thus in the clover field one late afternoon a plane came
winging all alone from afar toward the camp--fast, with the directness
of a wounded thing seeking its lair to die. As it came near, it did not
approach the ground in the usual gradual circlings, but lit straight,
with a sort of desperate urgency--and Célestine recognized the young
Frenchman. Even as he still rolled along the ground, his helmet-framed
face was turned sidewise toward the sheds, and with open mouth he was
shouting out a question. Everybody about the camp was running to him;
when the plane at last came to a standstill, all the men of the camp,
pilots and mechanics, were grouped about it. Sagging in his seat, again
he was asking the question. Célestine, from where she stood, could not
hear at all, but just as surely as if she had heard, she knew that it
was a question he was thus asking with his open mouth, and what
question.
The men about the plane all shook their heads negatively; then, all
together, they raised their heads and looked afar toward the east, the
seams in their faces showing deep.
* * * * *
The flier climbed stiffly out of his cockpit and stood among the others.
He was relating something. Not able to hear a word, Célestine followed
what he said, terribly, by the way his hands went. There had been a
combat. Two planes high in flight--this the two hands showed--and then
many, many attacking them. The two hands, in fight and flight, darted
here, darted there, rose, fell, turned over, slid sidewise down, for a
while stubbornly together. Then the two hands went apart--and the tale
continued, told by only one hand--the tale of one plane only--of the
teller’s own plane. That plane was alone, cut off, pursued by many, in
dire distress; it twisted and strove like a moth in a flame. Finally it
abandoned itself, it fell; fell long, forsaken and loose like a dead
leaf--it was doomed. But no--abruptly, the descriptive hand, almost
touching the earth, straightened out with a supple movement; the plane,
at full speed, went scuttling along the heads of the wheat, the pursuit
shaken off, free!
The narrator halted. Again he shouted his question, fiercely, as though
the violence of it might have potency in creating the right answer. But
the others, all shaking their heads, stepped free from the plane and
looked upward in the sky, toward the east.
It was time for Célestine to go, but she could not go. In the field she
remained, waiting--but out of the east no more planes were coming. The
crying of the child in its carriage finally recalled her to herself.
During the following days she saw that the young Frenchman was not
flying; he loitered aimlessly among the sheds. He began to come to the
inn. He would sit in a corner, looking fixedly at his table, drinking
one glass of strong stuff after the other, till finally, told that the
place was shutting up for the night, he would stiffly depart without a
glance at the one who had spoken.
Then one day he shook himself and rose after the first drink. And the
following afternoon Célestine saw that he was flying once more, captain
of a squadron of five.
This, somehow, settled her last doubt, and when night had come, in a
corner of the inn garden, she made a little grave.
It was thus they did in her native village, in Brittany. There, when a
fisherman, gone to the far banks of Iceland, did not return at the end
of the season, little untenanted graves were made along the churchyard
wall in memory of those who had thus vanished.
Célestine made such a grave, in a corner of the garden where two thick
stone walls met behind a thick chestnut tree. The recess was well
hidden; few ever came there. She made a rectangular outline with white
pebbles, drawing it thin so that one happening here should not quite be
sure of what he saw; she bought a small Virgin of green porcelain and
set it at the head. The little Virgin stood there always, a rosary
drawn through her rudimentary hand, and with downcast eyes seemed to
meditate upon the grave.
Every night now, no matter how weary she was, Célestine came here, and
in the silence and the darkness said a prayer. This is all she had of
what had passed--the little make-believe grave, and the nightly prayer,
there in the secret silence behind the tree. The war had moved on to the
east; there was talk of great victories; and the flying camp had gone to
other parts as suddenly as it had come a few months before.
The moment of prayer at the end of the day came to have for her a sweet
importance. It coloured the day, the long hard day. It lay there ahead,
through the effort, the sweat, and the grime, like a small still harbour
of pure blue water. And its peace overflowed back into the day; it made
of the whole day a still, white peace. Within the peace she moved and
toiled as if in a haze, deliciously numb of life’s asperities and life’s
screams.
The war ended; she held to her grave, her prayer, and her secret, and a
year went by. Then, one summer day, suddenly he reappeared, solid,
alive, in flesh and blood.
She was washing the red flagging at the entrance of the court, and was
on her knees amid soap and suds, as the omnibus, come from the station
with many valises on its top, halted before the entrance. And he,
leaping out, turned to give his hand to a fair-haired girl who was
stepping down after him.
At first Célestine did not believe her eyes; then, when she did, she
began to tremble. Kneeling there on the wet flagging, she trembled and
trembled, her big opaque blue eyes raised to the newcomers as if they
had been gods arisen from the sea.
His eyes fell upon her. “Hello,” he said shortly, “there’s Madelon!”
“_Bonjour_, Madelon,” he said, in that French which had so delighted her
that day so long ago. “_Bonjour_, Madelon--do you not remember me?”
The fair-haired girl, standing by his side, her hand trustingly resting
on his arm, also was looking down at the kneeling woman. Célestine rose
suddenly, and, altogether shaken out of her usual heavy reticence,
cried: “My faith--I had thought you dead!”
A burst of laughter from both, after a moment’s hesitation followed her
words, and she, too, found herself laughing.
“My faith,” she explained, “you flew away and never came back!”
“It was to Germany I flew, Madelon--not because I wanted to. And you’re
not the only one who thought me gone to another place. But now I live in
America once more, and this is my new little wife. Shake hands with my
little wife, Madelon.”
Célestine wiped her hands laboriously on her apron, and took, in one
thick red one, the little white one offered her.
“And now me,” he said, and pumped her hand up and down, while she felt
her face distended in a stupid grin.
But there were things to see about, many things. She ran to the valises
and began to carry them in. She ran upstairs to the room, and refreshed
the sheets and pillow slips; brought clear water. A sort of mad joy was
in her heart, and her thick legs were light. In a moment, between jobs,
she ran out into the court and, stooping behind the chestnut tree, with
one large gesture of her heavy hand, scattered the little white pebbles
and whisked the little Virgin into her pocket.
They remained three days, the young man and his bride; three days during
which Célestine spent herself in an adoration of service.
Then they were gone--away to some of the other battlefields they went to
visit--gone for ever.
* * * * *
For some time the happiness of those three days remained in Célestine’s
heart like a vague resonance of music, then little by little her life
discoloured into a bleak emptiness. The memory of the return, the fact
that he whom she had mourned was really alive--these things her mind
somehow would not hold; little by little they ceased to be in her; they
were no guard and no refuge, and she missed greatly what had been
before.
The happy haze in which she had then stirred was gone; life once more
was sharp and screamed; out of the profundities of a deep stillness,
like a happy dead disturbed, she had been brought up to a surface of raw
airs and intolerable glitters.
After a time she knew what she missed; now and then the knowledge
brought her, hesitant, to the small inclosed space behind the chestnut
tree.
Then one night her mind was made up. From her small room beneath the
eaves she stole down into the darkened garden.
Down on both knees, in the dark damp space behind the chestnut tree she
outlined with white pebbles a small simulated grave; she placed at its
head the little porcelain Virgin.
There--it was done. With bowed head, she said a prayer. Every night now
she came here and said a prayer.
And little by little the old happiness returned, and finally it was as
though he had never come back. At the end of each day stood the awaiting
moment of prayer like a small still harbour of pure blue water. Its
peace overflowed back into the day; it made of the entire day a still,
white peace. The delicious numbness once more enwrapped her in its soft
haze, deadening life’s sharp angles and sharp screams.
It was as though he had not returned; the memory of this interruption
grew fainter and fainter; flattened out; ceased to be. She was left with
her sweet dim sorrow; her grave, her secret, and her prayer.
WITCH MARY
BY GENEVIEVE LARSSON
From _Pictorial Review_
“Has any one of you seen Witch Mary of late?” Wise Olaf, keeper of the
country store, asked the question of the farmers gathered in a group on
the “grocery side.” A curious, vivid silence followed. They had been
rejoicing over their fields of grain, which stood, as one man had
exultantly proclaimed, high as a man’s arms, and were heavy with
promise. Some made as if to speak, shifted uneasily, sucked back the
half-formed words.
“Well?” questioned Wise Olaf.
Through the summer stillness a wind swept up from the river, came
sighing in through the open door, and rattled the loose papers about.
There was something eery, electric, about it, as though it carried with
it an unseen presence.
“Hush! The women will hear you!” cautioned one, glancing across the
room.
“Not seen a sign of her all summer; but that’s a good sign,” nervously
ventured a gnarled, bent old man, stooping over the counter to pick up a
stray coffee bean. He rubbed it between his horny palms, and then fell
to munching it, his long chin nearly meeting his nose in the process.
Assuming an attitude of cheerfulness, he glanced around carelessly, and
then slumped back into a chair.
The women across the room were busy examining the rolls of blue and
brown denim that Wise Olaf’s Kaisa displayed upon the counter, and had
been chattering together busily. The summer was a good one, and they
could buy extra yards. Underlying their Northern speech, in which were
represented various provincial dialects of Sweden, was an undercurrent
of wistful melancholy, as though they feared to be too joyous, lest
some unforeseen disaster come upon them in the midst of their plenty.
Now, quick to note a change of feeling in the men’s talk, they stopped,
broken sentences suspended in the air, reluctantly left the goods upon
the counter, and crossed to the other side.
“But what is it?” asked Kaisa, looking around at the guilty faces.
“We were just talking about Witch Mary,” answered Wise Olaf.
“We agreed, long ago, not to talk of her.” Kaisa’s voice was
high-pitched, nervous. Her keen, rather hard-featured face lit up with a
curious, avid expression. “As long’s you’ve started, _has_ any one seen
her?”