WE are enthroned in the back yard. The big hen, white as a cream
cheese, is brooding in the depths of a basket near the coop whose
imprisoned occupant is rummaging about. But the black hen is free to
travel. She erects and withdraws her elastic neck in jerks, and
advances with a large and affected gait. One can just see her profile
and its twinkling spangle, and her talk appears to proceed from a metal
spring. She marches, glistening black and glossy like the love-locks of
a gypsy; and as she marches, she unfolds here and there upon the ground
a faint trail of chickens.
These trifling little yellow balls, kept always by a whispering
instinct on the ebb-tide to safety, hurry along under the maternal
march in short, sharp jerks, pecking as they go. Now the train comes to
a full stop, for two of the chickens are thoughtful and immobile,
careless of the parental clucking.
"A bad sign," says Paradis; "the hen that reflects is ill." And Paradis
uncrosses and recrosses his legs. Beside him on the bench, Blaire
extends his own, lets loose a great yawn that he maintains in placid
duration, and sets himself again to observe, for of all of us he most
delights in watching fowls during the brief life when they are in such
a hurry to eat.
And we watch them in unison, not forgetting the shabby old cock, worn
threadbare. Where his feathers have fallen appears the naked
india-rubber leg, lurid as a grilled cutlet. He approaches the white
sitter, which first turns her head away in tart denial, with several
"No's" in a muffled rattle, and then watches him with the little blue
enamel dials of her eyes.
"We're all right," says Barque.
"Watch the little ducks," says Blaire, "going along the communication
trench."
We watch a single file of all-golden ducklings go past--still almost
eggs on feet--their big heads pulling their little lame bodies along by
the string of their necks, and that quickly. From his corner, the big
dog follows them also with his deeply dark eye, on which the slanting
sun has shaped a fine tawny ring.
Beyond this rustic yard and over the scalloping of the low wall, the
orchard reveals itself, where a green carpet, moist and thick, covers
the rich soil and is topped by a screen of foliage with a garniture of
blossom, some white as statuary, others pied and glossy as knots in
neckties. Beyond again is the meadow, where the shadowed poplars throw
shafts of dark or golden green. Still farther again is a square patch
of upstanding hops, followed by a patch of cabbages, sitting on the
ground and dressed in line. In the sunshine of air and of earth we hear
the bees, as they work and make music (in deference to the poets), and
the cricket which, in defiance of the fable, sings with no humility and
fills Space by himself.
Over yonder, there falls eddying from a poplar's peak a magpie--half
white, half black, like a shred of partly-burned paper.
The soldiers outstretch themselves luxuriously on the stone bench,
their eyes half closed, and bask in the sunshine that warms the basin
of the big yard till it is like a bath.
"That's seventeen days we've been here! After thinking we were going
away day after day!"
"One never knows," said Paradis, wagging his head and smacking his lips.
Through the yard gate that opens on to the road we see a group of
poilus strolling, nose in air, devouring the sunshine; and then, all
alone, Tellurure. In the middle of the street he oscillates the
prosperous abdomen of which he is proprietor, and rocking on legs
arched like basket-handles, he expectorates in wide abundance all
around him.
"We thought, too, that we should be as badly off here as in the other
quarters. But this time it's real rest, both in the time it lasts and
the kind it is."
"You're not given too many exercises and fatigues."
"And between whiles you come in here to loll about."
The old man huddled up at the end of the seat--no other than the
treasure-seeking grandfather whom we saw the day of our arrival--came
nearer and lifted his finger. "When I was a young man, I was thought a
lot of by women," he asserted, shaking his head. "I have led young
ladies astray!"
"Ah!" said we, heedless, our attention taken away from his senile
prattle by the timely noise of a cart that was passing, laden and
laboring.
"Nowadays," the old man went on, "I only think about money."
"Ah, oui, the treasure you're looking for, papa."
"That's it," said the old rustic, though he felt the skepticism around
him. He tapped his cranium with his forefinger, which he then extended
towards the house. "Take that insect there," he said, indicating a
little beast that ran along the plaster. "What does it say? It says, 'I
am the spider that spins the Virgin's thread.'" And the archaic
simpleton added, "One must never judge what people do, for one can
never tell what may happen."
"That's true," replied Paradis politely. "He's funny," said Mesnil
Andre, between his teeth, while he sought the mirror in his pocket to
look at the facial benefit of fine weather. "He's crazy," murmured
Barque in his ecstasy.
"I leave you," said the old man, yielding in annoyance.
He got up to go and look for his treasure again, entered the house that
supported our backs, and left the door open, where beside the huge
fireplace in the room we saw a little girl, so seriously playing with a
doll that Blaire fell considering, and said, "She's right."
The games of children are a momentous preoccupation. Only the grown-ups
play.
After we have watched the animals and the strollers go by, we watch the
time go by, we watch everything.
We are seeing the life of things, we are present with Nature, blended
with climates, mingled even with the sky, colored by the seasons. We
have attached ourselves to this corner of the land where chance has
held us back from our endless wanderings in longer and deeper peace
than elsewhere; and this closer intercourse makes us sensible of all
its traits and habits. September--the morrow of August and eve of
October, most affecting of months--is already sprinkling the fine days
with subtle warnings. Already one knows the meaning of the dead leaves
that flit about the flat stones like a flock of sparrows.
In truth we have got used to each other's company, we and this place.
So often transplanted, we are taking root here, and we no longer
actually think of going away, even when we talk about it.
"The 11th Division jolly well stayed a month and a half resting," says
Blaire.
"And the 375th, too, nine weeks!" replies Barque, in a tone of
challenge.
"I think we shall stay here at least as long--at least, I say."
"We could finish the war here all right."
Barque is affected by the words, nor very far from believing them.
"After all, it will finish some day, what!"
"After all!" repeat the others.
"To be sure, one never knows," says Paradis. He says this weakly,
without deep conviction. It is, however, a saying which leaves no room
for reply. We say it over again, softly, lulling ourselves with it as
with an old song.
* * * * *
Farfadet rejoined us a moment ago. He took his place near us, but a
little withdrawn all the same, and sits on an overturned tub, his chin
on his fists.
This man is more solidly happy than we are. We know it well, and he
knows it well. Lifting his head he has looked in turn, with the same
distant gaze, at the back of the old man who went to seek his treasure,
and at the group that talks of going away no more. There shines over
our sensitive and sentimental comrade a sort of personal glamour, which
makes of him a being apart, which gilds him and isolates him from us,
in spite of himself, as though an officer's tabs had fallen on him from
the sky.
His idyll with Eudoxie has continued here. We have had the proofs; and
once, indeed, he spoke of it. She is not very far away, and they are
very near to each other. Did I not see her the other evening, passing
along the wall of the parsonage, her hair but half quenched by a
mantilla, as she went obviously to a rendezvous? Did I not see that she
began to hurry and to lean forward, already smiling? Although there is
no more between them yet than promises and assurances, she is his, and
he is the man who will hold her in his arms.
Then, too, he is going to leave us, called to the rear, to Brigade
H.Q., where they want a weakling who can work a typewriter. It is
official; it is in writing; he is saved. That gloomy future at which we
others dare not look is definite and bright for him.
He looks at an open window and the dark gap behind it of some room or
other over there, a shadowy room that bemuses him. His life is twofold
in hope; he is happy, for the imminent happiness that does not yet
exist is the only real happiness down here.
So a scanty spirit of envy grows around him. "One never knows," murmurs
Paradis again, but with no more confidence than when before, in the
straitened scene of our life to-day, he uttered those immeasurable
words.