I would wish above all things, if some fairy gave me the chance, to be
a hibernating animal this year, during which the weather has almost
called an armistice along our front, locked from the Swiss border to
the sea.
There is but one consolation, and that is that, costly and terrible as
have been the first four months of the war, three of the great aims of
the German strategy have been buried too deep ever to be dug up--
their hope of a short war is gone; they did not get to Paris, and now
know that they never will; they did not, and never can get to Calais,
and, in spite of their remarkable feats, and their mighty strength, in
the face of those three facts even their arrogance cannot write
"victory" against their arms.
I have to confess that I am almost as cold as the boys out there in the
rain and the mud. I have managed to get a little coal--or what is called
coal this year. It is really charbon de forge--a lot of damp, black dust
with a few big lumps in it, which burns with a heavy, smelly, yellow
smoke. In normal times one would never dignify it by the name of
coal, but today we are thankful to get it, and pay for it as if it were
gold. It will only burn in the kitchen stove, and every time we put any
on the fire, my house, seen from the garden, appears like some sort
of a factory. Please, therefore, imagine me living in the kitchen. You
know the size of a compact French kitchen. It is rather close quarters
for a lady of large ideas.
The temperature of the rest of the house is down almost to zero.
Luckily it is not a cold winter, but it is very damp, as it rains
continually. I have an armchair there, a footstool, and use the kitchen
table as a desk; and even then, to keep fairly warm, I almost sit on
top of the stove, and I do now and then put my feet in the oven.
I assure you that going to bed is a ceremony. Amélie comes and puts
two hot bricks in the foot of the bed. I undress in the kitchen, put on
felt shoes, and a big wrap, and, with my hotwater bottle in one hand
and a book in the other, I make a dash for the arctic regions, and
Amélie tidies up the kitchen, locks the doors behind her, and takes
the keys away with her.
I am cosy and comfy in bed, and I stay there until Amélie has built the
fire and got the house in order in the morning.
My getting up beats the lever de Marie Antoinette in some of its
details, though she was accustomed to it, and probably minded less
than I do. I am not really complaining, you know. But you want to
know about my life--so from that you can imagine it. I shall get
acclimated, of course. I know that.
I was in Paris for Christmas--not because I wanted to go, but because
the few friends I have left there felt that I needed a change, and
clinched the matter by thinking that they needed me. Besides I
wanted to get packages to the English boys who were here in
September, and it was easier to do it from Paris than from here.
While I was waiting for the train at Esbly I had a conversation with a
woman who chanced to sit beside me on a bench on the quai, which
seemed to me significant.
Today everyone talks to everyone. All the barriers seem to be down.
We were both reading the morning paper, and so, naturally, got to
talking. I happened to have an English paper, in which there was a
brief account of the wonderful dash made by the Royal Scots at Petit
Bois and the Gordon Highlanders at Maeselsyeed Spur, under cover
of the French and British artillery, early in the month, and I translated
it for her. It is a moral duty to let the French people get a glimpse of
the wonderful fighting quality of the boys under the Union Jack.
In the course of the conversation she said, what was self-evident,
"You are not French?" I told her that I was an American. Then she
asked me if I had any children, and received a negative reply.
She sighed, and volunteered that she was a widow with an only son
who was "out there," and added: "We are all of us French women of
a certain class so stupid when we are young. I adore children. But I
thought I could only afford to have one, as I wanted to do so much for
him. Now if I lose that one, what have I to live for? I am not the sort of
woman who can marry again. My boy is a brave boy. If he dies he will
die like a brave man, and not begrudge the life he gives for his
country. I am a French mother and must offer him as becomes his
mother. But it was silly of me to have but this one. I know, now that it
is too late, that I could have done as well, and it may be better, with
several, for I have seen the possibilities demonstrated among my
friends who have three or four."
Of course I did not say that the more she had, the more she might
have had to lose, because I thought that if, in the face of a disaster
like this, French women were thinking such thoughts--and if one
does, hundreds may--it might be significant.
I had a proof of this while in Paris. I went to a house where I have
been a visitor for years to get some news of a friend who had an
apartment there. I opened the door to the concierge's loge to put my
question. I stopped short. In the window, at the back of the half dark
room, sat the concierge, whom I had known for nearly twenty years, a
brave, intelligent, fragile woman. She was sitting there in her black
frock, gently rocking herself backward and forward in her chair. I did
not need to put a question. One knows in these days what the
unaccustomed black dress means, and I knew that the one son I had
seen grow from childhood, for whom she and the father had
sacrificed everything that he might be educated, for whom they had
pinched and saved--was gone.
I said the few words one can say--I could not have told five minutes
later what they were--and her only reply was like the speech of the
woman of another class that I had met at Esbly.
"I had but the one. That was my folly. Now I have nothing--and I have
a long time to live alone."
It would have been easy to weep with her, but they don't weep. I have
never seen fewer tears in a great calamity. I have read in
newspapers sent me from the States tales of women in hysterics, of
women fainting as they bade their men goodbye. I have never seen
any of it. Something must be wrong with my vision, or my lines must
have fallen in brave places. I can only speak of what I see and hear,
and tears and hysterics do not come under my observation.
I did not do anything interesting in Paris. It was cold and grey and
sad. I got my packages off to the front. They went through quickly,
especially those sent by the English branch post-office, near the
Etoile, and when I got home, I found the letters of thanks from the
boys awaiting me. Among them was one from the little corporal who
had pulled down my flags in September, who wrote in the name of
the C company, Yorkshire Light Infantry, and at the end of the letter
he said: "I am sorry to tell you that Captain Simpson is dead. He was
killed leading his company in a charge, and all his men grieved for
him."
That gave me a deep pang. I remembered his stern, bronzed, but
kindly face, which lighted up so with a smile, as he sat with me at tea
on that memorable Wednesday afternoon, and of all that he did so
simply to relieve the strain on our nerves that trying day. I know
nothing about him--who he was--what he had for family--he was just a
brave, kindly, human being, who had met me for a few hours, passed
on--and passed out. He is only one of thousands, but he is the one
whose sympathetic voice I had heard and who, in all the hurry and
fatigue of those hard days, had had time to stop and console us here,
and whom I had hoped to see again; and I grieved with his men for
him.
I could not write last week. I had no heart to send the usual greetings
of the season. Words still mean something to me, and when I sat
down, from force of habit, to write the letters I have been accustomed
to send at this season, I simply could not. It seemed to me too absurd
to even celebrate the anniversary of the days when the angel hosts
sang in the skies their "Peace on earth, good will to men" to herald
the birth of Him who added to religion the command, "Love one
another," and man, only forty miles away, occupied in wholesale
slaughter. We have a hard time juggling to make our pretensions and
our acts fit.
If this cold and lack of coal continues I am not likely to see much or
write much until the spring campaign opens. Here we still hear the
guns whenever Rheims or Soissons are bombarded, but no one
ever, for a minute, dreams that they will ever come nearer.
Though I could not send you any greetings last week, I can say, with
all my heart, may 1915 bring us all peace and contentment!