"Where is she?"
I said that at that moment she was probably at Couilly, but that
ordinarily when she was not here, she was at her own home.
"Where is that?" was the next question.
So I took them out on to the terrace again, and showed them
Amélie's house.
They stared solemnly at it, as if they had never seen it before, and
then one of them turned on me quickly, as if to startle me. "Vous êtes
une femme de lettres?"
"It is so written down in my papers," I replied.
"Journaliste?"
I denied my old calling without the quiver of an eyelash. I hadn't a
scruple. Besides, my old profession many a time failed me, and it
might have been dangerous to have been known as even an ex-
journalist today within the zone of military operations.
Upon that followed a series of the most intimate questions anyone
ever dared put to me,--my income, my resources, my expectations,
my plans, etc.--and all sorts of questions I too rarely put to myself
even, and never answer to myself. Practically the only question they
did not ask was if I ever intended to marry. I was tempted to volunteer
that information, but, as neither man had the smallest sense of
humor, I decided it was wiser to let well enough alone.
It was only when they were stumped for another single question that
they decided to go. They saluted me politely this time, a tribute I
imagine to my having kept my temper under great provocation to lose
it, went out of the gate, stood whispering together a few minutes, and
gazing back at the house, as if afraid they would forget it, looked up
at the plaque on the gate-post, made a note, mounted their wheels,
and sprinted down the hill, still in earnest conversation.
I wondered what they were saying to one another. Whatever it was, I
got an order early the next morning to present myself at the
gendarmerie at Esbly before eleven o'clock.
Père was angry. He seemed to feel, that, for some reason, I was
under suspicion, and that it was a man's business to defend me. So,
when Ninette brought my perambulator to the gate, there was Père,
in his veston and casquette, determined to go with me and see me
through.
At Esbly I found a different sort of person--a gentleman--he told me
he was not a gendarme by métier, but a volunteer--and, although he
put me through practically the same paces, it was different. He was
sympathetic, not averse to a joke, and, when it was over, he went out
to help me into my baby cart, thanked me for troubling myself,
assured me that I was absolutely en règle, and even went so very far
as to say that he was pleased to have met me. So I suppose, until the
commander at Esbly is changed, I shall be left in peace.
This will give you a little idea of what it is like here. I suppose I
needed to be shaken up a bit to make me realize that I was near
the war. It is easy to forget it sometimes.
Amélie came this morning with the tale that it was rumored that all
foreigners were to be "expelled from the zone des armées." It might
be. Still, I am not worrying. "Sufficient to the day," you know.