"What's the matter?" she demanded, breathlessly.
"Nothing."
"Why didn't you drive into the stable as usual?"
"I couldn't."
"Why couldn't you?"
"Because I am forbidden to go to Couilly."
I thought she was going to see the joke and laugh. She didn't. She
was angry, and I had a hard time to make her see that it was funny.
In fact, I did not really make her see it at all, for an hour later,
wanting her, I went up to the Quincy side of the road, leaned against
the wall, opposite her entrance, and blew my big whistle for ten
minutes without attracting her attention.
That attempt at renewing the joke had two results. I must tell you that
one of the few friends who has ever been out here felt that the only
annoying thing about my being so absolutely alone was that, if
anything happened and I needed help, I had no way of letting anyone
know. So I promised, and it was agreed with Amélie, that, in need, I
should blow my big whistle--it can be heard half a mile. But that was
over two years ago. I have never needed help. I have used the
whistle to call Dick.
I whistled and whistled and whistled until I was good and mad. Then I
began to yell: "Amélie--Mélie--Père!" and they came running out,
looking frightened to death, to find me, red in the face, leaning against
the wall--on the Quincy side of the road.
"What's the matter?" cried Amélie.
"Didn't you hear my whistle?" I asked.
"We thought you were calling Dick."
The joke was on me.
When I explained that I wanted some fresh bread to toast and was
not allowed to go to their house in Couilly for it, it ceased to be a joke
at all.
It was useless for me to laugh, and to explain that an order was an
order, and that Couilly was Couilly, whether it was at my gate or down
the hill.
Père's anger was funnier than my joke. He saw nothing comic in the
situation. To him it was absurd. Monsieur le Général, commandant de
la cinquième armée ought to know that I was all right. If he didn't
know it, it was high time someone told him.
In his gentle old voice he made quite a harangue.
All Frenchmen can make harangues.
It was difficult for me to convince him that I was not in the slightest
degree annoyed; that I thought it was amusing; that there was
nothing personally directed against me in the order; that I was only
one of many foreigners inside the zone des armées; that the only way
to catch the dangerous ones was to forbid us all to circulate.
I might have spared myself the breath it took to argue with him. If I
ever thought I could change the conviction of a French peasant, I
don't think so since I have lived among them. I spent several days
last summer trying to convince Père that the sun did not go round the
earth. I drew charts of the heavens,--you should have seen them--
and explained the solar system. He listened attentively--one has to
listen when the patronne talks, you know--and I thought he
understood. When it was all over--it took me three days--he said to
me:
"Bien. All the same, look at the sun. This morning it was behind
Maria's house over there. I saw it. At noon it was right over my
orchard. I saw it there. At five o'clock it will be behind the hill at
Esbly. You tell me it does not move! Why, I see it move every day.
Alors--it moves."
I gave it up. All my lovely exposition of us rolling through space had
missed. So there is no hope of my convincing him that this new
regulation regarding foreigners is not designed expressly to annoy
me.
I often wonder exactly what all this war means to him. He reads his
newspaper religiously. He seems to understand. He talks very well
about it. But he is detached in a way. He hates it. It has aged him
terribly. But just what it means to him I can't know.