Georges, having commenced his regular three years’ military service in
October, 1913, got leave to visit his aunt who was keeping a _pension_
in Paris.
How shy and confused he was when I came down to the dining-room that
day and surprised him while he was examining his too-faint mustache
with great seriousness before the mirror! Charming, I thought him,
instantly; a clean, jolly sort of boy, quite too young for that
ridiculous soldier’s uniform.
His aunt introduced him (with her arm about his shoulder and a tweak of
his ear) by his nickname, “Coco”; and, after he got used to my being
a foreigner, he began to talk, using his big brown eyes and his free,
expressive hands quite as much as his tongue. Knowing a little of the
Midi, I attempted an imitation of the _patois_. Coco threw back his
head and laughed with abandon. That broke the ice, and we became great
friends.
He was so curious about everything American that I took him up to my
salon to see my typewriter; also my neckties and fancy socks.
“But what’s this?” asked Coco, reading with his funny French
pronunciation, “A-mer-i-cain Pencil Compagnie.” It was a novelty, a
“perpetual” pencil of the self-sharpening sort, with a magazine filled
with little points like cartridges. When I gave it to him, it pleased
Coco immensely.
“Just like a rifle!” he exclaimed, as he amused himself by pressing the
end and ejecting the bits of lead. He went through the manual of arms
with it, laughing; he did a mock bayonet thrust or two, and then aimed
it at me in fun, like a child. “_Pan!_” he cried; “_that’s_ the way we
shoot Germans!” The contrast of his red pantaloons and blue coat with
the round, innocent face and lips parted like a girl’s was absurd. Why,
he was more like those doll soldiers you see at toyshops with curly
hair! With his fresh pink cheeks and big brown eyes he seemed no more
than sixteen years old.
In the evening we all went out on the crowded Boulevard, where, it
being a fête day, they were dancing in front of the open-air band
stands. It was a long time before I ceased to think of Coco as jolly,
flushed, exuberant, dancing the Tango on the corner by the Sorbonne
with his pretty young aunt, as excited and happy as only a lad can be
who has come up from a provincial town to see the metropolis for the
first time on a holiday.
That was on the 14th of July of 1914. Next day he went back to his
caserne at Montauban.
In two weeks war was declared!
Coco, our own blithe Coco, would have to go to the front—oh, his aunt’s
white face that day!—and Coco would be in the first line! It seemed
like some hideous mistake. But already Coco, pink-cheeked, laughing,
shy, his mother’s only boy, was well on his way toward the German
shells and machine guns!