“You laugh, but I know what I am saying. Your life is abnormal, don't
go against nature.” She rolled over on an elbow and laid a hand on my
knee. “You must love--it will wash away all your sick fancies. You’ll
see. Any one you’ve a liking for will do; surely you like some one?
Don’t be romantic, be practical. Face facts. Take things as they are,
and you will find beauty, mystery, rapture and sanity. Beyond the
little prosaic door of compromise you will find the world of dreams.
Believe me, materialism is the only road to happy illusion, and to
remain sane, we must have illusions.”
Well, that was her point of view, and she may have been right. I never
found out. I didn’t take her advice. Perhaps had I done so, I would be
in Paris now content with the illusion she promised me. Who knows?
That sort of thing is the solution of most lives. A growing lassitude,
a growing fear, the feeling that one has missed life, that it will soon
be too late, and at last we give in and take in the place of what we
wanted, what we can get.
I couldn’t. There was no one about who in the slightest degree
resembled a lover--my lover. And I was sick of the subject of love. For
years and years and years it had been served up to me, for breakfast,
for lunch, for dinner. Every theatre, every music hall, every novel one
opened, every comic paper was full of it. Travestied, caricatured,
perverted or idealized, but always the same old thing--sex--sex--sex
in all its ramifications--always monotonously the same; it bored me to
extinction.
Philibert, fastening on this woman then that one, all my friends
falling in and out of love, like ducks round a muddy pond; it put me in
a rage with the world.
The War came--and with it the end of a world.
I sometimes think that God’s final day of judgment will not be so very
different. The Edict will go out from Heaven. Life will stop. Humanity
suddenly arrested on the edge of time will look over the precipice
of Eternity--will pause--will shudder--then, why should it not act?
Why not revolt as it did in 1914 against the menace of universal
destruction? Was it not just like that?
Death was let loose on the earth. And men refusing to die, gave their
lives so that man might live.
The obliteration of life! Something else took its place. All the usual
things of life disappeared, human relationships, amusements, ambitions,
business, hope, comfort. The people vanished. No familiar faces
anywhere. Armies took their place. Men were changed into soldiers, all
alike. Women were turned into nurses. Their personalities fell from
them, they appeared again, a mass of workers, colourless, uniform, with
white set faces in professional clothes.
Our world, Philibert’s and mine suddenly fell to pieces; all the men
servants left, most of the women, called to their houses to send their
men to the war. Philibert found himself one morning a private in an
auxiliary service of the army; he too disappeared. The enemy was
marching on Paris; Ludovic telephoned me to say that I had best leave
for Bordeaux. I packed off Jinny to Nice with her grandmother. A woman
whose work in the slums I had been interested in for some years, was
taking an _équipe_ of nurses to the front. I went with her. Philibert’s
secretary had orders to pack up all the valuables in the house. I
forgot them. I forgot everything.
We went as you know to Alsace--were taken prisoners--sent back again.
On regaining Paris, I turned the house that I had hated into a
hospital. Most of its treasures had already been packed up and sent
away to a place of safety. The empty salons were turned into wards,
my boudoir into an operating room. I enjoyed filling the place with
rows of white iron beds and glass topped tables and basins and pails
and bottles and bandages. It had been a hateful house, it made a good
hospital. When it was in running order, I left again for the front.
I enjoyed the War. It set me free. I reverted to type, became a savage,
enjoyed myself. In a wooden hut, on a sea of quaking mud under a
cracking sky, I lived an immense life. I was a giant--I was colossal--I
dwelt in chaos and was calm. With death let loose on the earth, I felt
life pouring through me, beating in me; I exulted. Danger, a roaring
noise, cold, fatigue, hunger, these my rations, agreed with me. I was
a giantess with chilblains, and a chronic backache; I was a link in an
immense machine, an atom, a speck in an innumerable host of atoms like
myself, automatons, humble ugly minute things doomed to die, immortal
spirits, human beings, my brothers.
I observed that my little tin trunk contained everything needful for
life; soap, warm clothes, rubber boots, a brush and comb. I wanted
nothing; I was content to go for days without a bath. The beef and
white beans of the soldier was sufficient. I ate it ravenously.
I worked and was happy. I lifted battered men in my arms, soothed their
pain, washed their bodies, scrubbed their feet; poor ugly swollen feet
tramping to death in grotesque boots, socks rotting away in them. I
enjoyed scrubbing them. I had, for the business, pails of hot water,
scrubbing brushes, the kind one uses for floors, and slabs of yellow
soap. For some months, it was my job to wash the wounded who came in
from the trenches. Many of them were peasants, old bearded men who
talked patois, in soft guttural voices and called me sister. Their
great coats were covered with mud and blood, they crawled with vermin.
I loved them. They had given their lives, they had given up their
homes, their deep ploughed fields, their children, their cattle. They
did not complain. Their stubborn souls looked out at me kindly from
weary eyes, sunk under shaggy brows, and loving them, my brothers, I
loved France, the France I had not, before, known.
We were sent from one part of the front to another. Our _équipe_ had
a good reputation. Passing through Paris from time to time, I found
opportunities for using money. I gave, gratefully. Supply depots were
organized. Every one was in need, every one was doing something. The de
Joigny family were pleased with me. They made a great fuss over me when
I came to Paris. They spoke of my generosity, my devotion, my courage.
I loved them too, bulking them together with my comrades, my _poilus_,
the men of France.
I had lost track of Philibert during the first months of the war. Then
I heard that he had been put to guard one of the Paris gates. He stayed
there for three months, standing in the road, with a gun, stopping the
motors of officers, looking at passes. Poor Philibert! And there was
no one to take any interest now in what became of him. His world was
finished, his friends could do nothing for him. The France that was at
war with Germany did not know him. The men who were leading the nation
had never heard of him, or if they had, remembered him with a sneer.
Ludovic had entered one of the ministries. I went to him. Philibert,
I pointed out, was being wasted. He was a linguist. A month later he
was given the rank of interpreter and attached to the General Staff.
Occasionally he accompanied Ludovic to London, or Rome, or Boulogne.
Poor Philibert! He would have gone to the trenches if he could. He was
too old. I scarcely saw him, for four years.
When I had leave I spent it with Jinny. He did the same, but our leave
didn’t often coincide.
Jinny came back to Paris and lived with her grandmother. There was a
room kept ready for me in the flat.
Sometimes I motored down from the front, along the thundering roads
where armies moved in the dark, and with the gigantic rumble of motor
convoys, and the pounding of the guns in my ears, I would step into the
little still bright sitting room with its glinting miniatures and silk
hangings to find the two of them rolling bandages or knitting socks.
Jinny seemed to me quite safe there.
And in a way I was glad that the years of her girlhood should be passed
in a seclusion and quiet that would have been impossible in peace
time. There was no one left to spoil her now, no army of servants for
her to order about, no pageant of pleasure to dazzle her eyes. The
problem of her life seemed like everything else to be simplified out of
recognition.
I did not know that Bianca had come back to Paris. I had forgotten her.
Jinny was very sweet to me when I came. She would turn on my bath and
help me take off my things, and wail over my dreadful hands, stained
with disinfectants and swollen with chilblains.
“Oh, darling,” she would say, “how brave you are to do it,” and then
she would shudder and add--“I couldn’t--the sight of blood makes me
sick. How you can bear the ugliness--”
And I would assure her that she was much too young to do nursing.
Your mother was very kind to me. The war had aroused her from the
lassitude of old age. She had risen to meet it. Lifting her gentle head
proudly, she had seemed to look out beyond the confines of her narrow
seclusion, across the years, and to see her country rise before her in
its old beauty, its one-time grandeur.
“France will have her revenge now,” she had said, with a flash lighting
her weary eyes.
And her mind appeared more vigorous. She read all the newspapers or
asked Jinny to read them aloud to her. She took a great interest in my
work, and seemed to regard me as some admirable but inexplicable puzzle.
“You are too brave, _mon enfant_, and too exalted. When the war is over
and you come back to your old habits, to take up your old life--you
will see--”
“Maybe I shall never come back to it, dear--never take up again the old
life as you say.”
And again she smiled, thinking that I was joking, but I was not joking,
my brain was clear, I believe I knew even then, that I would never run
Philibert’s house again.
“You look happy, my child,” she said to me one day.
“I am, _belle-mère_.”
“Ah--but how curious!”
“But dear--it is not as if any one very near or dear were in danger.
Philibert is safe, Blaise too, driving his ambulances.”
“But the horror, the pain, the suffering all round one--look--already
in our family five young men killed--your Aunt Marianne bereft of her
sons--your Uncle Jacques crippled--”
“I know--I know--I do feel for them, and I do feel for France. When I
say that I am happy, I only mean, that for me the equation of life is
so simple, that I am content as never before.”
“I see--you are happy because of the sacrifice you have made--because
of all you have given up in the cause for our country. _Cela est très
beau._”
“No, dear.” I felt bound to try and explain. “It is not that. It is not
fine at all. I haven’t given up anything that I cared about. I have
only got what I wanted. I have found my place, my right place--the
place of a worker.”
She looked puzzled, then turned it off with a smile.
Jinny was growing up and the war was slipping by over her little blond
head like a monstrous shadow. She seemed in that greyness, to become
unreal. I did not know what was going on in her mind.
One night in March 1918 I staggered in on her. I must have been more
tired than I realized. My head was burning. The little soft still room,
your mother with her hair in stiff regular waves, a lace shawl round
her shoulders, and Jinny, smiling over a story book; it was like a
dream.
And Jinny was like a little creature in a dream. Her idle delicate
hands, her plaintive voice were strange. She had on a rose coloured
frock, and was eating sweets. Some one had sent her a box of chocolates.
“Look, Mummy, chocolates--we never have them any more, do we, _petite
mère_?”
I had seen the world rushing to destruction; the powers of darkness
triumphant. Just beyond those walls, along the road, one came to the
edge of the abyss.
“Mummy, I hate the war, _c’est si bête_--when will it end?” she pouted.
Suddenly I was angry; I felt that it was wrong for my daughter to be
like that, wrong and stupid.
“Jinny,” I cried--“are you asleep? Don’t you understand that the world
is coming to an end?”
But she looked at me with curious defiant eyes and asked, “What do you
mean?”
“I mean what I say. Come with me tomorrow. Come and see. Come and
help--you’re no longer a child. Come!” But she drew away from me with a
shiver.
“I couldn’t,” she said in a fine hard little voice.
And your mother broke in,
“Jane, you must be mad to suggest such a thing.”
“But I want her to know--to understand--to share--”
“That is wrong. What is there for her to understand? She is a child.
Her life is not involved in the war. It lies beyond. She should be
protected from this nightmare.”
“I want her with me.”
Your mother shook her head sadly. “If you want her with you, you should
stay at home and look after her. You have been admirable, you have
devoted yourself, but when the war is over, you will perhaps find that
you have made a mistake.”
“Mistake! Would you have me stay at home while men are dying by
thousands!”
She sighed gently. “Ah--well--dear--you know best, but I wonder
sometimes, if you are not deluded--”
Jinny had disappeared. I found her in her bedroom, her head buried in
her pillow.
“I’m a coward,” she sobbed, “a coward. I would be afraid to go.”
I took her in my arms. “My poor little lonely Jinny.” I held her a
long time--a long time--comforting her, conscience-smitten, troubled,
but the next day I left again for the front, following my monstrous
illusion, answering the terrible call of the greatest imposture in
creation. For I was wrong and your mother was right. The war was not a
fine thing. It did not save the world or renew it. It left nothing fine
or noble behind. It was an obscene monster. It called up from the soil
of a dozen continents all the fine strong men, and devoured them, it
summoned out of the heart of humanity, heroism, and it devoured that.
Courage, faith, hope, self-sacrifice, all the dreams of men were poured
into its jaws and disappeared. Nothing was left but broken men, and a
ruined earth.