Part 34 (1/2)
In the Street of the Three Pebbles there was a small estaminet into which I went one morning for a cup of coffee, while I read an Amiens news-sheet made up mostly of extracts translated from the leading articles of English papers. (There was never any news of French fighting beyond the official communique and imaginary articles of a romantic kind written by French journalists in Paris about episodes of war.) In one corner of the estaminet was a group of bourgeois gentlemen talking business for a time, and then listening to a monologue from the woman behind the counter. I could not catch many words of the conversation, owing to the general chatter, but when the man went out the woman and I were left alone together, and she came over to me and put a photograph down on the table before me, and, as though carrying on her previous train of thought, said, in French, of course:
”Yes, that is what the war has done to me.”
I could not guess her meaning. Looking at the photograph, I saw it was of a young girl in evening dress with her hair coiled in an artistic way and a little curl on each cheek. Madame's daughter, I thought, looking up at the woman standing in front of me in a grubby bodice and tousled hair. She looked a woman of about forty, with a wan face and beaten eyes.
”A charming young lady,” I said, glancing again at the portrait.
The woman repeated her last sentence, word for word.
”Yes... that is what the war has done to me.”
I looked up at her again and saw that she had the face of the young girl in the photograph, but coa.r.s.ened, aged, raddled, by the pa.s.sing years and perhaps by tragedy.
”It is you?” I asked.
”Yes, in 1913, before the war. I have changed since then-n'est-ce pas, Monsieur?”
”There is a change,” I said. I tried not to express my thought of how much change.
”You have suffered in the war-more than most people?”
”Ah, I have suffered!”
She told me her story, and word for word, if I could have written it down then, it would have read like a little novel by Guy de Maupa.s.sant. She was the daughter of people in Lille, well-to-do merchants, and before the war married a young man of the same town, the son of other manufacturers. They had two children and were very happy. Then the war came. The enemy drove down through Belgium, and one day drew near and threatened Lille. The parents of the young couple said: ”We will stay. We are too old to leave our home, and it is better to keep watch over the factory. You must go, with the little ones, and there is no time to lose.”
There was no time to lose. The trains were crowded with fugitives and soldiers-mostly soldiers. It was necessary to walk. Weeping, the young husband and wife said farewell to their parents and set out on the long trail, with the two babies in a perambulator, under a load of bread and wine, and a little maid carrying some clothes in a bundle. For days they tramped the roads until they were all dusty and bedraggled and footsore, but glad to be getting farther away from that tide of field-gray men which had now swamped over Lille. The young husband comforted his wife. ”Courage!” he said. ”I have money enough to carry us through the war. We will set up a little shop somewhere.” The maid wept bitterly now and then, but the young husband said: ”We will take care of you, Margot. There is nothing to fear. We are lucky in our escape.” He was a delicate fellow, rejected for military service, but brave. They came to Amiens, and hired the estaminet and set up business. There was a heavy debt to work off for capital and expenses before they would make money, but they were doing well. The mother was happy with her children, and the little maid had dried her tears. Then one day the young husband went away with the little maid and all the money, leaving his wife in the estaminet with a big debt to pay and a broken heart.
”That is what the war has done to me,” she said again, picking up the photograph of the girl in the evening frock with a little curl on each cheek.
”C'est triste, Madame!”
”Oui, c'est triste, Monsieur!”
But it was not war that had caused her tragedy, except that it had unloosened the roots of her family life. Guy de Maupa.s.sant would have given just such an ending to his story.
IX
Some of our officers stationed in Amiens, and billeted in private houses, became very friendly with the families who received them. Young girls of good middle cla.s.s, the daughters of shopkeepers and schoolmasters, and merchants in a good way of business, found it delightful to wait on handsome young Englishmen, to teach them French, to take walks with them, and to arrange musical evenings with other girl friends who brought their young officers and sang little old French songs with them or English songs in the prettiest French accent. These young officers of ours found the home life very charming. It broke the monotony of exile and made them forget the evil side of war. They paid little gallantries to the girls, bought them boxes of chocolate until fancy chocolate was forbidden in France, and presented flowers to decorate the table, and wrote amusing verses in their autograph alb.u.ms or drew sketches for them. As this went on they gained to the privilege of brotherhood, and there were kisses before saying ”good night” outside bedroom doors, while the parents downstairs were not too watchful, knowing the ways of young people, and lenient because of their happiness. Then a day came in each one of these households when the officer billeted there was ordered away to some other place. What tears! What lamentations! And what promises never to forget little Jeanne with her dark tresses, or Suzanne with the merry eyes! Were they not engaged? Not formally, perhaps, but in honor and in love. For a time letters arrived, eagerly waited for by girls with aching hearts. Then picture post-cards with a line or two of affectionate greeting. Then nothing. Nothing at all, month after month, in spite of all the letters addressed with all the queer initials for military units. So it happened again and again, until bitterness crept into girls' hearts, and hardness and contempt.
”In my own little circle of friends,” said a lady of Amiens, ”I know eighteen girls who were engaged to English officers and have been forsaken. It is not fair. It is not good. Your English young men seem so serious, far more serious than our French boys. They have a look of shyness which we find delightful. They are timid, at first, and blush when one pays a pretty compliment. They are a long time before they take liberties. So we trust them, and take them seriously, and allow intimacies which we should refuse to French boys unless formally engaged. But it is all camouflage. At heart your English young men are just flirts. They play with us, make fools of us, steal our hearts, and then go away, and often do not send so much as a post-card. Not even one little post-card to the girls who weep their hearts out for them! You English are all hypocrites. You boast that you 'play the game.' I know your phrase. It is untrue.
”You play with good girls as though they were grues, and that no Frenchman would dare to do. He knows the difference between good girls and bad girls, and behaves, with reverence to those who are good. When the English army goes away from France it will leave many bitter memories because of that.”
X