Chapter VI: Part II: “On les aura” (2)

Madeleine ticked the beloved name and went on, as in a stupor. This was really a blow. To come to Paris had seemed to her, somehow, the satisfactory culmination of her long vigil. She felt sure she would be successful in finding him. She had found him indeed. What now! The Paris garrison was not concerned with the fate of “aspiring aviators” once they were struck off its rolls. Their fate was not indeed in much doubt, but there remained the horrible uncertainty as to which of the graveyards behind the four hundred miles of Front would hold his grave. At this point her common-sense and practical knowledge of affairs deserted her. She just wanted him, that was all. Feigning a headache, she excused herself and got leave to go home; but instead of going, she lingered about the quays and bridges, never lovelier than in winter twilight, with golden wraiths of leaves spinning in the bitter wind along the severe, well-proportioned gray lines of masonry. The fresh air calmed her; hunger at length drove her back to the Petits’ apartment. She did not notice at first anything in the manner of her hosts. The only thing that she noticed was that M. Petit, as he handed her a letter, used the phrase:

“It came about four o’clock!”

That was the hour at which her eye had caught the name in the fatal list. All the threads and tatters of superstition that clung to her Flemish soul took life and substance at this. She muttered the words, “Ah, yes! I expected it. It is a word from home!” She passed, quiet and self-possessed, to her little bedroom, one of those little rooms which lead one to ask if they were intended by the architect for anything, or whether they might not be an inadvertence. Lighting her candle, she sat on the thin coverlet of her bed, that reached from the tall window to the door, and resting her feet on the lower shelf of the washstand, thrust her thumb into the envelope and burst it open. It was from Skene. It was what is called in those English romances Madeleine had never read or imagined, a “love letter.” It asked her to spend his week’s leave with him. That much she saw, and then put it down and buried her face in her hands. She had expected it to contain news of the death of Georges. Why or how she thought anyone should write to her on such a subject is one of those mysteries that hang about the most clear-minded, least bemused of people. She had felt rather than thought it, and the revulsion was for the moment too much for her. She was roused by the clatter of plates, and the acrid voice of Madame Petit, keeping the supper within the smallest possible bounds. She changed her blouse, washed and did her hair, and hurried out to help Madame.

During a meal whose frugality would have driven a monk from his vows, she heard M. Petit say, “Well, have you good news from home!” and herself replying: “Yes. My brother writes to say he has leave, and asks me to go home to see him!”

She afterwards reflected that she could not have invented a better answer. The envelope was stamped with the British military postmark. The old man was inquisitive, and there was no knowing what use he might not make of any conclusion he drew. To have a brother in the English area was the one feasible explanation.

* * * * *

These considerations did not weigh heavily with her, however. She slipped away as soon as she could, and read her letter through again and then again. There was much in it that she did not come within a long way of understanding--descriptions of the life of decent civilized men in camp and billet, not to mention trench and dugout. These simply conveyed nothing and did not interest her. Then there was an involved scrupulousness that she had no means of sharing. But the main motive that had caused the writing of those four sheets was clear enough--Skene really wanted her. And if she did not admit it to herself, she wanted to be wanted. She did not reply to the letter, but put it away in a safe place, a little lock-up box in which she kept her immediate savings and a trinket or two, and went to her work in the morning, a changed woman. She had regained in a breath her old sureness. She now saw herself again the woman she desired to be. “If I can only see him face to face” still ran in her mind, but this time it was Skene whom she hoped to see. Insensibly the symbol had changed, the emotions remained. She thought the matter over in her cautious way. He had supposed her still to be in Amiens and had written there. By good luck she had sent a card (one of those war postcards, all khaki and azure and sentiment) to Cécile Blanquart, having it in her mind that Cécile would describe to the full, in her next letter home (for Cécile was the sort that wrote once a week), anything that she, Madeleine, did. It had been an act of petty pride. It now seemed like the work of Providence--Cécile had redirected the letter, and here it was. Madeleine did not mistake what it meant. He wanted a week, like the few hours he had had, in Amiens. That was natural enough; she saw nothing in it. In her experience men were like that, and she secretly approved. For a week, at least, she would have some one belonging to her; beyond that she did not look.

After twenty-four hours’ consideration she took the letter from its hiding-place, replied to it in most measured terms--judging to a nicety, by some instinct, what would make him say a little more and say it a little plainer, without committing her in any way. A week passed, and back came a further letter. It filled her with a sort of steady glow. There was no mistaking it. He had written for a room in an hotel he knew of at the other end of the city, on the steep hill that leads from behind the big stations to Montmartre. She did not reply until old M. Petit, looking at her over his spectacles, asked her: “Well, and your brother?”

She gathered herself together mentally. Of course, she had to fend off all that sort of thing. She replied briefly: “I am going home for a week!”

That evening she sent Skene a card on which Union Jack and Tricolor were entwined. She wrote with a sort of exultation: “I wish to be all yours.” Such an outburst must have been caused by something deeper than the paltry bickering of a little old man, or the prospect of meeting a young one with whom she had once passed a few hours of intimacy under the stress of strong emotion.

* * * * *

The day came. She got her week’s leave. It is one of the victories of women’s entry into ordinary commercial activities of business houses and Government offices, that they have forced some humanity and reason into the mechanical discipline of such places. Having made no plans, she had put her few belongings into one of those black hold-alls that make all French travelers seem countrified, and stood on the platform of the Gare du Nord, waiting. She had dressed herself carefully--more carefully than usual, with hardly a spot of color, and was conscious that every inch of her that was covered showed the finest possible value for the money. Her hands, neck and face had lost nothing in their firmness and pallor. The figure she cut seemed to culminate in the little leather satchel clasped against her fur--as if she were holding her heart in reserve, and defending it at the same time. The train roared into the station, and after a moment’s confusion, she saw Skene coming towards her. She had been wondering fearfully for a moment if he would come, if she would recognize him, if any unforeseen obstacle would arise. When he reached her, she turned up her face and gave him her rare smile. When he slid his hand under her arm and hurried her down the platform to catch one of the few taxis, she pressed ever so little against him. Never in her life had she been happier than in hearing those heavy boots clanking beside her. Now that he had come she knew she was right. Skene was neither exceptionally handsome, brave nor rich--and she would have thought nothing the more of him if he had been. She neither knew nor cared for heroes of fiction, but admired the clean, athletic type of young man just then beginning to be popularized by the cinema. Skene had the looks and bearing of what he was--an average Englishman of the professional classes, who had passed through the successive stages of discomfort, danger, all but death. He had the sure movements, straight glance, and agreeable carelessness begotten of this, grafted on to middle-class standards of manners. Superficially, at any rate, he was more considerate than his nearest French equivalent would have been.

All this, which would have disappointed or amused many a Frenchwoman, captivated Madeleine, and in the taxi she gave up her lips to him with rich joy at the unmistakable warmth of his feelings. The moment, however, the taxi stopped at the restaurant she had indicated, she made herself prim and aloof. She had not wasted her time since she had been in Paris, and knew her way about. The restaurant dated from the period of those great Exhibitions that had served to rehabilitate Paris after 1870. Originally the home of the sort of people who gave some shadowy substance to Murger’s bohemian Paris, it had long become the classic rendezvous of English and American visitors and of Frenchmen who wanted to sacrifice style to price. It still had the red-plush benches and gaily frescoed walls of romance, but the service and cooking were what Frenchmen call “serious.” The place had just been worth preserving on a commercial basis in the commercial era, and consequently had been preserved.

Madeleine had lost nothing of her idea of celebrating an occasion. She ate heartily and did not refuse to drink with Skene. He was, of course, ravenous, and in the state in which drink had no effect on him. She smiled demurely across the table at him, more at home every moment. He was also amused at something. He had only known Paris fifteen years earlier, as a young architect half-way through his A.R.I.B.A., and was marveling at the change--at the figure she cut in those surroundings that had for him such different associations: she almost bourgeois--he in the fancy dress of his uniform. Her manner with the waiter was perfect, and perfect her assumption of respectability. He loved it, felt almost at home, too. For in their secret hearts both of them were domesticated, conventional to the core. Both of them loathed the War and all it had brought. It was the queerest of contradictions that forced them to comfort their ultra-respectable aspirations in such a place and such a manner, both spoken of even in war-time by many people, as “irregular.”

* * * * *

The meal at an end, they went, as a matter of course, to a cinema. One did, in war-time. Skene, who at home would hardly have walked to the end of the street with such an object--Madeleine, who had hardly heard of such a thing before she went to Amiens--went to the nearest cinema because it was war-time and no one wanted to think. Walking in the brisk air of a Parisian winter evening, good meat and drink within them, they enjoyed themselves prodigiously, Skene because he had existed in dubious snatches of comfort for a long time, and was likely to so exist for an indefinite period--Madeleine because of the reality of a man at her side. He was making jokes about the Place Clichy being the Place Cliché! She did not understand in the least, but laughed because he was happy beside her. And so to the gaping portico of one of those establishments which advertise what is known in France as “spectacle de famille.” This last was being loudly cried by a person, paid to do so, at the door--who added in stentorian tones that soldiers went in free, and nursemaids half-price. It was typical of Skene that he paid for two of the most expensive seats, and placed Madeleine in the one that gave him the best view of her profile. The film, unfortunately, was a French one, not an American. That is to say, instead of being confronted with the improbable adventures of a man looking somewhat like Skene, Madeleine realized with a start that she was watching a love story in which the principal character was a tolerable travesty of Georges d’Archeville, and behaved with just his perverse petulance. She turned her head, smiled at Skene, played with her program, smoothed her gloves, and arranged herself with minute care for her costume and the possible effect of the seat on it. It was no good. Cinema screens are insistent. It is difficult to avoid that great glare of white, with its intriguing figures in motion. It revealed to her what she would never have invented for herself--the idea that, like the hero of the film, Georges neglected her because he was engrossed by some other woman. She could not dismiss the idea; did not try, perhaps. She felt suddenly more wounded than she had ever felt since August, 1914. That Georges might be hurt at her sharing an English officer’s week of Leave never occurred to her. To her practical soul, with its incapacity for flights of imagination, things seemed all too readily what they appeared to the eye. Suddenly she rose.

“This representation is rasant,” she said to Skene, and marveled a moment, as they threaded their way out, at his docile good temper. Not a grumble, not a protest. He just followed her and snapped up a taxi. In it he was more solicitous than ever, gentle, kind, with a Mid-Victorian kindness she had never known--the manners of one whose boyhood has been unspoiled by bitter thoughts about money.

They reached the little hotel at which they had dropped their baggage, and he handed her in. By this time his way with her was having the queerest effect. Had he been thoughtless, brutal, she would easily have braced herself to meet it. As it was, she felt something slowly dissolving in her. She held herself in yet a little, approving the place he had chosen, clean and reasonable in price. But when the door of their little room was bolted, and she stood in front of the mirror by the rose-colored curtains, unpinning her hat, he came gently behind her and slipped his hands under her arms. It was just Georges’ way. She burst into tears. The moment the first sob had shaken itself free--for she did nothing by halves, and when, rarely, she cried, she cried bitterly--she knew she would feel better. Skene let her droop on to the bed and sat beside her, one arm round her, making very small comforting remarks in French and English alternately, but no inquiries. She kept her handkerchief tight pressed upon her eyes with both hands, but her sobs were lessening, and with every moment the agonizing vision of Georges with some one else grew smaller and fainter. She leaned ever so gently against Skene, who tended her as a woman might a child, did every little service for her, amazing her, who had never been so treated since she was four years old. Gradually she slipped down into the comfort of those hard hands, whose fingers kept something of the skill and discrimination of such as have been used for wise, gentle occupations. But only when she was at ease, with dry bright eyes and braided hair, did he seem to think of himself, and then only to ask so humbly for what he wanted. She gave him all herself, fiercely, as if for ever to prevent any of her from escaping again into those other hands that had neglected her so. More, when they two swam slowly back to the surface of normal existence again, in the quiet of the night only broken by the discreet bubbling of the calorifère in the corner, she told him the stark truth of herself and Georges, with a bareness of exposure of her very soul she had never before permitted, of which, perhaps, she had never before been capable. And when at last they slept, in each other’s arms, it was the deep sleep of emotional reaction, for no less than she, Skene had looked for years past on utter shipwreck--obliteration of his individuality in the dark mud of Flemish trenches--and knew from a different point of view all she suffered, and what comfort she clutched at.

* * * * *

The next day passed in that atmosphere known to English honeymooners. Not a trace remained of the emotions of the evening before--nothing but two healthy young people out for a holiday, both in the most incurious state of mind, and easily amused. The things they missed seeing far out-numbered those they noticed, as is the case with honeymooners.

Madeleine was so used to the English that she hardly smiled when he turned the little hotel upside down in order to have a hot bath and an egg for breakfast. The establishment, at length conceding these recondite advantages, ceased to interest them. They went out into the busy streets, in the frosty air, Skene’s hands in the pockets of his “British warm,” Madeleine with one hand tucked into his arm, the other holding her fur tippet close across her throat, as she saw other girls doing. To Skene, a free morning in Paris could only, by habit and association, mean one thing:--pictures. To Madeleine it could only mean another:--shops. As they descended into the roaring heart of the city, never busier than in mid-war, they found some of the galleries were still open, and Skene took her from room to room, pointing out old favorites, lamenting new gaps left by careful storage of some of the more valuable masterpieces. She moved beside him, confused, uncertain whether to blush or look away in front of many a splendid nudity, but drawn by the spirit that was on both, to squeeze his arm a little. In the mood of the moment she unconsciously identified herself with all feminine beauty, and he acquiesced. But he was not less in holiday mind than she, stood patiently for half an hour at a time in big shops, watching her wringing out to the uttermost centime the best value from scowling shop-girls. Skene begged to give her what she wanted--he had managed to visit three field cashiers and get francs from each--he had a pocket full of money. She accepted, loyally keeping herself within limits and wasting nothing. Both of them had their shocks. In one of the turnings off the rue de Rivoli they met a tall fresh-cheeked young man, scented and glittering, in a gray-green uniform Skene identified as Russian. Skene fell into a growling condemnation of all “Base Pups,” “Head-quarter people,” etc., etc., incomprehensible to her, save its long-stored ill-humor. But she was after all only saying the same thing in French, when a frail, fair, over-arranged lady kept her waiting in the glove department of the Bon Marché, when Skene heard her grind her white teeth, with: “That sort of animal doesn’t know what time’s worth!”

* * * * *

The next day was still queerer. Skene wanted what he called “a day in the country.” Madeleine had no idea what he might mean, her notions of a holiday being confined to Church Festivals. She went with him, however, down the Seine Valley, as far as the regulations permitted. She gathered he once had regular haunts here, had gone by steamer with companions. She taunted him laughingly with having been one to “rigoler” in his youth. She began to suspect that he was much richer than his worn khaki and careful trench habits made apparent. He took her to a well-known beauty spot, all shuttered and sad with war and winter, roused the proprietor and persuaded him to give them food and drink in the mournfulness of the dismantled salle à manger. The proprietor, like so many others, had lost an only son. It took a lot of gentleness and some of Skene’s Expeditionary Force canteen cigarettes to thaw him. But gradually he expanded into the graveyard interest of his kind. What were the trenches like? Were the dead buried properly? Would one find their graves? Skene told all he could, painted a true picture as far as he could, exaggerating no horror, slurring over none of the stark facts. The old man was appeased. He liked to know. So his son was lying like that, was he, amid the Meuse hillocks!

Madeleine took no part in the conversation, but sat looking at Skene, totally uninterested in what he was saying, enjoying the masculinity of his movements and gestures. She was beginning to be curious about the one thing that ever aroused her speculation. What was this man’s position in life? The men talked on into the winter dusk, the “patron” offering liqueurs and cigars. She and Skene missed their train back and had to walk to a neighboring depôt, and get seats on an army lorry. Skene tipped the driver and Madeleine saw the man’s face. That night, as they lay side by side in the sober companionship that both of them felt so right and justifiable, she asked him of his home. She was somewhat astonished at the result. He talked for twenty minutes, and was all the time incomprehensible to her. The old house in the Cathedral Close, the hereditary sinecure descending in the one family--the semi-public school, wholly leisured-class prejudices and scruples--the circle of maiden aunts living on railway dividends--the pet animals--the social functions--made her pucker her smooth, regular forehead with complete mystification. She could make nothing of it except that every one in England was rolling in money.

* * * * *

Another day followed, and another. The end of the week was at hand. As it approached, they both regarded the impending separation calmly. The emotions that had brought them together were of the sort that will not keep. Neither of them were bohemians of the true water. The life of the little hotel where they slept and the restaurants where they fed was soon drained of its attractiveness. If Skene really wanted anything, it was to be back at his job in England. If Madeleine ever asked herself what she found lacking in those brief days, the answer would have been a farm of her own, a settled place in some village community, and, perhaps, children. But she did not ask herself such questions, nor did Skene admit for a moment that there was anything to desire other than what they shared. But there fell long silences between them. The tittle-tattle about topical events interested neither of them. The little news they could tell each other was told. They could not talk of Georges. Their only common memories were of the farm and the Easter Horse Show of the division. Both subjects were stale. The small attempt Madeleine made to understand Skene had led her into perplexity. Skene had let her more intimate self alone, having neat provincial notions of chivalry. The excursions of peace-time Paris no longer existed. The cinema and most theaters bored Skene. Madeleine could not sit out concerts. The day before the last, they went at Skene’s suggestion to the Sorbonne. He wanted to feast his eyes, that must so soon look at decauville railways and trench-mortar ammunition, on the Fresco, by Puvis de Chavannes, which decorates the lecture hall of that institution.

He had first seen it as a young man, and the impression it had made was undimmed. He loved that blue-green twilight in which statuesque people stood in attitudes among Greek pillars and poplar trees. He loved it with an English love of things as they are not. Madeleine gazed at the great lecture hall. At last she said, “It is not then a church!” No fool, she had grasped the speculative, investigating atmosphere.

“No,” Skene replied, “it is a higher grade school!”

“As school decoration, it is not ver’ useful!”

Skene had nothing to say.

Later, as Skene wished to dawdle over some architectural drawings in the Cluny Museum, she said frankly she would look at the shops. Their time was drawing to a close. The next day was the last. Skene did not know how to say that he hoped to meet her again. Did he?

* * * * *

For Madeleine it was easier. She simply went on behaving beautifully. The week had not been spoiled by one cross word. To the end, she found no fault with Skene, herself, or Fate. Such tenderness as life had not already rubbed out of her, showed itself in her solicitude as to his sandwiches and half-bottle of wine. It would be cold, she warned him, as they paced the platform of the Gare du Nord. If he passed by the farm he would say a word to her father and Marie. He promised, stoical as she, and habituated to War-time farewells. He did not allude to the future. She kept herself wrapped in uncritical passivity. The train was made up. She saw his out-of-shape cap, khaki back, and tightly clothed legs disappear successively in the doorway of the carriage. He came out again, having secured his corner, and they paced the asphalt of the station for yet a few minutes, in silence. Then at shoutings and whistlings and blowings of tin trumpets, without which no French train can start, he disappeared again, but, the door closed, hung out of the window. The train was full of French leave-men, many drunk. One in particular, who was wearing a bowler hat on his uniform, noticed Skene and Madeleine just as the train began to move, and shouted, “I know what you’ve been doing, English officer and little lady!” Skene waved and was gone. Madeleine turned and went. “Know what you’ve been doing” rang in her ears. A smile curled the corners of her mouth. Men looked after her again now that she was alone. She walked, taking pleasure in exercise and the keen air, to the little hotel in the stony street, paid the bill, with the money Skene had given her, reclaimed her hold-all, strained to bursting with the things he had bought for her. Then she demanded a taxi, which she dismissed in front of the Pantheon, and walked on foot to Monsieur and Madame Petit’s. She ascended the stone stairs, cold and bare as penury, and knocked.

Monsieur opened to her with a short piece of candle, carefully screened in his hand. He closed the door and led her into the fireless dining-room, from which her room opened. He peered at her.

“Well, this war, how goes it?”

“But gently!” she replied, not guessing what he was driving at.

“Come, your brother told you nothing?”

In a moment it came back to her, that she had been spending a week’s “leave” with her “brother.” She faced the peering old eyes.

“You know that the men in the trenches never say anything!”

He was rebuffed, but tried again.

“The Boulogne train must have been very late!”

But she was on her guard now, and replied readily enough:

“Very late. The Bosche were bombing Amiens!”

The old man grunted and left her. In her own room she smiled at her reflection in the glass. She was looking magnificent, feeling magnificent. To come from at least some degree of luxury, if not from home and love, at least from entertainment and admiration, to the bleak realities of her daily life, did not daunt her Flemish heart. She unpacked and undressed methodically, passed her hands over that flesh that had been so generously caressed, and seemed rounded and fortified by it, and wrapped herself in the hard-worn bed-clothes, warming them with her vitality. Could Skene, buttoned up in his “British warm,” miles away on the northern railway, have seen her, he might have been attracted, he would not have been harrowed or flattered. She had rubbed off the contact with him by the passage of her hands over herself. She rubbed him off her soul no less easily. She was at her place in the Ministry on the morrow, and save that her appearance of well-being excited desire or envy, created no sensation.

Then as the days passed, very slowly, and all the more surely, reaction began to set in. She did not analyze it or express it, but it was there. The old feeling of having been done, cheated! There was the old void--and Skene, against whom she bore no malice, was partial, rather--had tried to fill it and failed. It was not in him. Too, well behaved, too incomprehensible, too English, he had, in fact, not asked enough of her. She would have felt more at home with him had he been subject to those moods of feverish desire and cold disgust that she associated with all that was most admirable in men. For that male perversity which, when it existed in her father and the Baron, in “Papa,” and Monsieur Blanquart, in fact in all men, was the very thing by which war had been brought about, and caused her separation from Georges--when it appeared in that Georges himself, became simply one of his attributes. Her “good child” bored her. Her spoiled, imperious one was what she needed.

* * * * *

The evenings lengthened. February came, and the Bosche retreat. Marie wrote that she was trying to get back to Laventie, where things were in a pitiable state, but good land must not be allowed to lie waste. They despaired of Marcel. Madeleine did not reply to this letter. The farm and all it had contained seemed very remote. Yet the letter was a comfort; it brought no bad news, and no news was good news. Already, she thought again of nothing but Georges. As for any practical plan to find him, she had long come to the end of the expedients that her not very strong imagination could devise. She just wanted, and waited.

The chief of her department in the Ministry was one of those politicians who found the War dull. Its concentration upon the one great effort to beat the Bosche, and preserve the French nation alive, robbed such a politician of his living. There was little scope for anything but messing with contracts, trying and necessarily unspectacular. This one among the party-bosses of the French Chamber hit upon a plan which would advertise him, and at the same time give a sort of rallying-cry and style for the next political stunt. He saw shrewdly enough that Peace would one day burst upon an astonished world, and that those who were unprepared for it would be badly left. And what would be the best starting-place in the new Peace atmosphere? Why, obviously, to be hailed in a million farms, a million small shops, as “That brave Monsieur Dantrigues--he was good to our poor boys in the hospitals during the War!” It could be used as common ground for Action Française on the one hand, and the extreme socialists on the other. And no one dared raise hand or word against it. The quickest, cheapest and best way to set it afoot was, of course, to make use of the organizing power of his immense department, the ocean of needy vanity in which the hundreds of temporary typists and girl war-clerks swam; the comic papers could be got to blaze it about--they were invariably hard up.

So it was that Madeleine, in common with all her companions, found herself invited to take part in a gigantic Charitable Fête. They were given little cards with the particulars--certain elements of costume were to be uniform, also an electric lamp in the hair, and a basket of gifts. They were to meet in the Tuileries, at certain spots indicated by numbers, from which decorated lorries would take them to the various hospitals of the metropolitan area, to distribute an Easter gift to every sick or wounded soldier. Monsieur Dantrigues was smart enough to see that this was much more effective than the same thing carried out near the Front. For if a man has incurred a gumboil guarding a railway in the Seine Valley, he likes just as well to be treated as a “brave wounded,” and is just as likely to vote subsequently for the man who organized people to think him so. On the other hand, the real fighting soldiers, nearer the Front, would mostly be killed and never vote at all.

The idea caught on. Generals, clerics, ladies old and young, blessed it and gave funds for costumes and presents.

* * * * *

Never did government department function so ill as that which contained Madeleine, as the ten thousand charitable maidens prepared themselves for the fray. Madeleine entered into the affair rather than make herself conspicuous. She had no sentiment about other people’s soldiers, no anxiety to please men who did not interest her. But she went, took her number, arranged herself with sense and taste, and found a little comfort from looking nice. She managed to get a double supply of gifts and send one lot to her brother Marcel, hoping that it might bring a sign from him in his German prison.

The day came. Released at an early hour, the girls dispersed to costume themselves. The short-sleeved tunic of thin white material, with its girdle of artificial ivy leaves, suited Madeleine. Even Monsieur and Madame Petit, never prodigal of praise, admitted that she looked well. When she arrived at the rendezvous, she created some sensation. The uniform dress brought out precisely her better proportions and carriage, all her good looks that depended on health and hard work. As the lorries that were to take them to their places swung alongside the pavement, one of the girls said of her, “That great Flanders mare ought to have two seats allowed her!” but the very spite of the speech was a compliment to Madeleine. They were set down on the steps of one of those great palaces of stone, common in Paris, that had been aroused from centuries of slumber by the War, and now sheltered hundreds of narrow white beds. Among these, up and down great vistas of ward and corridor, the girls processed, music in front, bearers of lighted candles behind. The fête, designed by a lady of cosmopolitan education, just then very intimate with Dantrigues, had elements of English carol-singing and German Christmas-tree effect, mixed with French delight in spectacle and uniform. Then the girls were divided into pairs, and given so many beds each for the distribution of gifts.

Madeleine was frankly bored with the whole thing. She hardly bothered to make herself agreeable to the men in her section of beds--passing them with a word or two of conventional good wishes, holding her clean, fair-skinned, smiling, slightly obtuse profile high above them, stepping easily, unencumbered by the basket on her hip. At the end of her bit were several empty beds, the nursing sister on duty explaining that the occupants were more or less convalescent, and had leave. She did not trouble to hurry off elsewhere, nor to obtain a fresh supply of gifts. The more or less innocent flirtations, which the other girls saw as one of the chief attractions of the business, did not excite her. The electric globe in her hair, which annoyed her, went out, and seeing a glass door leading on to a verandah, all dark and quiet, she slipped through unseen. She had hardly drawn the door to behind her than she had a peculiar sensation. She had stepped into a mild, humid spring night, the stars of which shone above the garden plantation of the place, beyond the stone pillars of the balcony on which she stood. But in her own mind she had stepped through the separation of over two years, as one puts one’s foot through a paper screen. Georges was near her, she knew. The back of the balcony, against the glazed windows of the ward, was lined with a kind of fixed garden seat used by the convalescent. One of these convalescents was seated, lying there rather, his attitude expressive more of exasperation than of physical weakness. Before she could analyze or act upon her queer feeling of nearness of Georges, his voice arose from the recumbent figure, in the quakerish simplicity of French intimacy: “It is thou!” was all he said.

She flung down her basket and sunk on the seat beside him. Galvanized into sudden life, he heaved himself up, clutched her in his arms, bent down her face to his. For some time, who can tell how long, neither of them thought of anything, content just to feel the emotions of the moment. Amid these arose the jangle of a bell. It brought Madeleine to her senses at once. It was the arranged signal--five minutes’ warning before the charitable maidens rejoined their lorries. M. Dantrigues’ lady friend had thoughtfully suggested that some of the young women might want to put themselves tidy. Madeleine stood up, telling Georges briefly what was intended. He replied with an army word, intimating how much he cared. She was tender, docile, careful with him, spoiling him every minute.

“Yes, yes, my little one. I know. But it is worth more to arrange where we can meet. Your Mado will wait for you wherever you say!”

It was the pet name he had for her those ages ago in the Kruysabel. At the sound of it, spoken as she spoke, all that lost Peace-time ease arose ghostly before them. He vented his indignation against Fate by picking up her basket and flinging it into the night, where it crashed softly among earth and leaves. The gesture delighted her. It was the old Georges, the real “young master” of first love. She had been terribly frightened by his first greeting, that meek “It is thou!” so unlike him, that he had uttered. He pleased her still more when he went on:

“If that’s your bell, you’d better go. Don’t get caught in this sacred box, whatever you do!”

“Tell me where,” she whispered.

“I’ll find a place and let you know. I must get out of here. If not, I’ll burst myself as I have bursted so many Bosches. Where do you live?”

She told him, pressed a kiss on his lips, and was gone in a flash, quiet, confident, alert. She was herself again.

The journey back to the rendezvous in the lorry was noisy and amusing. A score or two of young women, mainly at the minx stage of unattachment, chattered and squabbled, mimicked and raved. Madeleine sat in a corner unheeding. From the rendezvous home she took no account of time, nor place, could not have said by which street she passed, or at what hour she sat down to the Petit’s supper. They were rather nicer than usual to her that night, feeling perhaps that she was a credit to them--for the charitable fête had been discussed from every possible point of view in that quarter of shabby gentility, and every one in the block of flats knew that the Petits’ lodger had taken part. Madame Petit had seen to that. But Madeleine was not responsive--wrapped herself in a brown study--or was it a golden dream?--and retired early to her room.

* * * * *

The next day she was the same--quiet, polite, but detached, went to the office as usual, returned at the same hour, replied to questions in monosyllables, went to bed early. Monsieur Petit began to have his suspicions--could it be that the young woman had fallen in love (“made a friend” was the expression he used to his wife) at the fête?

The next morning, as they sipped coffee in their several déshabillés, there came a knock on the door. A message! Monsieur Petit, who took it in, handed it to Madeleine through the two inches that she opened her door. He dressed hurriedly, agog with excitement. The hour at which she usually left for the office passed, and she did not appear. Finally, she did leave her room, at nearly ten o’clock, dressed in her best, carrying her hold-all and a hat-box.

“Good-bye,” she said. “I have left everything in order and the week’s money on the dressing-table.”

Monsieur Petit stammered, “But why?”

Madeleine’s eyes gleamed in such a way that he stood aside to let her pass. “Because I am leaving,” she said. “Make my adieux to Madame. She is occupied, I know!”

And the old man stamped with rage as he heard her firm footfall descending the stone stairs. She was going, taking away a secret with her. Almost as well have taken one of the bronze figures of saints or knights on horseback from the dining-room--that would have been no more a robbery than to take away a secret from that little home where bronze statuettes and curiosity about other people’s affairs were the only luxuries.

At the foot of the stairs Madeleine hailed a taxi and gave an address in the northwestern quarter of the city, from the paper in her hand. Then she folded the paper carefully, and replaced it in her hand-bag with her money and little mirror, as the vehicle bounded down the Boulevard St. Michel. Poor Monsieur Petit was not to be allowed to forget her departure. Three days later the postman brought a letter for Madeleine. Monsieur Petit turned it over and over, his fingers itched. Then something in his memory of superannuated government service stirred. He knew what it was, and told his wife, nodding and glaring malignantly.

“I have sent hundreds in my time. It is the dismissal!”

It appeased him somewhat, for naturally he could imagine nothing more fatal than to be dismissed from the service of the government he had served for fifty years, and which paid him his pension in consequence. Retribution indeed had fallen on Madeleine, in Monsieur Petit’s eyes.

* * * * *

Could Monsieur Petit have divined whither Madeleine had flown, could he have followed her, confronted her as he longed to, crying, “See, abandoned girl, cheater of my curiosity, how Fate has overtaken you!” it is doubtful if Madeleine would have bothered even to laugh at him. She sat perfectly upright, swaying with the rocking vehicle, staring at the chauffeur’s back, as she was carried down steep crowded streets, across wide vistas of bridge and quay, square and avenue, up into quiet, almost sinister-quiet, respectable streets. Dismissing and paying her taxi, and watching him out of sight, she shouldered her baggage and found her way along by sign and number to a tall block of small flats, like a hundred other such. She waited a moment, hesitating between dislike of the concierge and equal dislike of becoming conspicuous by standing in the road. Finally, she walked boldly in, disregarding the gaping eyes and mouth that followed her from the basement, mounted to the floor she required, and knocked. She had to repeat her knock more than once before it was answered and the door was left unlocked for her to push open. There was no one in the little vestibule. She dropped her things, and, guided by Georges’ voice, found the bedroom, where Georges, who had pulled the clothes over him again, was cursing the cold floor he had had to tread. That was the real Georges, the man who wanted her without bothering to get up to open the door for her, the man for whom she would have died. She put her arms around his neck, and bent down to him, so that he could have her.

* * * * *

He was very much real Georges that day. He lay in bed until hunger forced him to rise, and then would neither dress nor shave. He was not of that type that lives on the interest of the past, nor hurriedly discounts the future. Nor can it be said that the thought of Lieutenant Skene crossed Madeleine’s mind. Had it done so, she might have reflected how much more she loved this, her spoiled child, than that, her good one. But she, too, was absorbed in the present. She did not even remember the Ministry, whose service she had so peremptorily abandoned.

When the first gladness of reunion was slowing down into the assurance that she really had got him back, and had now only to devise how to keep him--a task she did not feel very difficult--she began to question him, very gently and indirectly, as to his plans. She remonstrated with him on the folly of their being there together, an object of interest to the concierge, still more on his insistence that she should stay there. But he only shouted that he would “burst up” all the concierges, and she had to humor him and promise to stay for the present at least. Not that he threatened to leave her, but that she would not and could not threaten to leave him. At length, in the evening, as he sat in gown and slippers before the fire she had made, at the supper she had fetched and set, while she tidied the room strewn with his things, he began to think of her, asked for her father. He only asked one or two brief questions not being the man to take deep interest in anything outside his own comfort. When she had answered, he just said: “This sacred war!” Nothing else. But Madeleine knew what he meant. There it was, all round and over them, enveloping, threatening, thwarting. No less than he, she rebelled against it, in her decorous woman’s way. But for him she rebelled against it twice over, hated it, made it responsible for his loss of health that was new, and his violence that was habitual--forgave him, on account of it, his carelessness of her--this way in which he wanted to live--the obvious fact that he had had other women in this room. She did not reflect upon her own record, then. But she coaxed him to take supper--she had bought the war-products that were nearest to the hare pâté and spicebread and confiture of old times--gave him a bowl of hot wine and water, as she had many a time that he had found her, he, glowing and triumphant, with a dog at his heels. And sure enough, under the spell of her magic, in that firelit bed-sitting room of the little flat in Paris, there came back, gradually but surely, the Georges of old days. His worn cheeks filled out, his eyes were less sunken, his hand less thin and shaky. He began to hold up his head and hum a tune. She hung near him, watching him, foreseeing not only every need, but every whim. He became almost liberal, expansive. He had fourteen days’ “convalo”--a visit every day to the hospital, which institution would not otherwise bother about him. At the end of that time he would either go back to hospital, or up to the front. He did not care which, he said, smiling. For the first time since she had rediscovered him, he did not call anything sacred, wish to “burst” anyone, or use the expressive, untranslatable verb “foutre.” She cleared away and tidied up and prepared herself for the night, as he sat glancing through the newspapers humming to himself, content, asking nothing. When he felt tired, he just turned out the light, and rolled into the place she had made warm for him.

* * * * *

Days so spent soon pass, nor is there anything more tragic than physical satiety, with its wiping out of what has gone before. Madeleine, not naturally apprehensive, would have gone on had not hard facts pulled her up. Georges had spent his pocket-money on paying the quarter’s rent of their retreat. She had spent hers on food for him and herself. No bohemian, she began to take counsel with herself as to how to obtain fresh supplies. One source of funds she dismissed at once. She would not ask Georges for a penny. That would have seemed outrageous to her. She did not attempt it. She had a handsome sum in the Savings Bank at Hazebrouck. But how get it? She did not want to write to Monsieur Blanquart or to Marie. Even if they could have withdrawn it for her (and the difficulties of such a step she did not clearly foresee), they would both of them have found out sooner or later something about Georges. And that she would not have for all the world. Her father she could trust, but she also knew his ingrained habits regarding money, his incapacity for reading and writing. A letter would simply stupefy him. If he got some one to read it to him, he would simply be stupefied the more. His Madeleine spending her savings? Never! He would do nothing. Should she, then, go by train and get the money? There would be endless difficulties in getting authority to journey into the British Military Zone--but the great difficulty to her mind, the insurmountable one, was to leave Georges for two days. She was nonplussed.

Just then it happened that Georges, turning towards her in one of his more expansive moments, said, in his spoiled way: “My God, how I want you!”

Occupied fully with him at the moment, her mind retained the words, her memory searching for the last occasion on which she had heard them. Georges went out to his club that morning, leaving her sewing, washing, doing a hundred and one jobs in her thorough housekeeper’s way. She sat brooding, almost waiting for some stroke of luck to help her with her difficulty. Suddenly she remembered who it was that last used that phrase--Lieutenant Skene. She sat down at once and wrote to him. She had no scruples. All the English were rich. This one had no outlet for his money. She had been worth it. The reply came in three days, to the post-office address she had given. It brought a hundred francs. They lasted a week, and few people could have made them last more, save that Georges only came in to supper now. He was getting restless, smelled of drink. She wrote again to Skene. No reply came. Instead there came the end of the fortnight of Georges’ “convalo.” That day she sat alone waiting for two things, a letter bringing money, or Georges bringing fatal news. Either he was not well enough to go back to the front, so that his state must indeed be serious, or he was well enough, which was even worse. She dared not ask him; he vouchsafed nothing, seemed well enough, but restless. She, meanwhile, for the first time in her life was feeling really ill. She had never met before with this particular cruelty of Fate, resented it, but only felt worse. Perhaps the town life had sapped her vitality. Perhaps Georges had brought home from his hospital, on his clothes, in his breath, the germ of some war fever. The following day Georges was excited, and talked loud and long when he came back from the club. Her head felt so strange she did not understand.

* * * * *

Perhaps it was as well she did not. Georges had been granted another fortnight “convalo,” but it was not that. It was the news of the battle of Vimy that excited him. The English, of whom he was good-humoredly jealous, had taken that battered ridge, disputed for years. There was talk of eleven thousand prisoners and a quantity of guns. He had missed being “in it.” But with the news came rumor more important still. The French were preparing a great offensive in Champagne. He would not miss that one, sacred name, not he! The spirit of that period of the war, the spirit of “On Les Aura” burned in his veins like fire. As he strode and shouted about the room, cursing his “convalo” that, a week ago was all he desired, because now it prevented his being in the show.