“Be silent!” cried M. Schmoll. “Be silent! I am ashamed of you.”
The officer re-entered.
“Have you decided?”
“I am at your orders,” murmured M. Hermann.
“The sooner the better! Get your hat and let’s go. You know the road?”
“Very well.”
“You will serve us then as a guide. Let us get under way—and quickly.”
M. Schmoll stammered:
“Wretch! Wretch!”
The officer pushed him into the street.
“You, Mayor, come with us!”
M. Hermann exchanged his slippers for heavy shoes, drew on his cloak, locked his cash drawer, put up the shop shutters, extinguished the lamp, and followed the others out.
In the Place four companies were assembled. They put M. Schmoll between two men and the troop set out, M. Hermann leading. M. Schmoll tried to escape. They pushed him back into the ranks with the butts of their rifles. He cried aloud, pointing to M. Hermann:
“Look at the traitor! Vive la France!”
Leaving the village, they followed the national road. Then they took a road leading across the fields. Some distance away, to the left, a bridge crossed the river. But M. Hermann showed them a ford, over which the whole troop passed, scarcely wetting themselves.
“My faith!” exclaimed the officer. “We have gained almost four good kilometers. At this rate we ought to fall on their rear guard before daylight.”
The night was so black that one could hardly see three feet ahead of him. Each time in the course of the march that they came near together M. Schmoll hissed at the dark figure of the guide:
“Boche! Prussian!”
At first M. Hermann simply shrugged his shoulders. Finally, becoming annoyed, he asked the soldiers to put a handkerchief over the mayor’s mouth.
After having marched a good hour they entered a wood. At a junction where three roads crossed M. Hermann said:
“One second, so that I am sure I don’t make a mistake. In the daylight I should have no trouble, but in pitchy blackness like this!”
They advanced very carefully. The company to the rear, which had not preserved its distance, pushed against the company preceding it. The company in the lead had almost come to a halt. The column was thrown into confusion. M. Schmoll found himself against M. Hermann. The trees were so tangled that the troops could neither advance nor retire.
In the semi-panic M. Hermann gave a command in an undertone to M. Schmoll:
“Lie down! For God’s sake, lie down!”
Then, turning about and waving his hat, he shouted at the top of his voice:
“Chasseurs of the 10th! I have brought them to you! Fire into their ranks!”
At the Movies
IN SIMPLE little phrases, such as one uses who has repeated the same thing over and over again, the woman in mourning was telling her story to a neighbor during the intermission at the moving picture show. In these war times one makes acquaintances very easily. Any one individual’s sufferings are but a part and parcel of the sufferings of the community at large.
“Yes, madam, I lost my husband two years ago—my husband that was to be, the father of my little boy. We were to be married in the autumn. He was killed at once—at the very beginning of the war.”
“If he had to go, it was better that he shouldn’t have suffered the hardships of the trenches for a couple of years.”
“Perhaps, yes; perhaps, no. For, at least, we should have seen him again, and he would have written. While this way— My little son here, who is nearly seven years old—he hardly remembers his father. Think of it! My husband was mobilized among the very first. He was not yet twenty-six. Already for eight days he had told me: ‘It will be war. You will see.’ But, like so many others, I wouldn’t believe it.
“One evening, returning from his office, he said to me: ‘It has come. I am off tonight.’ I wanted to make him up a bundle of clothing, with some linen. But he wouldn’t wait. He scarcely listened to me. At such a time one could almost believe that nothing counts any longer with a man! I had just put the little one to bed. He kissed the boy, he kissed me and then he made for the street on the run. In the street he turned to wave me a goodbye and then jumped into a cab. It was the 31st of July. Since then I have heard no news of him. Without doubt he was killed in one of the first battles. I know neither where, nor how, nor even whether they were able to find and bury him. Not one thing.”
“Perhaps he is a prisoner! How can anybody tell? I have known persons who have gotten news after many months.”
“Oh! I no longer have any hope. It is more than two years, remember. Well, that was to be my fate. At any rate, I have my little boy; he helps me to live. Poor little fellow! A childhood like his is not very cheerful. To see always about the house a sad figure, with reddened eyes! Until recently I didn’t care to go out. Then I decided to take him to the picture shows in order to amuse him. The picture show is not like the theatre. One can go to it, even if one is in mourning.”
The electric bell sounded. The people took their places again. A soldier passed by. He wore a military medal, the Croix de Guerre. The child, leaning over to his mother, asked:
“Is he like that, my papa?”
She stroked his hair softly.
“Yes, my dear.”
“With medals like that, too?”
For a child a brave soldier ought always to have medals. The mother answered:
“Yes, dear.”
With his head turned, his hand in his mother’s hand, the child gazed eagerly at the soldier.
The lights went out and a picture title appeared on the screen.
“The War in 1914.”
“Are we going to see the war?” asked the child.
“Yes, my dear. Look.”
At first streets were shown—a chaos of half-demolished houses, beams smashed, walls shattered, a mass of black ruins almost without form.
“What is that?” asked the child.
“A village.”
“That a village? There is nothing there.”
But a dog ran about among the ruins, and a little boy also, who stumbled over the stones. Then came a wide plain. The shells had dug enormous holes in it and along the road as far as the eye could reach—even to the horizon, where heavy clouds of smoke gathered and then dissolved—one could see only the big trees, razed almost to the ground, tumbled right and left among the fields. On the trunks, already dead, some leaves still fluttered in the wind.
“And that? What is that?” asked the child.
“The country, my dear.”
“Is that the country? There is nothing there.”
“It was beautiful once,” said the mother, trembling. “The Germans have destroyed everything.”
The boy gave a sidelong glance at the soldier.
But already, in another film, troops defiled. In a heavy rain cavalrymen trotted along the roads bordered by ruins, field artillery guns were dragged at a gallop, jolting, rolling, plunging into and rising out of the ruts. In passing one saw the artillerymen laugh and the officers lift their arms, turning in their saddles.
“What is that?” asked the boy.
“The pursuit, my dear,” murmured the mother, pressing him close against her.
“Are they running after the Boches to capture them?”
“Yes, my dear.”
And behind the cavalrymen appeared the infantrymen, spattered with mud, their shoulders sagging under their heavy packs.
“Are they going to fight?” the child asked.
“Yes, dear.”
To her all the soldiers were like her poor, missing husband. In their ranks, under each helmet, in each movement, it was he whom she saw. And the little fellow, more collected, more grave, asked in an almost inaudible voice:
“Was papa like that?”
Then when all—artillerymen, cavalrymen and infantrymen— had passed, a long file of prisoners appeared. One saw them first fleeing unde
r the fire of their own cannon to our lines, then in the camps, then in huddled groups about the coffee kettles. Some were very young and others were old; some with stupefied faces and a melancholy bearing, others with an air of insolence. Still others lay on the ground, a miry horde, conquered, disarmed. The mother sighed.
“See them. Look at them well, my son. They are Boches.”
And the film unrolled their story. They were neither presentable nor brilliant. They were no longer swaggerers. Famished, gesticulating, jostling one another, they crowded about a French soldier, who was distributing rations, and as they got their allowance they scattered to eat it, shamefacedly and apart.
“Are they soldiers?” asked the child.
But the mother was weeping too much to answer.
Suddenly among those downcast figures a bestial and joyous figure appeared. He was a clean-shaven trooper, his cap over his ear, who, in the face of the public, alone on the screen, cynically, his eyes batted, his cheeks protruding, consumed with huge bites his piece of bread.
“Oh, mama,” said the child. “Mama, see how ugly that one is.”
And the mother, having looked up through her tears, gave a cry—a terrible, heartrending cry.
For that German glutton, that man who laughed at the hate of a whole hallful of people, was her husband—her husband, who, she believed, had died in our ranks.
The Little Soldier
SHE LISTENED, her elbow on the table, her chin in her hands. While he spoke he gazed at her with eager eyes—the eyes of amorous youth. He was telling her the story of his life—of his brief memories of boyhood, of college, the ending of his studies; the war, his ardent desire to fight, his mother’s fears and, finally, his dream of fighting realized.
She interrupted him:
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen years.”
She smiled and laid her finger on the narrow ribbon which he wore on his coat.
“What is this?”
“That is the emblem of those wounded in battle.”
“Have you been wounded?”
“Yes,” he answered, without attaching any importance to it.
Moved by the thought of this mere boy stricken down, lying in a ditch, she murmured, with an air of almost maternal interest and concern:
“Poor little fellow! And when were you wounded?”
“At the Marne.”
“Was it a serious wound?”
He answered negligently, pointing to his breast:
“A piece of shell went through there.”
And as she insisted, anxious to have all the details, he told her what he knew about the war: The hard retreat; the triple daily marches to the rear; then the advance, the roads encumbered with wreckage and bodies, the trees uprooted; the men struggling against fatigue and sleep and able to see nothing ahead of them but a dead plain and a gray horizon; the sudden thunder of the artillery; the blow which one never sees or knows of, but which strikes one to the ground; then the awakening to consciousness at a relief station, removal to a distant hospital, long months of rest under a gracious sky, convalescence and, finally, the furlough home.
She took one of his hands in hers and repeated:
“Poor little fellow! And will you return to the front?”
“I hope to.”
They got up. The wood, this springtime night, was filled with shadows and perfumes. She walked along, leaning on his arm, stroking with her ungloved hand the rude cloth of his cloak. At moments, when the moon shone on them from between the trees, she glanced admiringly at his delicate little figure, his shining eyes and his beardless cheeks. He scarcely spoke now, forgetting the war, surrendering himself to the tenderness of the moment, seeking words and promises, but finding only soft pressures and sighs with which to express the feelings of his heart.
Then suddenly the sky became black, the trees tossed, the wind bent the small ones double and whistled among the great oaks with a noise like bullets. She said:
“A storm is coming. We must hurry home.”
“Why? It is so pleasant here.”
In fact, they were happy there, in spite of the storm—happy to be alone in the wood, so alone that the wood seemed to belong to them. She smiled as they made a little detour from the main path.
“If I were not with a soldier I should be afraid.”
These words filled him with pride and he pressed her arm softly. Then the rain began to fall, and they sought shelter under some trees. With her thin dress and her light taffeta mantle she could not help trembling. They thought that they were sheltered, but the drops reached them gradually and then the shower turned into a steady downpour. He expressed concern about her being so lightly clothed. She answered:
“That is nothing. But how about you?”
“Me? I have been in worse storms than this.”
She excused herself for having asked him such a question.
“It was foolish, of course. You are a soldier.”
Time passed. The rain beat through their leafy covering. The far-off street lamps seemed enveloped in a watery haze. No conveyances were in sight.
“We must go home, all the same,” she said.
“You are right,” he replied. “But you cannot walk through the rain this way. You are already drenched. You are cold. It is dark. Nobody will see you. I am going to put my cloak over your shoulders.”
She refused.
“And how about yourself ?”
“Nonsense. Let me do it, please.”
He unbuttoned his cloak and softly laid it over her. This time it was he who was maternal in manner. They hurried along, smiling, through the rain, but each one worried about the other.
“Are you all right?”
“All right. And you? Aren’t you cold?”
“Not at all.”
“I should never forgive myself if you were taken ill again.”
At a roadhouse they found a carriage. As he shivered a little she put her hand on his jacket.
“You are wet through.”
“It is nothing at all.”
“When you get home you must change your clothes at once.”
“I promise you that I will.”
She heard his teeth chatter.
“I am heartbroken. If you should fall ill—”
“But you didn’t catch cold; that was the only important thing.”
He thought of nothing else than of gazing at her, of cuddling up against her, stroking affectionately the big cloak which for a few minutes had sheltered her. On parting with him she said:
“Above all, let me hear from you soon.”
Then he kissed her hand and let her enter her house.
A week went by without her hearing anything from him. She did not dare to go herself and inquire about him. One day she passed by the house in which he lived. They had put straw in the street. That evening she decided to telephone.
They told her that the little soldier was ill—in fact, very ill. And one morning she received a letter, the envelope bordered in black. He was dead. Stupefied, she read and re-read that frightful line:
“Jean Louis Verrier, corporal of the 7th Infantry.”
Her little soldier! Her poor little soldier! She followed the funeral procession, her eyes fixed on the hearse, which went jolting along draped with a tri-color bunting and with the blue cloak with which he had covered her.
Afterward a desire to know something more about this poor youth, of whom she really knew so little, led her to pass again by the house in which he had lived. Some men had just removed the furnishings. She approached the janitress and said to her:
“My God, but he went quickly.”
“Alas!” sighed the good woman. “They had little hope that he would pull through.”
“It was his wound, I suppose?”
“Oh! his wound—that would never have carried him off. That would have healed. But he had weak lungs. In spite of that, they could never prevent him from taking risks. All those fatigues, all thos
e hardships—they were too much for him. He got pneumonia. He was passed along for six months from one hospital to another, refusing always to be mustered out. They thought that he was better. He must have committed some imprudence. He got pneumonia again, and that finished him.”
She answered:
“Thank you, madame.”
And thinking of the spirit of that adolescent, who had marched toward death for a beautiful ideal, and then, for the simple joy of being gallant toward a woman, had carried with him to the tomb no other trophies than a piece of ribbon and a woman’s smile, she sighed:
“He was a man.”
The Great Scene
AVOICE mounted from the depths of the obscurity in which the main floor of the theatre was left, despite the glare of the six dusty stage lamps.
“That’s not the way, Monsieur Fanjard. Won’t you do it over again?”
Fanjard, who had been perched on a chair, which represented the staircase of a château, jumped down and made his way to the front of the stage. Respectfully, yet not without a certain hauteur—his foot on the prompter’s cubbyhole, his elbow on his knee and his hand held to his ear like an ear trumpet—he asked:
“What is it, monsieur?”
The author called back at the top of his voice, as if making head against a tumult:
“I should like to have in that passage more ardor, more passion, more grief. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” answered Fanjard, with a bow.
The author would have been glad to elaborate his meaning. But Fanjard, having already returned to his chair staircase and said to his comrades, “Let us do it over, my friends,” played the climax of the scene again just as he had played it before.
“That’s not right yet! That’s not right yet!” cried the author. “You are on the first step. Mlle. Ravignan lifts her arms toward you. You stop her with a gesture. ‘What is it?’ A silence, you understand, mademoiselle? A silence, a simple silence! You, Monsieur Fanjard, you ask her, almost in a whisper: ‘Your brother? My son?’ You bow your head, mademoiselle. That is enough. He has understood you. Then you, Monsieur Fanjard, you utter a cry, a harrowing cry; all the rest of the scene is only a sob. You see what I want. Let’s try it again!”
Thirty Hours with a Corpse Page 17
