No Hero-This

by Warwick Deeping

“Well, I’m going to look around. My dear old skeleton——”

  I want to remind Carless that we are not in a dug-out or a cellar, but Fairfax does it for me.

  “We are guests of a very charming family, Carless. Let’s rest our war language. It’s a little out of place here.”

  Carless looks hurt and sulky, but so rarely does Fairfax use his authority in the mess, that when he does so, the effect is paternal and complete.

  * * *

  The Americans do not arrive for a week. Their Divisional Headquarters are to be established at Beauchamp, about a mile and a half away, and their battalions will be dispersed over a considerable area. Apparently, Le Mesnil is to remain ours, and it seems so pleasantly ours that I am glad.

  * * *

  Every time I leave my billet or return to it I have to pass through the parlour-kitchen, with its stove and its spotless tiled floor and supremely simple furniture. I feel that I ought to apologize to these Frenchwomen for invading the curiously intimate yet secret atmosphere of this room. Often, madame is there alone, cooking or sewing, for I understand that the girls, like so many other Frenchwomen, are working on the farm. I am less afraid of Madame Victoire than the girls, and one afternoon I stop to ask her whether Finch is making himself a nuisance. He comes in to clean my boots, and bring me my early tea, and he is supposed to make my bed, but after that he has no business here.

  Madame assures me that Finch is quite bon garçon. I hesitate, and she asks me to sit down.

  I sit down. My French is adequately fluent, if not very academic, and Madame and I chat. She tells me that she is a widow, and that Jean, her son, is at the war, as also is Gabrielle’s fiancé. Which is Gabrielle?

  “Is that your elder daughter, madame?”

  It is. Madame confesses that Gabrielle is temperamental, and that she worries excessively over the war and her Louis; no doubt that explains her moodiness, and her unfriendliness to an ally whose army is in disgrace. I say that the war has been a terrible ordeal for France, but now that the Americans are arriving the Boches will never come to Le Mesnil. I am conscious of wanting to discover the name of La Petite, and whether she, too, is fiancée.

  “Has your son been wounded, madame?”

  “Yes, at Verdun. And Gabrielle’s Louis was wounded on the Chemin des Dames. He is in the artillery. And has monsieur been wounded?”

  I have to say no, and I feel rather ashamed of it.

  “That is a blessing. Monsieur is married, I believe?”

  So, they have been looking at my photos! Yes, I have a wife and a small daughter in England.

  Madame beams upon me. She appears to be regarding me with more confidence.

  “It is very worrying for the women, monsieur. I am glad, in a way, that Pauline has no fiancé yet.”

  So that is her name. I am moved to be a little more personal.

  “I hope your daughters do not resent my being here?”

  This seems to amuse madame. But why? She tells me that they all are glad to have a senior officer, a commandant, in the house, and that I do not disturb them in the least. I am not quite sure whether my respectable innocuousness pleases me.

  * * *

  I happen to overhear a family conversation. I am in my room with the door open.

  A voice says, “Monsieur le Commandant est très gentil.”

  Another voice adds, “Mais, très timide.”

  Timide! I feel a little hot over that word, and I pick up my dictionary and turn the word up. It may be translated as bashful or shy!

  Do they expect me to be a kind of Carless? Carless, whose philosophy of sex is so candid and elemental. He is always arguing that purity, so called, is utter humbug, a convention imposed upon the young by nasty old men who hate to think of all the world enjoying happy sinning. He says that when a man plays the noble fellow and talks about love transcending lust, he is just a funk.

  The news is not encouraging. We appear to be having a sticky time up in the north after the rout of the Portuguese. The Boches are in Merville. That means that Le Hameau farm has been overrun and done to death. I am sorry.

  * * *

  Mademoiselle Pauline is a stately little person. It is extraordinary how much stateliness can be concentrated in a figure less than five feet high. What is more, even in her working-clothes, and wheeling a wheelbarrow up the street, she remains a creature of compact dignity. I go to open the yard gates for her, and offer to relieve her of the wheelbarrow.

  I am repulsed. She thanks me, but assures me that the war has accustomed her to such work.

  From my window I can see her hoeing in the garden. She wears leather gloves and a kind of sunbonnet. I gather that she milks the two cows. This little farm is carried on by these two girls, an old man and a hunchbacked boy.

  * * *

  This marvellous, radiant weather shows no signs of breaking. Lilacs are out, and a red thorn, and in the early morning I can hear the birds singing in the Bois l’Abbaye. The orchards are still a smother of blossom, and the beech trees like columns of green smoke.

  These French girls work hard, but in the evening they appear like ladies of leisure in their black dresses and flowered aprons, with hair sleek and glossy. La Petite is rather fond of a little pair of heelless slippers in which she shuffles over the tiled floors. I happen to glance at these slippers one morning as I pass through, and I am aware of her somehow resenting my scrutiny. But why? They are such seductive yet innocent little slippers, but from that moment they disappear. Miss Pauline trips about in neat black boots.

  * * *

  A tragedy! I come back from the château after tea to write letters home, and find Madame and La Petite in the parlour-kitchen. There is a bowl of water on the table, and one of La Petite’s hands is being held over it, and Madame is sponging a finger with a wad of wool. There is blood in the bowl. Gabrielle is being temperamental in a corner, huddled up on a chair, as though blood suggested death and horror.

  What has happened? La Petite has cut her finger while attempting to sharpen a sickle. It is a nasty gash, and I become professional. I hold her wrist gently and examine the cut. I say that this is my affair, and that I will go and procure proper dressings and bind up her finger. She looks up at me with peculiar, intent seriousness, like a child.

  “Is it necessary, monsieur?”

  “Absolutely. Such things must not be neglected.”

  I walk back to the château and get what I require—gauze, lint, wool and a bandage from our Sergeant Dispenser. When I return La Petite is sitting in a chair, still holding her hand over the basin. The bleeding has stopped, but she looks intensely pale. I ask her if she feels faint.

  “No, monsieur.”

  Gabrielle has disappeared, but madame comes in and watches me dress La Petite’s finger. I ask her if I am hurting her. Her eyes float up to mine.

  “No, monsieur.”

  Madame remarks that I am very skilful, and that I must have succoured many poor wounded. I say that it is my job, and that so far as I can see it is the only merciful business in this ghastly war. Madame nods her head, and asks me whether doctors have to dress the wounded under shell-fire. I say yes. As I am tying off the bandage round La Petite’s wrist, I am aware of her eyes fixed upon something. She is looking at the piece of ribbon on my tunic.

  It is madame who asks the question.

  “Monsieur has a decoration?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like our Croix de Guerre?”

  “We call it the Military Cross.”

  “Given for some brave act, monsieur?”

  I smile at madame.

  “Yes; because I was too frightened to run away.”

  I am aware of La Petite’s eyes looking up at me. There is an enigmatic something in them, a kind of profound and intent questioning of my secret self and of some quality in our mutual self-consciousness. I stare into her eyes for a moment, and then give her hand a pat, and turn away.

  Gabrielle is standing in the doorway, with a crooked f
inger on her lip, watching us with a kind of farouche, tragic curiosity. A little shiver seems to go through me. Why is that dark and passionate young woman looking at us so strangely?

  * * *

  Carless has discovered my billet.

  Coming back to change into slacks for dinner, I discover Carless leaning over the green fence of No. 6. Damn the man! I suppose he has spied out the land, and has strolled up the rue de Bois l’Abbaye to play the part of fascinator. I could lay my cane across our Don Juan’s backside. I can see the Malaunays in their garden, and as I come nearer I get the impression that Carless’s budding amorousness has been subjected to a late frost. Madame Victoire and Gabrielle are knitting; La Petite has a newspaper on her knees. She is reading out some pieces of news to the others. The three faces appear to be maintaining a deliberate blindness towards this man leaning over the fence.

  Carless taps the bars with his cane. He has a little, whimsical smirk on his face. I hear him say, “Que dit le journal, m’amselle?” I see Pauline look at him for a moment, close her lips firmly, and then go on reading.

  Carless hears my footsteps, turns quickly, and assumes surprise.

  “Hallo, daddy! I just blew along to see if you were in your billet.”

  I open the gate, and salute the Malaunays. Madame smiles at me. The two girls look at neither of us.

  “Just going to change.”

  Carless follows me in. He is the sort of person whose sensibilities have to be stimulated with a curry-comb for any reaction to be produced. He saunters up into my room after me and sits down on my bed.

  “Frosty bits, those two wenches. I’d like to cuddle the little fair one.”

  “Would you?”

  “Prosaic old thing, you are, daddy. Haven’t you noticed what a throat and a bosom she’s got on her?”

  Perhaps I am a little afraid of showing my face to Carless. I am sitting in a chair, bending down and unlacing my field-boots. Something blazes in me. I want to tell him that he is a vulgar, silly beast, but Carless might only laugh, and make the obvious retort.

  I say, “I expect you know a good deal more about women than I do.”

  He slaps his leg with his cane.

  “Well, I’ve had some experience. Say, daddy, is there another bedroom here? I’d like to move in. I bet you I’d cuddle that little fair bit in a week.”

  I have one boot off, and my impulse is to throw it in Carless’s complacent, fornicating face. But I sit up straight in my chair and look at him.

  “You are a rather filthy sort of beast, Carless. Can’t you ever see any beauty in things? It seems to me you know only one sort of woman.”

  He is a little taken aback for a moment. His eyes are half shut. Then he slaps his leg, and lets out a laugh.

  “You are funny, daddy. Feeling paternal, what?”

  I bend down and take off my other boot, for I know that my face must be betraying my anger.

  “I’d keep away from here if I were you, Carless, or you’ll get snubbed. These girls aren’t——”

  Again I hear him laugh and slap his leg.

  “You have had a week’s start of me, you old devil.”

  I lay the second boot carefully aside. The urge to fling it in his face is almost too strong.

  “Oh, all right. Try the Juan game, my lad. I’ll bet you a new pair of breeches, the sort you cultivate, that you’ll be put in your proper place.”

  “Righto, daddy. You sentimental people never get up the stairs.”

  * * *

  My God, am I in love with this child? Yes, I know now that I am. But I am in love with her as one falls in love with beautiful things, the spring, the singing of birds, the apple blossom, trees in young leaf. It is all part of this exquisite spring, this sweet season after a winter of mud and of fear and of squalor. It is like drinking wine, and not expecting to be warmed by it.

  I go and look at my wife’s photo, and I know that I love both these women, if a little differently. My love for Mary is part and parcel of my life, like the soil out of which all one’s good urges grow, and somehow this spring madness makes me feel more tender towards her. Would she understand? Perhaps? We men have been so starved of all life’s more beautiful and gentle satisfactions that this spring can be a sort of intoxication.

  But I am not a Carless.

  I say that to myself, and instantly I am challenged by Carless’s sexual realism. All this is mere sublimation, a romantic and sentimental prevarication, mere muslin in which one drapes an illusion and calls it sacred love. I seem to hear Carless’s laugh, and his voice saying, “What you really want is the girl’s body, and if you weren’t a humbug you would do your best to seduce her. Also, my dear, nine women out of ten ask to be seduced. All this virtue business is just a chemise, and modesty covers itself just to provoke the exposure. You romantic asses make women loathe you in secret. They get nothing but highfalutin from you, just when they are dying to be tumbled on the bed.”

  Damn Carless! Yet, I know that the sensuous part of me desires Pauline, to possess her utterly and completely, to drink with her the cup of red wine to its dregs. Dregs! Yes, that is where the world’s Carlesses are cheated of that which transcends mere cellular satisfaction. Surely man is more conscious than the beasts, and that his significance rests in the spiritualizing of his consciousness. Do all women desire to be regarded as mere ewes? I do not believe it. Surely, the essential and exquisite dreamer in woman should ask for the lover rather than the butcher in man? An exquisite memory can be more precious and lasting than the ghost of a greed that slinks off satisfied? If a woman has in her to understand that which a man feels for her, and that which he denies himself, she will know that a love that lacks restraint and compassion is mere gross selfishness.

  But this Carless business must be thrown out into the street. I am not going to have him sniffing outside these railings. I go down, carry out a chair, and ask if I may join the family circle. Madame nods and smiles. La Petite does not look at me.

  I ask her what the news is in the French paper she has been reading.

  “Oh, about the war, monsieur, and the Americans.”

  “Any good news?”

  “Only that the Americans arrive.”

  I pretend to be piqued, and she looks at me suddenly.

  “Does not monsieur understand how we French feel?”

  My eyes hold hers for a moment.

  “Of course I do. Do you think I wish to see Le Mesnil in ruins?”

  She gives me the paper to read, but I confess that some of the French is beyond me. She moves her chair nearer to mine, and pointing with a twig of a finger, translates for me. We are very close, and I love her.

  I come back late in the dusk, and I find Carless in my chair. His cap lies on the grass and he is smoking a cigarette, and looking whimsical. The atmosphere strikes me as tense and chilly. La Petite has moved her chair a little way from the others. As I reach the gate Carless gets up and replaces his chair nearer to Pauline’s.

  “Hallo, daddy. Heard from the wife to-day? And how is la petite enfant?”

  So that is his idea of strategy? I am married, and nearly forty, and have a small daughter. I feel like taking him by the ear, and removing him.

  He smirks at me.

  “Come on; there’s room for everybody. Squattez vous.”

  I am suddenly aware of Pauline getting up on her small feet, and walking deliberately towards the house. In the dusk her hair and her face seem of the same exquisite pallor, like pure wax.

  Carless jerks round.

  “I say, m’amselle, it’s too early to couchez.”

  She pauses by the door, and makes the most unexpected of replies.

  “I like to say my prayers, monsieur.”

  I divine a sudden deflation in Carless. Prayers! He giggles, and turns to Gabrielle.

  “I say, that’s marvellous. Do you say prayers, too, m’amselle?”

  Gabrielle looks at him fiercely.

  “Yes, sometimes, for my brother
, and for someone else.”

  Carless reaches for his cap, puts it on, stands up and gives a kind of waggle to his trousers.

  “Well, I’d better be getting out my little prayer book, too. Nighty-night, daddy. Bon soir, madame.”

  Mother and daughter reply with perfect politeness.

  “Bon soir, monsieur.”

  Carless swaggers out, and goes off down the street whistling “Roses in Picardy.” Damn him, why whistle that? I sit down in the chair that was Pauline’s.

  Madame says that my friend is something of a flaneur. I say rather irritably that he is not my friend, nor is he the kind of friend I would wish them to have.

  Gabrielle looks at me sharply in the dusk.

  “If monsieur understands that, it is well.”

  I become aware of a movement, a presence. Pauline has come back. I get up quickly and give her her chair.

  XXIV

  The Americans.

  I think we are not a little jealous of these men from across the Atlantic, for, perhaps we feel that the last dramatic act of the war will find them filling the stage. We are rather like the hero who has set out to rescue the princess from the dragon, and found that beast too potent and strong for us, and all the killing and the glory will go to this other knight. Yet, when one considers it, their coming into this war from the great distances of all those States is a wonderful and a singular adventure, and perhaps more splendid and unselfish than ours. We are more wise now as to the inevitableness of our intervention. It was not Belgium alone, but our secret fear of the wild beast that forced us into this fight. I cannot see that America had any such peril to persuade her. Whatever history may say about it, to me it is one of the most splendid and superlative things that has happened since the first Crusade.

  One of their battalions is to march into Beauchamp, and our Brigadier, and a platoon, or rather the training cadre of one of our battalions, are to receive them. Fairfax and I decide to go and see the show, and we ride over and, leaving our horses with two grooms, take up a position near the church. The whole neighbourhood appears to have swarmed into this small town. The French have put on their Sunday clothes, and an excitement that is big with emotion.