Read Ebook: A Village in Picardy by Gaines Ruth Neilson William Allan Author Of Introduction Etc Poulbot Francisque Illustrator

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From this extreme end of the village, by the Calvary, the street continues across the railroad track. Here, on almost any day, children may be seen digging miniature coal mines. They do it not in play, but in earnest. The ties which the Germans left have long since been used as fuel, but in the roadbed the villager still finds a scant supply of coal. Beyond the track, the first habitable building is a barn. Its interior consists of one room, earthen-floored where two makeshift beds allow it to be seen. In one corner stands a small stove. No light enters except from the open door. Here lodge the old mother, the married daughter, two children, a girl of seventeen and a boy of eleven, and their orphaned cousin, four-year-old No?l. Lydie, capable, red-cheeked, crisp-haired, welcomes us and pulls forward a bench. "Be seated, please." Her voice has a ring of youth, her mouth a ready smile. One wonders how it can be, yet it is so. The grandmother complains querulously from the untidy bed where she is lying to keep warm. Lydie tells us with perfect equanimity that she herself has no bed. Where does she sleep? On the bench. Beds would be welcome, yes, and sheets and blankets. The grandmother adds a request for warm slippers; her feet are so often cold. A pane of glass for the door I set down also in the list in my notebook, and as assets--the furniture being negligible--300 kilos of cabbages, 100 kilos of potatoes, leeks and chicory in smaller quantities.

Beyond the Moroys, lives Mme. Thuillard, Charles, as the neighbours call her to distinguish her from the Thuillards, O. I have seldom found this energetic lady at home, but I often see her, and sometimes hear her, as she passes with firm step down the street to work in her garden. When not playing, her ten-year-old granddaughter Or?lie follows in her wake. This leaves in the unlighted recesses of the barn, her husband, M. Charles. He seems an apologetic and conciliatory soul, with whom I discuss domestic needs, such as a window, a lamp, and sheets for the beds. He will tell his wife what I say and report to-morrow when he comes for the milk. It is in his entrance-way, so to speak, that I first noticed a pile of willow-withed market baskets. "O, yes," he said, "I had hundreds of such, but the Boches took them." "Are they then made hereabouts?" "Before the war; but now no one is left who understands the trade." The next day I am likely to get a report, and a sharp one, from Madame, his wife. "Sheets," she queries, "what sort of sheets? Are they linen sheets? Blankets. Are they wool? Are they white? Look you, before the war, I had five dozen linen sheets and plenty of blankets and down quilts of the finest quality. Keep your gifts about which you make so much talk! I will have none of them, none of them at all!"

Chiefly from the neighbours, I learned that M. Augustin was a widower, that he had been the village cobbler, and that he preferred to live alone. Now, we had shoe-making tools among our stores, so one day I asked him if he would not like some. "No, Mademoiselle, I thank you," he replied. "My eyes are no longer clear; I cannot see well." I was more successful with other suggestions, however. A little nest of dishes pleased him greatly; a new stove was installed, and a bed, and what was perhaps even more greatly appreciated, a lamp. The evidence of his appreciation took the form of whitewash on walls and ceiling; the cobwebs vanished from the windows; and a shelf appeared for the dishes behind the stove. It may be that M. Augustin will now be more content with his own fireside, and less drawn to visit the wineshops of Ham and Nesle.

Another sprightly old gentleman was M. Touret. His quarters were more spacious than those of his neighbour, for he lived in a barn. Overhead, hay piled from eaves to roof-tree helped to keep out the cold, and there was one window. As he himself said when asked if he wanted anything: "What would you? I am warm; I have a chair, a stove and a bed. If the young people were here--perhaps. But we who are old, we shall not live long, we have enough." M. Touret, however, did not live alone. The mother of his son's wife had taken pity on him after the Germans deported his two sons and their families, and had invited him to share her barn. There were three housed there altogether, for with them lived her son. M. Touret was oftenest found on a bench between the window and the stove, poring through his spectacles over the daily paper. Mme. Clara was usually busy with some savoury cooking, and M. Albert on the occasion of my first visit held the centre of the floor with saw-horse and axe. A chair was offered at once, and we all sat down to talk. M. Touret, however, kept glancing at his paper, or regarded us over the rims of his spectacles. Presently he broke in: "As for you, I do not know what you may be, but as for me, I am a Christian." In the midst of a conversation about fodder and furniture, the effect was arresting, until one realised from his point of view the strangeness of our position. What, he must have queried, are these young American women doing here? We were certainly different from the French ladies of family who nursed the soldiers, or took over whole communities to house and feed. French women would never have walked as we did, muddy-shoed and knapsacked, alone over the fields. They might have been more understanding, at least their ways would have been more conventional and better understood.

In fact, on another occasion M. Touret asked me why I had come to France. "Monsieur, my father was a soldier; I cannot fight, but in this war I, too, want to help." "Your father was a soldier? Ah yes, that would be in the Civil War, in '64--I remember it well. And what rank did he hold? Was he a general?" "But no, Monsieur; only a common soldier." "A common soldier?" He thought a moment. "But not like ours, because in America you are not a military nation, and depend on volunteers." My face must have expressed astonishment. "Look you, Mademoiselle; before the war it was my habit to read. I read every year as many as two hundred volumes. I had a large library in a cabinet. The Germans burned my books." He rose, picked up something from a bench behind the stove and handed it to me. It proved to be a charred and mildewed copy of a history; the history of England in the time of Henry the Eighth. Mutilated as it was, the pages showed a beautiful clear type and exquisite engravings. It was a good example of the printing of Abbeville, famous for its engravers and binders since the days of its first printing press in 1484.

"Would you not like some books, then?" I ventured.

"What sort of books? Not magazines." He looked contemptuously at one that I had in my hand. "Me, I like stories. See what I bought yesterday." He brought from a chest of drawers a gaudy paper volume entitled "La Morte d'Amour."

Knowing that our library contained no such light literature, I continued, "Would you perhaps like Dumas?"

"Dumas? 'The Three Musketeers'?" His wrinkled face lighted. "I know them. Another book I liked the Germans loaned me when they were here. It was by an Englishman--B-u-l-w-e-a-r--'The Last Days of Pompeii'--a very interesting book."

"Tell me," he went on a little later, "some one has said that you have no twilight in North America. Is it true?"

It seeming in his mind to be a reflection upon our country, I tried my best to dissipate this impression by citing the great size of the United States, and its varying climatic conditions. But I could not truthfully say that we had the lingering orange sunsets and afterglows of pink and mauve and applegreen which I knew were in his mind, and with which I too became familiar on the plain of Picardy.

The last time I saw M. Touret was on a white and wintry morning when I had risen even earlier than the Villagers or M. the chaplain, to attend the Village mass. In a golden-brown corduroy which might have been the twin of M. Augustin's, I spied M. Touret on the path ahead of me, homeward bound after the service. I ran to catch up.

"Good morning, Monsieur, and how are you?"

"The books, did you like them?" I inquired, for his Christmas present had consisted of three.

UNE DISTRIBUTION DE DONS

But our "arrangements" did not lack humour or interest. There was Mme. Laure, for example, who was purposely absent when we brought the new clothing for her family, and undressed and bathed it and filled the boiler in turn with what we had taken off; and Mme. Gense-Tabary who conspired with her husband to get vegetables in Ham and resell to us at a higher price in payment for her dozens of new garments, and Mme. Payell who, hearing a rumour that We were about to outfit her babies, bought extra buttons to have them ready to sew on. There was also conscientious Mme. Regina, with her box of clean rags all ready for the new suit We gave fifteen-year-old Raymond.

As winter advanced, it became obvious, even at mass, that Canizy went cold. The children's noses and mittenless hands were red. True, there was Mme. Gabrielle, who came in furs and smart black hats; and several other ladies sufficiently warm if rather rusty and old-fashioned. But one noted among the children an absolute lack of the capes which are the characteristic dress of French school children. Throats wrapped in mufflers, hands thrust into pockets or skirts,--this was their method of keeping warm. The older boys especially looked pinched in trousers which had become too short, and tightly buttoned, threadbare coats. One day, when a biting wind and a powdery snow impressed their discomfort upon me, I made a raid on our store-room, with the entire permission of my colleague in charge. Woollen shirts, stockings, caps, overcoats and suits, whatever article of warmth I could find, I gathered up. The roads were too drifted for the truck, or for walking, but I had asked for the horse and wagon. Carlos, our soldier, helped me pack my plunder, and conveyed me on my way. But a difficult way it proved to be, and it was not until nearly twilight that we drew up at Mme. Lef?vre's door, too late to distribute that night. I left the warm clothing in her care, asking her at the same time to make me a list of those to whom she thought it ought to go, and promising to return the following day. But Mme. Lef?vre's enthusiasm exceeded her instructions. When I came, she met me with a triumphant smile. "I knew, Mademoiselle, that it would please you were the clothes on the backs of the poor children. Voil?, I have given the clothing according to the list." A cramped and illiterate list it was she handed me, devoid of capitals, but it accounted for every article, even to a boy's coat given to Lydie Cerf. "Lydie?" I queried mentally, yet not for the world would I have questioned or criticised good Mme. Lef?vre. Lydie herself I did question. "But, yes, Mademoiselle," she replied, "I am keeping the coat for Papa. He is with the Boches. It will be ready for him when he returns."

When they return! It was a phrase on every lip. "If the children were here, it would be different." "No, I do not wish to touch my indemnity. I and my wife, we are saving it for the boys when they come home." "Mademoiselle, I need another bed." "But you have two." "Yes, but there is my mother, who may return any day." So ran the undercurrent of longing in every family, mutilated as were the apple trees girdled in the orchards, uprooted, like them, and left for dead.

For my next distribution, which was to be a more important one, I went to Mme. Gabrielle. "Madame," said I, "it is true, is it not, that the parents of most of the children have enough money to buy capes?" "Yes," she admitted. "But it is not true that they will not do so?" "Yes; there are so many things to buy when one has lost so much. We fear to spend the money." "Very well. Will you make me out a list for all the world?" The list was made; a list so orderly that it could be used as a shopping guide. Coats for the women and capes for the children were bought, including a coat for Lydie Cerf. They were brought down by our own truck, which had made a special trip to Amiens in the bitterest weather, and deposited with Mme. Gabrielle. "Madame," I said again as we brought the heaped armfuls in, "will you not make this distribution yourself?" "But it is very difficult," she remonstrated, "and all the world will say that I am partial." "I will tell all the world that the distribution is mine," I urged. "You can see yourself that we are very busy,--and you know the size for each child." Reluctant though she was, Mme. Gabrielle's kind heart could not refuse. On a Sunday not long after, a strange yet strangely familiar audience sat in the little church, the women in coats all of one pattern, "but of different colours, the children in smart blue hooded capes. No one looked self-conscious, or thanked us. The distribution, like the snow, had fallen on the just and on the unjust; it was a providence for which one thanked God.

EN PERMISSION

Mme. Topin had another son also serving with the colours, who came home quite often to see his wife, because he was making a slow recovery from gas-injured lungs. She, during his absence, taught in the village school, while her old mother kept house and took care of three-year-old Guy. M. Topin it was who showed me around his ruined yard one day, pointing out the place of the five-room cottage, and telling me the colours of the roses whose blackened stalks still remained against the walls. "This was white and very fragrant; that yellow. I planted it on Guy's birthday. Here we had a bed of mignonette. Take care, Guy--pardon, Mademoiselle." And he stooped to wrench away from the child's fingers a long cartridge picked up in the d?bris. "A German bullet," he explained, handing it to me. "There are hundreds of them about."

A LA FERME DU CALVAIRE

Midway between Hombleux and Canizy, at the crossing of the highway, stood on one side a Calvary, and on the other a demolished farm house. The lane here emerged from a hollow, so that both objects rose distinctly against the sky. About the Calvary, the poplars were shattered by shell-fire; back of the farm sloped an orchard, whose every tree had been lopped. Across the road and into the fields ran a zig-zag trench, where could be found even yet blue coats and rusted helmets; the line of defence evidently for the highway, against the German advance. A square declivity, formerly a clay pit, perhaps an hectare in area, bordered road and trench. Its banks were green with grass, and in the bottom land was a little orchard. At one side, half-hidden, was a hut.

A solitary farm is rare in these rural communities, where the houses as a rule cluster in villages. I was undecided at first as to whether the Farm of the Calvary belonged to Hombleux or Canizy. But in the yard were two obvious reasons for calling and inquiring. Higher than the hut rose a heaped hay stack; at its base the apples from the orchard had been gathered in a mound of red and white. I ran down the path, too steep for walking, and knocked at the door. It was opened by a gaunt, dark man of perhaps forty-five. At a table sat his wife paring apples; and in a corner, quite unabashed, his daughter, pretty Colombe, finished lacing her bodice before she stepped forward to greet me. So small a room, in any of our villages, I had never been in. A double bed took up all the space except for a border of about two feet. The roof was so low that the man seemed to have acquired a perpetual stoop.

"I come from the Ch?teau," I began.

"I should have called before, perhaps; but I was not aware that a family lived in so small a place, until I saw the smoke from the chimney to-day."

"Yes, it is small," admitted the wife.

"If it folded, yes, and we would thank you. Colombe, she sleeps now on the ground."

The bed being promised, I inquired as to fodder. Could I see if it were suitable to feed our cows? Assuredly; and the brown sides of the stack were rudely pulled apart that I might see and smell the sweet hay within. How much would it weigh and how much would it cost? A bargain was finally concluded for eight hundred francs.

This was the first of many visits to the hut beside the road. Going or coming, sharp eyes spied me, and friendly voices called me in. Once it was for a bumper of sparkling cider.

"I make it myself, from the apples. But I have to take them to Mme. Mari?'s in Hombleux because my press the Germans broke. Ah, the Germans!" he continued. "It is only a month and a half since I returned, eh!"

"Were you then taken to Germany?"

"To Belgium; and I worked, always. And hungry, always hungry; one has nothing, eh! to eat."

On another occasion I was offered apples; not the small, sour ones from which cider was made, but luscious golden globes that adorned the narrow beams of the hut like a frieze.

"See," said Monsieur. "I will put them in this sack, so that you can carry them the more easily."

But I, thinking of the long miles yet ahead of me, ventured to suggest that I call on my return.

But a rain set in that afternoon; a slant mist which made Corot-like effects of brown autumn copses and shut one in from the sometimes too lonely sweep of the plain. At the same time, it beat persistently on my face, and made heavier at every step my woollen uniform. I did not stop therefore for my apples, and wondered for a few days what had been their fate. But not for long.

Over his back hung a sack, nor was it empty.

"You did not come for your apples," he began. "I hope that you wish them, however." He unslung the sack, opened it, and disclosed the golden fruit.

I thanked him. "But the sack, you wish it back?"

"Not to me, Monsieur? To me also it would be a souvenir, to take to America."

"O no, Mademoiselle, never," and his hands clutched it involuntarily. "The souvenir and the memory, they are mine. Both my grandchildren shall remember also in the years to come."

But the sack was not the only souvenir contained in the little hut. I spied one day three tiny teacups depending from nails upon the wall. They were even smaller than coffee cups, and delicately flowered.

"Oh, how pretty," I exclaimed. "May I look?"

Mme. Guilleux took them down with fumbling fingers and a suddenly altered face. For the first time, I noticed the sharp indrawn wrinkles about mouth and eyes which tell of suffering.

She wiped her eyes at length, and regarded the little cups. "When we returned, I searched the ruins. I was fortunate, for I found these. They were all that I did find. Everything else had been destroyed. Nor did I save anything, for look you, after the soldiers seized Solange, I ran hither and thither distracted, and knew not what to save."

She rose, took the cups from my hands, and rehung them on the wall.

How do they live, I wondered, as I passed out and over the fields? How do these mothers keep their reason, who have seen their daughters taken into a captivity upon which shuts down a silence deep as death? One understands the comment of Mme. Charles Thuillard, who in spite of her sharp tongue has a most human heart. She was showing me the picture of her daughter one day; an enlargement such as all the world makes of its dead. "Thank God," she said, "she was happy; she died before the war."

LES PETITS SOLDATS

So, in chorus, sang the children of my village, day after day, as they marched and circled about us up and down the streets. A catching tune; a laughing eye; did they realise that only twelve miles away on the firing line their soldiers were dying for the glory of the flag? No, it was not possible for them, fugitives though they themselves had been, to live the horrors of war. As Mme. Gabrielle said: "The children laugh; they do not know that our world is destroyed, and it is well."

Well brought up, yes, in all the usages of docility and endurance. Shifting of troops, obedience to military masters, slavery and pillage, such are the facts which these children have learned for three years. But grafted as the lesson has been upon a spirit gentle by nature, the result is terrible in its sombreness. Robert Gense, uncannily helpful; Raymond Carpentier, threadbare and bowed at fourteen,--a look like that of a faithful, whipped dog in his eyes,--Elmire Carlier, whose lovely mouth is carved in patience, the Tabarys, ragged and elfin--these are the children of Picardy. But where is the spontaneity of childhood? Where may one find it in the track of war?

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