i came again to croisilles.
i looked for the sunken road that we used to hold in support, with its row of little shelters in the bank and the carved oak saints above them here and there that had survived the church in croisilles. i could have found it with my eyes shut. with my eyes open i could not find it. i did not recognize the lonely metalled road down which lorries were rushing for the little lane so full of life, whose wheel-ruts were three years old.
as i gazed about me looking for our line, i passed an old french civilian looking down at a slight mound of white stone that rose a little higher than the road. he was walking about uncertainly, when first i noticed him, as though he was not sure where he was. but now he stood quite still looking down at the mound.
"voilà ma maison," he said.
he said no more than that: this astounding remark, this gesture that indicated such calamity, were quite simply made. there was nothing whatever of theatrical pose that we wrongly associate with the french, because they conceal their emotions less secretly than we; there were no tragic tones in his voice: only a trace of deep affection showed in one of the words he used. he spoke as a woman might say of her only child, "look at my baby."
"voilà ma maison," he said.
i tried to say in his language what i felt; and after my attempt he spoke of his house.
it was very old. down underneath, he said, it dated from feudal times; though i did not quite make out whether all that lay under that mound had been so old or whether he only meant the cellars of his house. it was a fine high house, he said, as much as two storeys high. no one that is familiar with houses of fifty storeys, none even that has known palaces, will smile at this old man's efforts to tell of his high house, and to make me believe that it rose to two storeys high, as we stood together by that sad white mound. he told me that his son was killed. and that disaster strangely did not move me so much as the white mound that had been a house and had had two storeys, for it seems to be common to every french family with whose fathers i have chanced to speak in ruined cities or on busy roads of france.
he pointed to a huge white mound beyond on the top of which someone had stuck a small cross of wood. "the church," he said. and that i knew already.
in very inadequate french i tried to comfort him. i told him that surely france would build his house again. perhaps even the allies; for i could not believe that we shall have done enough if we merely drive the germans out of france and leave this poor old man still wandering homeless. i told him that surely in the future croisilles would stand again.
he took no interest in anything that i said. his house of two storeys was down, his son was dead, the little village of croisilles had gone away; he had only one hope from the future. when i had finished speaking of the future, he raised a knobbed stick that he carried, up to the level of his throat, surely his son's old trench stick, and there he let it dangle from a piece of string in the handle, which he held against his neck. he watched me shrewdly and attentively meanwhile, for i was a stranger and was to be taught something i might not know—a thing that it was necessary for all men to learn. "le kaiser," he said. "yes;" i said, "the kaiser." but i pronounced the word kaiser differently from him, and he repeated again "le kaiser," and watched me closely to be sure that i understood. and then he said "pendu," and made the stick quiver a little as it dangled from its string. "oui," i said, "pendu."
did i understand? he was not yet quite sure. it was important that this thing should be quite decided between us as we stood on this road through what had been croisilles, where he had lived through many sunny years and i had dwelt for a season amongst rats. "pendu" he said. yes, i agreed.
it was all right. the old man almost smiled.
i offered him a cigarette and we lit two from an apparatus of flint and steel and petrol that the old man had in his pocket.
he showed me a photograph of himself and a passport to prove, i suppose, that he was not a spy. one could not recognize the likeness, for it must have been taken on some happier day, before he had seen his house of two storeys lying there by the road. but he was no spy, for there were tears in his eyes; and prussians i think have no tears for what we saw across the village of croisilles.
i spoke of the rebuilding of his house no more, i spoke no more of the new croisilles shining through future years; for these were not the things that he saw in the future, and these were not the hopes of the poor old man. he had one dark hope of the future, and no others. he hoped to see the kaiser hung for the wrong he had done to croisilles. it was for this hope he lived.
madame or señor of whatever far country, who may chance to see these words, blame not this old man for the fierce hope he cherished. it was the only hope he had. you, madame, with your garden, your house, your church, the village where all know you, you may hope as a christian should, there is wide room for hope in your future. you shall see the seasons move over your garden, you shall busy yourself with your home, and speak and share with your neighbours innumerable small joys, and find consolation and beauty, and at last rest, in and around the church whose spire you see from your home. you, señor, with your son perhaps growing up, perhaps wearing already some sword that you wore once, you can turn back to your memories or look with hope to the future with equal ease.
the man that i met in croisilles had none of these things at all. he had that one hope only.
do not, i pray you, by your voice or vote, or by any power or influence that you have, do anything to take away from this poor old frenchman the only little hope he has left. the more trivial his odd hope appears to you compared with your own high hopes that come so easily to you amongst all your fields and houses, the more cruel a thing must it be to take it from him.
i learned many things in croisilles, and the last of them is this strange one the old man taught me. i turned and shook hands with him and said good-bye, for i wished to see again our old front line that we used to hold over the hill, now empty, silent at last. "the boche is defeated," i said.
"vaincu, vaincu," he repeated. and i left him with something almost like happiness looking out of his tearful eyes.
