as far as jeanne’s personal life was concerned, what little was left of it ebbed and flowed to the daily rhythm of the mail. she felt it begin to sink lower with the fatigue of preparing and serving the lunch for the six noisy children, always too hungry for the small portions, so that at the last she divided most of her own part among them. it ebbed lower and lower during the long hours of the afternoon when she strove desperately to keep the little ones cheerful and occupied and at the same time to mend and bake and darn and clean and iron and carry ashes out and coal in; her long slim pianist’s fingers reddened and roughened till they bled, because cold cream was far too costly a luxury. it sank to its stagnant lowest during the tired end of the day when the younger children, fretful with too much indoors, disputed and quarreled; and when, as she prepared the evening meal, she tried to help the older ones with their[4] latin declensions and greek verbs so that they might be worthy sons of their father. and oh, the nights, the long nights, when she woke again and again, dreaming that she saw andré wounded, dreaming that some one called to her in a loud voice that he had been killed at the head of his men.
but after midnight she felt the turn of the tide. in less than twelve hours there might be a letter. she dozed, woke to make the round of the children’s beds to be sure that they were covered, and noted that it was three o’clock. in seven hours she might have news again. she slept, and woke to hear the church clock clang out five, and knew that if she could but live through five hours more—
in the morning, the countless minor agitations; the early rising in the cold; the smoky kindling of the fire; the hurried expedition for the milk through the empty streets, dripping with the clammy fog of the region; the tumultuous awakening of the children, some noisily good-natured, some noisily bad-tempered; the preparation of the meager breakfast in the intervals of buttoning[5] up blouses and smoothing tousled hair; then, as school time approached, the gradual crescendo of all the noise and confusion into the climax of the scampering departure of the three older ones, blue-nosed and shivering in their worn, insufficient wraps; the gradual decrescendo as she dressed the thin, white bodies of the younger ones, and strove to invent some game for them which would keep them active and yet allow her to do the morning housework—all these tossing, restless waves were the merest surface agitation. beneath their irregular, capricious rhythm she felt physically the steady, upward swelling of her expectation as the clock-hands swung towards ten.
till then she knew nothing, nothing of what might have happened during the portentous night behind her, for every night, like every day, was portentous. there was no calamity which was impossible. the last four years had proved that. anything might have happened since the last news had come in from the outer world—anything, that is, except the end of the war. that alone had come to seem impossible.
and yet, in spite of that great flooding tide[6] of her expectancy, when the ring at the door finally came, it always gave jeanne an instant’s violent shock. her heart flared up like a torch with hope and fear, its reflection flickering on her thin cheeks as she hurried to the front of the house and, her delicate work-worn hands shaking, opened the door on fate.
first her eye leaped to see that there was not the official-looking letter without a stamp which she had received so many times in her bad dreams, the letter from his captain announcing that sous-lieutenant bruneau—no, it had not come yet. she had another day’s respite.
she could breathe again, she could return the white-haired postman’s “bonjour, madame bruneau.”
next, even on the days when there was a letter from andré, she tore open the paris newspaper and read in one glance the last communiqué. after this her hands stopped shaking. no, there was no specially bad news. no horror of a new offensive had begun. then she could even smile faintly back at the tired old face before her and say, in answer to his inquiry,[7] “oh yes, all pretty well, thank you. my own are standing the winter pretty well. but my brother’s children, they have never really recovered from the nervous shock of that dreadful experience of bombardment, when they lost their parents, you know. of course none of the six are as plump or as rosy as i would like to have them—michel is growing so fast.”
“you ought to thank god, madame bruneau, that they are too young. there are worse things than being thin and white.”
“yes, yes, monsieur larcade,” she apologized hastily for her unmerited good fortune compared to his, “what news from your sons?”
“still no news from salonique. a letter this morning from jules’s surgeon. they are not sure whether he will ever be able to walk again. the wound was so deep—an injury to the spine.”
a wordless gesture of sympathy from her, a weary shifting of his heavy letter bag, and he went on to the next door, behind which another woman waited, her hands shaking; and beyond that another one, and then another.
if it was to be a good day, if there had been[8] a letter from andré, she opened it hurriedly and read it all in one look, even though the children clung clamoring to her skirts, even though the fire smoked and threatened to go out. then she set it carefully in the bosom of her dress and put on the faded caps and patched wraps and darned mittens to take the children out for their outing, while she did her marketing. they were too small to leave alone, even for half an hour.
during the painful experience which her marketing always was, she felt warmed and sustained by the letter tucked inside her dress. everything cost more than the month before, twice as much as the year before when her income was the same minute sum as now.
but andré was alive and unhurt.
she looked longingly at the beefsteak which the older boys needed so much, her own children, and bought instead the small piece of coarse pork which must make a stew for them all, those other children of her blood whom the war had thrown on her hands.
but she had a letter from her husband in her bosom.
[9]she priced the cauliflowers, sighed, and bought potatoes, and less of them than she had hoped to have, the price having gone up again. she was horrified to find that rice cost more than it had, an impossible sum per pound, even the broken, poor-quality grade. she would try macaroni as a substitute. there was no macaroni, the woman clerk informed her. there was none at all, at any price. jeanne turned to another item on her list. the doctor had said that the children absolutely must have more fruit in their diet—fruit! well, perhaps she might be able to manage prunes. they were the cheapest fruit—or they had been. “prunes, madame bruneau? they are only for the rich.” she named a price which made jeanne gasp.
she calculated the amount she would need for one portion each for her big family. it was out of the question. she was really aghast, and appealed desperately to the woman clerk, “what do you do?” she asked. “we do without,” answered the other woman briefly.
“but your children? growing children can’t be in good health without some fruit.”
[10]“they’re not in good health,” answered the other grimly. “my marthe has eczema, and the doctor says that henri is just ripe for tuberculosis.” her voice died.
jeanne closed her eyes during the instant’s silence which followed. the woman clerk shoved aimlessly at the sack of dry beans which stood between them.
then they both drew a long breath and began to add up together the cost of jeanne’s purchases. she took out her pocketbook, paid soberly, and went on to the baker’s.
here a girl weighed out for her with scrupulous care the exact amount of bread allowed for the family, and took the bread tickets along with the money in return. at the sight and smell of the fresh-baked bread the children began their babbling, begging, clamorous demand which jeanne dreaded almost more than anything else. she winced away from this daily pain, crying out, trying hastily to stop them before the tears came,x “no, no, my darlings, you can’t have any now. no, jacqueline, don’t tease auntie! annette dearie, you know if mother lets you have[11] any now there will be just that much less for you at lunch and dinner. you know i can’t give you any of what belongs to the others.” she was imploring them not to ask her for the food she could not give them. anything but that! the daily repetition of this poignant little scene was intolerable. if she could only leave them at home, could only spare them that daily ordeal of the visit to the bakeshop where their poor little heads were turned at the sight and odor of all that food. not to have bread to give them!
she was almost on her knees before their shrill, insistent demands when she felt her husband’s letter crackle against her breast, and stopped short. she was on the edge of losing her head, like men after too long shell fire when they walk dazedly straight into danger. she knew better than this! the tragic manner would never do for little children who cannot live and thrive save in gaiety and lightness of heart. she was only making a bad matter worse.
she summoned all her strength, put her hand on the letter in her bosom, and burst resolutely into a hearty laugh. “oh, children, just see that[12] funny picture of the little kitten. he’s chasing his tail, do you see, round and round and round. annette, do you know how he feels! see, i’ll hang this string down your back, and you try to catch it by turning around quickly. see, the faster you turn the faster it gets away from you. maurice wants to try? well, we’ll just hurry home, and i will give you a piece of old red curtain cord and you each can have a tail and be a little kitten. and when the big ones get back from school you can show them how to chase tails. won’t they laugh?”
they were safe in the street by this time, the bakeshop forgotten, the loaf in the basket hidden, the children looking up, laughing through their tears at jeanne, breathless, pouring all her vitality into her cheerful face and bright voice, so that there was not enough left to keep her knees from shaking under her.
back to the house quickly, lest the wretched war coal, half black stones, smoking sullenly in the cook-stove, should go out in their absence. the invention of the curtain-cord tails was still valid, even after the pork had been put on to[13] cook with the potatoes. the children were still playing, still unexacting. jeanne would have time to read her letter.
she put the paper-thin potato parings to cook in an old kettle for their three hens, who occasionally presented them with a priceless fresh egg; and, wiping her cold, wet, potato-stained hands (was it possible that those hands had ever played beethoven and debussy?), took her treasure out of her bosom and unfolded the double sheet, warm still from the warmth of her body.
this time she read it slowly, taking in, absorbing to the last cell of her consciousness, every one of those words, written by candlelight, underground, to the thunder of shells exploding over the abri. they were plain, homely words enough, rambling, unstudied familiar phrases, such as husband and wife write to each other when they have shared their daily life for many years and still try to go on sharing what may be left to them of days in common.
it had rained, as usual, all day long, but the new trench boots had kept his feet almost dry.[14] yet he was ashamed of the price she must have paid for them—she, straining every nerve to buy food to keep the children well. he was a man, a grown-up, and the war had done for them forever. let him shift as best he could. everything ought to go to the children, there would be little enough. but they must have the best chance we could give them. whoever else was responsible for the war certainly the children had nothing to do with it. and they must be the torch bearers. did she remember how he had always wondered why no musician had ever composed music on that theme? he could conceive such a noble symphonic poem called “the torch bearers.” he had wondered all day if the coal had finally arrived at méru. it went beyond his imagination how she could manage at all, the days when the coal supply was so low. in their little underground abri they had a stove—yes, a real stove. it had been left there by some american ambulance men who had used the abri before them. so they were really warm, part of the time, and occasionally almost dry. but the wood they were burning—it made him sick. it was[15] what his men tore out from the ruined village houses near which the trenches ran. of course it could never be used for houses again, but when you know what it is to have a home of your own, and how it grows to be a part of you, it is not much fun to put parts of other people’s houses into your stove. no, he did not need any new socks. he did not need anything; she need not go on trying to slip in some new luxury for him out of her impossibly small budget. did she remember that poor dury, the youngest of his men? he had been shot yesterday; a stray ball, not meant for anybody in particular—such a silly way to be killed. and now there was the letter to write to his mother. heavens, how he dreaded writing the letters to the parents of men who died or disappeared! he hoped little maurice’s throat was better. what a sickly child that poor kid was! he was evidently one who would have to be nursed along all through his childhood, and since the war had killed his parents, it fell to his poor aunt to do the job. and then—“now, see here, jeanne darling, don’t kill yourself over that little boy because you feel so guilty at not[16] loving him more. he’s not a lovable kid. his own mother, poor nervous thing, never could keep from snapping at him, and you know your brother cared enough sight more for jacqueline than for him. don’t you blame yourself. take it easy!”
jeanne laid the letter down with a little exclamation, half a laugh. how ever did andré know she did not love the little nephew who reminded her so of the sister-in-law she had never been able to love? she had not thought that anybody could guess that the child to whom she was always the gentlest was the one—and here was andré, quite casually as usual, walking into her most secret places! how he knew her! how he knew the meaning of her smallest gesture, the turn of her most carefully worded phrase! how near he was to her! how there was no corner of her life where he did not come and go, at ease, and how she welcomed him in, how she rejoiced to feel him thus pervading the poor, hurried, barren inner life of her, which had bloomed so richly when they had lived it together. how married they were! that was, after all, an achievement, to have wrested that[17] glory from so horrible a thing as life had come to be. let the heavens fall, she had known what it was to be one with a noble human soul.
she stood up, her thin face glowing, her tired eyes shining, as they always were after reading andré’s letter. it was the only moment of the day when she felt herself wholly alive.
this was the high tide of her daily life, poor, scanty trickle of life it was, even at its best, compared to the fathomless deep surge of the fullness of the days before the war, days when it had seemed natural that andré should be there always, that they should profoundly live together, that there should be some leisure, and some music mixed with their work, and warm rooms and clothes and food as simply as there was air to breathe.
a whiff of acrid coal smoke in her face, a wailing cry from maurice who had pinched his finger, a warning half-hour stroke from the kitchen clock—she came back to the present with a start and strove loyally to use for that present the little renewal of strength which came from a momentary vision of the past. she changed[18] the drafts of the stove, stirred the stew and, gathering the weeping child up in her tired arms, began to make a funny nonsense song, purporting to be sung by the hurt finger. her voice was obliged to pass through a knot in her throat, but it came out bravely, and in a moment the children were laughing again, their thin faces turned toward hers like little pale flowers toward the sun.
then there was the table to set, of course in the kitchen, since there was no coal for another fire in the cold house. how jeanne suffered from this suffocating necessity to do everything in one small room! it made an intolerable trial of every smallest process of the everyday life, to prepare food, and eat it, and play, and wash, and study, and bathe the children, and dress and undress them—they were like pigs in a sty, she often thought, working feverishly to keep a little order and decency in the room which seemed to her fastidious senses to reek stiflingly of the effluvia of too-concentrated human life.
as she worked she felt, like an inward bleeding, the slow ebbing of her forces. the good[19] moment of the day had come and gone. there was nothing to look forward to now till the mail of the next morning.
and this was a good day, one of the best, when there had been no special activity on the front, when the daily letter from andré arrived on time. but what of the days when the communiqué announced laconically, “heavy artillery fire between fresnes and villers-raignault”? (andré was stationed at fresnes.) or worse, when the great offensives began, when all personal letters from the front were stopped, when day after day the communiqué announced: “violent fighting all along the champagne front.”
the feeble, tired old postman, shuffling on his rounds, was a very snake-crowned horror to the dry-eyed women, waiting and hoping and dreading to see him come. always there were cases of hysteria at such times; old madame vielé, who shrieked out suddenly in the market-place that she had seen her son fall dead before her; marguerite lemaire, who, returning from paris on the night train, had found her husband in the compartment with her, had kissed him, held his[20] hand, wept on his breast—and suddenly she was alone, with the train rushing on through the darkness to méru, where she was met by the news of his death.
at such times jeanne braced her shivering limbs and throbbing nerves to steady rigidity and bore her burden as though she had the strength of eternity in her heart. scraps of phrases from andré’s letters came before her eyes, as voices speak to tranced saints. as she worked she saw, written before her, “whoever is responsible for the war, the children are not.” or again, “we are all evil creatures, god knows, and our motives must be mixed in this war because they are mixed in everything else. but with whatever of virtue there is in me, i am fighting for what i think best fit to survive in the world i wish my children to inhabit.” or again, for her own comfort, “dearest darling jeanne, the very powers of hell cannot take away from me the ten years of supreme happiness you have given me.”
the days went by, one, two, three, four, five, with no letters, with no words at all beyond the[21] steady advance of the germans. the nights went by, the long, long nights, not black and empty, but filled with dreadful lightning visions of what might be happening, even at that instant, as she lay in her bed. jeanne felt no fatigue, no hunger, no consciousness of her body at all, at such times. it happened once, after one of these long, numb days, that she cut her hand deeply, and did not know she had done it till she saw the smears of blood on her skirt. her first thought was that it was the only skirt she possessed and that she must not spoil it with her blood, because there was no money to buy another.
it was that very evening, after she had tied up the wound on her hand and was beginning to undress the younger children, interrupting herself frequently to help jacques with his latin, that she heard the front door of the house open and shut.
she went as cold as ice. her heart stopped beating, her hair stirred itself on her head. it had come. some one had brought a telegram with the bad news.
she put the children on one side, quietly,[22] opened the kitchen door, and stepped out into the cold twilight of the hall.
andré stood before her, a shadowy figure in the obscurity, pale, unshaven, muddy, smiling, a strange, dim, tired, infinitely tender smile. his arms were outstretched toward her.
for a moment—a long, silent, intense moment of full life—she knew nothing but that he was there, that she held him in her arms, that his lips were on hers. nothing else existed. there was no war, no danger, no fear, no wonder how he could have come. there was nothing in all her being but the consciousness that they were together again. she was drowned deep in this consciousness; the blessed flood of it closed over her head.
presently the door of the kitchen opened, and the littler ones trooped out to find her. they could live but so few moments, those littler ones, without sucking at her vitality.
she fell at once into the happy confusion of the usual leave of absence, crying out to the children, “see, see, papa has come! see, uncle andré is here!”
[23]it seemed to her the children were singularly apathetic, not instantly molten joy as she had been. the younger ones were even a little shy of him, who was, after all, an unknown man to them; and more than a little jealous of him, who came to share with them their maman, their auntie, the source and light and warmth of their exacting little, new lives. it seemed to jeanne that they looked even more queerly at him this time than usual, and that there was in the sidelong glances of the older ones an element of strangeness. their father was becoming a mere legend to them, she thought with a painful contraction of her heart.
she found herself talking a great deal, in a quavering, excited voice, gone back to her old exuberance of expression. it seemed to her that she finally asked andré how it could have happened, his coming, and that he explained across the children’s clamor that his regiment had gone down to the gates of hell in the offensive and that what was left of them had been given a twenty-four hours’ leave of absence.
oh, yes, she understood with no further words,[24] she who knew by heart every way of communication between his sector on the front and her door; he had reached paris by the 3.20 train, had hurriedly changed stations, had caught the 4.40 train out and reached méru at twenty minutes of seven. and oh, she had not been at the station to meet him! but of course he had not had time to telegraph. so, if it were only a twenty-four hour leave, he would need to take the midnight train back. he had come so far, so far, for five hours with her.
she thought this all out while flying to get him some food, to open the can of meat, preciously kept for just such a golden chance, to heat the potatoes which were left, to set jacques to grinding some coffee, real coffee, such as they never used, to uncover the sacred little store of sugar, wide, to his hand! and at the same time to talk to the children. how unresponsive children are, she thought; how quickly they outgrow whatever is not immediately present. it is hard to remember that four years, so long in the life of a child, is all eternity to a young child; his utmost imagination cannot compass it. she said all[25] this to andré, to explain the children. how absurd to try to explain them to andré, smiling his deep understanding of them and of her, far deeper than she could ever fathom!
then she was driving them all upstairs to bed, leaving the kitchen to andré, the big tin bathtub and the clean underclothes which she had always ready for the first ceremony of every return from the trenches. if only there were more hot water! but she always let the fire go down toward night, to save coal. for her there was no need of fire. she could put a blanket around her shoulders and wrap her legs in a rug of an evening as she sat writing her letter to andré by the poor light of the one lamp, filled with war kerosene, which smoked and glimmered uncertainly.
she hardly knew what she was doing as she hurried the children into their beds in the cold rooms. hurry as she might, there were six of them; and many, many, of the priceless, counted-out moments had passed before she ran down the stairs, as madly as any girl racing to meet her lover.
[26]andré was there, at table, washed, shaven, a little color in his lean, deeply lined cheeks under their warlike bronze. when he heard her step flying down the hall, he pushed back from the table and, his napkin across his knees, a good light of laughter in his eyes, he held out his arms to her again, crying like the traditional bridegroom, “alone at last!”
so it began on the light note, that incredible good fortune of their evening together, she perching on his knee, watching him eat, filling his plate, pouring out more coffee, talking, laughing—yes, really laughing as she only did when andré was there on permission. when he had finished she cleared the table, made up the fire, recklessly putting in lump after lump of the sticky resinous coal and opening all the drafts. they sat down together before the stove, beside the surly ill-conditioned lamp, and their tongues were loosened for much talk—light, deep, sad, hopeful, brave, depressed, casual, tragic. they poured out to each other all the thousand things which do not go into letters, even daily ones. she heard of the unreasonable irritability of his[27] captain, and the plain, restoring good faith of the old colonel; the heroism of the men, the cowardly slinking back to a clerical position at the rear by young montverdier, the son of their député. he heard of her struggles with the boys’ latin and mathematics, and with the little ones’ alphabet. “just think, andré, annette, the obstinate little thing, will not admit that b’s name is b. she says it is ‘loof’ and she knows it is because she dreamed it was—haven’t children the most absurd ideas?”
she spoke out with a frenchwoman’s frankness of her moments of horror, of despair, of doubt of the war’s meaning, of revulsion from the industrial system which had made the war possible. there deep answered deep; he brought to her the envenomed hatred of war which fills the trenches to the brim. “it is not glorious; it is infamous. i am not a hero; i am a murderer. but there are worse things. it would be worse to have peace, with the german ideas ruling the world. no, every one of us would better die than allow that to happen. yes, i have had too—who hasn’t?—moments of doubt, moments[28] when the horror of our stupidity was too great, when i have thought that any other way would be better than war. but not since the russian affair, not since the germans marched into defenseless russia. russian children will be brought up in german schools to form a new generation of germans. i would kill my children with my own hands before having them added to those ranks. no, since russia, there seems no other way but to go on to the end, and to make that end an end to war forever.” the worn phrases, dubious and tarnished on the facile tongues of public orators, repeated there in that dimly lighted room by that worn man and suffering woman, became new, became sacramental.
they clung to each other for a moment again, and gradually felt the tension of the spirit melt away in the old cure of simple bodily nearness. his cheek against hers—at the sensation she became just a woman again.
she stirred, she smiled; she told an amusing story of their queer old neighbor,—she interrupted herself to say reproachfully, “but[29] i do love little maurice! i don’t love him as i love the other children, but just because of that i love him more, because i pity him so.”
“that,” he said with conviction, “must be true because nobody but you would be capable of such mixed language and emotions.”
she had laughed at this and, remembering suddenly that she had a box of cigarettes for him, jumped up to get it. he was amazed. where, in heaven’s name, had she been able to get cigarettes in france in 1918? ah, that was her little secret. she had her ways of doing things! she teased him for an instant and then said she had begged it for him from an american red cross camion driver who had stopped there to get water for his radiator. the recollection brought to mind something painful, which she poured out before him like all the rest. “oh but, andré, what do you think the woman in uniform sitting by him said? of course she couldn’t have known that i understand english, but even so— she looked at me hard, and she said, ‘these heroic frenchwomen people make[30] so much fuss about, i notice you don’t see any of them turning out to run cars or distribute clothes to refugees. much they bother themselves for france. they stay right inside their comfortable homes and do fancywork as usual.’ yes, she said that. oh, andré, it hurt! i was ashamed that i could be hurt so cruelly by anything but the war.”
this led to talk of america. “all our hope is with them, jeanne. you mustn’t mind what one woman said—very likely a tired woman too, fretted by being in a country where she doesn’t speak the language. all the future is in their hands, and, by god, jeanne, i begin to believe they realize it! they are really coming, you know; they are really here. i see them with my own eyes, not just doctors and nurses and engineers and telegraphists, as at first, but real fighting men. they are in the sector next to ours now. they fight. they fight with a sort of exuberance, as though it were a game they were playing and meant to win. and they all say that their country is back of them as france is back of us, to the last man, woman, and child.[31] they’re queer fellows. they remind me a little of our normans and a little of our gascons, if you can imagine the combination. whenever there is a difficulty they have a whimsical, bragging little phrase, that they drawl out in their sharp, level voices, ‘never you mind, the yanks are coming.’ it made me smile at first, at their presumption, at their young ignorance. but there is something hypnotizing about the way they say that jerky, unlovely phrase, like the refrain of a popular song that sticks in your mind. it sticks in mine. ‘the yanks are coming!’ the russians have gone, or rather the russians never were there, but ‘the yanks are coming!’”
jeanne had been looking at him hard, scarcely hearing what he said, drawing in a new conviction from his eyes, his accent, the carriage of his head. “why, andré! you are really hoping that it may end as it ought!” she interrupted him suddenly, “you are really hoping—” he nodded soberly. “yes, my darling, i really hope.”
he was silent, smiled, drew her to him with[32] a long breath, his arm strong and hard about her. they might have been eighteen and twenty again. “and i know,” he whispered, “that you are the loveliest and the best and the bravest woman in the world.”
the tears ran down her cheeks at this—happy tears which he kissed away. when she could speak she protested, saying brokenly that she was weak, she was helpless in the face of the despair which so often overcame her, that she was perilously poised on the edge of hysteria. “ah, who isn’t near that edge?” he told her. “not to go over the edge, that is the most that can be done by even the strongest in these days.” “no, no,” she told him. “you don’t know how weak i am, how cowardly, how i must struggle every day, every hour, not to give up altogether, to abandon the struggle and sink into the abyss with the children.” “but you don’t give it up,” he murmured, his lips on her cheek. “you do go on with the struggle. i always find the children alive, well, happy. you weak! you cowardly! you are the bravest of the brave.”
[33]the clock struck ten.
they went upstairs hand in hand to look at the sleeping children and to try to plan some future for them. jeanne told of her anxieties about michel, the oldest, who had silent, morose fits of brooding. “he’s old enough to feel it all. the littler ones only suffer physically.” andré put his father’s hand on the sleeping boy’s forehead and looked down at him silently, the deep look of strength and comprehension which was like the wine of life to his wife. she thought it was a benediction to the boy which no priest could better. andré took his watch out of his pocket and laid it on the table. “see here,” he said, “i’m going to leave this here for michel when he wakes in the morning. i only use the old wrist watch nowadays. it may please the little fellow to know i think him big enough to have my watch.”
“he’ll make it a talisman—it’s the very thing!” she agreed, touched by his divining sympathy for the boy’s nature.
they roamed then through the cold deserted rooms of the much-loved little home, unused[34] because of lack of fuel, but the wan, clustering memories were too thick even for their tried and disciplined hearts. they went back into the smoky kitchen, shivering.
the clock struck eleven.
as it struck twelve, jeanne turned back from the door, the lamp in her hand, the last echo of his footsteps faint in her ears. she stood for a moment, trance-like, staring at the yellow flame of the lamp, her eyes wide. already it seemed impossible that he had been there.
she felt horribly, horribly tired, hardly any other sensation but that. she went upstairs, undressed rapidly, blew out the light, and lay down beside little maurice. she slept with him, that she might be sure to watch over him carefully enough, fearing that she might not rise in the cold so readily for him as for the others. almost at once she fell into a profound sleep.
she woke with a start, to find herself standing up in her nightgown in the darkness, on the cold floor, in the middle of the room, the cold, damp wind blowing in on her from the black opening[35] of the window. and at once she knew what had happened—knew it as though some one had just finished telling her.
andré had not been there at all that day. he had been killed, that was it, and her intense longing had brought his spirit straight to her for a moment, and all the rest she had imagined.
staring into the darkness, she saw it all with perfect lucidity. that was why he had looked so dim and shadowy when she had first seen him in the hall; that was why his smile had been so strange. that was why the children had seemed so queer; she understood now, it was because they saw no one there and because they heard her talking to herself.
did she, then, often talk to herself, that they should do no more than look sidelong and askance when she did it? yes, she must have been slowly going near the edge of dementia during the last weeks, and quite over the edge into madness the last five days of suspense.
a deadly chill shook her, so that her teeth chattered loudly in the darkness, audible even to her ears. what did it matter? andré had been[36] killed. there was no meaning in anything any more.
the cold settled around her heart, an icy flood, and congealed in her veins. she felt herself to be dying and ran out to meet delivering death.
she heard andre’s voice saying clearly, “whoever else is responsible for the war, the children are not. they must not suffer if we can help it.”
there was a pause when the world seemed to be slowly shifting under her feet.
she knew what was coming. in an instant it came. in all that was left alive of her, she knew that she must try to go on living for the children.
she turned her back on escape, and in a spiritual agony like the physical anguish of child-birth, she put out her hands to grope her way back to the fiery ordeal of life.
her hands, groping in the darkness, fell on something cold and metallic and round—andre’s watch, which he had left for michel!
but if his watch was there, he had been there himself.
[37]she ran trembling to the match box, struck a light, and looked. yes, there was the watch, and a burned-out cigarette beside it.
the match went out suddenly in the cold, damp breath from the window.
andré had come, then! and she—she was in such a pass that she was incapable of believing that her husband had been with her for an hour. stretched on the rack of long separation, her body and brain had lost the power to conceive of happiness as real. she felt now that she had not really believed in his presence any of the time. that was why she had fancied the children looked oddly at him. she had not been able to believe it!
but she did now! it had reached her very self, at last, the knowledge that he had been there, that he had been of good cheer, that he loved her, that he thought the war might yet be won for the right, that he had even laughed, had said—what was that quaint phrase?—“the yanks are coming!”
she took the watch up in her hands, laid it[38] against her cheek, and began to cry, sweet, weak, child-like tears.
she groped her way back to the bed, weeping silently, the watch clutched tightly in her hand.
she lay down beside the unloved little orphan, whom she loved through pity; she took him in her arms; she felt the watch cold and hard and actual against her heart, and, the tears still on her cheeks, she fell once more asleep, smiling.
