Home Fires in France Part 19

A scouting party from another charitable inst.i.tution, one of the very "chic" _oeuvres_, nosing around our inst.i.tution to make sure they were losing no points in the game, stumbled on our new press and were as awestruck as I had been by its costliness and speed. After this, all the information which I had about the Halls, scanty and highly improbable as you will see it to have been, was repeatedly pumped from me by one past mistress after another in the art of pumping.

I became so curious as to what the reaction of the Halls to this world would be, and as to what this world would make of the Halls, that one afternoon I took the time off to go to one of those horribly dull afternoon teas in which fashionably disposed charitable ladies made up for the absence of their usual pre-war distractions. I did not see the guests of honor at first, and stood dismally taking my tea, submerged in the talk customary at such affairs, for the most part complaints of war inconveniences ... the hardship it was to have so few taxis in Paris, how inconsiderate the Government had been to forbid cakes and candy on two days a week, how the tailors and dressmakers were profiting by the high prices to ask preposterous ones, "even of their old clients," how hard it was to get coal enough to have a fire in one's _cabinet de toilette_ ... it was one of the days when we had heard of the failure of a great French offensive, and of the terrible shortage of hospital supplies at the front! My tea and sandwiches were ashes in my mouth!

Through the window I saw a one-armed soldier with his head in bandages hobbling by the house, and I found myself bitterly longing for a bolt from heaven to descend and consume the whole worthless lot of us. Then I caught sight of the Halls.

They towered above the crowd and above the very small but very important person who was monopolizing them, none other than the d.u.c.h.esse de Sazarat-Begonine, who was obviously engaged in opening upon them, one after another, her redoubtable batteries of persuasion. Do not let this casual mention of so well known a t.i.tle lead you to the very erroneous idea that I move in the aristocratic society which she adorns. Nothing could be further from the truth. The very fact that I know the d.u.c.h.esse de Sazarat-Begonine is a startling proof of the extent to which, in the pursuit of her war-relief work, she has wandered from her original circle! It shows, as nothing else could, what a thorough sport she was in the pursuit of her new game, stopping at nothing, not even at promiscuous mingling with the obscure. She was, if you will allow me the expression, the _as des as_ of the fashionable war-relief world in Paris. As in the case of Guynemer, when she mounted her aerial steed in pursuit of big cash donations to her _oeuvre_, all lesser lights abandoned hopes for theirs.

She had so many different weapons in her a.r.s.enal that she was irresistible; her chateau full of the memories of those distinguished thieves, intriguers, and murderers, the ill.u.s.trious ancestors of her husband; her far-renowned collection of historic snuffboxes, her wonderful Paris house with its rigorously select circle, to enter which any woman there would have given her ears; her astonishing and beautiful jewelry; the reputation of having been in her youth the _bonne amie_ of one of the best-known of the Bourbon pretenders (or was it a Napoleonic) ... ah, when the d.u.c.h.esse started out to bring down a wealthy philanthropist for her Home for One-armed and Tubercular Soldiers, she never missed her aim. It was not to be doubted that people who had succ.u.mbed without a struggle to the snuffy old parish priest with his war-orphans, would put up no resistance to this brilliant onslaught.

When I perceived the Halls corraled by this well-known personage, I shamelessly moved closer so that I could overhear what was being said.

This was little enough on the part of the two Halls. Mrs. Hall smiled silently down on her short and majestic interlocutor. Mr. Hall's strongly marked face was inscrutable. However, the great lady was quite used to respectful attention from those of her excompatriots with whom she deigned to converse, and she continued to talk with her habitual certainty of herself. At the moment when I came within earshot, she was retailing to them exactly how many hundreds of wounded heroes had pa.s.sed through "her" hands to their eternal benefit; exactly the praises the Minister of War had given her when her red ribbon was bestowed; exactly how she had attacked and driven from the field a Spanish lady of wealth who had had the presumption also to attempt to aid one-armed and tubercular soldiers; how imitators had tried to "steal" her methods of outdoor work for the tubercular, and how she had defeated their fell purpose by allowing no more visitors to that inst.i.tution without a card from her personally....

At this point my attention was called away by an acquaintance who asked me in a whisper if those people whom the d.u.c.h.esse had so ruthlessly grabbed were really the extravagantly rich and queer Americans everybody was talking about, attached to no inst.i.tution, who gave as they pleased, dodging recognition and decorations, mavericks of the fashionable war-relief world, breaking all the time-honored traditions of that society.

When I could resume my eavesdropping, the d.u.c.h.esse was embarked upon her snuffboxes, graciously dropping down from the pinnacle of her lofty exclusiveness an actual invitation to the two n.o.bodies before her to call on her and see that world-famed collection, comprising snuffboxes used by the Duc de Talleyrand, the Duc de St. Simon, the Marquis de la Rochefoucauld....

About this time I detected an inward glow in Mr. Hall's steady eyes. He said grimly, "I don't happen to be acquainted with any of those gentlemen, but in our country snuff-taking is accounted a rather low form of amusing yourself."

The d.u.c.h.esse was brought up short, not in the least by any intimation that she might not be extracting her usual due of admiration, but by a great desire to laugh at the unsophistication of the barbarians. For my part I went warm all over with cheerfulness, and stepped forward to present my cordial greetings to the Halls. Mrs. Hall soon fell back a step or two with me, leaving Mr. Hall looking down severely on the jewel-covered woman before him. There was a shade of anxiety on Mrs.

Hall's usually clear face. "You don't suppose," she murmured to me, "that Robert will be taken in by that horrid, common old woman and give some money to her? Men are so blind, even the best of them!"

I must have laughed out at this, for the d.u.c.h.esse turned and came towards us, carrying off Mrs. Hall the moment thereafter, with her wonderful irresistible a.s.surance of conferring a distinction. I said to Mr. Hall, moved by the most genuine curiosity: "What do you think of the celebrated d.u.c.h.esse de Sazarat-Begonine? You know she is accounted perhaps the most chic of all chic Parisiennes. Is there any other city where a woman of her age could set the style for the most exclusive society?"

Mr. Hall did not seem interested in the chic-ness of the great lady. He was silent for a moment, watching over the heads of the crowd his wife listening to the d.u.c.h.esse, her kind eyes bent attentively downward. Then he said, with decision, "If that bragging old harridan gets a cent out of my wife, I'll ... I'll spank Margaret."

I thought then that my cup of diverted satisfaction, was quite full; but it ran over splashingly when, half an hour later, separated by the crowd from the Halls, I heard the d.u.c.h.esse near me, announcing confidently to a friend: "Oh, no difficulty whatever. The simplest fish who ever swallowed down the bait in one gulp. Hooked? My dear, they are in my basket already!"

I went away on that, full of threadbare meditations on the little child who had been the only one to see that the Emperor had really nothing on.

Although, after this, our Braille printing establishment continued to benefit by casual visits from the Halls, visits followed usually by some sound suggestion for improvement, accompanied by a check, they were strictly Scriptural as regards the ignorance of the right hands of the doings of the left, and I had little idea of what were their occupations in other directions. Once in a while they carried me off to dinner in some famous restaurant where otherwise I would never have set foot, and where my war-tired and gloomy spirits received a lesson in the art of cheer. There was in those delicate and costly repasts a sort of robust confidence in the ultimate rightness of things ... or at least I used to have this fancy to explain to myself the renewed courage which came to me after such evenings, and which may have been simply the result of a really hearty meal after a good deal of penitential and meager fare.

I needed all the courage and calmness I could extract from any source during those days, for it was at that time that my old school friend, Marguerite Moysset, was notified that her husband was killed in a skirmish on the Champagne front. Marguerite had already lost, almost at the beginning of the war, her only child, a boy of nineteen. The death of her husband left her desperately poor and inexpressibly alone. She had not wept for her boy's death nor did she shed a tear now for her husband whom she had almost extravagantly adored. She shut herself up in a white, stern horror which frightened us, all her well-meaning friends who hovered about her in those clumsy ministrations which often do more harm than good but which nevertheless one dares not omit.

Paradoxically enough it was the much-dreaded moving out of the old apartment, full of memories of the twenty happy years pa.s.sed there, and the moving into the two little rooms on the fifth floor of a dingy old tenement house in a poor quarter of the city, which did more for Marguerite than all our foolish efforts. At least it aroused her to a sort of shocked and horrified life, and carried her out of her own misery.

Not long after she had gone there to live I found her with four, pale-faced, dirty little children in one of her two rooms. She was heating water on her charcoal stove. "I'm going to give them a bath,"

she said to me, p.r.o.nouncing the commonplace words with a strange wild accent. "Do you know they have never had a bath, all over their bodies, in their lives?" I stayed to help her, wondering at the curious expression on her face. She was, as she had been ever since the blow had fallen, still very white, but now that pallor was like white heat. After the children were clean, Marguerite dressed them in coa.r.s.e, clean, new clothes, which she told me she had sold her watch to buy, "the church-bell strikes so near that I don't need a watch any more," and gave them each a piece of bread and jam. They took their departure then, stricken into an astonished silence, and Marguerite turned to me with an angry toss of her head, "Do you know what the war is?" she asked me fiercely. "_I_ know! It is the punishment we have called down on ourselves. I see now that the war has only intensified everything that existed before, it has _changed_ nothing fundamentally. We were living as hideously in a state of war before as now, except that it was not physically b.l.o.o.d.y. There were children in this awful house then as now, without baths, without food, without decency, while I was giving all my energy that one little boy might have everything, everything that he could wish."

At this I could not repress a protest, calling up the very modest comforts of her simple home. She brushed me aside. "It was luxurious, sinfully, wickedly luxurious to live so while other human beings were living as they were in this house. Oh, I see it so plainly, we were all living with all our might according to the horrible Prussian maxim that you have a right to anything you're strong enough to keep other people from sharing. All the Germans did was to carry it to its logical, murdering conclusion, and show us what we really were."

I could not, Heaven knows, deny this, but I ventured a palliative murmur. "But at least we are ashamed of it. We tried to hide it. We never gloried in it, as the Prussians do."

"I am ashamed of it _now_," she told me somberly, "now when I have nothing, nothing to use as help but my two hands. I am ashamed of it now when it is too late."

The black misery on her face was such that I brought out the foolish phrase I had been repressing all during the weeks since the news had come: "Marguerite dearest, why do you keep such a dreadful calm?

Wouldn't it do you _good_ to cry?"

"_I?_" she said bitterly. "I haven't the right to cry! Look at my neighbors!"

The next time I went back I found her two little rooms full of children, three small babies on the bed, and a dozen or more of different ages playing together, while Marguerite, in a long black ap.r.o.n, stirred a soup-pot on the charcoal fire.

"Their mothers are working!" She gave me this as all-sufficient explanation, adding: "But there are so many, many more that I can't help! If only I had more room to take them in ... and more soup ... and more bread! But with children it's wicked to start more than you can carry on, and ... I've made the calculation.... I can't possibly help any more than there are here!"

I noticed that the feverish, wild look had gone from her eyes, that she looked steadied--infinitely tragic--but quiet, purposeful. The children had brought her back into real life again.

On a sudden impulse I left her, and went to telephone the Halls, asking them to meet me near there. While I waited for them, I found myself very much agitated, my head whirling with possibilities for Marguerite's future, my legs a little unsteady under me. I revolved the best way to "approach" them, the most tactful manner of presenting the matter to them; I brought to mind all the painfully acquired war-relief lore about "managing" people with money, I tried to recall what I knew of them so that I might guess at some weakness of theirs to exploit. Perhaps I could promise to get recognition for them from the French Ministry of the Interior ... what _was_ the exact name of that medal they give to foreign philanthropists, of course not the red ribbon, but still....

In the midst of these cheap calculations, their taxi drove up to the curb, they stepped out, and I perceived that I had forgotten what they were. It was not surprising. I lived in a world where there were few reminders of such as they. Mr. Hall looked at me out of his honest eyes, and said with his honest American accent, "Well, what's doing?" and I found myself without preamble giving them the facts, naked facts, without an adjective to qualify them, without a single picturesque arrangement. I did not even make an appeal to them. I simply told them all that had happened since the death of Marguerite's husband. I even hid nothing of what Marguerite had said which might seem a criticism of their way of life and of mine. I told them all. When I finished, they glanced at each other, their good look of deep understanding which, in the cold, ill-smelling city street was like a gust of warm, country-scented air across my face. Mrs. Hall said, "I wonder if she'd mind our going to see her?" Mr. Hall qualified: "Of course if you think best not to ... we're not acquainted with her. We don't want to seem to b.u.t.t in."

We found her giving those little people their noonday meal, hot soup and bread. Having only her small kitchen table and four bowls, the children came in relays. The fear of those who waited, lest the soup should give out before their turn, was painful to see. Marguerite glanced at my companions, surprised, and gave me a questioning, half-challenging look.

The Halls stood quietly in one corner of the dark little kitchen and watched the white-faced clean little mites, all their ineffably clear child's eyes turned on the tall, pale foster-mother, bending over them, serving them, stooping to catch a timidly murmured request, smoothing a little cheek, tying and untying their bibs, wiping their lips ... every gesture pregnant with pa.s.sionate motherliness. To me she wore the look of a mother who returns to her brood after an absence and, finding them ill-cared for and unhappy, strives burningly and remorsefully to give them their lost due of love and care.

With the last relay of four occurred a tragedy. Sc.r.a.pe as she might, Marguerite could not bring out of the kettle more than enough for three bowls. For a moment, there was silent consternation. Then, sighing, without any suggestion from Marguerite, these children of the poor, began dipping from their portions into the empty bowl. There was on their thin little faces a patient and unsurprised resignation. When all the bowls were equally full, they set to eagerly, a natural childlike greediness coming at last into their eyes. I glanced at Mr. Hall and saw that his lips were moving as though in some exclamation, but I could not catch what it was.

When the last drop had been sc.r.a.ped up from the last bowl and Marguerite's long white fingers were once more immersed in dishwater, I ventured to bring my visitors to her and introduce them. They asked a few questions which Marguerite answered in her careful book-English, astonished and a little nettled, I could see by their directness and lack of ceremony.

Yes, she said, turning a second glance of interrogation on me ... who _were_ these strangers in her house?... yes, there were other lodgings to be had in the house where she could care for more children, the whole top floor was a big, deserted factory loft with skylights letting in the sun and with windows opening on a flat-roof terrace where the children could play. But of course that was out of the question. The rent was very high, it would cost a great deal to heat the room, and where could she get money to feed any more?... "Even with the number I have, you saw...."

"Yes," they said hastily, they had seen! I took it from their accent that they would not soon forget what they had seen.

Mrs. Hall looked at her husband, their serious, eloquent glance. He nodded, cleared his throat, and took out his wallet, that famous wallet!

I remember exactly what he said, it being of the most masterly brevity, and I mean to set it down textually as he said it. What I cannot set down is the inimitable, straight, clear gaze out of his eyes, as he looked at Marguerite, everything but their common humanity forgotten. He said: "Madame, my wife and I want to help you help these children. I am going to leave five thousand francs with you to-day, for you to rent anything, buy anything, do anything you think best for the children. And there will always be plenty more where that came from, for you to go on."

Having said all that he had to say, he was silent, laying down on the table with his card, the five big banknotes, and putting on them one of the children's soup-bowls. I noted especially the gentleness with which he touched the coa.r.s.e, yellow earthenware, as though it were of great value. I wondered intensely how Marguerite could thank them. I did not venture to look at her face.

Marguerite did not thank them at all. She stood perfectly motionless for a moment, and then, putting her hands over her face, she broke into a storm of loud sobs. The tears ran down between her thin fingers and fell on the coa.r.s.e yellow bowl and on the banknotes....

Mrs. Hall pulled at my arm. Mr. Hall opened the door, and I found myself stumbling down the steep, dark stairs, holding desperately to the greasy railing. We groped our way down, step by step, in darkness and in silence, until, nearly at the bottom, I called back, with a quavering attempt at a jest, "But how about the necessity of a sound business basis?"

From the fetid darkness above me, dropped down Mr. Hall's clarion American accent, "Oh, d.a.m.n a sound business basis!"

I found myself obliged to wink back the tears which came along with my laughter.

Emerging into the gray light of the narrow street, I turned to wait for my companions, but when I saw the expression of their faces I knew I should not be missed, and while they stood to hail a cab I made hasty farewells and betook myself to the nearest Metro station, my ears ringing as though I had been hearing the loud, triumphant note of trumpets.

I was about to dive into the anthole of the subway entrance when I heard my name called and saw Mrs. Hall's chic little toque thrust out of a cab window. "We forgot to tell you," she called across the street to me, "that we are very much obliged to you indeed for telephoning us."

With this inimitable farewell they vanished again from my view until months after this I ran across them, for the last time. I was at the Gare de Lyon, seeing off a blind soldier whom, with his family, we had been able to place in a home in the country. As usual with the poor, to whom journeys are considerable events, we had been fearfully ahead of time because they were in a panic for fear of losing their train. I had settled our proteges with all the innumerable valises, baskets, packages, roll-ups, and wraps which are the accompaniment of a French family, even the humblest, _en voyage_, had bidden them G.o.dspeed, and was going back along the platform to the exit when I was confronted by a familiar royal effect in furs, followed by a mountain of magnificent baggage on a truck.

"h.e.l.lo!" said Mr. Hall. "You on the move too?"

I explained my presence and turned back to walk with them to their train. "We are going to Italy," explained Mrs. Hall, "and for once we are going to try and _take_ Italy something, instead of just getting the most out of her the way we have done and everybody else has done all these tourist years."

(I had some reflections of my own about what Italian hotel keepers and guides had taken from me, but I kept them to myself, recognizing that as usual I was on a very different plane from the Golden Age of my companions.)

"You see," explained Mr. Hall in their astonishing, matter-of-fact manner, "you see one of our enterprises at home in the States is making a lot more money than ever before because of the war-manufacturing ...

now that the Government is in the war, at last, thank the Lord! Of course, that money's got to go somehow to make up for some of the harm the war is doing. And it's such a lot that it can swing a big proposition. We've thought it over a lot, Margaret and I, and we've decided to put it into helping the reforestation movement in Italy." I had only a blank glare to greet this idea, so totally unexpected was it to me. They hastened to expand, both of them talking at once, with a fresh, eager interest. I gleaned the idea in broken bits of phrases, "... terrible floods in Italy every few years ... tops of the mountains bare and eroded ... campaign of education needed ... a thousand young pines to the acre ... forty millions needed ... a fine Italian forestry society already existing to direct the work, but without funds since the war ... hundreds of thousands of acres to be reclaimed...." My head whirled, but the main outlines were clear.