Home Fires in France Part 8

He stopped short for a moment, staring into s.p.a.ce as though recalling the scene.

"Well," prompted the French listener, "what did he say?"

"He said, as near as I could make out from what the hotel porter told me, he said _he didn't want to_," replied the American, in the carefully restrained voice of one who recounts an enormity so patent that there is no need for emphasis to bring out its monstrousness. "Yes, from what the hotel porter said, I took it that he said he didn't want to! It wasn't that he was afraid of losing money, or that he suspected a skin deal ... at least that was what he _said_ ... nor that he doubted a single thing I said, it was just that he guessed he didn't feel like it to-day, thank you."

He reached for his hat and stood up. "There, Monsieur Portier, there's where I am. I started to argue, of course. I tried to get at what in h.e.l.l was the matter anyhow. But I soon saw I was up against something too big for that hotel porter to manage. So I came to see if you would go back with me, or send somebody who's got good sense and business experience, and help me make that proposition all over again. It must be of course that that hotel porter got the thing all balled up, the way he put it. I ought to have known better than to trust it to a Swede, anyhow."

Monsieur Portier looked at the calendar on his desk. "Yes, I shall be glad to go out with you. Let me see, to-day is Monday, next Thursday afternoon."

The visitor's face dropped. "Not till _Thursday_!" he cried, as though that date were in the next century. "I was hoping you could go right back with me now. I've got a taxi waiting downstairs."

The Frenchman's face wore for an instant a look of consternation which changed into a rather curious, strained expression. Then he said with the accent of heroism, laughing a little, "Yes, Mr. Hale, there is really no valid reason for my not going with you now, _at this instant_, and I will!" He seemed to regard the resolution as an extraordinary one, adding whimsically, as he put on his overcoat, "Ah, you can never, never understand, my dear Mr. Hale, the awful effort of will it costs a European to do something the moment it is suggested instead of putting it off till the next week."

"No," said the American heartily, "that's something I never will understand."

As they approached the shining windows of the pharmacy, where as a matter of fact a big, beautifully cared-for cat was sleeping in the sun, the Frenchman exclaimed: "Oh, it's Monsieur Requine's pharmacy! I've known him for years, ever since my sister came to live in Versailles. I didn't think it could be he because you spoke of him always as old."

"Isn't he?" asked the American.

"Fifty-two. Is that old? I hope not."

"Fifty-two! I'm fifty-four myself! That's one on me!"

"What made you think him old? His hair isn't white. He hasn't any wrinkles. Really, I'm curious to know."

The American stopped on the curbstone, pondering, his alert mind interested by the little problem in self-a.n.a.lysis. "What _did_ make me, I wonder?" He glanced in through the open door and said: "Well, just look at him as he stands there, his hands clasped over his stomach,--you can see for yourself. It's a kind of settled-down-to-stay look that I'm not used to seeing unless a man is so old that he can't move on any more."

The Frenchman looked at the druggist and then at the man beside him.

"Yes, I see what you mean," he admitted. He said it with a sigh.

They entered the shop. The druggist came forward with a smile, and shook hands heartily with them both. "Eleven," noted the American mentally.

"Monsieur Requine," said the French visitor, "can't we go through into your salon, or perhaps out into your garden for a little talk?" Mr.

Requine glowed with hospitality. "Yes, yes, delighted. I'll just ask my wife to step here to mind the shop."

"_His wife!_" asked the American, "to wait on customers?"

A well-dressed, tall, full-bosomed woman of forty-odd, with elaborately dressed black hair and a much powdered, intelligent face came in answer to the call and installed herself back of the counter with her knitting.

"Yes, and she knows as much about the business end as he does, you may be sure," said the Frenchman as they went through a door at the back of the shop, emerging, not, as the American expected, into a storeroom, but into an attractive parlor. They pa.s.sed through the salon, into an exquisitely kept little dining-room and out into a walled garden which made the American pa.s.s his hand over his eyes and look again. While their host was installing them at the little round green iron table under a trellis overgrown by a magnificent grapevine, Mr. Hale's eyes traveled from one point to another of the small paradise before him. It could not have been more than a hundred feet wide and three hundred long, but like a fabled spot in the "Arabian Nights" it shone resplendent with incredible riches. The stone walls, ten feet high, were carpeted to the top with a mantle of glistening green leaves, among which hung peaches and pears, glorious to the view, rank on rank, such fruit as the American had never thought could exist. On each side of the graveled path down the center were flowering plants, like great bouquets each. Back of them were more fruit-trees, none more than eight feet tall, bearing each a dozen or more amazing apples, as brightly colored as the flowers. Around the trees were vegetables, carrots, salads, cabbages, every specimen as floridly full-leafed and perfect as the incredible pictures Mr. Hale had seen, and disbelieved in, on the front of seed catalogues.

From the other end of the garden, drenched in sunshine, came the humming of bees. Above their heads a climbing rose covering the end of the house sent down a clear, delicate perfume from its hundred flowers.

The American's eyes came back from their inspection of all this and rested with a new expression on his rather snuffy, rather stout and undistinguished host. "Will you please tell Monsieur Requine from me,"

he said to his companion, "that I never saw such a garden in my life?"

Monsieur Requine waved the tribute away with sincere humility. "Oh, it's nothing compared to those all about me. I can't give it the time I would like to. Later on, when I am retired, and my son has the business ..."

his gesture seemed to indicate wider horizons of horticultural excellence before which the American's imagination recoiled breathless.

The straw-colored liqueur had been poured out into the gla.s.ses, which were, so Mr. Hale noticed, of extremely fine and delicate workmanship ... "and his wife tending shop!" The two Frenchmen drank with ceremonious bowings and murmured salutations. Mr. Hale consumed his fiery draught silently but with a not ungraceful self-possession. He was at his ease with all kinds of ways of taking a drink.

Then, drawing a long breath, taking off his hat and putting his elbows on the table, he began to expound and the French official with him to translate. The bees hummed a queer, unsuitable accompaniment to his resonant, forceful staccato.

He talked a long time. The patches of sunlight which fell through the vines over their heads had shifted their places perceptibly when he stopped, his head high, his gray eagle's eyes flashing.

The elderly Frenchman opposite him had listened intently, his fat, wrinkled hands crossed on his waistcoat, an expression of thoughtful consideration on his broad face and in his small, very intelligent brown eyes. When the American finished speaking, he bent his head courteously and said: "Mr. Hale, you have spoken with great eloquence. But you have forgotten to touch on one matter, and that is the reason for my doing all that you outline so enthusiastically. Why _should_ I?" It was evidently a genuine and not a rhetorical question, for he paused for a reply, awaiting it with sincere curiosity on his face. He received none, however, the fluent American being totally at a loss. "Why _should_ you?" he said blankly. "I don't believe I understand you." The two exchanged a long puzzled look across the little table, centuries and worlds apart.

"Why, I mean," Monsieur Requine went on finally, "I don't see any possible reason for embarking in such a terrifyingly vast enterprise as you outline; no reason for, and many against. To speak of nothing else, I am absolutely, morally certain that my cold cream" (he spoke of it with respect and affection) "would immediately deteriorate if it were manufactured on such an inhuman scale of immensity as you plan, with factories here and factories there, run by mercenary superintendents who had no personal interest in its excellence, with miscellaneous workmen picked up out of the street haphazard. Why, Mr. Hale, you have no idea of the difficulties I have, as it is, to get and train and keep serious, conscientious work-people. I should be lost without the little nucleus of old helpers who have been with our family for two generations and who set the tone of our small factory. They have the reputation and fine quality of our cold cream at heart as much as we of the family. They help us in the selection of the newer, younger workers whom we need to fill the ranks, they help us to train them in the traditions and methods of our work, and with patience teach them, one by one, year by year, the innumerable little fine secrets of manipulation which have been worked out since my grandfather began the manufacture there in that room back of you in 1836. Our recipe is much of course, it is all important; but it is not all. Oh no, Mr. Hale, it is not all. We put into our cold cream beside the recipe, patience, conscience, and pride, and that deftness of hand that only comes after years of training. You cannot buy those qualities on the market, not for any price. To think of my recipe put into the hands of money-making factory superintendents and a rabble horde of riffraff workmen!... Mr. Hale, you must excuse me for saying that I am astonished at your proposing it, you who have shown by your generous appreciation of its qualities that you are so worthy a member of our guild."

He paused, stirred from his usual equable calm and waited for an answer.

But he still received none. The American was staring at him across an unfathomable chasm of differences.

Monsieur Requine continued: "And as for me personally, I am almost as astonished that you propose it. For nothing in all the world would I enter upon such a life as you depict, owing great sums of money to begin with, for no matter how 'easy' your business credit may be made in the modern world, the fact remains that I should lie down at night and rise up in the morning conscious that thousands of men had intrusted their money to me, that I might easily, by one false step or piece of bad judgment, lose forever money which means life to poor women or old men.

Such a fiery trial would shrivel me up. It would be my death, I who have never owed a penny in my life. And then what? Even with the utmost success which you hold out, I should have a life which, compared with what I now have, would be infernal; rushing to and fro over the face of the earth, away from home, my wife, my children, homeless for half the time, constantly employed in the most momentous and important decisions where in order to succeed I must give all of myself, all, _all_, my brain, my personality, my will power, my soul ... what would be left of me for leisure moments? Nothing! I should be an empty husk, drained of everything that makes me a living and a human being. But of course there would not be any leisure moments.... I see from what you so eloquently say that I would have become the slave and not the master of that invention which has come down to me from my fathers; that instead of its furnishing me and my work-people with a quiet, orderly, contented life, I should only exist to furnish it means for a wild, fantastic growth, like something in a nightmare, because a real growth is never like that, never!

"Mr. Hale, do you know what I do of an evening, in the summer? I leave the shop at half-past five or six, and I step into my garden, where I work till half-past seven, when I am most exquisitely hungry. We dine here under this vine, my wife, my daughters, and my son (he who is now at the front). Afterwards we sit and chat and exchange impressions of the day, as the moon comes up or the stars come out. Perhaps some of the young friends of the children drop in for a game of cards. My wife and I sit down at the other end of the garden on the stone bench where we sat when she came here as a bride, where my father and mother sat when they were bride and groom. The stars come out. I smoke my pipe and watch them. Mr. Hale, it is very surprising, the things which come into your head, if you sit quietly and watch the stars come out. I would not miss thinking them for anything in the world. We talk a little, my wife knits. We meditate a great deal. We hear the gay voices of our children coming to us mingled with the breath of the roses. We have finished another day, and we are very glad to be there, alive, with each other, in our garden. When we come in, my wife makes me a cup of tisane and while I sip that I read, sometimes a little of Montaigne, sometimes a little of Horace, sometimes something modern. And all that while, Mr.

Hale, there is in our home, in our hearts, the most precious distillation of peace, the ..."

For some moments the American had been surging inwardly, and he now boiled over with a great wave of words. "Will you just let me tell you what you've been describing to me, Monsieur Requine? The life of an old, old man ... and you're younger than I am! And will you let me tell you what I'd call your 'peace'? I'd call it laziness! Why, that's the kind of life that would suit an oyster right down to the ground! And, by George, that's the kind of life that gave the Boches their strangle-hold on French commerce before the war. They _weren't_ afraid of good credit when it was held out to them! They had it _too_ easy, with n.o.body to stand up against them but able-bodied men willing to sit down in their gardens in the evenings and meditate on the stars, instead of thinking how to enlarge their business! I'll bet they didn't read Horace instead of a good technical magazine that would keep them up to date. Why, Monsieur Requine, I give you my word, I have never looked inside my Horace since the day I took the final exam in it! I wouldn't _dream_ of doing it! What would business come to if everybody sagged back like that? You don't seem to realize what business is, modern business. It's not just soulless materialistic money-making, it's the great, big, wide road that leads human beings to progress! It's what lets humanity get a chance to satisfy its wants, and get more wants, and satisfy them, and get more, and conquer the world from pole to pole. It's what gives men, grown men, with big muscles, obstacles of their size to get through. It gives them problems that take all their strength and brain power to solve, that keeps them fit and pink and tiptoe with ambition and zip, and prevents them from lying down and giving up when they see a hard proposition coming their way, such as changing a small factory into a big one and keeping the product up to standard. Business, modern business keeps a man _alive_ so that when he sees a problem like that he doesn't give a groan and go and prune his roses, he just tears right in and _does_ it!"

Monsieur Requine listened to the translation of this impa.s.sioned _credo_ with the expression of judicial consideration which was evidently the habitual one upon his face. At the end he stroked his beard meditatively and looked into s.p.a.ce for a time before answering. When he spoke, it was with a mildness and quiet which made him indeed seem much the older of the two, a certain patient good humor which would have been impossible to the other man. "Mr. Hale, you say that my conception of life looks like laziness to you. Do you know how yours looks to me? Like a circle of frenzied worshipers around a fiery Moloch, into whose maw they cast everything that makes life sweet and livable, leisure, love, affection, appreciation of things rare and fine. My friend, humanity as a whole will never be worth more than the lives of its individuals are worth, and it takes many, many things to make individual lives worth while. It takes a mixture, and it needs, among other elements, some quiet, some peace, some leisure, some occupation with things of pure beauty like my roses, some fellowship with great minds of the past...." His eyes took on a dreamy deepening glow. "Sometimes as I dig the earth among my fruit-trees, the old, old earth, a sentence from Epictetus, or from Montaigne comes into my head, all at once luminous as I never saw it before. I have a vision of things very wide, very free, very fine.

Almost, for a moment, Mr. Hale, almost for a moment I feel that I understand life."

The American stood up to go with a gesture of finality. He put his hat firmly on his head and said in pitying valedictory: "Monsieur Requine, you're on the wrong track. Take it from me that n.o.body can understand life. The best thing to do with life is to live it!"

The Frenchman, still seated, still philosophic, made a humorous gesture.

"Ah, there are as many different opinions as there are men about what that means, to 'live life'!"

In the cab going back to Paris the American said little. Once he remarked almost to himself, "The thing I can't get over is that his d.a.m.ned cream _is_ better than anything we make."

The French official emerged from a thoughtful silence of his own to comment: "Mr. Hale, the generosity of that remark is only equaled by its perspicacity! It makes me more than ever concerned for the future of French commerce."

That evening Monsieur Requine was stooping over a dwarf-apple tree, string in one hand, pruning shears in the other. He was clipping away all except one of the vigorous young shoots. That one he then laid along a wire, strung about a foot from the ground and tied it fast at several points so that in growing it would follow the exact line traced by the horizontal wire. When he finished he gathered up all the clipped shoots, put them under his arm, and stood looking at the severely disciplined little tree, which did not look in the least like a tree any more. The sight apparently suggested an a.n.a.logy to his mind, for he said in the tone of one who makes an admission: "It's true one does it for apple-trees and vines." After considering this for a moment, he shook his head with decision, "But not for human beings, no."

And yet his brow was far from clear as he betook himself to the stone bench at the end of the garden.

When his wife went out later to join him, she missed the glow of his pipe and inquired, a little troubled, "Why, Rene, you've forgotten to light your pipe! what's the matter?"

"Adele, do you remember, just before the order for mobilization came, how Robert wanted to travel a year in America to study American business and to see something of other conditions? Perhaps I was wrong not to consent. I've been sitting here thinking it over. Perhaps when he comes back [they always forced themselves to say "when" and never "if"]

perhaps we would better let him go, before he settles down to take my place." He took her hand and held it for a moment. "Do you know, Adele, after all, the world changes, perhaps more than we realize, here in Versailles."

That evening Mr. Hale sat in his hotel bedroom with all the electric lights blazing, and filled sheet after sheet with elaborate calculations. He was concerned with an important detail of transatlantic transportation to which he did not believe half enough attention had been paid: the question as to what form of carrier is the best for certain breakable objects which he was arranging to send in large quant.i.ties into the States. The quant.i.ties were so large that if he could effect a small saving of s.p.a.ce, with no increase of the breakage per cent., the sum-total would be considerable.