A Padre in France Part 9

"Take me there," I said, "and I'll manage to get a taxi or something."

"But," said the colonel, "my train does not stop at T. We simply pa.s.s through the station. But I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll slow down as we go through. You be ready to jump out. Tell your servant to fling out your valise and jump after it. You won't have much time, for the platform isn't very long, but if you're ready and don't hesitate you'll be all right."

I babbled words of grat.i.tude. The prospect of a leap from a moving train at 6 a.m. was exhilarating. I might hope that I should find my servant and my luggage rolling over me on the platform when I reached it. Then all would be well. The colonel, moved to further kindness by my grat.i.tude, invited me to travel in a coach which was specially reserved for his use.

The art of travelling comfortably in peace or war lies in knowing when to bully, when to bribe, and when to sue. Neither bullying nor bribing would have got me to B. If I had relied on those methods I should not have arrived there for days, should perhaps never have arrived there, should certainly have been most uncomfortable. By a.s.suming the manner, and as far as possible the appearance, of a small child lost in London I moved the pity of the only man who could have helped me. But those circ.u.mstances were exceptional. As a general rule I think bullying and bribing are better ways of getting what you want on a journey.

I travelled in great comfort. There were three of us--the colonel, a colonial commissioner, in uniform but otherwise unconnected with the army, and myself. There was also the colonel's servant, who cooked a dinner for us on a Primus stove.

The train stopped frequently at wayside stations. There was no conceivable reason why it should have stopped at all. We neither discharged nor took up any pa.s.sengers. But the halts were a source of entertainment for the men. Most of them and all the officers got out every time the train stopped. It was the duty of the colonel, as O.C.

Train, to see that they all got in again.

It was a laborious job, not unlike that of a sheep dog. The colonial commissioner and I tried to help. I do not think we were much use.

But I have this to my credit. I carried a message to the engine driver and told him to whistle loud and long before he started.

Having read long ago Matthew Arnold's Essay on Heine, I know the French for "whistle" or a word which conveyed the idea of whistling to the engine driver.

When it became dark the worst of this labour was over for the colonel. The men stayed in their carriages. I suppose they went to sleep. We dined. It was a pleasant and satisfying meal. We all contributed to it. The colonel's servant produced soup, hot and strong, tasting slightly of catsup, made out of small packets of powder labelled "Oxtail." Then we had bully beef--perhaps the "unexpended portion" of the colonel's servant's day's rations--and sandwiches, which I contributed. By way of pudding we had bread and marmalade. The colonial commissioner produced the marmalade from his haversack. I had some cheese, a Camembert, and the colonel's servant brought us sardines on toast, and coffee. We all had flasks and the colonel kept a supply of Perrier water. Men have fared worse on supply trains.

After dinner I taught the colonel and the commissioner to play my favourite kind of patience. I do not suppose the game was ever much use to the commissioner. In his colony life is a strenuous business.

But I like to think that I did the colonel a good turn. His business was to travel up to the rail head in supply trains full of men, and then to travel down again in the same train empty. When I realised that he had been at this work for months and expected to be at it for years I understood why he looked depressed. Train commanding must be a horrible business, only one degree better than draft conducting. To a man engaged in it a really absorbing kind of patience must be a boon.

The next morning the colonel woke me early and warned me to be ready for my leap. In due time he set me on the step of the carriage. He took all my coats, rugs, and sticks from me. The train slowed down. I caught sight of the platform. The colonel said "Now." I jumped. My coats and rugs fell round me in a shower. My servant timed the thing well. My valise came to earth at one end of the platform. The man's own kit fell close to me. He himself lit on his feet at the far end of the platform. The train gathered speed again. I waved a farewell to my benefactor and the colonial commissioner.

CHAPTER XII

MADAME

Madame was certainly an old woman, if age is counted by years. She had celebrated her golden wedding before the war began. But in heart she was young, a girl.

I cherish, among many, one special picture of Madame. It was a fine, warm afternoon in early summer. The fountain at the lower end of the garden spouted its little jet into the air. Madame loved the fountain, and set it working on all festive occasions and whenever she felt particularly cheerful. I think she liked to hear the water splas.h.i.+ng among the water-lily leaves in the stone basin where the goldfish swam. Behind the fountain the flowers were gay and the fruit trees pleasantly green round a marvellous terra-cotta figure, life-size, of an ancient warrior. Below the fountain was a square, paved court, sunlit, well warmed.

Madame sat in a wicker chair, her back to the closed green jalousies of the dining-room window. Beside her was her workbox. On her knees was a spread of white linen. Madame held it a sacred duty _visiter la linge_ once a week; and no tear remained undarned or hole unpatched for very long. As she sewed she sang, in a thin, high voice, the gayest little songs, full of unexpected trills and little pa.s.sages of dancing melody.

Madame was mistress. There was no mistake about that. Monsieur was a retired business man who had fought under General Faidherbe in the Franco-Prussian war. He was older than Madame, a very patient, quiet gentleman. He was a little deaf, which was an advantage to him, for Madame scolded him sometimes. He read newspapers diligently, tended the pear trees in the garden, and did messages for Madame.

There was also Marie, a distant cousin of Monsieur's, herself the owner of a small farm in Brittany, who was--I know no term which expresses her place in the household. She was neither servant nor guest, and in no way the least like what I imagine a "lady-help" to be. She was older than Madame, older, I fancy, even than Monsieur, and she went to Ma.s.s every morning. Madame was more moderate in her religion. Monsieur, I think, was, or once had been, a little anti-clerical.

Madame was the most tender-hearted woman I have ever met. She loved all living things, even an atrocious little dog called Fifi, half blind, wholly deaf, and given to wheezing horribly. Only once did I see her really angry. A neighbour went away from home for two days, leaving a dog tied up without food or water in his yard. We climbed the wall and, with immense difficulty, brought the creature to Madame. She trembled with pa.s.sion while she fed it. She would have done bodily harm to the owner if she could.

She did not even hate Germans. Sometimes at our midday meal Monsieur would read from the paper an account of heavy German casualties or an estimate of the sum total of German losses. He chuckled. So many more dead Boches. So much the better for the world. But Madame always sighed. "_Les pauvres garcons_," she said. "_C'est terrible, terrible._" Then perhaps Monsieur, good patriot, a.s.serted himself and declared that the Boche was better dead. And Madame scolded him for his inhumanity. Our own wounded--_les pauvres blesses_--we mentioned as little as possible. Madame wept at the thought of them, and it was not pleasant to see tears in her bright old eyes.

But for all her tender-heartedness Madame did not, so far as I ever could discover, do much for the men of her own nation or of ours. An Englishwoman, in her position and with her vitality, would have sat on half a dozen committees, would have made bandages at a War Work Depot, or packed parcels for prisoners; would certainly have knitted socks all day. Madame did no such things. She managed her own house, mended her own linen, and she darned my socks--which was I suppose, a kind of war work, since I wore uniform.

The activities of Englishwomen rather scandalised her. The town was full of nurses, V.A.D.'s, and canteen workers. Madame was too charitable to criticise, but I think she regarded the _jeune fille Anglaise_ as unbecomingly emanc.i.p.ated. She would have been sorry to see her own nieces--Madame had many nieces, but no child of her own--occupied as the English girls were.

I have always wondered why Madame took English officers to board in her house. She did not want the money we paid her, for she and Monsieur were well off. Indeed she asked so little of us, and fed us so well, that she cannot possibly have made a profit. And we must have been a nuisance to her.

In England Madame would have been called "house proud." She loved every stick of her fine old-fas.h.i.+oned furniture. Polis.h.i.+ng of stairs and floors was a joy to her. We tramped in and out in muddy boots. We scattered tobacco ashes. We opened bedroom windows, even on wet nights, and rain came in. We used monstrous and unheard-of quant.i.ties of water. Yet no sooner had one guest departed than Madame grew impatient to receive another.

On one point alone Madame was obstinate. She objected in the strongest way to baths in bedrooms. As there was no bathroom in the house, this raised a difficulty. Madame's own practice--she once explained it to me--was to take her bath on the evening of the first Monday in every month--in the kitchen, I think. My predecessors and my contemporaries refused to be satisfied without baths. Madame compromised. If they wanted baths they must descend to _le cave_, a deep underground cellar where Monsieur kept wine.

I, and I believe I alone of all Madame's guests, defeated her. I should like to believe that she gave in to me because she loved me; but I fear that I won my victory by unfair means. I refused to understand one word that Madame said, either in French or English, about baths. I treated the subject in language which I am sure was dark to her. I owned a bath of my own and gave my servant orders to bring up sufficient water every morning, whatever Madame said. He obeyed me, and I washed myself, more or less. Madame took her defeat well. She collected quant.i.ties of old blankets, rugs, sacks, and bed quilts. She spread them over the parts of the floor where my bath was placed. I tried, honourably, to splash as little as possible and always stood on a towel while drying myself.

After all Madame had reason on her side. Water is bad for polished floors, and it is very doubtful whether the human skin is any the better for it. Most of our rules of hygiene are foolish. We think a daily bath is wholesome. We clamour for fresh air. We fuss about drains. Madame never opened a window and had a horror of a _courant_ _d'air_. The only drain connected with the house ran into the well from which our drinking water came. Yet Madame had celebrated her golden wedding and was never ill. Monsieur and Marie were even older and could still thoroughly enjoy a _jour de fete_.

Madame had a high sense of duty towards her guests. She and Marie cooked wonderful meals for us and even made pathetic efforts to produce _le pudding_, a thing strange to them which they were convinced we loved. She mended our clothes and sewed on b.u.t.tons. She pressed us, anxiously, to remain _tranquille_ for a proper period after meals.

She did her best to teach us French. She tried to induce me--she actually had induced one of my predecessors--to write French exercises in the evenings. She made a stringent rule that no word of English was ever to be spoken at meals. I think that this was a real self-denial to Madame. She knew a little English--picked up sixty years before when she spent one term in a school near Folkestone. She liked to air it; but for the sake of our education she denied herself. We used to sit at dinner with a dictionary--English-French and French-English--on the table. We referred to it when stuck, and on the whole we got on well in every respect except one.

Madame had an eager desire to understand and appreciate English jokes, and of all things a joke is the most difficult to translate. A fellow-lodger once incautiously repeated to me a joke which he had read in a paper. It ran thus: "First British Soldier (in a French Restaurant): 'Waiter, this 'am's 'igh. 'Igh 'am. _Compris?_' Second British Soldier: 'You leave it to me, Bill. I know the lingo.

_Garcon, Je suis._'"

I laughed. Madame looked at me and at W., my fellow-lodger, and demanded a translation of the joke. I referred the matter to W. His French was, if possible, worse than mine, but it was he who had started the subject. "Ham," I said to him, "is _jambon_. Go ahead."

W. went ahead, but "high" in the sense he wanted did not seem to be in the dictionary. I had a try when W. gave up and began with an explanation of the c.o.c.kney's difficulty with the letter "h." Madame smiled uncomprehendingly. W., who had studied the dictionary while I talked, made a fresh start at "_je suis_." "_Je suis_--I am.

_Jambon_--ham, _c'est a dire ''am' a Londres_.'" We worked away all through that meal. At supper, Madame, still full of curiosity, set us at it again.

We pursued that joke for several days until we were all exhausted, and Madame, politely, said she saw the point, though she did not and never will. I do not believe that joke can be translated into French.

Months afterwards I had as fellow-lodger a man who spoke French well and fluently. I urged him to try if he could make Madame understand.

He failed.

Madame was most hospitable. She was neither worried nor cross when we asked friends to dine with us. Indeed she was pleased. But she liked due notice so that she could devote proper attention to _la cuisine_.

M., who was at that time with a cavalry brigade, used to come and spend a night or two with me sometimes. He was a special favourite with Madame and she used to try to load him with food when he was leaving. One very wet day in late autumn, Madame produced a large brown-paper bag and filled it with pears. She presented it to M. with a pretty speech of which he did not understand a word. M. was seriously embarra.s.sed. He liked Madame and did not want to hurt her feelings; but he had before him a railway journey of some hours and then five miles on horseback. It is impossible to carry a brown-paper bag full of pears on a horse through a downpour of rain. The bag gets sopped at once and the pears fall through it. M. pushed the bag back to Madame.

"_Merci, merci_," he said. "_Mais non, pas possible._"

Madame explained that the pears were deliciously ripe, which was true.

M. said, "_a cheval, Madame, je voyage a cheval_."

Madame pushed the bag into his hands. He turned to me.

"For goodness' sake explain to her--politely, of course--that I can't take that bag of pears. I'd like to. They'd be a G.o.dsend to the mess.

But I can't."

Madame saw the impossibility in the end; but she stuffed as many pears as she could into his pocket, and he went off bulging unbecomingly.

M. used to complain that he ate too much when he came to stay with me. I confess that our midday meal--we ate it at noon, conforming to the custom of the house--was heavy. And Madame was old-fas.h.i.+oned in her idea of the behaviour proper to a hostess. She insisted on our eating whether we wanted to eat or not, and was vexed if we refused second and even third helpings.

Madame was immensely interested in food and we talked about marketing and cookery every day. I came, towards the end of my stay, to have a fair knowledge of kitchen French. I could have attended cookery lectures with profit. I could even have taught a French servant how to stew a rabbit in such a way that it appeared at table brown, with thick brown sauce and a flavour of red wine. The marketing for the family was done by Madame and Marie, Marie in a high, stiff, white head-dress, carrying a large basket.

On the subject of prices Madame was intensely curious. She wanted to know exactly what everything cost in England and Ireland. I used to write home for information, and then we did long and confusing sums, translating stones or pounds into kilos and s.h.i.+llings into francs; Monsieur intervening occasionally with information about the rate of exchange at the moment. Madame insisted on taking this into account in comparing the cost of living in the two countries. Then we used to be faced with problems which I regard as insoluble.

Perhaps a sum of this kind might be set in an arithmetic paper for advanced students. "b.u.t.ter is 2_s._ 1_d._ a pound. A kilo is rather more than two pounds. The rate of exchange is 2785. What would that b.u.t.ter cost in France?"