The Happy Foreigner Part 3

"Have you _got_ to be here?" asked an American.

"No, I wanted to come."

The eye of the American said "Fool!"

"Are you paid to come here?" asked a Frenchman.

"No. In a sense, I pay to come." The eye of the Frenchman said, "Englishwoman!"

Each day she drove in a wash of rain. Each night she returned long after dark, and putting her car in the garage, felt her way up the inky road by the rus.h.i.+ng of the river at its edge, crossed the wooden bridge, and entered the cell which she tried to make her personal haven.

But if personal, it was the personality of a dog; it had the character of a kennel. She had brought no furnis.h.i.+ngs with her from England; she could buy nothing in the town. The wooden floor was swamped by the rain which blew through the window; the paper on the walls was torn by rats; tarry drops from the roof had fallen upon her unmade bed.

The sight of this bed caused her a nightly dismay. "Oh, if I could but make it in the morning how different this room would look!"

There would be no one in the sitting-room, but a tin would stand on the stove with one, two, or three pieces of meat in it. By this she knew whether the cubicles were full or if one or two were empty. Sometimes the coffee jug would rise too lightly from the floor as she lifted it, and in an angry voice she would call through the hut: "There is no coffee!" Silence, silence; till a voice, goaded by the silence, cried: "Ask Madeleine!"

And Madeleine, the little maid, had long since gone over to laugh with the men in the garage.

Then came the owners of the second and third piece of meat, stumbling across the bridge and up the corridor, lantern in hand. And f.a.n.n.y, perhaps remembering a treasure left in her car, would rise, leave them to eat, feel her way to the garage, and back again to the safety of her room with a tin of sweetened condensed milk under her arm. So low in comfort had she sunk it needed but this to make her happy. She had never known so sharp, so sweet a sense of luxury as that with which she prepared the delicacy she had seized by her own cunning. It had not taken her long to learn the possibilities of the American Y.M.C.A., the branch in Bar, or any other which she might pa.s.s in her travels.

Shameless she was as she leant upon the counter in some distant village, cajoling, persuading, spinning some tale of want and necessity more picturesque, though no less actual, than her own. Secret, too, lest one of her companions, over-eager, should spoil her hunting ground.

Sitting with her leather coat over her shoulders, happy in her solitude, she would drink the cup of Benger's Food which she had made from the milk, and when it was finished, slide lower among the rugs, put out the lights, and listen to the rustle of the rats in the wall.

"Mary Bell is getting married," said a clear voice in the hut.

"To the Wykely boy?" answered a second voice, and in a sudden need of sound the two voices talked on, while the six listeners upon their stretchers saw in the dark the life and happiness of Mary Bell blossom before them, unknown and bright.

The alarm clock went off with a scream at five.

"Why, I've hardly been asleep!" sighed f.a.n.n.y, bewildered, and, getting up, she lit the lamp and made her coffee. Again there was not time to make the bed. Though fresh to the work she believed that she had been there for ever, yet the women with whom she shared her life had driven the roads of the Meuse district for months before she came to them, and their eyes were dim with peering into the dark nights, and they were tired past any sense of adventure, past any wish or power to better their condition.

On and on and on rolled the days, and though one might add them together and make them seven, they never made Sunday. For there is no Sunday in the French Army, there is no bell at which tools are laid aside, and not even the night is sacred.

On and on rolled the weeks, and the weeks made months, till all November was gone, and all December, and the New Year broke in fresh torrents of rain.

f.a.n.n.y made friends all day and lost them again for ever as she pa.s.sed on upon the roads. Sometimes it was a sentry beside whom her "clients" left her for an hour while they inspected a barracks; sometimes it was an old woman who called from a doorway that she might come and warm her hands at the fire; sometimes an American who helped her to change a tyre.

There were times, further up towards Verdun, where there were no old women, or young women, or villages, when she thought her friends were mad, deranged, eccentric in their loneliness.

"My sister has a grand piano ..." said one American to her--opening thus his conversation. But he mused upon it and spoke no further.

"Yes?" she encouraged. "Yes?"

He did not open his mind until she was leaving, when he said simply to her: "I wish I was back home." And between the two sentences all the pictures of his home were flowing in his thoughts.

An old woman offered her shelter in a village while her clients were busy with the mayor. In the kitchen there was a tiny fire of twigs.

American boys stamped in and out of the house, laughing, begging the daughter to sew on a b.u.t.ton, sell them an egg, boys of nineteen and twenty, fair, tall, and good-looking.

"We shall be glad when they are gone," said the old woman looking at their gay faces. "They are children," she added, "with the faults of children."

"They seem well-mannered."

"They are beautiful boys," said the peasant woman, "and good-mannered.

But I'm tired of them. Children are all very well, but to have your house full of them, your village, your family-life! They play all day in the street, chasing the dogs, throwing b.a.l.l.s. When our children come out of school there's no holding them, they must be off playing with the Americans. The war is over. Why don't they take them home?"

"Good-day, ma'am," said a tall boy, coming up to f.a.n.n.y. "You're sure cold. We brought you this." And he offered her a cup of coffee he had fetched from his canteen.

"Yes, they're good boys," said the old woman, "but one doesn't want other people's children always in one's life."

"Is this a park?" f.a.n.n.y asked a soldier in the next village, a village whose four streets were filled with rows of lorries, touring cars and ambulances. On every car the iron was frail with rust, the bonnets of some were torn off, a wheel, two wheels, were missing, the side ripped open disclosing the rusting bones.

"Pardon, madame?"

"What are you doing here?"

"We are left behind from the Fourth Army which has gone up to Germany. I have no tools or I would make one car out of four. But my men are discouraged and no one works. The war is over.

"Then this is a park?"

"No, madame, it is a cemetery."

Months went by, and there came a night, as wet and sad as any other, when no premonitory star showed in the sky, and all that was bright in f.a.n.n.y's spirit toned itself to match the monotonous, shadowless pallor about her.

She was upon her homeward journey. At the entrance to the hut she paused; for such a light was burning in the sitting-room that it travelled even the dark corridor and wandered out upon the step. By it she could see the beaded moisture of the rain-mist upon the long hair escaped from her cap.

A group of women stood within, their faces turned towards the door as she entered.

"f.a.n.n.y...."

"What is it?"

"We are going to Metz! We are ordered to Metz!" Stewart waved a letter.

Was poverty and solitude at an end? They did not know it. In leaving the Meuse district did they leave, too, the boundless rain, the swollen rivers, the s.h.i.+ning swamps, the mud which ebbed and flowed upon the land like a tide? Was hunger at an end, discomfort, and poor living? They had no inkling.

f.a.n.n.y, indifferent to any change, hoping for nothing better, turned first to the meat tin, for she was hungry.

"Metz is a town," she hazarded.

"Of course!"

"There will be things to eat there?"

"No, very little. It was fed from Germany; now that it is suddenly fed from Paris the service is disorganised. One train crosses the devastated land in the day. I hear all this from the brigadier--who has, for that matter, never been there."