Part 29

"Just one more centimetre, and you'll be fit!" exclaims the enthusiastic father, while on the lashes of the smiling mother form two bright tears which trickle unheeded down her cheeks.

There reigns a supernatural enthusiasm among all these youths; an almost sacred fire burns in their eyes, their speech is pondered but passionate. They are so glad, so proud to go. They know but one fear--that of arriving too late.

"We don't want to belong to the Class that didn't fight."

And with it all they are so childlike and so simple--these heroes.

One afternoon, in a tea room near the Bon Marche, I noticed a soldier in an obscure corner, who, his back turned to us, was finishing with vigorous appetite, a plate of fancy cakes and pastry. (There was still pastry in those days--1917.)

"Good!" thought I. "I'm glad to see some one who loves cakes enjoying himself!"

The plate emptied, he waited a few minutes. Then presently he called the attendant.

She leaned over, listened to his whispered order, smiled and disappeared. A moment later she returned bearing a second well laden dish.

It was not long before these cakes too had gone the way of their predecessors.

I lingered a while anxious to see the face of this robust sweet tooth, whose appetite had so delighted me.

He poured out and swallowed a last cup of tea, paid his bill and rose, displaying as he turned about a pink and white beardless countenance, that might have belonged to a boy of fifteen--suddenly grown to a man during an attack of measles. On his breast was the Medaille Militaire, and the Croix de Guerre, with three palms.

This mere infant must have jumped from his school to an aeroplane. At any rate, I feel quite certain that he never before had been allowed out alone with sufficient funds to gratify his youthful passion for sweetmeats and, therefore, profiting by this first occasion, had indulged himself to the limit. Can you blame him?

The "Bananna"--slang for the Medaille Militaire--probably on account of the green and yellow ribbon on which it hangs.

VIII

To go from Le Mans to Falaise, from Falaise to St. Lo; from St. Lo to Morlaix, and thence to Poitiers would seem very easy on the map, and with a motor, in times gone by it was a really royal itinerary, so vastly different and picturesque are the various regions crossed. But now that gasolene is handed out by the spoonful even to sanitary formations, it would be just as easy for the civilian to procure a white elephant as to dream of purchasing sufficient "gas" to make such a trip.

There is nothing to do but take the train, and that means of locomotion not only requires time, but patience and considerable good humour. Railway service in France has been decidedly reduced, and while travelling is permitted only to those persons who must needs do so, the number of plausible motives alleged has greatly augmented, with the result that trains are crowded to the extreme limit. To tell the truth, a good third of the population is always moving. For how on earth is one to prevent the parents of a wounded hero from crossing the entire country to see him, or deny them the right to visit a lad at his training camp?

This then accounts for the appearance of the Breton peasant's beribboned hat and embroidered waistcoat on the promenades of the Riviera, the Arlesian bonnet in the depths of Normandy, the Pyrenese cap in Lorraine.

All this heterogeneous crowd forms a long line in front of the ticket office, each one encumbered with a basket or a bag, a carpetsack or a bundle containing pates and sausages, pastry and pickles, every known local dainty which will recall the native village to the dear one so far away.

It is thus that from Argentan to Caen I found myself seated between a stout motherly person from Auvergne, and a little dark man from whose direction was wafted so strong an odour of garlic that I had no difficulty discerning from what region he hailed. Next to him were a bourgeois couple whose mourning attire, red eyes and swollen faces bespoke plainly enough the bereavement they had just suffered. Silent, indifferent to everything and everybody, their hands spread out on their knees, they stared into the ghastly emptiness, vainly seeking consolation for their shattered dream, their grief-trammelled souls.

A heavily built couple of Norman farmers occupied the seats on either side of the door, and then came a tall young girl and her mother, a Belgian soldier, and finally a strange old creature wearing an antiquated starched bonnet, a flowered shawl, and carrying an umbrella such as one sees but in engravings illustrating the modes and customs of the eighteenth century. She was literally buried beneath a monumental basket which she insisted upon holding on her knees.

Every available inch of floor space was covered with crocks and kits full of provisions, and in the rack above our heads were so many boxes and bundles, bags and bales, remaining aloft by such remarkable laws of equilibrium that I feared lest any moment they fall upon our heads, and once this catastrophe occurred there seemed to be little hope of extricating oneself from beneath the ruins.

The conversation was opened by the Norman farmer who offered to relieve the little old woman of her basket and set it safely between his feet.

"Oh, non merci," she piped in a thin little wavering treble, and an inimitable accent which made it impossible to guess her origin.

"Oh, no, Monsieur, thank you," she continued. "It's full of cream tarts and cherry tarts, and custard pies made right in our own home. I'm taking them to my boy, and as we stayed up very late to make them so that they would be quite fresh, I should hate to have any of them crushed or broken. He did love them so when he was little!"

"Our son was just the same. As soon as he was able to eat he begged them to let him have some brioche. But his fever was too high when we got there, and he couldn't take a thing. 'That doesn't matter,' he said to his mother. 'Just the sight of them makes my mouth water, and I feel better already.'"

My Provencal neighbour could no longer resist. His natural loquaciousness got the better of his reserve.

"Well, the first thing my son asked for was olives, so I brought him enough to last, as well as some sausage which he used to relish. Oh, if only I could bring him a little bit of our blue sky, I'm sure he would recover twice as quickly."

The mother of the young girl now sat forward and asked the Norman farmer's wife where and how her son had been wounded.