The Blower of Bubbles Part 11

The Frenchman tore the red kerchief from his neck and hurled the mug to the floor, where it broke into a hundred pieces. "By gosh, me!" he bellowed in a voice that would have terrified a bull. "I _keel_ you!"

He advanced in windmill fas.h.i.+on, but his opponent, who had been one of the best boxers of his year at Toronto 'Varsity, stopped him with a blow known technically as a "straight left to the jaw." Des Rosiers paused to collect his thoughts. He was wondering whether to kick with one foot or with both, when something happened, and oblivion settled over him like the curtain on the last act of a melodrama. Campbell had stepped forward, and, putting his shoulder behind it, had delivered a blow on the lower part of the jaw with force enough to fell an ox. For Des Rosiers the rest was silence.

Concluding his recruiting speech to the dazed villagers, Campbell put on his tunic and strode down the street.... But the fall of Mr.

Pecksniff in the eyes of Tom Pinch was not more complete than the collapse of their idol, Jacque Noir, in the eyes of the inhabitants of Ville Marie.

III

A sky that was hung with stars looked down upon the s.h.i.+mmering roof-tops of Haileybury. The streets were deserted except in the main thoroughfare, where a group of men were seated in an irregular line, their pipes glowing in the darkness. They had been there since dusk.

Midnight pa.s.sed, and the shadowy line was longer as each hour struck.

Men with heavy packs; men with the mud of the northern wilderness still on their boots; men who had walked for sixty miles; men whose beardless chins bespoke the schoolboys of a year before; men whose faces would have looked coa.r.s.e and cruel in any light but that of the stars; one by one or in pairs they came. For each there was a yell of welcome, a ribald jest or two--then silence once more, and the glowing pipes. The first glimmering streaks of dawn showed the queue in all its picturesque grotesqueness. The man in front was leaning against a frame store that bore the placard "Recruiting Office."

Some three thousand miles away, a Hohenzollern Emperor had said that the British Empire would crumble into disintegration at the first sound of war. And through the forests of the north and over weary trails men were staggering on, mile after mile, fearful of one thing only--that they might be too late to answer the call which had come, from across the Atlantic, speeding over forests, cities, prairies, lakes, and mountains until echo answered from the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific Coast.

The early boat from Ville Marie discharged its half-dozen pa.s.sengers. A powerfully built French-Canadian strode up the hill and stopped at the crowd of men. With a worried contraction of his heavy eyebrows he surveyed the formidable length of the line.

"G.o.dam!" said he.

Heedless of the jests and the comments of the mob, he went slowly down the line, carefully scrutinizing each man, until he stopped at a half-breed Indian. For a moment only they argued in French, then he produced a roll of dollar notes in one hand, and brandished the other hand threateningly in the half-breed's face. The combined arguments proved too much; when the enrollment of recruits took place, number eighteen was Jacque Des Rosiers, sworn to serve His Majesty the King for the duration of the war and six months afterwards--in witness whereof he had drawn an inky cross after his name.

It would be difficult to give the exact motive for his action. He probably had never heard of Belgium, but--well, take horns and tail from the devil, and what is left?

Three weeks later the company of amateur soldiers were warned to proceed to the concentration camp. Willing, but puzzled by the infliction of army discipline, they had struggled past the first pitfalls of recruits.h.i.+p. For the sake of Captain Douglas Campbell, their "boss," they had suppressed their grumbling and submitted to the rites and ceremonies of military routine, arguing that, inexplicable as it was, it had some connection, however remote, with the ultimate goal of warfare. The afternoon before their departure Campbell spoke to them for exactly five minutes. His hair looked redder and his eyes seemed bluer than before. His powerfully built shoulders and the rhythm of his muscles lent a grace to his entire body, despite its ruggedness.

"Look here, you fellows," he said, "you signed up to fight--so did I.

We will fight, too, but Kitchener can't use us until we're ready. You wonder what all this drill is about. Well, here's my idea about it.

There isn't a coward in this crowd; there isn't a man who wouldn't go down a shaft after a pal, even if the chances were a hundred to one against his coming back. But you're not ready for the front. You've got the heart, but your bodies must have training and discipline. Watch me with this cigarette. In flicking the ash I burn my finger; the next time I want to touch the ash, my finger avoids it by a quarter of an inch. I laugh and try again. You all know what I mean. I am not afraid of the cigarette, but my finger is. If you've ever been kicked in the leg by a horse, the next time that horse kicks, which of your legs is drawn back first? In some strange way your body has instincts of its own, and though you might have a heart like a bull, your muscles and nerves--your body--might fail you when you needed them most. As I understand the army system, it is to train you to obey, not only mentally but physically. Eight months from now we may be lying half-dead with the enemy's guns playing h.e.l.l all around us. We may want to quit, we may be 'all in,' but, if the order comes to advance, we'll go forward, because our bodies will be disciplined to obey.

"Be patient then, men, and just grin when things go wrong. I would gladly have gone with you in the ranks, and there are lots of you chaps better able to lead than I, but a commission was given to me, and I'm out to do my best with the finest company of men in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. I'm learning all the time--as you are. You will have bad times, and so shall I; but let's help each other to laugh and make the best of it, for, after all, we're just great big children playing a mighty big game.... And when we reach France we'll show them all that the old Cobalt gang is afraid of nothing in this world or the next."

They cheered--and the man who shouted loudest was Jacque Des Rosiers.... And somewhere in the speech _esprit de corps_ had been born.

IV

Four winters pa.s.sed by.

France lay in the warmth of a late spring evening, like a stricken deer that has thrown off its pursuers momentarily, but is bleeding from a hundred wounds. Month after month she had endured the invader, and the cycle of years, instead of freeing her had only deepened her agony.

What had she left? The next attack would see Arras and her remaining coalfields gone, the Channel ports captured, and then ... Paris?...

Paris?

Unperturbed, however, by any such thoughts, Pet.i.te Simunde--no one thought of her by any other name--was driving four cows home from pasture. The setting sun shed a kindly hue on her gingham garment that was neither a frock nor an ap.r.o.n, yet served as both. Nor was the mellowing sunlight unkind to her face, for the racial sallowness of her cheeks, accentuated by too constant exposure to the elements, was softened and shaded into a gentle brown. Her shoes, which were far too large, were in the final stages of disrepair. About the brow her hair was braided with a simplicity that was by no means devoid of charm. Her eyes--but there she was really French. Simunde had never been farther from the village of Le Curois than the neighboring town of Avesnes Le Comte (unless one counts the momentous occasion, a year after her birth, when she was taken to Arras for exhibition before an esteemed and wealthy relative, who was so little impressed that he bequeathed his entire estate, consisting of eight thousand francs, to a manufacturer of tombstones); but a French woman does not acquire coquetry--she is born with it. Even in church Simunde would cast such languis.h.i.+ng yet mischievous eyes upon the cure himself, that the poor little man, who had never liked Latin at any time, used to stammer and mumble his orisons like an over-conscientious penitent at confessional.

When her two brothers went to war Simunde, who was then sixteen, a.s.sumed their tasks in addition to her own, in all of which she had the able direction of "madame" her mother. Between them they performed a day's work that would have exhausted two husky laborers. As is the custom in most of northern France, their home was not on the farm, but in the village, for one of the first essentials of existence to a Frenchman is companions.h.i.+p. On the outskirts of Le Curois, just on the hill, there was a great chateau, beautifully, gloomily aloof; but in the one street of the village itself, pigs, cows, hens and their offspring wallowed in mud and acc.u.mulated filth.

It is difficult to know which is the more striking: the French peasant's stoicism in the presence of war, or his indifference to dirt.

On this particular evening in May of 1918 Simunde was frankly regretting the absence of men. Not that she had ever been in love or known the rapture of wandering in the moonlight with a man (France is almost the only civilized country remaining that has not relegated chaperons to the realm of fiction); but she wanted to use her eyes on something more susceptible than a cow or a cure. It was spring, and she felt pretty, and when a woman is conscious of her own charm she seldom wishes to prove miserly with it.

She had just run across the road to convince a cow of its loss of the sense of direction when she heard the neighing of a horse. Glancing behind her, she looked directly into the eyes of a mounted British officer, whereupon that gentleman brought his steed to a standstill.

"_Bon soir, mademoiselle_," he said.

"_Bon soir, monsieur_," she answered demurely. Her eyes were lowered shyly, and her fingers played over the stick she was carrying, like a flute-player caressing his instrument. The officer bowed slightly and tried to recall his French vocabulary, though it must be admitted he was never loquacious in any tongue when conversing with a daughter of Eve. As for her, since it is a woman's _role_, she waited. Would he speak again or would he pa.s.s on, leaving the memory of yet one more meeting with a gentleman of adventure--one more roadside drama in which the dialogue consisted only of an exchange of salutations. Most men who have returned from France will recall for years to come how, a few kilometres back from h.e.l.l, they often caught a glimpse of two dark eyes and a tender smile. Just that and--

"_Bon soir, mademoiselle._"

"_Bon soir, monsieur._"

Commonplace, perhaps, in the telling, but in France it was the commonplace that became romance.

A smile crept into the officer's eyes, which were blue and kindly, though they had a glint in them--something like metal--a look that a mother always noticed first when her son returned from the line.

"_Ou est le village?_" he ventured.

"Le Curois?"

"_Oui!_ Le Curois."

"_Mais, monsieur_"--her eyes widened and her hands indicated the village dwellings--"_c'est ici Le Curois_!"

He breathed deeply and ventured again.

"_Connaissez-vous un billet pour dix officiers?_"

He felt rather pleased with the sentence; it was true he had intended to get accommodation for eleven officers, but it was moderately accurate for a foreign tongue.

For answer Simunde led him, preceded by the four cows, to her domicile as "Madame," like all French housewives had received billeting instructions in the first year of the war. In conjunction with her neighbors on either side, she speedily arranged accommodation for eleven officers in their cottages, and for the officers' _domestiques_ in the barns.

One hour later the guests of war, their battalion having come out for a rest, were dining comfortably in the home of Pet.i.te Simunde, while a sow, attended by ten small pigs, snorted approvingly outside the door.

Less than an hour afterwards Private Des Rosiers, acting as temporary batman to Major Douglas Campbell, was sitting on a chair in the farm-yard, in the glittering moonlight, regaling Simunde and her mother with grossly exaggerated stories of the mining country of Cobalt. He told them of his misdeeds, not in humility, but with much _braggadocio_, and his auditors listened, lost in gesticulatory admiration. Simunde was thrilled from her ill-shod feet to her braided brow. Jacque Des Rosiers was the first really wicked man she had met, and, woman-like, she was fascinated; also he had nice teeth and flas.h.i.+ng eyes.

The picture of a young officer on horseback whose brown hair was almost red and whose humorous blue eyes had a glint in them like metal, faded as completely from her mind as the memory of the sunset that had thrown its spell upon them.

Unromantic?... _Que voulez-vous? C'est la guerre!_

V

Two weeks pa.s.sed, during which period the placid fields about Le Curois resounded to the shouts of Canadian troops rehearsing open warfare (for rumor had it that the hour was almost at hand when Foch was to release the forces of retribution). For pastime, the troops played baseball and held field-days of many and varied sports. Whatever they did, they shouted l.u.s.tily and continuously while doing it, for they had mastered one elemental truth--that nothing can be accomplished without intensity.

Des Rosiers explained baseball to Simunde, who enjoyed the description without allowing it to interfere with her innumerable domestic and agricultural duties. It was quite true that Jacque Noir had never played the game or even mastered its rudiments, but he had the narrator's instinct that rises above mere accuracy of detail.

Every evening he accompanied Simunde to the pasture-land, and together they guided the patient cows homeward. When darkness set in and Simunde's tasks were finished for the day, he sat with her in the farm-yard and told lurid tales of northern Canada--to all of which "madame," whose tasks were never finished, lent a delighted and adjoining ear.

He pictured to Simunde the snow--how it filled the rivers till they ran no more; how it covered the great pine-trees until, as far as eye could see, there was nothing but white; and he told of the wind that was never still. And she listened, as only a Frenchwoman can listen, with every emotion he called forth registering in her face, as clouds racing across the sun will throw their shadows on the ground.