Home Fires in France Part 14

He himself went among them, gathering the contributions which were given in silence. While he counted them afterwards, the young reporter, waiting with an anxious face, swallowed repeatedly and crossed and uncrossed his legs a great many times. Before he had finished counting the minister stopped, reached over and gave the other young man a handclasp. "I envy you," he said.

He turned to the audience and announced that he had counted almost enough for their purpose when he had come upon a note from Mr.

Pennypacker saying that he would make up any deficit. Hence they could consider the matter settled. "Very soon, therefore, our town will again be represented on the French front."

The audience stirred, drew a long breath, and broke into applause.

Whatever the rest of the Union might decide to do, Marshallton, Kansas, had come into the war.

EYES FOR THE BLIND

She woke in the morning to the sound of her alarm clock, an instrument of torture which, before the war, she had never heard. At once there descended upon her two overpowering sensations, one an intense desire to stay in bed and rest, the other the realization that she had no time to lose if she was to be at her office on time. She was up at once, and began making a hasty toilet with cold water. It was so hasty that she had no time to think, even in pa.s.sing, of the old days when waking up meant ringing for some one to open shutters, close windows and bring hot water, breakfast, and the mails. By the time she had finished her Spartan toilet, her _concierge_, very sleepy-eyed and frowsy, rang at the door and handed in a bowl of _cafe au lait_ and a piece of bread, with the morning paper folded across the tray. The Directrice sat down in her cheerless dining-room and ate her breakfast, reading, eagerly at first, and then grimly, the communique of the day. "No advance anywhere along the lines; a few _coups-de-main_ here and there--indecisive results." Another day like all the others had begun, a day when hope was forbidden, when the only thing left was to endure and do the task at hand. For her, personally, there was nothing to fear in the lists of the dead, because she had found there, two long years before, the name which alone gave meaning to her life.

She put on her hat without looking in the mirror. This is a strange action in a Frenchwoman, but the Directrice was already preoccupied by the work awaiting her in her office. As she walked rapidly along through the rain, she was turning over in her mind the possibilities for one of her charges, Philippe, the childlike one who was perfectly willing to sit down there in the comfortable home provided for him and allow himself to be forever supported. It was not, Heaven knows, that our Directrice would not have liked forever and ever to have him supported and cared for like any child. But she had the instinctive grasp on the exigencies of human nature which is characteristic of her nation, and she knew that if he were to be again a normal human being, he must be roused to a sense of responsibility for his own life, in spite of the dreadful calamity which war had brought him. But how could he _be_ aroused? He had shown no interest in learning how to be a professional knitter; he had only dabbled in clay-modeling; his typewriting continued indifferent--what could there be which she had not yet tried?

Never before, until the war took away not only the meaning of her life but all her goods, had she known what it was to walk at that dismally early hour in the morning through a dismally rainy street. But now she was so absorbed with the needs of another that she did not at all feel the rain in her face or see the mud on her shoes, and had not even the most pa.s.sing pang of pity for herself, losing her youth from one day to another, with very little to hope for and,--alas!--nothing left to fear.

As she turned into the door of her inst.i.tution, she had an inspiration.

The only thing to do for Philippe was to turn to account the inimitable charm of his personality, since that was about all the equipment he seemed to have. Why could not he be a traveling salesman? But how _could_ a blind man be a traveling salesman? Ah, that was the thing for the Directrice to contrive! That was why she was there!

She was, as usual, the first person to arrive at her office, although the blind men, just coming out from breakfast, were already standing idling about the hall before going to their cla.s.ses, lighting cigarettes and chatting. They recognized her quick, light, steady step, and all their blind and mutilated faces lit up with welcome. Hers also. Although they could not see it, she gave to every one the smile, the animated look, the pretty, sideways toss of her head, the coquettish poise of her upright little figure, which she would have given to him seeing. It was strange to see her there, all those blind faces turned towards her, and hers irradiating a light and warmth--Well, perhaps, they saw it, after all.... Then she dismissed them to their work, with peremptory affection. "Off with you now, boys; don't stand fooling around here.

There isn't a minute to lose, with all you have to do." They nodded, saluted, and dispersed like obedient children.

She went into her office to begin the day's work. The light which had transformed her face died out into fatigue, as she sat opening one after another of the innumerable letters which lay on her desk, most of them pitiful, some of them very foolish, all from people who were clamoring for help. The stenographers came in; the professors began to arrive; the telephone bell rang tyrannically over and over; one of the men came groping his way back from his cla.s.s to complain fretfully that his teacher had treated him with insufficient respect; another arrived, his cane tapping in front of him, beaming with pride, and held out a perfectly typewritten page to show his progress; a third one limped to the door to say he had a sore throat, and please would the Directrice take care of it herself and not turn him over to the nurse, who did not understand him? The minutes pa.s.sed,--an hour, a precious hour was gone, and nothing yet accomplished!

The telephone rang again, the Directrice was called and received over the wire a communication from a lady who announced herself as the Marquise de Rabat-Sigur, _nee_ Elizabeth Watkins. That considerable personage said she would like to do something for the war-blind ("everybody in my set has an _aveugle de guerre_") and on being questioned as to her competence, stated squarely that all she could do was to take them out for walks, and please, if she did, she would like a good-looking one, not one of those with the dreadfully mutilated faces.

The Directrice turned away from the telephone, a hard line of scorn at the corner of her lips, her eyes very tired and old. She had not as yet been able to attend to any of her letters.

She now began dictating rapidly the answer to one of them when the bare-kneed boy-scout page came hurriedly to say that Pigier, the one who had the bad face-wounds, was worse, was in one of his "spells," and the nurse could do nothing with him. Blindness always comes of course from head-wounds, and head-wounds mean the disorganization of all the nervous centers. The Directrice left her work and went upstairs into the sick man's room and sat down by his bed. The great-shouldered, ma.s.sively muscled fellow clutched at her like a scared child, and began in a rapid, hysteric whisper to tell her of the awful things he saw in his eternity of blackness. For he was not really blind, he told her, he saw, yes he saw, but only not what was really there ... dreadful things, horrible things, dead men in the trenches after an attack, corpses rotting in the rain, artillery wagons driving headlong over men only half-dead--he told all these visions to her, all, and as he spoke he felt them grow faded, harmless, unreal. But she grew pale as she listened, and turned rather sick.

When he had poured out all his terrors and she had a.s.sured him--as she had forty times before--that they were all imaginary, just the result of his nerves not being settled yet; that as soon as he got back his appet.i.te and could take more exercise out of doors, and learn to roller skate in the gymnasium, he would find they would all disappear. Having transferred to her all his horrors, he felt himself immensely lightened and comforted. He promised her that if she went with him to the gymnasium, he would get up and dress and see if he could learn to stand up on the roller skates. She left him, her imagination full of new nightmare images to beset her next sleepless night, and hurried down to her office again, making a hopeful calculation that while he was dressing--this is a lengthy process with a newly blinded man--she could certainly have time to answer some letters.

As she entered her office, a pretty young girl, richly dressed, with a sweet, child's face, flushed with emotion, sprang up, grasped her arm and said, in a trembling voice of nervous determination: "Madame, you do not know me, but I have come to you at a critical moment in my life. I have decided that I will either go into a convent, or marry a blind man.

I have plenty of money, I can support a blind man." At the expression which came into the face of the Directrice, her voice rose hysterically.

"Don't laugh at me! Don't try to dissuade me. I detest the life at home.

My family do not understand me. I have run away from home this morning to tell you this. My decision is irrevocable."

The Directrice, feeling herself a thousand years old in worldly wisdom, summoned all her patience and sat down to tell her what she had told all the other pretty, child-faced young ladies who had come with such fixed determination. She said clearly and firmly that it was not to be thought of; that her visitor was far too young to make any such decision; that it would be unfair to any blind man to put him in a position where he would certainly soon feel himself a terrible drag on a young life; that she would not go into a convent, either, but would stay at home with her parents, like a sensible girl, until she married a man like herself. These were the words she p.r.o.nounced, very simple, common-sense, conversational words, which would have had no effect in any one's else mouth. But what she was spoke more loudly than what she said. The Directrice did not wear the black and penitential garb of a Mother Superior, but she had acquired, through intensive experience, all of a Mother Superior's firm, penetrating authority and calm manner. Not a trace of the amused scorn she felt for the silly child penetrated to the surface of her quiet manner. In ten minutes, the girl was crying, quite relieved that her visit had come to nothing, and the Directrice was calling for a cab to take her home. She herself put the weeping child into the carriage, and stood looking after it with a tolerant smile on her firm lips. "Was I ever as young as that?" she asked herself as she went back to her office.

As she turned again to the letter from the important members of the American colony who wanted to be put on the Governing Committee of the inst.i.tution because of the other distinguished names there, her blind man, the one who had had the horrors, appeared at the door, dressed, still animated with the new energy given him by his Directrice, and held out his hand to her. She jumped up laughing--how could she manage that laugh!--and told him he looked as though he were leading her out to dance. By this device she managed so that, while in reality leading him, he seemed to be leading her down the steps and across the courtyard, to the gymnasium.

While the instructor put on his roller skates and he started on his first round, she stayed, her face all a-sparkle with fun and interest, calling out joking encouragements to him, and making such merry fun of his awkwardness that he laughed back at her. One quite forgot for the moment that he had not only no eyes, but very little face left.

Then, seeing him well started, already taking an interest in the new sport, she turned back across the courtyard. Now that it was no longer needed, the sparkle and animation had all gone from her face again. She looked very old and tired, and cross and severe; and one of the volunteer teachers (a wealthy woman, coming in to give a half-hour of English in the intervals of her shopping and dressmaking expeditions) thought what a disagreeable-looking woman the Directrice was.

Then, for half an hour, she was, by some extraordinary chance, left uninterrupted in her office, and dictated rapidly the answers to her morning mail. In order to accomplish as much as possible in this unheard-of period of quiet, she became a sort of living flame of attention. The real meaning of each letter was sucked out of it by a moment's intense scrutiny. She had but a moment, in each case, to make the decision, sometimes a very important one. The wealthy American lady who wanted to be on the Committee was referred vaguely to some far-distant authority, who would in turn refer her to some one else, and so put her off without offending her; because if it is possible, wealthy people, no matter how preposterous or self-seeking, must not be offended. The money which Providence has so curiously placed in their hands means too much to the needy charges in the care of the Directrice.

She who, before the earthquake changes in her life, had been so scornful of self-seeking and pretentiousness, had now learnt a hundred adroit ways of setting those evil forces to turn the wheels of her mill. This was the part of her work she hated the most....

Another letter was from a blinded soldier in one of the hospitals, sent by one of his friends, since the authorities of the hospital would not permit him to write. He wanted to come to the Directrice's inst.i.tution, and a clique in the hospital, who were jealous of it, were combining in a thousand subterranean ways to prevent his going there. It is very easy for two or three seeing people to circ.u.mvent a blind man. The Directrice did not answer this letter--she put it aside with a bright light of battle in her eyes and a slightly distended nostril.

Four begging letters from people who had no claim on her or the inst.i.tution; two from inventors--one of whom had quite simply discovered the secret of perpetual motion, which, he thought, would be of especial benefit to blind people,--the other had invented a typewriter wonderfully adapted for the blind, a detailed description of which he forwarded. In her lightning survey the Directrice perceived that the machine weighed seventy pounds, threw the letter violently in the waste-paper basket, and turned to the next. Over this one she lingered a moment, her face softening again. It was from one of her graduates, who had come into the inst.i.tution with the horrors, who had clung to her like a dead weight for the first month of his stay, but who, before the end of his six months' sojourn there, had become perfect master of the knitting machine. Just before leaving, he had married the nurse who had taken care of him in the hospital, the Directrice being, of course, chief witness at the wedding. And now, after a year, he wrote her to make a report. They earned their living well, he and his wife, he had bought three other knitting machines and had a little workroom in his house, where he, his wife and two employees carried on a lucrative business; that is, his wife did until the arrival of a baby--such a healthy, hearty little boy whom they had called Victor, because the Directrice's name is Victorine; and please, will she be his G.o.dmother?... Yes, there are good moments in the life of the Directrice, moments when there is no mask on her face, either of courageous smiling or of bitter fatigue; when she is, for just a moment, a very happy woman, happy in a curious, impersonal way which was as little within her capacities before the war as all the rest of her laborious, surcharged life.

And then, somehow, it was lunch time. Where had the morning gone? She must needs go in now and sit down at one of the long tables, looking up and down the line of blind faces, watching the fumbling hands trying so hard to learn the lesson of self-reliance in the new blackness. She had acquired an almost automatic dexterity in turning a cup so that the handle will be in the right place for the groping hand, in cutting up a morsel of meat on the plate of the man beside her, while engaging him in lively conversation so that he shall not notice it, in slipping the gla.s.s under the water carafe which is being awkwardly tilted by one of those dreadful searching hands. Through some last prodigy of dexterity she ate her own lunch while she did this. There were four of the long tables, and every day she must sit at a different one, or the others will be jealous.

After lunch she stood for a few minutes in the big hall, laughing and talking with the men, helping them light their cigarettes, listening to their complaints or their accounts of the triumphs of the morning. As she went back into her office, she saw that one of them was following her, and her experienced eye saw by his shambling gait, by the listless way in which he handled his little bamboo cane, by every slack line of his body, what the trouble was. He had the "_cafard_"--the blues--and n.o.body could do anything for him but the Directrice. She was very tired herself, and for just a moment she reflected that if she had an instant's time, she would probably have the worst fit of "_cafard_" ever known to man. But she had _not_ an instant's time, so, without seeming to note the cloud on his face, she pulled open the drawer where she always kept some device against these evil hours. This time it was a new invention for writing Braille by hand. She told her "pensionnaire" that she was so glad he happened to come, because she had been wanting his opinion on the advisability of this. "See, it is intended to be used thus,"--she put it in his hands,--"and the little bar is made of such and such an alloy instead of the aluminum that is usually used, with such and such claimed benefits." Did he think, now, that it would be better than the standard one they were using, and what did he think about the advisability of giving the inventor a chance to make a few samples? With that she was launched upon a history of the inventor's life, what a hard time he had had, how eager he was to do something for the blind, and she wondered if perhaps her blind men there would be willing to give him an interview. The inventor would consider it such an honor. But in the meantime, of course, let him look carefully at the little invention, so that he can have the best judgment possible to give the inventor. The west wind of this new interest in another's life, this new importance for himself, blew away visibly before her eyes the black clouds of disheartenment. Her blind man was only a boy, after all. He took the little Braille plaque under his arm and, tapping briskly before him, felt his way to the door, saying, over his shoulder importantly, that he would try to find half an hour's time to give the inventor, although his days were really very much occupied. The Directrice looked after him with speculative eyes. "Now I have used up that device, what shall I do for the next one?"

Suddenly she realized that this was the visiting hour for the hospital where the blind man was being held in durance by the little plot against him. The fighting light came into her eyes again, she clapped on her hat--you will note it is the second time this day she has put on her hat without looking at herself in the gla.s.s--and swept out to do combat, all her firm, small, erect person animated by the same joy in battle which had sent her crusading forefathers into the fight singing and tossing their swords up into the air. She was gone an hour and a half, and when she came back, although she looked several degrees more tired even than before, a grim satisfaction sat upon her hard, small mouth. She had won her point. The blind man was to be allowed to come.

But there was Philippe, the man with whom she had begun the day. By looking out of the window, she could see him idling, as usual, in the garden, ostensibly taking a lesson in English from a volunteer professor, and in reality doing his best mildly to flirt with her. The Directrice frowned and smiled at the same time. What an absurd, lovable fellow he was! Thank Heaven, there was one of her "pensionnaires" whom it was impossible to take tragically. She gave a few orders for the disposition of the office work, wondered when she would ever have time really to go over her accounts thoroughly, and went out again to interview the head of a big wholesale groceries firm. In the old days, when she and hers lived in a chateau, they bought _en gros_ their supplies from this firm, and the head of it still had a respectful attention for any one of her name. This time she looked at herself when she put on her hat, looked very intently, rearranged her hair, noticed with impatience, quite impersonally, that the gray was beginning to show more every day, put on a little touch of powder and bit her lips to make them red. Then she took a fresh pair of gloves and put on a crisp veil.

Thus accoutered, looking inimitably chic, the grande dame entirely in spite of her few inches, she went forth to triumph. After a long conversation with the big grocer, she extracted from him a promise to try Philippe as a traveling salesman. She felt very young and almost gay, as she brought back this news. "If Philippe cannot sell anything to anybody, whether he wants it or not, I am much mistaken," she thought, watching him out of the window, wheedle a would-be stern professor of typewriting into lounging there instead of going back for the lesson.

Somehow, in the intervals of this day, which you will see to have been reasonably full, she had worked out all the details with what device in Braille Philippe could take down his orders, what kind of a typewriter he could carry about him to copy them, how he could be met at the station by such a volunteer to settle him in his hotel, and at the other station by another--our Directrice had a network of acquaintances all over France. Philippe came strolling into the room, very handsome, showing only by the unmoving brightness of his clear dark eyes that he was blind. "See here, Philippe," she said, pulling him into a chair beside her as though he were a child.

"Yes, yes." Philippe agreed to the new plan. "_There_ is something really sensible! That's a life that amounts to something! That is something that a man can do and take an interest in! Thank Heaven, I never need to take another English lesson as long as I live. I will go at once and work hard at my typewriter! How soon before I can begin? You know that I am engaged. I must earn enough to be married as soon as possible." Yes, she knew, although she knew also that it was the third time that Philippe had been engaged to be married since he was blinded!

She reflected how curiously little a temperament like his is changed by any outward event.

Just at this moment of amused relaxation, when the Directrice was looking young and carefree, she glanced out of her window and saw a very handsomely dressed, tall woman descend from a very handsome limousine and make ready to enter. Have I said that our Directrice can look very cross and tired? She can also look terrifying, in spite of her small stature.

She went rapidly down the steps and across the courtyard, giving the impression of a very much determined mother-hen bristling in every feather to defend her brood. On her side, the woman who came to meet her gave the impression of a hawk, with a thin, white face, whitened to pallor by powder, and with shallow, black eyes.

"Madame," said the Directrice, "you are not to enter here to-day, nor any other day."

"You have no right to keep me out," said the other.

The Directrice did not deny this; but she repeated sternly: "You are not to enter here, nor to see Auguste Leveau anywhere at all. He has a wife and two children. He is not only blind, but as weak as water. But I am not. You are not to enter."

The woman in the sables broke out into a storm of vulgar language, at which the Directrice advanced upon her with so threatening an air that she literally turned tail and ran back to her car, although she was shouting over her shoulder as she fled. The small, erect figure stood tense and straight like a sentry on guard until the car moved away, the occupant shouting out of the window the direst threats of revenge.

A gleaming car came up from another direction, and another handsomely dressed woman descended, greeting the Directrice in an affectionate, confidential manner. She said: "Oh, my dear, I am so glad to find you here. I always come to you, you know, when I am in difficulties! What would happen to me without your good advice! A friend of mine from the provinces, an engineer by profession, wants so much to come and see your weaving workroom, because he is interested in machinery and thinks perhaps he may do something for the blind in that part of France--not _here_, you know, not the slightest idea of stealing your ideas and duplicating your work here. When will you allow us to come, when he can really look at the machinery without bothering the men?" That was what she said, but this was what the Directrice understood very distinctly: "My search for the Legion d'Honneur is getting on famously. If I can only just add a weaving-room to my outfit before the Minister of the Interior comes for his visit, I am sure I'll get the red ribbon, and then I won't have to bother any more about these tiresome war-blind."

The Directrice answered guardedly: "Why, yes; come into my office, and I will see what will be the best time."

As she walked across the courtyard with her visitor, chatting about the difficulties of war-time housekeeping in Paris, she was thinking: "Yes, she only wants it to make a temporary show in order to get the Legion of Honor. But what of that! Let her have it. But if she opens a weaving-room, she must have blind there to operate the looms, and if she takes them up only to drop them, what will become of them? Let me see what I can do about that. Perhaps this is the way to get her to pay for the installation of a new weaving-room. As soon as she gets what she wants out of it, we could perhaps take it over and add the men to the number we care for here. I wonder if the American Committee would be willing to send more money for that. Yes, it's worth taking the risk."

But nothing of this elaborate calculation appeared in her smooth, affable manner as, having come to her decision, she announced, after gravely looking through a card catalogue, that Thursday afternoon at a certain hour would be the best time to see the looms. "And if you don't mind, Mrs. w.a.n.gton," she said, "I am just going to treat you like an old friend of the inst.i.tution and let you and your engineer wander about at your pleasure, without anybody bothering to escort you." That was what she said. What she thought was: "There, that will give them a chance to steal the names of the makers and the dimensions of the looms as much as they please."

Her visitor confounded herself in effusive expressions of grat.i.tude and friendliness, which the Directrice received with a smile. She went away, sweeping her velvet gown over the stone steps and looking down with antic.i.p.atory eyes on that spot of her well-filled bosom where she hoped to pin the coveted red ribbon. The Directrice let her go with almost an audible sniff of contempt, and turned again to work.

This time it was a plan to be worked out whereby the blind could learn certain phases of the pottery trade at Sevres. It involved a number of formalities and administrative difficulties which only one who has been in contact with French bureaucratic methods can faintly imagine. Our Directrice plunged into it headlong, and did not stir from her desk until she saw with a start that it was dinner time. And she had not yet looked over her accounts, the complicated accounts of a big, expensive, many-arteried inst.i.tution. However, long ago, all her friends had stopped asking her to go to dinner or to go to hear music. They had learned that she rarely spent the evening in any other way than finis.h.i.+ng up what work she had not found time to do during the day. She was a.s.sured of several hours more of quiet.

She went out to dinner (one meal a day in the company of many mutilated and blinded men is as much as one woman can stand) and had a solitary meal in a quiet restaurant, turning her gla.s.s about meditatively between the courses and wondering if she dared ask enough from the philanthropic American manufacturer to settle Benoit in the country. With his tendency to tuberculosis, that was the only safe life for him and his family. She made a mental calculation of what his pension would come to, and how much he could earn by his trade. Then, if he kept chickens, and a garden, and rabbits, and if he could get a house for six thousand francs ... by the time she had finished her dinner she had thought out a plan and a definite and businesslike proposition to put to the well-disposed American. Out of the depth of her experience with philanthropic people, she said to herself as she walked out: "I think I'd better tell him that we will put a bronze plaque on the house announcing that it is his gift to one of the war-blind. _That_ ought to settle him."

At her office the evening pa.s.sed very rapidly, between her account books and the sauntering in and out of one and another of the blind men. At ten o'clock, tired to the marrow of her bones, she stood up, dreading the effort to get home and get to bed, and yet looking forward to sleep as the one certain blessing of life. As she went out of the door she saw two shadowy forms standing in the summer starlight, and recognized two of her charges. "Come, come, children," she said; "it is bedtime. You must get to bed and sleep and get back your strength."

"But we _can't_ sleep," one of them told her. "We go to bed and lie awake and get the '_cafard_' worse and worse." The other one suggested timidly: "We thought that perhaps, before you went home, you might take us for a little turn about the lake in the park?" Our Directrice accomplished the last violent action of her violent day. There was not an instant's hesitation before she said cordially: "That's an excellent idea! Just what I would like to do myself. One always sleeps so much better for a bit of a walk in the fresh air."