Empty Memories
Seventeen months after the day when he went out for the first time, he was killed beside his mitrailleuse.
He had been home in the meanwhile twice on leave, and there had been nothing changed. He had won many honours, and she supposed the other woman had been proud of him. For herself she had seen him very little and always pleasantly. She was glad now that it had been only pleasantly.
But it was the day of that first August, the day of his first going, that one day, that one hour, she kept living again and again through. It kept being present with her, curiously.
He had arrived—he had telegraphed—about four of the afternoon, she did not know from where. He would have to leave again before five o'clock. She knew, of course, with whom he had been. She thought, waiting for him, what an irony that it should be like this, after all the bitterness, he was coming back to her, and to the old house of his people, in the street of many gardens.
She thought it would be awkward for them both. What could they say to one another?
She wondered if it had been terrible to him to leave the other woman. Probably the other woman was beautiful. All those women were beautiful. She thought, perhaps that other woman loved him and cared what happened to him.
Her two little boys were playing in the room.
The great closed rooms, to which she had brought them back hurriedly from the seaside, fascinated them.
The bigger little one, in his sailor suit with the huge collar was saying, "That's the old witch's cave, Toto, in the snow mountain."
The smaller one, with the curls and the Russian blouse, said, "Oh, Zizi!"
"Yes; and, Toto, that big lump is the giant, sleeping."
"Oh, Zizi!"
Then their father came.
The little boys hung back and stared at him; they never had known him really well.
Their mother stood up and went to meet him, across the wide room. "You've had a horrid journey," she said.
"I've been fifty hours in the train," he answered. "Hallo, small boys, there!"
"Toto," said Zizi, "he's going to be a soldier!"
"Oh, Zizi!" said Toto.
The bigger boy came over to his father. "I know a chap," he said, "it's the son of a friend of mademoiselle's, whose father is dead and cannot be a soldier."
"Poor chap," said his father.
His wife said, "Old Denis has got your things together. All the other men-servants are gone. He has put you something to eat on the dining-room table."
He said, "Will you come with me, do you mind? I've things to say to you, and there is so little time."
But when they sat together at one corner of the big shining table, he did not seem to know what to say. He tried to eat, but it seemed as if he could not eat. He pushed the plate away and leaned his elbows on the table and his head in his hands.
She thought she would like to do something for him, but did not know what to do. Again she said, "It must have been dreadful in the train."
"It was wonderful," he said. Then, sitting still with his face hidden, he went on: "We were singing all the time. Wherever the train stopped people gave us flowers; the whole train was full of flowers, you know. They were most of them boys of the young classes in the train. We sang the most absurd things—nursery rhymes, and old cannons, 'Frères Jacques' and 'Cœur de Lise,' and those, you know. What is the one about 'Papa Lapin'? None of us could remember the one about 'Papa Lapin,' you know."
"I don't know," she replied. It had always annoyed her, his trick of saying, "You know." She sat playing with something on the table.
He said again, "The whole train was full of flowers. 'Papa Lapin,' 'Papa Lapin'—how irritating, you know, when one can't remember."
He sat up suddenly erect, and said, "You'll take the boys and go down to the old place and look after things. It has always bored you, but after all it is for Zizi. And be good to my mother, will you, though you don't like her—she, she remembers '70. And I've not been of much use to her. I've not been of much use to you, nor to any one." He stopped short.
It was odd that suddenly she, who never had thought much about him, or felt things at all about him, should have known this thing. She had known as she sat there with him, alone in the dining-room, by the untouched things on the table, that he never would come back. He was one of those who never come back.