Friday, July 14th: Pink Shoes
It would be too unkind of it to rain, as if the fête were not already shadowed enough.
One was angry waking in the rain.
It rained when they took their wreaths and flowers to the statues of Strasburg and Lille, and it rained when the troops were massed before the Invalides for the prise d'armes.
But afterwards the rain did stop.
A girl and a limping soldier, ahead of us as we went to the Nord-Sud, were sopping wet. I suppose they had been standing for hours on the Esplanade. Her knitted cape and cotton blouse were quite soaked through. She had no hat, and she was laughing because her brown curls dripped into her eyes.
In the Place de la Concorde people had put down their umbrellas, and were telling one another that it was really better not to have the heat of sunshine.
We waited a little with the crowd in the Place, the friendly, orderly Paris crowd that used to come to fêtes so gaily, grave now, almost solemn. The crowd was full of wounded. The men flung back out of the war, broken, were come to watch their comrades pass between two battles. The crowd gave place to them, and they were proud in it.
Then Diane came, with Miss and the babies, both of them tremendously excited in their little mackintosh coats.
One of the club servants showed us to the small writing-room, where a window had been reserved for us. From the window we looked down on the wide grey stream of the street between banks of people. One way we could see the great Place kept clear also, in grey reaches, past islands of crowd, and the other way we could see a heap of people on the steps of the Madeleine.
The babies sat on the window-ledge and forgot everything at once because of another baby, down in the crowd on the opposite kerb, who wore a pink bonnet and pink shoes, and had a little flag in either hand.
"Oh, mummy, her mummy has put down a newspaper for her to stand on, so the wet won't hurt her shoes."
"Yes, Cricri darling. Don't wriggle so, child; Miss, do watch out for her."
"I've got pink shoes, too, haven't I, Fafa?"
Diane, holding Fafa very tight on the window-ledge—not because he wriggled, he was too big, but because he might have been grown up, like the little boys of other mothers, and gone away to war—was telling him what a wonderful thing it was he had come to see, and how, when he was a big man, he would always remember it, and could say to people, "On the 14th of July, 1916, I saw——"
"Yes, mummy! Oh, mummy, do you suppose that little girl's shoes are quite new for to-day?"
"Babies, you are going to see Belgian soldiers; you will always and always remember what they did for us. And there will be British soldiers; you know how they are fighting for us, just the same as papa and Uncle Raoul. And you will see the Russians, who have come from so far away to help us; and beautiful Hindus, and big Africans, and the little Anamites, and our own men."
Her voice thrilled when she said "our own men."
Her voice has that curious quality of drawing darkness: it made me feel the shadows when she said like that, "our own men."
She said, "There will be the fusilliers marins, and the cuirassiers, and the artilleurs. You may see the 75', Fafa. And there will be the chasseurs à pied, from Verdun, with their fourragère."
"Mummy, was it her mummy who gave her the little flags?"
"I think so, Fafa darling."
"Is it her mummy there with her?"
"I think so."
"Is her papa gone to the war, like my papa?"
Diane put her cheek down against the top of his little fuzzy head as she stood with her arms around him.
"Is her papa gone to the war too, mummy?"
"I think so."
"She has to stand up all the time, mummy, will she not be tired? I am afraid she will be tired before the procession comes. When will the procession come, mummy?"
Diane said to me, "To think it is the first day of flags and music we have had since the war began——"
I was thinking all the time of the day when the troops will come home. I was thinking that this day was a promise of that day. I knew that Diane was thinking of that also. Her eyes filled with tears; I saw them through the tears that were in my own eyes. We both knew so well. The men look forward fearlessly to that day, but the women know fear. Every woman in the crowd was thinking how this day promised that day, gloriously; and every one was thinking—but if he does not come home.
The people were come to their day of flags and music almost as if it were to some religious ceremony. They waited in the grey morning to see their troops go by; coming from battles, going back again to battles, and always with the war so close that, if it were not for the sounds of the city, we could have heard its thundering.
Diane said, because she did not want the children to think she was sad, "The little pink girl must have come very early to have got so good a place."
"Mummy, did she have a nice breakfast before she came?"
"Oh, yes, a lovely breakfast."
"Will the procession never come, mummy dear? That little girl must be so tired. Why doesn't the procession come, mummy?"
"Oh, there's the sun," Cricri sang out, wriggling in Miss's arms, and clapping her hands. "There's the sun come out!"
The sun shone straight into our eyes for a few minutes, and then the soft grey settled down again.
We heard the sound of music and of marching, from a long way off.
The crowd stirred and thrilled.
"They are coming," cried the babies, "they're coming!"
"Yes, yes, they're coming. What is that the band plays? There's the Garde Républicaine, and the music—listen, babies! And now it is Belgian music. There are the Belgians—see the people run out to give them flowers! There are the mitrailleuses and the Lanciers and the Cyclistes!"
"Mummy, I've got a bicycle too, haven't I; and I can ride it well, can't I?"
"Now the English, with their music! Cricri, do keep still and let Miss see. How beautifully they march! Aren't you proud, Miss? There are the Ansacs, Fafa; and look at the Indians! The street is carpeted with flowers: they cannot pick them up, they walk over them. There are the Russians. Look, babies, the little boys and girls from the crowd run out and pick up the flowers to give them! Listen, the Russian music sounds like great seas and winds in forests. It will be our own men coming now, Fafa."
"Mummy, oh, mummy! I can't see the little girl any more!"
"Now it will be our own men coming! Look, look, babies, to see the very first of them! There's our own music—listen."
Holding Fafa close against her shoulder, she leaned out past him over the window-ledge, her eyes lighted with that flame one knows in soldiers' eyes.
"They will be our own men, who have fought for us, who will go back to fight for us. Fafa, think of it! Here they are, their music—oh, oh, it is the Chant du Départ!"
"Mummy, do you think we'll never any more see the little girl with the pink shoes?"