OUR BIVVIE.
"Not a bad possie," said George, looking round the village. "Let's rustle a bivvie before the crowd comes along."
All George's performances in the art of rustling bivvies rank as star. He permits no coarse and obvious gathering of an expectant horde about the opening door; no slacking of straps and bootlaces until the final "I will" is said on either side. He debouches in extended order on the doomed house; gets his range and has the barrage well in hand (the quantity and quality of Madame's gesticulations furnish the key to this) before Colin drifts off the horizon and shows a peaked face with haunting eyes over George's shoulder. Colin does not speak. That is not his métier. He is the star shell illuminating the position; and usually in about six minutes' time it is safe for John to put in an appearance with the kit.
This is the recognised procedure, and it has served us indifferently well up and down three years of war and a good deal of France and Flanders. Therefore John was not to blame when, after waiting the scheduled six minutes, he arrived to find the other two still in the thick of it. Either Colin was not haunting up to form (which was likely, as he had been over-fed lately) or George's French (which was never made in the place where they make marriages) had scandalised Madame.
She stood in the door like some historical personage, probably the Sphinx, and repeated a guttural kind of incantation while George stretched his ears until they stood out more than usual in a struggle to understand.
"Rotten patois some of these people speak," he said. "I believe she has a room, though something's biting her. Likely enough Fritz went off with all her furniture; but I've already explained twenty times that that doesn't matter. Écoutez, Madame. We only want a room. Chambre-à-coucher. We can furnish it. We have three beds. Trois lits. Trois stretcher-beds sent over from Angleterre. À la gare. We've just seen them. Trois lits nous avons. Three beds."
"Beds!" Madame pounced on the word. "C'est cela! No beds, Monsieur. Je n'en ai pas."
"Ah, now we know where we are." George looked round triumphantly. "Écoutez, Madame. We don't want beds. Nous les desirons jamais. We have them. Trois lits. We don't want them. We have beds. Comprenez?"
"No beds," explained Madame firmly.
"But I've just told you—" George plunged again into the maelstrom, and a pretty girl appeared from the firelit room behind to stir him to his highest flights of eloquence. A smell of savoury cooking came also, and out in the street night shut down dark and chill and sinister, as it does in all the best novels. John let part of the kit down on the door-sill. It was his way of explaining that at the present moment there was a deeper, more intimate call than the Call of the Wild. Colin moved up a step and turned the haunting-stop full on. George redoubled his efforts, making them very clear indeed. We could understand almost every word he said.
Then Madame answered, and we could understand that too.
"No beds," she said.
The pretty girl smiled in a troubled way and murmured something in a soft voice.
"She says they haven't got any beds in the rooms. Fritz took them all," interpreted George. "Écoutez, Mademoiselle. We have beds. Trois lits. Nous les avons. Tous les trois. Oui. À la gare. Absolument."
Mademoiselle looked at Madame with a kink of her pretty brows. Madame rose like a balloon to the need.
"No beds," she said very distinctly, with a rounding of eyes and mouth. "No beds, Messieurs. No-o-o—beds."
Before George could recover John interfered. He makes a hobby of cutting Gordian knots.
"Oh, what's the earthly use of telling 'em we have beds when they can see for themselves that we haven't? They just think we can't understand. Let's go up and take the rooms if they're decent. Then we'll get the stretchers and put 'em up. That's the only sort of argument we can handle."
Manfully George went to work again. And reluctant, and yet obviously fascinated by his French, like a bird by a snake, Mademoiselle led up the narrow stairs and into a sizeable room, clean as a pin and as naked. On the threshold Madame washed her hands of hope.
"Regardez! No beds. C'est affreux!"
George began again. He had courage. Whatever else Nature and luck denied him there was no question of that. For a little it looked as though he were in sight of the goal. Then Mademoiselle explained. They were désolées, but the sales Boches had stolen all the beds, and Madame would not let the bare rooms to Messieurs les Anglais. It would not be convenable when they had no beds.
"No beds!" Madame appealed to the skylight as witness, and we looked at each other. It was getting late and the others would have rustled all the best bivvies by now. John had another brain-wave.
"Let's pantomime it. They always understand pantomime. There's no use saying we've got beds—not when George has to say it. We'll show them."
Earnestly we pantomimed stretcher beds—our own stretcher beds—and reposeful slumber thereon. "Mon Dieu!" cried Mademoiselle, retreating in haste. "No beds," repeated Madame, unconvinced and unafraid.
"She means that she doesn't want to have us," said John in cold despair.
"She'd be a fool if she did now," answered Colin grimly. "Let's get out of this."
And then John had a third brain-wave. He ordered George on guard, and descended with Colin in search of the concrete proof of our sanity. And Madame's voice, faint yet pursuing, followed us down.
"No beds," it said.
In ten minutes we were back triumphant with the three stretchers. It was a full six months since we had written to England for them, and they had come at last. Visions of rest went upstairs with us, and under the big eyes of Madame and Mademoiselle and several more Madames who had collected as unobtrusively as a silk hat collects dust we slashed at the coverings, ripped them off and disclosed—three deck-chairs.
We did not attempt to meet the situation. We left it to the devil—or Madame. And she, with the lofty serenity of one who through long and grievous misunderstanding has won home at last, was completely adequate.
"No beds," she said.
"ADOPTION.—Fine healthy boy, 3½ years; entire surrender to good home. reception. 5 bedrooms; £1,100."—Provincial Paper.
What an exacting young rascal!
"Liebknecht was the son of a father who opposed tyranny in earlier days, who sounded the toxin for liberty."—Express and Star (Wolverhampton).
But, to do old LIEBKNECHT justice, it was the son, not the father, who spelt it that way.