Home Fires in France

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

A one-armed young soldier, in a worn blue uniform, with a patch over one eye, rose up from the cane-bottomed chair, took from the white-pine table a small pad of paper and held it out to the newcomer sketching a bow. The older man looked the other way sedulously. He was a very tender-hearted person (except of course for his business competitors) and the constant sight of the maimed wreckage of young manhood made him sick.

On the pad of paper was printed "Nom du Visiteur," with a blank following it, and, underneath, "Objet du la visite." Mr. Hale's French was limited, but he made out that he was to write down who he was and what his business was, and generously he admired the little detail of office administration which he had never happened to see in an American business office. "That beats sending in a message by the office-boy, all right!" he thought to himself as he wrote. "They are funny people! Just when you get absolute proof that they can't do business any more than a sick cat, you run into something that makes you wonder."

He had written on the pad "Randolph Metcalf Hale, President of the Illinois Association of Druggists," and, underneath that, "On business connected with closer commercial relations of France and the United States." As he handed the slip of paper back to the young soldier he thought, "I might about as well get a rubber stamp for that last, and save writing it over so often."

The uniformed messenger limped out of the room. "Oh Lord! and a wooden leg, along with only one eye and one arm," thought Mr. Hale, wincing at the too familiar sound of the halting gait. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and stood meditatively looking down at his own vigorous, well-clad legs.

The soldier came back and motioned the visitor to follow him. They went along a narrow corridor with occasional steps up and other steps down, with large old windows looking out through time-dimmed panes upon a stone-paved court with an old gray stone fountain. The American shook his head. "Never anything new! Always cutting their clothes out of their grand-father's left-overs and sewing them up by hand; that's it, everything hand-made!"

He was ushered into an office where a man of about his own age, with a black beard, streaked with white, rose up and came towards him with outstretched hand.

"Ninth to-day," noted the American mentally. He amused himself by keeping statistics on the fabulous amount of handshaking accomplished in French business life.

Then he explained his presence. Partly because he accounted it a crime to take longer than necessary to state your business, and partly because he had stated it so many times, he packed a succinct account of himself into comparatively few phrases.

"Like almost everybody else in America, Monsieur Portier, I want to help make up to France for the way she's been having the rough end of all this war. But everybody does best at his own sort of help; and I didn't come over for reconstructing villages or taking care of refugees. That sort of work's got to be done, of course, but there are a lot of our own folks at that already. Anyhow, not knowing your language, or your folks, I'd make a poor job of trying to fix up their personal lives. That's not my specialty. But I have a specialty, and that's the American toilet preparations business. And it occurred to me out there in Evanston that perhaps getting American business along my line joined up closer with French business would be as good a turn as I could do for France. After all, though it does give you the horrors to see the poor boys with their legs and arms shot off, that doesn't last but one generation. But business now ... all the future is there!" His eye kindled. He had evidently pronounced his credo. The attentive Frenchman behind the desk nodded, acquiescing in carefully accurate English: "Precisely, Mr. Hale. You had the very same idea which induced my Government to organize this committee of which I am secretary. I am more than at your disposition."

"I know it," said the American without further expression of gratitude than this recognition, "and that's why I'm here. I've got to a place where I need some help. It's this way. I've done a lot of straight business, I mean paying business. And I've managed that all right. I've got the rails laid for our sending over drug specialties you don't have here and for shipping to the States the toilet preparations specialties I find here. But now I'm here I want to do more than just regular business. Now that I see your country and take in what the war's been, and think what you've been up against ... well, Monsieur Portier, I tell you I want to do something for France!"