Home Fires in France

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

But the price! Like all war prices it was five times what it was worth when new. I hadn't the least idea that my extraordinary visitors would buy it for us. Why in the world should they? In fact, by that time I had gone back to thinking that I had dreamed them.

However, I betook myself to their hotel, into their private sitting-room, bright with chintz and copper and flowers. I found Mrs. Hall without her hat even lovelier than before, a little gray in her thick soft hair as honestly shown as the faint, fine lines of simple kindness in her clear skin. She wore a dark-blue satin dress richly embroidered, evidently a creation from one of the great Paris houses. She assured me cordially that she was awfully glad to see me.

Sitting on the edge of the Beauvais tapestry chair like the poor relation on a begging expedition which I felt myself to be, I timidly told of my search, trying to be amusing about it. Now that I was there I dared not mention the price. Finally, however, having run out of expedients to put off that dangerous moment, I brought out haltingly the sum needed, and began to say, excusingly, that I thought I might get part of that from....

Mr. Robert J. Hall moved to the writing-table and took out a check-book. "I'll tack another thousand francs on to that," he said over his shoulder as he wrote, "I haven't been able to sleep nights for thinking of those operators punching down the pedals by main strength and awkwardness."

There was a silence as he wrote. Mrs. Robert J. Hall examined her glistening nails, looked out of the window, and, with a tact for which I was grateful, did not once glance at my face. I fancy that my expression, instead of gratitude, must have been stupefaction. Mr. Hall blotted his check, detached it, and handed it to me—the little bit of blue paper through which I saw as in a vision hundreds of the terribly needed raised-type books put into those terribly empty hands. I could find no words at all. "It's ... it's just like a miracle!" I was stammering, when some one knocked at the door, a timid, hesitating knock, such as mine had been.

The sound seemed to alarm the Halls. "Good Lord, I bet it's the abbé!" said Mr. Hall.

"You don't happen to speak French, do you?" asked his wife hastily. "Oh, you do? It's all right then. It's the curé of a town in the war-zone and we want to help him with some war-orphans, but we have the most awful time trying to make him understand about business details. It's perfectly terrible, not speaking the languages."

We turned to meet a short, elderly, double-chinned ecclesiastic who carried his bulky body with the impersonal professional dignity of his calling, but was not otherwise in the least impressive. The conversation began.

It consisted of an attempt on the part of Mr. Hall to get the curé to "come to the point," as he expressed it, and name a sum, and of terror-stricken evasions on the part of the curé to do any such thing for fear of losing their interest. This fencing centered about a large house which the curé needed to fit up for the reception of a number of war-orphans. "How much will it cost?" asked Mr. Hall patiently, over and over, evidently seeing no reason for his not receiving a direct answer. Upon my pressing the abbé hard, he finally brought out the sum, miserably, in a faltering voice which made me want to shake his hand. I knew how he felt.

The Halls consulted each other with a look of intimate understanding. "All right," said the husband, "all right, on condition that he can get the funds from his diocese to keep the thing going if we set it on foot." To me, he added: "The more we see of this sort of thing, the more we see you've got to go slow at times. These Europeans are so impractical that first thing you know they've used the money you give them to get themselves into some fool scheme, without half seeing their way through. We make it a rule not to give anything to a concern which isn't on a good, sound, business basis. What's the use?"