Home Fires in France

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Mrs. Hall pulled at my arm. Mr. Hall opened the door, and I found myself stumbling down the steep, dark stairs, holding desperately to the greasy railing. We groped our way down, step by step, in darkness and in silence, until, nearly at the bottom, I called back, with a quavering attempt at a jest, "But how about the necessity of a sound business basis?"

From the fetid darkness above me, dropped down Mr. Hall's clarion American accent, "Oh, damn a sound business basis!"

I found myself obliged to wink back the tears which came along with my laughter.

Emerging into the gray light of the narrow street, I turned to wait for my companions, but when I saw the expression of their faces I knew I should not be missed, and while they stood to hail a cab I made hasty farewells and betook myself to the nearest Métro station, my ears ringing as though I had been hearing the loud, triumphant note of trumpets.

I was about to dive into the anthole of the subway entrance when I heard my name called and saw Mrs. Hall's chic little toque thrust out of a cab window. "We forgot to tell you," she called across the street to me, "that we are very much obliged to you indeed for telephoning us."

With this inimitable farewell they vanished again from my view until months after this I ran across them, for the last time. I was at the Gare de Lyon, seeing off a blind soldier whom, with his family, we had been able to place in a home in the country. As usual with the poor, to whom journeys are considerable events, we had been fearfully ahead of time because they were in a panic for fear of losing their train. I had settled our protégés with all the innumerable valises, baskets, packages, roll-ups, and wraps which are the accompaniment of a French family, even the humblest, en voyage, had bidden them godspeed, and was going back along the platform to the exit when I was confronted by a familiar royal effect in furs, followed by a mountain of magnificent baggage on a truck.

"Hello!" said Mr. Hall. "You on the move too?"

I explained my presence and turned back to walk with them to their train. "We are going to Italy," explained Mrs. Hall, "and for once we are going to try and take Italy something, instead of just getting the most out of her the way we have done and everybody else has done all these tourist years."

(I had some reflections of my own about what Italian hotel keepers and guides had taken from me, but I kept them to myself, recognizing that as usual I was on a very different plane from the Golden Age of my companions.)

"You see," explained Mr. Hall in their astonishing, matter-of-fact manner, "you see one of our enterprises at home in the States is making a lot more money than ever before because of the war-manufacturing ... now that the Government is in the war, at last, thank the Lord! Of course, that money's got to go somehow to make up for some of the harm the war is doing. And it's such a lot that it can swing a big proposition. We've thought it over a lot, Margaret and I, and we've decided to put it into helping the reforestation movement in Italy." I had only a blank glare to greet this idea, so totally unexpected was it to me. They hastened to expand, both of them talking at once, with a fresh, eager interest. I gleaned the idea in broken bits of phrases, "... terrible floods in Italy every few years ... tops of the mountains bare and eroded ... campaign of education needed ... a thousand young pines to the acre ... forty millions needed ... a fine Italian forestry society already existing to direct the work, but without funds since the war ... hundreds of thousands of acres to be reclaimed...." My head whirled, but the main outlines were clear.