This time she read it slowly, taking in, absorbing to the last cell of her consciousness, every one of those words, written by candlelight, underground, to the thunder of shells exploding over the abri. They were plain, homely words enough, rambling, unstudied familiar phrases, such as husband and wife write to each other when they have shared their daily life for many years and still try to go on sharing what may be left to them of days in common.
It had rained, as usual, all day long, but the new trench boots had kept his feet almost dry. Yet he was ashamed of the price she must have paid for them—she, straining every nerve to buy food to keep the children well. He was a man, a grown-up, and the war had done for them forever. Let him shift as best he could. Everything ought to go to the children, there would be little enough. But they must have the best chance we could give them. Whoever else was responsible for the war certainly the children had nothing to do with it. And they must be the torch bearers. Did she remember how he had always wondered why no musician had ever composed music on that theme? He could conceive such a noble symphonic poem called “The Torch Bearers.” He had wondered all day if the coal had finally arrived at Méru. It went beyond his imagination how she could manage at all, the days when the coal supply was so low. In their little underground abri they had a stove—yes, a real stove. It had been left there by some American ambulance men who had used the abri before them. So they were really warm, part of the time, and occasionally almost dry. But the wood they were burning—it made him sick. It was what his men tore out from the ruined village houses near which the trenches ran. Of course it could never be used for houses again, but when you know what it is to have a home of your own, and how it grows to be a part of you, it is not much fun to put parts of other people’s houses into your stove. No, he did not need any new socks. He did not need anything; she need not go on trying to slip in some new luxury for him out of her impossibly small budget. Did she remember that poor Dury, the youngest of his men? He had been shot yesterday; a stray ball, not meant for anybody in particular—such a silly way to be killed. And now there was the letter to write to his mother. Heavens, how he dreaded writing the letters to the parents of men who died or disappeared! He hoped little Maurice’s throat was better. What a sickly child that poor kid was! He was evidently one who would have to be nursed along all through his childhood, and since the war had killed his parents, it fell to his poor aunt to do the job. And then—“Now, see here, Jeanne darling, don’t kill yourself over that little boy because you feel so guilty at not loving him more. He’s not a lovable kid. His own mother, poor nervous thing, never could keep from snapping at him, and you know your brother cared enough sight more for Jacqueline than for him. Don’t you blame yourself. Take it easy!”
Jeanne laid the letter down with a little exclamation, half a laugh. How ever did André know she did not love the little nephew who reminded her so of the sister-in-law she had never been able to love? She had not thought that anybody could guess that the child to whom she was always the gentlest was the one—and here was André, quite casually as usual, walking into her most secret places! How he knew her! How he knew the meaning of her smallest gesture, the turn of her most carefully worded phrase! How near he was to her! How there was no corner of her life where he did not come and go, at ease, and how she welcomed him in, how she rejoiced to feel him thus pervading the poor, hurried, barren inner life of her, which had bloomed so richly when they had lived it together. How married they were! That was, after all, an achievement, to have wrested that glory from so horrible a thing as life had come to be. Let the heavens fall, she had known what it was to be one with a noble human soul.
She stood up, her thin face glowing, her tired eyes shining, as they always were after reading André’s letter. It was the only moment of the day when she felt herself wholly alive.
This was the high tide of her daily life, poor, scanty trickle of life it was, even at its best, compared to the fathomless deep surge of the fullness of the days before the war, days when it had seemed natural that André should be there always, that they should profoundly live together, that there should be some leisure, and some music mixed with their work, and warm rooms and clothes and food as simply as there was air to breathe.
A whiff of acrid coal smoke in her face, a wailing cry from Maurice who had pinched his finger, a warning half-hour stroke from the kitchen clock—she came back to the present with a start and strove loyally to use for that present the little renewal of strength which came from a momentary vision of the past. She changed the drafts of the stove, stirred the stew and, gathering the weeping child up in her tired arms, began to make a funny nonsense song, purporting to be sung by the hurt finger. Her voice was obliged to pass through a knot in her throat, but it came out bravely, and in a moment the children were laughing again, their thin faces turned toward hers like little pale flowers toward the sun.
Then there was the table to set, of course in the kitchen, since there was no coal for another fire in the cold house. How Jeanne suffered from this suffocating necessity to do everything in one small room! It made an intolerable trial of every smallest process of the everyday life, to prepare food, and eat it, and play, and wash, and study, and bathe the children, and dress and undress them—they were like pigs in a sty, she often thought, working feverishly to keep a little order and decency in the room which seemed to her fastidious senses to reek stiflingly of the effluvia of too-concentrated human life.
As she worked she felt, like an inward bleeding, the slow ebbing of her forces. The good moment of the day had come and gone. There was nothing to look forward to now till the mail of the next morning.
And this was a good day, one of the best, when there had been no special activity on the front, when the daily letter from André arrived on time. But what of the days when the communiqué announced laconically, “Heavy artillery fire between Fresnes and Villers-Raignault”? (André was stationed at Fresnes.) Or worse, when the great offensives began, when all personal letters from the front were stopped, when day after day the communiqué announced: “Violent fighting all along the Champagne front.”
The feeble, tired old postman, shuffling on his rounds, was a very snake-crowned horror to the dry-eyed women, waiting and hoping and dreading to see him come. Always there were cases of hysteria at such times; old Madame Vielé, who shrieked out suddenly in the market-place that she had seen her son fall dead before her; Marguerite Lemaire, who, returning from Paris on the night train, had found her husband in the compartment with her, had kissed him, held his hand, wept on his breast—and suddenly she was alone, with the train rushing on through the darkness to Méru, where she was met by the news of his death.