"You see, Susan," I explained, "I'm meeting you halfway. By the time he's had a letter or two from me written like this, you ought to be able to do something pretty near it yourself. Now go upstairs and bring down those French stamps. They're in my green bag."
While Susan was upstairs I took the letter out of the envelope and glanced through it once more. When I got as far as "I have always been happy with Miss Langley," the oddity struck me irresistibly. It was quite too comically reminiscent of the letters which girls used to write, under the governess's eye and at the governess's dictation, protesting their ideal happiness at school.
There was just time. I picked up the pen and wrote sideways along the margin of the letter:--
I suppose you think my mistress calls me "Briggs."
When Susan arrived with the stamps, the letter was back in its envelope, the flap was gummed down, and I was blinking peacefully at the sunlight on the sea.
Wednesday, noon.
I suppose it's true that every country gets the Government it deserves. But the maxim, like nearly all the maxims I've ever heard, is a heartless one.
Without doubt, France just now has got the Government which France deserves, as a whole. But the whole is made up of parts; and, unless my travels have misled me, there must be thousands of parts of France like Sainte Véronique. I have seen a dozen myself--rural communities, working hard and living decently, with the slated spire of their hoary parish church looking down upon them, as it looked down ages ago on their direct ancestors who first drained the valleys and set vines upon the hillsides. Here live and toil the men, and, more remarkable still, here live and toil and suffer the women, whose hard earnings are the war-chest of France when the professional politicians of Paris wantonly thrust the nation into some vainglorious adventure. Here was made and saved the treasure with which the invader was bought out when his armies were everywhere masters of French soil. And here are bred the supplies of sound human stuff--the healthy bodies, the healthy souls--to redress the awful balance of the towns, and to save France from becoming a ruin amid stinging weeds and insolent poppies.
Even an atheist statesman, if he's as truly a statesman as he's truly an atheist, ought to know that, in striking at the village churches, he is striking at the heart of French rural life; and that, in wounding French rural life in a vital spot, he will be severing arteries where Bismarck and Von Moltke only lanced small veins.
This morning has made me so sad. The sweet little white convent is shut up, the garden is full of nettles, two of the chapel windows are broken, the nuns are in England, and the lawyers have grown fat on the pickings. At the church, the statue of St. Veronica, over the west door, has a broken arm--snapped off on the day of the inventory. Meanwhile the weeks are drifting by; and, for all the old curé knows, he will be saying Mass in a barn before the winter is half over.