A Padre in France

by George A. Birmingham

MADAME

Madame was certainly an old woman, if age is counted by years. She had celebrated her golden wedding before the war began. But in heart she was young, a girl.

I cherish, among many, one special picture of Madame. It was a fine, warm afternoon in early summer. The fountain at the lower end of the garden spouted its little jet into the air. Madame loved the fountain, and set it working on all festive occasions and whenever she felt particularly cheerful. I think she liked to hear the water splashing among the water-lily leaves in the stone basin where the goldfish swam. Behind the fountain the flowers were gay and the fruit trees pleasantly green round a marvellous terra-cotta figure, life-size, of an ancient warrior. Below the fountain was a square, paved court, sunlit, well warmed.

Madame sat in a wicker chair, her back to the closed green jalousies of the dining-room window. Beside her was her workbox. On her knees was a spread of white linen. Madame held it a sacred duty visiter la linge once a week; and no tear remained undarned or hole unpatched for very long. As she sewed she sang, in a thin, high voice, the gayest little songs, full of unexpected trills and little passages of dancing melody.

Madame was mistress. There was no mistake about that. Monsieur was a retired business man who had fought under General Faidherbe in the Franco-Prussian war. He was older than Madame, a very patient, quiet gentleman. He was a little deaf, which was an advantage to him, for Madame scolded him sometimes. He read newspapers diligently, tended the pear trees in the garden, and did messages for Madame.

There was also Marie, a distant cousin of Monsieur’s, herself the owner of a small farm in Brittany, who was—I know no term which expresses her place in the household. She was neither servant nor guest, and in no way the least like what I imagine a “lady-help” to be. She was older than Madame, older, I fancy, even than Monsieur, and she went to Mass every morning. Madame was more moderate in her religion. Monsieur, I think, was, or once had been, a little anti-clerical.

Madame was the most tender-hearted woman I have ever met. She loved all living things, even an atrocious little dog called Fifi, half blind, wholly deaf, and given to wheezing horribly. Only once did I see her really angry. A neighbour went away from home for two days, leaving a dog tied up without food or water in his yard. We climbed the wall and, with immense difficulty, brought the creature to Madame. She trembled with passion while she fed it. She would have done bodily harm to the owner if she could.

She did not even hate Germans. Sometimes at our midday meal Monsieur would read from the paper an account of heavy German casualties or an estimate of the sum total of German losses. He chuckled. So many more dead Boches. So much the better for the world. But Madame always sighed. “Les pauvres garçons,” she said. “C’est terrible, terrible.” Then perhaps Monsieur, good patriot, asserted himself and declared that the Boche was better dead. And Madame scolded him for his inhumanity. Our own wounded—les pauvres blessés—we mentioned as little as possible. Madame wept at the thought of them, and it was not pleasant to see tears in her bright old eyes.

But for all her tender-heartedness Madame did not, so far as I ever could discover, do much for the men of her own nation or of ours. An Englishwoman, in her position and with her vitality, would have sat on half a dozen committees, would have made bandages at a War Work Depot, or packed parcels for prisoners; would certainly have knitted socks all day. Madame did no such things. She managed her own house, mended her own linen, and she darned my socks—which was I suppose, a kind of war work, since I wore uniform.

The activities of Englishwomen rather scandalised her. The town was full of nurses, V.A.D.’s, and canteen workers. Madame was too charitable to criticise, but I think she regarded the jeune fille Anglaise as unbecomingly emancipated. She would have been sorry to see her own nieces—Madame had many nieces, but no child of her own—occupied as the English girls were.