I have been to Mauvages; a reconnoitering expedition. As regards the town the most striking feature about it is the Egyptian Fountain. A somewhat startling structure to come upon in a little French mudpie village, it stands in the centre of the town and consists of the façade of a temple in front of which towers an ancient God of the Nile—or so I take him—in dull green bronze, pouring from pitchers held in either hand clear streams of water into a broad semi-circular basin. Behind the columns is another pool, this one for the village washerwomen: a cleverly conceived arrangement, for every passing stranger must stop to stare at the fountain and this in turn affords the washerwomen the opportunity to stare at him.
Around two sides of the town curves the canal along whose placid surface the slow barges occasionally pass. They tell me that some very beautiful women go by on these canal boats, but I suspect that the reason that they seem so beautiful is just that they do go by—the lure of the unobtainable. At the south end of the town the canal disappears into a hill-side, four miles to the southwest it appears again; a rather remarkable, and in view of the fact that in the most piping times of peace the traffic on the canal never exceeded four barges each way a day, inexplicably extravagant feat of engineering. Every now and then a little crowd of ordnance boys will take a notion to walk through the tunnel which has a path cut at one side, an excursion which must be unspeakably dreary as the whole length is quite unlighted and the air damp and close beyond anything. More than once on these excursions a boy has fallen into the canal and had to be fished out again.
My hut-to-be is on the further edge of town in the centre of a beautiful open green field like a lawn. Just behind it is a large ruined stone house which the boys use as a background against which to take pictures “at the front” and on one side is a lovely tall wayside cross and a tiny chapel, the smallest I have ever seen, almost hidden in a little grove of bushes. The hut is a French recreation barracks; long, low, covered with black tar paper, the windows filled with grimy cloth, it is comprised of four walls, a roof, a tiny stage and a mud floor,—a good mud floor, the best mud floor, I am assured, in this part of France.
As for my billet, I am to lodge, it seems, with Monsieur le Curé. He was out when I called but the Major du Cantonment and Madame the Caretaker settled things between them. What Monsieur le Curé will say when he come home and discovers that une demoiselle Américaine is to live chez lui, I don’t know, but as Monsieur le Major himself suggested it, it must be in accordance with the clerical proprieties.
The Curé’s mansion is a rather stately, gloomy square house set back from the street with a rose-garden edging the path in front. My room has a Juliet balcony with a view of the Egyptian Fountain, the ancient church and a scrap of rolling hills beyond. Breakfasts I have arranged to take with Madame the Caretaker who lives several doors down the street, dinners and suppers I am to eat by courtesy of the C. O. at the camp.
When I returned tonight I told my landlady of my plans. Her eyes fairly danced with mischievous glee.
“Oh la la! You and the Curé!” she cried. “Le diable avec le bon Dieu! It will be necessary for you to become a good Catholic, say your prayers, and go to mass every morning. Who knows? Perhaps you may end by becoming a religieuse.”
Mauvages, November 2.
We are building. This proves to be a painful process, consisting largely of discovering what you can’t have and what you will have to do without. For instance, it appears that there is not enough lumber to be had in France to furnish me a complete floor, and I had set my heart on having a nice, whole, sweepable floor! French barracks, one should note in passing, are constructed of sections; the upper part of the walls containing the window sections being vertical, the lower sloping outward at an angle of about thirty-five degrees. By a process of begging, borrowing and salvaging—nobody says steal any more these days,—I have visions of getting the floor in the centre all filled in, but for the edges, under the sloping sides, I am afraid there is no hope. But I’m not going to mind, I tell the boys; I shall start a series of war gardens in the little mud-plots, cabbages in number one, brussels sprouts in number two, and violets just for my own satisfaction in three. And the boys can take turns hoeing them.
For the rest, we have cut a door in the side for general entrance, the original one being reserved for cooks, colonels and K. P.s, and across the front end opposite the stage we have constructed our store-room, kitchen and canteen. A lattice is all that separates the kitchen from the counter; this is so, in order to facilitate social intercourse between the cook and the customers, and also to enable the secretary, no matter if she is engaged in stirring the chocolate or washing the dishes, to keep a weather eye on what is going on outside. But the triumph of my hut-plan is the window-seat. Half-way down the hut we have a stove, a stove which looks as big as an engine-boiler, a stove which makes the eyes of all beholders fairly pop with admiration. “That’s a real stove,” say the boys. “That ain’t no frog stove I’ll tell the world!” And back of the stove we have a seat three sections long against the wall. Wonderful to say that seat is comfortable and what’s more it has sofa-cushions. “What are those pillers for?” demanded one boy suspiciously. “Are they for the officers to sit on?”