“Oh, darling,” she would say, “how brave you are to do it,” and then she would shudder and add—“I couldn’t—the sight of blood makes me sick. How you can bear the ugliness—”
And I would assure her that she was much too young to do nursing.
Your mother was very kind to me. The war had aroused her from the lassitude of old age. She had risen to meet it. Lifting her gentle head proudly, she had seemed to look out beyond the confines of her narrow seclusion, across the years, and to see her country rise before her in its old beauty, its one-time grandeur.
“France will have her revenge now,” she had said, with a flash lighting her weary eyes.
And her mind appeared more vigorous. She read all the newspapers or asked Jinny to read them aloud to her. She took a great interest in my work, and seemed to regard me as some admirable but inexplicable puzzle.
“You are too brave, mon enfant, and too exalted. When the war is over and you come back to your old habits, to take up your old life—you will see—”
“Maybe I shall never come back to it, dear—never take up again the old life as you say.”
And again she smiled, thinking that I was joking, but I was not joking, my brain was clear, I believe I knew even then, that I would never run Philibert’s house again.
“You look happy, my child,” she said to me one day.