The old man, in his black suit and high-crowned peaked Dutch cap, sat almost crouching on the seat of the gig, knees nearly as high as his chin, wrists on knees, dark eyes fixed on the road ahead, speaking from time to time to the old white horse, who paid no attention nor varied its wooden shamble. Madeleine, whose clothes were almost those of a modern girl of the towns, sat upright, hands folded in her lap, head erect, in face and figure just another of those strongly built, tranquil, slightly “managing” Madonnas of the pictures of the old Flemish painters, if ever Madonna had so grim an immobility, such a slow-burning, unquenchable spark in the gray eye.
They reached the “Golden Key,” put up the horse and gig, and walked to the station. There was a train in ten minutes. They each took a bowl of coffee and slice of bread, not at the station buffet where the tariff was aimed at the hurried traveler, but at the little café outside, where the small ill-paid world employed at a French station gets itself served for twenty centimes a time less than other people. Then Madeleine went with her certificate, her own and her father’s identity cards, and her hand full of small notes, to the booking-office.
“Two third-class privilege tickets to Schaexen Halte, and return, to see a wounded relative!”
The booking-clerk took the papers and looked at them.
“This is no good,” he muttered through his decayed teeth.
Madeleine, with all the contempt of the comparatively free and wealthy farmer’s daughter for the small railway official, and all the cunning of one who deals with beasts and the law, held her peace.
The booking-office clerk was in that category of age and infirmity which alone in those days could exempt a man from mobilization. He worked fifteen hours a day in a pigsty of an office, whose glazed wicket made a perpetual draught. He was easily flustered.
“You asked for two privilege tickets to go and see a wounded relative in hospital.”
“That is what I said!”
“This certificate is incomplete!”