Looking up from her knitting, she said gravely:
“It seems so!” But secretly she now believed it. If it were not true he would not have come. He disliked the crowd of junior officers who joked about his beard.
What was to be done? Not retain an empty restaurant where no one ever came. She saw enough at home in the evenings to know that Marie was firmly settled in, and didn’t want her. The situation was beyond her. Her practical mind focussed on the immediate was baffled. But things went on happening and once again the long arm of chance touched her.
It was about a fortnight after Hondebecq had been plunged in its unnatural silence. She was going home in the long July twilight. She no longer waited to serve late dinners, her only customers being occasional passing troops during the day. No local people used the “Lion of Flanders,” it was essentially an English restaurant. She was stopped at the level-crossing by the evening train from Calais going southward. As the smoke and noise faded away, she ran into Blanquart, the schoolmaster and communal secretary, stumbling over the platform-edging, wiping his eyes. The sight of that familiar figure in tears gave her pause.
“Why, Monsieur Blanquart, what is it?”
“It is my little Cécile!”
“What has she got, Cécile?”
Monsieur Blanquart blew his nose and said: “I ought not to complain. She was a good girl. Naturally she has got a good job.”
“What job has she got? Where has she gone, then?”
“But to Amiens! You haven’t seen the discourse of M. Paul Deschanel on the Recruitment of Women? It is hanging in the Mairie if that gives you any pleasure.”