Never did government department function so ill as that which contained Madeleine, as the ten thousand charitable maidens prepared themselves for the fray. Madeleine entered into the affair rather than make herself conspicuous. She had no sentiment about other people’s soldiers, no anxiety to please men who did not interest her. But she went, took her number, arranged herself with sense and taste, and found a little comfort from looking nice. She managed to get a double supply of gifts and send one lot to her brother Marcel, hoping that it might bring a sign from him in his German prison.
The day came. Released at an early hour, the girls dispersed to costume themselves. The short-sleeved tunic of thin white material, with its girdle of artificial ivy leaves, suited Madeleine. Even Monsieur and Madame Petit, never prodigal of praise, admitted that she looked well. When she arrived at the rendezvous, she created some sensation. The uniform dress brought out precisely her better proportions and carriage, all her good looks that depended on health and hard work. As the lorries that were to take them to their places swung alongside the pavement, one of the girls said of her, “That great Flanders mare ought to have two seats allowed her!” but the very spite of the speech was a compliment to Madeleine. They were set down on the steps of one of those great palaces of stone, common in Paris, that had been aroused from centuries of slumber by the War, and now sheltered hundreds of narrow white beds. Among these, up and down great vistas of ward and corridor, the girls processed, music in front, bearers of lighted candles behind. The fête, designed by a lady of cosmopolitan education, just then very intimate with Dantrigues, had elements of English carol-singing and German Christmas-tree effect, mixed with French delight in spectacle and uniform. Then the girls were divided into pairs, and given so many beds each for the distribution of gifts.
Madeleine was frankly bored with the whole thing. She hardly bothered to make herself agreeable to the men in her section of beds—passing them with a word or two of conventional good wishes, holding her clean, fair-skinned, smiling, slightly obtuse profile high above them, stepping easily, unencumbered by the basket on her hip. At the end of her bit were several empty beds, the nursing sister on duty explaining that the occupants were more or less convalescent, and had leave. She did not trouble to hurry off elsewhere, nor to obtain a fresh supply of gifts. The more or less innocent flirtations, which the other girls saw as one of the chief attractions of the business, did not excite her. The electric globe in her hair, which annoyed her, went out, and seeing a glass door leading on to a verandah, all dark and quiet, she slipped through unseen. She had hardly drawn the door to behind her than she had a peculiar sensation. She had stepped into a mild, humid spring night, the stars of which shone above the garden plantation of the place, beyond the stone pillars of the balcony on which she stood. But in her own mind she had stepped through the separation of over two years, as one puts one’s foot through a paper screen. Georges was near her, she knew. The back of the balcony, against the glazed windows of the ward, was lined with a kind of fixed garden seat used by the convalescent. One of these convalescents was seated, lying there rather, his attitude expressive more of exasperation than of physical weakness. Before she could analyze or act upon her queer feeling of nearness of Georges, his voice arose from the recumbent figure, in the quakerish simplicity of French intimacy: “It is thou!” was all he said.
She flung down her basket and sunk on the seat beside him. Galvanized into sudden life, he heaved himself up, clutched her in his arms, bent down her face to his. For some time, who can tell how long, neither of them thought of anything, content just to feel the emotions of the moment. Amid these arose the jangle of a bell. It brought Madeleine to her senses at once. It was the arranged signal—five minutes’ warning before the charitable maidens rejoined their lorries. M. Dantrigues’ lady friend had thoughtfully suggested that some of the young women might want to put themselves tidy. Madeleine stood up, telling Georges briefly what was intended. He replied with an army word, intimating how much he cared. She was tender, docile, careful with him, spoiling him every minute.
“Yes, yes, my little one. I know. But it is worth more to arrange where we can meet. Your Mado will wait for you wherever you say!”
It was the pet name he had for her those ages ago in the Kruysabel. At the sound of it, spoken as she spoke, all that lost Peace-time ease arose ghostly before them. He vented his indignation against Fate by picking up her basket and flinging it into the night, where it crashed softly among earth and leaves. The gesture delighted her. It was the old Georges, the real “young master” of first love. She had been terribly frightened by his first greeting, that meek “It is thou!” so unlike him, that he had uttered. He pleased her still more when he went on:
“If that’s your bell, you’d better go. Don’t get caught in this sacred box, whatever you do!”
“Tell me where,” she whispered.
“I’ll find a place and let you know. I must get out of here. If not, I’ll burst myself as I have bursted so many Bosches. Where do you live?”
She told him, pressed a kiss on his lips, and was gone in a flash, quiet, confident, alert. She was herself again.