“Will you have some coffee? The Allies stole all our wine!” Then she softened again, and gave him good coffee, because, like all women, she had a tender spot somewhere for a man who had once desired her. But it was only for a moment. He sat there, unaltered, just as he had sat when she had sent him to deliver a message to Georges. And the thought that Georges had gone out of her life, and that this lesser man of hers was on his way to England, to go out of her life just as effectually, hurt her possessive and domineering instincts. She said bitterly, “I lost my fiancé, after all!” and as he murmured some condolence her spleen overcame her, and she lashed out with her tongue at all the damage done to the farm and to her father, the destruction of her brothers and Georges, at all the work there was to do, and no one to do it.
She saw Millgate fidget, heard him say in English, “Come on!” Then she saw Skene rise, bid her good-bye, and go. She moved to the door, but for the life of her she could not say if she wanted him to go or stay.
Then, as he swung his leg, in its soiled army clothes, over his horse’s back, straightened up, and clattered away, she knew. She did not want him, had never wanted him, nor any Englishman, nor anything English. He was just one of the things the War, the cursed War, had brought on her, and now it, and they, were going. Good riddance. Nor was her feeling unreasonable. The only thing she and Skene had in common, was the War. The War removed, they had absolutely no means of contact. Their case was not isolated. It was national.
* * * *
So Madeleine remained in the Spanish Farm, and saw no more English, for the Labor Corps soon broke up and went, and she did not care. She was engrossed in one thing only: to get back, sou by sou, everything that had been lost or destroyed, plundered or shattered, by friend or foe, and pay herself for everything she had suffered and dared. And as there was a Madeleine more or less, widowed and childless, bereaved and soured, in every farm in northeastern France, she became a portent. Statesmen feared or wondered at her, schemers and the new business men served her and themselves through her, while philosophers shuddered. For she was the Spanish Farm, the implacable spirit of that borderland so often fought over, never really conquered. She was that spirit that forgets nothing and forgives nothing, but maintains itself, amid all disasters, and necessarily. For she was perhaps the most concrete expression of humanity’s instinctive survival in spite of its own perversity and ignorance. There must she stand, slow-burning revenge incarnate, until a better, gentler time.