It is a pleasure to look about as we talk. On the mantel, to give a note of colour, are laid a row of tiny yellow pumpkins; the floor is red, and through the window peer red geraniums. In a cupboard beyond the stove is a modest array of pans and dishes. Two panes of glass, like portholes, pierce the wall to the rear. Beneath stands a sideboard, and a little to one side, a round table. Not until the coffee was heated did I notice that cups were set for four.
“But have you another guest?” I inquired, as Mme. Gabrielle poured first some syrup from a bottle, and then the steaming drink. “But no, only Adrien. Adrien, come!” She raised her voice. Then for the first time I saw the boy, head propped on elbows, poring over a book. The mother regarded him indulgently. “It is a pity for the children that we have no school. Adrien is apt; when the Germans were here, he understood everything, everything. And when the Scotch came, he learned, too. I myself try to learn English.” She brought forth from the sideboard an English-French phrase book. “This I found in a house after the English soldiers went away. It would be easy, but there is the pronunciation.” “I will teach you,” I said, and we took up the words one by one, Grand’mère laughing the while, pleasant laughter, like a cracked, old bell. But the boy kept on reading and hummed a tune. “The children,” broke in the mother, “they sing; it is well.” But presently the boy shuts his book with a sigh and draws a chair to the table. “Did you like it, the story?” I inquire. “Yes, it tells of America.” On the table, clear now save for Adrien’s belated cup, is revealed an oilcloth map in lieu of a linen cover. “Where, then, is America?” His finger traces the colored squares. “Here is France, here England, here Italy, here Russia,—but America, it is so far one cannot see it.” “But yes,” rejoins his mother, “so far that never in my life did I expect to see an American. Once in my childhood I remember looking at a picture of M. Pierpont’s bank in New York—a great bank. But now I have seen Germans, Russians, English, Moroccans,—and you. The war teaches many things.”
“You have seen Russians?”
“Very many; the Germans worked our fields with Russian prisoners. A strange people! You and I converse; we come from different countries, but we have ideas in common. The Russians were like dumb beasts; they had no esprit de corps.”
“It is the fault of their government,” I venture.
“Yes,” she replied, “France and America are republics. It is not that our government is perfect. There are many beautiful things in France, but there is much injustice also, much.”
I knew of what Mme. Gabrielle was thinking, then; of the wheatlands of Canizy, where not one furrow had been turned for the next year’s harvest, while the grands cultivateurs and the petty politicians looked out for themselves; and of the school building, long promised and still delayed.
But Mme. Gabrielle looked beyond the confines of her small village and its grievances. Love for la belle plaine and la belle France, unreasoning, passionate, pulsed in her. Hatred of the Germans was its corollary. “Mademoiselle, during the occupation, we were prisoners,” she said. “We had to have passes to go one fourth of a kilometre from our village. My mother was sick at Voyennes,—and I could not go to see her.” It came out that Bobbinot had been her constant companion. “But I should think,” I said, “that the Germans would have taken him away.” “They dared not; he would have bitten them!” was the spirited response.
At Mme. Gabrielle’s table, with the map upon it, I was destined to sit often, sometimes for luncheon and sometimes for dinner, while we took counsel over village affairs. For Mme. Gabrielle, together with Mme. Lefèvre, and the former school teacher, became an informal advisory committee to me. Through punctiliously served courses of soup, stew, salad, wine, cheese and coffee, Mme. Gabrielle offered her information, or, when asked, her opinion. It was she who reassured me on the point of selling rather than of giving the smaller articles we distributed. “I understand completely; it is better for us. The American Red Cross did the same when the Germans were here. They sold the food, but very cheap. Without their help, we should have starved. We are grateful to America, which saved our lives.” It was she who advised in regard to a baby whom its half-witted mother had placed in a crèche: “For the mother,” she said, “it would doubtless be better that the child returned. But for the child—and I am a mother myself who speak—let it remain.” On the good sense and the good heart of Mme. Gabrielle one came to rely. Even as far as Hombleux she was known and respected. “O yes,” the women there told me, “Mme. Gabrielle, we know her. She is une femme très forte.”