My next call I have been urged to make by our doctors. Here in a ramshackle ell, facing a court deep in mire, live the poorest family in the village, comprising Mme. Laure Tabary, her six children, and a black and bearded goat. The goat inhabits a rabbit hutch from which her tether allows her the freedom of the narrow brick path. From the sidelong gleam in her eyes, one always expects an attack in the flank or rear. But Madame, her mistress, regards her as a pet; perhaps because she cannot regard her in any other favourable light,—since la petite gives no milk. Once past the goat, the door is quickly gained. Two rooms has Mme. Tabary, and a loft and a shed. She needs them! From forlorn Olga to forlorn Andréa, the girls of the family descend in graduated wrappings of rags. “O, Mme. Tabary,” exclaimed the school teacher, with whom I discussed the all too evident need of soap, and of clothing, “she is a very worthy woman, but she is always poor.” Always poor, always ailing, yet always humorous, were the Laure Tabarys. Did the unfortunate woman try to boil her washing, the stove must needs break, and the cauldron full of scalding water descend upon Madeleine. No sooner were her wounds dressed than Andréa developed a fever. It would be interesting to know how many litres of gasoline were consumed by us in the carrying of Mme. Tabary’s children to and from hospitals located ten and twenty miles away. One would have thought the distracted mother might welcome these deportations. But, naturally enough, she distrusted them, and having faithfully promised to give up the baby to our care on a certain day, left instead for Ham. Of how she was won over,—that is a tale which belongs to the annals of the medical department rather than to me. But I have heard rumours of hair ribbons and dolls and candy and fairy stories and I know not what of similar remedies which Hippocrates and Galen never mentioned. Judge, then, whether our doctors were bugbears or no among the children of our villages!
But the ell housed another family besides the Tabarys. Across the hall lodged the Moroys; M. Edouard, an old man of eighty-four, his niece and nephew and his granddaughter, Mlle. Suzanne. All lived in the one room. It was a room with only three corners as well, because in the fourth the floor rose in an arch which indicated the cellar-way. In this room were three beds, a table, a stove, three chairs and a broken sewing machine. Yet I never saw the room in disorder, nor heard any requests from the family beyond that of a little sugar for Grandpère, and, if possible, another bed, so that Charles might have a place to sleep. Meantime, Charles slept upon the floor. In this room were two windows. The one to the south interested me by chance, because the panes looked so clear. I stepped over and put out my hand. It went straight through the framework; there was no glass. “But you must be cold!” I exclaimed, knowing well the common fear of courants d’air. Besides, it was late October, and the nights were already frosty. “Yes, a little,” Mlle. Suzanne admitted in a matter of fact way. “Yes,” agreed her aunt, in a more positive tone. “And besides, Mademoiselle, our stove is too small, as you see. In fact, it is not ours, but belongs to Mme. Tabary. But she has so large a family, we made an exchange. Perhaps when you distribute stoves——” I promise to remember, wondering the while if we in like circumstances would share our last crusts with like generosity. For the window, so scarce was glass, oiled linen was the best that could be done, a pity considering that it excluded the sun with the cold.
Mlle. Suzanne, with the exception of Germaine Tabary and Lydie Cerf, is the only young woman in Canizy. She had been taken captive by the Germans, but was allowed to return. Her family, however, met an unknown fate; father and brother, they were avec les Boches. A curious circumstance in this connection was that Suzanne, having been an independent worker, received no pension for her loss. She, too, seemed a Good Samaritan to her neighbours—lame Mme. Juliette depends on Suzanne to bring her her pitcher of milk; Mme. Musqua, sick and irresponsible, has only to send over her children to Mlle. Suzanne to be cared for,—what matter two more or less in the crowded room? I added my quota to her labours by asking her to take charge of washing rags, and started her in with those of her next-door neighbour, Mme. Tabary. For the purpose, I have given her a cylindrical boiler, standing three feet high. This, when not in use, is placed over by the cellar-way. On washing days, it is set on an open fire in the court, where Grandpère feeds it with laboriously chopped twigs. Meantime, back of the house, patches of colour and of flapping white begin to adorn the wire fence. Suzanne also sews, by hand and, now that its frame is mended by I know not how many screws in the warped wood, by machine. We give out the sewing, and she earns by it perhaps three francs a week.
Beyond the Moroys, lives Mme. Thuillard, Charles, as the neighbours call her to distinguish her from the Thuillards, O. I have seldom found this energetic lady at home, but I often see her, and sometimes hear her, as she passes with firm step down the street to work in her garden. When not playing, her ten-year-old granddaughter Orélie follows in her wake. This leaves in the unlighted recesses of the barn, her husband, M. Charles. He seems an apologetic and conciliatory soul, with whom I discuss domestic needs, such as a window, a lamp, and sheets for the beds. He will tell his wife what I say and report to-morrow when he comes for the milk. It is in his entrance-way, so to speak, that I first noticed a pile of willow-withed market baskets. “O, yes,” he said, “I had hundreds of such, but the Boches took them.” “Are they then made hereabouts?” “Before the war; but now no one is left who understands the trade.” The next day I am likely to get a report, and a sharp one, from Madame, his wife. “Sheets,” she queries, “what sort of sheets? Are they linen sheets? Blankets. Are they wool? Are they white? Look you, before the war, I had five dozen linen sheets and plenty of blankets and down quilts of the finest quality. Keep your gifts about which you make so much talk! I will have none of them, none of them at all!”
I have sometimes wondered if Madame were related to the contrary-minded but equally independent wife of the garde champêtre who distributes—or not—at her pleasure, the communal supply of bread. “I hear,” she began one day, as I waited for change for a hundred franc note—change which came in gold, by the way, as well as in silver—“I hear that you are to make a distribution of gifts. Do not forget me! I will receive anything, but you understand, not for payment; only as a present. Behold,” this with a playful slap on the shoulder, “any one will tell you that I have a tongue. O, là, là, là!”
CHAPTER VII
NOUS SOMMES DIX
It was at Christmas time that we came most to realise the broken family circles in all our villages. There was not one household which did not have some hostage avec les Boches. Of the pitiful remnant, the old men—there were no young ones—were to me the most appealing. I shall never forget the fête in the hill village of Douilly, well up to the front, a village completely destroyed, whose inhabitants were living in cellars. On the brow of the hill, facing the sunset, stood the white stone church. It had been used by the Germans as a barracks, and had not been reconsecrated, so that we were given permission to hold our party there. Cold, bare, yet beautiful with the sunlight falling in rainbow colours on the groined arches, was the old church. At the bases of the pillars, we deposited our sacks of presents; most of them for the children, but one each for the women and the men. The latter were in my charge. Only three came hobbling up from the outskirts of the crowd. “But is this all?” I asked, as they chose the size of package which seemed to each most desirable. “Are there no other men in the village?” The old men consulted together. “There is Grandpère Cordon,” suggested one, “and Jean, who has rheumatism,” “and blind Pierre——” “Nous sommes dix,” came the answer, finally. “Shall we take the presents to the rest?”
“Nous sommes dix!” It was the answer which might have been made in Canizy. According to the number of inhabitants, it might represent the proportion of the male population left anywhere in the région dévastée. Not one was able-bodied. In Canizy there were, for example, the lame mayor of whom I have spoken; his four contemporaries, verging on sixty, one a heavy drinker, another one-armed, a third in need of an operation, a fourth suffering from heart disease. Even the latter had been taken away, but as he said, when the German doctor put down his ear to listen, he threw up his hands, and gave the officers a good piece of his mind for having imported a useless consumer of food. So he was encouraged to make his way back.