When they return! It was a phrase on every lip. “If the children were here, it would be different.” “No, I do not wish to touch my indemnity. I and my wife, we are saving it for the boys when they come home.” “Mademoiselle, I need another bed.” “But you have two.” “Yes, but there is my mother, who may return any day.” So ran the undercurrent of longing in every family, mutilated as were the apple trees girdled in the orchards, uprooted, like them, and left for dead.
For my next distribution, which was to be a more important one, I went to Mme. Gabrielle. “Madame,” said I, “it is true, is it not, that the parents of most of the children have enough money to buy capes?” “Yes,” she admitted. “But it is not true that they will not do so?” “Yes; there are so many things to buy when one has lost so much. We fear to spend the money.” “Very well. Will you make me out a list for all the world?” The list was made; a list so orderly that it could be used as a shopping guide. Coats for the women and capes for the children were bought, including a coat for Lydie Cerf. They were brought down by our own truck, which had made a special trip to Amiens in the bitterest weather, and deposited with Mme. Gabrielle. “Madame,” I said again as we brought the heaped armfuls in, “will you not make this distribution yourself?” “But it is very difficult,” she remonstrated, “and all the world will say that I am partial.” “I will tell all the world that the distribution is mine,” I urged. “You can see yourself that we are very busy,—and you know the size for each child.” Reluctant though she was, Mme. Gabrielle’s kind heart could not refuse. On a Sunday not long after, a strange yet strangely familiar audience sat in the little church, the women in coats all of one pattern, “but of different colours, the children in smart blue hooded capes. No one looked self-conscious, or thanked us. The distribution, like the snow, had fallen on the just and on the unjust; it was a providence for which one thanked God.
CHAPTER IX
EN PERMISSION
At noon time, on dispensary days, I sometimes lunched with the doctors in Mme. Lefèvre’s kitchen. It was a heterogeneous spot, with two beds (one being stored for a niece), two cats, and a few neighbours always sitting near the fire. Usually the neighbours were waiting for la factrice. A tap at the window, and Madame ran to open it, and received a handful of letters which the postmistress brought each day by bicycle from Nesle. Were it cold, she herself, a capable, pleasant-faced woman, came in to join the group for a moment, threw back her long cape, and warmed her numb hands. Meantime spectacles were brought out and the envelopes scanned. It was not alone of the return of the refugees that the village lived in hope. They might come unannounced, but the soldiers, en permission,—that was different. Any day Albert or Henri might write that he was coming home!
C’est un coup de fourreau de sabre.