Nevertheless, those that came were shod. I personally can take no credit for it. My plunges into the refrigerator only served as a rule to send the temperature up! The miracles of compression and expansion were performed by the Directrice of the establishment, who will, I hope, forgive me if I say that I deplore an excellent sportswoman lost in her. She had the divine instinct of the chase, and when she ran her quarry to earth her eyes bubbled. At other times, she tried to hide the softest heart that ever betrayed a woman under a grim exterior, that only deceived those who saw no further than her protecting pince-nez.
III
Yes, they were going. Old friends of over a year's standing, many of whom we had visited again and again, and of whom we shall carry glad memories till the final exodus of all carries us beyond the Eternal Shadows. Madame Drouet, our femme de ménage, was wavering; pressure, steadily applied, was slowly driving her to the thing she dreaded and disliked. Then, as you know, the blow fell.
She was gone, and we gazed at one another in consternation. Where would we find such another? Hastily we ran over a list of names, and then, Eureka! we had it. Madame Phillipot, of course. On with our hats, and hot foot at top speed to the rue de Véel. An agitated half-hour—Madame was diffident, she was no cook, she could never please Les Anglaises—a triumphant return, all her scruples overruled, and the inauguration of a reign of peace and plenty such as we shall not see again. There is only one Madame Phillipot in this grey old world. Only one, and we loved her. Loved her? Why, we could not help it! Picture a little robin-redbreast of a woman, short and plump, with pretty dark eyes and clear skin, and the chirpiest voice that ever made music on a summer day. I can hear her now lilting her "Bon Soir, Mesdemoiselles," as she came to bid us good-night. The little ceremony was never forgotten, nor was the morning greeting. She rarely talked, she chirped, and she chirped the long day through. The coming of every new face was an adventure. No longer did the uninterested "C'est une dame," hurl us from our peace. No. In five minutes, in five seconds Madame, interviewing the new-comer, had grasped all the salient points of her history, and we went forth armed, ready to smite or succour as occasion demanded. And dearly she loved her bit of gossip. What greetings the old stone staircase witnessed! What ah's and oh's of delight! We would hear the voluble tide rising, rising, and groan over rooms undusted, and beds blushing naked at midday. But it was impossible to be angry with Madame. The work was done sooner or later, generally later, and when we sat down to her ragoût, or her bœuf mode, or her blanquette de veau in the evening her sins put on the wings of virtue and fluttered, silver plumed, to heaven.
Now, I am a mild woman, but there are hours in which I yearn to murder M. Phillipot, and Pappa, and Mademoiselle Clémence, for they hold Madame to the soil of France. If she was a widowed orphan, perhaps we might console our lonely old age together, but no one could be really lonely when Madame was by. Is one lonely in woods when birds are singing?
It was the ambition of her life to be a milliner, but Pappa—you shall hear about him presently—said No. So she married M. Phillipot instead, and became the wife of a commis-voyageur who did not deserve to get her. For he had as mother an old harridan who insisted on living with him, and who, bitterly jealous of Madame, made her life a burden to her. The commis-voyageur having a soul like his bag of samples, all bits and scraps, always sided with his mother.
Once Madame asked me to guess her age. I hazarded thirty-eight quite honestly, and she flushed like a girl. "Ah, mais non. She was older than that. She was...." (I shan't "give her away." Am not I, too, a woman?)
"You don't look it, Madame," I answered truthfully.
"Ah, but if only Mademoiselle had seen me before the war. When I was dressed in my pretty Sunday clothes. Ah, que j'étais belle! And fresh and young. One would have given me thirty."