Round about Bar-le-Duc

by Susanne R. Day

Her speech was the most picturesque thing, a source of unfailing delight. Once in that awful frost, when for six weeks there was ice on the bedroom floor and a phylactery of ice adorned my sponge-bag, when the moisture that exuded from the walls became crystallisé, and neither blankets, nor fur coat, nor hot water bottle kept one warm at night, Madame, seeing me huddle a miserable half-dead thing over the stove, cried, "It is under a cloche we should put you, Mademoiselle Day." And the three villains who shared my misery with ten times my fortitude chuckled with delight. My five-foot seven and ample proportions being "forced" like a salad under the bell-glass of intensive culture! No wonder we laughed. But I longed for the cloche all the same.

As for her good humour it was indestructible. When people came, as people inconsiderately will come, from other work-centres demanding food at impossible hours, Madame sympathised with the agonies of the housekeeper and evolved meals out of nothingness, out of a leek and a lump of butter, or out of three sticks of macaroni, one gousse d'ail and a pinch of salt. The clove of garlic went into every pot—was it that which made her dishes so savoury? When the gas was shut off at five o'clock just as dinner was under way, she didn't tear her hair and blaspheme her gods; she cooked. Don't ask me how she did it. I can only state the fact. On two gas-rings, with a tiny hot-plate in between, she cooked a soup, a meat dish, two vegetables and a pudding every night, and served them all piping hot whether the gas "marched" or whether it did not.

If we wanted to send her into the seventh heaven we gave her a "commission" in the town, or asked her to trim a hat. We would meet her trotting up the Boulevard, her basket on her arm, her smile irradiating the greyest day, and know that when she returned every rumour—and Bar seethed with rumours—every scrap of gossip—it was a hotbed of gossip—on the wing that day would be ours for the asking. She never held herself aloof as Madame Drouet did. She became one of the household, and it would have done your heart good to see her on Sunday morning trotting (she always trotted) first from one room and then to another with trays of coffee and rolls, keeping us like naughty children in bed, ostensibly because we must be tired, we worked so hard (O Madame! Madame!), but actually we believed to keep us out of the way while she scuttled through her work in time for Mass.

Her dusting was even sketchier than Madame Drouet's, and when she washed out a room she always left one corner dry, but whether in pursuance of a sacred rite or as a concession to temperament, I cannot say.

Meantime she lived in one room in the rue de Véel, sharing it with her father and Mademoiselle Clémence. M. Phillipot, his existence once acknowledged, faded more and more surely from our ken. He was not in Bar-le-Duc, he was in a misty, nebulous somewhere with his virago of a mother. We felt that wherever he was he deserved it, and speedily put him out of our existence. But he occurred later. Husbands do, it seems, in France.

Frankly, I believe that Madame forgot him too. She never spoke of him, and she was devoted to M. Godard and Clémence, who are of the stock and breeding that keep one's faith in humanity alive. Monsieur was a carpenter, an old retainer of the château near his home. A well-to-do man, we gathered, of some education and magnificent spirit. When the Germans captured his village they seized him, buffeted him and threatened to shoot him. Well, he just defied them. Flung back his old head and dared them to do their worst. Even when he was kneeling in the village square waiting the order to fire he defied them. He told me the story more than once, but the details escaped me. Heaven having deprived him of teeth, he had a quaint trick of substituting nails, with his mouth full of which he waxed eloquent. Now, toothless French causes the foreigner to pour ashes on her head and squirm in the very dust, but French garnished with "des points" ...!

Of course I ought to have mastered it, as opportunities were not lacking, but Monsieur, who worked regularly for us, was unhappily slightly deaf. So what with the difficulty of making him understand me, and the difficulty of making me understand him, our intimacy, though at all times of the most affectionate nature, rested rather on goodwill than on soul to soul intercourse.

A scheme for providing the refugees with chests in which to keep their scanty belongings having been set afoot, Monsieur was established in the wood-shed with planes, hammer and nails, and there he became a fixture. We simply could not get on without him. We flew to him in every crisis, flying back occasionally in laughter and indignation, with the storm of his disapproval still whistling in our ears. He could be as obstinate as a mule, and oh, how he could chasten us for our good! In the intervals he made chests out of packing-cases, which he adorned with hinges and a loop for a padlock, while we painted the owner's initials in heavy lettering on the top. So highly were they prized and sought after, our stock of packing-cases ran out, and those who wanted them had to bring their own. It was then that Monsieur's gift of invective showed itself in all its razor-like keenness. For, grievous to relate, there are people in the world who presume upon generosity—mean people who will not play the game. Every packing-case in process of transformation made serious inroads on Monsieur's time, and upon the small supply of wood at his disposal, so their cost was not small. But if you had seen some of the boxes brought to our door!

"That?" Monsieur wagged a contemptuous finger at the overgrown match-box one despicable creature planted under his enraged eyes. "That? A chest to hold linen? Take it away. It will do to carry your prayer book in when you go to Mass."

Or, "It is a chest that you want me to make out of that? That? Look at it. C'est du papier à cigarette. Your husband can roll his tobacco in it."