I met a man in the Club at Lille the other day who told me that he knew all about women. He had studied the subject, he said, and could read 'em like an open book. He admitted that it took a bit of doing, but that once you had the secret they would trot up and eat out of your hand.
Having thus spoken he swallowed three whiskies in rapid succession and rushed away to jump a lorry-ride to Germany, and I have not seen him since, much to my regret, for I need his advice, I do.
We splashed into the hamlet of Sailly-le-Petit at about eight o'clock of a pouring dark night, to find the inhabitants abed and all doors closed upon us.
However, by dint of entreaties whispered through key-holes and persuasions cooed under window-shutters, I charmed most of them open again and got my troop under cover, with the exception of one section. Its Corporal, his cape spouting like a miniature watershed, swam up. "There's a likely-lookin' farm over yonder, Sir," said he, "but the old gal won't let us in. She's chattin' considerable." I found a group of numb men and shivering horses standing knee-deep in a midden, the men exchanging repartee with a furious female voice that shrilled at them from a dark window. "Is that the officer?" the voice demanded. I admitted as much. "Then remove your band of brigands. Go home to England, where you belong, and leave respectable people in peace. The War is finished."
I replied with some fervour (my boots were full of water and my cap dribbling pints of iced-water down the back of my neck) that I was not playing the wandering Jew round one-horse Picard villages in late December for the amusement I got out of it and that I could be relied on to return to England at the earliest opportunity, but for the present moment would she let us in out of the downpour, please? The voice soared to a scream. No, she would not, not she. If we chose to come soldiering we must take the consequences, she had no sympathy for us. She called several leading saints to witness that her barn was full to bursting anyhow and there was no room. That was that. She slammed the window-shutter and retired, presumably to bed. The Corporal, who had been scouting round about, returned to report room for all hands in the barn, which was quite empty. Without further ado I pushed all hands into the barn and left them for the night.
Next morning, while walking in the village street, I beheld a remarkable trio approaching. It consisted of a venerable cleric—his skirts held high enough out of the mud to reveal the fact that he favoured flannel underclothing and British army socks—and a massive rustic dressed principally in hair, straw-ends and corduroys. The third member was a thick short bulldog of a woman, who, from the masterly way in which she kept corduroys from slipping into the village smithy and saved the cleric from drifting to a sailor's grave in the duck-pond, seemed to be the controlling spirit of the party. By a deft movement to a flank she thwarted her reluctant companions in an attempt to escape up a by-way, and with a nudge here and a tug there brought them to a standstill in front of me and opened the introductions.
"M. le Curé," indicating the cleric, who dropped his skirts and raised his beaver.
"M. le Maire," indicating corduroys, who clutched a handful of straw out of his beard and groaned loudly.
"Moi, je suis Madame, Veuve Palliard-Dubose," indicating herself.