He was right. I could not remember to have seen any young men, and everywhere women were working in the field, and in one place a woman was yoked up with an ox, ploughing, while a young girl drove the odd pair.
"And if that isn't enough, wait until we come to the next cathedral and I'll show you what corresponds to our 'Honor Rolls' in the churches back home. Then you'll know whether war has touched Brittany or not."
We entered with reverent hearts the next ancient cathedral of Brittany, in a little town with a population of only about two thousand, we were told, and yet out of this town close to five hundred boys had been killed in the Great War. Their names were posted, written with many a flourish by some village penman. In the list I saw the names of four brothers who had been killed, and their father. The entire family had been wiped out, all but the women.
So I was mistaken. As quiet and peaceful as Brittany was during May and June, as beautiful with broom and poppies as were its fields, it had not gone untouched by the cruel hand of war. It, too, had suffered, as has every hamlet, village, and corner of fair France; suffered grievously.
Thus I was not surprised to hear that this beautiful young woman was wearing black because her husband had been killed, and that the little girl behind her in the doorway had no longer any hope that her soldier daddy would some day come home and romp with her as of old. At the lunch we were told all about it. True, there were tears shed in the telling, and these not alone by these brave Frenchwomen and the little girl, but it was a sweet, simple story of courage. Several times during its telling the little girl ran over to kiss the tears out of her mother's eyes, and to say, with such faith that it thrilled us: "Never mind, mother, the Américains are here now; they will kill the cruel Boches."
After dinner we walked amid the red poppies in the great lawn that was the crowning feature of that white-stone home. On the walls of the ancient house grew the most wonderful roses that I have ever seen anywhere, not excepting California. Great white roses, so large and fragrant that they seemed unreal, delicately moulded red roses, which unfolded like a baby's lips, climbed those ancient stone walls. The younger woman cared for them herself, and was engaged in that task of love even before we went away.
I said to her, in what French I could command: "They are the most beautiful roses I have ever seen."
"Even in your own beautiful America?" she asked with a smile.
"Yes, more beautiful even than in my own America."
"Yes," she said, "they are most beautiful, but they are more than that; they are full of hope for me. They are my promise that I shall see him some time again. They come back each spring. He loved them and cared for them when he was alive. Even on his leave in 1915 he gloried in them. And when they come back each spring they seem to come to give me promise that I shall see him again."