The telegram from the Prefecture was posted up at the door. It was still daylight, I lingered to gaze at it. My cousin took me by the arm. "I say, come along in."
There was no one there but Alfred Lecomte, the town clerk, a still youthful peasant of a thoughtful cast of countenance, and in a corner, the deputy mayor, an infirm old man who kept in the background.
"Well, what the deuce are you doing, Alfred?" said the doctor.
The other had got up, his pen behind his ear.
"Good heavens, man!" continued my cousin, "can't you realise that there's anything to be done?"
"What should there be?"
"What should there be? You must send word first to La Ferrière and Tarins!"
Lecomte tossed his head: "Send word! That would mean a nice lot of running about! They've had the bells rung: it is up to the people to come and find out what it is about."
My cousin began to get angry:
"You idiot, Alfred. How do you imagine they'll suspect anything of the kind! You must send Machurot to them."
[Pg 26]
He was the local policeman.
"He'll be having a drink."
"At Tronquière's?"
"Probably."
A boy, who stuck his nose in, was sent to look for him. My cousin undertook to draw up the proclamation destined for the neighbouring populace.
He dashed it down without any scratchings out, and gave it to me to run through.
"Excellent!" I exclaimed.
Somewhat pretentious, it had a great effect on Alfred and the old deputy. The boy brought Machurot back, and it was put into his hands.
The old dog was as drunk as a pig, but he declaimed it, all the same, head-in-air, scanning all the syllables but breathing out of time. They traced a detailed route on the paper, for him, and let him loose in the growing dusk.
The news had spread. Peasants began to come for information on their way home from the fields. They arrived with lagging footsteps.
"It's true we're going to fight?"
"Rather!"
Alfred took them to see the telegram, lit up now by a lantern.
"Just look at that and see if it's nonsense!"
"When do we leave?"
"That depends. You've only got to look at your record book."
Those who had gone on to get it at home, pulled it out, opened it, and consulted the number.
"The third day," they read; or "the second"; territorials, "the eleventh."
"You'll get there too late, old chap!"
[Pg 27]
The upshot was that each one seemed overjoyed or heart-broken, according to whether he would have time to get his hay in or not.
Very few remarks; and anyhow not a single grumble. My cousin, who forced himself to keep up his cheery tone, met with no echo. He could only drag a few disconnected sentences out of the broken-down old deputy.
The visitors did not linger, but soon turned on their heels, their wooden pipes in their mouths.
Lecomte bustled and fussed, full of the importance of his part. As for me I took part in it all as the stranger I was, and incapable of realising the tragic element afloat in the air.
When the doctor wanted to go in, I urged him to take a turn with me through the village streets. I expected at last to come upon some unexpected, and unusual demonstration ... the evening of mobilisation! The great evening, by Jove! I was disillusioned, we met no one in the poorly lit streets. In the little schoolyard the teacher's son was making figures of eight on his bicycle; further on through an open window, we saw a lot of farm hands sitting round a table, limp and taciturn, gorging themselves with soup. And the usual frequenters of Tronquière's "pub" were sipping their verre de verte in silence.
My cousin did not rise much in answer to my short sentences. However, when I asked him:
"Are they patriotic about here?"
"Very," he assured me. "You'll soon see!"
I objected diffidently.
"At first sight...."
"Well?"
"There's rather a lack of enthusiasm."
[Pg 28]
"Enthusiasm? It was not wanting in the year '70! They didn't know then what a real war was. They've learnt. In '71 in January, we saw what was left of Bourbaki's army pass by, dying of hunger and cold in the snow. We know what beaten men are, and that we must not be of their number. They aren't going out of light-heartedness, but they'll go on till death!"
My place was laid. We dined. The doctor was grave and silent, and I feeble and dull. My cousin was the only one to talk, and she overflowed with lukewarm lamentations. What bad-luck that Geneviève should have gone back to Belfort just a week before. Would she be able to come back?
I reassured her by saying that women and children would certainly be ejected. But her son-in-law, the Captain? His fate did not seem to worry her much. I remarked that he was in the first line, much exposed.
"Of course!" she sighed. "Hadn't I told them often enough to try not to stay in the East!"
The doctor interposed, declaring that it was the most honourable position for a soldier. Julien would most certainly not complain!
He added, turning to me:
"Your brother runs an even greater risk!"
My brother Victor! I felt rather ashamed of not having thought of him! A lieutenant in the infantry at St. Mihiel, ten miles from the frontier. Hadn't I heard that he could be mobilised in three quarters of an hour? This detail which I put before them, drew forth shrieks from my cousin. I tried to picture Victor as parted from his wife and his little children, perhaps[Pg 29] since this afternoon, perhaps for the last few days, to go towards the dark unknown.... Seated at this table, in front of an appetising dish of morels, I had difficulty in convincing myself of the grim reality.
In order to rouse myself, I declared:
"In three days, it will be my turn."
"To do what?" asked my cousin.
"Rejoin my regiment, of course!"
"What! Are you going too?"
She had a dazed look. The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
"Of course he's going! At the age of twenty-seven! My dear Mathilde, you don't seem to have any idea...."
She acknowledged frankly that she did indeed understand nothing.... But when I had told her again that in three days' time I was going to report myself at F——, whence I should be sent to fight, she seemed thunder-struck, poor soul! I should never have suspected her of being so fond of me; she had known me ever since I was quite tiny, and I was the son of her poor lost Blanche, one of her own people, a blood relation, and dearer to her than her son-in-law, I could see ... she began to bewail herself, cursing the relentless fate against our family. The doctor had to cut it short, a little sharply:
"Look here, don't discourage the boy!"
I was not displeased when she stopped talking; too much attention always worried me; moreover it occurred to me—a false, but unpleasant impression—that I was making an unfair appeal to her compassion.
During dessert, while my uncle was uncorking a bottle of wine, I studied the railway-guide. The 6:50 train ought to get me to Paris at four o'clock, but[Pg 30] the time-tables would probably all be upset. It would be wiser to be at the station from six o'clock onwards, and to wait.
My cousin sympathised:
"You'll have to be up very early."
We drank to the health of our relations with much feeling; examining myself stealthily in a looking-glass, I decided—I was a little heated—that I already had a martial air about me.
"Are you a corporal, anyhow?" the doctor asked me.
"Sergeant."
Half-past eight struck, I got up.
"Oh! how I should like to pack for you!" said my cousin.
We embraced. They entrusted me with many friendly messages for my father, whom they had not seen for ten years, and went with me as far as the railings, where the last farewells were said.
As I went away, I heard the doctor murmur:
"The beginning of the bad times."
And my cousin:
"Poor boy!"
These words bore me company. I thought involuntarily that in this separation from people who loved me, and perhaps the only ones who loved me, there must be something deep and heart-rending, of which I was still unconscious, but which one day would fill me with emotion.