As far as Jeanne’s personal life was concerned, what little was left of it ebbed and flowed to the daily rhythm of the mail. She felt it begin to sink lower with the fatigue of preparing and serving the lunch for the six noisy children, always too hungry for the small portions, so that at the last she divided most of her own part among them. It ebbed lower and lower during the long hours of the afternoon when she strove desperately to keep the little ones cheerful and occupied and at the same time to mend and bake and darn and clean and iron and carry ashes out and coal in; her long slim pianist’s fingers reddened and roughened till they bled, because cold cream was far too costly a luxury. It sank to its stagnant lowest during the tired end of the day when the younger children, fretful with too much indoors, disputed and quarreled; and when, as she prepared the evening meal, she tried to help the older ones with their[4] Latin declensions and Greek verbs so that they might be worthy sons of their father. And oh, the nights, the long nights, when she woke again and again, dreaming that she saw André wounded, dreaming that some one called to her in a loud voice that he had been killed at the head of his men. But after midnight she felt the turn of the tide. In less than twelve hours there might be a letter. She dozed, woke to make the round of the children’s beds to be sure that they were covered, and noted that it was three o’clock. In seven hours she might have news again. She slept, and woke to hear the church clock clang out five, and knew that if she could but live through five hours more—
In the morning, the countless minor agitations; the early rising in the cold; the smoky kindling of the fire; the hurried expedition for the milk through the empty streets, dripping with the clammy fog of the region; the tumultuous awakening of the children, some noisily good-natured, some noisily bad-tempered; the preparation of the meager breakfast in the intervals of buttoning[5] up blouses and smoothing tousled hair; then, as school time approached, the gradual crescendo of all the noise and confusion into the climax of the scampering departure of the three older ones, blue-nosed and shivering in their worn, insufficient wraps; the gradual decrescendo as she dressed the thin, white bodies of the younger ones, and strove to invent some game for them which would keep them active and yet allow her to do the morning housework—all these tossing, restless waves were the merest surface agitation. Beneath their irregular, capricious rhythm she felt physically the steady, upward swelling of her expectation as the clock-hands swung towards ten.
Till then she knew nothing, nothing of what might have happened during the portentous night behind her, for every night, like every day, was portentous. There was no calamity which was impossible. The last four years had proved that. Anything might have happened since the last news had come in from the outer world—anything, that is, except the end of the war. That alone had come to seem impossible.
And yet, in spite of that great flooding tide[6] of her expectancy, when the ring at the door finally came, it always gave Jeanne an instant’s violent shock. Her heart flared up like a torch with hope and fear, its reflection flickering on her thin cheeks as she hurried to the front of the house and, her delicate work-worn hands shaking, opened the door on Fate.
First her eye leaped to see that there was not the official-looking letter without a stamp which she had received so many times in her bad dreams, the letter from his captain announcing that sous-Lieutenant Bruneau—no, it had not come yet. She had another day’s respite.
She could breathe again, she could return the white-haired postman’s “Bonjour, Madame Bruneau.”
Next, even on the days when there was a letter from André, she tore open the Paris newspaper and read in one glance the last communiqué. After this her hands stopped shaking. No, there was no specially bad news. No horror of a new offensive had begun. Then she could even smile faintly back at the tired old face before her and say, in answer to his inquiry,[7] “Oh yes, all pretty well, thank you. My own are standing the winter pretty well. But my brother’s children, they have never really recovered from the nervous shock of that dreadful experience of bombardment, when they lost their parents, you know. Of course none of the six are as plump or as rosy as I would like to have them—Michel is growing so fast.”
“You ought to thank God, Madame Bruneau, that they are too young. There are worse things than being thin and white.”
“Yes, yes, Monsieur Larcade,” she apologized hastily for her unmerited good fortune compared to his, “what news from your sons?”
“Still no news from Salonique. A letter this morning from Jules’s surgeon. They are not sure whether he will ever be able to walk again. The wound was so deep—an injury to the spine.”
A wordless gesture of sympathy from her, a weary shifting of his heavy letter bag, and he went on to the next door, behind which another woman waited, her hands shaking; and beyond that another one, and then another.
If it was to be a good day, if there had been[8] a letter from André, she opened it hurriedly and read it all in one look, even though the children clung clamoring to her skirts, even though the fire smoked and threatened to go out. Then she set it carefully in the bosom of her dress and put on the faded caps and patched wraps and darned mittens to take the children out for their outing, while she did her marketing. They were too small to leave alone, even for half an hour.
During the painful experience which her marketing always was, she felt warmed and sustained by the letter tucked inside her dress. Everything cost more than the month before, twice as much as the year before when her income was the same minute sum as now.
But André was alive and unhurt.
She looked longingly at the beefsteak which the older boys needed so much, her own children, and bought instead the small piece of coarse pork which must make a stew for them all, those other children of her blood whom the war had thrown on her hands.
But she had a letter from her husband in her bosom.
[9]She priced the cauliflowers, sighed, and bought potatoes, and less of them than she had hoped to have, the price having gone up again. She was horrified to find that rice cost more than it had, an impossible sum per pound, even the broken, poor-quality grade. She would try macaroni as a substitute. There was no macaroni, the woman clerk informed her. There was none at all, at any price. Jeanne turned to another item on her list. The doctor had said that the children absolutely must have more fruit in their diet—fruit! Well, perhaps she might be able to manage prunes. They were the cheapest fruit—or they had been. “Prunes, Madame Bruneau? They are only for the rich.” She named a price which made Jeanne gasp.
She calculated the amount she would need for one portion each for her big family. It was out of the question. She was really aghast, and appealed desperately to the woman clerk, “What do you do?” she asked. “We do without,” answered the other woman briefly.
“But your children? Growing children can’t be in good health without some fruit.”
[10]“They’re not in good health,” answered the other grimly. “My Marthe has eczema, and the doctor says that Henri is just ripe for tuberculosis.” Her voice died.
Jeanne closed her eyes during the instant’s silence which followed. The woman clerk shoved aimlessly at the sack of dry beans which stood between them.
Then they both drew a long breath and began to add up together the cost of Jeanne’s purchases. She took out her pocketbook, paid soberly, and went on to the baker’s.
Here a girl weighed out for her with scrupulous care the exact amount of bread allowed for the family, and took the bread tickets along with the money in return. At the sight and smell of the fresh-baked bread the children began their babbling, begging, clamorous demand which Jeanne dreaded almost more than anything else. She winced away from this daily pain, crying out, trying hastily to stop them before the tears came,X “No, no, my darlings, you can’t have any now. No, Jacqueline, don’t tease auntie! Annette dearie, you know if mother lets you have[11] any now there will be just that much less for you at lunch and dinner. You know I can’t give you any of what belongs to the others.” She was imploring them not to ask her for the food she could not give them. Anything but that! The daily repetition of this poignant little scene was intolerable. If she could only leave them at home, could only spare them that daily ordeal of the visit to the bakeshop where their poor little heads were turned at the sight and odor of all that food. Not to have bread to give them!
She was almost on her knees before their shrill, insistent demands when she felt her husband’s letter crackle against her breast, and stopped short. She was on the edge of losing her head, like men after too long shell fire when they walk dazedly straight into danger. She knew better than this! The tragic manner would never do for little children who cannot live and thrive save in gaiety and lightness of heart. She was only making a bad matter worse.
She summoned all her strength, put her hand on the letter in her bosom, and burst resolutely into a hearty laugh. “Oh, children, just see that[12] funny picture of the little kitten. He’s chasing his tail, do you see, round and round and round. Annette, do you know how he feels! See, I’ll hang this string down your back, and you try to catch it by turning around quickly. See, the faster you turn the faster it gets away from you. Maurice wants to try? Well, we’ll just hurry home, and I will give you a piece of old red curtain cord and you each can have a tail and be a little kitten. And when the big ones get back from school you can show them how to chase tails. Won’t they laugh?”
They were safe in the street by this time, the bakeshop forgotten, the loaf in the basket hidden, the children looking up, laughing through their tears at Jeanne, breathless, pouring all her vitality into her cheerful face and bright voice, so that there was not enough left to keep her knees from shaking under her.
Back to the house quickly, lest the wretched war coal, half black stones, smoking sullenly in the cook-stove, should go out in their absence. The invention of the curtain-cord tails was still valid, even after the pork had been put on to[13] cook with the potatoes. The children were still playing, still unexacting. Jeanne would have time to read her letter.
She put the paper-thin potato parings to cook in an old kettle for their three hens, who occasionally presented them with a priceless fresh egg; and, wiping her cold, wet, potato-stained hands (was it possible that those hands had ever played Beethoven and Debussy?), took her treasure out of her bosom and unfolded the double sheet, warm still from the warmth of her body.
This time she read it slowly, taking in, absorbing to the last cell of her consciousness, every one of those words, written by candlelight, underground, to the thunder of shells exploding over the abri. They were plain, homely words enough, rambling, unstudied familiar phrases, such as husband and wife write to each other when they have shared their daily life for many years and still try to go on sharing what may be left to them of days in common.
It had rained, as usual, all day long, but the new trench boots had kept his feet almost dry.[14] Yet he was ashamed of the price she must have paid for them—she, straining every nerve to buy food to keep the children well. He was a man, a grown-up, and the war had done for them forever. Let him shift as best he could. Everything ought to go to the children, there would be little enough. But they must have the best chance we could give them. Whoever else was responsible for the war certainly the children had nothing to do with it. And they must be the torch bearers. Did she remember how he had always wondered why no musician had ever composed music on that theme? He could conceive such a noble symphonic poem called “The Torch Bearers.” He had wondered all day if the coal had finally arrived at Méru. It went beyond his imagination how she could manage at all, the days when the coal supply was so low. In their little underground abri they had a stove—yes, a real stove. It had been left there by some American ambulance men who had used the abri before them. So they were really warm, part of the time, and occasionally almost dry. But the wood they were burning—it made him sick. It was[15] what his men tore out from the ruined village houses near which the trenches ran. Of course it could never be used for houses again, but when you know what it is to have a home of your own, and how it grows to be a part of you, it is not much fun to put parts of other people’s houses into your stove. No, he did not need any new socks. He did not need anything; she need not go on trying to slip in some new luxury for him out of her impossibly small budget. Did she remember that poor Dury, the youngest of his men? He had been shot yesterday; a stray ball, not meant for anybody in particular—such a silly way to be killed. And now there was the letter to write to his mother. Heavens, how he dreaded writing the letters to the parents of men who died or disappeared! He hoped little Maurice’s throat was better. What a sickly child that poor kid was! He was evidently one who would have to be nursed along all through his childhood, and since the war had killed his parents, it fell to his poor aunt to do the job. And then—“Now, see here, Jeanne darling, don’t kill yourself over that little boy because you feel so guilty at not[16] loving him more. He’s not a lovable kid. His own mother, poor nervous thing, never could keep from snapping at him, and you know your brother cared enough sight more for Jacqueline than for him. Don’t you blame yourself. Take it easy!”
Jeanne laid the letter down with a little exclamation, half a laugh. How ever did André know she did not love the little nephew who reminded her so of the sister-in-law she had never been able to love? She had not thought that anybody could guess that the child to whom she was always the gentlest was the one—and here was André, quite casually as usual, walking into her most secret places! How he knew her! How he knew the meaning of her smallest gesture, the turn of her most carefully worded phrase! How near he was to her! How there was no corner of her life where he did not come and go, at ease, and how she welcomed him in, how she rejoiced to feel him thus pervading the poor, hurried, barren inner life of her, which had bloomed so richly when they had lived it together. How married they were! That was, after all, an achievement, to have wrested that[17] glory from so horrible a thing as life had come to be. Let the heavens fall, she had known what it was to be one with a noble human soul.
She stood up, her thin face glowing, her tired eyes shining, as they always were after reading André’s letter. It was the only moment of the day when she felt herself wholly alive.
This was the high tide of her daily life, poor, scanty trickle of life it was, even at its best, compared to the fathomless deep surge of the fullness of the days before the war, days when it had seemed natural that André should be there always, that they should profoundly live together, that there should be some leisure, and some music mixed with their work, and warm rooms and clothes and food as simply as there was air to breathe.
A whiff of acrid coal smoke in her face, a wailing cry from Maurice who had pinched his finger, a warning half-hour stroke from the kitchen clock—she came back to the present with a start and strove loyally to use for that present the little renewal of strength which came from a momentary vision of the past. She changed[18] the drafts of the stove, stirred the stew and, gathering the weeping child up in her tired arms, began to make a funny nonsense song, purporting to be sung by the hurt finger. Her voice was obliged to pass through a knot in her throat, but it came out bravely, and in a moment the children were laughing again, their thin faces turned toward hers like little pale flowers toward the sun.
Then there was the table to set, of course in the kitchen, since there was no coal for another fire in the cold house. How Jeanne suffered from this suffocating necessity to do everything in one small room! It made an intolerable trial of every smallest process of the everyday life, to prepare food, and eat it, and play, and wash, and study, and bathe the children, and dress and undress them—they were like pigs in a sty, she often thought, working feverishly to keep a little order and decency in the room which seemed to her fastidious senses to reek stiflingly of the effluvia of too-concentrated human life.
As she worked she felt, like an inward bleeding, the slow ebbing of her forces. The good[19] moment of the day had come and gone. There was nothing to look forward to now till the mail of the next morning.
And this was a good day, one of the best, when there had been no special activity on the front, when the daily letter from André arrived on time. But what of the days when the communiqué announced laconically, “Heavy artillery fire between Fresnes and Villers-Raignault”? (André was stationed at Fresnes.) Or worse, when the great offensives began, when all personal letters from the front were stopped, when day after day the communiqué announced: “Violent fighting all along the Champagne front.”
The feeble, tired old postman, shuffling on his rounds, was a very snake-crowned horror to the dry-eyed women, waiting and hoping and dreading to see him come. Always there were cases of hysteria at such times; old Madame Vielé, who shrieked out suddenly in the market-place that she had seen her son fall dead before her; Marguerite Lemaire, who, returning from Paris on the night train, had found her husband in the compartment with her, had kissed him, held his[20] hand, wept on his breast—and suddenly she was alone, with the train rushing on through the darkness to Méru, where she was met by the news of his death.
At such times Jeanne braced her shivering limbs and throbbing nerves to steady rigidity and bore her burden as though she had the strength of eternity in her heart. Scraps of phrases from André’s letters came before her eyes, as voices speak to tranced saints. As she worked she saw, written before her, “Whoever is responsible for the war, the children are not.” Or again, “We are all evil creatures, God knows, and our motives must be mixed in this war because they are m............