Coming Home

lull, the sight of a single spiked helmet at the end of the drive. In a few minutes a dozen followed: mostly officers; then all at once the place hummed with them. There were supply waggons and motors in the court, bundles of hay, stacks of rifles, artillery-men unharnessing and rubbing down their horses. The crowd was hot and thirsty, and in a moment the old lady, to her amazement, saw wine and cider being handed about by the Rechamp servants. “Or so at least I was told,” she added, correcting herself, “for it’s not my habit to look out of the window. I simply sat here and waited.” Her seat, as she spoke, might have been a curule chair.

Downstairs, it appeared, Mlle. Malo had instantly taken her measures. She didn’t sit and wait. Surprised in the garden with Simone, she had made the girl walk quietly back to the house and receive the officers with her on the doorstep. The officer in command—captain, or whatever he was—had arrived in a bad temper, cursing and swearing, and growling out menaces about spies. The day was intensely hot, and possibly he had had too much wine. At any rate Mlle. Malo had known how to “put him in his place”; and when he and the other officers entered they found the dining-table set out with refreshing drinks and cigars, melons, strawberries and iced coffee. “The clever creature! She even remembered that they liked whipped cream with their coffee!”

The effect had been miraculous. The captain—what was his name? Yes, Chariot, Chariot—Captain Chariot had been specially complimentary on the subject of the whipped cream and the cigars. Then he asked to see the other members of the family, and Mlle. Malo told him there were only two—“two old women!” He made a face at that, and said all the same he should like to meet them; and she answered: “‘One is your hostess, the Comtesse de Rechamp, who is ill in bed’—for my poor daughter-in-law was lying in bed paralyzed with rheumatism—‘and the other her mother-in-law, a very old lady who never leaves her room.’”

“But aren’t there any men in the family?” he had then asked; and she had said: “Oh yes—two. The Comte de Rechamp and his son.”

“And where are they?”

“In England. Monsieur de Rechamp went a month ago to take his son on a trip.”

The officer said: “I was told they were here to-day”; and Mlle. Malo replied: “You had better have the house searched and satisfy yourself.”

He laughed and said: “The idea had occurred to me.” She laughed also, and sitting down at the piano struck a few chords. Captain Chariot, who had his foot on the threshold, turned back—Simone had described the scene to her grandmother afterward. “Some of the brutes, it seems, are musical,” the old lady explained; “and this was one of them. While he was listening, some soldiers appeared in the court carrying another who seemed to be wounded. It turned out afterward that he’d been climbing a garden wall after fruit, and cut himself on the broken glass at the top; but the blood was enough—they raised the usual dreadful outcry about an ambush, and a lieutenant clattered into the room where Mlle. Malo sat playing Stravinsky.” The old lady paused for her effect, and I was conscious of giving her all she wanted.

“Well—?”

“Will you believe it? It seems she looked at her watch-bracelet and said: ‘Do you gentlemen dress for dinner? I do—but we’ve still time for a little Moussorgsky’—or whatever wild names they call themselves—‘if you’ll make those people outside hold their tongues.’ Our captain looked at her again, laughed, gave an order that sent the lieutenant right about, and sat down beside her at the piano. Imagine my stupour, dear sir: the drawing-room is directly under this room, and in a moment I heard two voices coming up to me. Well, I won’t conceal from you that his was the finest. But then I always adored a barytone.” She folded her shrivelled hands among their laces. “After that, the Germans were tres bien—tres bien. They stayed two days, and there was nothing to complain of. Indeed, when the second detachment came, a week later, they never even entered the gates. Orders had been left that they should be quartered elsewhere. Of course we were lucky in happening on a man of the world like Captain Chariot.”

“Yes, very lucky. It’s odd, though, his having a French name.”

“Very. It probably accounts for his breeding,” she answered placidly; and left me marvelling at the happy remoteness of old age.

VI

The next morning early Jean de Rechamp came to my room. I was struck at once by the change in him: he had lost his first glow, and seemed nervous and hesitating. I knew what he had come for: to ask me to postpone our departure for another twenty-four hours. By rights we should have been off that morning; but there had been a sharp brush a few kilometres away, and a couple of poor devils had been brought to the chateau whom it would have been death to carry farther that day and criminal not to hurry to a base hospital the next morning. “We’ve simply got to stay till to-morrow: you’re in luck,” I said laughing.

He laughed back, but with a frown that made me feel I had been a brute to speak in that way of a respite due to such a cause.

“The men will pull through, you know—trust Mlle. Malo for that!” I said.

His frown did not lift. He went to the window and drummed on the pane.

“Do you see that breach in the wall, down there behind the trees? It’s the only scratch the place has got. And think of Lennont! It’s incredible—simply incredible!”

“But it’s like that everywhere, isn’t it? Everything depends on the officer in command.”

“Yes: that’s it, I suppose. I haven’t had time to get a consecutive account of what happened: they’re all too excited. Mlle. Malo is the only person who can tell me exactly how things went.” He swung about on me. “Look here, it sounds absurd, what I’m asking; but try to get me an hour alone with her, will you?”

I stared at the request, and he went on, still half-laughing: “You see, they all hang on me; my father and mother, Simone, the cure, the servants. The whole village is coming up presently: they want to stuff their eyes full of me. It’s natural enough, after living here all these long months cut off from everything. But the result is I haven’t said two words to her yet.”

“Well, you shall,” I declared; and with an easier smile he turned to hurry down to a mass of thanksgiving which the cure was to celebrate in the private chapel. “My parents wanted it,” he explained; “and after that the whole village will be upon us. But later—”

“Later I’ll effect a diversion; I swear I will,” I assured him.

*****

By daylight, decidedly, Mlle. Malo was less handsome than in the evening. It was my first thought as she came toward me, that afternoon, under the limes. Jean was still indoors, with his people, receiving the village; I rather wondered she hadn’t stayed there with him. Theoretically, her place was at his side;