Going to the door she called in the servants: “I’m leaving for England in a few days,” she told them, “and while I’m away you’ll take care of this house. I have absolute confidence in you.”
Pierre said: “All things shall be done as you would wish, Mademoiselle.” And she knew that it would be so.
That evening she told Puddle of her decision, and Puddle’s face brightened: “I’m so glad, my dear, when war comes one ought to stand by one’s country.”
“I’m afraid they won’t want my sort …” Stephen muttered.
Puddle put a firm little hand over hers: “I wouldn’t be too sure of that, this war may give your sort of woman her chance. I think you may find that they’ll need you, Stephen.”
III
There were no farewells to be said in Paris except those to Buisson and Mademoiselle Duphot.
Mademoiselle Duphot shed a few tears: “I find you only to lose you, Stévenne. Ah, but how many friends will be parted, perhaps forever, by this terrible war—and yet what else could we do? We are blameless!”
In Berlin people were also saying: “What else could we do? We are blameless!”
Julie’s hand lingered on Stephen’s arm: “You feel so strong,” she said, sighing a little, “it is good to be strong and courageous these days, and to have one’s eyes—alas, I am quite useless.”
“No one is useless who can pray, my sister,” reproved Mademoiselle almost sternly.
And indeed there were many who thought as she did, the churches were crowded all over France. A great wave of piety swept through Paris, filling the dark confessional boxes, so that the priests had now some ado to cope with such shoals of penitent people—the more so as every priest fit to fight had been summoned to join the army. Up at Montmartre the church of the Sacré Cœur echoed and reechoed with the prayers of the faithful, while those prayers that were whispered with tears in secret, hung like invisible clouds round its altars.
“Save us, most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Have pity upon us, have pity upon France. Save us, oh, Heart of Jesus!”
So all day long must the priests sit and hear the time-honoured sins of body and spirit; a monotonous hearing because of its sameness, since nothing is really new under the sun, least of all our manner of sinning. Men who had not been to Mass for years, now began to remember their first Communion; thus it was that many a hardy blasphemer, grown suddenly tongue-tied and rather sheepish, clumped up to the altar in his new army boots, having made an embarrassed confession.
Young clericals changed into uniform and marched side by side with the roughest Poilus, to share in their hardships, their hopes, their terrors, their deeds of supremest valour. Old men bowed their heads and gave of the strength which no longer animated their bodies, gave of that strength through the bodies of their sons who would charge into battle shouting and singing. Women of all ages knelt down and prayed, since prayer has long been the refuge of women. “No one is useless who can pray, my sister.” The women of France had spoken through the lips of the humble Mademoiselle Duphot.
Stephen and Puddle said goodbye to the sisters, then went on to Buisson’s Academy of Fencing, where they found him engaged upon greasing his foils.
He looked up, “Ah, it’s you. I must go on greasing. God knows when I shall use these again, tomorrow I join my regiment.” But he wiped his hands on a stained overall and sat down, after clearing a chair for Puddle. “An ungentlemanly war it will be,” he grumbled. “Will I lead my men with a sword? Ah, but no! I will lead my men with a dirty revolver in my hand. Parbleu! Such is modern warfare! A machine could do the whole cursèd thing better—we shall all be nothing but machines in this war. However, I pray that we may kill many Germans.”
Stephen lit a cigarette while the master glared, he was evidently in a very vile temper: “Go on, go on, smoke your heart to the devil, then come here and ask me to teach you fencing! You smoke in lighting one from the other, you remind me of your horrible Birmingham chimneys—but of course a woman exaggerates always,” he concluded, with an evident wish to annoy her.
Then he made a few really enlightening remarks about Germans in general, their appearance, their morals, above all their personal habits—which remarks were more seemly in French than they would be in English. For, like Valérie Seymour, this man was filled with a loathing for the ugliness of his epoch, an ugliness to which he felt the Germans were just now doing their best to contribute. Buisson’s heart was not buried in Mitylene, but rather in the glories of a bygone Paris, where a gentleman lived by the skill of his rapier and the graceful courage that lay behind it.
“In the old days we killed very beautifully,” sighed Buisson, “now we merely slaughter or else do not kill at all, no matter how gross the insult.”
However, when they got up to go, he relented: “War is surely a very necessary evil, it thins down the imbecile populations who have murdered their most efficacious microbes. People will not die, very well, here comes war to mow them down in their tens of thousands. At least for those of us who survive, there will be more breathing space, thanks to the Germans—perhaps they too are a necessary evil.”
Arrived at the door Stephen turned to look back. Buisson was once more greasing his foils, and his fingers moved slowly yet with great precision—he might almost have been a beauty doctor engaged upon massaging ladies’ faces.
Preparations for departure did not take very long, and in less than a week’s time Stephen and Puddle had shaken hands with their Breton servants, and were driving at top speed
