Saint's Progress

His wife put out her hand and touched the child’s shoulder.

“Why should we not hate?” she said. “Who killed Chica’s father, and blew her home to-rags? Who threw her out into this horrible England – pardon, mademoiselle, but it is horrible. Ah! les Boches! If my hatred could destroy them there would not be one left. Even my husband was not so mad about his painting when we lived at home. But here – !” Her eyes darted at his face again, and then sank as if rebuked. Noel saw the painter’s lips move. The sick woman’s whole figure writhed.

“It is mania, your painting!” She looked at Noel with a smile. “Will you have some tea, mademoiselle? Monsieur Barra, some tea?”

The soldier said thickly: “No, madame; in the trenches we have tea enough. It consoles us. But when we get away – give us wine, le bon vin; le bon petit vin!”

“Get some wine, Pierre!”

Noel saw from the painter’s face that there was no wine, and perhaps no money to get any; but he went quickly out. She rose and said:

“I must be going, madame.”

Madame Lavendie leaned forward and clutched her wrist. “Wait a little, mademoiselle. We shall have some wine, and Pierre shall take you back presently. You cannot go home alone – you are too pretty. Is she not, Monsieur Barra?”

The soldier looked up: “What would you say,” he said, “to bottles of wine bursting in the air, bursting red and bursting white, all day long, all night long? Great steel bottles, large as Chica: bits of bottles, carrying off men’s heads? Bsum, garra-a-a, and a house comes down, and little bits of people ever so small, ever so small, tiny bits in the air and all over the ground. Great souls out there, madame. But I will tell you a secret,” and again he gave his heavy giggle, “all a little, little mad; nothing to speak of – just a little bit mad; like a watch, you know, that you can wind for ever. That is the discovery of this war, mademoiselle,” he said, addressing Noel for the first time, “you cannot gain a great soul till you are a little mad.” And lowering his piggy grey eyes at once, he resumed his former attitude. “It is that madness I shall paint some day,” he announced to the carpet; “lurking in one tiny corner of each soul of all those millions, as it creeps, as it peeps, ever so sudden, ever so little when we all think it has been put to bed, here – there, now – then, when you least think; in and out like a mouse with bright eyes. Millions of men with white souls, all a little mad. A great subject, I think,” he added heavily. Involuntarily Noel put her hand to her heart, which was beating fast. She felt quite sick.

“How long have you been at the Front, monsieur?”

“Two years, mademoiselle. Time to go home and paint, is it not? But art – !” he shrugged his heavy round shoulders, his whole bear-like body. “A little mad,” he muttered once more. “I will tell you a story. Once in winter after I had rested a fortnight, I go back to the trenches at night, and I want some earth to fill up a hole in the ground where I was sleeping; when one has slept in a bed one becomes particular. Well, I scratch it from my parapet, and I come to something funny. I strike my briquet, and there is a Boche’s face all frozen and earthy and dead and greeny-white in the flame from my briquet.”

“Oh, no!”

“Oh! but yes, mademoiselle; true as I sit here. Very useful in the parapet – dead Boche. Once a man like me. But in the morning I could not stand him; we dug him out and buried him, and filled the hole up with other things. But there I stood in the night, and my face as close to his as this” – and he held his thick hand a foot before his face. “We talked of our homes; he had a soul, that man. ‘Il me disait des choses’, how he had suffered; and I, too, told him my sufferings. Dear God, we know all; we shall never know more than we know out there, we others, for we are mad – nothing to speak of, but just a little, little mad. When you see us, mademoiselle, walking the streets, remember that.” And he dropped his face on to his fists again.

A silence had fallen in the room-very queer and complete. The little girl nursed her doll, the soldier gazed at the floor, the woman’s mouth moved stealthily, and in Noel the thought rushed continually to the verge of action: ‘Couldn’t I get up and run downstairs?’ But she sat on, hypnotised by that silence, till Lavendie reappeared with a bottle and four glasses.

“To drink our health, and wish us luck, mademoiselle,” he said.

Noel raised the glass he had given her. “I wish you all happiness.”

“And you, mademoiselle,” the two men murmured.

She drank a little, and rose.

“And now, mademoiselle,” said Lavendie, “if you must go, I will see you home.”

Noel took Madame Lavendie’s hand; it was cold, and returned no pressure; her eyes had the glazed look that she remembered. The soldier had put his empty glass down on the floor, and was regarding it unconscious of her. Noel turned quickly to the door; the last thing she saw was the little girl nursing her doll.

In the street the painter began at once in his rapid French:

“I ought not to have asked you to come, mademoiselle; I did not know our friend Barra was there. Besides, my wife is not fit to receive a lady; vous voyez qu’il y a de la manie dans cette pauvre tote. I should not have asked you; but I was so miserable.”

“Oh!” murmured Noel, “I know.”

“In our home over there she had interests. In this great town she can only nurse her grief against me. Ah! this war! It seems to me we are all in the stomach of a great coiling serpent. We lie there, being digested. In a way it is better out there in the trenches; they are beyond hate, they have attained a height that we have not. It is wonderful how they still can be for going on till they have beaten the Boche; that is curious and it is very great. Did Barra tell you how, when they come back – all these fighters – they are going to rule, and manage the future of the world? But it will not be so. They will mix in with life, separate – be scattered, and they will be ruled as they were before. The tongue and the pen will rule them: those who have not seen the war will rule them.”

“Oh!”’ cried Noel, “surely they will be the bravest and strongest in the future.”

The painter smiled.

“War makes men simple,” he said, “elemental; life in peace is neither simple nor elemental, it is subtle, full of changing environments, to which man must adapt himself; the cunning, the astute, the adaptable, will ever rule in times of peace. It is pathetic, the belief of those brave soldiers that the-future is theirs.”

“He said, a strange thing,” murmured Noel; “that they were all a little mad.”

“He is a man of queer genius – Barra; you should see some of his earlier pictures. Mad is not quite the word, but something is loosened, is rattling round in them, they have lost proportion, they are being forced in one direction. I tell you, mademoiselle, this war is one great forcing-house; every living plant is being made to grow too fast, each quality, each passion; hate and love, intolerance and lust and avarice, courage and energy; yes, and self-sacrifice – all are being forced and forced beyond their strength, beyond the natural flow of the sap, forced till there has come a great wild luxuriant crop, and then – Psum! Presto! The change comes, and these plants will wither and rot and stink. But we who see Life in forms of Art are the only ones who feel that; and we are so few. The natural shape of things is lost. There is a mist of blood before all eyes. Men are afraid of being fair. See how we all hate not only our enemies, but those who differ from us. Look at the streets too – see how men and women rush together, how Venus reigns in this forcing-house. Is it not natural that Youth about to die should yearn for pleasure, for love, for union, before death?”

Noel stared up at him. ‘Now!’ she thought: I will.’

“Yes,” she said, “I know that’s true, because I rushed, myself. I’d like you to know. We couldn’t be married – there wasn’t time. And – he was killed. But his son is alive. That’s why I’ve been away so long. I want every one to know.” She spoke very calmly, but her cheeks felt burning hot.

The painter had made an upward movement of his hands, as if they had been jerked by an electric current, then he said quite quietly:

“My profound respect, mademoiselle, and my great sympathy. And your father?”

“It’s awful for him.”

The painter said gently: “Ah! mademoiselle, I am not so sure. Perhaps he does not suffer so greatly. Perhaps not even your trouble can hurt him very much. He lives in a world apart. That, I think, is his true tragedy to be alive, and yet not living enough to feel reality. Do you know Anatole France’s description of an old woman: ‘Elle vivait, mais si peu.’ Would that not be well said of the Church in these days: ‘Elle vivait, mais si peu.’ I see him always like a rather beautiful dark spire in the night-time when you cannot see how it is attached to the earth. He does not know, he never will know, Life.”

Noel looked round at him. “What do you mean by Life, monsieur? I’m always reading about Life, and people talk of seeing Life! What is it – where is it? I never see anything that you could call Life.”

The painter smiled.

“To ‘see life’.” he said. “Ah! that is different. To enjoy yourself! Well, it is my experience that when people are ‘seeing life’ as they call it, they are not enjoying themselves. You know when one is very thirsty one drinks and drinks, but the thirst remains all the same. There are places where one can see life as it is called, but the only persons you will see enjoying themselves at such places are a few humdrums like myself, who go there for a talk over a cup of coffee. Perhaps at your age, though, it is different.”

Noel clasped her hands, and her eyes seemed to shine in the gloom. “I want music and dancing and light, and beautiful things and faces; but I never get them.”

“No, there does not exist in this town, or in any other, a place which will give you that. Fox-trots and ragtime and paint and powder and glare and half-drunken young men, and women with red lips you can get them in plenty. But rhythm and beauty and charm never. In Brussels when I was younger I saw much ‘life’ as they call it, but not one lovely thing unspoiled; it was all as ashes in the mouth. Ah! you may smile, but I know what I am talking of. Happiness never comes when you are looking for it, mademoiselle; beauty is in Nature and in real art, never in these false silly make believes. There is a place just here where we Belgians go; would you like to see how true my words are?

“Oh, yes!”

“Tres-bien! Let us go in?”

They passed into a revolving doorway with little glass compartments which shot them out into a shining corridor. At the end of this the painter looked at Noel and seemed to hesitate, then he turned off from the room they were about to enter into a room on the right. It was large, full of gilt and plush and marble tables, where couples were seated; young men in khaki and older men in plain clothes, together or with young women. At these last Noel looked, face after face, while they were passing down a long way to an empty table. She saw that some were pretty, and some only trying to be, that nearly all were powdered and had their eyes darkened and their lips reddened, till she felt her own face to be dreadfully ungarnished: Up in a gallery a small band was playing an attractive jingling hollow little tune; and the buzz of talk and laughter was almost deafening.

“What will you have, mademoiselle?” said the painter. “It is just nine o’clock; we must order quickly.”

“May I have one of those green things?”

“Deux cremes de menthe,” said Lavendie to the waiter.

Noel was too absorbed to see the queer, bitter little smile hovering about his face. She was busy looking at the faces of women whose eyes, furtively cold and enquiring, were fixed on her; and at the faces of men with eyes that were furtively warm and wondering.

“I wonder if Daddy was ever in a place like this?” she said, putting the glass of green stuff to her lips. “Is it nice? It smells of peppermint.”

“A beautiful colour. Good luck, mademoiselle!” and he chinked his glass with hers.

Noel sipped, held it away, and sipped again.