A little gray house in France

Foreword

A comfortable Turk, sitting on a dustycushion making a rug, has eternity before him. He can stop when he likes to pull on the mouth-piece of his nargileh and dream. He dreams about the pattern he is weaving.

We are weaving to-day. The force that moves our shuttle is war. Ours is no simple frame like that of the Turkish weaver. And the pattern? So complicated that a plain body like me cannot make it out. My work is to tie up the loose strands I can see and prevent dropped stitches.

The boys know they are caught in the working of a vast machine. Some take things as they come and sing, "I don't care what becomes of me." Some think about what they see and wish they could understand. And some know that yesterday has slipped back of us as a tug drops away from a mighty battlecruiser. They realize that the human mind

[vii]

FOREWORD

can forget, and burn with longing to capture impressions as they fly through the days. But their work draws out from them all the energy there is. The pages of the note-book remain white.

In the study of my Little Gray Home in France is an old Brittany wardrobe. As boys toast their toes at the fire-place beside it when they stop for a breathing space, they tell me what they think and what they see. On a shelf are paper and pencil, and when I go there to get out chocolate or a new pair of woolen socks I scratch down hastily what my boys have said. When the bowls of coffee have been drunk, when the cigarettes have been smoked, when their names have been written in the guest-book and the boys have hurried out into the night to put their two hands on the steering wheel of the trucks, I light another candle, and write out the notes in more detail. Before the initial slow chug-chug tells me they have cranked and are getting under way, I have tied another loose strand.

This record belongs to the boys now and hereafter, now because they have given me the

[viii]

FOREWORD

stories, hereafter because when we are all home again in the sunshine of peace, they will have time to remember some of what they did here, and these pages may give them a peg to hang their coat on when they try to make their own record.

H. D. G.

Chateau du Loyer,

Prinquiau par Savenay, Loire-Inferieure, October, 1918.

[ix]

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Foreword . . . . .. . . vii

I The Little Gray Home .... 3

Chapter I The Little Gray Home

Twelve houses straggle back through the wheat fields to form the village of Loyer. Mine is the largest. That is why it is called the Chateau, although it is no more than a "little gray home," the name the American soldiers have given it. The other houses of Loyer are all hitched to each other. Starting with that of the most prosperous peasant, they taper down, telescope-wise. At the place where you would look for a caboose on a railway train you see a cuddling thatch.

The Chateau de Loyer is set far back from the road, behind tall trees, in the midst of a tangled garden. The house is of gray stone, like the druid altar in my neighbor's meadow. I have looked for years in France for what I have found here, a bungalow without having to build it. There are two stories, and the rooms choo-choo straight along one after the other like children's blocks across the nursery floor. The house is one room deep, and the windows look out down the slope of hills on both sides. Because of many front doors opening straight into the garden, the house has a "room-for-everybody, come-in" air. This is confirmed when the boys see the two enormous guest-rooms beyond the drawing-room. The walls are whitewashed. Above the mantelpieces are smoked places, tawnybrown camel color. Half a dozen walnut beds, smoothed by years of waxing, take up very little space. The spreads are the coarse blue linen made by the people around here.

On the table are the things a boy needs for writing a letter to mother or bride or sweet-

THE LITTLE GRAY HOME

heart at home. One boy talked yesterday, as he wrote, of somebody's birthday. I shall get the present he wants for her, and attend to the shipment of it. I leave the cupboard doors open, an unspoken invitation to tobacco and chocolate and comfort bags on the shelves. The hearths are the glory of "The Little Gray Home." My bedroom fireplace is high enough for three-year-old Hope to walk into and look up at the sky. I can burn big logs there. Each guest-room has its hearth. Logs and a bundle of fagots are always ready to light on a rainy day or a cool night. A summer in the country in France knows no scorching heat waves. Sitting by the fire when it is storming, I get comfort from hearing raindrops come down with a hiss on a bed of glowing embers. I am always glad of an excuse to have an open fire. You can keep your tea hot. More boys come on rainy days and cold nights, and before the fire they become expansive, and I am never bored.

A toothless granny with towering starched coiffe hitched to sparse, braided hair, and with quilted petticoat doubled up around her, scrubs every day my floors of well-fitted boards with such vigor that the glow in her cheeks makes you forget she is wrinkled as a winter apple. Madame Criaud, like the rest of my neighbors, thinks I am an American heiress, and wonders at the curious whim which brings one who could go elsewhere with her children to a remote country place away from her kind. Madame Criaud differs from the others only because she holds that my being an American — ergo, careless of money — is no reason why I should be cheated.

I did not realize how many windows and doors with glass panes I had until I came to buy curtain material at 1918 prices. Perhaps economy led me to tack the headings of the creamy scrim curtains one pane below the top of the window frame. But I can argue it was a desire to keep always visible the line of wind-

THE LITTLE GRAY HOME

mills of the Dutch type that run along the shoulder of the hill until they disappear. The last one lies so low that its arms curve and dip like porpoises. But if there were no windmills, the checker-board of little grain fields, interspersed with meadows where grass is Irish green, would justify not excluding the outlook from any window. When it has been raining, and women and boys toss hay in the sunshine, you smell clover and wet air.

At the other end of the house from the ground-floor guest-rooms is a fat old kitchen, which has its own flight of stairs leading to the upper floor. The artist, dressed in khaki, and with a war correspondent's brassard on his arm, dropped in unexpectedly on a sketching trip through Base One. I took him around the house, for I wanted to know if I was right in my idea that the place was artistic. He didn't stop to put in a guest-room the khaki school-bag slung over his shoulder with a strap. The artist's baggage is mostly a thick wad of sketching paper. When we came to the kitchen, he stood beaming, with head thrown back and eyes half closed. His fingers began to unfasten the strap of the kit, and he sat down on my flreless cooker to sketch the black-from-smoke stairway in the corner, with Madame Criaud leaning over a table picking a chicken. "But, Lester, have you lunched?" I asked. He answered: "This is great stuff, Helen, great stuff."

The wood pile outside the kitchen door is nearly as high as the house, and protects chicken-run and rabbit-warren from the sea wind. Servants sleep in a lodge by the gate. The floor of the summer house is high enough from the ground for the children to see over the garden wall. When autos are heard coming up the hill, Christine and Lloyd and Mimi rush out and shout. Baby Hope waddles after them, waving her fat hands and piping, "Les AmericainSj les Americains!"

THE LITTLE GRAY HOME

"Hello! Come in and see our mother," shouted the other three.

And so we make our friends.

CHAPTER II I said, "Where is the ball?"

Lloyd patted my shoulder to attract attention. I put my coffee cup back on the saucer and guessed that the ball might still be behind the cushions of a steamer-chair in the garden where he had hidden it yesterday when Baby wanted it. Mother is supposed to know where things are. Grandma says that when grandpa used to ask for his Sunday trousers she would answer that the last time she wore them she hung them in the bedroom cupboard.

Boys are alike, wherever you find them. Girls' hair is pulled in Siberia and South Africa. Jam is hunted in Denmark and Argentina. Prisoner's base is played as belligerently in the Hague as in Berlin. A piece of gingerbread produces the same reaction on Turkish and American boys.

If grandpa, when he saw his son's sons, was still boy enough to ask the whereabouts of his Sunday trousers, is n't that proof that our men folk never grow up?

Soldiers are boys. I see, behind sunburned foreheads, surprise and hurt when some one has treated them impersonally. Though a necessary phrase, "You are in the army now," is none the less a hard phrase. Military discipline and uniform dress are leveling forces, essential to the machine. But there are moments when our boys are not on duty or parade.

When the ball is lost, my little son expects me to find it. Whatever he wants, it is for mother to give it to him quickly. Soldiers do not like to have to ask for a glass of cider or a cigarette. If the comfort bags are put where a soldier is free to pick out things to replace what somebody stole from his kit at the barracks, he will feel at home. Nothing is more appreciated than to give a fellow a chance, without studying to make it, to sit down and tell how he and his girl waited instead of rushing into a war wedding.

After the Germans had been throwing shells into our quarter of Paris for twelve days, some of which landed in my children's only playground, the Luxembourg Gardens, I felt that it was time to get them away. It was only Easter, so we went to Aix-les-Bains for the month of April. I did not want to return to my villa on the sea at Houlgate this summer. Contact with American soldiers in the camps, when I was lecturing for the Y. M. C. A., and in the Savoy leave area, had made me want to work out my own ideas about treating soldiers special. The Little Gray Home was chosen because it lies at the middle point along a seventeen-kilometer stretch of country highway where the soldier, bound inland from the Holy City, finds only a chilly buvette. The woman who dispenses drinks there knows that she does n't have to go out and chase the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow — her fortune rolls in on motor trucks. Heavy motor traffic from the Holy City to points all over France passes us constantly, and the largest hospital center of the American Expeditionary Forces is four miles from the Little Gray Home.

A truck passes every morning when we are at breakfast. The boys throw out newspapers. Several motor cycles aim to go by at lunch time. A steam-tractor crew sends in a man to ask for permission to get water from our well for the boiler. Before the tractor starts toiling again northward, the soldiers have mended the windlass so that the pail does not fall into the water and have to be fished out patiently every time by my cook, Rosalie.

Soldiers from many camps hire bicycles for a ride on Sunday morning. As they wheel by our gate, Mimi wants to know if they like France. The surprise of hearing a kid speak

English in this out-of-way spot jolts the soldiers off their bicycles. They come in for cookies and coffee, while I mend a rent in a flannel shirt. To be able to strut around in my husband's light-blue dressing-gown for half an hour is such a relief from khaki uniform that I am told it is as good a vacation as a week's fishing trip. A motor, new and stiff, gets cranky in front of our house. After it has been coaxed into action again, so much time has been lost that there is still enough to eat waffles and maple syrup. I tell the boys I don't wish anybody bad luck, but if they must break down, for goodness' sake do it near us.

Truck-trains in command of convoy pilots— usually second lieutenants — generally leave the Holy City in the late afternoon. They aim only to get clear of the park and test their new motors before the first night's stop. Last night a convoy slowed down here. I ran along until I reached the Cadillac at the head of the line. When the tall lieutenant stepped out of his car, I greeted him:

"I 'm glad to see you. How do you do!"

"You — you — speak English?"

"Of course. I was born in Philadelphia."

"Good Lord!" allowed the lieutenant, "and I in Chester."

I found that he was just going to look for a field where he and his men could camp. I told him I had guest-rooms with enough beds for him and the other officers, and that I could put up all the men around my place somewhere. There was the room over the kitchen, the woodshed, the carriage house, and a very large barn-loft.

While the officers and sergeants were making arrangements for the night, I discovered six lads who had missed out on the mess deal before the convoy left the Holy City. When Rosalie was giving them something to eat, I asked if they, too, were surprised to find that I was an American.

"No," said a young Southerner. "No Frenchwoman can run like you."

Some of the men gathered around the summer house, where they had carried pails of water to indulge in a moonlight scrub. Others were spreading out their bedding-rolls in the barn. Mademoiselle Alice, my children's governess, cannot speak English, but she found a corporal who knew German. He helped her carry the iron tripod and the caldron from the kitchen and found a safe place for them in the garden. They were chattering away in the enemy's lingo as they broke up a bundle of fagots and piled them under the caldron ready to start a fire quickly in the morning.

Half a dozen boys who had parked their trucks had come into the house to my study fire. I asked them, "What are you, boys, aviators?"

"No, ma'am, only when we get refused a pass. Then we do go up in the air."

After they had seen to everything, the offi- [16]

cers had their supper with us. The way you recognize a good officer is by the care he gives his men. The dining-room all ready for the lieutenants: drawn-work runner on the table, yellow candlesticks, blue Brittany bowls rilled with hot chocolate to warm them up after a tough day's work. Soft-boiled eggs and tiny gold-bowled spoons to eat them with. Camembert cheese and toast. How I wished it were possible to have a dainty meal for every one in the crowd !

When I lighted the officers to bed, one of them observed : "It is only fair for me to tell you before I go into your guest-room that I am full of cooties."

"That may be — and it is equally true that other boys have come here like that too."

"Doesn't that shock you? Doesn't me either. It is not their board bill I mind — it is their traveling expenses."

At five o'clock next morning every mother's son had a pint of hot coffee. One hundred marched through my rose garden in the early sunshine and filed by the range where I ladled out the coffee. The only trouble with the aluminum cups in the mess-kits is that they get so hot you burn your mouth on them. Luckily, the mess sergeant gave me some tins of ground coffee to add to mine, and the drink was nice and strong. On a table near by I had put roses and doilies and milk and sugar. The sergeant had added tins of baked beans. I shivered when I saw the beans were going to be eaten cold. But the soldiers told me they were used to that. The boys came on through the dining-room where some one was cutting bread. They were invited to sit down in hall and drawing-room. There were too many of them for all to sit down at one time, but the process of getting served was slow enough to make room for those that were actually eating. When they finished, they signed their names in my guest book and got a cigarette. Then they went to the well to wash mess-kits and fill canteens. Several boys had hung little mirrors on trees and were comfortably shaving.

"Gee — it 's nice to get into somebody's home," said one.

"Do you know, this is the first time I have eaten food I did not have to pay for — outside of our own mess — since we left Hoboken."

"Hey, can-opener, you got a match? We call the guy that handles the rations on these convoys can-opener."

"I was just looking for you, Mrs. Gibbons," said Mr. Can-Opener. "Found a good knife in your kitchen. Would you be good enough to swap it for these?" "These" were four loaves of bread. He put them on my desk, and patted the pocket out of which stuck my knife. A soldier came up to me and inquired : "Say, lady, where do you pay for this here?"

"Can you read?"

"Course I can read."

"Did you happen to see the sign on my gate?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"What does it say?"

"A Little Gray Home in France."

"Did you see that the biggest word on that sign is home?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Then don't talk to me about paying, boy."

The children were put into an ancient rolling-chair found in the barn, and dragged to the head of the line. I followed with the lieutenants.

The top sergeant blew a whistle. Motors began to chug-chug. The line moved slowly. Shouts. Cheering. A Philadelphia boy took the insignia off his collar and fired them at my feet as he passed. One truck-load of boys sang, "There 's a Long, Long Trail a-Winding into No-Man's Land." Some one stood up and waved his hat. He called "Good-by— " (a pause)— "Mother!"

Chapter III

In the Little Gray Home I was marooned. I tried to rent a pony and cart. Then I let it be known among the peasants that I was in the market for the purchase of a horse. Military people, congressmen on joy rides, and endless bands of folks inspecting seem to be the only ones that move about quickly and easily.

In what category am I? Convoys do not always have provisions. To be able to offer a good meal at any time means giving aid and comfort to the soldier. Food I must have, and there is only one way to get it — buy it from Uncle Sam. The colonel says he is going to make me a mess sergeant. Until rations are sent to me, I must forage. Yes, I am military.

When the meat truck from the hospital passed, I hailed the driver.

"Coming along with you, Tony, this morning!" said I, climbing up to the seat and sitting down beside him.

"Sure you are!" Tony profited by the stop to light a cigarette. "Off for the Holy City," he said, putting his overcoat on my lap ; "that 's the nearest we '11 get to home for God knows when!"

As we bumped over a grade crossing, an M. P. stepped out. Holding up his stick, he shouted,

"Girls ain't allowed to ride on motor-trucks!"

Tony looked at me.

"Thinks you 're a French mademoiselle," whispered Tony. "Gosh! Mrs. Gibbons, you '11 have to get me out of this!"

I leaned over and smiled at the M. P. [22]

"Come here, boy," I said. "Put your hand in mine."

He did it, slowly and wonderingly.

"If there 's ever anything I can do for you, I want you to tell me," I said. "I 'm thirty-five years old. No one has called me 'ghT for years. I 'm flattered and touched!"

The M. P. put his stick back of him. He backed. "Y-y-yes, ma'am," said he.

Since then no M. P. has stopped me. Word has gone up and down the line, "Better not touch that woman, she 's loaded."

We were approaching the Holy City.

"I 'm proud to be an American when I look at the work our men have done here. I have been doing this route for a year now. Every time I go through this town it looks more like Jersey City."

"It didn't look like Jersey City when the first Americans landed, Tony. That was the month before you came over. The censorship thought the great event could be concealed.

No mention in the newspapers of this or any other port. But we all knew about it beforehand — concierge as soon as cabinet minister. Of course I jumped on a train with my husband, and we came to greet the boys. Dear me, how homesick that first bunch was inside of twenty-four hours ! The Holy City was n't any holier then than it is now. But it was very strange and foreign. Those two adjectives, you know, are the same in French. The end of June, 1917! Scarcely a year ago. And to follow this long road for miles to-day, flanked on both sides with American camps and depots and endless railroad tracks, where there were only cat-tails last year, to see these ships with the American flag, — more American ships than I 've seen together at one time in all my life before, and I know East and West rivers well, — it makes me feel that Aladdin's lamp has been rubbed. Aladdin's lamp has been rubbed by Uncle Sam, and if he 's done all this, it 's because not one genius appeared, but millions. You fellows are the genii, Tony."

"I don't know what that may be, Mrs. Gibbons, but we 're it all right, if you say so."

A Cadillac passed us quickly in the other direction. Shouts. Arms waving.

"Again?" said Tony, dejected. "They 're stopping."

A long-legged fellow with a black mustache was running back toward us.

"They want us," said Tony. "It 5 s a captain. You ought to get the chief M. P. to make you out a pass and stamp it proper."

"Here you are!" said the captain. "I Ve been looking all over France for you! Did you ever get letters from me?"

"I certainly did, Whit, and answered them, too."

"What are you doing here, Helen?"

"Spending the summer."

"Far from here?"

"Not very. Just came from there this morning. How long have we been, Tony?"

"An hour," said Tony.

"An hour by motor truck," said Whit. "I can make it in half an hour. I '11 come up to see you Sunday, if you '11 be there."

"Come for the week-end, Whit," said I, "and make friends with my children."

"I '11 do that if you don't make them call me Uncle, and if you let me bring Johnny along."

"Be there Saturday afternoon then with Johnny, whoever he is!"

"Johnny is a pal of mine, prince of a fellow, if he did go to Princeton. You '11 like Johnny."

"I certainly shall, but I am surprised at you, fifteen years out of Yale ! You 're still the kid I used to know — with that Princeton stuff."

"Strange, isn't it, that I should have said that. But over here we older fellows, living with the youngsters, get right back where we were in 1900."

"Come, Tony," I said, "the waiting line at the commissary will be getting too long."

"Wait," said Whit, "why don't you lunch with me to-day? Meet me at Marie's restaurant at twelve-thirty. I '11 arrange my work so we can show you the shops this afternoon."

"Shops? What kind of shops?"

"Railroad shops, of course," said he.

"Of course," I answered. "Whitfield, you are one of the few people I know that knew what they were going to be from the beginning. You have stuck to your choo-choo cars since you wore knee-caps and hated to get your ears washed."

"Ain't it funny," said Tony, when we started on, "how we find old friends over here. I'm doin' that all the time."

"Yes, Tony," I answered. "I've called that captain's mother Aunt Louise ever since I can remember."

"You sure must go with him to see the shops. I got an early start this morning. I '11 wait at the commissary till you buy your stuff, and I can take it out and leave it at the Little Gray Home as easy as not. And it '11 save you the trouble."

"All right, Tony," I answered. "I do hope the Captain has his children's pictures in his pocket. I 've never seen them."

At luncheon in the restaurant at the table sitting next to us were two ensigns and three second lieutenants. The restaurant girl said,

"Pas de vin."

Marie brings carafes of water and, laughing as she puts them on the table, she says, "Du vin Americain, alors!"

Before the American invasion, if people lunching there had refused to buy wine, Marie would have been mystified or angry. Now she receives with equanimity the "Pas de vin."

When Whitfield paid for the lunch, he gave [28]

Marie a hundred-franc note. While we were waiting for the change, he said,

"My hundred-franc notes are not money to me— they look more like bills of lading."

"Choo-choo cars again."

When the captain's motor drew up in front of the shops we saw a colored fellow riding a mule. He was directing a detail of negro soldiers unloading heavy triangular steel frames for bridge building. The negro corporal jumped down off the mule and saluted the captain.

The mule was restless.

"Halt!" the corporal commanded. The mule stopped. He walked around the mule, and cried, "At ease!"

"Did you get that?" said the captain. "Negro troops are an endless source of amusement to me. Nigs love paraphernalia. They take military stuff theatrically."

"Yes," I said, "their tools are stage business."

"But they play their role well," said the captain.

The negroes were carrying one of the steel frames now.

"Git yo' shouldahs agin dat," commanded the corporal. "You-all done tole Uncle Sam you would. Push now, you-all Yanks !"

"We ain't Yanks," protested one. "We 's f'om Virginia!"

"Easy now! Mind yo' co'ns," said the corporal.

The burden slipped into place on top of a pile, and the negroes slouched along singing,

"Gawd don't have no coward soldiers in His band, Ah 'm goin' to climb up Jacob's ladder some dese

days, Every round goes higher en higher, Gawd don't hev no coward soldiers in His band."

"That's one of their working songs," said the captain. "Heavy work, moving steel, but they do relax between times."

We went in the office to pick up Johnny, [30]

and met the colonel in charge of the stevedores.

"Been watching your black soldiers working," said I. "Listening to their talk makes me homesick!"

"Great boys," said the colonel. "The other night I was n't feeling very well. Dog-tired after a hard day. Had my boy wash my feet and give me a rub-down. A nigger makes the best orderly in the world. There is something of the old mammy left in many of them. I 've seen my boy come back after he had settled me for the night and ask, 'You sick?' and when I 'd ask him why, he would reply, "Don't know — 'pears to me you is oneasy and too quiet.' I was lying there and he was rubbing my back when he broke out with :

" 'C'n'l — is dere eny chance fo' me to go to de front ?'

" 'What do you want to go to the front for, Nelson?'

"'When Ah jined, Ah thought Ah 'd be daid befoh dis en Ah jes well go now.'

" 'Nelson, I 've read in the paper to-night that the Germans cut off the ears of all colored troops captured/

" 'You doan' say, sir!'

"Then after a silence, quite a little interval:

" 'C'n'l, Ah wants to go anyway, dey cain't cut urn off 'n all ob us.' "

Johnny was not to be found. We left a note for him to join us later.

In the shop a locomotive body, held high in the grip of a mighty crane, was lowered slowly and put into place on waiting wheels. The captain was delivering a lecture on choochoos.

"Got to know the laws of physics to understand the load she will pull," said he, finally.