# McClure's Magazine/New Series Volume 1/Number 4/'One Little Minute'

Extracted from McClure's magazine, 1925, pp. 525-537. A post-war (World war I) story of a German-American couple who seek their son in France.
"One Little Minute"
By Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
MR. RITTNER put his big strong hand over His wife's thin fingers. "I've a kind of feeling that we're going to get on his track this time," he shouted, in what she felt to be a falsely cheerful voice. He had to shout, for the taxi driver was working his hooter all the time as they motored dangerously fast through the narrow eighteenth-century streets of what has become the heart of business Paris. Now and again they seemed just to escape a bad accident, but Mrs. Rittner was past caring about what might happen to either of them, on this hot July morning.
In the days of her youth, when she and the man who had just shouted those lying comforting words had been hard-working young married folk, she had longed intensely to see Paris, and, being one of those people blessed or cursed with great mental activity, she had actually taught herself to read and even to write French, though she never ventured to speak it. That being so her good husband, Earl Rittner, had promised her that one day, when their two little sons, Fritz and George, were grown up, maybe, she should go to Paris, and with plenty of money to spend too!
Ah me—how fortunate that the future is hidden from us poor mortals. How would Annie Rittner have fared through life's journey had it been revealed to her that George would be killed by soldiers of his father's race, flying—flying—in defence of the country which she had always thought of as the embodiment of light-hearted mirth, beauty and charm? And further, that she, herself, would finally come to Paris only because Paris was a kind of half-way house to that part of war-scarred Prance which seemed to hold so urgent, compelling, and to her so mysterious, an appeal to her remaining son. The only promise which had been redeemed by fate was that she had plenty of money to spend.
The husband and wife had only landed in France four days before, and already Mrs. Rittner felt that she hated Paris. For one thing she had expected to find a cool, beautifully clean city, and she found Paris in July stiflingly hot, and lamentably dirty. It was even a real trial to this refined, elderly American woman to go into the odorous, grimy post-offices from which her husband despatched to Fritz the urgent telegrams to which there had as yet been no answer. Every one they applied to for information agreed that Fritz Rittner was an active and well-known member of the Fraternité Franco-Américaine, but none of those who ought to have known could tell them where he was—exactly.
This morning, almost, she felt, as a last hope, they were on their way to see a woman of whom a kindly, intelligent man in the American Consulate had said: "If Madame Couteau can't help you to find out where your son is just now—then nobody can! The best time to find her? Well, she's in her office from eight in the morning."
Couteau? Knife? What a queer name she thought to herself.
The ramshackle open taxi pulled up with a jerk. Could so important a person's office be in such a dingy, dismal looking house? Yes, for the ill-tempered looking concierge, after glancing at the piece of paper held out to her, pointed her finger skywards, and after what seemed a very long climb they saw the name "Madame Couteau," affixed to a door painted dark brown.
The door was opened by a wizened-faced little girl who led them silently through an unfurnished antechamber into what was evidently Madame Couteau's office, and, as Mrs. Rittner followed the child into the shabby room, she looked about her with an air of discouragement and disappointment. On a flat deal writing-table lay an ink-soaked piece of gray blotting-paper, a coverless railway guide, and a telephone. Mr. Rittner's heart sank also. They had evidently been sent on yet one more wild-goose chase, but he wasn't so resentful of that for himself as he was for his wife.
"Makes me tired the way we're treated. I don't anticipate much good from——"
"Ssh!" murmured Mrs. Rittner.
She had seen a door behind him opening slowly, and a moment later Madame Couteau came through it. A spare tall woman, with a mass of gray hair done up anyhow; her pallid face might have been a dead face, but for the curiously bright eyes which were the windows to her soul.
She bowed stiffly, and slipped behind her writing-table; then she held out a claw-like hand for the piece of paper on which their friend of the Consulate had put down the particulars of their anxious quest.
"Rittner?" She spelt out the name, and then in fair English she asked, "And F— what does it say?"
It was Mrs. Rittner who answered her. For all her quiet look and old-fashioned, rather heavy, appearance she had a far more eager, imaginative, and even determined, nature than her husband.
"My son's name is Fritz." Defiantly she added, "His grandfather was a German."
"But yes, I comprehend now." The voice had softened, wonderfully.
"Fritz came over with the first American draft," went on the mother quickly. "He was wounded at St. Mihiel. His right arm and hand were pretty badly hurt, and so he came right home. But after the war was over a short while he said he must go back to France to help in some way, and he's been here ever since. At first he wrote us every mail, but now he writes us only now and again. We feel anxious about him, so we've come, and—and we don't seem able to find him. He was at place called Sourire."
"Now Sourire is a geographical expression," said Madame Couteau, staring straight before her. "There may be a few huts, but there is no post-office there—as yet."
"We wirelessed from the ship," went on Mrs. Rittner in a toneless voice, "and we have telegraphed since we arrived in France eight times—or is it nine, father?"
"Nine," he said briefly, "and yesterday we were told as a sort of last forlorn hope that if there's any one in Paris who could find out where our boy is, you can, madame."
There broke a curious wintry smile over the Frenchwoman's pinched face.
"I am very—what word is it?—yes, very perseverant," she exclaimed. "Rest assured that I will do of my best to find this brave boy."
Mrs. Rittner liked to hear her Fritz called a brave boy. He was that—no doubt about it!
Madame Couteau took the receiver off the telephone. Then she looked over at them both and muttered, "One little minute!" and called out, "'Ullo, 'ullo," in a cross tone and hissed out a double number.
Nervously she drummed her thin fingers on the table. Then suddenly she spoke again into the phone. "Some weeks ago you asked for some American volunteers for Rheims? I want to know if among those who responded you have the name of Rittner?" She spelt out the name.
There followed what seemed a long wait. Now and again Madame Couteau would murmur encouragingly, "Just one little minute!" But at last she looked straight at Mrs. Rittner, and her face was so altered, so enlivened with joy, that, for a moment, even Mr. Rittner saw as in a flash what a charming, happy-natured creature she must have been when young.
"Your son is at Rheims!" she exclaimed. "I cannot say his address exact, but they will have it 'ere." Bending down she wrote something quickly on a bit of paper, and then she drew towards her the dirty-looking unbound railway guide which lay on the table before her.
Hurriedly she turned over the dog-eared pages. "There is a rapid train at ten o'clock. This afternoon you will see that brave boy!"
Mrs. Rittner ran round the table impulsively and took the Frenchwoman's hand. "I don't know how to thank you!" she said chokingly. And Madame Couteau, gazing down into the flustered face and misty eyes, asserted, rather than asked: "You had another son, madame?"
"My other son was in Paris studying to be an artist when the war broke out. He joined the Lafayette Air Squadron, and—and he was killed in February, 1915."
Very quietly the Frenchwoman said: "I had three sons—I 'ave not one now. But no—I must not say that—'Les morts sont des invisibles—ils ne sont pas des disparus.'"
And now, three hours later, they stood in the blinding sunshine outside the railway station at Rheims, a bewildered, helpless-looking pair.
Mrs. Rittner's mind was working busily. She was asking herself, with a kind of amazed surprise, whether this could really be the town of which she had read quite recently so pitiful an account.
With an instinctive knowledge of what impresses the stranger bent on business, the Frenchmen who planned the reconstruction of Rheims have seen to it that the great space in front of the railway station should look imposingly prosperous—so great stone houses with fine ironwork balconies rise above the public garden which, on this particular July day, made a deliciously cool oasis of greenery and vivid coloring.
The square between the station and the garden was full of automobiles plying for hire, and Mr. Rittner was hesitating which one to hail when suddenly an ancient-looking little horse-drawn open carriage came towards them. There was something about the driver that seemed to mark him out from the people round him, and sure enough—"English?" he asked. And then with a sudden quickening of interest—"American, I guess?"
Mr. Rittner laughed aloud for the first time since he had been in France. "No need to ask what you are," he said drily.
And the other exclaimed: "Same as you, sir!"
Then the man went on: "My wife's a Rheims girl. She wanted to stay right on here, so I kind of felt I had to. There was plenty to do, too—not a street you could get along all through '19! But though the place is practically re-built now—we still have lots of folk sight-seeing."
He was already helping the American lady up into his queer little carriage. "Shall we begin with the Cathedral, ma'am?" he asked insinuatingly.
She shook her head. "We want to go to 10 Place d'Epinay," she said.
As they settled themselves down on the hard seat the unspoken thought in each eager, longing heart was that it didn't look as if there could be any of the sort of work their boy's heart had been so set on doing in this prosperous-looking town. Husband and wife also felt just a slight pang of disappointment—while in the train they had secretly looked forward to seeing something of the awful aftermath of war.
The light carriage slithered along a broad thoroughfare lined with high substantial houses across which were emblazoned, in thick gold letters, the names of the famous champagnes of the world. And then——
A sudden turn at right angles brought them to something so extraordinarily fantastic and unexpected that Mrs. Rittner clutched her husband's arm in sheer amaze. They were in a rut-scarred street, lined with skeleton buildings and lamentable, desolate-looking ruins which seemed to lift gaunt arms heavenwards in voiceless lamentation. Here a rough shack had been erected within the crumbling walls of a once fair dwelling-house, and there people were evidently camping out in the heat and dust. Mrs. Rittner silently pointed to where some trick of the wind had taken an acorn, or maybe a tiny sapling, up onto the sill of a second-floor window, for green leaved branches sprawled across a long room of which the ceiling was open to the sky.
The driver turned round at last. "They began rebuilding the week of the Armistice," he exclaimed, a note of apology in his voice. "But these were only houses where folk lived—so no one can afford to build them up again yet. But the business part of the town is all right—smarter, I reckon, than before the war!"
And they saw that he spoke the truth when yet another turn brought them once more into a thoroughfare full of large new houses and of eager, bustling animation.
At last they drew up before a building on which was written "Fraternité Franco-Américaine."
"You stay here, mother, and I'll just go in and find out where the boy is just now."
There was something in his voice which made her feel she could not ask him to let her get down too, as she longed to do.
He was away so long that dreadful fears—menacing shapes she would not face—assailed her, but when at last he came out she saw by his face that it was "all right."
"16 Rue Varenne," he called out, and then as he slowly hitched himself up into the carriage again, Mrs. Rittner felt that her husband had suddenly become an old man, and even in the midst of her almost painful joy there came a pang of sharp secret pain.
"He's doing splendid work, Annie,"—there was a choke in his voice—"looking after the youngsters here. Most of 'em are war orphans, and they ran wild till Fritz came along and took 'em in hand."
He said nothing more for a while, and then suddenly he turned to her again. "The chap in there seemed scared lest we'd want to take Fritz away."
"I hope we will take him away," said his wife, in the quiet yet determined voice of which he had learnt to read the meaning in their thirty-three years of married life.
They were again going through scenes of terrible arid destruction, but such was the joy singing in their hearts that they saw without seeing. It was an outlying part of the city, where as yet no real reconstruction work had been begun, though here and there a one-story building, hastily erected with a view to some poor trade, seemed to make the desolation more desolate.
Mr. Rittner stood up and touched the driver. "Sure it's this way?"
"The Rue de Varenne is this way," called out the driver sulkily.
He couldn't make these people out. The old man had some of the ways and the outward appearance of prosperity; the brooch which pinned the old lady's silk cloak was set with real diamonds, and yet here they were—neglecting the one sight of Rheims, the Cathedral, which still brought opulent strangers to the city.
At last the carriage stopped before the shell of what had been one of those villas which are to be found on the outskirts of every French country town, built of strong enduring brick and stone with no thought of beauty, yet achieving that air of solid worth and secretive, self-respecting security, which has always been the French ideal of life. Now each wrecked room belched open to the sky and to the street, though the porte-cochère, through which could be seen the walled garden of what had been a snug little property, had escaped all injury.
"Fritz can't live here," exclaimed the two simultaneously to each other.
The driver slipped off his seat; he disappeared through the arch of the porte-cochère for a moment and then he hurried back. "There's somebody living in a shanty in the garden, marm. See the smoke coming from the chimney? Like me to go through and ask if it's the place you want?"
"No," said Mr. Rittner, "we'll just get down ourselves and investigate."
"Best hurry through that archway. There have been some bad accidents through walls suddenly giving way around here."
But neither of them heeded the warning and, as she walked under the vaulted way, Mrs. Rittner looked with painful curiosity to her left and right. Through a huge hole in the parquet floor of one of the ground-floor rooms grass was growing, and over by a shattered window were the splintered remains of what must have been a large marble-topped sideboard.
But nature had done her best to cause what man had done to be forgotten. The once formal, carefully-tended garden was now a glorious riot of color—poppies, hollyhocks, nasturtiums, roses, and geraniums struggled for mastery with one another. A corner had survived as a small kitchen-garden, and over by that one neat little patch was the cottage of lath and plaster from whose chimney was rising, straight up through the hot still air, a thread of white smoke.
There swept over the two strangers a feeling of bitter disappointment. That tiny homestead lost in this desolate quarter of the town was not a place in which their son could possibly be living. Mrs. Rittner told herself she had been a fool to let her husband go in and make the inquiry alone, and then—as she stepped up the path leading to the door of the cottage, relief, surprise, and yes, fear, clutched at her heart, for, framed in a widely open window to the left of the closed, green-painted door, an attractive-looking girl sat darning one of Fritz's winter stockings!
Mrs. Rittner knew it was Fritz's stocking for the good reason that she herself had knitted it, and as she gazed at the dark-haired darner, and noted the delicate, somber charm of the oval face, she remembered how years before her boy had said to her once, half laughing, half defiant, "Why, mum, I could never like a fair girl!"
Yet there was a fair girl of whom he had grown very fond during that long convalescence of his at home. Her name was Rosy Wiggins, and—and his mother felt sure that Rosy was just quietly waiting for him. But girls get tired of waiting——
Suddenly the stocking-mender saw the two strangers slowly walking up her brick path, and Fritz Rittner's mother, already jealous, saw a look of apprehension come over the sensitive, piquant-looking little face. She left the window hastily, and ran to open the door, and Mr. Rittner, at the sight of what he would have called to himself "a very pleasant-looking young woman" said eagerly:
"Does Mr. Fritz Rittner live here?"
As for Fritz Rittner's mother, she had already stepped up into the bare little passage now filled with a delicious smell of something tasty which made her suddenly aware that she was very hungry!
For perhaps as long as half a minute the Frenchwoman remained quite silent in answer to the question, and Mrs. Rittner saw, with an almost cruel satisfaction, that this was no girl, as she had first thought, but a woman who had suffered. Even so, a dangerously attractive, alluring-looking woman.
Again, and this time impatiently, Fritz's father repeated his question, and at last she nodded, and turning, brought a slate out of the kitchen. Deeply scratched across the top of the slate was the name "Frederic Rittner." How strange the "Frederic" looked!
Mrs. Rittner took the slate and wrote or it in French: "I am his mother." The young woman silently opened a door and, stepping back, motioned her unknown guests to pass through into a sitting-room—the only cosy place she had seen in France, said Mrs. Rittner to herself.
An armchair was drawn up to a writing-table covered with papers, and on the brick floor lay part of what had once been a beautiful carpet. The window was open to the garden, and on the ledge of the window was a queer home-made wasp-trap.
All at once Mrs. Rittner seized her husband's arm. "Just look there, father!"
On the narrow mantelpiece was propped up a snapshot of herself and her husband standing on the porch of their home—that house which seemed so much too big for two lonely old folks. Flanking that queer little picture was a French color-print of Niagara Falls.
It was so hot, and they were so tired, that it was with a feeling of deep relief that they both sat down, while the Frenchwoman, framed by the door, and the stocking still in her hand, stared at them in what seemed to Mrs. Rittner a heavy, ominous silence.
At last Carl Rittner got up and began walking round the room. "Looks as if Fritz spent a good deal of his time here," he said casually.
To that his wife made no answer, and presently he spoke again: "Funny sort of place for Fritz to have settled himself into, eh, mother?"
She was wondering what to say in answer to that when all at once the French girl—she did look a girl after all—turned and shut the door quickly and Mrs. Rittner, led by some mother instinct, jumped up and went over to the window. Then her heart gave a great leap, for Fritz was striding up the path, looking like a fair giant after the small wiry dark Frenchmen they had been seeing.
The young woman had run to meet him, and the mother could have called out, so great was her relief when she saw the change that came over his face. He didn't wait to answer the giver of the good news, he just leaped forward.
"Mother! Dad!" he cried, "why did you ever come without letting me know——?"
And then he was in the room—the room that suddenly looked the smaller for his big presence. There couldn't be any doubt about it—he was glad, glad, glad to have them there. And when they all sat down he was still holding a hand of each of them in what, before September, 1914, her husband would have called "the good old German fashion."
But he seemed to take their coming for granted and asked no questions about home, till at last his father said: "What's the matter with you, Fritz! They told me at that office of yours that you weren't well."
"Oh, I'm all right. After I've had dinner you'd best come out and see my little parlez-vous—if it isn't too hot?" He turned to his mother, and looked at her solicitously.
But it was she who said suddenly: "I don't think you are all right, boy."
"I've felt a bit queer lately—at times." He was reluctant to admit it. "We've got a Scotch doctor here and he wants me to go home. But somehow—well if I go home I don't feel as if I shall ever come over again!"
"Aren't you through roaming?" asked his mother wistfully, and his father added abruptly:
"You can't live and die in France, boy."
"I suppose I can't," he said a thought sadly.
Then he roused himself. "Tell me all about everything. And I say! Have you had anything to eat yet?"
They shook their heads smiling.
"Why, snakes—you must be hungry! He jumped up. "There's no dining-room in this little place," he exclaimed, "but Madame Louis keeps the kitchen in apple-pie order."
"Madame Louis!" Then she was a married woman? That was a good thing anyway.
The kitchen was the biggest room in the cottage, and Mrs. Rittner looked round it with eager curiosity. Across one end of it had been built in, apparently recently, an old stove far to big for the room. On the stove stood a brown earthenware pot. In the center of the brick floor stood a round table, and on the wall, opposite the window, rows and rows of copper saucepans gleamed brightly. There were three chairs; a gilt armchair upholstered in pink brocade might have come out of a palace, the other two were straw-bottomed, and very roughly finished off.
Fritz Rittner grinned. "Everything in this house has been what we used to call 'won'—you'd just call it 'stolen.' But the poor devils to whom all these things belonged studied 'safety first' when the shelling grew too hot, and they've never come back."
"D'you mean your"—his mother waited a moment then said the word—"landlady just took all these things out of deserted houses?" There was deep disapproval in her voice.
Fritz Rittner laughed. "Well—no. Some one else saved us that trouble! We paid for the things."
"Us?"—"We?"—what odd words to use of this stranger woman and himself, thought his mother uncomfortably.
And then Fritz Rittner called out: "Madame Louis?" And the young woman came in, took the earthenware pot off the stove and put it on the table. Then she slipped silently out of the kitchen as they sat down.
Mr. Rittner looked at his son with a curious, measuring, thoughtful look. "Been here long?" he asked. And as the other, who was busy ladling out, did not answer at once, he added: "Funny little place, boy, this, how did you find it?"
Fritz Rittner glanced across at his father, and his mother, watching him, felt as if he had been dreaming and had just waked up.
"I don't live here," he said abruptly. "I'm living at the hostel. But I fixed up this place just for an office, and to have my meals in peace and quiet."
There was a touch of slight constraint in his manner, and he became very busy over Madame Louis' savory stew. Though the earthenware pot was large, there wasn't much in it, barely enough for the three of them.
Suddenly Mr. Rittner again spoke out thoughts they were in his wife's heart.
"How about her?" he asked. "Doesn't she want any dinner?"
Fritz reddened deeply. His mother looked at him—then locked away.
"She had hers hours ago," he said at last. "I come in at any odd time."
Then, almost as if the words were being dragged out of him, he went on: "That house yonder and this garden belonged to some cousins of Madame Louis. They wouldn't leave when others did, and they were all killed, three of them, as well as their two servants, in the last bombardment. But this shanty wasn't touched—it often happened so. And when she got the news that the place was hers now, she came along and settled in here. A big bit of luck for me!"
There was a touch of defiance in his voice, and "Yes, it was," agreed his mother soothingly.
"It's the women who rule France—fortunately for France," he said slowly. Then, "But mind you—their men are bonny fighters, as our Scotch medico says."
He got up, took their plates off the table and brought over a big bowlful of golden pears.
"For all that parts of the town look so prosperous, there's a lot of food shortage," he said apologetically. "No flour lately, or else we'd have had a pudding."
And then all of a sudden he turned to his mother. "Left your luggage at the station?" he asked.
"We didn't bring any luggage," interposed his father. "We're just here for the day."
"I'm not going to leave him now that I've just found him, so don't you think so!" exclaimed Mrs. Rittner.
The old man laughed. "'Tisn't only in France that what a woman says goes—"he observed. "I suppose we can get some one here to go to Paris and get our luggage, eh, Fritz?"
The young man hesitated. "I don't know that I can get anybody to go to-day." He spoke doubtfully. "Folks are pretty busy here. There's no one left over in Prance now to do odd jobs. "
"I guess money talks more in France than in most places," interjected his father dryly.
"Well, I wouldn't go so far even as to say that." A slow reluctant smile came over Fritz's face, then he became dead serious. "Kill a million and a half able-bodied men, and maim as many so that they'll never work again, and you'll have plenty to do for every one that's left." He waited a moment, then brought out with a certain effort, "Let's see what Madame Louis says." He got up, opened the door into the passage, and shut it behind him.
The two left behind looked at one another uneasily. Mrs. Rittner got up from her chair and walked over to the window. She felt the atmosphere stifling.
The door opened. "She doesn't think we can get anybody to go to Paris to-day, but she says she can lend you night things, mother, and she wants you to stay right here. There's a second room upstairs, and father could come along with me to the hostel. Will that be all right?"
"Why, yes," said Mr. Rittner slowly, "it sounds all right. But perhaps we'd better see what sort of room it is upstairs."
Fritz Rittner took his mother's hand, and it made her feel as if he were a little boy again. But at the bottom of the narrow, steep, ladder-like staircase he had to drop it, and start up the narrow stair alone two steps at a time.
Did he know the way—? she wondered, and then she felt horribly ashamed of her secret self-questioning when she saw him blocking up the whole of the little landing, and hesitating perceptibly as to which of the two doors to open.
"Madame Louis?" he called out at last, evidently thinking her to be downstairs.
And then, to the surprise of both mother and son, the door to the right opened, and the Frenchwoman coming through it, uttered the three words to which Mrs. Rittner was now becoming accustomed. "Une petite minute!" she exclaimed, and then she unlocked the other door giving on to the landing, and preceded them into a room evidently just above the kitchen. There was the same kind of brick floor here as there and the simple furnishings included a comfortable-looking low bed.
Fitz Rittner looked round him a trifle dubiously. "Will this be all right for you, mother? Of course there's no bath-room, but she'll make you plenty of hot water. She's a wonder at getting what one asks for."
He was speaking, or so his mother fancied, not quite naturally.
"Can she talk anything but French?" asked Mrs. Rittner in a rather hard voice.
He shook his head decidedly. "Not one word! But you can practice your French on her—same as I do. Don't I remember the French books that used to pour into the house when I was a child!"
And then they heard Mr. Rittner's hearty voice. He had come up to see what was happening, for he had felt lonely in that queer-looking kitchen. "Your mother can read French and she can write French, but she won't speak French," he cried. "I can't read it and I can't write it—but I do make a try at speaking it!"
"He had a teacher four evenings a week for three months before we left home," said his wife, "and it's perfectly true that he does try to talk at any rate. I simply feel I can't!"
While this was going on their hostess—somehow they all looked upon her as their hostess—was looking at them with such a curious look. Even to Fritz's mother it was a look that told no tales, though the pain in Madame Louis' eyes was apparent enough.
Mrs. Rittner looked quickly across at her husband. She hadn't seen him look so pleased, so—so happy, well, for years. Her husband's face made up her mind for her—quite suddenly.
"Look here, Fritz. You go along with father. I'm tired, so I'll just stay here in that comfortable room of yours downstairs, and try and get a bit of sleep. I didn't sleep much last night." She couldn't help adding, "Why on earth didn't you let us know where you were, boy?"
He looked hurt. "I cabled when I came here. But I don't expect the cable got far."
They went downstairs, and as he put her in his armchair, he lowered his voice, "You musn't mind if Madame Louis goes about the house singing, it's a way she's got into lately."
"A war-widow?" asked Mrs. Rittner, in a voice which was not as kindly as she would have liked it to be.
He shook his head. "No, worse than that."
"Worse than that?" She wondered what he could mean.
"I'll tell you some time. The truth is she hates being talked over. She told me so just after I got fixed up here."
Again she felt the touch of awkwardness, of something being held back, in his voice, and yet he was looking at her quite frankly, and a moment later when he had shut the door behind him she heard him utter laughing words to his father in the passage.
She got up and from the window looked at them as they hurried down that strange treeless garden. The broad, rather bowed figure, and the tall slim, finely-built young man. She wondered whether Madame Louis was looking at them too from her kitchen window. She surmised she was.
And then Mrs. Rittner fell asleep, and there came no sound of singing to disturb her.
At five o'clock the door opened and the Frenchwoman came in with a tray. She had made tea in a big china teapot, and cut some rough slices of bread and butter. The tea was very strong, and Fritz's mother could not help hoping to herself that Fritz didn't have his tea like that! But still she was grateful for the stimulant for, in spite of her long refreshing sleep, she felt tired—tired and infinitely sad. There had come over her, in a rush, the memory of her other boy. She felt as if George were nearer to her now than Fritz seemed to be.
She looked at Madame Louis. Her trim figure, her beautifully dressed dark hair, the delicate color in her cheeks and her bright eyes reminded Fritz's mother of a picture she had once seen called "The French Coquette." Yet perhaps the half fears and half suspicions, the painful sensations of jealously with which he was assailed, were all fancy. Fritz didn't seem to worry much about his landlady anyway.
She tried to smile pleasantly into the face that was looking down at her with so curiously pathetic an expression, and in answer there did flit a smile over it, but Mrs. Rittner told herself that it was more like a grimace than a smile.
And then Madame Louis suddenly turned and ran into the kitchen. "Une petite minute!" she cried, and came back with the slate which bore that unfamiliar-looking name "Frederic Rittner" deeply graven in its shiny gray surface.
She wrote on it in French: "Does Madame prefer coffee in the morning?" and the other wrote quickly the word "Coffee," spelling it in the French way.
Deep in her heart Mrs. Rittner longed to cover the slate with eager questions about Fritz and his work, but she felt as if there were an invisible barrier between herself and this young woman.
Suddenly Madame Louis bent down and wrote something again on the slate. "You have come to fetch Monsieur Frederic! You want him to return with you?"
And slowly, painfully, searching for the right word, "Monsieur Frederic's" mother answered by another question: "Don't you think, Madame, that my son has spent enough of his life away from his own country?"
And at once the other wrote down: "It is truly time he thinks of his own affairs. I tell him so sometimes."
Mrs. Rittner, still without looking up, wrote down laboriously the words, the supplication, "Tell it him again—now."
"It will to me be hard—he is such a brave boy."
What importance the French people attached to courage! Even without ever having seen Fritz, Madame Couteau had used the same term of praise, of commendation.
Mrs. Rittner looked up. Madame Louis was staring out of the window; then, with a quick movement, she poured a few drops of the hot water she had brought with the tea on to the slate, and wiped off with a corner of her apron what had been written there.
She put her fingers to her lips, and then, catching up the tray, went off just as Mrs. Rittner heard her son's voice close to the window: "We've come to fetch you, mother. You're going to have a first-class dinner. Trust the French to put up a restaurant of what they call the première classe where anybody's likely to come along! I am told there's no such good cooking in Paris now, as there is at the place I'm going to take you to——"
Fritz was smiling broadly into his mother's face. Yet it was as if behind his smile there was a feeling of constraint.
Mr. Rittner, who was standing by him, asked: "But how about her—I mean your landlady, boy? Hadn't she better come too? Seems unkind to leave her out."
"I don't think she'll come to-night," said Fritz hesitatingly. "French people—well they think a lot of a father and mother, you know. She'd feel she was intruding."
He did not see the mute inquiry in his mother's eye—"and wouldn't she be intruding?"
"A11 the same I'll ask her," he went on, and ran forward into the house.
Mrs. Rittner went out into the passage. Through the half -open kitchen door she saw Fritz standing very close to Madame Louis. He turned as if he had sensed that she was there, and the mother felt as if she had been caught eavesdropping.
"She says she doesn't care to come to-night. She's got a lot of things to do. I expect she wants to have everything fixed up nicely for you, mother."
And now, three hours later, Mrs. Rittner was slowly taking off the thin black silk cloak which had been made at home after her own pattern just before she had started on this trip to France.
It was years and years since she had undressed by the light of a candle, and she was thinking how queer it was to be doing so, while straining her ears to know whether Fritz was still down- stairs, talking to "that person." They had left Mr. Rittner to make friends with the people at the hostel and so, for the first time, mother and son had been alone together. But the car had seemed to fly through the night air, and though he had come right up to her bedroom to see if everything was "O. K." he had kissed her good night hurriedly, obviously disinclined for any talk, and then, shutting the door firmly, he had gone down the flight of stairs.
She stood still and listened intently while there floated up a murmur of voices—low, intimate murmurs. Madame Louis was doing most of the talking, though every now and then the mother could hear her boy's deep voice throwing in a few words.
At last the murmur of voices ceased, and Mrs. Rittner saw her son's figure looming up darkly as he hurried through the eerie moonlit garden towards the far more eerie-looking moonlit ruin of what had once been a human habitation.
Slowly she finished undressing herself. She knelt down, but no words would come, and she got into bed feeling more wide awake than she had ever felt in her life.
Would Fritz come home? Would he? Would he? She wondered what the real relations between her boy and Madame Louis had been, and were now—— She resented not having seen her husband alone, and yet, if he were here now, what could she say to him? Nothing that could satisfy her uneasy, suspicious, jealous heart.
At last she heard the younger woman come up the narrow creaking stairs, and it seemed to her that Madame Louis listened for a while on the landing before going into her room.
And there, perhaps because it was so uncannily quiet, she found it impossible to go to sleep. For one thing she felt so lonely in the big low soft bed. During her long married life she had hardly ever been separated, even for so long as a night, from her Karl.
She looked back over the evening she had spent at the restaurant. Her husband had enjoyed the excellent food set before them. But, though outwardly placid, she had been inwardly too excited, too questioning, to eat, and now, in the hot darkness, she tried to remember what they had talked about. Fritz had asked a few questions about home, but not as if he really cared to have answers to them.
And then, as she lay turning uneasily this way and that, trying for coolness as sleep was denied her, she suddenly heard the sounds of low, bitter, hopeless sobbing.
She sat up, feeling at once irritated and, yes, distressed. But what could she do? Why, just nothing. Madame Louis had no business to be so—so upset. After all she was a married woman. Mrs. Rittner remembered suddenly a French novel that had made a great impression on her years and years ago. The woman's name had born Emma—Emma Bovary. Perhaps this Madame Louis was like that.
But as the minutes slipped by, and still the piteous sounds continued, she felt that she must do something! So at last she got up, and lit the guttering candle. Taking up the slate which had been put by her bedside, she went and opened her door. Then, slowly, she turned the handle of the other door, and stepped into Madame Louis' room.
Holding up her candle she gazed at the narrow bed and its occupant. Madame Louis' hair was down, and, though her face was blotched and disfigured with crying, she looked far younger than she did in the day-time.
Slowly, after they had gazed at one another in silence for what seemed a long time, Mrs. Rittner came close to the bed. She patted the Frenchwoman on the shoulder. "Come," she said, "come, don't cry! What's the matter?"
Madame Louis almost snatched the slate from her hand. "I cry because he's going away," she wrote. And then she looked up at "his" mother, while a queer wavering smile came over her face.
Again she bent over the slate, and the words she wrote down were: "I love him—but he does not know it." It was as if a great load were suddenly lifted from the heart of Fritz Rittner's mother. Perhaps she showed too clearly the joy, the relief she felt, in her face, for there came an angry look into Madame Louis' eyes.
"He was beginning to love me, even if he did not know it," she wrote quickly.
There was a challenge, something of a threat in the dark bright eyes.
Then Mrs. Rittner, slowly, hesitatingly, wrote what she knew was an appeal to this strange woman who had been so startlingly frank. She, too, would be frank—it seemed to be the only thing to be.
"You are good to let him go away. I know you could keep him."
Madame Louis stretched out her hand; she took a small towel, dipped it into the ewer, and then effaced all the words that were written on the slate.
And after she had done that, she began crying again bitterly, "Oh! la, la!" she cried, rocking herself backward and forward, and then again, "Oh! la, la!"
Mrs. Rittner bent down and, putting her arm round the younger woman's shoulders, kissed herw Then she went back to bed and slept heavily, soundly, till the hot sun, streaming on her face, woke her. Then she got up, washed as well as she could manage in the tiny basin, dressed, and went downstairs.
What had happened in the night seemed like a dream, for there was Madame Louis bustling about her kitchen, and with no trace of the woe which had filled her night, while from behind the closed door of the sitting- room there came sounds of Fritz and his father talking together.
After she had finished her breakfast she went in to them, and Fritz, giving her a hasty kiss, left her with his father and, going into the kitchen, shut the door behind him.
"Well," she said, "well, Karl? Is he coming?"
"He is. It's all fixed up! That Scotch doctor actually got through to Paris last night, while the boy was bringing you back here, and some one's coming to-day to take over Fritz's job."
She could see that he was immeasurably relieved, immeasurably glad—but somehow she herself felt just a little ashamed of her own gladness.
She went up quite close to him. "Has Fritz said anything about Rosy Wiggam?" she asked.
He answered gruffly, "Not a word. Why should he?" and then as he caught the look of disappointment on her face, he exclaimed: "Guess it will come all right when they're once more together." And as if following the same train of thought he went on: "I'm thinking we ought to do something for that—that person out there. She's been very kind to the boy. He won't talk about her, but he did admit that she's not well off—comes from what they call the devastated districts."
He was taking out his pocket-book. She saw him count out very carefully ten 1000-franc notes. Looking round he took a bright blue envelope off Fritz's writing-table and placed the notes in it.
"Here, mother, you give her this. Fritz says she won't take anything, but I guess you can make her. She's going back to her old home as soon as we're gone—so she told Fritz last night. He's advised her not to sell this house for a bit. These tumble-down ruins aren't worth much. There isn't the manpower to build the dwelling-houses up again—that's the truth."
"When are we going back to Paris?" she asked eagerly.
"We're starting pretty soon—for, now that he's got to go, the boy seems to be in——"
And then he stopped, for the door opened. Mrs. Rittner was glad that she was standing with her back to the window so that she could look at her son. But Fritz's face was not one that gave away much.
"Madame Louis says that she'll pack up everything here, and send it on to me in Paris," he said abruptly. "So there's nothing to wait for, and there's a good train at twelve." He looked at his wrist. "Just ten to eleven, so there's plenty of time. Madame Louis says it would be awful to come to Rheims and not see the Cathedral. I guess she'll come along too."
"You two go and wait in the car, and she and I will follow in five minutes," Mrs. Rittner said and watched them go down the path. She went upstairs and put on her outdoor things. Then she came down and went straight into the kitchen.
Madame Louis said something quickly, but seeing that Mrs. Rittner looked puzzled, she took the slate from where it was hanging, and on it she wrote: "A11 is arranged."
The older woman nodded, while her hand was feeling down to the pocket where she had put the blue envelope containing those ten thousand franc notes.
She took up the pencil which was tied to the slate, and wrote laboriously: "You have been very good to our son. We want to give you——" Now, what was the French word for present? And then, all at once she remembered, and with a look full of relief she wrote down the word.
The color flew up into Madame Louis' looking at her with bright puzzled eyes. "Cadeau?"
And then Mrs. Rittner took the envelope out of her bag. She handed it to the younger woman, patting her hand affectionately as she did so.
The color flew up into Madame Louis' face, but just a little to Mrs. Rittner's disappointment she did not reject the gift. She simply said: "You are very amiable."
Well, French people were fond of money—that was a fact—and after all they all knew only too well that the franc was about twenty to the dollar. Still she had not thought Madame Louis would take the money in so quiet and composed a way, just slipping the envelope into her black apron pocket. Of course she didn't know what a lot of money the envelope contained—a lot of money to her—though not very much money to Karl Rittner.
She went into her son's room and sat down in the mahogany and gilt-encrusted chair. She heard the Frenchwoman go upstairs, and then when Madame Louis came down again and opened the door Mrs. Rittner felt as if it was a stranger who stood there. Dressed for going out in a long thin black doak and wearing on her head a wide yellow straw hat with a bit of blue ribbon tied round it, Madame Louis looked like a lovely picture.
While she was thinking this Fritz suddenly opened the door.
"Now, then, mother, are you ready?" He spoke in a rasped, preoccupied tone, and Mrs. Rittner thought he avoided looking at Madame Louis. 'We haven't long!"
She wondered if he knew how light-hearted she felt now that he was coming with them. Light-hearted, yet, for no reason, again just a little ashamed of her light-heartedness.
He stood aside for the two women to go into the passage.
It was an old-fashioned heavy car, with place for three at the back, and two in front. Madame Louis put herself between the two older people, and Fritz sat by the driver.
The car started, and his mother kept her eyes fixed on Fritz's back. She noticed that he just stared fixedly in front of him, looking neither to the right nor to the left.
All at once Mr. Rittner exclaimed, "Here we are!" and the car drew up under the statue of Joan of Arc which once more stands, as if breasting the world, on the great space in front of the mutilated miracle of beauty where Joan saw the king she had saved crowned.
"There doesn't seem anything so very much wrong with the towers," said Mr. Rittner hesitatingly.
"You wait till you've got out," called out his son brusquely.
They all stepped down out of the car, and sure enough, after he had looked for a while Mr. Rittner felt that he had been mistaken. He did not put the thought into words, but his thought was that Rheims Cathedral was now like a beautiful woman who has become not only poverty-stricken, humiliated, and abashed, but also, what is so far worse, degraded.
"I suppose there's more to see than this!" he said.
"You can't go inside—it isn't safe," said Fritz harshly. He pulled (n a roughly made new door. "Just stand here, mother."
And she did stand there, and saw the vast desecrated nave open to the sky, with jagged rock-like broken pillars surrounded by loose-looking masses of wood scaffolding.
Madame Louis said something to Fritz. "She wants you to see the tapestries," he exclaimed. "They've fixed up a chapel and hung the tapestries that were hidden away during the bombardment."
The four of them walked silently round the Cathedral till they came to a small leather-covered door. This Fritz pushed open; they found themselves in what was like a tiny country church fashioned out of what had been a side aisle of the Cathedral. Against a boarding, which had been put up to hide the ruined nave, were hung the tapestries. Slowly they all walked up towards the little altar. There were people kneeling on low chairs, perhaps a dozen altogether—no tourists, no strangers there—only humble folk who had come to say their prayers. On either side of the altar-rail was a large box where visitors were asked to place offerings for the restoration of the Cathedral. In one of the boxes Mr. Rittner put a thousand-franc note.
Soon Fritz whispered to them that it was time to go, and obediently his father and mother began walking bade towards the leather-covered door. Madame Louis lingered behind for just a moment and then she hurried after them.
And then, when close to the door, Mrs. Rittner suddenly told herself she would like to join her husband in making an offering. After all it wouldn't take a minute! She turned back, and almost ran the few steps leading to the nearest collecting box. Opening her bag she took out a wad of hundred-franc notes and then, as she was going to push them through the square opening, she suddenly caught sight of something, sticking up just within that opening, which made her pause, for it was the flap of the blue envelope which contained the ten thousand francs she had given to Madame Louis.
Well, now! Wasn't that strange And just a little careless, too, for any ill-disposed person could have pulled out the blue envelope and appropriated its contents.
She thrust her offering so that it pushed the blue envelope and its contents right down out of sight. Then she joined the others, and they motored off in the same order as they had come.
All too soon, or so it seemed to Mr. Rittner, they were in the station. Already a crowd was waiting for the Paris train. Fritz seemed a long time getting his single ticket, but at last they were all gathered together on the platform, a little silent group in the surging, talkative crowd. The long, dirty-looking train came into the station, and a great many people got out of it, adding to the confusion.
Madame Louis had become very pale; she no longer looked a pretty, or even a young, woman. She held out her hand, and then impulsively kissed Fritz Rittner's mother. Then she shook hands stiffly with Mr. Rittner. Fritz, meanwhile, was looking for an empty first-class carriage. At last, when he had found one, hoisted hi mother up into it, and seen his father settled, too, in the further corner, he turned round.
"Madame Louis!" he called out.
She came forward, and Mrs. Rittner, peering out of the side window, saw with surprise that he did not take Madame Louis' hand. He simply went up very close to her, and began saying something to her in a quick, urgent tone. His mother surmised that he was telling the Frenchwoman that if ever she was in any trouble she must write and tell him.
There came the cry, "En voiture! En voiture, s'il vous plai!" And Fritz turned round and swung himself up into the railway carriage.
The train began to move—slowly—slowly, and he leaned out dangerously far.
"Madame Louis!" There was something wild, despairing, beckoning, in his cry.
Mrs. Rittner saw the French woman rush forward. She heard her exclaim breathlessly, "Une petite minute!" as she thrust herself through the crowd. Then she leaped up on the footboard of the slowly moving train. Fritz leant out still further, seized Madame Louis' left hand, and suddenly their lips met and clung together, while the mother watched them in agonized silence.
The train began to get up speed and Mr. Rittner, who had been looking out of the further window, turned round and shouted: "Boy, what are you doing?"
But it was Madame Louis who tore herself away from him at last.
Mrs. Rittner covered her eyes for a moment. She thought that her son was going to leap down, out of the train. But when she looked again the French woman was standing on the platform, and Fritz was sitting by his father, his hands on his knees, staring before him.
Mr. Rittner spoke first. He had seen nothing of that piteous, passionate embrace. "A chapter closed, my boy, a good chapter closed," he said feelingly. But to that Fritz said nothing and after a while Mr. Rittner again spoke. "A war-widow I assume—that Madame Louis, I meant?"
Fritz answered somberly, "She doesn't know, father, what she is. Her husband was one of those deported pretty early in the occupation into Germany. She has never heard what happened to him."
"Does she want him back?" asked Mrs. Rittner in a hard voice.
Her son looked at her strangely. "She did—for quite a time. And I can tell you one thing for sure, mother——"
He waited a moment. "She would like to have back," he said very deliberately, "the sister of eighteen whom they took a little later, and of whom I've never been able to get any news either, though I think General Allen did what he could."
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1947, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 76 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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