THE LITTLE HOUSE IN THE GARDEN.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 15, 19 January 1916, Page 3

THE LITTLE HOUSE IN THE GARDEN.

WHEN THE BOSCHES CAME. WONDERFUL CALM OF FRENCH WOMEN. (By John N. Raphael, in the Daily Chronicle), “What amazes me about you Frenchmen,” said the New Arrival, “is the wonderful calm and resignation

of your women.”

The Frenchman, the right arm of whose smart pale-blue uniform is sewn quite ccquettishly over the stump, laughed, rolled and lit a cigarette with his left hand, laughed again and said nothing. Wounded Frenchmen of today have acquired great eloquence in the art of saying nothing, and the New Arrival answered Adhemar’s silence as though he had spoken. “Oh, but I have,” she said. “There are refugee Belgians at home, and refugee French people who have been driven out of

“She was a handsome old thing,” said Adhemar, “and she sat down on the bench next to me, just where the Saone and the Rhone meet, and told me that she hated Lyons. I liked Lyons myself, because, when the doctors have been picking lead out of you for their collection it’s very nice to be 'able to walk about and sit in the sunshine again. Besides, they’ve some wonderful bottle stout at a bar in Lyons.”

I laughed. This is so exactly like Adhemar. He is always romantic in unexpected places. I heard him tell a girl once that her smile reminded him of London’s crisp frizzled bacon.

CHANGED BY WAR. Adhemar is tall, fair, and decidedly good-looking. His eyes are blue, his mind is pitilessly logical, and with the Legion of Honour on his breast, and his empty sleeve, he is one of the most irresistible lieutenants in the French army. He used to be a very clerk in an architect’s office. But the war changes people. I shouldn’t wonder if Adhemar continues to look smart even when he wears civilian clothes again.

“There’s nothing to laugh at; it is beautiful stout,” said Adhemar. The New Arrival was going to say something, but I kicked her. It wasn’t very polite, perhaps, but Adhemar doesn’t /often talk, and I didn’t want to miss my story. “She was a handsome old thing, Adhemar said. “Her sister and her brother-in-law and all their friends had been very kind to her when she first came to Lyons ,but she h'ad lost everything in the world, she said, except a trifle of money which she had brought away with her, and people get tired of being kind, even to their sisters, when they got used to them. Little things made such a difference. She liked to got up early in the morning and go out and work in the garden. Her sister lived in a {3'at, and got up at nine.”

The New Arrival’s lips quivered eag- | orly, but T put a cigarette in them. If you once stop Adhemar, he stops. “She offered me some cigarettes,” he went on, “but I told her I had plentv, and asked her to give them to comrades who hadn’t. Then she told me again that she didn’t like Lyons, and her eyes filled with tears. “ ‘Do you know P at all?’ she asked me. ‘There’s a bit of me there I said, ‘unless the Bodies came ■back after we left and took it away, '.and I don’t think they did that.’ T

was born in P ,’ she said. T suppose you don’t remember a little house in a garden just on the slope of the hill to your right ag you come out of the town? There’s a bit of meadow land in front of it, which runs down to the road. It’s railed off with white railings.’ I nodded. ‘We cooked the last real meal we got for some time with some of those railings,’ I said, ‘but the meadow is ploughed up pretty badly now. There’s barbed wire in it, too.’

WRECKED HOME

“ ‘And the house ’ she asked. ‘lt is the s ame place, isn’t it? There’s a little olfi well with a moss-grown rim just inside the gate on the left.’ f ‘On the right,’ I said. ‘No, it’s on the left as you come in. Is the house still (standing?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘there may be a wall or two, but you know the Bosches were there first, and we had to shell it, and then when we got in there they shelled us out again. It was taken and retaken once or twice. It was rather warm work round there.’ 1 ‘lt was all that I had in the world,’ she said. ‘My mother’s house and her ! father’s before her. Her grandfather j built it. I spent most of my life | there. This war is terrible. I do not , think property ought to be respected.’. “ ‘What you say about the well puz- 1 : les me,’ she said. ‘Do you remember the colour of the paper in the drawing- | room. There wasn’t any roof, you see. and there were only three walls. 1 “She began to cry again. ‘There’s one thing I remember, though,’ I said, ‘there was a picture of an old man on an ease 1 . The frame was heavy, and the easel with the picture on it had danced into the middle of the floor, and stopped there. It made us laugh, because the old gentleman’s nose had I a bullet through it. He was a fat old gentleman with two chins, a white waistcoat and a big gold watchchain.’ ■My grandfather,’ she sa'JP.. ‘How dreadful it is. They came at night, and I only had time to snatch up my money and go. I ran out into the | ■country, and Blaise took me away in a cart, but they requisitioned the !■ ,horse, and Blaise was shot soon af- j t terwards. |

AT THE WELL. , T wandered all alone along the reads that night. I do think when our troops came they might have respected ——. Are you quite sure about the well being on the right.’ ‘,Well, you see,’ I told her, ‘we had a very rough time by that well. We had to shell the house to get there, 'and they ; found the range aftenvards, and there

wasn’t very much of the garden wall j left, so I’m not quite sure, which side j of the door, or what used to be the j door, the well was. But I remember j the well, all right. I nearly fell into I it, and was taking cover behind the rim when my arm was shot away. I I got niy neck full of shrapnel there, jl too, so ’ She got up and kissed J m,e. They oughtn't, -to ',do these [ things, and there were lots of people : about. ‘Do your wounds hurt you i much still?’ she asked. She didn’t ‘ say any more about her losses.

The New Arrival pretended to lock out of the window, and sniffed.

“You see,” said Adhemar, “even the refugees understand. They talk to us, and it brings it all home to them, somehow. “Don’t forget, if you ever go to Lyons. I think it’s called the ‘Bar j' Anglais.’ There’s a brown label on the bottles. It’s beautiful stout.”