Marie Belloc Lowndes

“ 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?" ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”