Birds of a Feather: Iv. The Best Way

TRANSLATED BY FLORENCE CONVERSE

I. THE FIRST CLASS

THE parlor at Marjean’s was full of smoke, despite the open window. This café, or rather inn, was a sort of General Headquarters for the conscientious electors of the village of Duesmes, who were in the habit of gathering there, to gossip with their constituents. In times of peace, no one was ever in the parlor except on Sunday after vespers, or market-day, the first Saturday of the month. But since the war the place had known a daily prosperity. It was here that the mayor read aloud the official bulletins which he received from the sub-prefecture through the intervention of the postmistress, Mademoiselle Vantrouille. It was here that villagers bewailed the requisitions in chorus, because it is the fashion to blame the government; although, privately, they were glad of them, since they made money by them. Here, drinking bitter beer and abusing the ox-eyed maid who had to endure their scolding, they forgot their homes — so empty since their strongarmed sons had gone to the front; they forgot their wives whom grief had made more greedy and more crabbed.

This evening, as on the evenings before elections, the crowd had gathered around the people of importance.

Champommier, physician and district deputy. This unworthy graduate of the Medical School had been obliged to leave the city because of unpleasant rumors concerning his affairs, and was now trying for a deputyship in rural politics. When he let fall from his thin lips certain high-sounding socialistic formulae, his long hungry teeth gleamed through his dirty beard.

Next, Malinvaud, complacently lifting his enormous wine-smeared, fullmoon face, above the bowl of his gross body: he was chevalier du mérite agricole. He and Mr. Mayor, the municipal judge, to whom the rural guard and the chief of police, if not too tipsy, paid their respects.

Then, Vilardier, dry as the herrings curled in their hogshead at the door of his grocery, waiting for customers.

‘Well, Mr. Mayor, what do you plan to do to set it straight?’

‘It would be a disgrace for our parish.’

‘ I — you understand — if it happens, I shall send my boys to the curé. So much the worse for the Republic!’

‘We expected you to be more firm. You’ve been as soft as tripe — excuse my frankness.’

The mayor took a whiff at his pipe, and spat. ‘I also am annoyed at what has happened, but I am still more annoyed that my Breton cow is about to calve.’

Vilardier felt that it was up to him to continue the conversation in his capacity of assistant magistrate: —

‘Of course, it’s tiresome that they should send us, to take the place of the late Ratier, a teacher whom we don’t know; but what can you do — c’est la guerre!' And he reflected that, as sugar had gone up five per cent, it was quite natural that he should double the price to the consumer.

Champommier, having neither a cow about to calve, nor a business blessed with an unexpected profit, but only his patients to occupy his time, — in other words, nothing of interest, — approached the subject with an entirely free mind, and embraced the opportunity to hold forth: —

’The central authority has saddled us with a teacher without consulting our preference. It is illegal, but let us wait before asserting ourselves.’

‘He’s to begin to-morrow morning.’

‘Well, then, don’t be impatient.’

‘In the first place, it would seem that he’s an old man, and old men — I’ve no confidence in them.’ This from old Marjean, nicknamed Death’s Deceiver, because he was over ninety.

‘They certainly might have given us somebody disabled in the war,’ replied Champommier; ‘that would have been flattering and ornamental. But what’s done is done.’ He stroked his beard with his hairy hand, adjusted his eyeglass and gurgled forth his phrases: ‘We’ll judge him by his work. It’s by his work that the workman is judged.'

Malinvaud scented the danger of letting Champommier talk too long, as he might be a serious rival at the municipal elections, so he now put in his oar: —

‘The council will be present at his first class, and, as our district councilor has so justly observed, the workman shall be judged by his work. Besides, I’ll pull his leg, as my boy says; he’s full of Paris slang now that he goes to college at Châtillon-sur-Seine.’

‘Our mayor’ll pull his leg,’ the crowd repeated, admiring the words it did not understand.

The mayor, flattered by the sensation he had produced could not have resisted the pleasure of explaining his joke; but just then the piercing voice of his wife rang out in the yard: —

‘Victor! — Come quick! — The cow has calved! — Hurry! You tipsy fool! ’

The little railway train puffed as it climbed the steep incline leading to the station at the end of the line. It arrived at last, but stopped so suddenly that the cars banged into each other, and a peasant who was shaken up by the collision exclaimed, ‘They call that progress! ’

An old man got down and hurried toward the exit, lugging a heavy hand-box.

‘Is it the school you want? — Straight on, as far as the church, and at the left of the square, opposite the liberty pole,’replied the official who took his ticket. ‘That must be the new master,’he murmured.

The old man — for, judging by his white hair, his bent shoulders, and his weary step, he was indeed an old man — took advantage of the first milestone to sit down. He wiped his forehead, and brushed the dust from his shoes with a handful of grass. Before him, the market town rose on the hillside, its flatroofed houses clustered round the bell tower. In the deserted yards, the hot stone walls caught the sun’s rays and ripened the trellised fruit trees. Beyond, the wheat-fields, which were beginning to turn yellow, stood out from the dark Spanish trefoil. In the bright morning the town was attractive, and the bell which was ringing seemed to invite him graciously to make haste.

But the old man shook his head, disillusioned. Although the inanimate things might seem friendly, he knew that the people wrere not. He reviewed in memory his career as a country schoolteacher, exposed to the insults and rebuffs of the peasants. To them, the man who does not work with his hands is a humbug, a regular good-fornothing. He could make no headway against their instinctive hate except by becoming the secretary in the mayor’s office, — the electoral agent, that is to say, — and he was one of those unusual people who had not the soul of a lackey. Ah, he knew them! these villages outwardly so quiet, but really the battleground of all the sordid struggles of an ignorant humanity, delivered over to its worst instincts. This was a new station in his Way of the Cross, this schoolhouse, so coquettish and white; he knew it and approached it resignedly, for such is life.

On the doorstep, the women lifted their heads from the beans which they were shelling, nudged each other, and laughed behind his back.

‘There he is! Our mayor’s going to pull his leg!’

He went up the steps. A bird sang in the trellis which framed a bay of the facade. ‘Cui — cui!’ It was the piteous cry of a wounded bird.

He entered the schoolroom. The children stared at him curiously from their desks. The authorities were seated in full array, under the chairmanship of Malinvaud, who had put on his tricolored scarf in honor of the occasion.

After brief greetings, the mayor climbed to the platform and addressed the audience: —

’Citizens, here is your schoolmaster, M. Tatignon, who enters upon his duties to-day.'

He could go no further, for the ‘citizens’ from five to eight years of age burst out laughing. Tatignon! — The citizens wriggled.

Ah, what shall he do? The old man gazed without heart into the shining eyes fixed upon him by the wicked little beasts on watch,

The mayor, having, by the aid of strong language, obtained an approach to silence, turned toward the victim and said with an assumption of good will, —

‘The Council has decided that because of circumstances you will open this first class with an address on heroism, at which the council will be present in a body, hoping that you will fully appreciate the honor of this arrangement.’

The public, in the secret, laughed in its sleeve. ‘That’s it! Our mayor’s going to pull his leg!’

The old man blenched. It was a trap. They were trying to ridicule him, to prove how little he knew. He gathered his ideas together. Heroism — of course, there were ever so many examples: d’Assas, La Tour d’Auvergne, the sailors of the Vengeur. It was an easy subject, but he did not improvise easily. These hostile faces deterred him; fear paralyzed him.

Then the postman entered.

‘ Pardon! Excuse me, Mr. Mayor and the company, but I bring M. Tatignon some letters which have already been here some time, as Mademoiselle Vantrouille explains. Your servant, sirs.

The old man seized the packet with a greedy gesture. The one he wanted was not there; but on one envelope a military stamp drew his attention.

‘It is from his squadron, and that’s not his handwriting!’

He ripped it open with a horrible prescience of misfortune, and skimmed through it rapidly. His lips moved. He tried to speak, but the words would not form in his contracted throat.

‘He can’t pull it off,’ whispered Champommier.

‘We’re waiting on you, master,’ said Malinvaud sweetly.

He drew himself up and seemed to have grown immeasurably taller. His dilated eyes shone with a strange light. The sheet of paper trembled in his fingers.

‘ You have asked me to speak on heroism. — It is here. — In the squadron they called him Flagada. His real name was Louis Tatignon. — He was my son.— He has died out there.'

In the trellis, the bird gave his piercing, ‘Cui, cui!’ — then was silent.

II. PAPA CHARLES LOOKS OUT FOR HIMSELF

The machine-guns were crackling at the shooting-range in a hollow near Lay-Saint-Christophe. While the scorers stopped up the holes in the target, the gunners rested.

‘I’ll play you for cocktails with the Browning, Papa Charles — five balls. I’m in luck to-day; did you take a squint at my targets? Regular sieves they are, since the sight of my Hotchkiss was corrected. Her shooting is adorable. Come on. If you lose, you can take it out on Frangipane.'

And Chignole invited them to go down from the hillock.

But Papa Charles stopped him. ‘We have n’t time. I have permission from the captain to use his car to take us to the cemetery.’

The ghost of Flagada rose before them. Oh, not a terrifying ghost, gaunt and menacing beneath a shroud! No; memory recalled the image of their friend under his usual aspect, sympathetic and gay, with the theatrical pose that made him so amusing. Neither Chignole, upon whom events made only fleeting impressions, nor even Frangipane, still a novice in flying, was much moved by this recollection of sad hours. But Papa Charles, who had finished his twenty-fifth month in the squadron, beheld the dolorous band of his vanished comrades pass before him. Their names crowded to his lips, and he recalled the very form under which death had overtaken each one: caught under the engine; hit by anti-aircraft guns; smashed in landing; brought down by a Hun; burned; missing — He read in their faces an almost ironical astonishment.

‘Yes; I am still here.’

Their hands reached out to him and their lips murmured, ‘It is your turn next.’

Unconsciously, he gave a low groan.

‘ I say! What’s the matter with you ?' said Chignole, nudging him.

He passed his hand over his eyes to dispel the nightmare: ‘Nothing — nothing!’

As they were getting into the automobile, Frangipane offered them cigarettes from his engraved case. Papa Charles scratched a match, held it out to his two friends, and used it himself before extinguishing it; whereupon Frangipane exclaimed, ‘Three with the same match! That means bad luck.’

Papa Charles shivered involuntarily, but recovered his coolness at once and retorted, ‘Ridiculous—such sayings!'

‘ I detest superstitions,’ Chignoleadded airily; and the car started.

‘Do you think you’ll know how to fly in the daytime, now that we’ve been playing the owl so long ? — Ah, old man — we’ve got a fine spin in prospect! I’m delighted with the objective! What sport to drop these on them!’

Chignole, with Frangipane helping him, was setting the bombs carefully in their racks. Papa Charles, seated on the edge of the cockpit, was watching the oscillations of the needle of the speed-indicator, while Mimile looked to the oiling.

‘What’s the matter with the mill today? — only 1000, 1050 revolutions.’

‘I don’t understand it at all, Papa Charles; it’s less than a week since the valves were ground. We need a new one — that’s the trouble.’

Chignole tested each cylinder, listened carefully, then with a half-satisfied grimace, added, ‘It might go better, but there’s nothing to worry about. In the air it will increase by at least one hundred revolutions.’

Frangipane, who was staying below, as he no longer had a pilot, watched them start, uneasily. After several pickups, the biplane tried to rise, but fell back; at last, helped by the steepness of the flying-field, the wheels left the earth and the machine got its equilibrium at a low altitude, after balancing first on one wing, then on the other.

‘She’s heating up all right.’

And Papa Charles took his way nonchalantly toward the directing station of the 75’s, to watch their evolutions through the glass.

‘It won’t climb!’ Papa Charles struck the altimeter with his fist.

‘Don’t get excited. You’ll ruin your disposition, and do no good.’

’Look at the others.’

Above them, their comrades were climbing easily. He tried all the manœuvres which usually help climbing; but because the machine side-slipped, he nosed down, thus losing height. There were the trenches already. The captain’s rocket made a gray streak in the clear atmosphere. Papa Charles tried hard to rejoin the squad, but Chignole protested vigorously.

‘Do you want to annihilate us? — 1000 metres! No, my friend! That’s not aviation, it’s suicide!’

Papa Charles turned unwillingly, reduced the speed, descended, landed, and said curtly, —

’Put up the taxi. Turn the mill upside down and see what it has in its belly.’ Then, addressing Frangipane who had run up for news, ‘It’s disgusting! The first time I ever came back without reaching my goal.’

As the mechanics rolled the biplane toward the hangar and he steered it by the rudder, he heard one of them say very distinctly, —

‘Papa Charles won’t go up again.’

And another voice added, —

‘He must take care of himself for the sake of his lady-love.’

Papa Charles turned pale, and set his teeth, then he said brusquely, ‘Stop! Turn her into the wind. Get out, Chignole; without your weight I can go up.’

And before Chignole and Frangipane could prevent him, he had put the gas on full, and pulled the joystick to him. The machine made a deep zoum, to get a clear line of flight once more.

Chignole drew Frangipane aside.

‘Did you hear what one of those guys said ? ’

‘Yes; some mechanic — jealous.’

‘Do you know which it was?’

‘No.’

‘So much the better for him. If anything happens to Papa Charles — I shall kill him! He’s a murderer! ’

Lightened of his load, Papa Charles flew toward the lines, increasing his altitude as he flew. The rotation speed of his engine did not improve, but the decrease was not marked. That was a good sign, and he hummed a fox-trot which recalled happy hours. He was glad of his decision. His companions would be much astonished at his fantastic departure, and the slanderous tongue would be silenced. As Chignole would say, it would give the squadron a jolt — and at the thought of the figure the latter was certainly cutting at the present moment, he laughed aloud, just as the enemy fired his first shell. His squad was coming back, its task ended, and he darted toward the planes, wove his way among them, exchanged salutes with several, and then, guided by the pond of Lindre, shining on his right under the last rays of the sun, he easily made out his goal.

He had to double, as two Huns were pursuing him. But when they shot, he dived as if he were struck and were falling; and he pretended so well that they let him go down quietly. Presently he found himself just over the aerodrome. The hangars were visible despite their camouflage; in front, some monoplanes with black crosses were going out. He turned half way round, released the bombs, straightened up, veered, and fled toward the frontier.

For a moment, the Boches were perplexed by this unexpected manœuvre; then, enraged at being tricked, they hurled themselves in his wake. But luckily for Papa Charles, at that moment the Farmans, flanked by the Nieuports, found the range for the batteries. Sometimes the Nieuports set fire to the sausages, and the Boches preferred not to give battle, but to let the Voisin continue unmolested on its way.

‘That’s done!’

But just then four shells encircled him and he felt a lively heat at his back. A shot had cut through a tube of the radiator, and the boiling water was spouting through the crack. This shower-bath did not disturb him much, but if the radiator ran dry, the engine could not be cooled; it would stick, and there would be a breakdown. So he let go the joystick, and stopped the flow by twisting the pipe with a pair of pliers. But when he took hold of the steering-gear again, to bring his biplane back into the right road and avoid collisions, he was horrorstruck at the new situation confronting him. The controls of the joystick would not move. He leaned over. The cables of the elevator were broken and hung down brushing the screw. He closed the inlet to prevent the propeller from coming in contact with them and smashing, and he tried to reëstablish his equilibrium with the help of the rudder-bar. But the machine tipped violently on its nose and began to spin round on the end of the cockpit.

It was the tail-spin.

He felt as if he were attached to a giant gimlet, hung in space, which increased its speed with every twist. Head down, clinging with all his might so as not to be pitched out of his seat, he shut his eyes to avoid the dizziness which he felt when he saw the ground apparently pitching round him in a spiral. He had one brief gleam of hope, when the machine slid and came back to level. He opened his eyes: eight hundred metres. — Saved ? — No. He dived again, and again the tail-spin began.

This was the end. Whatever happened, he was done for. There was no longer height enough even for an improbable flattening out.

The end. The two words hammered frightfully in his ears, which were whistling under the rapid change of atmospheric pressure. — The end. — Nothing to do about it. He was the victim of forces subdued but not yet enslaved.

But he would not die smashed under the weight of his biplane. He undid his belt, opened his arms, and with a great cry flung himself to meet that cruel earth which seemed to rush up toward him in order to devour him more quickly.

III. A LETTER

Escadrille V. B.

In every squadron there is a metal coffer kept with the greatest care in the office of the quartermaster, who has the key. In it are placed, by every pilot and observer, the letters to be sent in case of accident. To-day I bring to it this letter, destined for you, my very dear. It will be in good company. Mothers, wives, betrothed, mistresses, sisters, godmothers, these are its companions. Love, passion, broken hearts, hidden longings, unsatisfied caresses, faded flowers, last wishes, everything that endears, everything that stirs to remembrance; the sentimental hodgepodge of twenty young men is locked up in this steel box.

It is no vague presentiment which leads me to write you, but a cool scrutiny of my situation, which convinces me that my doom will soon be upon me.

Yes; the idler, the jester, the dilettante, the truly Parisian comrade that was I, in times of peace, ought logically to disappear in this torment, and I ask your scatterbrain to follow my argument for a few moments.

I left for the front without enthusiasm, in those flower-decked trains, chalked over with notices announcing Berlin as the first stop. I did n’t believe it. I recognized too well the German’s strong grip upon our vitals; the slow disintegration of our Republic, promoted by the depravity of our politicians; the degrading softness into which we had been led by the doctrine of peace at any price.

At the overthrow of Belgium, I said, ‘It was bound to happen.’ And when Paris was threatened, I said, ’It is fate.’

The Marne surprised me. Without attributing it to the intervention of Sainte Geneviève, I did for a moment recognize something akin to miracle in it, a rebirth, an awakening. But my pessimism got the upper hand again. ‘It is a stroke of luck,’ I thought; and I went down into the trenches quite without hope.

Then the surprises began. I found that I had really been aware of nothing. The ‘knowing gentleman,’ saturated with morbid egotism and excessive individualism, was an ignoramus who had judged the world from the sofa in his lounging-room.

The wretched infantry revealed life to me under its brutal but simple aspect, stripped of the subtleties and complexities with which we snobs try to trim it up. At last I understood the worth of realities, the beauty of action, daily duty, sacrifice for others, for the unknown; I, who had always bounded everything by my own small personality. Now, dependent upon myself alone, I blessed discipline and accepted the uncompromising militarism of a Psichari.

This change did not take place without a struggle, without hard knocks. The past called to me; I felt the lure of the cloudy reveries of former days; I breathed the perfume of old letters; I suffered when I saw my dear ones unchanged, while I was so radically transformed.

Then aviation cast its spell upon me. My feelings when I made my first flight as a pilot were like those I had felt at my first communion: the same faith, the same mystical confidence; I gave myself to my wings as I had given myself to God.

Joys, robust, almost savage, healthy emotions, brotherly fellowship, heroic nonsense, these were what I found as I followed my profession of bird-man.

When Karlsruhe, which I had gone out to bomb, appeared in the pane of glass on the floor of my cockpit, my happiness reached its height. That day I avenged the insult of 1870 and of 1914 in my own name and the names of my ancestors. I blotted out Sedan and Charleroi. I was no longer conquered, nor the son of the conquered.

Even physically, the war has changed me. Shall I prove it? Do you remember that breakfast we had together in a restaurant near the Madeleine, during my last leave? A gentleman who was sucking the claws of his broiled lobster said to his companion, indicating me, ‘Look, what a splendid military type!’

A military type! the ex-dude of Maxim’s, whom the Americans regarded with awe because of his peculiar manner of guzzling champagne! A military type!— the frequenter of greenrooms, grill-rooms, suspicious houses, race-tracks, and also of second-rate shows, beer-gardens, and holidays at Neuilly—high life after the manner of Jean Lorrain! A military type! — the lover of the little light-o’-love who had been the mistress of old Machin!

So, you see, my redemption was complete. Why, then, since I have improved so much, now that I have learned how to live better, now that I have redeemed my faults, paid my debts, got a steady head on the wing — why wish for death?

Because, in spite of everything, I have not wholly shuffled off the old man, and I have no confidence in the future. I am weak, and I am afraid to go back to those hours of the past: monotonous, idle, lulled by such phrases as, ‘It will come out all right,’ ‘It’s of no consequence,’ which Chignole translates so well by his, ‘ What’s the odds, so long as we’re jolly!’

Just now, I am so far away from our petty interests, our narrow sordidness, our childish vanities, our poor little sentimental quarrels, our daily renewal of our vows, that I feel an instinctive disgust, an irresistible repulsion, at the thought of once more hampering myself with all that folly.

Yes, I am afraid of the future. I hear the dull rumbling of the poorer classes against a social organization which is going to pieces, and which the war has discredited; I foresee acute struggles between capital and labor, the hatred of the peasant, who has done the fighting, for the workman who has made the shells.

Peace is not an end, it is an attitude. Dark years must intervene before order can be established.

How should I employ them? Badly, probably. In any event, less well than at present. Besides, I would rather go out beautifully, in the best act of the play, a modest supernumerary in the splendid adventure, in the red and gold apotheosis of blood and of the sun.

Granted that all that is a pose; it has only the value of a gesture, but does n’t the crowd follow a gesture better than an idea?

The graduate of Saint-Cyr who charged in white gloves and with plumes in his cap was a fool, doubtless, but such fools are needed to set reasonable folk on fire. Navarre, giving his exhibitions over the trenches, heaped up for himself the hatred of the aviation functionaries who go up prudently once in six months to secure their indemnity from flying; but he remains, nevertheless, the father of aerial tactics of pursuit.

Don’t think for a minute that I consider myself a hero and that my conduct requires courage. No. The only time when my courage failed me a little, was on my last visit to Paris. Ah, the rear! Never go back behind the lines; it is too hard to return afterwards. The inventors of ‘leave’ were paltry psychologists, or lusty fellows who could take it easily.

For, after all, even when denuded of great experiences, this life is still to be desired. This life! it is—your bright eyes, your long curled lashes, your wheedling hands; our endless automobile escapades, our feverish evenings at La Napoule, our quiet mornings at Saint Gervais.

I must not turn over those happy pages, they would move me altogether too much; and for a gentleman who affects the stoic, that would be really too comical.

What sonorous phrases are these! How serious, how weighty, for the frivolous little person that you are, and that you will always be. For, my clear, you will never change; your charm lies in your tranquil inconsequence.

You will forgive me when you remember that this evening, if I am grumbling, it is because I am afraid that you are deceiving me, that if I see everything black, it is because you see everything rose-color.

Above all, don’t regret me. To guard against regret, think how my body, which you have loved, will be mutilated in the final crash, and the horror of the picture will drive the repulsive corpse forever from your thoughts.

Adieu. I adore you.

PAPA CHARLES.

(To be concluded)