The Ordeal by Fire By a Sergeant in the French Army
9781465630698
108 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
I can see myself again on that afternoon walking up and down the platform of Vallorbe Station. At my side little André, aged twelve, sailor-collared and bare-legged, besieged me with questions concerning sport. It was his craze. I did my best to give him the information he wanted, while waiting impatiently for his people to reappear. I had offered to look after the ladies' luggage, but the grandmother had declined my help with thanks. Jeannine was so capable! These little jobs amused her. The girl came out on to the platform towards us, and wanted to take back her dressing bag. I refused to allow it. Madame Landry joined us. I took her to a seat but she refused to sit down, she was not tired. I always admired her, slim and alert at over sixty. I had made their acquaintance at the hotel at which we had arrived together three weeks before. The old lady, who was the widow of an Inspector of Finances, always began by keeping her distance. The chance discovery that I was the son of an officer in the army had prejudiced her in my favour. The Landrys had many connections with the army, and Colonel Dreher's name was not unknown to them. The grandmother had been able to prove, by the concurrence of various dates, that my father must have received his commission at the same time as her own brother, who had been seriously wounded in the year '70. This was reason enough for us to become very intimate in a few days. I learnt that Madame Landry had lost her son, a lieutenant in the Cuirassiers, twelve years before. He had been killed by a horse's kick and her daughter-in-law had died in childbirth a few weeks later, whereupon she undertook to bring up her two grandchildren. Jeannine was quite young, eighteen or nineteen, I think—she refused to tell me her age, just for fun. She was tall and slim, and bright-eyed; her mouse-coloured hair curled and entangled itself in spite of all she could do. She had spent two years in England. It must have been there that she had picked up this rather offhand, or more correctly speaking, this playful manner, whose manifestations sometimes surprised her grandmother, though they rarely shocked her. I who hold in equal abhorrence insipid or hypo-critical goody-goodies and brazen coquettes, had been attracted by this frank ingenuity, this assurance which was quite innocent of all effrontery. Our friendship had been formed on the tennis court. Jeannine, who was nimble and skilful and keen, was delighted to find a worthy opponent. She challenged me anew every morning. She fought obstinately and was annoyed if I paid her compliments. In the afternoon we went for walks, chaperoned by Madame Landry, or the little brother, and in the evening we both enjoyed our interminable discussions on the terrace where sweet-scented breezes blew. The grandmother only put in an occasional word from her arm-chair, a little way off. Jeannine willingly avoided topical futilities. Literature, painting, music, or even politics—why not?—the occult sciences—a fruitful subject of conversation when the mysterious night is falling—she broached them all quite fearlessly. I have always had a taste for riding headlong through these preserves of metaphysics or ethics. Philosophers only venture there too gingerly, unravelling the thread of a theory. The most delightful recreation is to disport oneself there as if in conquered territory, to breast at a gallop some hilltop or other, where one breathes in draughts of pure air, whence one may cast a bold eye on life. Jeannine was not at all apprehensive of these giddy escapades.
