The Happy Foreigner | Page 6

Frenchmen, the scream of a nigger, the twittering surprise
of a Chinese scavenger.
Yet she was glad to have come, for half the world was here. There
could have been nothing like it since the Tower of Babel. The country
around her was a vast tract of men sick with longing for the four
corners of the earth.
"Have you got to be here?" asked an American.
"No, I wanted to come."
The eye of the American said "Fool!"
"Are you paid to come here?" asked a Frenchman.
"No. In a sense, I pay to come." The eye of the Frenchman said,
"Englishwoman!"
Each day she drove in a wash of rain. Each night she returned long after
dark, and putting her car in the garage, felt her way up the inky road by
the rushing of the river at its edge, crossed the wooden bridge, and

entered the cell which she tried to make her personal haven.
But if personal, it was the personality of a dog; it had the character of a
kennel. She had brought no furnishings with her from England; she
could buy nothing in the town. The wooden floor was swamped by the
rain which blew through the window; the paper on the walls was torn
by rats; tarry drops from the roof had fallen upon her unmade bed.
The sight of this bed caused her a nightly dismay. "Oh, if I could but
make it in the morning how different this room would look!"
There would be no one in the sitting-room, but a tin would stand on the
stove with one, two, or three pieces of meat in it. By this she knew
whether the cubicles were full or if one or two were empty. Sometimes
the coffee jug would rise too lightly from the floor as she lifted it, and
in an angry voice she would call through the hut: "There is no coffee!"
Silence, silence; till a voice, goaded by the silence, cried: "Ask
Madeleine!"
And Madeleine, the little maid, had long since gone over to laugh with
the men in the garage.
Then came the owners of the second and third piece of meat, stumbling
across the bridge and up the corridor, lantern in hand. And Fanny,
perhaps remembering a treasure left in her car, would rise, leave them
to eat, feel her way to the garage, and back again to the safety of her
room with a tin of sweetened condensed milk under her arm. So low in
comfort had she sunk it needed but this to make her happy. She had
never known so sharp, so sweet a sense of luxury as that with which
she prepared the delicacy she had seized by her own cunning. It had not
taken her long to learn the possibilities of the American Y.M.C.A., the
branch in Bar, or any other which she might pass in her travels.
Shameless she was as she leant upon the counter in some distant village,
cajoling, persuading, spinning some tale of want and necessity more
picturesque, though no less actual, than her own. Secret, too, lest one of
her companions, over-eager, should spoil her hunting ground.

Sitting with her leather coat over her shoulders, happy in her solitude,
she would drink the cup of Benger's Food which she had made from the
milk, and when it was finished, slide lower among the rugs, put out the
lights, and listen to the rustle of the rats in the wall.
"Mary Bell is getting married," said a clear voice in the hut.
"To the Wykely boy?" answered a second voice, and in a sudden need
of sound the two voices talked on, while the six listeners upon their
stretchers saw in the dark the life and happiness of Mary Bell blossom
before them, unknown and bright.
The alarm clock went off with a scream at five.
"Why, I've hardly been asleep!" sighed Fanny, bewildered, and, getting
up, she lit the lamp and made her coffee. Again there was not time to
make the bed. Though fresh to the work she believed that she had been
there for ever, yet the women with whom she shared her life had driven
the roads of the Meuse district for months before she came to them, and
their eyes were dim with peering into the dark nights, and they were
tired past any sense of adventure, past any wish or power to better their
condition.
On and on and on rolled the days, and though one might add them
together and make them seven, they never made Sunday. For there is
no Sunday in the French Army, there is no bell at which tools are laid
aside, and not even the night is sacred.
On and on rolled the weeks, and the weeks made