All at once, without warning, Maxime came home for a week’s leave. He stopped on the stairs, for though he seemed more robust than formerly, his legs felt heavy, and he was soon tired. He waited a moment to breathe, for he was moved, and then went up. His mother came to the door at his ring, screaming at the sight of him. Clerambault who was pacing up and down the apartment in the weariness of the long waiting, cried out too as he ran. It was a tremendous row.
After a few minutes there was a truce to embraces and inarticulate exclamations. Pushed into a chair by the window with his face to the light, Maxime gave himself up to their delighted eyes. They were in ecstasies over his complexion, his cheeks more filled out, his healthy look. His father threw his arms around him calling him “My Hero”—but Maxime sat with his fingers twitching nervously, and could not get out a word.
At table they feasted their eyes on him, hung on every word, but he said very little. The excitement of his family had checked his first impetus, but luckily they did not notice it, and attributed his silence to fatigue or to hunger. Clerambault talked enough for two; telling Maxime about life in the trenches. Good mother Pauline was transformed into a Cornelia, out of Plutarch, and Maxime looked at them, ate, looked again. … A gulf had opened between them.
When after dinner they all went back to his father’s study, and they saw him comfortably established with a cigar, he had to try and satisfy these poor waiting people. So he quietly began to tell them how his time was passed, with a certain proud reserve and leaving out tragical pictures. They listened in trembling expectation, and when he had finished they were still expectant. Then on their side came a shower of questions, to which Maxime’s replies were short—soon he fell silent. Clerambault to wake up the “young rascal” tried several jovial thrusts.
“Come now, tell us about some of your engagements. … It must be fine to see such joy, such sacred fire—Lord, but I would like to see all that, I would like to be in your place.”
“You can see all these fine things better from where you are,” said Maxime. Since he had been in the trenches he had not seen a fight, hardly set eyes on a German, his view was bounded by mud and water—but they would not believe him, they thought he was talking “contrariwise” as he did when he was a child.
“You old humbug,” said his father, laughing gaily, “What does happen then all day long in your trenches?”
“We take care of ourselves; kill time, the worst enemy of all.”
Clerambault slapped him amicably on the back.
“Time is not the only one you kill?”—Maxime drew away, saw the kind, curious glances of his father and mother, and answered:
“Please talk of something else,” and added after a pause:
“Will you do something for me?—don’t ask me any more questions today.”
They agreed rather surprised, but they supposed that he needed care, being so tired, and they overwhelmed him with attentions. Clerambault, however, could not refrain from breaking out every minute or two in apostrophes, demanding his son’s approbation. His speeches resounded with the word “Liberty.” Maxime smiled faintly and looked at Rosine, for the attitude of the young girl was singular. When her brother came in she threw her arms round his neck, but since she had kept in the background, one might have said aloof. She had taken no part in her parents’ questions, and far from inviting confidence from Maxime she seemed to shrink from it. He felt the same awkwardness, and avoided being alone with her. But still they had never felt closer to each other in spirit, they could not have borne to say why.
Maxime had to be shown to all the neighbours, and by way of amusement he was taken out for a walk. In spite of her mourning, Paris again wore a smiling face; poverty and pain were hidden at home, or at the bottom of her proud heart; but the perpetual Fair in the streets and in the press showed its mask of contentment.
The people in the cafés and the tearooms were ready to hold out for twenty years, if necessary. Maxime and his family sat in a teashop at a little table, gay chatter and the perfume of women all about him. Through it he saw the trench where he had been bombarded for twenty-six days on end, unable to stir from the sticky ditch full of corpses which rose around him like a wall. … His mother laid her hand on his, he woke, saw the affectionate questioning glances of his people, and self-reproached for making them uneasy, he smiled and began to look about and talk gaily. His boyish high spirits came back, and the shadow cleared away from Clerambault’s face; he glanced simply and gratefully at Maxime.
His alarms were not at an end, however. As they left the teashop—he leaning on the arm of his son—they met a military funeral. There were wreaths and uniforms, a member of the Institute with his sword between his legs, and brass instruments braying out an heroic lamentation.
The crowd drew respectfully to either side, Clerambault stopped and pointedly took off his hat, while with his left hand he pressed Maxime’s arm yet closer to his side. Feeling him tremble, he turned towards his son, and thought he had a strange look. Supposing that he was overcome he tried to draw him away, but Maxime did not stir, he was so much taken aback.
“A dead man,” he thought. “All that for one dead man! … and out there we walk over them. Five hundred a day on the roll, that’s the normal ration.”
Hearing a sneering little laugh, Clerambault was frightened and pulled him by the arm.
“Come away!” he said, and they moved on.
“If they could see,” said Maxime to himself, “if they could only see! … their whole society would go to pieces, … but they will always be blind, they do not want to see …”
His eyes, cruelly sharpened now, saw the adversary all around him—in the carelessness of the world, its stupidity, its egotism, its luxury, in the “I don’t give a damn!”, the indecent profits of the war, the enjoyment of it, the falseness down to the roots. … All these sheltered people, shirkers, police, with their insolent autos that looked like cannon, their women booted to the knee, with scarlet mouths, and cruel little candy faces … they are all satisfied … all is for the best! … “It will go on forever as it is!” Half the world devouring the other half. …
They went home. In the evening after dinner Clerambault was dying to read his latest poem to Maxime. The idea of it was touching, if a little absurd.—In his love for his son, he sought to be in spirit, at least, the comrade of his glory and his sufferings, and he had described them—at a distance—in “Dawn in the Trenches.” Twice he got up to look for the MS., but with the sheets in his hand a sort of shyness paralysed him, and he went back without them.
As the days went by they felt themselves closely knit together by ties of the flesh, but their souls were out of touch. Neither would admit it though each knew it well.
A sadness was between them, but they refused to see the real cause, and preferred to ascribe it to the approaching reparation. From time to time the father or the mother made a fresh attempt to reopen the sources of intimacy, but each time came the same disappointment. Maxime saw that he had no longer any way of communicating with them, with anyone in the rear. They lived in different worlds … could they ever understand each other again? … Yet still he understood them, for once he had himself undergone the influence which weighed on them, and had only come to his senses “out there,” in contact with real suffering and death. But just because he had been touched himself, he knew the impossibility of curing the others by process of reasoning; so he let them talk, silent himself, smiling vaguely, assenting to he knew not what. The preoccupations here behind the lines filled him with disgust, weariness, and a profound pity for these people in the rear—a strange race to him, with the outcries of the papers, questions from such persons—old buffoons, worn-out, damaged politicians!—patriotic braggings, written-up strategies, anxieties about black bread, sugar cards, or the days when the confectioners were shut. He took refuge in a mysterious silence, smiling and sad; and only went out occasionally, when he thought of the short time he had to be with these dear people who loved him. Then he would begin to talk with the utmost animation about anything. The important thing was to make a noise, since one could no longer speak one’s real thoughts, and naturally he fell back on everyday matters. Questions of general interest and political news came first, but they might as well have read the morning paper aloud. “The Crushing of the Huns,” “The Triumph of the Right,” filled Clerambault’s thoughts and speeches, while he served as acolyte, and filled in the pauses with cum spiritu tuo. All the time each was waiting for the other to begin to talk.
They waited so long that the end of his leave came. A little while before he went, Maxime came into his father’s study resolved to explain himself:
“Papa, are you quite sure?” …
The trouble painted on Clerambault’s face checked the words on his lips. He had pity on him and asked if his father was quite sure at what time the train was to leave and Clerambault heard the end of the question with an only too visible relief. When he had supplied all the information—that Maxime did not listen to—he mounted his oratorical hobbyhorse again and started out with one of his habitual idealistic declamations. Maxime held his peace, discouraged, and for the last hour they spoke only of trifles. All but the mother felt that the essential had not been uttered; only light and confident words, an apparent excitement, but a deep sigh in the heart—“My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken us?”
When Maxime left he was really glad to go back to the front. The gulf that he had found between the front and rear seemed to him deeper than the trenches, and guns did not appear to him as murderous as ideas.
As the railway carriage drew out of the station he leaned from the window and followed with his eyes the tearful faces of his family fading in the distance, and he thought:
“Poor dears, you are their victims and we are yours.”