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Page 5
"What--her husband?" cried everybody.
"The same," answered Madame Marcot. "He was a spectacle. He had lost
an arm; his clothing was in tatters, and he was as thin as a skeleton.
But it was Monsieur de Blanchet all the same."
"What had happened?" we shrieked in chorus.
"What has happened more than once in the course of this War. He had
been taken prisoner, had been unable to communicate and at last, after
many marvellous adventures, had succeeded in escaping."
"But the other?" we cried.
"Ah, now we come to the really desolating part of the affair," said
Madame Marcot. "The corpse in M. de Blanchets clothing, what was he
but a villainous Boche--stout, as is the way of these messieurs--who
had appropriated the clothes of the unfortunate prisoner, uniform,
badges, disc and all, in order, no doubt, to get into our lines and
play the spy. Happily a shell put an end to his activities; but by the
grossest piece of ill-luck it made him completely unrecognisable, so
that Madame de Blanchet, as well as the officers who identified him,
were naturally led into the mistake of thinking him a good Frenchman,
fallen in the exercise of his duty."
"What happiness to see him back!" I remarked.
"I believe you," said Madame Marcot, "and touching was the joy of M.
de Blanchet too, until he observed her mourning. He was then inclined
to be slightly hurt at her taking his death so readily for granted.
However, she soon explained the case; but, when he heard that a
nameless member of the unspeakable race was occupying the place in the
family vault that he had been reserving for himself for years past at
considerable cost, he became exceedingly annoyed; and when, through
the medium of his relations, he learned of the first-class funeral,
and of the oak coffin studded with silver, and the expensive full
choral mass, and the requiem specially written for the occasion, and
the marble monument, his wrath was such that in pre-war days,
and before he had undergone the reducing influence of the German
hunger-diet, he would certainly have had an apoplectic seizure. To a
man of his economical turn of mind it was naturally enraging. But the
thing that put the climax on his exasperation was the bas-relief of
his wife, 'ridiculously svelte' as he remarked, shedding tears over
the ashes of a wretched Boche.
"The situation for him and for the family generally," concluded
Madame Marcot, "is, as you will readily conceive, one of extreme
unpleasantness and delicacy. The cost of exhuming the Hun, after the
really outrageous expense of his interment, is one that a thrifty man
like M. de Blanchet must naturally shrink from; indeed he assures me
that his pocket simply does not permit of it.
"In the meantime he can never go to lay a wreath upon the tombs of his
sainted father and mother, or pass through the cemetery on his way to
mass (he is a good Catholic), without being reminded of the miserable
interloper and all the circumstances of his magnificent first-class
funeral. Hence he is a man with a grievance--an undying grievance,
I may say--for he is practically certain to have a ghost hereafter
haunting the spot that ought to be its resting-place but isn't. Still,
it is _chic_ to have a ghost in the family. The de Blanchets will be
more distinguished than ever."
* * * * *
[Illustration: "'OW'S YOUR SON GETTIN' ON IN THE ARMY, MRS. PODDISH?"
"FINE, THANKEE. THEY'VE MADE 'IM A COLONEL."
"OH, COME----"
"CAPTAIN, THEN."
"GO ON. YOU MEAN CORPORAL, P'RAPS."
"WELL, 'AVE IT THAT WAY IF YOU LIKE. I KNOW IT BEGAN WITH A 'K.'"]
* * * * *
LIFTING AND UPLIFTING.
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