They didn’t quite know what to say; so they sat still awhile,
looking pretty vacant. Then old D’Arc said:
“Yes, your mother–that is true. I never saw such a woman. She
worries, and worries, and worries; and wakes nights, and lies so,
thinking–that is, worrying; worrying about you. And when the
night storms go raging along, she moans and says, ‘Ah, God pity
her, she is out in this with her poor wet sodliers.’ And when the
lightning glares and the thunder crashes she wrings her hands and
trembles, saying, ‘It is like the awful cannon and the flash, and
yonder somewhere she is riding down upon the spouting guns and I
not there to protect her.”
“Ah, poor mother, it is pity, it is pity!”
“Yes, a most strange woman, as I have noticed a many times.
When there is news of a victory and all the village goes mad with
pride and joy, she rushes here and there in a maniacal frenzy till
she finds out the one only thing she cares to know–that you are
safe; then down she goes on her knees in the dirt and praises God
as long as there is any breath left in her body; and all on your
account, for she never mentions the battle once. And always she
says, ‘Now it is over–now France is saved–now she will come
home’–and always is disappointed and goes about mourning.”
“Don’t, father! it breaks my heart. I will be so good to her when I
get home. I will do her work for her, and be her comfort, and she
shall not suffer any more through me.”
There was some more talk of this sort, then Uncle Laxart said:
“You have done the will of God, dear, and are quits; it is true, and
none may deny it; but what of the King? You are his best soldier;
what if he command you to stay?”
That was a crusher–and sudden! It took Joan a moment or two to
recover from the shock of it; then she said, quite simply and
resignedly:
“The King is my Lord; I am his servant.” She was silent and
thoughtful a little while, then she brightened up and said, cheerily,
“But let us drive such thoughts away–this is no time for them. Tell
me about home.”
So the two old gossips talked and talked; talked about everything
and everybody in the village; and it was good to hear. Joan out of
her kindness tried to get us into the conversation, but that failed, of
course. She was the Commander-in-Chief, we were nobodies; her
name was the mightiest in France, we were invisible atoms; she
was the comrade of princes and heroes, we of the humble and
obscure; she held rank above all Personages and all Puissances
whatsoever in the whole earth, by right of baring her commission
direct from God. To put it in one word, she was JOAN OF
ARC–and when that is said, all is said. To us she was divine.
Between her and us lay the bridgeless abyss which that word
implies. We could not be familiar with her. No, you can see
yourselves that that would have been impossible.
And yet she was so human, too, and so good and kind and dear and
loving and cheery and charming and unspoiled and unaffected!
Those are all the words I think of now, but they are not enough;
no, they are too few and colorless and meager to tell it all, or tell
the half. Those simple old men didn’t realize her; they couldn’t;
they had never known any people but human beings, and so they
had no other standard to measure her by. To them, after their first
little shyness had worn off, she was just a girl–that was all. It was
amazing. It made one shiver, sometimes, to see how calm and easy
and comfortable they were in her presence, and hear them talk to
her exactly as they would have talked to any other girl in France.
Why, that simple old Laxart sat up there and droned out the most
tedious and empty tale one ever heard, and neither he nor Papa
D’Arc ever gave a thought to the badness of the etiquette of it, or