CHAPTER VICarrier Pigeons
BEHIND the officers’ house was a carefully tended little home garden. There were no flowers, except a few perennials, blooming on unconscious of the war which for the past three years had been destroying the land that nourished them.
But between the rows of feathery carrots and the stiff spikes of onions, a girl was kneeling.
She looked up in surprise at the approach of so large a number of people, then smiled in response to Eugenia’s greeting, although she did not rise immediately.
She wore a smock of a coarse blue material, covering her from her throat to her ankles. Her head was bare and she seemed to have the very blackest hair one could imagine and her eyes were equally so. Her face, however, was tanned, and was a little worn and sad. But seated on her head andshoulders and hovering everywhere about her, were a flock of pigeons, fluttering and talking apparently to themselves and to her.
Close behind the garden was the pigeon house, set high up and painted gray, with bright blue lines about the small windows. From the inside came the cooing and mourning, the sounds of the most delicate and romantic of love murmurings, as well as the noises necessary to the smoothing of small, new famines. But the sounds were unmistakable; there are no others like those of a dove cote.
A little farther to one slide stood a small house, which could hardly contain more than two rooms.
Coming out of the front door, attracted by the footsteps of so many visitors, was Madame Bonnèt. She was not young or graceful like her daughter, Berthe, yet the greater number of the girls found their eyes turning admiringly toward the older woman. Without immediately knowing why, they recognized her attraction. But this was because Madame Bonnèt typified so muchthat is finest and strongest in the French national life.
She was large, with a deep bosom and broad shoulders, but with narrow hips. She had dark hair, black almost as Berthe’s and as free from gray; her skin was as smooth and clear one might say as satin, but there was a softness and a fragrance to Madame’s skin that no satin ever had.
She wore a mourning dress, but with a wide white apron over it and a white collar about her full throat.
Smiling a welcome to her unknown guests, Madame Bonnèt opened her arms to Eugenia Castaigne and Eugenia kissed her as no one had ever seen her do to anyone else.
Their display of affection was perfectly simple and natural and of course over in a moment. However, Mildred and Barbara and Nona, Eugenia’s old friends, who had been with her at the time of her marriage, understood that there was some close bond between the two women, the one who had lost her husband, the other whose position was perhaps worse, since she did not know what fate had come to hers.
“I nursed Madame Bonnèt’s son. Her husband, who was an officer, and one son have been killed since the war began; the other is at Verdun,” Eugenia whispered quietly to Nona, while Madame Bonnèt was shaking hands with Mildred Thornton and while Barbara and Mollie and Agatha were waiting to speak to her. Eugenia spoke as if she were making a perfectly ordinary statement.
“She and her husband were raising carrier pigeons more as an amusement than for any other reason when the present war broke out,” Eugenia continued. “They immediately sent all they had to the French government and the government has been using them for their messengers, when all their wonderful telephone and telegraph systems break down, as they do now and then. But I am going to ask Madame Bonnèt to talk to you. It is fascinating to learn what part carrier pigeons can play in war.”
Madame Bonnèt was now walking toward the dove cote with her visitors.
A few moments before she had picked upa large platter of corn, which the American soldier had afterwards taken from her. At present he was walking in front of the little procession and evidently he and Madame Bonnèt were great friends, since he was looking back over his shoulder and telling her of his recent domestic rescue.
And Madame Bonnèt was laughing and shaking her head.
“It is all right so long as Lieutenant Martin does not find you out.”
“Oh, Martin is a martinet,” Guy Ellis returned. “Yet even Martin should feel honored by Mrs. Thornton and Miss Drew’s attention. However, the favor was done for me, wasn’t it, Miss Drew?”
At this moment the young man’s expression changed rather oddly from its gay look to one that was almost sullen. Yet his hand went up to his forehead in a military salute. He had just seen the officer, whom they had been discussing, walking along the same path in their direction with Lieutenant Hugh Kelley.
But no one else had observed them. For at this instant Madame Bonnèt had comeclose up to her dove cote and having taken the bowl of corn into her own hands, held it up for a moment, as if before feeding her flock she were invoking a blessing from the sun.
The pigeons must have been accustomed to this. For they came out of their house and ranged themselves in a long, fluttering row on the eaves. But although they moved impatiently, they did not at once fly down.
The birds were of several colors, white and black and a soft gray, yet the larger number were iridescent, shining like bright jewels under water. The girls discovered that carrier pigeons are a little larger than ordinary ones, with long wings reaching to the end of their tails.
Then, at a little signal from Madame Bonnèt, they came, enfolding her in a moving cloud, setting on the edge of the bowl, eating the corn from her hand. Yet the most of them were on the ground where she scattered handfuls of grain.
The group of Red Cross girls were fascinated, but Nona Davis particularly so.
Leaving Eugenia, she slipped over and stood next Madame.
“I wonder if you will do me a favor? Allow me to come over some morning and take your picture here with your pigeons? I have a friend in New York whom I should so like to have see it.”
Madame Bonnèt smiled and then shook her head.
“You can have my picture at any time you like, so far as I am concerned, my dear. But you see, my house has been given up to the army and several of the officers are quartered here. I am afraid Lieutenant Martin would object to photographs of any part of the encampment. We are having to be so careful that the enemy does not discover where the camp is located and there is always the danger from spies.”
Nona flushed. She was glad that no one except Madame Bonnèt had heard her request.
“Of course. I should have thought of that. One would suppose I was a novice and knew nothing of military requirements, when I have been nursing since the beginningof the war. But tell, me, please, are the carrier pigeons ever used to carry messages of importance? I have heard of their being used and yet it seems almost absurd in a war of such amazing scientific inventions that one should employ such a messenger.”
Madame Bonnèt shrugged her shoulders in French fashion.
“Child, this is a war of both little things and great. Nothing is too simple, nothing too wonderful to have its use. I can only hope my birds are of some service; what messages they bear I am, of course, not told. Yet they must be of some value, since the French government has been able to employ all I could furnish them. It is more difficult to train the young birds now. One takes them away from home for a short distance when they are young, then the distance becomes greater, a hundred miles, five hundred, sometimes six hundred. In the Franco-Prussian war, when my beloved city of Paris was besieged, the carrier pigeons kept Paris always in touch with the outside world. That shall not happen again. Pariswill not be besieged, and yet who can say what service my pets may not give?”
Nona held out her hand. “How interesting, Madame Bonnèt! Do you think one of them will come to me?”
Madame Bonnèt slipped a grain of corn in Nona’s outstretched palm as she stood waiting. She was not in her nurse’s uniform, but wore a simple white dress and a moment before had taken off her hat. She looked very young and slender and picturesque in contrast with Madame Bonnèt’s size and her mourning.
A particularly lovely gray pigeon with delicate lavender shades of color in her full throat had for several moments been hovering about Nona, coquetting with her.
Now, at her invitation, the pigeon rose and flew off, then returned and for a breathless instant settled in Nona’s hand.
Madame Bonnèt reached over and lifted it up.
“My pigeons rarely do that for anyone except my daughter or me. So I mean to name this one for you. Will you tell me your name again? I do not think I heard, there were so many ones.”
Madame Bonnèt was speaking in French, but Nona understood her without difficulty. Madame Bonnèt seemed to be able to understand English, but not to use it fluently.
Nona repeated her name. Then slipping her hand into her pocket she drew out a little purse and opened it.
“I have been carrying around a little gold luck piece someone gave me as a child. May I tie it around my pigeon, so if we ever meet again I may recognize her as my namesake?”
Then Nona felt embarrassed by her own sentimentality. She had thought no one was paying attention to her except Madame Bonnèt, and here were the two young American officers whom they had met upon their railway journey through France, waiting to speak to their hostess. Evidently they had been quartered in Madame Bonnèt’s home.
Candidly, Nona did not like Lieutenant Martin and had never liked him in their slight acquaintance as boy and girl.
Yet these repeated meetings with persons whom one does not expect to see again are always taking place.
Madame Bonnèt shook hands with the two young officers. One could see how much they both admired the fine French woman.
“I am told Lieutenant Martin is a wireless expert, so he is probably scornful of my carrier pigeons,” Madame Bonnèt said good naturedly. “You see, he represents the newest, while my pigeons represent the oldest method of communication in war. Pigeons were used by the Saracens in the first crusade. Nevertheless, Lieutenant Martin, when you leave for the front, I intend to make you a present of one of my old-fashioned messengers. It would be strange if you should find my gift useful.”
To Nona’s surprise Lieutenant Martin said quickly:
“Then may I have the pigeon I just overheard you naming for Miss Davis?”
And Madame Bonnèt laughed and agreed.