22 
LAND & WATER 
Her Dead 
By Marie Louise van Saanen 
November i6, 1916 
H 
FR name was Marie Soleil. She lived in a tiny 
room that smelt of faded things. She had lived 
there neatly and uncomplainingly for fifteen \e,irs. 
No one had ever minded what became of her. >lie 
eked out u timid, honest and spiritless existence by fabricating 
paper flowers. Indeed she looked like a wilted pink fli^wer 
that has lain too long without care. Yet loveless and un- 
graceful. Marie Soleil guarded, tucked in a secret sanctuary 
of imigination, wistful tendencies towards romance and 
adventure. ^ 
When she was loneliest, she would stand and stare out of 
the narrow window which seemed to be merely basti'd in 
the slanting roof of the old house. She stared with 
dull small eyes wondering at the decomposed stridences 
of the city. Fragments of inconsequent sound mounted 
reiterating notes and themes, as if instruments of a 
vast orchestra were tuning tirelessly while waiting signal 
for a concerted harmony which never came. In certain moods 
of Paris, through blue haze, the houses grinning and blinking 
like linked files of monsters in grotesque hats, with chimneys 
as p umes, seemed poised for the figures of a quadrille. 
She -thought they leered and winked at her, inviting her to 
the dance. Often she shook her head at them. But they 
were friendlier than the strangers, who with averted faces 
hurried over the cool slate-coloured streets. She had never 
solved the tricks of relationship or gained by eloquent personal 
appeal any human recognition of value. She coimted nods 
and casual words, the sum due her of sociability. 
Now while she made paper flowers for a living and stared 
out of the window, nations intrigued, combined and decided 
momentous affairs. Then one day there was war. Where- 
upon preconceived attitudes and complacencies scattered 
like chaff in a cyclone, and the people of many nations were 
thrust suddenly into conscious forms of pain and violence. 
Men leagued in armies strove by destroying to survive. 
Problems of families, homes, affairs of individuals vanished 
beneath the trampling tramping obedient masses moved 
onwards with clock of machinery by calculating governments. 
Marie Soleil stopped making paper flowers, since she could 
no longer sell them. With this brusque cessation of livelihood, 
she joined dismayed throngs, entered the vortex of taxed 
responsibility and became a quickened nerve in a responsive 
population. Only no one had time to notice her readiness to 
play her part. 
In vain she pinned a penny tricoloured badge of France 
upon her shabby coat, and mingled wistfully with febrile 
crowds. In vain she circled discursive groups, listening to 
loud opinions, nodding approval or sighing in gentle echo of 
public sentiment. Since she had sent no man away to die, 
her^veeping could only water other graves and there were 
already enough tears for those. 
Wherever she went, through the tiny street which had 
known her for fifteen years, in the expectant city among the 
hushed black browed women who clung together sharing 
fears and pride, she could only touch the rim of their anguish. 
And when she ventured to intrude upon their banded talk 
with halting phrase of comfort, they would first turn eagerly 
to her, question her authority, then shake their heads and 
murmur : " It is easy to talk. Mademoiselle but 
it is never the same when you have no one out there. . . ." 
The concierge, a stout voluble guardian of the old house, 
assembled daily a round of cronies in her gloomy den at the 
foot of the stairs. The place smelt of chicory and lard, and 
shadows lay stuffily over her Xorman bed, red-covered table 
andj|citchen chairs. But on the mantel-piece in antiquated 
franves stood a male generation of her family, all in uniform. 
She had a brother in the trenches, a nephew had already been 
wounded. Now to the clack of tongues, the concierge direc- 
ted importantly the confection of socks and scarves for " our 
ones." Marie Soleil envied these women their knitting. She 
knew that in all the city women were bending over needles 
and wool. But she had not money enough to buy wool nor 
indeed anyone to knit for. Everywhere she applied for 
work, they explained to her in set phrase that they had no 
need of extra good will, or that she would have to supply her 
own materials, or that they only accepted members of such 
and such a society. So she would steal back to her little 
room, rebuffed and ashamed of her enforced inactivity, and 
wonder more than ever why in the pulsing tragic events of 
the day she had no place. 
She grew thinner and more subdued. Her sa.vings came 
to a frail showing. Winter threatened. The acrid fragrance 
of chrysanthemums edged the frosting air. Women knitted 
harder than ever for tiie soldiers in the trenches, who with 
numbed fingers were pulling and pulling at triggers set to 
kill. 
Marie Soleil, driven with the rest into an inclement season, 
tried not to think of herself. 
" They are colder than I could ever be." 
She was too proud to ask for help. Besides first considera- 
tion was due to the women whose men were fighting. She 
could not conceive of armies, battles and ravaged lands, nor 
hear the echo of cannon. She loved the bandaged convales- 
cents, who in faded uniforms passed consciously with glistening 
grateful eyes, glad above all to be still alive. They never 
noticed her. But to her each was a hero, the saviour of her 
country. She worshipped them as a young girl, choosing 
shyly the perfect man, thrones him high above all other men. 
Sometimes her concierge talked to her and gave her news 
of the brother and nephew, adding with a wise nod : 
" You are fortunate to have no one. Mademoiselle. It is 
different . . ." which seemed to Marie Soleil a covert 
reproach. 
Then came the Day of the Dead. The people of the city 
streamed in thick, quiet masses to the cemeteries. They went 
united in cult of souvenir, to visit and flower their dead. It 
was a day of flowers. The tang of wilting chrysanthemums, 
musty whiffs of fading violets, the persuasive fragrance of 
tributes stirred through the cold grey day. Armies of flowers 
walked vividly to chosen graves and knelt refreshingly. 
Assembled families went soberly to cluster around some 
shrine. Tjie restless spirit of battle fields seemed bidden to 
the stone houses of the dead. Beside the carved labelling 
slabs of monuments and crosses, floated intangibly, the name- 
less souls of soldiers, who had travelled far, bidding for per 
manent hospitality. It was as if collected in grave unity 
the mourned military dead of France had given tryst. 
Marie Soleil felt disgraced because she had no one to weep 
for on such a day. However, she put on her rusty black cape 
that hung in meagre folds, her jaded straw hat with a feather 
neatly circling a low brim, and pinning the tricoloured badge 
in bright view, crept forth to join the crowds. Lost, un- 
heeded in the black streams that welled devoutly through 
the city she wandered, eyeing each draped woman wistfully. 
It was a solemn claim to respectability to own a grave. 
At the gates of Pere La Chaise, wedged in the onward crush, 
caught in an embroidered napery of masses that seemed to 
merge into some livid face expressing suitable expectancy, 
she drifted towards the graves. Because the draft of strangers 
was flecked with rich-toned blooms, she bought a two sou 
bunch of violets. They gave her confidence, attached her 
to the day. She held them consciously, inviting the fleet 
compassion of a look or gesture in the throng. She was glad 
that she was dressed in black. No idea of deception troubled 
her naive longing to be kin with those she mourned. A 
gentle readiness to follow them allayed her usual timidity. 
She wandered through the gate, past lined scrutinising 
guardians up the sloping alley. 
The alleys widened quietly, or curved in narrow paths, 
weaving patterns tangled among undusted stones. The 
hill was contemplative, rounded, billowing to greyish green 
distances. Tawny autumn leaves hung massed sumptuously 
by slender golden threads from the trees, and marking the 
hour and season, sailed in meditative solitude to the ground, 
there to be trampled on and crumbled into dust. 
Mary Soleil climbed the hill alone, pretending to hunt her 
path. The passers-by seemed to have relapsed into a normal 
sociable atmosphere, as if once in this city, the mask of cir- 
cumstance might relax without olfending their dead. Besides, 
it was Sunday, their usual day of rest. Marie Soleil crept on 
up the hill. A side-path beckoned to her, and she followed its 
secret shadows. A great longing pervaded her soul. She 
preten led that someone who had cared for her — a soldier, 
perhaps— lay tranquilly awaiting her visit. She dreamed 
that in all this tangled world of living and dead, some right 
of love and memory belonged to her. This garden seemed an 
elysian field wherein rested weary ones. And she was weary ! 
So weary with the burden of her insignificance that she faltered 
and stumbled against a grave. It was a freshly moulded 
grave, hidden at the foot of a dried bush. A homely cross . 
sentinelled its ungarlanded mound. Upon the cross was 
written : " Jean B6ret, Soldier — killed at Charleroi " — the 
date, and that was all. 
Marie Soleil stared down, sweet pity warming her. She 
thought of the soldiers she had seen. They had meant to 
her the army of France. Jean Beret had been one of them 
She thought of the grey ambulances roUing down the vivid 
{Continued on page 24) 
