Читать книгу And Five Were Foolish онлайн

66 страница из 67

“Of course.”

“Well, then, Madame, he is safe. No news is good news. You would have heard, certainly. There is no doubt about it. Calm yourself, Madame. He will come back.”

But Lacaze did not come.

Again, in June, she went to the War Office.

She saw the same clerk. He asked the same questions, shrugged the same shoulders, gave her the same reply....

That Autumn her orders fell off. People, I suppose, were beginning to sew for themselves. Madeleine could hardly find work for two days a week. The Marats—the people she lodged with—saw what was coming, and, meeting her trouble half-way, diverted it from their path. In a word, they gave her notice. This, thanks to their foresight, they were able to do without any compunction at all. It would not have been nice to turn out a soldier’s wife—possibly ‘relict’—because she could not pay her way. As it was, they could look the world in the face. They did so defiantly. They also cancelled, with sighs, their subscription to an orphanage on the ground that they had lost a valuable paying guest.....