I had to laugh, as I told him to wait and see how they treated them when war was there; that they probably had not done the thing simply because they never had had the chance.
"Well," he answered, "they'll have to change mightily. Why, our own women would have been uncomfortable and ashamed to see a lot of dirty men stripping and washing down like we have done. You haven't looked as if you minded it a bit, or thought of anything but getting us cleaned up as quick and comfortable as possible."
I started to say that I felt terribly flattered that I had played the role so well, but I knew he would not understand. Besides, I was wondering if it were true. I never knew the English except as individuals, never as a race. So I only laughed, picked up my towels, and went home to rest.
Not long before noon a bicycle scout came over with a message from Captain Edwards, and I sent by him a basket of eggs, a cold chicken, and a bottle of wine as a contribution to the breakfast at the officers' mess; and by the time I had eaten my breakfast, the picket had been changed, and I saw no more of those boys.
During the afternoon the booming off at the east became more distinct. It surely was cannon. I went out to the gate where the corporal of the guard was standing, and asked him, "Do I hear cannon?" "Sure," he replied. "Do you know where it is?" I asked. He said he hadn't an idea—about twenty-five or thirty miles away. And on he marched, up and down the road, perfectly indifferent to it.
When Amelie came to help get tea at the gate, she said that a man from Voisins, who had started with the crowd that left here Wednesday, had returned. He had brought back the news that the sight on the road was simply horrible. The refugies had got so blocked in their hurry that they could move in neither direction; cattle and horses were so tired that they fell by the way; it would take a general to disentangle them. My! wasn't I glad that I had not been tempted to get into that mess!
Just after the boys had finished their tea, Captain Edwards came down the road, swinging my empty basket on his arm, to say "Thanks" for his breakfast. He looked at the table at the gate.
"So the men have been having tea—lucky men—and bottled water! What extravagance!"
"Come in and have some, too," I said.
"Love to," he answered, and in he came.
While I was making the tea he walked about the house, looked at the pictures, examined the books. Just as the table was ready there was a tremendous explosion. He went to the door, looked off, and remarked, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, "Another division across. That should be the last."
"Are all the bridges down?" I asked.
"All, I think, except the big railroad bridge behind you—Chalifert. That will not go until the last minute."
I wanted to ask, "When will it be the 'last minute'—and what does the 'last minute' mean?"—but where was the good? So we went into the dining-room. As he threw his hat on to a chair and sat down with a sigh, he said, "You see before you a very humiliated man. About half an hour ago eight of the Uhlans we are looking for rode right into the street below you, in Voisins. We saw them, but they got away. It is absolutely our own stupidity."
"Well," I explained to him, "I fancy I can tell you where they are hiding. I told Captain Simpson so last night." And I explained to him that horses had been heard in the woods at the foot of the hill since Tuesday; that there was a cart road, rough and winding, running in toward Conde for over two miles; that it was absolutely screened by trees, had plenty of water, and not a house in it,—a shelter for a regiment of cavalry. And I had the impertinence to suggest that if the picket had been extended to the road below it would have been impossible for the Germans to have got into Voisins.
"Not enough of us," he replied. "We are guarding a wide territory, and cannot put our pickets out of sight of one another." Then he explained that, as far as he knew from his aeroplane men, the detachment had broken up since it was first discovered on this side of the Marne. It was reported that there were only about twenty-four in this vicinity; that they were believed to be without ammunition; and then he dropped the subject, and I did not bother him with questions that were bristling in my mind.
He told me how sad it was to see the ruin of the beautiful country through which they had passed, and what a mistake it had been from his point of view not to have foreseen the methods of Germans and drummed out all the towns through which the armies had passed. He told me one or two touching and interesting stories. One was of the day before a battle, I think it was Saint-Quentin. The officers had been invited to dine at a pretty chateau near which they had bivouacked. The French family could not do too much for them, and the daughters of the house waited on the table. Almost before the meal was finished the alerte sounded, and the battle was on them. When they retreated by the house where they had been so prettily entertained such a few hours before, there was not one stone standing on another, and what became of the family he had no idea.
The other that I remember was of the way the Germans passed the river at Saint-Quentin and forced the battle at La Fere on them. The bridge was mined, and the captain was standing beside the engineer waiting to give the order to touch off the mine. It was a nasty night—a Sunday (only last Sunday, think of that!)—and the rain was coming down in torrents. Just before the Germans reached the bridge he ordered it blown up. The engineer touched the button. The fuse did not act. He was in despair, but the captain said to him, "Brace up, my lad—give her another chance." The second effort failed like the first. Then, before any one could stop him, the engineer made a dash for the end of the bridge, drawing his revolver as he ran, and fired six shots into the mine, knowing that, if he succeeded, he would go up with the bridge. No good, and he was literally dragged off the spot weeping with rage at his failure—and the Germans came across.
All the time we had been talking I had heard the cannonade in the distance—now at the north and now in the east. This seemed a proper moment, inspired by the fact that he was talking war, of his own initiative, to put a question or two, so I risked it.
"That cannonading seems much nearer than it did this morning," I ventured.
"Possibly," he replied.
"What does that mean?" I persisted.
"Sorry I can't tell you. We men know absolutely nothing. Only three men in this war know anything of its plans,—Kitchener, Joffre, and French. The rest of us obey orders, and know only what we see. Not even a brigade commander is any wiser. Once in a while the colonel makes a remark, but he is never illuminating."
"How much risk am I running by remaining here?"
He looked at me a moment before he asked, "You want to know the truth?"
"Yes," I replied.
"Well, this is the situation as near as I can work it out. We infer from the work we were given to do—destroying bridges, railroads, telegraphic communications—that an effort is to be made here to stop the march on Paris; in fact, that the Germans are not to be allowed to cross the Marne at Meaux, and march on the city by the main road from Rheims to the capital. The communications are all cut. That does not mean that it will be impossible for them to pass; they've got clever engineers. It means that we have impeded them and may stop them. I don't know. Just now your risk is nothing. It will be nothing unless we are ordered to hold this hill, which is the line of march from Meaux to Paris. We have had no such order yet. But if the Germans succeed in taking Meaux and attempt to put their bridges across the Marne, our artillery, behind you there on the top of the hill, must open fire on them over your head. In that case the Germans will surely reply by bombarding this hill." And he drank his tea without looking to see how I took it.
I remember that I was standing opposite him, and I involuntarily leaned against the wall behind me, but suddenly thought, "Be careful. You'll break the glass in the picture of Whistler's Mother, and you'll be sorry." It brought me up standing, and he didn't notice. Isn't the mind a queer thing?
He finished his tea, and rose to go. As he picked up his cap he showed me a hole right through his sleeve—in one side, out the other-and a similar one in his puttee, where the ball had been turned aside by the leather lacing of his boot. He laughed as he said, "Odd how near a chap comes to going out, and yet lives to drink tea with you. Well, good-bye and good luck if I don't see you again."
And off he marched, and I went into the library and sat down and sat very still.
It was not more than half an hour after Captain Edwards left that the corporal came in to ask me if I had a window in the roof. I told him that there was, and he asked if he might go up. I led the way, picking up my glasses as I went. He explained, as we climbed the two flights of stairs, that the aeroplane had reported a part of the Germans they were hunting "not a thousand feet from this house." I opened the skylight. He scanned in every direction. I knew he would not see anything, and he did not. But he seemed to like the view, could command the roads that his posse was guarding, so he sat on the window ledge and talked. The common soldier is far fonder of talking than his officer and apparently he knows more. If he doesn't, he thinks he does. So he explained to me the situation as the "men saw it." I remembered what Captain Edwards had told me, but I listened all the same. He told me that the Germans were advancing in two columns about ten miles apart, flanked in the west by a French division pushing them east, and led by the English drawing them toward the Marne. "You know," he said, "that we are the sacrificed corps, and we have known it from the first—went into the campaign knowing it. We have been fighting a force ten times superior in numbers, and retreating, doing rear-guard action, whether we were really outfought or not—to draw the Germans where Joffre wants them. I reckon we've got them there. It is great strategy-Kitchener's, you know."
Whether any of the corporal's ideas had any relation to facts I shall never know until history tells me, but I can assure you that, as I followed the corporal downstairs, I looked about my house—and, well, I don't deny it, it seemed to me a doomed thing, and I was sorry for it. However, as I let him out into the road again, I pounded into myself lots of things like "It hasn't happened yet"; "Sufficient unto the day"; and, "What isn't to be, won't be"; and found I was quite calm. Luckily I did not have much time to myself, for I had hardly sat down quietly when there was another tap at the door and I opened to find an officer of the bicycle corps standing there.
"Captain Edwards's compliments," he said, "and will you be so kind as to explain to me exactly where you think the Uhlans are hidden?" I told him that if he would come down the road a little way with me I would show him.
"Wait a moment," he said, holding the door. "You are not afraid?" I told him that I was not.
"My orders are not to expose you uselessly. Wait there a minute."
He stepped back into the garden, gave a quick look overhead,—I don't know what for, unless for a Taube. Then he said, "Now, you will please come out into the road and keep close to the bank at the left, in the shadow. I shall walk at the extreme right. As soon as I get where I can see the roads ahead, at the foot of the hill, I shall ask you to stop, and please stop at once. I don't want you to be seen from the road below, in case any one is there. Do you understand ?"
I said I did. So we went into the road and walked silently down the hill. Just before we got to the turn, he motioned me to stop and stood with his map in hand while I explained that he was to cross the road that led into Voisins, take the cart track down the hill past the washhouse on his left, and turn into the wood road on that side. At each indication he said, "I have it." When I had explained, he simply said, "Rough road?"
The House on the Hilltop
I said it was, very, and wet in the dryest weather.
"Wooded all the way?" he asked.
I told him that it was, and, what was more, so winding that you could not see ten feet ahead anywhere between here and Conde.
"Humph," he said. "Perfectly clear, thank you very much. Please wait right there a moment."
He looked up the hill behind him, and made a gesture in the air with his hand above his head. I turned to look up the hill also. I saw the corporal at the gate repeat the gesture; then a big bicycle corps, four abreast, guns on their backs, slid round the corner and came gliding down the hill. There was not a sound, not the rattle of a chain or a pedal.
"Thank you very much," said the captain. "Be so kind as to keep close to the bank."
When I reached my gate I found some of the men of the guard dragging a big, long log down the road, and I watched them while they attached it to a tree at my gate, and swung it across to the opposite side of the road, making in that way a barrier about five feet high. I asked what that was for? "Captain's orders," was the laconic reply. But when it was done the corporal took the trouble to explain that it was a barricade to prevent the Germans from making a dash up the hill.
"However," he added, "don't you get nervous. If we chase them out it will only be a little rifle practice, and I doubt if they even have any ammunition."
As I turned to go into the house, he called after me,—
"See here, I notice that you've got doors on all sides of your house. Better lock all those but this front one."
As all the windows were barred and so could be left open, I didn't mind; so I went in and locked up. The thing was getting to be funny to me,—always doing something, and nothing happening. I suppose courage is a cumulative thing, if only one has time to accumulate, and these boys in khaki treated even the cannonading as if it were all "in the day's work."
It was just dusk when the bicycle corps returned up the hill. They had to dismount and wheel their machines under the barricade, and they did it so prettily, dismounting and remounting with a precision that was neat.
"Nothing," reported the captain. "We could not go in far,—road too rough and too dangerous. It is a cavalry job."
All the same, I am sure the Uhlans are there.
September 8, 1914.
I had gone to bed early on Friday night, and had passed an uneasy night. It was before four when I got up and opened my shutters. It was a lovely day. Perhaps I have told you that the weather all last week was simply perfect.
I went downstairs to get coffee for the picket, but when I got out to the gate there was no picket there. There was the barricade, but the road was empty. I ran up the road to Amelie's. She told me that they had marched away about an hour before. A bicyclist had evidently brought an order. As no one spoke English, no one understood what had really happened. Pere had been to Couilly—they had all left there. So far as any one could discover there was not an English soldier, or any kind of a soldier, left anywhere in the commune.
This was Saturday morning, September 5, and one of the loveliest days I ever saw. The air was clear. The sun was shining.
The birds were singing. But otherwise it was very still. I walked out on the lawn. Little lines of white smoke were rising from a few chimneys at Joncheroy and Voisins. The towns on the plain, from Monthyon and Penchard on the horizon to Mareuil in the valley, stood out clear and distinct. But after three days of activity, three days with the soldiers about, it seemed, for the first time since I came here, lonely; and for the first time I realized that I was actually cut off from the outside world. All the bridges in front of me were gone, and the big bridge behind me. No communication possibly with the north, and none with the south except by road over the hill to Lagny. Esbly evacuated, Couilly evacuated, Quincy evacuated. All the shops closed. No government, no post-office, and absolutely no knowledge of what had happened since Wednesday. I had a horrible sense of isolation.
Luckily for me, part of the morning was killed by what might be called an incident or a disaster or a farce—just as you look at it. First of all, right after breakfast I had the proof that I was right about the Germans. Evidently well informed of the movements of the English, they rode boldly into the open. Luckily they seemed disinclined to do any mischief. Perhaps the place looked too humble to be bothered with. They simply asked—one of them spoke French, and perhaps they all did—where they were, and were told, "Huiry, commune of Quincy." They looked it up on their maps, nodded, and asked if the bridges on the Marne had been destroyed, to which I replied that I did not know,—I had not been down to the river. Half a truth and half a lie, but goodness knows that it was hard enough to have to be polite. They thanked me civilly enough and rode down the hill, as they could not pass the barricade unless they had wished to give an exhibition of "high school." Wherever they had been they had not suffered. Their horses were fine animals, and both horses and men were well groomed and in prime condition.
The other event was distressing, but about that I held my tongue.
Just after the Germans were here, I went down the road to call on my new French friends at the foot of the hill, to hear how they had passed the night, and incidentally to discover if there were any soldiers about. Just in the front of their house I found an English bicycle scout, leaning on his wheel and trying to make himself understood in a one-sided monosyllabic dialogue, with the two girls standing in their window.
I asked him who he was. He showed his papers. They were all right—an Irishman—Ulster—Royal Innisfall Fusiliers—thirteen years in the service.
I asked him if there were any English soldiers left here. He said there was still a bicycle corps of scouts at the foot of the hill, at Couilly. I thought that funny, as Pere had said the town was absolutely deserted. Still, I saw no reason to doubt his word, so when he asked me if I could give him his breakfast, I brought him back to the house, set the table in the arbor, and gave him his coffee and eggs. When he had finished, he showed no inclination to go—said he would rest a bit. As Amelie was in the house, I left him and went back to make the call my encounter with him had interrupted. When I returned an hour later, I found him fast asleep on the bench in the arbor, with the sun shining right on his head. His wheel, with his kit and gun on it was leaning up against the house. It was nearly noon by this time, and hot, and I was afraid he would get a sunstroke; so I waked him and told him that if it was a rest he needed,—and he was free to take it,—he could go into the room at the head of the stairs, where he would find a couch and lie down comfortably. He had sleepily obeyed, and must have just about got to sleep again, when it occurred to me that it was hardly prudent to leave an English bicycle with a khaki-covered kit and a gun on it right on the terrace in plain sight of the road up which the Germans had ridden so short a time before. So I went to the foot of the stairs, called him, and explained that I did not care to touch the wheel on account of the gun, so he had better come down and put it away, which he did. I don't know whether it was my saying "Germans" to him that explained it, but his sleepiness seemed suddenly to have disappeared, so he asked for the chance to wash and shave; and half an hour later he came down all slicked up and spruce, with a very visible intention of paying court to the lady of the house. Irish, you see,—white hairs no obstacle. I could not help laughing. "Hoity-toity," I said to myself, "I am getting all kinds of impressions of the military."
While I was, with amusement, putting up fences, the gardener next door came down the hill in great excitement to tell me that the Germans were on the road above, and were riding down across Pere's farm into a piece of land called "la terre blanche," where Pere had recently been digging out great rocks, making it an ideal place to hide. He knew that there was an English scout in my house and thought I ought to know. I suppose he expected the boy in khaki to grab his gun and capture them all. I thanked him and sent him away. I must say my Irishman did not seem a bit interested in the Germans. His belt and pistol lay on the salon table, where he put them when he came downstairs. He made himself comfortable in an easy chair, and continued to give me another dose of his blarney. I suppose I was getting needlessly nervous. It was really none of my business what he was doing here. Still he was a bit too sans gene.
Finally he began to ask questions. "Was I afraid?" I was not. "Did I live alone?" I did. As soon as I had said it, I thought it was stupid of me, especially as he at once said,—"If you are, yer know, I'll come back here to sleep to-night. I'm perfectly free to come and go as I like,—don't have to report until I 'm ready."
I thought it wise to remind him right here that if his corps was at the foot of the hill, it was wise for him to let his commanding officer know that the Germans, for whom two regiments had been hunting for three days, had come out of hiding. I fancy if I had not taken that tack he'd have settled for the day.
"Put that thing on," I said, pointing to his pistol; "get your wheel out of the barn, and I'll take a look up the road and see that it's clear. I don't care to see you attacked under my eyes."
I knew that there was not the slightest danger of that, but it sounded businesslike. I am afraid he found it so, because he said at once, "Could you give me a drink before I go?"
"Water?" I said.
"No, not that."
I was going to say "no" when it occurred to me that Amelie had told me that she had put a bottle of cider in the buffet, and—well, he was Irish, and I wanted to get rid of him. So I said he could have a glass of cider, and I got the bottle, and a small, deep champagne glass. He uncorked the bottle, filled a brimming glass, recorked the bottle, drank it off, and thanked me more earnestly than cider would have seemed to warrant. While he got his wheel out I went through the form of making sure the road was free. There was no one in sight. So I sent him away with directions for reaching Couilly without going over the part of the hill where the Uhlans had hidden, and drew a sigh of relief when he was off. Hardly fifteen minutes later some one came running up from Voisins to tell me that just round the corner he had slipped off his wheel, almost unconscious,—evidently drunk. I was amazed. He had been absolutely all right when he left me. As no one understood a word he tried to say, there was nothing to do but go and rescue him. But by the time I got to where he had fallen off his wheel, he was gone,—some one had taken him away,—and it was not until later that I knew the truth of the matter, but that must keep until I get to the way of the discovery.
All this excitement kept me from listening too much to the cannon, which had been booming ever since nine o'clock. Amelie had been busy running between her house and mine, but she has, among other big qualities, the blessed habit of taking no notice. I wish it were contagious. She went about her work as if nothing were hanging over us. I walked about the house doing little things aimlessly. I don't believe Amelie shirked a thing. It seemed to me absurd to care whether the dusting were done or not, whether or not the writing-table was in order, or the pictures straight on the wall.
As near as I can remember, it was a little after one o'clock when the cannonading suddenly became much heavier, and I stepped out into the orchard, from which there is a wide view of the plain. I gave one look; then I heard myself say, "Amelie,"—as if she could help,—and I retreated. Amelie rushed by me. I heard her say, "Mon Dieu." I waited, but she did not come back. After a bit I pulled myself together, went out again, and followed down to the hedge where she was standing, looking off to the plain.
The battle had advanced right over the crest of the hill. The sun was shining brilliantly on silent Mareuil and Chauconin, but Monthyon and Penchard were enveloped in smoke. From the eastern and western extremities of the plain we could see the artillery fire, but owing to the smoke hanging over the crest of the hill on the horizon, it was impossible to get an idea of the positions of the armies. In the west it seemed to be somewhere near Claye, and in the east it was in the direction of Barcy. I tried to remember what the English soldiers had said,—that the Germans were, if possible, to be pushed east, in which case the artillery at the west must be either the French of English. The hard thing to bear was, that it was all conjecture.
So often, when I first took this place on the hill, I had looked off at the plain and thought, "What a battlefield!" forgetting how often the Seine et Marne had been that from the days when the kings lived at Chelles down to the days when it saw the worst of the invasion of 1870. But when I thought that, I had visions very different from what I was seeing. I had imagined long lines of marching soldiers, detachments of flying cavalry, like the war pictures at Versailles and Fontainebleau. Now I was actually seeing a battle, and it was nothing like that. There was only noise, belching smoke, and long drifts of white clouds concealing the hill.
By the middle of the afternoon Monthyon came slowly out of the smoke. That seemed to mean that the heaviest firing was over the hill and not on it,—or did it mean that the battle was receding? If it did, then the Allies were retreating. There was no way to discover the truth. And all this time the cannon thundered in the southeast, in the direction of Coulommiers, on the route into Paris by Ivry.
Naturally I could not but remember that we were only seeing the action on the extreme west of a battle-line which probably extended hundreds of miles. I had been told that Joffre had made a frontier of the Marne. But alas, the Meuse had been made a frontier-but the Germans had crossed it, and advanced to here in little less than a fortnight. If that—why not here? It was not encouraging.
A dozen times during the afternoon I went into the study and tried to read. Little groups of old men, women, and children were in the road, mounted on the barricade which the English had left. I could hear the murmur of their voices. In vain I tried to stay indoors. The thing was stronger than I, and in spite of myself, I would go out on the lawn and, field-glass in hand, watch the smoke. To my imagination every shot meant awful slaughter, and between me and the terrible thing stretched a beautiful country, as calm in the sunshine as if horrors were not. In the field below me the wheat was being cut. I remembered vividly afterward that a white horse was drawing the reaper, and women and children were stacking and gleaning. Now and then the horse would stop, and a woman, with her red handkerchief on her head, would stand, shading her eyes a moment, and look off. Then the white horse would turn and go plodding on. The grain had to be got in if the Germans were coming, and these fields were to be trampled as they were in 1870. Talk about the duality of the mind—it is sextuple. I would not dare tell you all that went through mine that long afternoon.
It was just about six o'clock when the first bomb that we could really see came over the hill. The sun was setting. For two hours we saw them rise, descend, explode. Then a little smoke would rise from one hamlet, then from another; then a tiny flame—hardly more than a spark—would be visible; and by dark the whole plain was on fire, lighting up Mareuil in the foreground, silent and untouched. There were long lines of grain-stacks and mills stretching along the plain. One by one they took fire, until, by ten o'clock, they stood like a procession of huge torches across my beloved panorama.
It was midnight when I looked off for the last time. The wind had changed. The fires were still burning. The smoke was drifting toward us—and oh! the odor of it! I hope you will never know what it is like.
I was just going to close up when Amelie came to the door to see if I was all right. My mind was in a sort of riot. It was the suspense—the not knowing the result, or what the next day might bring. You know, I am sure, that physical fear is not one of my characteristics. Fear of Life, dread of Fate, I often have, but not the other. Yet somehow, when I saw Amelie standing there, I felt that I needed the sense of something living near me. So I said, "Amelie, do you want to do me a great service?"
She said she 'd like to try.
"Well, then," I replied, "don't you want to sleep here to-night?"
With her pretty smile, she pulled her nightdress from under her arm: that was what she had come for. So I made her go to bed in the big bed in the guest-chamber, and leave the door wide open; and do you know, she was fast asleep in five minutes, and she snored, and I smiled to hear her, and thought it the most comforting sound I had ever heard.
As for me, I did not sleep a moment. I could not forget the poor fellows lying dead out there in the starlight—and it was such a beautiful night.
September 8, 1914.
It was about my usual time, four o'clock, the next morning,—Sunday, September 6,—that I opened my blinds. Another lovely day. I was dressed and downstairs when, a little before five, the battle recommenced.
I rushed out on the lawn and looked off. It had moved east—behind the hill between me and Meaux. All I could see was the smoke which hung over it. Still it seemed nearer than it had the day before. I had just about room enough in my mind for one idea—"The Germans wish to cross the Marne at Meaux, on the direct route into Paris. They are getting there. In that case to-day will settle our fate. If they reach the Marne, that battery at Coutevroult will come into action,"—that was what Captain Edwards had said,—"and I shall be in a direct line between the two armies."
Amelie got breakfast as if there were no cannon, so I took my coffee, and said nothing. As soon as it was cleared away, I went up into the attic, and quietly packed a tiny square hat-trunk. I was thankful that this year's clothes take up so little room. I put in changes of underwear, stockings, slippers, an extra pair of low-heeled shoes, plenty of handkerchiefs,—just the essentials in the way of toilette stuff,—a few bandages and such emergency things, and had room for two dresses. When it was packed and locked, it was so light that I could easily carry it by its handle on top. I put my long black military cape, which I could carry over my shoulder, on it, with hat and veil and gloves. Then I went down stairs and shortened the skirt of my best walking-suit, an/d hung it and its jacket handy. I was ready to fly,—if I had to,—and in case of that emergency nothing to do for myself.
I had got all this done systematically when my little French friend—I call her Mile. Henriette now—came to the door to say that she simply "could not stand another day of it." She had put, she said, all the ready money they had inside her corset, and a little box which contained all her dead father's decorations also, and she was ready to go. She took out the box and showed the pretty jeweled things,—his cross of the Legion d'Honneur, his Papal decoration, and several foreign orders,—her father, it seems, was an officer in the army, a great friend of the Orleans family, and grandson of an officer of Louis XVI's Imperial Guard. She begged me to join them in an effort to escape to the south. I told her frankly that it seemed to me impossible, and I felt it safer to wait until the English officers at Coutevroult notified us that it was necessary. It would be as easy then as now—and I was sure that it was safer to wait for their advice than to adventure it for ourselves. Besides, I had no intention of leaving my home and all the souvenirs of my life without making every effort I could to save them up to the last moment. In addition to that, I could not see myself joining that throng of homeless refugies on the road, if I could help it.
"But," she insisted, "you cannot save your house by staying. We are in the same position. Our house is full of all the souvenirs of my father's family. It is hard to leave all that—but I am
afraid—terribly afraid for the children."
I could not help asking her how she proposed to get away. So far as I knew there was not a carriage to be had.
She replied that we could start on foot in the direction of Melun, and perhaps find an automobile: we could share the expense. Together we could find a way, and what was more, that I could share my optimism and courage with them and that would help.
That made me laugh, but I didn't think it necessary to explain to her that, once away from the shelter of my own walls, I should be just as liable to a panic as any one else, or that I knew we should not find a conveyance, or, worse still, that her money and her jewels would hardly be safe inside her corset if she were to meet with some of the Uhlans who were still about us.
Amelie had not allowed me to carry a sou on me, nor even my handbag since we knew they were here. Such things as that have been hidden-all ready to be snatched up—ever since I came home from Paris last Wednesday—only four days ago, after all!
Poor Mile. Henriette went away sadly when she was convinced that my mind was made up.
"Good-bye," she called over the hedge. "I seem to be always taking leave of you."
I did not tell Amelie anything about this conversation. What was the good? I fancy it would have made no difference to her. I knew pretty well to what her mind was made up. Nothing in the world would have made Pere budge. He had tried it in 1870, and had been led to the German post with a revolver at his head. He did not have any idea of repeating the experience. It was less than half an hour later that Mile. Henriette came up the hill again. She was between tears and laughter.
"Mother will not go," she said. "She says if you can stay we must. She thinks staying is the least of two evils. We can hide the babies in the cave if necessary, and they may be as safe there as on the road."
I could not help saying that I should be sorry if my decision influenced theirs. I could be responsible for myself. I could not bear to have to feel any responsibility for others in case I was wrong. But she assured me that her mother had been of my opinion from the first. "Only," she added, "if I could have coaxed you to go, she would have gone too."
This decision did not add much to my peace of mind all that long Sunday. It seems impossible that it was only day before yesterday. I think the suspense was harder to bear than that of the day before, though all we could see of the battle were the dense clouds of smoke rising straight into the air behind the green hill under such a blue sky all aglow with sunshine, with the incessant booming of the cannon, which made the contrasts simply monstrous.
I remember that it was about four in the afternoon when I was sitting in the arbor under the crimson rambler, which was a glory of bloom, that Pere came and stood near by on the lawn, looking off. With his hands in the pockets of his blue apron, he stood silent for a long time. Then he said, "Listen to that. They are determined to pass. This is different from 1870. In 1870 the Germans marched through here with their guns on their shoulders. There was no one to oppose them. This time it is different. It was harvest-time that year, and they took everything, and destroyed what they did not take. They bedded their horses in the wheat."
You see Pere's father was in the Franco-Prussian War, and his grandfather was with Napoleon at Moscow, where he had his feet frozen. Pere is over seventy, and his father died at ninety-six. Poor old Pere just hates the war. He is as timid as a bird—can't kill a rabbit for his dinner. But with the queer spirit of the French farmer he has kept right on working as if nothing were going on. All day Saturday and all day Sunday he was busy digging stone to mend the road.
The cannonading ceased a little after six—thirteen hours without intermission. I don't mind confessing to you that I hope the war is not going to give me many more days like that one. I'd rather the battle would come right along and be done with it. The suspense of waiting all day for that battery at Coutevroult to open fire was simply nasty.
I went to bed as ignorant of how the battle had turned as I was the night before. Oddly enough, to my surprise, I slept, and slept well.
September 8, 1914.
I did not wake on the morning of Monday, September 7,—
yesterday,—until I was waked by the cannon at five. I jumped out of bed and rushed to the window. This time there could be no doubt of it: the battle was receding. The cannonading was as violent, as incessant, as it had been the day before, but it was surely farther off—to the northeast of Meaux. It was another beautiful day. I never saw such weather.
Amelie was on the lawn when I came down. "They are surely retreating," she called as soon as I appeared.
"They surely are," I replied. "It looks as if they were somewhere near Lizy-sur-I'Ourcq," and that was a guess of which I was proud a little later. I carry a map around these days as if I were an army officer.
As Amelie had not been for the milk the night before, she started off quite gayly for it. She has to go to the other side of Voisins. It takes her about half an hour to go and return; so—just for the sake of doing something—I thought I would run down the hill and see how Mile. Henriette and the little family had got through the night.
Amelie had taken the road across the fields. It is rough walking, but she doesn't mind. I had stopped to tie a fresh ribbon about my cap,—a tri-color,—and was about five minutes behind her. I was about halfway down the hill when I saw Amelie coming back, running, stumbling, waving her milk-can and shouting, "Madame—un anglais, un anglais." And sure enough, coming on behind her, his face wreathed in smiles, was an English bicycle scout, wheeling his machine. As soon as he saw me, he waved his cap, and Amelie breathlessly explained that she had said, "Dame americaine" and he had dismounted and followed her at once.
We went together to meet him. As soon as he was near enough, he called out, "Good-morning. Everything is all right. Germans been as near you as they will ever get. Close shave."
"Where are they?" I asked as we met.
"Retreating to the northeast—on the Ourcq."
I could have kissed him. Amelie did. She simply threw both arms round his neck and smacked him on both cheeks, and he said, "Thank you, ma'am," quite prettily; and, like the nice clean English boy he was, he blushed.
"You can be perfectly calm," he said. "Look behind you."
I looked, and there along the top of my hill I saw a long line of bicyclists in khaki.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, a little alarmed. For a moment I thought that if the English had returned, something was going to happen right here.
"English scouts," he replied. "Colonel Snow's division, clearing the way for the advance. You've a whole corps of fresh French troops coming out from Paris on one side of you, and the English troops are on their way to Meaux."
"But the bridges are down," I said.
"The pontoons are across. Everything is ready for the advance. I think we've got 'em." And he laughed as if it were all a game of cricket.
By this time we were in the road. I sent Amelie on for the milk. He wheeled his machine up the hill beside me. He asked me if there was anything they could do for me before they moved on. I told him there was nothing unless he could drive out the Uhlans who were hidden near us.
He looked a little surprised, asked a few questions—how long they had been there? where they were? how many? and if I had seen them? and I explained.
"Well," he said, "I'll speak to the colonel about it. Don't you worry. If he has time he may get over to see you, but we are moving pretty fast."
By this time we were at the gate. He stood leaning on his wheel a moment, looking over the hedge.
"Live here with your daughter?" he asked.
I told him that I lived here alone with myself.
"Wasn't that your daughter I met?"
I didn't quite fall through the gate backwards. I am accustomed to saying that I am old. I am not yet accustomed to have people notice it when I do not call their attention to it. Amelie is only ten years younger than I am, but she has got the figure and bearing of a girl. The lad recovered himself at once, and said, "Why, of course not,—she doesn't speak any English." I was glad that he didn't even apologize, for I expect that I look fully a hundred and something. So with a reiterated "Don't worry—you are all safe here now," he mounted his wheel and rode up the hills.
I watched him making good time across to the route to Meaux. Then I came into the house and lay down. I suddenly felt horribly weak. My house had taken on a queer look to me. I suppose I had been, in a sort of subconscious way, sure that it was doomed. As I lay on the couch in the salon and looked round the room, it suddenly appeared to me like a thing I had loved and lost and recovered—resurrected, in fact; a living thing to which a miracle had happened. I even found myself asking, in my innermost soul, what I had done to deserve this fortune. How had it happened, and why, that I had come to perch on this hillside, just to see a battle, and have it come almost to my door, to turn back and leave me and my belongings standing here untouched, as safe as if there were no war,—and so few miles away destruction extending to the frontier.
The sensation was uncanny. Out there in the northeast still boomed the cannon. The smoke of the battle still rose straight in the still air. I had seen the war. I had watched its destructive bombs. For three days its cannon had pounded on every nerve in my body; but none of the horror it had sowed from the eastern frontier of Belgium to within four miles of me, had reached me except in the form of a threat. Yet out there on the plain, almost within my sight, lay the men who had paid with their lives—each dear to some one—to hold back the battle from Paris—and incidentally from me. The relief had its bitterness, I can tell you. I had been prepared to play the whole game. I had not even had the chance to discover whether or not I could. You, who know me fairly well, will see the irony of it. I am eternally hanging round dans les coulisses, I am never in the play. I instinctively thought of Captain Simpson, who had left his brother in the trenches at Saint-Quentin, and still had in him the kindly sympathy that had helped me so much.
When Amelie returned, she said that every one was out at the Demi-Lune to watch the troups going to Meaux, and that the boys in the neighborhood were already swimming the Marne to climb the hill to the battlefield of Saturday. I had no curiosity to see one scene or the other. I knew what the French boys were like, with their stern faces, as well as I knew the English manner of going forward to the day's work, and the hilarious, macabre spirit of the French untried lads crossing the river to look on horrors as if it were a lark.
I passed a strangely quiet morning. But the excitement was not all over. It was just after lunch that Amelie came running down the road to say that we were to have a cantonnement de regiment on our hill for the night and perhaps longer—French reinforcements marching out from the south of Paris; that they were already coming over the crest of the hill to the south and could be seen from the road above; that the advance scouts were already here. Before she had done explaining, an officer and a bicyclist were at the gate. I suppose they came here because it was the only house on the road that was open. I had to encounter the expressions of astonishment to which I am now quite accustomed—a foreigner in a little hole on the road to the frontier, in a partially evacuated country. I answered all the usual questions politely; but when he began to ask how many men I could lodge, and how much room there was for horses in the outbuildings, Amelie sharply interfered, assuring him that she knew the resources of the hamlet better than I did, that she was used to "this sort of thing" and "madame was not"; and simply whisked him off.
I can assure you that, as I watched the work of billeting a regiment in evacuated houses, I was mighty glad that I was here, standing, a willing hostess, at my door, but giving to my little house a personality no unoccupied house can ever have to a passing army. They made quick work, and no ceremony, in opening locked doors and taking possession. It did not take the officer who had charge of the billeting half an hour, notebook in hand, to find quarters for his horses as well as his men. Before the head of the regiment appeared over the hill names were chalked up on all the doors, and the number of horses on every door to barn and courtyard, and the fields selected and the number of men to be camped all over the hill. Finally the officer returned to me. I knew by his manner that Amelie, who accompanied him, had been giving him a "talking to."
"If you please, madame," he said, "I will see now what you can do for us"; and I invited him in.
I don't suppose I need to tell you that you would get very little idea of the inside of my house from the outside. I am quite used now to the little change of front in most people when they cross the threshold. The officer nearly went on tiptoes when he got inside. He mounted the polished stairs gingerly, gave one look at the bedroom part-way up, touched his cap, and said: "That will do for the chef-major. We will not trouble you with any one else. He has his own orderly, and will eat outside, and will be no bother. Thank you very much, madame"; and he sort of slid down the stairs, tiptoed out, and wrote in chalk on the gatepost, "Weitzel."
By this time the advance guard was in the road and I could not resist going out to talk to them. They had marched out from the south of Paris since the day before,—thirty-six miles,—without an idea that the battle was going on the Marne until they crossed the hill at Montry and came in sight of its smoke. I tell you their faces were wreathed with smiles when they discovered that we knew the Germans were retreating.
Such talks as I listened to that afternoon—only yesterday—at my gate, from such a fluent, amusing, clever French chap,—a bicyclist in the ambulance corps,—of the crossing the Meuse and the taking, losing, re-taking, and re-losing of Charleroi. Oddly enough these were the first real battle tales I had heard.
It suddenly occurred to me, as we chatted and laughed, that all the time the English were here they had never once talked battles. Not one of the Tommies had mentioned the fighting. We had talked of "home," of the girls they had left behind them, of the French children whom the English loved, of the country, its customs, its people, their courage and kindness, but not one had told me a battle story of any kind, and I had not once thought of opening the subject. But this French lad of the ambulance corps, with his Latin eloquence and his national gift of humor and graphic description, with a smile in his eyes, and a laugh on his lips, told me stories that made me see how war affects men, and how often the horrible passes across the line into the grotesque. I shall never forget him as he stood at the gate, leaning on his wheel, describing how the Germans crossed the Meuse—a feat which cost them so dearly that only their superior number made a victory out of a disaster.
"I suppose," he said, "that in the history of the war it will stand as a success—at any rate, they came across, which was what they wanted. We could only have stopped them, if at all, by an awful sacrifice of life. Joffre is not doing that. If the Germans want to fling away their men by the tens of thousands—let them. In the end we gain by it. We can rebuild a country; we cannot so easily re-create a race. We mowed them down like a field of wheat, by the tens of thousands, and tens of thousands sprang into the gaps. They advanced shoulder to shoulder. Our guns could not miss them, but they were too many for us. If you had seen that crossing I imagine it would have looked to you like a disaster for Germany. It was so awful that it became comic. I remember one point where a bridge was mined. We let the first divisions of artillery and cavalry come right across on to our guns—they were literally destroyed. As the next division came on to the bridge—up it went—men, horses, guns dammed the flood, and the cavalry literally crossed on their own dead. We are bold enough, but we are not so foolhardy as to throw away men like that. They will be more useful to Joffre later."
It was the word "comic" that did for me. There was no sign in the fresh young face before me that the horror had left a mark. If the thought came to him that every one of those tens of thousands whose bodies dammed and reddened the flood was dear to some one weeping in Germany, his eyes gave no sign of it. Perhaps it was as well for the time being. Who knows?
I felt the same revolt against the effect of war when he told me of the taking and losing of Charleroi and set it down as the most "grotesque" sight he had ever seen. "Grotesque" simply made me shudder, when he went on to say that even there, in the narrow streets, the Germans pushed on in "close order," and that the French mitrailleuses, which swept the street that he saw, made such havoc in their ranks that the air was so full of flying heads and arms and legs, of boots, and helmets, swords, and guns that it did not seem as if it could be real—"it looked like some burlesque"; and that even one of the gunners turned ill and said to his commander, who stood beside him: "For the love of God, colonel, shall I go on?" and the colonel, with folded arms, replied: "Fire away."
Perhaps it is lucky, since war is, that men can be like that. When they cannot, what then? But it was too terrible for me, and I changed the subject by asking him if it were true that the Germans deliberately fired on the Red Cross. He instantly became grave and prudent.
"Oh, well," he said, "I would not like to go on oath. We have had our field ambulance destroyed. But you know the Germans are often bad marksmen. They've got an awful lot of ammunition. They fire it all over the place. They are bound to hit something. If we screen our hospital behind a building and a shell comes over and blows us up, how can we swear the shell was aimed at us?"
Just here the regiment came over the hill, and I retreated inside the gate where I had pails of water ready for them to drink. They were a sorry-looking lot. It was a hot day. They were covered with dirt, and you know the ill-fitting uniform of the French common soldier would disfigure into trampdom the best-looking man in the world.
The barricade was still across the road. With their packs on their backs, their tin dippers in their hands for the drink they so needed, perspiring in their heavy coats, they crawled, line after line, under the barrier until an officer rode down and called sharply:—
"Halt!"
The line came to a standstill.
"What's that thing?" asked the officer sternly.
I replied that obviously it was a barricade.
"Who put it there?" he asked peremptorily, as if I were to blame.
I told him that the English did.
"When?"
I felt as if I were being rather severely cross-examined, but I answered as civilly as I could, "The night before the battle."
He looked at me for the first time—and softened his tone a bit—my white hair and beastly accent, I suppose—as he asked:
"What is it for?"
I told him it was to prevent a detachment of Uhlans from coming up the hill. He hesitated a moment; then asked if it served any purpose now. I might have told him that the Uhlans were still here, but I didn't, I simply said that I did not know that it did. "Cut it down!" he ordered, and in a moment it was cut on one end and swung round against the bank and the regiment marched on.
It was just after that that I discovered the explanation of what had happened to my Irish scout on Saturday. An exhausted soldier was in need of a stimulant, and one of his comrades, who was supporting him, asked me if I had anything. I had nothing but the bottle out of which the Irish scout had drunk. I rushed for it, poured some into the tin cup held out to me, and just as the poor fellow was about to drink, his comrade pulled the cup away, smelt it, and exclaimed, "Don't drink that—here, put some water in it. That's not cider. It's eau de vie des prunes."
I can tell you I was startled. I had never tasted eau de vie des prunes,—a native brew, stronger than brandy, and far more dangerous,—and my Irishman had pulled off a full champagne glass at a gulp, and never winked. No wonder he fell off his wheel. The wonder is that he did not die on the spot. I was humiliated. Still, he was Irish and perhaps he didn't care. I hope he didn't. But only think, he will never know that I did not do it on purpose. He was probably gloriously drunk. Anyway, it prevented his coming back to make that visit he threatened me with.
The detachment of the regiment which staggered past my gate camped in the fields below me and in the courtyards at Voisins, and the rest of them made themselves comfortable in the fields at the other side of the hill and the outbuildings on Amelie's place, and the officers and the ambulance corps began to seek their quarters.
I was sitting in the library when my guest, Chef-Major Weitzel, rode up to the gate. I had a good chance to look him over, as he marched up the path. He was a dapper, upright, little chap. He was covered with dust from his head to his heels. I could have written his name on him anywhere. Then I went to the door to meet him. I suppose he had been told that he was to be lodged in the house of an American. He stopped abruptly, halfway up the path, as I appeared, clicked his heels together, and made me his best bow, as he said:—
"I am told, madame, that you are so gracious as to offer me a bed."
I might have replied literally, "Offer? I had no choice," but I did not. I said politely that if Monsieur le Chef-Major would take the trouble to enter, I should do myself the distinguished honor of conducting him to his chamber, having no servant for the moment to perform for him that service, and he bowed at me again, and marched in—no other word for it—and came up the stairs behind me.
As I opened the door of my guest-room, and stood aside to let him pass, I found that he had paused halfway up and was giving my raftered green salon and the library beyond a curious glance. Being caught, he looked up at once and said: "So you are not afraid?" I supposed he was inspired by the fact that there were no signs of any preparations to evacuate.
I replied that I could not exactly say that, but that I had not been sufficiently afraid to run away and leave my house to be looted unless I had to.
"Well," he said, with a pleasant laugh, "that is about as good an account of himself as many a brave soldier can give the night before his first battle "; and he passed me with a bow and I closed the door.
Half an hour later he came downstairs, all shaved and slicked up—in a white sweater, white tennis shoes, with a silk handkerchief about his neck, and a fatigue cap set rakishly on the side of his head, as if there were no such thing as hot weather or war, while his orderly went up and brought his equipment down to the terrace, and began such a beating, brushing, and cleaning of boots as you never saw.
At the library door he stopped, looked in, and said, "This is nice"; and before I could get together decent French enough to say that I was honored—or my house was—at his approval, he asked if he might be so indiscreet as to take the liberty of inviting some of his fellow officers to come into the garden and see the view. Naturally I replied that Monsieur le Chef-Major was at home and his comrades would be welcome to treat the garden as if it were theirs, and he made me another of his bows and marched away, to return in five minutes, accompanied by half a dozen officers and a priest. As they passed the window, where I still sat, they all bowed at me solemnly, and Chef-Major Weitzel stopped to ask if madame would be so good as to join them, and explain the country, which was new to them all.
Naturally madame did not wish to. I had not been out there since Saturday night—was it less than forty-eight hours before? But equally naturally I was ashamed to refuse. It would, I know, seem super-sentimental to them. So I reluctantly followed them out. They stood in a group about me—these men who had been in battles, come out safely, and were again advancing to the firing line as smilingly as one would go into a ballroom—while I pointed out the towns and answered their questions, and no one was calmer or more keenly interested than the Breton priest, in his long soutane with the red cross on his arm. All the time the cannon was booming in the northeast, but they paid no more attention to it than if it were a threshing-machine.
There was a young lieutenant in the group who finally noticed a sort of reluctance on my part-which I evidently had not been able to conceal—to looking off at the plain, which I own I had been surprised to find as lovely as ever. He taxed me with it, and I confessed, upon which he said:—
"That will pass. The day will come—Nature is so made, luckily—when you will look off there with pride, not pain, and be glad that you saw what may prove the turning of the tide in the noblest war ever fought for civilization."
I wonder.
The chef-major turned to me—caught me looking in the other direction—to the west where deserted Esbly climbed the hill.
"May I be very indiscreet?" he asked.
I told him that he knew best.
"Well," he said, "I want to know how it happens that you—a foreigner, and a woman—happen to be living in what looks like exile—all alone on the top of a hill—in war-time?"
I looked at him a moment—and—well, conditions like these make people friendly with one another at once. I was, you know, never very reticent, and in days like these even the ordinary reticences of ordinary times are swept away. So I answered frankly, as if these men were old friends, and not the acquaintances of an hour, that, as I was, as they could see, no longer young, very tired, and yet not weary with life, but more interested than my strength allowed. I had sought a pleasant retreat for my old age,—not too far from the City of my Love,—and that I had chosen this hilltop for the sake of the panorama spread out before me; that I had loved it every day more than the day before; and that exactly three months after I had sat down on this hilltop this awful war had marched to within sight of my gate, and banged its cannon and flung its deadly bombs right under my eyes.
Do you know, every mother's son of them threw back his head—and laughed aloud. I was startled. I knew that I had shown unnecessary feeling—but I knew it too late. I made a dash for the house, but the lieutenant blocked the way. I could not make a scene. I never felt so like it in my life.
"Come back, come back," he said. "We all apologize. It was a shame to laugh. But you are so vicious and so personal about it. After all, you know, the gods were kind to you—it did turn back—those waves of battle. You had better luck than Canute."
"Besides," said the chef-major, "you can always say that you had front row stage box."
There was nothing to do to save my face but to laugh with them. And they were still laughing when they tramped across the road to dinner. I returned to the house rather mortified at having been led into such an unnecessary display of feeling, but I suppose I had been in need of some sort of an outlet.
After dinner they came back to the lawn to lie about smoking their cigarettes. I was sitting in the arbor. The battle had become a duel of heavy artillery, which they all found "magnificent," these men who had been in such things.
Suddenly the chef-major leaped to his feet.
"Listen—listen—an aeroplane."
We all looked up. There it was, quite low, right over our heads. "A Taube!" he exclaimed, and before he had got the words out of his mouth, Crick-crack-crack snapped the musketry from the field behind us—the soldiers had seen it. The machine began to rise. I stood like a rock,—my feet glued to the ground,—while the regiment fired over my head. But it was sheer will power that kept me steady among these men who were treating it as if it were a Fourteenth of July show. I heard a ping.
"Touched," said the officer as the Taube continued to rise. Another ping.
Still it rose, and we watched it sail off toward the hills at the southeast.
"Hit, but not hurt," sighed the officer, dropping down on the grass again, with a sigh. "It is hard to bring them down at that height with rifles, but it can be done."
"Perhaps the English battery will get it," said I; "it is going right toward it."
"If there is an English battery up there," replied he, "that is probably what he is looking for. It is hardly likely to unmask for a Taube. I am sorry we missed it. You have seen something of the war. It is a pity you should not have seen it come down. It is a beautiful sight."
I thought to myself that I preferred it should not come down in my garden. But I had no relish for being laughed at again, so I did not say it.
Soon after they all went to bed,—very early,—and silence fell on the hilltop. I took a look round before I went to bed. I had not seen Amelie since the regiment arrived. But she, who had done
everything to spare me inconvenience, had fourteen officers quartered in her place, and goodness knows how many horses, so she had little time to do for me.
The hillside was a picture I shall never forget. Everywhere men were sleeping in the open—their guns beside them. Fires, over which they had cooked, were smouldering; pickets everywhere. The moon shed a pale light and made long shadows. It was really very beautiful if one could have forgotten that to-morrow many of these men would be sleeping for good—"Life's fitful dream" over.