We attended the session of the Chamber of Deputies. It was inspiring. The English and Russian ambassadors sat together, and the Chamber awaited the proceedings in complete silence. A tribute to the dead socialist Jaures was delivered by M. Paul Deschanel. It was eloquent, and the resounding shout that greeted the declaration that with France "there are no more adversaries; there are only Frenchmen," thrilled everyone present by its vociferousunanimity. Then followed the speech of the Premier M. Viviani, who read his address, punctuated by repeated cries of "Vive la France," and when he concluded with the phrase, uttered in a tone of metallic defiance, "We are without reproach. We shall be without fear," the Chamber went mad, and the walls sent back the billows of sound, as the air above the heads of the deputies became white with waving handkerchiefs and papers.
Yvette was overcome with his feelings, and I led him from the room trembling with emotion.
The next day Yvette appeared greatly refreshed, and suggested almost jocosely that we should together "parcourir la ville." I gladly assented. I craved this intimacy with the dramatic incidents of the moment, and was only too anxious to record some vivid impression of the city under this terrifying menace. That was August sixth, and we walked or rode all of the day. At night Paris was silent and dark, the streets almost deserted, and the soldiery watchful.
The dressmakers and milliners on the Rue de la Paix—the irony of the name grimly diverted us—were almost all shut up, and the street was a long dull succession of iron shutters. We saw women on the street cars (tramways). Along the Boulevard des Capucines our eyes were astonished by a drove of a hundred cows beingdriven through that avenue; the papers were sold in immense numbers, and the lively trade in them brought boys, girls, women, and old men from the suburbs to share in the momentary activity. Everywhere we saw the momentous enthusiasm and determination of the people, and any appearance of troops entrained for the frontier started the wildest applause.
Paris has been for an instant stunned by the spell of a terrible apprehension, that quickly succumbed to a returning wave of excited, indignant, overwhelming patriotism. I felt that the actual danger as a fear vanished in the tremendous reaction of rage and resolution. Its industries are crippled, its hilarity suppressed, and the many hued veil of joy and enjoyment that enveloped it like a cloud, has been torn aside, only to reveal the underlying hardihood and substance of manhood and devotion.
It looked finely, but I could not now shake off the terror of my mind over the Germanic rush onward. I intuitively felt that their devastating passage southward from Belgium would stretch far into France, and if arrested at all must be parried or flung back by the concentrated energy of the French and English armies, before its irresistible massiveness assumed such proportions as to become immovable and impregnable. I began to fear for St. Choiseul, and was anxious to return. M. Yvettepressed me to remain a few days longer, and as I had despatched all of my commissions—papers to Privat Deschat, and pictures to the captain, and letters every day to Gabrielle and Père Antoine—I assented.
Each succeeding day manifested the overturn in the domestic and routine days of the great city. The morning breakfast rolls had gone because the bakers are with the army, and families are supplied only withboulotanddemi-fendu, but the supply is irregular, and the girls go after both the bread and the milk. In a hundred ways the national emergency is felt in the family, apart from the departure of sons, and the even retinue of service has been disarranged, with amusing consequences. Lines were formed before the provision shops in the mornings.
On August eighth good news was received, and the quickly revived spirits of the city became apparent in the crowded streets, with a noticeable resumption of gayety. I went to church, leaving the Yvettes home. The church was filled to repletion, and there was a large proportion of men. The service was well rendered, and the preacher touched upon the one thing uppermost in all minds, and admonished faith, courage, and prayer. As the congregation emerged from the portals of the church, the Marseillaise was heard from a near-by street,and, like a spark conveyed to combustibles, the surging mass broke out with song. It was a convulsion of fervor that made one almost quail before its immense intensity.
I took my leave of the Yvettes, who had been charmingly pleasant to me in their great home, and where the enormous sadness was sensibly softened by their amiability and courage. That was August fifteenth. The morning was dark with heavy thunderstorms, and the rain fell continuously. In the large dining room of the Yvettes, we gathered at a late breakfast—une affaire de semi-cuisine à midi—and, as the chandeliers were lighted and candles graced the side-board, and the mantel, and the high squareétagères, it took on the expression of an "occasion." M. Yvette said it was my valedictory. I hardly knew what he meant, but this I know, that that was the last time I saw Yvette, or any of his splendid family. Yvette died at Bordeaux after the official evacuation of Paris; his two boys were killed at the battle of the Marne, and then the widow and the unmarried daughters left the mansion in the Avenue de l'Alma and lived with Madame Aubray, the married daughter. I have never seen any of them since.
We all tried to be cheerful, but the incessant marching of troops in the city during the last three days occurred to some of us as ominousof the encroaching and steadily moving Teuton. The conversation was most disingenuous, touching upon almost anything but the immediate preoccupations of our minds, and the apparent socialabandonmasked the uneasy sense of danger. The only remark that related to the war was one by myself, to the purpose that the superbly furnished table offered no suggestions of the possibility of Paris being starved—which perhaps under the circumstances was a littlemaladroit—and the story that Madame Aubray repeated, that a Prussian officer speaking French perfectly, among a group of prisoners at Versailles, met some French reservists, who passed the convoy singing the Marseillaise, and he turned to his guard and quickly remarked, "What a disillusion awaits us!"
M. Yvette accompanied me to the train at the Gare du Nord, and as I bade him "Farewell," he referred to the familiar and deep impression made upon everyone of the profound unity of the people, telling me that the Catholic Abbé Marcadé whose services at Le Bourget had attracted so much praise, had dined with the officers of the regiment and with the socialist mayor of the commune. He added, "I tell you, M. Lupin, the cementation of France is extraordinary. National cohesion has made us incompressible."
"Ah," I answered as I stepped into the almost empty train, "remember, M. Yvette, there is also such a calamity as pulverization."
My spirits had undergone a complete change since my talk with Père Grandin, and a gnawing feeling of hopelessness tormented me.
But how inexpressibly sweet it all was at St. Choiseul, and in the lovely and beloved country about it, as I walked along the familiar road from Briois, with the scent of the meadows, slowly ripening and withering at the summer's close; caught the long glimpses of the white road—lit now only by the light of the stars—indistinctly heaped, under the straight poplars, with the falling leaves, and then after the little stone bridge was passed with the liquid eyes of the stars gazing up to me as if from depthless nether worlds in the deep pools, I saw the massed houses of our village with hospitable lights shining from their windows. The urgent smell of flowers breathed from its walled gardens, and I prayed aloud that the hand of the destroyer or the cruel fury of bomb and shell and shrapnel might not invade the entrancing spot. The fresh odors—roses, heliotrope, verbena—enriched with an added effluence from the wet ground, bestowed upon the place a sort of consecration of beauty, peace, and sweetness.
I passed Privat Deschat's, and there was no light in the upper story window where he often read late into the night. I instantly caughtsight of our home, where the windows of the library sent out so bright a light, that as I stood before the gate I could distinguish its occupants. Lights in other rooms shone out more timidly. The old home had doubtless gathered our group of friends, and it was an auspicious moment for me to enter. I raised the knocker and let it fall with a rub-a-dub-dub that I invariably used. I heard the running footsteps within, and the door flew open and I fell into the arms of Gabrielle.
"Alfred, Alfred. How good. O! We are glad to see you. And our friends are here, and we are all wild with anxiety to know what is being done; what is happening. Come, come," and the impatient creature pulled me into the now filled doorway of the library, where one by the other stood father and mother, Père Antoine, Père Grandin, the captain, and Privat Deschat, with Dora Destin, the little circle of our intimates, all peering with wide-open eyes at me as the bearer of new tidings, new hopes perhaps.
An embrace of mother and father and of theCapitaine, a hearty hand-shake of Père Grandin and Père Antoine, of good Privat Deschat, and an unreluctant kiss from the pretty Dora brought me well into the room.
"Where," I said, "is Quintado?"
"O! Monsieur Lupin," it was the half wailingvoice of Dora, "He has gone to the regiment and is on his way to the front."
I looked intently at the half weeping child, and discovered a budding romance there.
"Come, come, Alfred," said the captain. "Tell us everything. Are there troops enough? Where are the robbers? We hear they are advancing along by Maubeuge in a broad front."
"And Alfred," it was the voice of Père Antoine, "the hospitals and the aids to the injured. Are they in good hands?"
"Monsieur Lupin," now it was Père Grandin, "is the Ministry together? Are we in safe hands under Viviani and Delcassé? Is Paris well guarded, and how goes the English alliance? Belgium is wiped out. Do the Russians make headway?"
I expected to hear next the shrill insistent voice of Privat Deschat, but as I turned towards him with a smile of interrogation, I saw he had withdrawn, and was moodily studying the ceiling.
"Alfred, will our credit be maintained? It is clear that the expense of the support of the armies, the purchase of stores, of munitions, the care of the wounded, will be almost ruinous. Does anyone predict how long the war will last? What arerentesselling at?" It was my father who put this practical aspect of the case before me.
"But Alfred, what can we do? Everyone must help. Could I nurse? I would go gladly." I knew that sweet voice and I felt how the devoted heart which gave it utterance would sacrifice herself to the last atom of her body in the cause. It was Gabrielle.
"Alfred, you are hungry and tired. Hortense and Julie have put up for you a good dinner—the things you like,un ragout de viande de saucisse avec les pommes de terres et les girofles, allbien melée." Ah, that was the mother's voice, and there behind her at the library entrance shone the honest face of Hortense, brimming full of admiration, and the little curiouspetite visageof Julie at her side, also admiring.
"Come, let us all go together with him in the dining room and sit around and hear him," said the disconsolate Dora.
Mother objected to that proposal and so I was whisked off under apologies, and with the strictest promise that I would be back in as short a time as possible, and then we would use up the night in talk and confidences, with mother's red wine andles gateaux aux amandesto loosen our tongues.
In our old dining room under the stiff surveillance of our over-painted ancestors, with mother opposite to me, and Hortense bustling in every minute, with new contributions ofles bonnesbouches, I sat enjoying to the uttermost the good dinner, while I told mother of the Yvettes, and of Paris, of the soldiers, the anticipated invasion of the Germans, and how the high and low, the rich and the poor, the learned and the ignorant, were standing shoulder to shoulder in the immense effort to preservela patrie!
Ah! that was a famous night! How we all talked, and how I rehearsed all I had seen, all I had heard, all that I thought and, all that Yvette heard, and saw, and thought too. How defiant was the captain, how grieving the Père Antoine—who half thought that the threatened death of the Pope might stop the war!—how impatient Père Grandin, how attentive and silent was Gabrielle—waiting for them all to go to besiege me with questions and offers—and how we all became silent, stifled with a fearful dread, when the invasion of the Huns was thought of, as reaching St. Choiseul. I argued against that likelihood. The wish was indeed then the father to the thought.
"The tide of approach will be more to the north and east, and if the worst happens before our men can check the deluge, the enemy's hordes will sweep into the Paris environs directly from the east and north. Our position north-west of Paris must protect us for some time, but—of course there are possibilities."
"It can't be done," the old captain strodeinto the centre of the room and swung round to us as he made his point clear. "It can't be done—c'est impossible. Why? Because with each retreat our armies are rolled up into thicker lines, and the Germans must broaden their wings to save themselves from being out-flanked and to protect their lines of retreat and supply. It can't be done—c'est impossible. Je vous le dit."
Perhaps we were not persuaded—so many things might happen—but we all felt better by making up our minds that St. Choiseul was rather out of the path of danger. Then we went over plans to help, and the suggestion was made by Père Antoine that I speak at the church house, and all of St. Choiseul and Briois and the country-side around be assembled there, and a committee be formed, and work started to gather and make material for the hospitals, the Red Cross missions, and to send gifts and warm underwear to the camps.
Now it was surprising, and it gave me an almost unpleasant shock of disillusionment, that throughout the night Privat Deschat had said nothing—absolument. Glances fell upon him from the company, as if his voice in the talk would be welcomed, and yet, listening with an absorbed earnestness, he "never opened his mouth" (Americain)—jamais il ouvrait son bouche—and it produced the disagreeable effectof alienation, of indifference. It could not be believed. Ah—God be blessed—that cloud of doubt was quite dissolved. About, as the morning sent its streaks of red over the east, and a fresher scent invaded us from the windows, Privat Deschat stood up at the corner of the group, where he had been sitting in his, to us, unfathomable taciturnity, and in a low voice, his big face moving with unconcealed emotion said these words. It closed our council:
"You wonder that I have kept silent. It seems to you a treachery. It is not. I can say but little. I know nothing. My heart beats with yours, with that of France, but neither your hearts nor the noble heart of France will force conclusions in this matter. Fate," he cast a momentary amused glance at Père Antoine, "is not concerned with the wishes of nations, any more than with the wishes of men and women. But after all Fate can be COERCED," he spoke the word with a simulated cry of anguish—it made me start. "Force and Strength and Devotion can put Fate to flight. You may not believe it, because Fate, or the way things go, is to you," he paused, as weighing the possibility of his inclusion, "all—the will of God. It may be in the meanings of Fate to destroy France, but ourFAITH in France—and that meansForceandStrengthandDevotionwill put thatFate to flight."
CHAPTER VI
THE INVASION
Thedeluge came. The spreading front of the magnificent wave of destroying Germans swept into France from Belgium, engulfing towns, foundering villages, flooding the wide country with its encompassing waters. Bah—the symbol is hopeless.Not water, the life-giving and fructifying essence of the skies, which fills the earth with gladness, not the moisture of the meandering rivulets that enamel the ground with flowers and grass, not the blessed warm rains that search the little brown rootlets of the glorious trees, and feed them nutriment and gather to them the atoms of mineral from the ground, that through the great trunks and all of the enlacing branches, build aloft to the bending skies the temple for the birds, and the home of protecting shadows, the wide canopy of beauty that holds the mists of the morning, and holds back the fury of the storms. None of these things that start in our minds familiar images of flowers and fruitage, when the pleasant wordwatersfills our ears—none of these came with the Germans.
It was a wave, but a wave of FIRE, consuming, scorifying, killing,fire; it was a flood, but a flood of ravenousflames, ravishing, withering, scorching, crematingflames—and there were indeedwaters. What?—the endlessly running fountain of tears.Tearsof fathers, and mothers, wives and children, tears over vanished homes, vanished faces, vanished tongues; tears before the black unpitying future of penury and want, of loneliness and beggary; tears over maimed lives, lost bodies, voiceless orphans, crushed shrines, deluded hopes—Nay differently, tears that were never shed, dried up in the fierce heat of bitterness and hate and terror, of shuddering despair, of dumb abnegation; fountains of grief indeed that were sucked dry by the tempest of impiety, that gathered them up into a storm-cloud before the Throne of the Most High and from whose depths rolled the awful summons—"Why, Why, Why, is This?"
I had given my lecture in St. Choiseul, and the little church house was finely packed. The people came from the villages about, trudging over the roads, riding horses and mules, driving in wagons and chariots, with country gentlemen amongst them, and lovely ladies, and bunches of the older children. The choir of the seminary at Bienne helped us, and sang touching songs, and gay ones too, and songs of courage and songs of prayer. It was inspiring. I looked at the patch-work assemblage, the earnest youngand the pale and trembling old—many helped by their children to walk into the big room—the maidens wearing the tricolor in profusion, the boys waving flags, and Monsieur Raoul la Fayette de Birot, the owner of the superb chateau over towards La Ferté where each year were held the grandchasse-cours, seated in the front row with madame, splendidly arrayed, while at his side sat the humblechasse-muletfrom Briois shrinking at first and fumbling his way to some less conspicuous place, and held back by M. de Birot who spoke up quite loudly:
"Restez. Je vous prie. À present nous sommes tous français, tous amis, Comment! fait-il une difference, quand la patrie est en peril?"
There were shouts of encouragement and approval, and then the crowded hall roseen masse, and sang the Marseillaise. It shook the rafters and went far away through the open windows, and woke the sleeping birds.
Père Antoine introduced me very prettily, very sweetly, and when he took my hand and led me forward to the edge of the stage the cheering was tremendous. I saw Gabrielle, and father and mother, theCapitaine, Privat Deschat, and Père Grandin, all together near the front, and dear sister held her face in her kerchief, because she could not hold back the tears.
I was a little frightened at the beginning, but I found my tongue, and described the scenes in Paris, and what the government was doing and how the troops were being mobilized, and the news of the successful landing of the English reinforcements, and the confidence everywhere, and then I read a part of M. Viviani's speech at the Chamber of Deputies, and closed with a recitation from Bambetta's great oration.
Ah! that was magnificent; I had skill in such things—as what Frenchman has not—and thrilled with emotion, my heart afire with pride and hope and love, I declaimed the blazing lines as though my lips were touched by the same divine flame that had lit those of the great tribune.
The tribute was immense; the building seemed to rock in the vibrations caused by the thunders of applause. All were standing, hats and caps filled the air, a sea of handkerchiefs sprang up, and the flags were torn from the walls and the standards, and mingled their brave colors in the ocean of snow. I saw Gabrielle between theCapitaineand Privat Deschat pale and rigid as if transfixed with pain.
Père Antoine spoke then, and invited M. de Birot to become chairman of the supplementary meeting, designed to form committees, and outline plans for practical work.We were most successful; the principal committee, that of Hospital Supplies, made me its chairman, and I instantly began my work. It was this work that carried me over the department, and kept me long weeks from home. Gabrielle wished to go to Paris and serve under the Red Cross, but I opposed that vigorously and kept her at St. Choiseul where she did nobly, gathering hospital supplies and furnishings for the soldiers, and where was inaugurated that mystical and supernatural VISITATION that led—as the world now knows—to the suppression of the raging conflict, as it threatened to level all of Europe in smouldering ruin; when—was it not so?—the HAND of GOD rested upon the earth, and the Armies shrank back from the Vision and DISSOLVED.
On August twenty-second the mailed hand of the Germans sprang over the borders of France, and from Mons to Luxembourg, its outstretched fingers were crushing the land and strangling its people. Against those groping fingers the twined hands of the French and English were now eagerly—albeit with some trepidation—also grappling. On the twenty-fourth there was reported terrific fighting on the Sambre and the Meuse. On the twenty-fifth, the French and English allies retreated, forced back by the hammering strength and anvil blows of the Germans, who dealt theircoups de tonnerrewhile banked against each other around their massed guns, the whole monster moved onward like some titanic physical eruption.
Again on the twenty-sixth the allies reluctantly yield—yielding everywhere with fierce retributive blows on their part, and consolidating as they retreat, every energy of resistance behind them, while they prepare new lines of defense, and gather together every available scrap of support, material and human. On the twenty-seventh the news is received that the battle line reaches from Maubeuge to the mountains of the Vosges, and that the Germans number one million men. Against this mountainous avalanche of soldiery and guns the grimmest determination alone can hold its ground. But the walls are unbroken and the raging flood breaks through nowhere yet.
On the twenty-ninth I was far north with the armies, in the Red-Cross ambulances. The Germans fought their way to La Fère—north-west of Laon, and about 140 kilometres from Paris (about 90 miles), but the watch wordTiens ferme—Hold tight—was passed from mouth to mouth, and the tense strain of dogged endurance held the fronts together, each inch fought for with savage fury.
Someone blundered; there seems to be no doubt of that. We were not receiving reinforcements as we should; the troops had been urgedinto Alsace, tempted by a barren victory, and the large support which these battalions could have provided failed.C'était miserable!
On the thirtieth our left yielded. A gigantic battle was fought out in the department of the Aisnes near La Fère, at Guise and Laon, on the road to Paris. The English allies proved to be adamant, immovable. Under Sir John French at Mons and at Cambrai, they saved the day.
The cannonading was deafening, and the red tongues of fire quivered in dense volumes along the struggling lines of men, shot forward here, stumbling backward there, crowded in disarranged groups that swayed this way and that. Ever and anon terrific rushes forced, from either side, into the open midst the raging storm of the vomiting guns, impotent sallies, whose human units fell beneath the withering, blasting discharges of the cannon, torn into fragments by the bursting shells, or suddenly trampled into disfigured masses by maddened charges of cavalry, these last again stricken into death or helpless mutilation by the converging fire of the batteries, victim and victor, man and horse, heaped up in a throbbing or motionless blackened mass, filtered through with the oozing streams of blood, where indeed to the disembodied ear, that might have bent above them, rose the cries of suffering, or the last murmurs of the anguished dying, or the indistinguishableagonized prayers of those who yet lived and prayed for deliverance.
Above the armies on either side the air was loaded with the brown and bluescent clouds of smoke, in which the lurid splashes of carmine from bursting shells broke momentary gaps. The dropping shells sent to every side scurrying figures, pressed against each other in panic, when with sullen roar, lost almost amidst the universal din and clash and swelter of noise, its imprisoned powers were released in straight lines of fire, carrying along their blinding thread of light the shattering steel missiles of death, the blistering resin and sulphur, while at the inner edges of that crushed resurgence of living men lay the victims of its rage, limbless soldiers, bodies stricken into shapelessness, the fainting suitors of Death gasping for breath.
But often the harsh steel missile, with its cracked sides, emitting the fell arsenal of its sputtering and lightning driven contents, failed to meet its desired mark, the soft flesh and the brittle bones of living men. It sank, defeated, upon the impassive earth, vengefully burrowing its hot way into the yielding ground, becoming in its burial a mimic volcano, ripping aside its earthen tomb, as its detonation, deadened to a hideous grumble, sent ball and canister through the soil, spattering far and wide with dirt and mud and grass, the curtains of the ambulances,the wheels of the wagons, the guards of the ammunition motors, the backs and shins and breasts of men. Back of the lines the gouged earth showed everywhere the frightful plunges of the foiled demons, while with inconstant frequency noticeable to the trained eye, not unobserved by those who thereby just escaped destruction, lay the black bolides, extinguished and harmless.
Behind that wavering and uneasy or else just stiffened frontier of combat, where the murderous duel was played its sharpest, where men with blood-shot eyes, blackened bodies, and rent clothing were lashed into a maniacal heroism, where officers at intervals feeling the necessity, or inspired by the traditional splendor of service, dashed into the open and in the withering rain of shot and shell, upright, and with sentinel precision, directed the fire or exhorted their men to steadfastness—behind that marvellous line of human endurance, the fluctuating panorama of supply and reparation and reinforcement spread. Here were the gathered platoons ready for entering the thinning lines, the marshalled helpers of the ambulance corps, the doctors and orderlies, the racing caissons constantly feeding the rapacious and smoothly running cannon, the more distant assemblages of the commissariat, and behind them—a long long way off—that perpetual train of fleeing victims, the procession of theevicted, hidden, as to their resemblances to human proportions, under loads of domestic goods, the paraphernalia of the household, so that they indistinguishably took on the appearance of a vast titanic, coarsely corrugated and dirtily colored reptile, worming its way endlessly into the distance.
And when the eye, freed momentarily from its awful imprisonment in that hideous wrestle of death and life, turned outward to the wide horizons, the image of the desolating ravages of war were multiplied. The confused flames and smoke-clouds of burning villages or deserted shelters rose tardily into the dimmed skies, while, caught nearer at hand perchance, and beyond the invading surges of the Germans, if seen at all through the screen of vapors, the broken angular edges of wall and parapet, tower and steeple, cut the horizon with cruel indentations.
I had reached the neighborhood of a little village near Noyon, and intended to enter the lines, having a special pass which would permit me to come quite close to the firing ranges. The reason for this urgency on my part was the knowledge that Sebastien was with the Third Fusiliers, in a division of the Fifth Army Corps, and a letter sent by him to Dora Destin which had been communicated to the captain by anattachéof Gallieni who was commandant of Paris, told his sweetheart that he was not well, and expressed a wish to hear from her. Dora had come to me with the letter, stained with tears, and begged me to make an effort to get to Quintado, and to take him not only her message—written in the neatest hand-writing—but a package of woven odds and ends which would help his comfort in the camps. Poor girl, she was inconsolable.
It was about two in the afternoon of a dull day, with the skies heavily laden with gray flat clouds, and there was a light drizzle falling, with occasional sharper gusts of wind that smote the rain into keen lines slanting eastward. I had pushed on—helped by my commission—and found access almost to the immediate front unhindered. The Third Fusiliers, I was told, held a part of the most exposed part of the field, and that the battle was raging at that instant. That fact was too evident. I heard the continuous roar of the guns; I saw the shells exploding above and around me, while past me through the open ways of access and retreat the stretchers passed in undeviating succession, in their rapid methodical transference of the wounded to the field hospitals further out, and in the direction of Compiègne. The incessant strain of anxious incisive movement, the troubled crowding of exertion among the waiters, the sharp punctuated orders, the bristling worry of preparation, the racing ambulances—these indications behind the lines formed the declarative prelude, were one approaching the battle from behind it, of its terrible reality. As reality lay just beyond that thicket of trees, that hastily constructed redoubt, that furrowed field where shallow trenches cut it lengthwise, that crumbling hut, smoking with concealed flames and spitting gun-shots.
I knew that the battle raged, but I insisted on making my way forward, and the favoring chance of a sudden disturbance, some intense propulsion of the enemy driving our soldiers rearward in a dishevellement—quickly overcome—brought me right within the focus of the fight. I was seized up in the refluent movement that reestablished our line. The oscillation sent me eastward, and I was thrown down, rolled over and almost trampled on, in a furious despairing rush forward of artillery. I fell within sight of a hillock, whose little yet unscathed crown of grass was sprinkled with daisies—the pathetic irony of flowers in that waste of slaughter! I crawled to this trivial protection, and, with a prayer on my lips, dug myself into the yielding mould, and watched. The battle line was still somewhat beyond me and to my amazement and satisfaction I soon discovered that I was actually in the companies of the Third Fusiliers. Was Sebastien in the front?
As I recall that instant now, it seems almost an illusion that it occurred at all. It was the concentrated immensity of it; its vast superabundant detail, crushed into a measure of time out of all proportion insignificant, that put it among the categories of dreams. Before me was a very slight declension of the ground, forming a sort of broad hollow, traversed at its centre by a stream-bed, now almost dry, but retaining a penurious thread of water, somewhat replenished now by the rain, which, assisted by frequent depressions had gathered into stagnant pools. Beyond the hollow to the right and to the left, were two sparse clumps of trees, crowning the opposite crest of the subsidence. Sheltered in these puny groves were cannon which had apparently just reached that forward position, as the gunners were seen desperately forcing them into position. Between the cannon-groups came the tightly compacted formation of the Germans—wedge-like—half crouchingly as they advanced, the close combination of figures making a chain of stern set faces above the pressed guns and bristling bayonets.
Our men had been driven off the opposite ridge, where the crippled trees showed the bitterness of the contest, and where lay motionless bodies in heaps while down the very gradual decline—less frequently—could be detected the fallen figures, some yet moving, and still nearerto my point of view strewn from end to end of the hollow were the dead and dying, while—gruesome spectacle—the darkened waters of the pools betrayed the slow infiltration of blood. From the hollow the French had retreated to the southern edge, and were now entrenching themselves for a new stand, at the moment when the Germans, recovering their confidence after a partial repulse, renewed the attack, and were coming again to close quarters with our soldiers. Our positions were being shelled. Themitrailleuserapidly seizing position would soon add their panic-breeding terrors, belching forth their destroying torrents of ball and canister. The soft hiss of an ascending bomb reached my ears, and later the roar or ripping whine of its explosion. Our artillery, entangled in the previousdebacle, was not yet reorganized for response, and the moment looked perilously uncertain for our defense.
Quickly the commanding officers realized that the stabilizing help of a vigorous charge would bring to the derailment time to straighten out, and, before the full power of the enemy's batteries could be developed, inflict a salutary repulse. There was a breathing space left. A moment's halt had brought with it reawakened energies, and when the order was given the ground thickened with men, and the disarray, as by the flourish of a wand of dissipation,vanished, and with shouts the braced bodies poured forward into that shallow trough, sprang across it, and rose on its opposite edge.
I too had risen out of my half buried position, and, transported by the surpassing glory of the effort became oblivious of danger. The cheering lines shot on, men dropping from the ranks and rolling backward, becoming limp and silent, to be seized the next minute by the quickly following support, and carried out of danger to the ambulances.
My eye was fastened upon the racing lines. The Germans, unable to bring at once the full power of their batteries to bear upon the French, awaited the attack with their massed infantry; indeed under the vociferous orders of their officers, leaped against it. The shock was blood-curdling. On either side the officers led, and amid the frightful collisions swords, bayonets, the heavily wielded butts of guns swayed, and rose and fell, among the frantic combatants. All loud sounds seemed suddenly stilled, and only the muffled groans and hissing suspirations of the heaving intermingled and vitalized mound of humans were heard and above them the metallic clash of arms.
The gunners dared not fire. It was, as if arrested by the suspense of a mortal conflict, each side was held at bay, except where between the armies this intimate carnage raged.More companies were hurled into the hollow—and from both sides—and the insignificant crease in the landscape became a boiling caldron of death. The German resistance had at first proved successful, and our men were being forced down into the battered and now unrecognizable rivulet, so that the hand to hand engagement filled the hollow with its lethal turbulence.
To and fro the mixed tumult bent and receded, when from our right, somewhere in the rear, a bomb soared. Its hiss, sweetened to a murmur only, sang in my ears as the harbinger of rescue. It fell a little within the German lines, and then came the detonation, and the mangled masses fell backward. The pressure relieved, and the appalling sense of some successor to the avenging missile, breaking down the courage of the enemy, our reinforced battalion was suddenly afforded room, from the enemy's recoil. Our antagonists were ballotted backward, as if struck with doom, and so, swinging their guns into horizontal phalanx, with naked bayonets the French renewed their charge, and drove the ravaged ranks before them, up, over the ridge, and back. The next moment was scarcely passed, before the hollow was again refilled with troops ordered to take and turn the enemy's batteries, somewhat screened in the desolated groves of trees.
In the twinkling of an eye the work was accomplished, and the Germans fled. Down the line for more than a kilometre I suddenly saw on either side of me a frontier of bayonets—from fresh arrivals—fixed and advancing and flashing. The slowly falling rain had relented, and the sun gleamed for an instant on the bared needle points, as if in augury of our success. Then the serried profile of bayonets paused, perhaps for mechanical alignments, tilted upward and moved; moved as with the release of a gigantic spring.
The line swept on. I watched them, fascinated, enthralled by its awful menace. The deserted hollow—no longer a battle field—was almost empty, save of those criss-crossed piles of fallen bodies where the transfixed agony of individual conflict yet remained unchanged, in the attitudes of foes knit together in the horrid embrace of their death-fight. Where the severed corpses, fouled in smoke and grime and dirt, lay shapeless, or distended on back or face, or sometimes with arms twisted in knots among each other, or just alone, hither and thither, solitary bodies unsoiled by any mutilation and bent together, as if bivouacked for sleep. And here too were the wounded, sometimes moaning audibly, sometimes still writhing with the urgent wounds, fresh in leg or arm or breast. And everywhere was the ploughed andtormented earth, trampled and dug into by the straining feet of the combatants, meshed with holes of water and now, under the recovered sun, glistening, wet, and muddy. I hurried along with the Red-Cross men into the hollow with my mission quite driven out of my head; only anxious to assist the wounded to some places of safety and relief. The battle seemed for the moment displaced, though around us the orders sounded, caissons rumbled, regiments poured past us and the intermittent aerial swish of shells was heard, and not so far to the right and to the left the German front was murderously insistent, pinching us where we stood in a dangerous salient.
After lifting a number of the limp bodies of men, in whose faces shone at times the benediction of gratitude, and at others rested just the pallid smile of recognition, or else were filmed with the bleaching shades of death, I went to the top of the ridge beyond which our forward flung companies had routed the Germans. The fearful clash, body against body, was resumed in a ploughed field but the horrors were augmented—though too it had a splendor in it—by the added carnage of the plunging cavalry that now thickened the fight into a crucial contest. The captured batteries were useless here, but they were being dragged into the French lines behind us. I was leaning against one of the willows ofthe groves, thrashed into a ruin of fallen branches, yielding to sickness of heart that might have thrown me into a faint when I felt my feet tugged at. I started and looked down. In the heavy grass, trampled and rutted, I saw the outstretched body of a soldier, dragging itself upward by my legs, and he had so far freed himself from the herbage that our eyes met. It was Sebastien Quintado.
Perhaps I shouted. I hardly think so. If I had Sebastien never heard me, for he had fallen back again, and lay motionless. For an instant I thought his life had fled. I seized his shoulders, and pulled him within the trees. He was bleeding from a cutlass wound across his chest, and from a gash in his thigh. We carried him back into the camp and he slowly revived. The half extinguished spark was relit. Of course he knew me. He said he knew me as I stood above him on the battlefield, but thought, half deliriously, that it was a dream only.
I had secured excellent quarters for Quintado, and his wounds while grave were surely healing. Had I not met him in time—the very nick of time—he might have bled to death. At the earliest practicable moment I intended to bring him to St. Choiseul. I knew that when I could tell him that, he would be better.L'espoir est à le fond de la santé.
We were in a relay hospital, back some kilometres from the front, and on the road to Paris, where most of the charges were transferred. It was an encampment of tents, and in one of these—indeed it was near Compiègne—the day after I had brought him from the field, and when too at any moment we might find it necessary to hastily retreat, as the Germans pressed on in spite of the grim resistance that like a wall delayed them. I say it was in one of these tents, towards sunset, as the level rays, unchecked by a cloud poured over the camp a light that seemed to wash out the stains of dirt and use, and make it brilliant, that, as I sat near Quintado's cot, I caught his eyes resting upon me with an indescribable affection.
"Sebastien," I said, "you will live, and very soon, O! very soon, I will take you to St. Choiseul, and you shall stay with us. Is it well?"
He murmured; "Ah, Alfred. How surely you know it is well."
"Sebastien, you must not talk any more. You see what I hope to do. At the most two or three days and you will be with Dora." His eyes were bright with joy, and then almost as quickly they darkened with tears.
"No! No!" I remonstrated, "No! Sebastien—you need have no fears. The doctor says you will be quite the same, a strong, well man. Eh! Do you hear me? And see, this is what Dorahas sent to you. All made by her own hands. Are you not content?"
I unfolded the roll of stockings, and handkerchiefs, and mittens, and waist bands, and as I handed them to feel he touched them with his lips, as though they were holy—indeed to him they were most holy—and then his lips moved too in prayer and a look unutterably tender flushed his face. His great liquid eyes closed, and his heart was consecrated anew to the pretty orphan girl.
Ah! those were terrible days. The shocking Teuton never faltered. He came on with big weltering blows that beat the French and English back, though we kept in good order, and, as the bulletin gave it, "The dam still holds, and breaches are being repaired." The government thought it best to leave Paris, and re-establish itself in Bordeaux, and the people thronged east and south from Paris to Tours, Orleans, Le Mons, Biarritz, Brest, Rennes, Nantes, Bordeaux, going in all ways, and blocking the roads so that nothing could move, and the men and women slept in the carriages, and wagons, and motor-cars, and in the roadside houses, and in the fields.
And the peasants north of Paris, in the farms and gardens, left in terror, and about fifteen hundred of them entered Paris—trudged the whole way—with boxes, and bags, bundles,strings of poultry, and sometimes driving their cows and pulling their pigs, with provisions tied up in shawls, and utterly dumb with grief and consternation.
Then the flying men appeared over Paris and dropped bombs just to scare the populace, letting fall papers and threats with lying news of the Germans almost at the gates of the city, and enclosing scoffing invitations to surrender. The bombs were dropped in the Rue de Hanovre, the Rue du Mart, the Rue Colbert, the Rue de Londres, the Rue de la Condamine. But later our aviators paroled the skies, and garrisoned the air, and the frightfultaubescame no more. But it was I think on September third (thirty-two days after the beginning of the war), that a daring show-man let out orchestra stalls at the "butte" of Montmartre on an arranged tribune, whence the big German dragons could be seen hideously humming above the city.
Il était un peu drôle, mais la plaisanterie est dans le fond de la nature française; n'est ce pas?But Père Grandin frowned, and called itune grande folie, and then repeated the lines from La Fontaine:
Le trépas vient tout guérir;Mais ne bougeons d'ou nous sommes:Plutôt souffrir que mourir,C'est la devise des hommes.
Well I got Sebastien away from Compiègne—and it was only about six days later that the Germans swarmed over this region—and after delays in the trains, crowded with the wounded, brought him to Paris. The city was in a suppressed excitement with a seething exodus of citizens going on, who stood in lines at the stations ten abreast and almost half a mile long waiting their turns to get away to the south. I stayed some days in Paris, putting Sebastien in one of the well equipped hospitaléchoppesin the Champ de Mars. He was yet weak and nervous, and his breast caused him much pain. I saw him every night, and we went over the orders and the news of each day together.
The government left Paris for Bordeaux, on September second, and it was thought that there might soon be a pitched battle around the Paris forts before a week was over. The enemy was pushing its outposts nearer and nearer, with the main advance directed against the left flank of the French centre. On September eighth the allied armies were more than holding their own from Ourcq to Verdun. Preparations went on furiously all over Paris, and the Bois de Boulogne was turned into a cattle ranch, and the ratio of available provisions to the population—then over two million—carefully calculated. The use of gas for cooking was prohibited, and its use confined to lighting.East of Paris were lines of refugees, filling the roads from Verdun, almost seventy kilometres (about 43 miles) long; the Chateau de Bizy was transformed into a hospital, and also the Chateau des Penitents at Vernonnet.
It was evident that St. Choiseul for the present was comparatively safe from invasion, the current of investment moving to the south-east, although a letter I received from Gabrielle said that German military motors had been seen near Briois and that their occupants had rifled the wine cellars of M. Villiers. Sebastien was impatient to get away, and I feeling too excited to remain with him, concluded to send him at once to St. Choiseul, writing to Gabrielle that we would come together. My intention to return to St. Choiseul was further quickened by some indefinite statements by my sister that father and mother had partly lost their memories. I instinctively divined that the relentless pall of paralysis was closing about them, and the miserable sombreness of this thought with all of the present darkness about me, plunged me into a dull speechless misery.
The autumn lights shone upon the fair lands about St. Choiseul and shone upon the gardens, thicketed with early chrysanthemums of the sweet village itself, with a lovelier tenderness. It was altogether charming, and as we rode from Briois gently—very gently—Sebastiencaught my shoulders and head in his arms, and hid his face on my breast, sobbing softly. The poor boy's heart was full of memories and full too doubtless of presaging fears. The happiness snatched from his life by the nation's peril, the yet unfaded impressions of the dreadful conflict painted to his eyes with the darkest, deadliest colors of suffering, the returning familiar beauty of his old home, and the rising flood of anticipation before the realization of his welcome, mingled together in a torrent of emotion too strong for his composure. I clasped him warmly, and the sympathy of my own bereaved soul covered him as with a benediction. Slowly we moved on amid the splendid fruitage of the fall, where, on either side, the richly laden fields bore their golden crops, and where too—another note of the country's extremity—the hardy old men and the children, and the silent devoted women, toiled almost alone at the deeply needed task of the generous harvest.
Mais, voila, qui arrive!We have reached the little bridge, from whose moss encrusted arches rises the low hill of the dear village, and just over there, half way up, stands the old chestnut tree. And, coming down to meet us, is the wholeentourageof old men and women and children, a mimic army bearing flags, the banners of the church, and singing, while an improvised little group of musicians at their head,sent far over the wayside the throb of the drums and the shrill whistles of the fifes.
It was indeed Quintado's welcome home. Our horse recoiled, snorted and reared at the unusual spectacle, and the stirring accompaniment, and the next moment the throng was all about us, and there were cheers and salutations, and waving caps, and a happy bubbling merriment, that made poor Sebastien half wild, and so bewildered him with pride and joy that the poor fellow was speechless, and almost in tears. I spoke a little for him, and the good people then ranged themselves around the carriage, and the horse, led by the head, to prevent his sudden bolting away from the noise and clamor, brought us into St. Choiseul.
Quintado had whispered to me with a blush on his cheeks and with a faltering voice, "But Dora is not here?"
"Ah, Sebastien," I cried, "the best comes last. Wait. You shall see. I think I know that Dora was afraid. Yes really afraid. It would be too much joy. Remember she has heard that you were wounded, and perhaps—surely you understand—"
I did not finish my assurance. His good arm was about my neck, and just to see him so overcome, without knowing the reason, pleased the good friends, marching happily in his company, and the smiling children, so thatthese, his pupils, broke out in a loud chorus that he had taught them at school; a gay barcarolle from Moliere, that reflected the buoyant unimpeded liveliness of young and loving spirits, though indeed I felt some scruples as to its propriety just now, when we bowed to the dark menace of a punishing destiny:
Sortez, sortez de ces lieux,Soucis, chagrins, et tristesse;Venez, venez, ris et jeux,Plaisirs, amours et tendresse.Ne songeons qu'à nous réjouir,La grande affaire est le plaisir.
It was pleasant to hear; the voices, sharp trebles, stabbing the quiet air with their keen accents, like vocal poignards, and running on with us under the first short group of walnuts—just opposite Privat Deschat's—whose lower branches were draped in the bronzed leaves of escaped vines. We moved along altogether in, to me, a curious sad emblematic way of the past happinesses and peace. The song breathed the pensive reminder of a remote dalliance and serenity, lost now behind the rolling clouds of belching cannon and smoking bombs.
The swinging melody put to flight immediate fears, yet like an incantation and, like dreamers, we surrendered to the transient forgetfulness:
Aimons jusques au trépas;La raison nous y convie.Helas! si l'on n'aimait pas,Que serait—ce de la vie!Ah! perdons plutôt le jourQue de perdre notre amour.
Well! that was fitting enough, and as I glanced at Quintado his ingenuous bliss under this vocal stimulation of his natural feelings was boundlessly agreeable. How very handsome he was; excitement had thrown into his flat cheeks a becoming color, and the lingering pallor, elsewhere, bestowed upon him an enticing interest, quite pleasing. His deep eyes glowed with pleasure, and the black hair escaping from beneath his pompon lay like ebony fingers on his white temples. Really for example, he was angelic, though of the darker hue and deeper temperament of angels, and there glinted from his eyes a stubborn tender maliciousness of animal joy.He knew that Dora waited for him.
And so we came decorously, with manifold lingerings, where the brisk people pressed against the carriage wheels, and almost stood under the horse's feet, up to our house, the one—you remember—next to that of Privat Deschat's and there,Mon Dieu, how I see it now! There was a beautiful arcade of branches of yews,and amongst them red, red roses, like ruby stars, and over the path beneath the arch were strewn vine-leaves. We alighted very slowly, for Quintado had again become weak, and the people were most respectful, and considerate, and, because it might have jarred him, withheld their cheers, and just hailed him with uncovered heads. Ah! it was most pathetic I think.
And up the path we went to that porch, where later, much later, Gabrielle and I sat, overwrought and stricken with wonder and dread, and on it stood father and mother, trembling, but gracious, and tenderly sympathetic, and then—
Then Deschat and I took him up the stairs, on the chair made of our crossed hands—the chair children make for each other—with Quintado's good arm about my neck, and brought him to the bed-chamber, so dainty and white, and sweet-smelling, and clean, and on the great broad bed we laid himsogently down and, from where he lay, his eyes could see the sky, blue like a pea-blossom, with the trellised vapors spun across it, and the window framed in Virginia creeper, with, at that very moment, a wren whisking through its tendrils. And then Gabrielle brought Dora to the door, and softly we went away, and the two lovers were left there, and—Helas!I was just envious perhaps, with some illy stirred remembrance, someindefinable despair—I looked back, and the two faces clung together and the whispering voices mingled, in the inarticulate ecstacy of that meeting.
I stepped again to the porch; the people were drifting away, still softly singing, but I did not see them. I saw only the field of battle, sodden with the dead; I heard only the menacing whisper of the ascending shell; I thought only of one Divine Figure—He of the Cross—weeping before His Father in Heaven for the sins of the world.
And so the night came on, and I still sat there, until a hand rested on my shoulder. I noticed its trembling pressure.
I raised my eyes. There stood near me the captain, Père Grandin and Père Antoine. It was the last who spoke:
"My son, Sebastien Quintado is no more!"
CHAPTER VII
THE REPULSE
Asthe Germans crossed the border of France and the hordes of the Kaiser, like some whirlwind of devastation, crushed our villages, trampled down our gardens, smote our sons, France trembled with rage, a rage at first not unmixed with fears. But it was for a moment only. The fierce reaction followed, and with the steadfast poise of her faith, her endurance, her heroism, she resisted. That resistance was a sublime act of confidence in herself. It meant an endless self-sacrifice. It meant a solidarity of hearts. It meant a complete disenthrallment from the illusions of ease and indolence and impregnability. We were surprised. The enemy was at our gates. And Paris, the cynosure of our pride and of our affection banished itsinsouciance, and suddenly became strained with gravity, and a kind of, I know not what, absorption in a new life.
The German wedge moved on, and then our armies holding stiffly together fell back, prodding the sides of the huge leviathan, that sprawled over our fair land with its fierce talonsextended, with a savage not-to-be-denied hunger reaching out for that paramount morsel—Paris—and spitting out of its ravenous mouth sprays of desecrating Uhlans and automobile excursionists, who were here and there, now hiding in a wood, now racing over the roads. It was these drops and waterings of saliva from its horrid living mass that spread terror and anxiety and a sickening dread. But we had not severed our lines, and the retreating army corps tightly kept their cordon intact, though falling back with a deep reentering swerve in the centre, where the enemy fought hard to break through. And not seldom it happened that those exudations from its vast throat were stamped out summarily, so that no spot of their defilement remained. And Joffre—Pater patriae—was not worried. That we knew; the plan was working. I learned that from a colonel who had been at the crossing of the Meuse, where, so he said, "the Germans spent their thousands to gain their end, squadrons upon squadrons, slaughtered like pigeons from a trap, coming on, stuck together like an army of termites, and beaten into death by the merciless fire from our guns. But they got over," he said, "and that was what they wanted to do. Why, living men were thrown into the gaps to be rained down with shot and shell, like so much earth and stone into a pit that must be crossed."
The plan was to thrust the great beast sideways, and for that purpose Joffre kept his plunging assaults on the west, while the English lured them eastward and then came the Battle of the Marne. Charleroi, Rheims, Rethel, Soissons, St. Quentin, had been passed, the bridge over the Marne near Meaux blown up, and now came the sudden halt with our backs against the wall, as it were, and every nerve and muscle strained in the death-grip. The magnificence of our resistance was the measure of our sense of peril.
I had trembled for St. Choiseul, but as the tide swept southward those fears passed, at least there was a breathing spell for us all. It had been sad enough. The few men who were under command to join the colors left in a little company, with their wives and children, their sweethearts and parents, all silent and dreary, with the dreariness of nameless fears. The men only were smiling and cheerful, and—not all of them; the women mute, and the prattling children impressed by some instinctive sympathy, almost always mute too. The women were all resigned, I thought, with just here and there some silently weeping girl, who smothered her sobs, and forced to her eyes the same earnest pathetic resolve of resignation that the others wore. Gabrielle had been an angel of mercy to these women. She had visited them;she opened our house to them, and entertained them, and took care of some of the children, and was so brave and loving with them, that they called her, among themselves,la Mère de Pitié—the Mother of Pity. A pretty name.
I had been driven to the verge of exhaustion with work in the Red-Cross and with service in Paris. The dispersion southward of the war-cloud roused my spirits, and then I was requested to follow the troops to Meaux—that was in September just after Quintado died—and I was more than glad. There was much work to do there, and I knew the leaders thought that the Germans were trapped. There had been some evidence of shortage of ammunition with them, and their loss had been crippling—so it seemed, though like some scourge of insects extinction was impossible. Behind those who fell pressed on the unnumbered legions, fresh and ready. But the advance had been too rapid and the critical moment dawned when the blow could be struck that would hurl them backward. So it was thought. So it proved.
The country-side about Meaux is delicious in its pastoral charm. It isun pay riant, and its smiles are so large and gentle, so benignant and inviting, that the dwellers there are always smiling too. The broken land rising, falling, with streams, passing hither, thither, that gleam beneath the fair skies, and are like silver bandsand threads on its bursting jacket of green and gold, is a land of gardens and fields, with clustering woods on hilltops, or, just missing that, creeping down like warm coverlids in capes and tippets to the wide valleys. Ah! it is most beautiful. And into this sweet refuge upon these quiet happy changeful villages—changeful in the drifting shadows from the slumbering clouds that basked above them in the glittering sun—came the rough confusion of WAR. But it was not for long. No, no, not for long. The kind God banished it before it had ravaged and soiled the peaceful homes, the dainty walled gardens, the sweeping fruitful meadows, the plenteous orchards, the teaming acres ripening so enchantingly with grain and barley, or profaned its pretty grave-yards gathered so warmly around its spired churches. Yes indeed our armies and the English allies banked here with stubborn courage, and put it all to flight. Drove it forty miles away!
I saw much of that fighting. I was not far away when the English fought like bull-dogs at Landrecies, when they hit the Teutons even harder at Coulommiers, and in one engagement with our own men I took part. I was not with the colors, but in the emergency I offered to shoulder a gun and was assigned to a company by Colonel Brissot, who indulged my fervor witha resigned and sympathetic shake of his noble head, remarking:
"C'est un peu dure. Mais que voulez vous. Quand un homme veut à mourir pour la Patrie c'est son affaire."
We lay back on a hill in a thin wood, and had planted the machine guns in shallow pits. It overlooked a road, down which our scouts reported the Germans were coming. I saw the first advanced lines, the gray multitude plunging on, apparently unadvised of our proximity. It was our intention to enfilade them, and then, under cover of fire to retreat, to another eminence, with a supporting column swinging from the opposite quarter, so that eventually we might catch the enemy in the double grip of two cross fires. On the Boches came confidently. They spied us before our spit-fires got into action, and the order rang out to charge us. Three companies were thought sufficient for the task of cleaning us out. They went at us in a huge lunge forward, almost unbrokenly up the hill slope, their ranks close pressed, and unwavering by the fraction of a foot. Almost at the minute when they started up the hill, from the rear a caisson rolled up to our position, and two shells were dropped amongst them. I saw the individual men fall, while, as they fell, others through the gaps sprang into their places,and the solid front unchangeably swept upward. It was magnificent discipline and superb valor. Another shell shattered the line, and I saw the mangled bodies drop. But still the unchecked tide poured on, with shouts, and somewhere from a distance I caught the vigorous beat of drums. The next instant they were almost at the muzzles of our cannon. The word was given and the ripping articulation of our machines rained three deadly streams of shot. The men rolled over each other in the murderous hail, and, for a moment, the whole line halted. The limp dead bodies formed a rampart, and behind that hideous protection their comrades fell to their knees and answered our fire with their guns. At the same moment a shell with the detonation of a crack of thunder soared over us, and struck the ground behind us, gimleting its way into the scorched earth, that smoked like a mimic crater. A fragment of the shell knocked over the gunner at one of the machine-guns and the next instant our officer caught sight of a swarming mass of gray bodies, debouching into the roadway to our left, stealthily and rapidly driving down upon us, with the evident purpose of surrounding our salient. The order to retreat under the charge of the right wing, who, for the expedient, was to hold the enemy, now pretty well discomfited by the unceasing machine fusillade, was given,and we on the left and centre slowly retired, moving to the second line of defence, more stoutly guarded by three regiments of infantry and the park of cannon.
The position of our machine guns, and the endangered right wing, which had utterly disarrayed the Germans by their bayonet onslaught, demanded attention. It would require but a few minutes for the arrival of a new division of the enemy, and already a greater force was seen detaching itself from the main body on the road, crossing the field below the hill, with a run. Everywhere in front of us the Teuton front seemed to be enlarging, and the glittering helmets of the plumed Uhlans, like a sheet of kindling fires, suddenly emerged within it. There was nothing for it but retreat, and a retreat quickly made. I trembled for the safety of the thin file of defenders on the hilltop. Their certain extinction or capture was inevitable.
Then something most unexpected happened. Dropping shells from the extreme right of our second line of defense, where the danger had been reported, covered the hillside with a rapid succession of eruptions. It was insupportable, though, with characteristic stubbornness—the German officers rushed more men to the desolated slope, where the shells ripped the ground, and filled the air with iron splinters. It wasterrific, and our gunners and infantry, dismayed for their own safety, in the superabundant rescue, scrambled back and, together almost, entered the lines of the second defense. I remember well enough my own struggles to get there, for at the very conjuncture when my legs should have best succored me, the injured member became almost useless. I rolled into a lucky hole, where there had been at some time an excavation made, or begun, for some reason, possibly the building of an outhouse or cattle shed. An intense pain developed, and I found myself quite, as the Americans say, "out of commission." Within sight was our second line of defense, bristling with rifles and concealed machine guns, a strong position, well garrisoned, and immediately before me raced the parting remnants of the small parleying party that I had adventurously joined.
My predicament was dangerous. The very thought of capture and isolation for months or years from St. Choiseul and Gabrielle and the domestic duties I was so sorely needed to perform, terrified me, but it also made me more methodical and ingenious. I searched the possibilities of a return to my friends, and the obvious plan was to "lie still," and in the night, if the positions of the armies remained unchanged to steal under the cover of darkness back to the French lines.
Suddenly I heard the oncoming shouts of German troops, and I realized that it was the advance ranks of the division deployed to our left to surround the hill,—now deserted—and which probably would continue their advance to the attack, of our second line of defense, with the whole strength of the German corps. I glanced about me. Some overturned bushes lay at the side of the hole, and instinctively I seized them to ambuscade my refuge.
I crouched—perhaps a derisive observer would have said I squatted—closely within the lowest recess of the accidental excavation, and drew after me, with all the caution my necessity and impatience permitted, the withered and prickly bushes—a hawthorn bramble—so that, like a cowering rabbit in its warren, I awaited the rapidly nearing host of the Germans. Luckily the excavation was somewhat removed from their direct approach, and formed so obvious and considerable a feature in the ground, that the platoons would avoid it, or at the worst jump over it. Nearer and nearer came the clamorous companies, and the heavy tramp of their feet, beating in unison the stubbled field, made my heart beat too with an insistent rapidity.
Now they were passing my tiny screen. I could hear their laughter and the occasional rough sallies of their voices. The line seemedendless. Just dimly through the interlaced twigs and dirt encumbered branches of the hawthorn, I could actually catch a broken view of the massive column. The horrible thought of one of the soldiers, through an inadvertence, or from the crowding of the lines, falling into my dug-out, sent the blood whirring through my veins and bathed me in perspiration. I drew my revolver. It might be a straggler, and, if just one man, the weapon would serve completely for my protection. I shuddered at the awful chance. This extremity was worse than the indiscriminate and generalized murder of the battlefield.