Earth has her usual delights—which can be met with six days out of the seven. But here and there upon grey earth there exist, like the flying of sunlight, celestial pleasures also—and one of these is the heaven of success. When, puffed-up and glorious, the successful creature struts like a peacock, gilded in a passing radiance. And in a radiance, in a magic illumination, the newcomers danced in the drawing-room of the Commandant Dormans, and tasted that which cannot be found when sought, nor held when tasted.
Old tapestries of tropical foliage hung around the walls, dusk upon one wall, dawn upon another. Trees climbed from floor to ceiling laden with lime-coloured flowers, with birds instead of fruits upon the branches.
When at a touch the yellow dust flew out under the lamplight it seemed to the mazy eye of the dancer that the trees sent up a mist of pollen and song.
In this happy summer, Fanny, turning her vain ear to spoken flattery, her vain eye to mute, danced like a golden gnat in fine weather.
The Commandant Dormans spoke to her. If he was not young he had a quick voice that was not old. He said: "We welcome you. We have been waiting for you. We are glad you have come."
Faces surrounded her which to her fresh eyes were not easy to read. Names which she had heard last night became young and old men to her —skins red and pale and dark-white—eyes blue and olive and black—gay, audacious and mocking features. She was dazzled, she did not hurry to understand. One could not choose, one floated free of preference, all men were strangers.
"One day I shall know what they are, how they live, how they think." But she did not want that day to come.
The Commandant Dormans said: "You do not regret Bar-le-Duc?"
"No, no, no."
"I hear you are all voracious for work. I hear that if you do not drive from morning to night we cannot hope to keep you with us!"
Denis said to her: "Be careful of him! He believes there is no end to the human strength."
She replied joyously: "There is no end to our strength!"
When she had eyes to see, to watch, to choose, she found that there was in the room a man who was graceful and young, whose eyes were a peculiar shape, who laughed all the time gently as he danced. He never looked at her, never came near her. This young man was indifferent to her, he was indifferent to her … Soon he became a trouble and a pleasure to her. With whom was he dancing now … and now? Who was it that amused him? His eyes and his hair were bright … but there were many around her whose eyes and hair were as bright. Before she had seen that young man laugh her pleasure had been more complete.
While she was talking to Denis a voice said to her: "Won't you dance with me?"
Looking up she saw who it was. His mouth smiled, his eyes were clever and gay.
The moment she danced with him she began to grow proud, she began to find herself. Someone whispered to her: "The section must leave at such and such an hour…."
She thought in a flash: "For me the section is dissolved … I am I, and the others are the others!"
The evening wore on. The musicians flagged and took up their courage again. It was late when Stewart, touching Fanny's arm, showed her that they were almost the only two women in the room.
"Where are the others?"
"In the hall, putting on their coats. We are all going."
"Aren't they in a hurry?"
"They have had orders, which were brought up just now, for runs early to-morrow morning. But you and I have nothing, and Denis has asked us … if you are quick you can slip away … to have supper with him at Moitriers."
"Well?"
"We can. The others go home in two cars which have been sent for us. No one will know that we are not in the other car. I'm so hungry."
"So am I, starving. Very well."
They joined the others, put on their coats, hunted ostentatiously for their gloves, then slipped ahead down the dark stairway into the square below. Denis joined them.
"Splendid. I have my car round that corner. It will be only a matter of half an hour, but if you are both as hungry as I you will welcome it. Everything was finished upstairs, every crumb and cake. We must get a fourth. Who shall I get?"
"Any one whom you would like to bring," said Stewart. "I don't think I have mastered the names yet. I really don't mind."
"And you, mademoiselle?"
"Nor I either," said Fanny, sniffing at the frosty air, at the fresh night.
"Whom you like!"
"Then I won't be a moment. I'll bring whom I can."
"Monsieur!"… as he reached the corner. He turned back.
"There is an artillery captain … in a black uniform with silver."
"An artillery captain …" he paused enquiringly.
"In black and silver. There was no other in the room."
"Oh, yes, there were two in black and silver!"
"Tall, with …"
"Ah, tall! The other is very short … The tall one is the Commandant's aide, Captain Chatêl. He may not be able…. But I will see!" He disappeared again.
When he returned he had the young man beside him.
"One moment," said Châtel, as they walked towards the car; "who asked for me, the girl with the fair hair, or with the dark?"
"With the fair."
Moitriers was closed when they reached it, and they drove on to the only other place where food could be bought past the hour of midnight—the station buffet.
Pushing past the barriers at the entrance to the station they entered a long corridor filled with heavy civilian life. Men and women lay, slept and snored upon the stone ledges which lined the side of the tunnel, their bags and packets stacked around them. Small children lay asleep like cut corn, heads hanging and nodding in all directions, or propped against each other in such an intricate combination that if one should move the whole sheaf of tired heads slipped lower to the floor.
Further on, swing doors of glass led to a waiting-room, and here the sleeping men and women were so packed upon the ground and around the little tables that it was difficult to walk between them. Men sat in groups of nine or ten around a table meant for four each with his head sunk down between his hands upon the marble surface. On one table a small child wrapped in shawls lay among the circle of heads, curled like a snail, its toe in its father's ear. At each end of the room stood soldiers with fixed bayonets.
Denis paused at the entrance. "Walk round here," he said, "there is a gangway for the sentry."
"If we talk too loud," said Fanny, "we shall wake them."
"They must soon wake in any case. It must be near the time for the train. You know who they are?"
"Who?"
"Germans. Expelled from Metz. They leave in batches for Germany every night—by a train that comes in and goes out at some horrible hour."
Passing through more glass doors they came to an inner room where, behind a buffet, a lady in black silk served them with beer and slices of raw ham and bread.
The four sat down for a moment at a little table—Denis talking of the system by which the outgoing Germans were nightly weeded from those who had permission to remain behind in Metz. Julien Châtel joined in the conversation. He spoke with the others but he glanced at Fanny. For the briefest of seconds he thought as he looked at her face that he saw a new interest smile upon it. He did not know that his own face wore the same look. His look said as he looked at her: "You, you, you!" At one moment she thought: "Am I pretty?" At the next she was content only to breathe, and thought no more of herself. She took in now his eyes which seldom rested on her, now a movement of his lips which made her feel both happy and miserable, and suddenly she learnt how often his finger traced some letter upon his cheek.
These things were important. They were like the opening sentences of a great play to which one must listen, absorbed, for fear of misunderstanding all the story.
It was not long before they rose, threaded their way back between the sleeping Germans, regained the car, and drove down the silent streets towards the Cathedral.
"Have you seen it?" said Julien in a low voice, addressing her directly.
"The Cathedral?"
"Yes. I want to show it to you. Will you meet me there to-morrow at three?"
(The others talked and smiled and knew nothing. Whoever has a secret is stronger than they who know nothing. Fanny thought: "My companions, to be as you are is not to exist! Whatever you feel, you are feeling nothing …")
"Will you?"
"Yes," she answered, and joined her hands tightly, for this was where the play really began.
* * * * *
The sun shone gaily. Here was no mud, no unhappiness, here were no puzzled women, and touching mayors of ruined villages, but instead gay goblin houses, pointed churches like sugar cake, the old French theatre with its stone garlands glittering in the sun; sun everywhere, streaming over the Place du Théâtre, over women shaking coloured rags from the windows, women washing linen by the river; everything that had been wet was drying, everything that had savoured of tears and age and sadness was burning up under the sun, and what moisture remained was brighter than jewels.
"Suppose he never came!"
"Why, then, be ready for that. Very likely he wouldn't come. Very likely he would think in daylight—' She is not a woman, but an English Amazon…'" Fanny glanced down at her clothes regretfully. She was ill-equipped for an assignation.
"At least I might have better gloves," she thought, and walked into a small shop which advertised men's clothes in German across the window. She bought yellow washing-leather gloves at twenty-eight francs a pair, and would have paid a hundred had the salesman insisted.
And now with yellow gloves, silk stockings, shining shoes and a heart as light as a leaf upon a wind she walked towards the Cathedral.
"He won't come. He won't be there…." She pushed at the east door.
He was under a Madonna, his black and silver hat in his hand, his eyes critical and pleased as he walked to meet her. They sat down together on a seat, without speaking. Then, each longing for the other to speak —"You have come…." he said first. (His face was oval and his hair was shining.)
"Yes," she nodded, and noticed a peculiar glory in the Cathedral. The dark cave shone as white flesh and youth can shine through the veils of a mourner.
They no longer lived their own separate lives; they had come together at each other's call.
"I thought you wouldn't come."
"Why, why did you think that?"
Little questions and little answers fell in a sudden rain from their lips. Yet while Fanny spoke he did not seem to know what she said, and answered at random, or sometimes he did not answer at all, but smiled.
Afraid of the fragile avowal of silence, evading it, she found little words to follow one another. But he answered less and less, and smiled at her, till his face was full of this smile. So then she said: "We'll go out and walk by the river," and he rose at once and followed her among the forest of wooden chairs. They forgot that he was to have shown her the Cathedral. In all its length she never saw one statue except the first Madonna, not one stone face but his young face with the cold light upon it, his hands as white as stones, as long and fine as any of the carved fingers which prayed around them.
They walked together down the winding path below the bridge to the very edge of the Moselle, which lay in light winter sunlight, its banks buried in shrubberies of green.
Mont St. Quentin, conical, covered with waving trees, shone like a hill in summer, and beyond it the indigo forest of every Lorraine horizon floated indefinitely like a cloud.
A young doctor lounged beside them, putty-coloured under his red plush cap. "Why are all doctors plain in France?" she laughed.
"Hush!" He wound his hand round and round like the player of a barrel -organ. "I have to stop you when you say silly things like a phonograph, at so much a metre."
So he believed he might tease her…. Delighted, she stopped by the bank of the river and stared into the water. The sun ran over her shoulders and warmed her hands. The still shine of the river held both their eyes as movement in a train holds the mind.
"I am enjoying my walk," he said. He did not mean it like that, or as a compliment to her. When it was said he thought it sounded banal, and was sorry. "What a pity!"
But she was not critical because she was looking for living happiness, and every moment she was more and more convinced that she would get it. But when he asked her her name and she repeated it, it sounded so much like an avowal that they both turned together down the tow-path with a quick movement and spoke of other things, for they were old enough to be afraid that the vague happiness that fluttered before them down the path would not be so beautiful when it was caught. And at this fear she said distinctly to herself: "In love!" and wondered that she had not said it before.
Coming back to him with her words, she then began to wound and to delay him. "You mustn't be late for your office…."
"When shall I see you again?"
They dropped into a long silence. She summoned her coquetry that she called pride. The blue, blue forest at the edge of her sight tilted a little like a ship, the watery hill-country rolled towards it in mysterious kilometres.
"It is beautiful," she said clumsily, avoiding his question, ignoring it. "Yet when I go there it is always more beautiful on the next hill.'
"I must hurry," he said at once, "I shall be late at my office."
"Where is your office?"
He looked round vaguely. "There in that group of pines." They walked towards it, they were almost at the door, but he would not repeat his question. Would he not at the last moment? No. Had it not then been clear that the living happiness was at her lips? No. Could he let her go, could it have been a failure? He was holding out one of the stone hands. He was going.
She looked up and the sun was streaming in his eyes, blinding him, and without seeing her he stared into the darkness that was her face. "I have so enjoyed my walk," he said. "Thank you for coming."
All her face said "Oh!" in a hurt, frightened stare, but the sun only came round the edges of her hair and cap and left the panic in a shifting darkness. He was gone.
She went back to her street. Reaching the big, populous house she followed the corridor that led from the stone courtyard, climbed to the first floor and opened the door of her own room. A bitter disillusion ran through her. The close-packed furniture seemed to say indifferently, "There's not much room for you!" and she knew quite well as she sat down on the bed that it was not her room at all, but had been as public to the birds of passage as the branch of a tree to the birds of the air.
"I did so little. I did so little. It was such a little mistake!"Self-pity flooded her.
"And why did he ask me to come to the Cathedral if such a little thing, such a little thing…." Indignation rose.
"Things don't crumble like that, don't vanish like that!" She stared, astonished, at the scenes she had left behind her, the shining of the dark Cathedral, the ripple on the Moselle. "But they do, they do, they do…."
Down in the street her own name caught her ear, and she went to the window.
"Are you there, are you there?" cried the voice.
Hanging waist-deep out of the window she received her orders for the next day.
"I came down to tell you now," said the girl below on the pavement. "I thought you might have things to do to the car. You must be at the Hôtel Royal, near the station, at half-past six to-morrow morning."
"Have you any idea whom I'm to take? Or where?"
"I don't know where, but the man is a Russian colonel."
She drew her head back through the window, and the gay tumble of the street gave way to the impersonal, heavy room. Cramming her oil-stained overall into her haversack, she put on her leather coat and went up to the garage.
The sun had disappeared. A cold wind struck the silk-clad ankles.
"Come in," she said in English, lifting her head and all her mind and spirit out of the pit of the pillow.
Feet came further into the room and a shivering child held a candle in her face. "Halb sechs, Fräulein," it said. But the Fräulein continued to stare at him. He thought she was not yet awake—he could not tell that she was counting countries in her head to find which one she was in—or that she was inclining towards the theory that she was at school in Germany. He was very cold in his shirt and little trousers, and he pulled at her sheets. "Fräulein!" he said again with chattering teeth, and when she nodded more collectedly the little ghost slipped out relieved by the door. "Russian colonel … I must get up. Fancy making that boy call me! Why couldn't someone older … I must get up."
He had left the electric light burning in her room, but out in the corridor all was black and hushed as she had left it the night before when she had gone to bed. Behind the kitchen door there was a noise of water running in the sink. She opened the door, and there was the wretched child again, still in his shirt, rinsing out her coffee-pot by the light of one candle. Well, since he was doing it … Poor child! But she must have her coffee. By the time she was dressed he tapped again and brought in the tray with coffee, bread and jam on it. Setting it down, he looked it over with an anxious face. "Zucker," he said, and disappeared to fetch it. She filled her thermos bottle with the rest of the coffee which she could not finish, and put two of the slices of grey bread into the haversack, then crept downstairs and out into the black street where the gas lamps still burnt and the night sentry still paced up and down in the spectral gloom. Over the river hung a woolly fog, imprisoning the water; but as she crossed the bridge she noticed where its solidity was incomplete and torn, and into the dark water which lay at the bottom of such crevasses a lamp upon the bridge struck its arrowed likeness. It was a good seven minutes' walk to the garage, and she tried to get warm by running, but the ice crackling in the gutters and between the cobble stones defied her, and her hands ached with cold though she put them in turn right through her blouse against her heart to warm them as she ran. Fetching her car she drove to the Hôtel Royal, and settled down to wait.
A porter came out and swept the steps of the hotel, and a puff of his dust caught her in the face. He laid a fibre mat on each stone step, and clipped them with little metal clips.
"Are you for us?" asked asous-lieutenant, looking first up and down the empty street and then at the car. He had blue eyes and a long, sad moustache that swept down the lower half of his face and even below his chin, making him look older than he should.
"I am for a Russian colonel," she said, liking his mild face.
"That's right. Yes, a Russian colonel. Colonel Dellahousse. But can you manage by yourself? Can you really? I will tell him…."
He disappeared up the steps and through the swing door of the hotel. A moment later he was out again.
"He will come to you himself, he will see you. But we want to go to Verdun! Could you drive so far? You could? Yes, yes, perhaps. Yet here he comes…."
In dark civilian clothes the Russian came down the hotel steps. He was tall, serious, upright, rich. His face beneath his wide, black hat was grave and well cared for. The sombre glitter of his eye was grave, his small dark beard shone in the well-controlled prime of its growth. From the narrow line of white collar to the narrower thread of French watchchain—from the lean, long feet to the lean, white hands she took him in, and braced herself, adjusted herself, to meet his stately gravity. If there was something of the Mephistopheles in fancy dress about him, it was corrected by his considerate expression.
"Have you had breakfast?" he began, speaking French with a softly nasal accent.
"How kind of you to think of it! Yes, thank you, monsieur."
"I have to go to Verdun," he put it to her. "I have business there." It was as though he expected that she would let him off without difficult explanations, would exclaim: "There is some mistake! Some other car, some other driver is intended for your work!"
But she remained silent except for a smile of acknowledgment, and with a sigh he summoned the lieutenant and went back into the hotel. In a few minutes the Frenchman came out again. "Monsieur Dellahousse would like to know if you know the way?" he inquired.
"He doesn't want to take me? Isn't that it?" asked Fanny, smiling but anxious.
"He is a little doubtful," admitted the lieutenant. "You must excuse…."
"Perhaps I appear flippant to him. But I am grave, too, grave as he, and I long to go, and the car and I, we are trustworthy. I do, indeed, know the way to Verdun."
He went in again, and for answer the porter brought out the bags, and Colonel Dellahousse followed, carrying a sealed black bag with care under his arm. She was sure he had said to the Frenchman: "But what sort of a woman is she? One does not want to have difficulties." And as sure, too, that the other had answered: "I know the English. They let their women do this sort of thing. I think it will be all right."
She no longer felt defiant towards the spoken and unspoken criticism she met everywhere: "What kind of women can these be whose men allow them to drive alone with us for hours, and sometimes days?" but had begun to apologise for it even to herself, while it sometimes caused her bewilderment.
She drove them back through the waking town and out by the Verdun gates, and soon up on to the steep heights above the town among frozen fields and grasslands white with frost. The big stone tombs of 1870 stuck out of a light ground fog like sails upon a grey sea, and it was not long, at Jeandelize, before the 1914 graves began, small isolated wooden crosses. They touched the brink of the battlefields; a rain of dead gunfire began along the sides of the road, shell-holes with hairy edges of dried thistles and, at the bottom of each, green moss stiffened with ice. The road grew wilder and wilder and took on the air of a burnt-out moor, mile after mile of grey, stricken grass, old iron, and large upturned stones. Wherever a pair of blasted trees was left at the road's side a notice hung in mid-air, on wires slung from tree to tree across the road.
"Halt—Autos!" shouted the square, black, German orders from the boards which swung and creaked in the wind.
"Nach Verdun," said the monster black arrows painted on trees and stone, pointing, thick, black and steady, till it seemed that the ghost of the German endeavour still flung itself along the road. "Nach Verdun! Nach Verdun!" without a pause, with head down. "Nach Verdun," so that no one might go wrong, go aside, go astray, turn back against the order of the arrow. Not an arrow anywhere answered "Nach Metz."
For miles and miles nothing living was to be seen, neither animal, nor motor, nor living man; only the stray fires of the Chinese fluttered here and there like blue and red marsh fires a mile or so back from the main road. Once as she flew along she shied like a horse and twisted the wheel as a wild screaming and twittering rose at the side of the car, and glancing back she saw three figures wriggle and laugh in mockery and astonishment. They had risen round the embers of a dead fire, and stood swaying on their feet and showing white teeth in orange faces. One had the long hair of a woman flapping about his ears.
They reached Etain, and turned the sharp corner in the street lined with hollow houses, passed under a tunnel of thick camouflage, leafy as an arbour, mouldy as the rags upon a corpse, and came on the first pill-boxes of the Hindenburg line.
Another twelve miles and the twin towers of Verdun appeared over the brow of a hill.
"I thought it but dust!" exclaimed the Russian. "I thought it a ruin; it is a town!"
"Wait, wait till you get nearer…."
Then down the last long hill and over the paved Route d'Etain into the suburbs of Verdun. As they neared it the town began to show its awful frailty—its appearance of preservation was a mockery. Verdun stood upright as by a miracle, a coarse lace of masonry—not one house was whole.
"Stop!" ordered the Russian, and at the foot of the steep, conical hill which wore Verdun upon its crest they stopped and stared. The town was poured over the slopes of the hill as though a titanic tipcart had let out its rubbish upon the summit. Houses, shops and churches, still upright, still formed Verdun, kept its shape intact, unwilling that it should fall to dust while these deadly skeletons could keep their feet. Light glared through the walls, and upon the topmost point of all the palace of the bishop was balanced, its bones laced against the sky. The Russian, who had stood up in the car, sat down. "Now go on…."
The streets which circled the base of the hill had been partially cleared of fallen rock and stonework, and the car could pick its way between the crazy shop-fronts, where notices of vanished cobblers, manicurists, butchers, flapped before caverns hollowed by fire, upon fingers of stone already touched by moss.
Here and there soldiers moved in bands at their work of clearing. But the black hat, the drab coat of the civilian had long been left behind —and here the face of a woman was unknown as the flying dragons of the world's youth.
Now and then with a crash the remains of a house fell, as the block of stonework which alone supported it was disarranged by the working soldiers.
"Where am I to go?" asked Fanny, as the street wound round the base of the hill.
"I will climb over beside you and direct you," said the French lieutenant, and dropped into the front seat.
"Where do these soldiers sleep? Not among these ruins?"
A block of masonry fell ahead of them and split its stones across the street.
"Be careful! You can get round by this side street. Up here…. In these ruins. No living soul can sleep in Verdun now."
"Where, then?"
"Don't you know? They sleepbeneathVerdun, in this hill around which we are circling. I am looking for the entrance."
"Inside this hill? Under the town?"
"But you've heard of thecitadelle?"
"Yes, but… this hill is so big."
"There are fifteen kilometres of tunnel in this hollow hill, and hundreds of steps lead up to the top by the palace, where there is a defence of barbed wire and guns. Look, here is the entrance."
They left the car. Before them was a small dark hole in the side of the hill, an entrance not much higher than a man, into which ran a single rail line of narrow gauge. A sentry challenged them as they walked towards him.
Entering the hill they found themselves in a tunnel lit by electric bulbs which hung in a dotted line ahead of them.
"Wait!" ordered the deep voice of the Russian, and he strode from them into the depths of the tunnel with the Eastern swing of Ali Baba entering his cave.
Fanny stood by the mild lieutenant, and they waited obediently.
"I must tell you a secret," he said to her. "Monsieur Dellahousse is very glad to be here. He said this morning: 'The Governor has sent me a woman to break my neck!'"
"But he took me…."
"Could he refuse you?—For he felt that it was a glove of challenge thrown down by the Governor of Metz. They do not get on together…. He took you with dignity, but he was convinced that he placed himself in the jaws of death."
"When do we go back? We cannot now be in Metz before dark."
"But haven't they told you? Never warned you? How monstrous! We are staying here."
"And I return alone?"
"No, you stay too. You are lent to us for five days. They should have told you!"
"Oh, I stay too. In this tunnel, here! How odd, how amusing!"
"Monsieur Dellahousse has gone to ask the Commandant of thecitadelleto house us all. Here he comes."
The Russian returned under the chain of lights. "Follow me," he said, and led them further into his cavern.
They followed him like children, and as they advanced the lieutenant whispered: "We are now well beneath the town. It lies like a crust above our heads. Exactly beneath the palace you will see the steps go up…."
"What is the railway line for?"
"Bread for the garrison. There are great bakeries in thecitadelle."
Further and further still…. Till the Russian turned to the right and took a branching tunnel. Here, lining the curve of the stone wall were twenty little cubicles of light wood, raised a few inches from the moist floor, and roofless except for the arch of the tunnel that ran equally above them all. These were the rooms assigned to theofficers de passage, officers whom duty kept for a night in Verdun. Each cubicle held a bed, a tin basin on a tripod, a minute square of looking-glass, a chair and a shelf, and each bore the name of its temporary owner written on a card upon the door.
"Twenty … twenty-one … and twenty-two," read the Russian from a paper he carried, and threw open the door of twenty-two.
"This is yours, mademoiselle"; he bowed and waved her toward it. Fanny entered the room, which, from his manner, might have been the gilded ante-chamber of his Tzar.
She heard him enter his own room, and through the partition the very sighing of his breath was audible as it rustled upon his lips! He tried to give her the illusion of privacy, for, wishing to speak to her, he left his room again to tap at her door, though his voice was as near her ear whether at door or wall.
"I hope you are content, mademoiselle?" he said through the woodwork.
"Delighted, monsieur."
"You will sleep here," he continued, as though he suspected her of sleeping anywhere but there, "and dine with us in the officers' mess at seven. Until then, please stay in thecitadellein case I need you."
She heard his footsteps go up the corridor, the lieutenant following him. "I will unpack," she thought, and from her knapsack drew what she had by chance brought with her. Upon the shelf she arranged a tin ofsinge—the French bully beef—a gilt box of powder, a toothbrush, a comb, a map, a packet of letters to be answered, and a magneto spanner.
There was an hour yet before dinner and she wandered out into the corridors to explore thecitadelle. A soldier stood upon a ladder changing the bulb of an electric light.
Catching sight of her he hurried from his ladder, and passing her with a stiff face, saluted, and disappeared.
Soon she began to think that this was the busy hour in the fortress: the corridors rustled gently, the unformed whispering of voices echoed behind her. The walls seemed to open at a dozen spots as she walked on, and little men with bright, grave faces hurried past her about their duties.
"Perhaps they are changing the guard…."
Yet a face which had already passed her three times began to impress its features upon her, and she realised suddenly that it was curiosity, not duty, that called the soldiers from their burrows. The news was spreading, for out of the gloom ahead fresh parties of onlookers appeared, paused disconcerted as she wished them "good evening," nodded or saluted her in haste, then hurried by.
An officer with grizzled hair stepped into the passage from a doorway.As she neared him she saw he wore the badges of a commandant.
"Who is this?" he asked in a low voice of the soldier who followed at his heels.
"J'n'en sais rien, mon commandant," The soldier stiffened as a watch-dog who sees a cat.
Fanny hastened nearer. "I drive a Russian officer," she explained. "I hope I have your permission to stay here."
"Ah!" exclaimed the officer, looking at her in surprise. "Colonel Dellahousse told me 'a driver'; he did not add that the driver was a lady. Where have they put you? Not in the cubicles of theofficiers de passage?No, no, that must be changed, that won't do. Come, you shall sleep in the room next to the bishop's room, as he is absent. It is in my corridor."
Fanny followed him, and noticed that the corridor was now clear of soldiers. The commandant paused before a door decorated with flags and led her into another corridor lined with cubicles much larger than those she had seen at first.
"Open number seven."
The soldier took his bunch of keys and opened the door.
"Now fetch mademoiselle's effects from the other corridor. Which number was your room, mademoiselle?"
"Twenty-two. But I can fetch them … I have really nothing."
The soldier withdrew.
"He will get them. You dine with us, I hope, to-night at seven. Are youEnglish, mees?"
"Yes, English—with the French Army. I am really so grateful…."
"The other room was not possible. I like the English, mees. I have known them at my home near Biarritz. You and I must talk a little. Do you care to read?"
"Oh, yes, if I get time…."
"Any books you may want please take from my sitting-room, number sixteen in this corridor.Tenez!I have an English book there—'The Light that Failed'—I will get it for you."
"Oh! I have read … But thank you."
"De rien, de rien!I will get it now." He hastened up the corridor and returned with the book in his hand.
The soldier, too, returned, bearing the seven objects which had accompanied her travels.
"You will clean mademoiselle's shoes, brush her uniform, and bring her hot water when she needs it," ordered the commandant, and the soldier saluted impassively—a watch-dog who had been told that it was the house-cat after all.
Left alone, she searched all her pockets for some forgotten stick of chocolate, and finding nothing, sat down upon the bed to wait hungrily till seven. The air in the tunnels was heavy and dry, and throwing off her tunic she lay down on the bed and slept until footsteps passing her door awoke her.
She became aware that the inhabitants of her corridor were washing their hands for dinner, and sitting up sleepily found that it was already seven. In a few minutes she hurried from her room and out into the main tunnel, glad to get nearer the fresh air which filtered in through the opening at the far end.
Reaching a door which she had noticed before, marked "popote," she paused a second, listening to the hum of voices within, then pushed at the door and entered.
Instantly there was a hush of astonishment as seventy or eighty officers, eating at a long trestle table, sharply turned their heads towards her, their forks poised for a second, their hands still. Then, with a quick recovery, all was as before, and the stream of talk flowed on.
The first section of the table was reserved for strangers passing through Verdun, and here sat a party of young Russian officers in light blouse-tunics, an American or two, and a few French officers. At the next section sat the officers of thecitadelle, a passing general, and at the left hand of the commandant, Monsieur Dellahousse and the mild lieutenant.
Overhead the stone roof of the tunnel was arched with flags, and orderlies hurried up and down serving the diners.
Fanny, halfway up the long table, wavered in doubt. Where, after all, was she supposed to sit? At the top section, as a guest—or, as a driver, among the whispering Russians at the "stranger" section? Her anxiety showed in her face as she glanced forwards and backwards and an orderly hurried towards her. "Par ici, mademoiselle, par ici!" and she followed him towards the head of the table. Her doubts dissolved as she saw the gap left for her by the friendly arm of the lieutenant, and, arrived at the long wooden bench upon which they sat, she bowed to the commandant, and lifting one leg beneath her skirt as a hen does beneath its feathers, she straddled the difficult bench and dropped into position.
"Beer, mademoiselle? Or red wine?" asked the Russian, suddenly turning to her; and the commandant, released from his conversation, called out gaily: "The mees will say 'water'—but one must insist. Take the wine, mees, it is better for you." The idea of water had never crossed Fanny's mind, but having decided on beer she changed it politely to red wine, which she guessed to be no other than the everlastingpinard.
"I know them…." continued the commandant, smiling at the general. "I know the English! My home is at Biarritz and there one meets so many."
And this old man thus addressed, a great star blazing on his breast, and tears of age trembling in his blue eyes, lifted his hand to attract her attention, and said to Fanny in gentle English: "Verdun honours a charming guest, mademoiselle."
"Verdun … honours…."His words lingered in her ear. She a guest,shehonoured …here!
Up till now the novelty of her situation had engrossed her, the little soldiers watching in the tunnels, the commandant so eager to air his stumbling English, these had amused her.
And when she had perceived herself rare, unique, she had forgotten why she was thus rare, and what strange, romantic life she meddled in.
Here in this womanless region, in this fortress, in this room, night after night, month after month, the commandant and his officers had sat at table; in this room, which, unlike the tomb, had held only the living, while the dead and the threatened-with-death inhabited the earth above.
They had finished dinner and Monsieur Dellahousse signalled to Fanny that she might rise. She rose, and at the full sight of her uniform he remembered her duties and said stiffly: "Be good enough to wait up till ten to-night. I may need you."
They passed out again down the length of the tables. Near the door the Russian paused to speak with his countrymen, who rose and stood respectfully round him. Fanny and the lieutenant went on alone to the corridor.
"You have travelled with him before?" she asked.
"Oh, yes. I am lent to him to help him through the country. He is on a tour of inspection for the Red Cross; he visits all the camps of Russian prisoners liberated from Germany."
"But are there many round Verdun?"
"Thousands. You will see to-morrow. And be prepared for early rising. If he doesn't send for you by ten to-night I will tell the orderly to let you know the hour at which you will be wanted to-morrow morning. The car is all ready to start again?"
"I am going out to her now."
He turned away to join the Russian, and Fanny passed the sentry at the tunnel's mouth, and stood in the road outside.
Verdun by night, Verdun by starlight, awaited her.
Up the slopes of the hill, every spar, brick and beam, carried its bristle of gold. At her own head's imperceptible movement flashes came and went between the ribs of the Bishop's Palace. The sentry by the tunnel stood between the upper and the underground:—with his left eye he could watch the lights that strung back into the hollow hill, with his right, the smiling and winking of the stars in the sky.
"Fait beau dehors." His voice startled her. She turned to him, but he stood immobile in the shadow as though he had never spoken. She could not be sure that he had indicated to her that every man has his taste and his choice.
She set to work on her car which stood in the shelter of an archway opposite, and for half an hour the sky trembled unregarded above her head. When she had finished she stood back and gazed at the Rochet with an anxious friendly enmity—the friendship of an infant with a lion. "The garage is eighty miles away," she sighed, "with its friendly men who know all where I know so little…. Ah, do I know enough? What have I left undone?" For she felt, what was the truth, that the whole expedition depended on her, that the stately Russian had perhaps never known what it was to have a breakdown—that in Moscow, in Petrograd, in his faraway life, he had sat in town cars behind two chauffeurs, unaware of the deadly traps in rubber and metal.
Night was the same as day in the tunnels; the electric light was always on, and with the morning no daylight crept in to alter it. The orderly called her at half-past six and she took her "clients" to a barracks in the suburbs of Verdun, where Russian prisoners "liberated" from Germany crowded and jostled to see her from behind the bars of the barrack square, like wild animals in a cage. Armed sentries paced backwards and forwards across the gateway to the yard. As it came on to snow a French soldier came out of a guardroom and invited her in by the fire.
Inside, the rest of the guard huddled about the stove, and behind them aRussian prisoner with a moon face swept up the crumbs from their last meal.
"Why do Americans guard the gate?" she asked, "since you are a French guard?"
"Because we don't shoot with enough goodwill," grinned a little man.
"But who do you want to shoot?"
"Those fellows!" said the little man, slapping the moon-faced Russian on the thigh. "We used to guard the gates a week ago. But the Russians were always escaping, and not enough were shot as they got over the wall. So they said: 'The Americans are the types for that!' and they put them on to guard the gates. Look outside! You are having a success, mademoiselle!"
Hundreds of Russians stood about together outside, in strange, poor, scraped-together clothes, just as they had come from Germany, peering at Fanny in silence through the open doorway.
"But I thought these wereliberatedprisoners from Germany?"
"Don't ask me!" said the little man disgustedly. "I wish to heaven they were all back in Germany. Look at me! I've fought in the Somme, the Aisne, and Verdun, and now at the end of the war I'm left here to look after these pigs!"
A sergeant entered. "A man to take the prisoner in the fourth cell up to the doctor," he said sharply.
"It's not my turn," said the little man, aggrieved that the eye of the sergeant should so rest on him. "It's yours!" he said to the man on the bench beside him. "It's yours!" replied this man to the next.
"Yes, it's Chaumet's! Yes, it's Chaumet's,va-t'en!" they all said, and a man with a cast in his eye got up slowly, grumbling, and turned towards the door.
"Here, dress yourself!"
"What, to take a … to the doctor?"
He pulled his belt and gun off the rack with an ill-will and disappeared, buckling it on.
"You have Russians in cells, too?"
"Those who won't work, yes. On bread and water. That one has been on bread and water for five days. In my opinion he'll die."
"But why won't they work?"
"Work! He won't even clean his own cell out! They say it's because they are Bolshevists, but I don't know about that. I talk a little Russian, and I think they are convinced that if they make themselves at all useful to us we shall never send them home. Some of them think they are in Germany still. They're an ignorant lot."
An American came in rather hesitatingly, but without nodding to theFrench.
"We've got bacon-chips in our camp," he said, addressing Fanny directly. "I don't like to bring them in here, but if you'd just step across … it isn't a stone's throw."
She did not like to desert the French, but she was sick with hunger, and rose. She knew she would have nothing from the guard-house meal, for they probably had the same ration as she—one piece of meat, two potatoes, and one sardine a man.
After all, food was more important than sentiment, and she followed him out of the hut.
"You won't get anything from those skinflints," said the American, "so we thought you'd better come and have some chips."
"Because they have nothing to give," she answered, half inclined to turn back. The American barracks were opposite, and in the yard, under a shelter of planks, the men were eating round a complicated travelling kitchen on wheels. "They have all the latest, richest things," thought Fanny, jealous for the French, antagonistic, yet hungry. But when she was among the Americans, they were simple and kind to her, offering her a great tray of fried bacon chips, concerned that she should have to eat them with her hand, washing out their tin mugs and filling them with coffee for her, making her sit on a barrel while she ate. "It's only that they are so different," she thought. "So different from the French that they can never meet without hurting and jarring each other."
Russians slouched about in the snow, washing the pans. When they had finished eating the Americans called to the Russians to eat what remained of the bacon chips. Watching them eat with the hunger of animals, they said:
"They starve them in the French barracks. We give them food here, or they'd sure die."
"They give them what they can in the French barracks; the soldiers don't get a ration like this, you know, even for themselves."
"Their fault for not kicking up a shindy," said the free-born Americans."We wouldn't stand it."
"You have no idea of poverty."
Food was even lying in the snow. A soldier cook thrust his head out of a hut, crying: "Any one want any more chips?"
She knew that it was probably true what the Frenchman had said, that the Americans shot the Russians as lightly as if they were sparrows. Yet here they wept over the French ration that kept the Russians hungry, though alive and well. What a curious mixture of sentiment and brutality they were….
She pulled out her cigarette case and offered a cigarette to a man standing near her. He took it and answered in a thick, lisping Jewish accent, soft and uniformed: "I don't smoke, ma'am. But I'll keep it as a souvenir give to me by the only lady I've seen in three months."
"That's really true? You haven't seen a woman for three months?"
"No, ma'am. Not a one. It must seem strange to you to hear us say that.Just as though you were a zebra."
"There's some one over by your car," said the sentry, who had no idea of silence at his post. She got up quickly and flew back to the other barracks, jumping the deep pools of water and mud and the little heaps of soiled snow, started up the car and drove back to thecitadellefor lunch.
At one-thirty they started out again, to chase over the grey downs in search of Russian camps folded away in small depressions and hollows, invisible from the main roads.
And thus, day after day, for five days, she drove him from morning to evening, from camp to camp around Verdun, until they had seen many thousands of Russians. Sometimes the French lieutenant came with them, and once or twice the Russian gravely invited him to sit in front with the driver. Then they would talk together a little in English, and once he said: "Would you like me to tell you something that will surprise you and interest me?"
She looked round.
"Your employer," he said, smiling gently over the expression, "is jealous of you."
She did not know what to make of this.
"He dislikes it intensely when you talk to the commandant of thecitadelle."
"But…."
"He does not think you exclusive enough, considering you, as he does, ashis woman."
"But, why…."
"Yes, of course! But you ought to realise that you are the only woman for miles around, and you belong to us!"
"You too?"
"Well, yes. I have something the same feeling. But his is stronger because his nature is Oriental. He thinks: 'This woman is a great curiosity, therefore a great treasure; and this treasure belongs to me. I brought her here, I am responsible for her, she obeys my orders.'"
"But does he tell you all this, or do you guess it?"
"We talk of this and that."
That night in the mess-room the Russian leant across the table to Fanny.
"What is man's mystery to a woman if she lives surrounded by him?"
"Oh, but that's not necessary … mystery!"
"Itisnecessary to love."
"Colonel Dellahousse," explained the lieutenant, smiling very much, "does not believe that you can love what you know."
The Russian nodded. "Love is based on a fabulous belief. An illusory image which fills the eyes of people who are unused to each other. This poor lady will soon be used to everything."
Fanny, who felt momentarily alarmed, suddenly remembered Julien.
"When do we go back?" she asked absently.
The sympathetic eyes of the lieutenant seemed to understand even that, and he smiled again.
They left next day, after the midday meal.
Before lunch she met a soldier, who stopped her in one of the branching corridors.
"You are going," he said. "I have a little thing to ask."
She waited.
"Mademoiselle, it would not incommode you, it is such a little thing.Think! We have not seen a woman here so long."
Still she waited; and he muttered, already abashed:
"One kiss would not hurt you, mademoiselle."
"Let me pass…." she stammered to this member of the great "monastery."
He wavered and stood aside, and she went on up the corridor vaguely ashamed of her refusal.
* * * * *
"We go now," said the Russian, rising from the luncheon table. "Are you satisfied with your experience, mademoiselle?"
"My experience?"
"Verdun. This life is strange to you. I have seen you reflective. Now, if you will go out to the car you shall go back to your civilised town where the Governor so dislikes me, and you shall see your women friends again! But we are not coming all the way with you."
"No?"
"No, we stay at Briey. You return from Briey alone."
They set out once more upon the roads which ran between the dead violence of the plains—between trenches that wandered down from the side of a sandy hillock, by villages which appeared like an illusion upon the hillside, fading as they passed and reforming into the semblance of houses in the distance behind them.
The clouds above their heads were built up to a great height, rocky and cavernous; crows swung on outspread wings, dived and alighted heavily on the earth like fowls. They came behind the old German lines, and the road changing led them through short patches of covering woods filled with instruments. Depôt after depôt was piled between the trees and the notices hanging from the branches chattered antique directions at them. "The drinking trough—the drinking trough!" cried one, but they had no horse to water. "Take this path!" urged another, "for the…." but they flew by too fast to read the end of the message, while the path pursued them a little way among the pines, then turned abruptly away. "Do not smoke here …Nicht rauchen," "NICHT RAUCHEN," "Rauchen streng verboten," cried the notices, in furious impotent voices. The wood chattered and spat with cries, with commands for which the men who made them cared no longer. The hungry noses of old guns snuffed at the car as it rolled by, guns dragging still upon their flanks the torn cloak of camouflage—small squat guns which stared idly into the air, or with wider mouths still, like petrified dogs for ever baying at the moon—long slim guns which lay along the grass and pushing undergrowth—and one gun which had dipped forward and, fallen upon its knees, howled silenced imprecations at the devil in the centre of the earth.
When they had passed the shattered staging of the past they came out upon the country which had been occupied by Germans but not by warfare. Here the fields, uncultivated, had grown wild, but round the sparse villages little patches of ground had been dug and sown. Not a cow grazed anywhere, not a sheep or a goat. No hens raced wildly across village streets. Far ahead on the white ribbon of road a black figure toiled in the gutter, and Fanny debated with herself: "Might I offer a lift?"
Looking ahead she saw no village or cottage within sight, and with a murmured apology to the Russian she pulled up beside the old woman whom she had overtaken.
"Where are you going?"
"To Briey."
"We, too. Get in, madame."
The Russian made no comment. The old crone, knuckled, hard-breathing, climbed in, holding uncertainly to the windscreen and pulling after her her basket and umbrella.
"Cover yourself, madame," ordered Fanny, as to a child, and handed her a rug.
"I have never been in an auto before," whispered the old creature against a wind which made her breathless. "I have seen them pass."
"You are not afraid?"
"Oh, no!"
"Cover yourself well, well."
Gallant old women, toiling like ants upon the long stretches of road, who, suddenly finding themselves projected through the air at a pace they had never experienced in their lives before, would say not a word, though the colour be whipped to their cheeks and their eyes rained tears until, clinging to the arm of the driver: "Stop here, mademoiselle!" they would whisper, expecting the car to rear and stop dead at their own doorstep; and finding themselves still carried on, and half believing themselves kidnapped: "Ah, mademoiselle, stop, stop…."
They slipped down into the pit of Briey where the houses cling to the sides of a circular hollow, and drew up by a white house which the Frenchman indicated.
The old woman searched, trembling and out of breath for her handkerchief, and wiped her streaming eyes; then, as she climbed out backwards, with feet feeling for the ground—"What do I owe you, mademoiselle?"
"Ah, nothing, nothing."
"Mais si! I am not at all poor!" and leaving a twopence-halfpenny piece on the seat, she hurried away.
Colonel Dellahousse came to the side of the car and thanked Fanny ceremoniously. "And if I do not see you again, mademoiselle," he said, "remember what I say and go back to your home before the pleasure of life is spoilt for you."
"Good-bye, good-bye," said the French lieutenant.
Soon after she had left Briey snow began to fall. A river circled at the foot of a hill, and she followed its windings on a road which ran just above it. Night wiped out the colours on the hills around her, until the moon rose and they glowed again, half trees, half light. She climbed slowly up to a plateau not a dozen miles from Metz.
* * * * *
An hour later, the car put away in the garage, Fanny was tapping at the window of the bath house in the town. The beautiful fat woman who prepared the baths answered her tap. "Fräulein," said Fanny, "would it matter if I had a bath? Is it too late? I'll turn it on myself and dry it afterwards."
What did the woman mind if Fanny had a bath? Fat and beautiful, she had nothing left to wish for, and contentedly she gave her the corner room overlooking the canal and the theatre square, wishing her a good-night full of German blessings. The water ran boiling out of the tap, and the smoke curled up over the looking-glass and the window-sill.
When the bath was full to the brim she got in, lay back, and pulled open the window with her toe. The beautiful French theatre, piebald with snow and shadow, shone over the window-sill. The Cathedral clock struck out ten chimes, whirling and singing over her head, the voices of the little boys died down, the last had thrown his last snowball and gone to bed. The steam rose up like a veil before the window, and once again, between the grey walls of her bath—so like her cradle and her coffin—she meditated upon the riches and treasure of the passing days.
"And yet," echoed the thoughts in that still water travelling still, "to travel is not to move across the earth."
Peering back into the past, frowning in the effort to string forgotten words together, Fanny whispered upon the surface of the water:
"The strange things of travel,The East and the West,The hill beyond the hill—"
But the poem was shattered as the voice of the bath woman called to her through the door.
"You are well, Fräulein?"
Fanny turned in her bath astonished. "Why, yes, thank you! Did you thinkI was ill?"
"I didn't know. I daren't go to bed till I see you out, for last week we had a woman who killed herself in here, drowned in the water. I have just remembered her."
"Well, I won't drown myself."
"I can never be sure now. She gave me such shock."
"Well, I'm getting out," said Fanny.
"What?"
"I'm getting out. Listen!" And naked feet padded and splashed down upon the cork mat. "Now go to bed. I promise you I have no reason to drown myself."