CHAPTER I

HOW ONE MAY HAPPEN TO GO TO THE FRONT

PARIS, _Thursday, June 7, 1917_.

Even personal events have their outriders, and this is how an unexpectant lady, still fiancée to Mexico, received from Destiny various indications that she was to go there where men, ten thousand upon ten thousand, lay down their lives _pro patria_. Like everything, it was simple when it had happened.

At the Foire Saint-Sulpice, where I was serving at the tea-stall, I met E. M. C., whom I thought in California. After greetings (we had not seen each other since the fatal month of October, 1916) she said to me:

“You must come down to Lunéville where I have a house, and visit the village of Vitrimont, that mother is rebuilding.”

I answered: “My dear, I’m still tied to Mexico, and I can see my publishers frowning all the way across the ocean if the second much-promised, long-delayed book doesn’t arrive. I oughtn’t even to peep at anything else for the moment.”

Then, tea victims beginning to crowd in, “business as usual” engaged us and we parted.

When I got home I found that Joseph Reinach, met but once—Polybe of the delightful _Commentaires_—had sent me his brochure, _Le Village Reconstitué_. I still didn’t hear the outriders galloping down the street.

In the evening I dined _chez Laurent_ with Mr. C., known in Mexico. When I got there I found that his sister, Madame Saint-R. T., Présidente de La Renaissance des Foyers, was going into Lorraine, to Lunéville itself, the next day; conversation was almost entirely of the practical work to be done in the devastated districts, and the deeply engaging _philosophie de la guerre_, of how one had not only to rebuild villages, but to remake souls and lives.

_A quoi bon donner des chemises?_ Give tools and implements, or a brace of rabbits, that nature may take its course and the peasant can say, “Soon I will have a dozen rabbits, and twenty-five francs that I have earned.”

Some one observed that it really would be the rabbits, however—it is any living, productive thing that is of account, beyond all else, in the dead and silent places of devastation, and gifts of twelve chickens and one cock are demanded rather even than shoes.

As we were pleasantly dining in the garden, and philosophizing sometimes with tears, sometimes smiles, a terrific thunder-storm broke over Paris, and we all crowded into the big central room, with piles of hastily torn-off, muddy table-linen. We sat talking, however, till they turned both ourselves and the lights out. As we parted, Madame Saint-R. T.’s last words were, “But try to come down to Lunéville.”

I thought to myself that night, “Things are getting hot.” I believe in signs from heaven, and signs from heaven are not to be neglected.

[Illustration: VERDUN AND VICINITY]

On Saturday, when E. M. stopped by for me to go again to the Foire, I said:

“I believe I _will_ go to Lunéville. What does one do about papers?”

We straightway went to the Rue François Premier, not being in the _mañana_ class, either of us, and found there a charming specimen of _jeunesse dorée_, intellectual, “sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,” but doing his bit. Shears for the cutting of red tape were liberally applied, and my papers were promised in an unprecedented three days.

As we “swept” out I said to E. M., “You don’t think we were _too_ strenuous?”

She said, “Oh, they are used to us now, though it was a thrilling moment when you ripped your photograph (such a photograph!) from the duplicate of your passport!”

The aforementioned charming specimen, M. de P., had said a photograph was essential; it was Saturday afternoon, the next day was Sunday, and for some unexplained reason photographers don’t seem to work in France on Mondays, at least not in war-time.

It was about this time that E. M. said, in a _dégagé_ way: “I am going down to Verdun with a friend. It’s awfully difficult, and the women who have been there can be counted on one’s fingers. I wish _you_ could go, too.”

I said, “That’s out of the question.” But I thought to myself, “We will see what Fate decides.” It’s a great thing to keep astride of her, anyway.

On account of Sunday coming in between, my papers could not be ready in time for me to leave with her on Tuesday (they have to be sent to the _Quartier-Général_ to be stamped), but they were promised for Wednesday that I might start for Lunéville on Thursday. I went to see E. M. at her aunt’s, the Princess P.’s, on Monday night for a few last words and injunctions. I found her after passing through some lovely dove-gray rooms with priceless old portraits of Polish great, hanging on silvery walls, and rare bibelots and porcelains discreetly scattered on charming tables rising from gray carpetings. She greeted me by saying, “It’s all arranged for you to go to Verdun, too.”

“Verdun!” I cried. “Glory and sorrow of France!”

I didn’t ask how, but thought of the harmonious working of chance that brings as many gifts as blows in its train.

_Thursday, June 14th, 10.30 a.m._

We slipped out of the station, flooded with waves of blue-clad men, at eight o’clock, and since then there has been a constant stopping of the train in green, glade-like places to let troop-trains pass. A while ago I found myself looking out on a river, and a shiver went over me. It was the jade-colored, slow-flowing Marne.

White morning-glories are thick on every hedge, and wild roses such as grow in New England lanes, and there are many thistles, soft and magenta-colored; lindens, acacias, and poplars abound and hang delicately over the banks of the river.

Lying open on my lap is the _Revue de Paris_ of June 1st, but I can’t read even the beautiful “_Lettres d’un Officier Italien_”—(Giosué Borsi[1]), breathing a deep spirit of conformity to the will of God and showing the evolution that many an _intellectuel catholique_ of his generation has gone through in Italy. In his dugout were Dante, Homer, Ariosto, the Gospels, St. Augustine, Pascal, and _Le Manuel du Parfait Caporal et les Secours d’Urgence_. And he loved his mother and let her know it.

All along the route are villages and peaceful country houses, near the train, bowered in acacia and linden; elder-bushes are in full bloom, too, and we pass many green kitchen gardens. Women are shaking blankets out of windows, and looking at the train going to the front, thinking, who shall say what thoughts?

_Later._

Big movement of troops is delaying us, and it has been a morning spent among emerald-green hills, pale, like Guatemalan or Bolivian emeralds, not like the deep-colored gems of the Rue de la Paix. Everywhere are patches of blue-clad men, marching down white roads between green fields melting into the blue sky at the point of the eyes’ vision. Still others are bathing in the pale, warm Marne or resting on its banks. Trains go past loaded with battered autos, _camions_ and guns coming from the front, or others with neatly covered, newly repaired machines of death, going out.

All were silent in the train at first. “_Méfiez-vous, les oreilles ennemies vous écoutent_” is the device placarded everywhere. In my coupé some one feeling slightly, very slightly, facetious, had rubbed out the first two letters of _oreilles_, changed the first “_e_” into an “_f_,” so that it read, “_Méfiez-vous, les filles ennemies vous écoutent_.” The ruling passion strong in death!

We pass Epernay, whose little vine-planted hills had run red, before the treading out of its 1914 wine, with the blood of English and French heroes.

At last we began to talk, a dark-eyed colonel of infantry with the _Grand’ Croix de la Légion d’Honneur_ having reached down my bag for me.

It is a historic date for France and for ourselves.

The night before, General Pershing arrived in Paris, with his guerdon of help, mayhap salvation. All the newspapers had pictures of him and his staff, their reception at the station, the crowd before the Hôtel Crillon. One officer told the story of the woman in the crowd who was so little that there wasn’t the slightest chance of her seeing anything or anybody. When asked why she was there she answered, “_Mais j’aurai assisté_,” and that, it seems to me, is the epitome and epitaph of the generation whose fate it is to see with their eyes the world war.

IN THE STATION, CHÂLONS-SUR-MARNE, _2.30 p.m._

Extreme heat. Train four hours late on account of the movement of troops. Wave after wave of horizon blue undulates through the station. They are lying about, standing about, sitting about—the _poilus_. Half hidden by their equipment, their countless bundles tied around their waists, slung on their shoulders, under their arms, they seem indescribably weary and dusty, turned toward the blazing front where the best they can hope is _la bonne blessure_—theirs not to reason why. Sometimes 30,000 pass through Châlons in a day.

Now it comes to me that our men—our fresh, eager, beautiful young men, such as I saw disembark at Vera Cruz—will pass through this same station to that same blazing front....

By my window, on the siding, is passing an endless train of box-cars, with four horses in the ends of each car. Between the horses’ forefeet, pale-blue groups of men are crowded; no room to lie, scarcely to sit—cramped, hot, with their eternal accoutrement. One bent group was playing cards, the horses’ heads above them. But mostly they are looking out at people who are not called upon to die.

_Later._

Pangs of hunger began to assail me as the train pulled out. I went into the dining-car and had a modest, belated repast of _œufs sur le plat_, cheese and fruit. At the tables were groups of uniformed men talking in low voices of what had been and what might have been. As I looked out of the window, while waiting, my eyes fell upon the first band of prisoners I had seen—tall, stalwart men, wearing the round white cap with its band of red—at work on the roads, those veins and arteries of France.

An officer, once the most civilian of civilians, looking like the pictures of Alexandre Dumas _fils_ on the covers of cheap editions of _La Dame aux Camélias_, with bushy hair parted on one side, mustache, and stubby Napoleon, broad face and twinkling eyes, pointed out Sermaize, the first of the devastated villages we passed, which has been rebuilt by the English Society of Friends. “Conscientious objectors” don’t intend to let the sons of Mars do everything, but they can’t keep pace with the destruction. In _Le Village Reconstitué_ M. Reinach speaks of the ugliness of the models proposed to the victims, which pass understanding, and says that even the vocabulary of Huysmans would not suffice to give the least idea of them. What the peasant wants is “_mon village_,” which doesn’t at all resemble what the _commis voyageur en laideur_ proposes.

REVIGNY, _4.30 p.m._

I have seen the first black crosses in a green field bounded by clumps of poplar against the clear sky. Revigny is a mass of ruins, roofless houses, heaps of mortar, and endless quantities of blue-clad, heavily laden men coming and going in the station—the eternal waiting, waiting for transit. Revigny is on the road to Verdun, Alexandre Dumas _fils_ told me. He gets out at Bar-le-Duc, which is now the point of departure to the fateful fortress. Groups of yellow Annamites are working at the roads. They are imported for that purpose, being of little use when the cannon sounds.

Awhile ago two young Breton under-officers, colonials, came into the compartment. They had been at school together and had not met for ten years until just now on the train. They watched together the shifting scenery; one was coming from a young wife, the other from a fiancée.

GONDRECOURT.

Two symmetrical fifteenth-century towers pierce a pale-blue sky. One of the young Bretons tells me that for some time the train has been making a great détour, as the straight line to Nancy would take it through Commercy, daily bombarded by the enemy.

PAGNY, _5.30 o’clock p.m._

Here we pick up the Meuse—and there still follows us the pink-and-gray ribbon of willow-fringed canal that links the Marne to the Rhine, and which all day long has looked like the marble the Italians call _cipollino_. But I remember that its greenness has been but lately colored with a crimson dye.

TOUL (_where we thread up the Moselle_), _5.50_.

We have just passed Toul. Great barracks are near the station, and on the opposite hill is the fortress, high against the sky, bound to Verdun by an uninterrupted series of forts. It is a _place de guerre de première classe_. The Romans had an encampment here, and Vauban made the fortifications of his time.

And because the mind is not always held to the thing in view, even though it be of great moment, I thought how Toul was the town where Hilaire Belloc did his military service, “was in arms for his sins”; from here it was that he set out upon the “path to Rome” in fulfilment of his vow. Other things laid long away in memory came to mind, and I was only jerked back as my eye was caught by a group of German prisoners being marched past the station, one soldier, with a pointed bayonet, in front of them and another behind.

And at Nancy we are to knit up the river Meurthe.