CHAPTER I
BY THE MARNE
GARE DE L’EST, _Wednesday, July 25th_.
No, it isn’t possible, even for one whose business is not that of stopping bullets, to go toward the combat a second time without a thrill.
Few soldiers in the station; they are mostly at the front, at Craonne and Le Chemin des Dames and other sacrificial places, and in a week or two the empty beds in the hospitals will be full again. Some officers are hastening back from their _permissions_ with pasteboard boxes and other unwar-like accoutrements. One is sitting by me, a straight-featured young man with dark-ringed eyes, his _Croix de Guerre_ and _fourragère_,[7] reading _Brin de Lilas_. In forty-eight hours he may be dead. Another officer is reading _Cœur d’Orpheline_, and _Le Pays_.
Miss N., with something of serene yet brooding in her being, plus a sense of humor, arrives with a telegraphic pass from army headquarters at Châlons, which may or may not “pass” the train conductor.
_Later._
Chelles, where the arts of peace in the form of a vermicelli-factory testify to the arts of war by having every pane of glass broken; and once there was a celebrated abbey at Chelles which was destroyed, with a tidy amount of other things beautiful, at the time of the French Revolution.
Farther along much thinning out of the woods, the beautiful warmth-giving, shade-giving forests of France. In one place there is a planting of young, slender trees, and I thought on those other children of France who must grow to manhood, remake her soul, transmit her immortality. The first harvest is stacked and yellow, and nature is densely, deeply green where it had been pale and expectant. Even the Marne, which we caught up here, has a deeper color than in June, as it reflects the lush green.
Meaux, with its cathedral rising from the center of the town, untouched except by time. Meaux has now come to be a sort of joke (“_de deux maux choisir le moindre_”) which few can resist—I’ve even heard it at the Théâtre Français—and it’s supposed to be the heart’s desire of the _embusqué_, far enough from the front not to get hurt, and far enough from Paris to be out of sight.
Château Thierry, with its first vintage of white grapes, and I bethought me how the whole of France is one vast wine-press—“He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.”
Epernay, with its peculiar church tower. The great building of the champagne Mercier firm near the station has every window-pane broken, and part of it is serving as a Red Cross station. The wave of invasion pressed hard through Epernay that August of 1914.
In the dining-car we sat at a table with two officers—an airman, tall, deep-eyed, some sort of _tic nerveux_ disturbing his face, with the _Grand’ Croix de la Légion d’Honneur_ among other decorations; and a captain of infantry, who had been months at Arras, and at Verdun the terrible March of 1916.
About the time that the cross-eyed waiter (it was easy, poor soul, to see why he wasn’t wanted in the trenches) threw the last set of plates with a deafening crash down the line of diners (the captain of infantry said it was just like the first-line trenches), the airman, whose nerves couldn’t stand it, pursued, rather irritably:
“You don’t even read the _communiqués_ any more, I wager. _Oh, les civils!_”
“I can’t truthfully say I do, always,” I answered, feeling called on to defend the _sacrés civils_. “After three years of it we are fatigued and bewildered by the spectacularness of it, the great, dazzling, hideous mass of it, and you who perish on the battle-field but perform an act that all must some day perform, only different in that it is far better done—_dulce et decorum_—but, after all, the same act that we must perform against our will, at the mercy of some accidental combination. It’s the same outcome, ‘and one’s a long time dead.’”
After a pause and a deep look, perhaps it is the look men have when alone in the secular spaces, he answered:
“_Choisir et aimer sa mort, c’est un peu comme choisir sa bien-aimée_,” and suddenly a flash illuminated my soul, showing me something of the _dulce_ as well as the _decorum_ of dying for country.
And then we looked out of the window, and there came into my mind a completely commonplace event that caught my attention in the first wonderment and horror of the world war. Accompanied by her daughter, an elderly woman, one August evening of 1914, took the Fifth Avenue motor-bus to get some fresh air, and they placed themselves on top. At that epoch, instead of going straight up the Avenue, which was being repaved around about Thirty-fifth Street, the omnibus took a turn into Madison Avenue and reappeared again at the north side of Altman’s. Now the roof of the _porte-cochère_ of Altman’s has a _motif_ of bronzework. The omnibus lurched just at this point; the head and hair of the old lady were caught in it; she was lifted up from the top of the omnibus, remained suspended in air for an instant of time, then dropped to the pavement, where she breathed out her soul. Doubtless there are those who will understand why this completely unimportant matter has remained in my mind—even why I thought of it at that moment.
CHÂLONS-SUR-MARNE, 36 RUE DU PORT DE MARNE.
An 1860 house requisitioned by the military authorities for the _Dames de la Cantine_.
_6.30 p.m._
Sitting in a little glass-inclosed veranda even with the ground. The side against the house, in between the doors and windows, is painted in a crisscross pattern of dark green against light green, and the woodwork is that favorite but uninspiring shallow brown; a large, empty, double-decker cage for birds is in a corner. The veranda leads into two low-ceilinged rooms with parquet flooring and little squares of Brussels carpet. In the first is a writing-table, some arm-chairs, and a horsehair sofa is across a corner; brown wallpaper ornamented with the inevitable oil-paintings of “near” Corots, and “farther” Guido Renis—everything distinctly early Victorian, and something soothing in its atmosphere after three lustrums of _art nouveau_. After all we’ve been through in art lately, early Victorian isn’t as bad as we once thought.
I looked for a moment into the walnut bookcase and found bound volumes of _La Semaine des Familles_, 1850-60; _Le Musée des Familles_ of the same dates: _Le Magasin d’Education_, of the eighties; and the curious part is that here beside the Marne it doesn’t seem of any special country, but of a special period.
The kitchen leads out of the dining-room (which latter is the spiritual twin of the _salon_), and has an old, unused fireplace with a high masonried shelf above it and a beautiful ancient fireback with coat of arms. Near the high window is a little range and the inevitable gas-stove. I put my valise in the sitting-room and went out into the old garden, untouched since the winter’s sleep and the spring’s awakening. It looks out on the road; beyond is a raised walk along the river, and across the stream, just opposite, is the station and the evacuation hospital.
But I was feeling uneasy as I looked about, for I was separated from my _carnet rouge_,[8] which has been unnecessarily reft from me by a too-zealous station individual. Miss Mitchell had met us, smiling and waving, which ought to have been a patent of respectability, from the other side of a bayonet, the side we wanted to be on; but the man had a dullish eye and didn’t see that we were birds of a feather, and, anyway, had just been put in authority and was enjoying his full powers, after the usual manner of the unaccustomed.
So I departed, and got sopping wet in my only suit (am traveling lighter even than the first time), and my garments were furthermore ravaged by falling pollen from a linden-tree under which I had confidingly stood during the downpour. I was a sight, but I _had_ to get that _carnet rouge_. Any one who has been in _la zone des armées_ and has been separated from it will understand the orphaned and anxious feeling that possessed me.
_Later._
A pale brightening of the western sky after the heavy rain. Two _avions de chasse_ passing swiftly to the northeast. I wandered out of the garden, past some modern houses (this part of Châlons, for some reason, is called Madagascar), taking the little raised earth-walk by the Marne. The river, always slow-flowing, has an almost imperceptible movement in front of our house, and there are many grasses and reeds; the banks are weedy and little green boats are made fast to them, and nature is a bit motley and untidy. A soldier is fishing on the opposite side near the station. An officer and a black-robed woman pass. Farther down, the banks are thickly wooded and the trees glisten after the rain; even the great railway station is a-shine, where tens of thousands of men pass daily, together with millions of francs of war material, and it all looks like some not very sharp wood-cut of the sixties—the kind you wouldn’t buy if you were looking over a lot; but, somehow, lived in, it is charming. Then I found myself on a path by the river, with a lush border of trees, poplar, willow, white birch, ash, hawthorn, and clematis-twined, wild-grape-vined bushes. On the other side were ripe wheat-fields. Near a sycamore a man and a woman were locked in an embrace, whether of greeting or farewell I know not. Neither was very young—this much I saw before I turned my eyes and went on; but when I passed there again they were as before, their eyes still closed; and I suddenly knew them for true lovers, who count not moments, but were lost in some infinity; and for all I know they may be there yet, and if not they, then others, for the spaces of love are never empty. To some it may be nonsense that I am talking, but there are those who will know. All the while there was a dull boom of cannon, and other men who could love women were giving up their lives; and I seemed to understand little or nothing, but did not need to understand, for I had a full heart, which is better than a full brain. And I cried, as I walked back, “_Domine Deus, Rex Celestis, Pater omnipotens_,” and left it all—the soft love and the hard death—where it belongs. And I was glad to have walked for a few moments alone by the green Marne.
When I got back I found Joseph of the 71st _Chasseurs à pied_ sitting with Miss N. Joseph thinks we are friends; he _knows_ we are friends, so different from “world’s” people, who are suspicious and think nobody loves them, or fatuous and think everybody does.
We sat in the 1860 dining-room. There is a pressed-bronze clock on the mantelpiece, representing a mild and smiling Turk with a drawn sword—and there is a sideboard you could find in Barnesville, Maryland, or Squedunk (I forget _where_ Squedunk is), and the extremely “distant” Guido Renis decorate the brown walls, without, however, enlivening them.
And this is Joseph’s story—Joseph of the grateful heart, Joseph with two years and a half of service, Joseph who won’t be twenty till December, Joseph with his young, round face and flat nose, dark under his pleasant eyes, and a bit hollow under his cheek-bones, and with decorations on his chest:
“I never knew my parents; the Fathers brought me up. I have had only good from them, and when they were _chassés_ I was taken with them to Pisa. I was going to continue my studies, _mais la guerre, que voulez-vous_? They call me ‘_le gosse_,’ I was the youngest in the regiment. Now I am alone in the world since my brothers were killed, one at Verdun three weeks ago, the other last year on the Somme. I miss the letters,” he added, simply.
“But, Joseph, tell us how you got your _Croix de Guerre_.”
“Oh, I only happened to save the life of my captain at Verdun. We were making a reconnaissance, and he fell with a ball in the hip. I started to bring him in, with a comrade who was hit by a piece of shrapnel in the head and killed instantly. I caught ‘mine’ in the arm, but I was still able to drag my captain in by his feet. It was quite simple, and since then he is very good to me.”
Joseph is _en perm_, his regiment is at Reims, but he spits blood and his voice is hoarse—he was gassed a few weeks ago.
“It smelt of violets,” he said, “and we didn’t know that anything was the matter till an officer rushed toward us. Eight of us never got up. I’ll never speak clearer than this.”
Joseph stayed to supper with us—a supper of _soupe à l’oseille_, scrambled eggs, and salad, but the brown, dull, little room gradually seemed to fill with a sifted glory, and we left our meal and went out to find the whole world dipped in transparent pink, and the great Light of Day about to disappear, a reddish ball, in a mass of color of an intenser hue. The delicate willows were like silver candelabra reflected in the Marne, which now was a satiny pink. The wheat-fields were seas of burnished gold.
Over all a terrific boom of cannon was borne on the damp evening air. It seemed impossible to do other than walk magnetically on and on toward the dreadful sound, out of that world of surpassing beauty toward those supreme agonies, toward Mourmelon and Reims, where men were laying down their lives, even as we three women walked the fields at the sunset hour. I remembered suddenly a picture known and loved years ago—a woman kneeling by such a river-bank, her hair falling, her face buried in her hands, called “_Hymnus an die Schönheit_,” but over the pink-and-silver beauty of _my_ sunset world I heard the deep and dreadful tones of _their_ cannon, and the answer of the 75’s, which Joseph likened to the _miaulement d’un chat_—and all the world seemed askew, and I looked through tears at a golden half-moon that was rising in the pink to add an unbearable beauty to it all.
IN MY ROOM, _10.30 p.m._
The cannon still booming.
My room also has a dark-brown paper with great white flowers on it—some cross between peonies and dahlias, if such union is possible—and heavy mahogany furniture; a few books which I immediately investigated, on a gimp and tasseled trimmed shelf, for a clue to the one-time dwellers. Among them were two by Victor Tissot, _Le Pays des Milliards_ and _Les Prussiens en Allemagne_; the dates were 1873 and 1875, and they told of that other war; and I looked at Germany through the eyes of forty years ago as I turned the pages of _Le Pays des Milliards_, listening to the 1917 guns. History was not only repeating itself, but tripping itself up!
Joseph is sleeping in the garden in the steamer-chair. I hear his gas-cough, a cross between a croupy cough and a whooping-cough. We wanted him to sleep inside, but he said “_J’étouffe_,” and took the steamer-chair out under the spreading chestnut-tree, and sleeps the sleep of youth, even though weary and gassed.
_Thursday, 26th July, 1.30 p.m._
Sitting in the garden, after lunch, where we have had coffee under the spreading chestnut, ready to go to Bar-le-Duc. _Avions_ are whirring in the perfect blue, and we plainly hear the cannon. We are to take night shift at the little _Foyer des Alliés_. When I say that we carry nothing with us, not more than if we were going to take a stroll about town, one sees that the journey will be fairly elemental.
Many white butterflies with an unerring instinct for beauty are flying in and out of the little white ash-tree. And in spite of the boom of cannon there straightway came to me a dear and fugitive realization that beauty is the first thing sought by instinct, its earliest and its last love, its imperishable means and its end. And how every other seeking of instinct comes after perpetuation, conservation, survival of the strong, and how it accompanies and pushes the soul toward its transfiguration.
Suddenly, under the rustling chestnut, all about me the murmur of the gently stirring garden, I found I was mad for beauty, and some liquid, long, unrepeated lines came to me, I know not why:
_E il pino_ _ha un suono, e il mirto_ _Altro suono, e il ginepro_ _Altro ancora, stromenti_ _diversi_ _Sotto innumerevoli dita._
...
_Che l’anima schiude_ _novella,_ _Su la favola bella_ _Che ieri_ _M’illuse, che oggi t’illude,_ _O Ermione._[9]
When you’re not carrying anything with you except your money and your safe-conduct, you _can_ dream till it’s time to take the train.