CHAPTER I

NANCY AND MOLITOR

_1.30 p.m., Tuesday, October 9th._

Passing Meaux. Square gray tower of its cathedral against a gray sky, the gray hemicycle of its lovely apse cutting in against reddish-gray roofs; gray houses with old towers built into them; yellowing acacia and plane and willow trees; level corn-fields stripped of their harvest, pheasants and magpies pecking in them; golden pumpkins; and _betteraves_ showing red and vermilion roots bursting out of the ground; everything wet—wet.

LIGNY-EN-BARROIS.

Two American soldiers walking up a muddy village street in the dusk; rain falling; a cinnamon-colored stream slipping by; and a quantity of shabby, wet foliage and wetter meadows.

GONDRECOURT, _5.40_.

In the extreme point of the angle where the Nancy train seems to turn back to Paris and where many American soldiers are billeted. Cheerless, dimly lighted station. Groups of our men standing about, high piles of United States boxes, marked “Wizard Oats.” Some persuasion of black-frock-coated “sky pilot” walking up and down and humming, “Pull for the shore, sailor, pull for the shore” (there _was_ a lot of water about!), and then in the darkness the train slipped out. There and in all the dim, wet Lorraine villages about are damp, puzzled, homesick, forlorn, brave, determined, eager young Americans.

HÔTEL EXCELSIOR ET D’ANGLETERRE, NANCY, _Tuesday evening_.

Cabs at station, hot water, writing-paper, meat, warmth, all sorts of things you don’t always get on Tuesday in Paris. Everything, in fact, except light. Dining-room full of officers. _Chic atmosphère de guerre_ began to envelope me, not yet experienced that day. Started from Paris tired and not particularly receptive, but was conscious of a slow quickening of sensibility as the hours passed, drawing me within the zone of armies.

This “chic war atmosphere” is like nothing else. Impersonal and larger lungs are needed to breathe it. We no longer, so many of us, read of their battles, but they still fight them, these blue-clad men out here. In the coal-black evening, stumbling from the station, one realizes it all once more—and there is some lighting of the soul.

_October 10th._

Nancy in rain and storm, and all night the sound of cannon and gun and mitrailleuse turned against sweet flesh and blood, the sons of women dying in agony hard as their mother’s pain, and no way out. Never were the imaginations of men less elastic; little groups everywhere are hourly setting this cold grind in motion with a word or a gesture, around green tables or bending over maps—in a few small spaces deciding the agonies of millions.

An _avion_ almost tapped at my window once toward morning and reminded me of a young aviator with whom we talked in the train last night, his face a-twitch, strange eyes, gloomy, set mouth, once _jeunesse dorée_. A hard look as he answered:

“_Avion de chasse, il n’y a que cela._” He had been “resting” in the cavalry, where there was little movement, and he couldn’t stand it. As for the trenches—

“_O les tranchées! Être avec des gens que je ne connais pas, sous des conditions indescriptibles; non, je n’en peux plus._”

“Better to fall from the heavens?” I asked him.

And then I realized the disarray of nerves, the complete unfitting of the being to an earthly habitat, in the knowledge that life is measured by an almost countable number of hours or days, scarcely weeks, and rarely, rarely months, and the calling on help from the flower of sleep to fit one for acts impossible to normal being.

I must say this very evidently “made-in-Germany” hotel is most comfortable. _Jugend-Stil_ designed bed, exquisitely clean; great white eiderdown; a munificence of brass electric-light fixtures representing leaves, with frosted shades running from pale pink to pale green, and giving plenty of light; the iron shutters tightly pulled down, of course. Large wash-stand with a huge faucet for hot water, bearing the name “Jacob”; the heating apparatus by Rückstuhl; the telephone, “Berliner-system”; electric light and lift the familiar “Schindler.” Wardrobe and mirror over wash-stand have, like the bed, a design, not of conventionalized flowers, but of flowers devoid of life. The inexpressibly sloppy _mollesse_ of _art nouveau_ is in such contrast to the beautiful precision of touch of the eighteenth century.

At 9.30 E. M. came into my room and said, “We’d better doll up and be off.” I leave it to the gentlest of readers to surmise what we did before being off, and I would like to say here that one doesn’t always “doll up” for others; the process gives to one’s own being a sense of completeness most sustaining. It comes after that of having one’s clothes put on properly.

_En route_ to the Prefect’s we met the tall, good-looking blond young son of Jean de Reszke, “_très chic, cherchant le danger_”; “_en voilà un qui n’a pas froid aux yeux_,” the only and adored child of his parents. It’s not a very promising situation for them. But again I thought, “Nothing but good can befall the soldier, so he play his part well,” and started to ponder on the incalculable growth of filial piety, and of the love of mothers, and their griefs, when, suddenly walking along the gray streets of Nancy, the scene shifted, and it was the Metropolitan Opera House that I saw—the lights, the red glow, the boxes, the jewels; the warmth, the stir of the orchestra, the quiet of the listening house, were about me. It seemed to be the second act of “Tristan and Isolde” after the duo, when King Mark makes his noble entry and in those unforgetable accents begins his broken-hearted apostrophe to Tristan, “_Tatest du’s in Wirklichkeit, wähnst du das?_” And all that unsurpassed and unsurpassable art of the great Polish brothers was again evoked; one now gathered to his rest in stress of war, the other knowing a greater fear than for himself.

Then I found myself in the Place Stanislas under gray morning skies, instead of the gleaming twilight web. I felt suddenly and acutely the turning of the seasons and the inexorable advent of winter through which unsheltered flesh and blood must pass. That ravishing of the spirit I knew in the warm June sunset was mine no more.

_Later._

Waiting for the motor to drive to Lunéville.

Went with Madame Mirman, the wife of the _Préfet de la Meurthe et Moselle_, to visit Molitor. It is a huge collection of barrack-buildings which for three years has contained that terrible precipitation of old men, women, and children from the devastated districts around about. They are received in every conceivable condition of hunger, dirt, disease, and distress of soul. They had been living in the woods and fields that first summer, and the children running the streets of half-ruined towns, before being brought to Molitor.

[Illustration: SISTER JULIE]

[Illustration: BAS-RELIEF OF THE REFUGEES

As they passed at Evian—but typical of any group anywhere.]

We went first to the school-building, and into the kindergarten room where rows of children were making straight lines with beans on little tables. Very hot and stuffy in the hermetically sealed room, every child sniffling and sneezing and coughing. There are always faces that stand out, and in this room, as the children rose and sang a song with patting of the hands, there was one child of five with gestures so lovely and movements of the body so rhythmic that one realized afresh the eternal differences in the seasoning of the human _pâte_. She was between two clumsy, wooden-faced children, one with a peaked forehead, the other with a heavy jaw.

We then went up-stairs to a class-room of older boys, and after we had spoken to the schoolmaster I noticed a handsome boy with shining eyes and a firm mouth. The master, who was new and wished to become acquainted with his pupils, had written the following questions on the blackboard: “Whence do you come? What was the occupation of your parents? Are you happy at Molitor?” etc. Well, that little boy of eleven, when asked what he had written, turned out to be a sort of cross between Demosthenes and Gambetta, and read from his slate an impassioned apostrophe about “_le flot envahisseur des barbares, quand délivrera-t-on la France martyrisée de la main destructrice de l’ennemi?_” and to the question, “Are you happy at Molitor?” the answer was, “_Oui, on est bien à Molitor, mais rien ne remplace le foyer; quand on a perdu cela, on a tout perdu_.”

The face of the master showed some embarrassment at any restrictions on happiness at Molitor, but the boy, whose eyes had begun to flame, continued: “_O quand viendra le jour de la Revanche, le jour sacré de la délivrance?_” and wound up with something about his blood and the blood of his children. His father, who was dead, had been employed in the customs at Avricourt, and his mother now cooked in one of the Molitor buildings. Then we passed through a room where some fifty women were sorting and stemming hops; the strong, warm odor enveloped us and the eyes of the women followed us.

Then out across the immense courtyard to one of the dormitory buildings. Rows of beds, and above them, around the walls, a line of shelves on which is every kind of small article that could be carried in flight, from trimmings for Christmas trees to shrines and little strong-boxes.

As we entered the first room, Madame Mirman said to an old woman with deep, soft eyes:

“_Comment ça va-t-il aujourd’hui?_”

And with such grace she answered:

“_Oh, Madame, c’est la vieillesse, et on n’en guérit pas._”

Another woman, nursing a rheumatic knee, when asked about her son, who had been at Molitor on a three days’ permission, put her cracked old hand over her heart and said, “_Voir un peu sa personne fait oublier tout_.”

In all the big rooms near the long windows women sit bent over embroidery and passementerie frames. One of them, with thin hair and horny hands, was working with extreme rapidity on a bright _pailleté_ strip for an evening gown, a design of silver lilies on white tulle, in such contrast to her worn face and bent figure.

Many were working at lovely and intricate tea-cloths, with designs of the Lorraine cross, and thistle, oak and acorn designs, that had been handed down through generations. Some of the work Madame Mirman is able to dispose of directly, while some is contracted for with big shops.

When we came down-stairs there was a great sound of young feet and voices and various noises of well-cared-for children, just dismissed from the seats of learning, coming up the stone stairway to their dinner.

It’s the threading up of all these destinies, this web of the France to be, that is the great problem. And oh, how terrible is this uptearing of human beings, this ghastly showing of the roots! I have seen it wholesale, east and west. I remember especially the first two evacuations of Czernowitz and the adjacent towns and villages during the Russian advance through Galicia. They would flood the streets of Vienna by the tens of thousands, in pitiful groups, always the same—old men, women, and children; and it’s all alike, it’s war, the ruthless, the indescribable, and everywhere the children paying most heavily. Could the war-book of _children_ be written no eyes could read it for tears....[13]

We went back to luncheon at the Prefecture, where I met M. Mirman, one of the most striking figures of the war. Since the 12th of August, 1914, when he took up his duties as _Préfet de la Meurthe et Moselle_, his handsome, straight-featured face has figured at every gathering of sorrow or relief. As he sat at his table, surrounded by his six children, he talked of those first days when Nancy was in danger and it was not known if _le Grand Couronné_ on which Castelnau had flung his _paraphe could_ protect them, and then he told of many urgent present needs.

After lunch we drove with Madame Mirman to her favorite good work, _l’école ménagère_.

When we got there the elementary class, girls of thirteen to fourteen, were chopping herbs and onions to make seasoning for soups in winter, and putting it up in stone pots. Another class was kneading and rolling out dough. Then we went into the great sewing-room and turned over the books of miniature sample pieces of underclothing. When the girls become expert they are given material and make their own trousseaux.

With a sigh Madame Mirman said: “But I am sad for these girls. The men who might have been their husbands lie dead on the field of honor, and there will be no homes for them.”

Something chill and inexorable laid its hand on me as I thought: only graves, and they leveled out of memory by time; except in the hearts of mothers, to whom _voir un pen sa personne_ is the supreme joy, and the knowledge that it can be no more the supreme sorrow.

HÔTEL DES VOSGES, LUNÉVILLE, _11.30 p.m._

A long day. Many pages of the book of life and death turned. Just before leaving Nancy, made a little tour of the battered station. Scarcely a pane of glass left anywhere, but in and out of it is the ceaseless movement of blue-clad men. A few flecks of a strange, dull amber in a pale-pink sky, the true sunset sky of Nancy. A bishop with a military cap and a chaplain in khaki pass, lines of _camions_ and Red Cross ambulances. Suddenly, beyond the station, a dark-winged thing against the sky is seen to drop, right itself for a moment, then a column of smoke goes up from it, then a flame, then there is a falling of something black just behind the twin Gothic towers of St.-Léon. The streets filled instantly, “_C’est un des nôtres_,” said a man with field-glasses, and then, death in the sky not being unusual here, they went about their business, and the long, delicate towers of St.-Léon got black as ink against the flaming sky. But a man’s soul was being breathed out in some distant beet-root field or in the forest of Haye. Peace to him!

The next thing I saw, that has become a familiar sight in the last months, was an American soldier on some sort of permission, and hanging from his arm, neatly bound, was a pretty little “dictionary”—from whom, however, came sounds of broken English. The British Expeditionary Force saved the classics from destruction at one time; now “salvage” seems to be rather the turn of the American forces. One can only philosophize on the indestructibility of matter.

The Place Stanislas was a bit out of our way, but when I saw the lovely Louis XV knots of pink that the orb of day was tying in the sky before he quite departed I begged for three minutes in its pale loveliness. Against the delicate ribbons of the sky were urns and figures, urns with stone flames arising from them, softly glowing, or stone flower-twisted torches held by winged beings, children and youths or angels I knew not—but I did know in a flash just how and why the Place Stanislas came into being.

In the gray streets were blue-clad, heavily laden men, and the chill autumn twilight was falling about them. Oh, Nancy! dream of the past and yet with so much of the hope of the present within your gates!

As we sped out of town, through the vast manufacturing suburbs, I turned and saw a bank of orange glory in the west, cut into browns and reds, with little threadings of gray and green and blue, for all the world like an ancient Cashmere shawl with light thrown on it.

Night was falling as we passed through St.-Nicolas du Port. The two immense towers of the church, which dominate the landscape, were cutting black and cypress-like into the sky. The streets were full of dim figures—soldiers, overalled men, and many trousered women coming from munition-factories, with baskets and clinging children, hurrying home to get the evening meal.

We two American women found ourselves threading our way through it all in a Ford which E. M. was driving herself, the Ford which in the afternoon had allowed itself caprices only permissible to lovelier objects, and there, close behind the French lines, we talked of love and marriage, and the Church. And these things had been and are for one, and for the other all to come.

Among its various imperfections, the Ford was one-eyed, and our little light did not cast its beams very far. We got tangled up into a long line of _camions_, with blinding headlights, quite extinguishing us as we hugged the right side of the road. Finally we reached the outpost of Lunéville, where the guard stopped us, dark and disreputable-looking as we were, flashed his lantern, saw the lettering on the auto. We cried, “Vitrimont,” and then passed on. The chill night had completely fallen, but in the dark fields rose darker crosses that only one’s soul could see. Peace to them that lie beneath!

Into town safe; drew up at the door of the house that was once an old Capuchin monastery, groped our way through a dark garden to find a warm welcome from Mademoiselle Guérin, a shining tea-table, an open fire, many books, things seemed _too_ well with us.