CHAPTER VII

BAR-LE-DUC

BAR-LE-DUC, _Sunday, June 17th, 2 a.m._

Scribbling in an indescribable brown-upholstered room, where one lies on the outside of a dark and menacing bed covered by one’s own coat, a strong odor of stable coming in at the window and a horrid black cat wandering about. It’s no night to sleep. Two o’clock has just softly sounded from some old bell. I didn’t hear one o’clock, I am thankful to say. I was in a sort of trance of fatigue when we got here at eleven.

Miss P. motored us into Nancy, straight into the setting sun. My eyes were so tired that I didn’t try to pierce the hot glaze, but there’s a memory of running through green fields, with black crosses, saline installations (Rosières aux Salines), manufacturing towns (Dombasle-sur-Meurthe), and Gothic towers (St. Nicholas du Port), and a dash through the new factory suburbs of Nancy into the delicate and perfect loveliness of the Place Stanislas. Neither E. M. nor I had a permit to go to Bar-le-Duc, the point of departure for Verdun, but Mrs. P. had, so she was deputed to order dinner at the Café Stanislas, while we went to the Hôtel de Ville to try to find the _Secrétaire Général_, Mr. Martin, a special friend of E. M.’s, and do what I call “cutting barbed wire.” It seemed at one time as if the high adventure of Verdun might have to be abandoned, as the _Secrétaire Général_, who alone could give us the necessary permission, had been called to Pont-à-Mousson to investigate the results of a raid of German _avions_ there and at Pompey that morning. However, when fate has made up its mind that things shall happen, any deadlock is cleared up by the puppets themselves, literally on a string this time, for as we were standing there in the room with the impotent substitute of the _Secrétaire Général_, the telephone rang, and who was it but the so desired gentleman calling up about something on the long-distance wire. E. M. literally grabbed the receiver, explained the situation, and he gave the necessary authority to his substitute, and we in turn gave the oft-repeated story of our lives from the cradle to the present moment, and finally could depart with papers in order for dinner at the Café Stanislas. Again as we walked across the lovely Place my soul was stirred with memories of peace, love, and the arts of peace. I seemed to understand anew those words, “The arts of peace,” and in a half-dream I looked up at the heavens. Again pale, charming faded tints of blues and grays and pinks were the background for the urns and figures of the sky-line of the pure and lovely buildings that surround it, and a crescent moon with something untouched and virginal flung a last charm about it all.

[Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF AMPHITRITE BY JEAN LAMOUR, PLACE STANISLAS, NANCY]

We found Mrs. C. P. waiting at the same table at which I had sat two nights before with the sons of Mars and the man of God. We were just beginning our dinner when, looking out of the window, we saw something strange and for a moment unclassifiable, in an almost impossible juxtaposition of ideas. No one’s mind would be sufficiently mobile to grasp what it was without blinking a bit. The great, portentous black cross on its wings was what started the mind working properly. It was the Taube brought down at Pont-à-Mousson that morning, being drawn on a _camion_ through the delicious, delicate tracery of Jean Lamour’s wrought-iron gate!

1755-1917!

We dashed out; a crowd was already gathering. A young French aviator with a curious look in his eyes was watching it being set up. Having espied the wings on his uniform, we asked “what and where and how” and are “they” dead or prisoners? Some one said, “_C’est lui_,” indicating the young man, who did not answer our questions, but continued to stand quite still in some sort of dream or _détente_ of nerves. But a man in the crowd said:

“He brought it down at Pont-à-Mousson, and _they_ are prisoners.” We were standing by the statue of _Stanislas le Bienfaisant, Stanislas le Bon_, his reign _le règne des talents, des arts et des vertus_ (these last not as we know them in 1917), and he _was_ looking on strange things! We went back to the café, consumed in haste and distraction the very nice little dinner, topped off by strawberries and cream and the celebrated _macarons des Sœurs Macarons_, and again I found myself dashing to the station, which one thinks is near and isn’t, accompanied by my two fair friends, all going at the same _allure militaire_ that I had taken forty-eight hours before with the two Breton officers and the Chaplain of the 52d.

Wild dash at the station for our hand-luggage; and stampings of safe-conduct, then a hunt for the porter, who, with an excess of zeal (and hope), had reserved a coupé for us and put up the fateful words _dames seules_. Now there is no such thing as _dames seules_ at the front. Many officers were standing in the corridor, one on crutches, so we tore the forbidding words from the windows, and the compartment automatically, though courteously, filled.

Among them two immense, dark-bearded men from the Midi, with accents to defeat the enemy, and a pale officer from near the Swiss frontier, as we afterward discovered. He smiled when I said to the dark one sitting by me, after the greetings and thanks:

“You come from Marseilles?” (He came from a little place five miles from there.)

The officer on crutches stretched his leg with a contraction of the face and a sigh of relief. They were all _en route_ for home, from the same regiment, the seven precious days of _permission_ counting from the hour they reach their homes till the hour they leave them, after months in the field. They had fought in Belgium, on the dunes, these men of the south, those first eighteen months, up to their waists in water, often for weeks at a time. They found the Lorraine landscape that so soothed my soul only fairly pretty, and spoke soft praises of _le Midi_.

They all had the strange, bold, hard, shining look about the eyes, with a deeper suggestion of sadness, that men just returning from action have. It is the warrior look—one kills or one is killed, one conquers or is conquered; there is no _via media_.

The pale officer from Savoy said: “There should never be any war; _c’est trop terrible_; but, once given the fact that war exists, all means to victory are justifiable.” And the bright, hard look deepening on his face made me suddenly think of Charles Martel and Charlemagne, and I knew it was the way French warriors have looked through the ages, but, oh! France. “_Oh doux pays!_”

At Bar-le-Duc, dating from the Merovingians, at least, we descended (our bags passed out of the windows by the officers), and went through a dark, silent, linden-scented town, obliged to drag our own belongings through an interminable street, over a bridge across tree-bordered black water, till we got to this abode, known to men by the name of Hôtel de Metz et du Commerce. What the devils call it I don’t know; I have just chased the black cat out, and if I don’t get some sleep I shall not get to Verdun. There’s no linden scent coming in at my window here.

BAR-LE-DUC, _eight o’clock a.m._

Waiting in the sandy-floored dining-room of the hotel. All three of us very cross. At dawn not only the light, but the sounds of chopping of wood, emptying of pails, and invectives of various sorts came in at the dreadful windows. At seven the maid mounted to know if we wanted the water in the tea or the tea in the water. That tea “threw” them. Not a sign of the famous Bar-le-Duc jellies that one has eaten all one’s life, even _outre-mer_. We compared notes of furry, rumpled sheets, dented pillows, dark coverlets, dreadful scents, and unmistakable sounds. We are now somewhat restored by hot and very good _café au lait_, and Mrs. C. P. is looking out of the door for signs of Mr. de Sinçay, who has just stepped out of his motor.