CHAPTER IX

CHÂLONS.—CHÂTEAU DE JEAN D’HEURS.—REVIGNY, THE “LINING” OF THE FRONT

Each, on comparing notes, was found to have spent the night on the outside of the bed. One of the party, who naturally wishes to remain anonymous, found a _cafard_, the classic cockroach, in her ear toward dawn, and Aurora was welcomed by no hymn of praise from her.

Now we are sitting drinking lemonade on the pavement in front of the abode of iniquity. We have been twice through the hot town, which consists of a modern town around the station, and a picturesque old one on a hill at the back, to find the proper authorities for the stamping of our papers with the military _permis_ to go to the château of Jean d’Heurs, belonging to Madame Achille Fould, for luncheon. We caught the major by a hair’s breadth; he was disappearing around the corner by the military _commandature_ on his bicycle. Then to the _préfecture_ for permission to telephone to Châlons for rooms that night; on returning, found Miss M. and Miss N. awaiting us. They have been working at the “Foyer des Alliés” near the station. They want now to get a much-needed canteen in shape at Châlons, and are asking us to help. The word from the colonel of Verdun is an “open sesame,” and we will investigate _en route_ to Paris.

CHÂLONS-SUR-MARNE, _10 o’clock p.m._

It’s been as long as to Tipperary since the scrawl at Bar-le-Duc.

At 11.30 we got into the comfortable motor Madame Fould sent to bring us to Jean d’Heurs’ for lunch. It’s a beautiful old château of the eighteenth century, given by Napoleon to the Maréchal Oudinot, and in the Fould family since those days, though not lived in until the war by the present generation. It made us feel quite like “folks” as a side-whiskered, highly respectable, rather aged majordomo received us and led us up a broad stairway and showed us into a big library where Madame Fould, her seven _infirmières_, and a young officer were waiting. After that, a perfect lunch in the way of each thing being of the freshest and most delicate and tasting of itself. The young officer was recovering from a wound received at Verdun last September, followed by a trepanning, evidently highly successful, as, in addition to all his senses, he had a thick mat of hair.

The library, to which we returned for coffee, was lined with the most precious books in the most precious bindings, one whole side containing first editions only from Voltaire and J.-J. Rousseau to Châteaubriand and Taine. And I ran my fingers with such a friendly feeling over some soft and lustrous bindings.

The vast spaces of the château are now made into wards, and relays of several hundred men are cared for in them. White hospital beds are pushed against elaborately frescoed walls and Empire gildings. Everything in spotless order. Afterward we went out into the beautiful old park, where convalescent men were sitting or lying about under the great trees. The park is now closed to visitors, the fair sex from neighboring villages having been too generous in their offerings on the altar of Priapus. It’s a lovely spot, and Madame Fould has had her hospital going since the beginning of the war.

At two o’clock we motored into Revigny, accompanied by the handsome young trepanned officer, who deposited us at the military headquarters for the stamping of our safe-conducts. Mrs. C. P., who can put her head through a stone wall, without injuring it, as neatly as any one I ever saw, proceeded to perform the feat, with the result that the major in command gave us all permission for the next _étape_, Châlons. Then Mrs. C. P.’s young son, serving with the American Ambulance, met us, motoring over from Z——; a friend came with him, originally from Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, rather discouraged at the quiet of the _secteur_ in which he was stationed. But all he has to do is to wait. Everybody at the front eventually gets what’s “coming to him.” Mrs. C. P.’s boy had on his _Croix de Guerre_, got for fearless ambulance work at Verdun during one of the big attacks.

Revigny seen from the inside is a hole of holes—but through it defile continually the blue-clad men of France. Twelve thousand had already passed through that day. In the _carrefour_ of the road by the station is a ceaseless line of convoys coming from or going to Verdun. This once banal little village has come to have something symbolic about it, though looking, as one passes by, like dozens of other destroyed villages. But inside it is the lining of the war—that thing of dust, fatigue, thirst, hunger, sadness, fear, despondence, hopelessness, running up and down the gamut of spiritual and physical miseries. “Theirs not to reason why.” ...

The English canteen is the only bright spot in the whole place. Those sad-eyed men, like us, love and regret, and are beloved and regretted; women have let them go in fear and dread; and all over Europe it is the same, east, west, north, and south—all they love they lay down at the word of command. I watched for an hour the blue stream of heavily laden men as they passed in, coming up to the counter with their battered quart cups, drinking their coffee standing, in haste, that the comrade following might be sure to get his drink, the sweat dripping from their faces. Fifteen minutes later a great thunder-storm broke, and thousands of sad-eyed men were huddled together, shelterless, like sheep, suddenly soaked; the hateful dust became the still more hateful mud. I left it all in complete desolation of spirit, and wondering, Is God in His heaven?

Revigny was worse to my spiritual sense almost than the battle-field—there all was consummated. Here the men are still passing up to sacrifice.