Everyman's Land Part 24

"This is as far as I dare go!" our lieutenant said, with a brusque gesture which bade the chauffeur stop. But before the car turned, he gave us a moment to take in the picture of grandeur and unforgivable cruelty. Yes, unforgivable! for you know, Padre, there was no military motive in the destruction. The only object was to deprive France forever of the n.o.blest of her castles, which has helped in the making of her history since a bishop of Rheims began to build it in 920.

"Roi ne suis Ne prince, ne duc, ne comte aussy.

Je suys le Sire de Coucy."

The beautiful old boast in beautiful old French sang in my head as I gazed through tears at the new ruin of ancient grandeur.

Some of those haughty Sires de Coucy may have deserved to have their stronghold destroyed, for they seem--most of them--to have been as bad as they were vain. I remember there was one, in the days of Louis XII, who punished three little boys for killing a few rabbits in his park, by ordering the children to be hanged on the spot; and St. Louis was so angry on hearing of the crime that he wished to hang the Sire de Coucy on the same tree. There were others I've read of, just as wicked and high-handed: but their castle was not to blame for its master's crimes!

Besides, the last of the proud Enguerrands and Thomases and Raouls, Seigneurs of the line, was son-in-law to Edward III of England; so all their sins were expiated long ago.

"The Boches were jealous of our Coucy," said the Frenchman, with a sigh.

"They have nothing to compare with it on their side of the Rhine. If they could have packed up the chateau and carted it across the frontier they would--if it had taken three years. As they couldn't do that, they did what Cardinal Mazarin wasn't able to do with his picked engineers; they blew it up with high explosives. But all they could steal they stole: carvings and historic furniture. You know there was a room the guardian used to show before the war--the room where Cesar de Bourbon was born, the son of Henri Quatre of Navarre and Gabrielle d'Estrees?

That room the Boches emptied when they first came in August, 1914. Not a piece of rich tapestry, not a suit of armour, not even a chair, or a table, or lamp did they leave. Everything was sent to Germany. But we believe we shall get it all again some day. And now we must go, for the Boches sh.e.l.l this road whenever they think of it, or have nothing better to do!"

The signal was given. We turned and tore along the road by which we'd come, our backs feeling rather sensitive and exposed to chance German bombs, until we'd got round the corner to a "safe section." Our way led through a pitiful country of crippled trees to a curious round hill. A little castle or miniature fortress must have crowned it once, for the height was entirely circled by an ancient moat. On top of this green mound Prince Eitel Fritz built for himself the imitation shooting-lodge which was our goal and viewpoint. And, Padre, there can't be another such German-looking spot in martyred France as he has made of the insulted hillock!

I don't know how many fair young birch trees he sacrificed to build a summer-house for himself and his staff to drink beer in, and gaze over the country, at St. Quentin, at Soissons and a hundred conquered towns and villages! Now he's obliged to look from St. Quentin at the summer-house--and how we pray that it may not be for long!

Over one door of the building a pair of crossed swords carved heavily in wood form a stolid German decoration; and still more maddeningly German are the seats outside the house, made of cement and shaped like toadstools. In the sitting room are rough chairs, and a big table so stained with wine and beer that I could almost see the fat figures of the prince and his friends grouped round it, with cheers for "_Wein, Weib, und Gesang_."

Close down below us, in sloping green meadows, a lot of war-worn horses _en permission_ were grazing peacefully. Our guide said that some were "Americans," and I fancied them dreaming of Kentucky gra.s.slands, or the desert herbs of the Far West, which they will never taste again. Also I yearned sorrowfully over the weary creatures that had done their "bit"

without any incentive, without much praise or glory, and that would presently go back to do it all over again, until they died or were finally disabled. I remembered a cavalry-man I nursed in our _Hopital des epidemies_ telling me how brave horses are. "The only trouble with them in battle," he said, "is when their riders are killed, to make them fall out of line. They _will_ keep their places!"

Both Father Beckett and the French officer had field-gla.s.ses, but we hardly needed them for St. Quentin. Far away across a plain slowly turning from bright blue-green to dim green-blue in the twilight, we saw a dream town built of violet shadows--Marie Stuart's dowry town. Its purple roofs and the dominating towers of its great collegiate church were ethereal as a mirage, yet delicately clear, and so beautiful, rising from the river-bank, that I shuddered to think of the French guns, forced to break the heart of Faidherbe's brave city.

It was a time of day to call back the past, for in the falling dusk modern things and old things blended lovingly together. For all one could see of detail, nothing had changed much since the plain of Picardy was the great Merovingian centre of France, the gateway through which the English marched, and went away never to return until they came as friends. Still less had the scene changed since the brave days when Marguerite de Valois rode through Picardy with her band of lovely ladies and gallant gentlemen. It was summer when she travelled; but on just such an evening of blue twilight and silver moons.h.i.+ne might she have had her pretended carriage accident at Catelet, as an excuse to disappoint the Bishop of Cambrai, and meet the man best loved of all her lovers, Duc Henri de Guise. It was just then he had got the wound which gave him his scar and his nickname of "_Le Balafre_"; and she would have been all the more anxious not to miss her hero.

I thought of that adventure, because of the picture Brian painted of the Queen on her journey, the only one of his which has been hung in the Academy, you know, Padre; and _I_ sat for Marguerite. Not that I'm her type at all, judging from portraits! However, I fancied myself intensely in the finished picture, and used to hope I should be recognized when I strolled into the Academy. But I never was.

Looking down over the plain of Picardy, I pretended to myself that I could see the Queen's procession: Marguerite (looking as much as possible like me!) in her gold and crystal coach, lined with rose-coloured Spanish velvet, jewel-broidered: the gentlemen outriders trying to stare through the thick panes obscured with designs and mottoes concerning the sun and its influence upon human fate; the high-born girls chattering to each other from their embroidered Spanish saddles, as they rode on white palfreys, trailing after the glittering coach; and the dust rising like smoke from wheels of jolting chariots which held the elder women of the Court.

Oh, those were great days, the days of Henry of Navarre and his naughty wife! But, after all, there wasn't as much chivalry and real romance in Picardy then, or in the time of St. Quentin himself, as war has brought back to it now. No deeds we can find in history equal the deeds of to-day!

We got lost going home, somehow taking the wrong road, straying into a wood, plunging and b.u.mping down and down over fearful roads, and landing--by what might have been a bad accident--in a deep ravine almost too strange to be true.

Even our French officer couldn't make out what had happened to us, or whither we'd wandered, until we'd stopped, and our blaze of acetylene had lighted up a series of fantastic caverns in the rock (caverns improved up to date by German cement) and in front of that honeycombed gray wall a flat, gra.s.sy lawn that was a graveyard.

"_Mon Dieu, c'est le Ravin de Bitry!_" he cried. "Let us get out of it!

I would never have brought you here of my own free will."

"But why--why?" I insisted. "It isn't the only graveyard we have seen, alas! and there are only French names on the little crosses."

"I know," he said. "After we chased the Germans out of this hole, we lived here ourselves, in their caves--and died here, as you see, Mademoiselle. But the place is haunted, and not by spirits of the dead--worse! Put on your hats again, Messieurs! The dead will forgive you. And, ladies, wrap veils over your faces. If it were not so late, you would already know why. But the noise of our autos, and the lights may stir up those ghosts!"

Then, in an instant, before the cars could turn, we _did_ know why.

Flies!... such flies as I had never seen ...nightmare flies. They rose from everywhere, in a thick black cloud, like the plague of Egypt. They were in thousands. They were big as bees. They dropped on us like a black jelly falling out of a mould. They sat all over us. It was only when our cars had swayed and stumbled up again, over that awful road, out of the haunted hole in the deep woods, and risen into fresh, moving air, that the horde deserted us. Julian O'Farrell had his hands bitten, and dear Mother Beckett was badly stung on the throat. Horrible!... I don't think I could have slept at night for thinking of the Ravin de Bitry, if we hadn't had such a refres.h.i.+ng run home that the impression of the lost, dark place was purified away.

Forest fragrance sprayed into our faces like perfume from a vaporizer.

We seemed to pa.s.s through endless halls supported by white marble pillars, which were really s.p.a.ces between trees, magically transformed by our blazing headlight. Always in front of us hovered an archway of frosted silver, moving as we moved, like a pale, elusive rainbow; and when we put on extra speed for a long, straight stretch, poplars carelessly spared by the Boches spouted up on either side of us like geysers. Then, suddenly, across a stretch of blackness palely shone Compiegne, as Venice s.h.i.+nes across the dark lagoon.

CHAPTER XXV

Little did I think, Padre, to write you from Soissons! When last I spoke to you about it, we were gazing through field-gla.s.ses at the single tower of the cathedral, pointing out of purple shadows toward the evening star of hope. Then we lost ourselves in the Ravin de Bitry, and arrived thankfully at Compiegne two hours later than we had planned. We expected to have part of a day at Soissons, but--I told you of the dreadful flies in that ravine of death, and how Mother Beckett was stung on the throat. The next day she had a headache, but took aspirin, and p.r.o.nounced herself well enough for the trip to Soissons. Father Beckett let her go, because he's in the habit of letting her do whatever she wants to do, fancying (and she fancies it, too) that he is master. You see, we thought it was only a fatigue-headache. Foolishly, we didn't connect it with the sting, for Julian O'Farrell was bitten, too, and didn't complain at all.

Well, we set out for Soissons yesterday morning (I write again at night) leaving all our luggage at the hotel in Compiegne. It was quite a safe and uneventful run, for the Germans stopped sh.e.l.ling Soissons temporarily some time ago, when they were obliged to devote their whole attention to other places. The road was good, and the day a dream of Indian summer, when war seemed more than ever out of place in such a world. If Mother Beckett looked ill, we didn't notice, because she wore her dust-veil. The same officer was with us who'd been our guide last time, and we felt like friends, as he explained, with those vivid gestures Frenchmen have, just how the Germans in September, 1914, marched from Laon upon Soissons--marched fast, singing, yelling, wild to take a city so important that the world would be impressed. Why, it would be--they thought--as if the whole ile-de-France were in their grasp! The next step would be to Paris, goal of all Germanic invasions since Attila.

It's an engaging habit of Mother Beckett's to punctuate exciting stories like this with little soft sighs of sympathy: but the graphic war descriptions given by our lieutenant left her cold. Even when we came into the town, and began to go round it in the car, she was heavily silent, not an exclamation! And we ought to have realized that this was strange, because Soissons nowadays is a sight to strike the heart a hammer-blow.

Of course the place isn't older than Rheims. It's of the same time and the same significance. But its face looks older in ruin--such features as haven't been battered out of shape. There's the wonderful St.

Jean-des-Vignes, which should have interested the little lady, because the great namesake of her family St. Thomas a Beckett, lived there, when it was one of Soissons' four famous abbeys. There's the church of St.

Leger, and the grand old gates of St. Medard, to say nothing of the cathedral itself. And then there's the history, which goes back to the Suessiones who owned twelve towns, and had a king whose power carried across the sea, all the way to Britain. If Mother Beckett doesn't know much about history, she loves being in the midst of it, and hearing talk of it. But when our Frenchman told us a story of her latest favourite, King Clovis, she had the air of being asleep behind her thick blue veil.

It was quite a good story, too, about a gold vase and a bishop. The gold vase had been stolen in the sack of the churches, after the battle of Soissons, when Roman rule was ended in France. St. Remi begged Clovis to give the vase back. But the booty was being divided, and the soldier who had the vase refused to surrender it to a mere monarch. "You'll get what your luck brings you, like the rest of us!" said he, striking the vase so hard with his battle-axe that it was dented, and its beauty spoiled.

Clovis swallowed the insult, that being the day of soldiers, not of kings: but he didn't forget; and he kept watch upon the man. A year later, to the day, the excuse he'd waited for came. The soldier's armour was dirty, on review; Clovis had the right as a general to reproach and punish him, so s.n.a.t.c.hing the man's battle-axe, the king crushed in the soldier's head. "I do to you with the same weapon what you did to the gold vase at Soissons!" he said.

It wasn't until we had seen everything, and had spent over an hour looking at the martyred cathedral, from every point of view, inside and out, that Mother Beckett confessed her suffering. "Oh, Molly!" she gasped, leaning on my arm, "I'm so glad there's only _one_ tower, and not two! That is, I'm glad, as it was always like that."

"Why," I exclaimed, "how odd of you, dearest! I know it's considered one of the best cathedrals in France, though it isn't a museum of sculpture, like Rheims. But the single tower worries me, it looks so unfinished.

_I'm_ not glad there's only one!"

"You would be if you felt like I do," she moaned. "If there was another tower, we'd have to spend double time looking at it, and in five minutes more I should have to faint! Oh no, I've stood everything so far, not to disappoint any one, but I _couldn't_ see another tower!"

With that, she did faint, or nearly, then came to herself, and apologized for bothering us! Father Beckett hardly spoke, but his face was gray-white with fear, and he held the fragile creature in his arms as if she were his last link with the life of this world.

We got her back into the car; and the man who had shown us the cathedral said that there was an hotel within five minutes' motoring distance. It was not first rate, he explained, but officers messed there and occasionally wives and mothers of officers stayed there. He thought we might be taken in and made fairly comfortable; and to be sure we didn't miss the house, he rode on the step of the car, to show us the way.

It was a sad way, for we had to pa.s.s hillocks of plaster and stone which had once been streets, but we had eyes only for Mother Beckett's face, Father Beckett and I: and even Brian seemed to look at her. Sirius, too, for he would not go into the Red Cross taxi with the others! Brian, whom in most things the dog obeys with a pathetic eagerness, couldn't get him to do that: and when I said, "Oh, his eyes are tragic. He thinks you're going to send him away, never to see you again!" Brian didn't insist. So the dog sat squeezed in among us, knowing perfectly well that we were anxious about the little lady who patted him so often, and unpatriotically saved him lumps of sugar. He licked her small fingers, clasped by her husband, and attracting Mother Beckett's attention perhaps kept her from fainting again.

Well, we got to the hotel, which was really more of a _pension_ than an hotel, and Madame Bornier, the elderly woman in deep mourning who was _la patronne_, was kind and helpful. Her best room had been made ready for the wife of an officer just coming out of hospital, but there would be time to prepare another. Our dear invalid was carried upstairs in her husband's arms, and I put her to bed while a doctor was sent for. Of course, we had no permission to spend a night at Soissons, but I began to foresee that we should have to stay unless we were turned out by the military authorities.

When the doctor came--a _medecin major_ fetched from a hospital by our officer-guide--he said that Madame was suffering from malarial symptoms; she must have been poisoned. So then of course we remembered the sting on her throat. He examined it, looked rather grave, and warned Father Beckett that _Madame sa femme_ would not be able to travel that day. She had a high temperature, and at best must have a day or two of repose, with no food save a little boiled milk.

Soissons seemed the last place in France to hope for milk of any description, but the doctor promised it from the hospital if it couldn't be got elsewhere, and added with pride that Soissons was not without resources. "When the Germans came three years ago," he said, "most of the inhabitants had fled, taking what they could carry. Only seven hundred souls were left, out of fifteen thousand, but many have come back: we have more than two thousand now, and some of them behaved like heroes and heroines. Oh yes, we may almost say that life goes on normally! You shall have all the milk you need for Madame."

When she had taken some medicine, and smiled at him, Father Beckett left his wife in my care, and rushed off to arrange about permission to stop.

The _medecin major_ and our officer-guide were useful. After telephoning from the military hospital to headquarters, everything was arranged; and we were authorized to remain in Soissons, at our own risk and peril.

Madame Bornier prepared rooms for us all; but there weren't enough to go round, so Brian and Julian O'Farrell were put together, and Dierdre and I! She, by the way, is in bed at this moment, whether asleep or not I don't know; but if not she is pretending. Her lashes are very long, and she looks prettier than I ever saw her look before. But that may be because I like her better. I told you, that after what she did for Brian I could never dislike that girl again: but there has been another incident since then, about which I will tell you to-morrow. You know, I'm not easily tired, but this is our second night at Soissons. I sat up all last night with Mother Beckett, and oh, how glad I was, Padre, that Fate had forced me to train as a nurse! I've been glad--thankful--ever since the war: but this is the first time my gladness has been so personal. Brian's illness was in hospital. I could do nothing for him.

But you can hardly think what it has meant to me, to know that I've been of real use to this dear woman, that I've been able to spare her suffering. Before, I had no right to her love. I'd stolen it. Now, maybe I am beginning to earn a little of the affection which she and Father Beckett give me.

I was all "keyed up" when I began to write to you to-night, Padre; but I was supposed to spend my three hours "off" in sleep. One hour is gone.

Even if I can't sleep, I shall pa.s.s the other two trying to rest, in my narrow bed, which is close to Dierdre's.