Padre, you were right. My greatest comfort, as of old, is in turning to
you.
I think you had a glimpse of the future when you left me that last
message: "Write to me, in the old way, just as if I were alive and had
gone on a long journey."
When I lock my door, and get out this journal, it seems as if a second
door--a door in the wall--opened, to show you smiling the good smile
which made your face different from any other. I don't deserve the
smile. Did I ever deserve it? Yet you gave it even when I was at my
worst. Now it seems to say, "In spite of all, I won't turn my back on
you. I haven't given you up."
When I first began to write in this book (the purple-covered journal
which was your last present to me), I meant just to relieve my heart by
putting on paper, as if for you, the story of my wickedness. Now the
story is told, I can't stop. I can't shut the door in the wall! I shall
go on, and on. I shall tell you all that happens, all I feel, and see,
and think. That must have been what you meant me to do.
When Brian and I were away from home a million years ago, before the
war, we wrote you every day, if only a few paragraphs, and posted our
letters at the end of a week. You said those letters were your "magic
carpet," on which you travelled with us. Poor Padre, you'd no time nor
money for other travelling! You never saw France, till the war called
you. And after a few bleak months, that other great call came. I shall
write to you about France, and about myself, as I should have written if
you were back at home.
First--about myself! A few pages ago I said that there was no one alive
who could prove me a liar, to the Becketts or Brian: that I was
"safe--brutally safe." Well, I was mistaken. I am _not_ safe. But I will
go back to our start.
Everyone warned the Becketts that they would get no automobile, no
essence, and no chauffeur. Yet they got all three, as magically as
Cinderella got her coach and four. The French authorities played fairy
godmother, and waved a wand. Why not, when in return so much was to be
done for France?
The wand gave a permit for the whole front (counting in the American
front!) from Lorraine to Flanders. It produced a big gray car, and a
French soldier to drive it. The soldier has only one leg: but he can do
more with that one than most men with two. Thus we set forth on the
journey Brian planned, the Becketts so grateful--poor darlings--for our
company, that it was hard to realize that I didn't _belong_.
It was a queer thought that we should be taking the road to Germany--we,
of all people: yet every road that leads east from Paris leads to
Germany. And it was a wonderful thought, that we should be going to the
Marne.
Surely generations must pass before that name can be heard, even by
children, without a thrill! We said it over and over in the car: "The
Marne--the Marne! We shall see the Marne, this autumn of 1917."
Meanwhile the road was a dream-road. It had the unnatural quietness of
dreams. In days of peace it would have been choked with country carts
bringing food to fill the wide-open mouth of Paris. Now, the way to the
capital was silent and empty, save for gray military motors and
lumbering army _camions_. The cheap bowling alleys and jerry-built
restaurants of the suburbs seemed under a spell of sleep. There were no
men anywhere, except the very old, and boys of the "class" of next year.
Women swept out the gloomy shops: women drove omnibuses: women hawked
the morning papers. Outside Paris we were stopped by soldiers, appearing
from sentry-boxes: our papers were scanned; almost reluctantly we were
allowed to pass on, to the Secret Region of Crucifix Corner, which
spying eyes must not see--the region of aeroplane hangars, endless
hangars, lost among trees, and melting dimly into a dim horizon, their
low, rounded roofs "camouflaged" in a confusion of splodged colours.
There was so much to see--so much which was abnormal, and belonged to
war--that we might have passed without glancing at a line of blue water,
parallel with our road at a little distance, had not Brian said, "Have
we come in sight of the Ourcq? We ought to be near it now. Don't you
know, the men of the Marne say the men of the Ourcq did more than they
to save Paris?"
The Becketts had hardly heard of the Ourcq. As for me, I'd forgotten
that part in the drama of September, 1914. I knew that there was an
Ourcq--a canal, or a river, or both, with a bit of Paris sticking to its
banks: knew it vaguely, as one knows and forgets that one's friends'
faces have profiles. But Brian's words brought back the whole story to
my mind in a flash. I remembered how Von Kluck was trapped like a rat,
in the _couloir_ of the Ourcq, by the genius of Gallieni, and the
glorious coöperation of General Manoury and the dear British
"contemptibles" under General French.
It was a desperate adventure that--to try and take the Germans in the
flank; and Gallieni's advisers told him there were not soldiers enough
in his command to do it. "Then we'll do it with sailors!" he said.
"But," urged an admiral, "my sailors are not trained to march."
"They will march without being trained," said the defender of the
capital. "I've been in China and Madagascar, I know what sailors can do
on land."
"Even so, there will not be enough men," answered the pessimists.
"We'll fill the gaps with the police," said the general, inspired
perhaps by Sainte-Geneviève.
So the deed was dared; and in a panic at sight of the mysteriously
arriving troops, Von Kluck retreated from the Ourcq to the Aisne. It was
when he heard how the trick had been played and won by sheer bravado,
that he cried out in rage, "How could I count on such a _coup_? Not
another military governor in a hundred would have risked throwing his
whole force sixty kilometres from its base. How should I guess what a
dare-devil fool Gallieni would turn out? But if Trochu, in '70, had been
the same kind of a fool, we should never have got Paris!"
Half the ghosts in history seemed to haunt this Route de Strasbourg, and
to meet us as we passed. You know how you see the characters in a
moving-picture play, and behind them the "fade ins" that show their life
history, visions that change on the screen like patterns in a
kaleidoscope? So on this meadow-bordered road, peaceful in the autumn
sunlight, we saw with our minds' eyes the soldiers of 1914: behind them
the soldiers of 1870: farther in the background Napoleon the Great with
his men: and fading into the distance, processions of kings who had
marched along the Marne, since the day Sainte-Geneviève ordered the
gates of Paris to be shut in the face of Attila.
Such a gay, gold-sequined blue-green ribbon of a river it looked! Almost
impudent in gaiety, as if it wished to forget and be happy. But souls
and rivers never really forget. When they know what the Marne knows,
they are gay only on the surface!
It was at Meaux where we had our first close meeting with the Marne:
Meaux, the city nearest Paris "on the Marne front," where the Germans
came: and even after three years you can still see on the left bank of
the river traces of trench--shallow, pathetic holes dug in wild haste.
We might have missed them, we creatures with mere eyes, if Brian hadn't
asked, "Can't you see the trenches?" Then we saw them, of course, half
lost under rank grass, like dents in a green velvet cushion made by a
sleeper who has long ago waked and walked away.
From a distance the glistening gray roofs of Meaux were like a vast
crowd of dark-winged doves; but as we ran into the town it opened out
into dignified importance, able to live up to its thousand years of
history. There was no work for the Becketts there, we thought, for the
Germans had time to do little material harm to Meaux in 1914: and at
first sight there seemed to be no need of alms. But Jim had loved Meaux.
His mother took from her blue morocco bag his letter describing the
place, mentioning how he had met the bishop through a French friend.
"Do you think," she asked me timidly, "we might call on the bishop? Who
knows but he remembers our Jimmy?"
"He's a famous bishop," said Brian. "I've heard _poilus_ from Meaux tell
stories of how the Germans were forced to respect him, he was so brave
and fine. He took the children of the town under his protection, and no
harm came to one of them. There were postcard photographs going round
early in the war, of the bishop surrounded by boys and girls--like a
benevolent Pied Piper. It's kindness he's famous for, as well as
courage, so I'm sure we may call."
Near the beautiful old cathedral we passed a priest, and asked him where
to find the bishop's house. "You need not go so far; here he comes," was
the answer. We looked over our shoulders, almost guiltily, and there
indeed he was. He had been in the cathedral with two French officers,
and in another instant the trio would have turned a corner. Our look and
the priest's gesture told the bishop that we were speaking of him. He
paused, and Mr. Beckett jumped out of the stopped car, agile as a boy in
his excitement.
"Oh, I forgot, I can't talk French! Mary, you must see me through!" he
pleaded.
I hurried to the rescue, and together we walked up to the bishop. Off
came Mr. Beckett's hat; and both officers saluted us. One was a general,
the other a colonel.
If I'd had time to rehearse, I might have done myself some credit. As it
was, I stammered out some sort of explanation and introduced Jim's
father.
"I remember young Monsieur Beckett," the bishop said. "He was not one to
be forgotten! Besides, he was generous to Meaux. He left a noble present
for our poor. And now, you say, he has given his life for France? What
is there I can do to prove our gratitude? You have come to Meaux because
of his letters? Wait a few minutes, till these brave messieurs have
gone, and I myself will show you the cathedral. Oh, you need not fear!
It will be a pleasure."
He was as good as his word, and better. Not only did he show the
splendid Gothic cathedral, pride of the "fair Île-de-France," but the
bishop's house as well. Bossuet had lived there, the most famous bishop
Meaux had in the past. It was dramatic to enter his study, guided by the
most famous bishop of the present; to see in such company the room where
Bossuet penned his denunciation of the Protestants, and then the long
avenue of yews where he used to walk in search of inspiration. We saw
his tomb, too--in the cathedral (yes, I believe Brian saw it more
clearly than we!), one of those grand tombs they gave prelates in the
days of Louis XIV: and when the Becketts had followed Jim's example in
generosity, we bade adieu to the--oh, _ever_ so much kindlier heir of
the great controversialist. I'm afraid, to tell the truth, the little
old lady cared more to know that her Jim's favourite cheese--Brie--was
made in Meaux, than anything else in the town's history. Nevertheless,
she listened with a charmed air to Brian's story of Meaux's great
romance--as she listens to all Brian's stories. It was you, Padre, who
told it to Brian, and to me, one winter night when we'd been reading
about Gaston, de Foix, "Gaston le Bel." Our talk of his exploits
brought us to Meaux, at the time of the Jacquerie, in the twelfth
century. The common people had revolted against the nobles who oppressed
them, and all the Île-de-France--adorable name!--seethed with civil war.
In Meaux was the Duchess of Orleans, with three hundred great ladies,
most of them beautiful and young. The peasants besieged the Duchess
there, and she and her lovely companions were put to sore straits, when
suddenly arrived brave Gaston to save them. I don't quite know why he
took the trouble to come so far, from his hill-castle near the Spanish
frontier, but most likely he loved one of the shut-up ladies. Or perhaps
it was simply for love of all womanhood, since Gaston was so chivalrous
that Froissart said, "I never saw one like him of personage, nor of so
fair form, nor so well made."
From Meaux our road (we were going to make Nancy our centre and stopping
place) followed the windings of the green ribbon Marne to
Château-Thierry, on the river's right bank. There's a rather thrilling
ruin, that gave the town its name, and dominates it still--the ruin of a
castle which Charles Martel built for a young King Thierry. The legend
says that this boy differed from the wicked kings Thierry, sons and
grandsons of the Frankish Clovis; that he wanted to be good, but "Fate"
would not let him. Perhaps it's a judgment on those terrible Thierry
kings, who left to their enemies only the earth round their
habitations--"because it couldn't be carried away"--that the Germans
have left ruins in Château-Thierry more cruel than those of the
crumbling castle. In seven September days they added more _monuments
historiques_ than a thousand years had given the ancient Marne city.
Jim Beckett had written his mother all about the town, and sent postcard
pictures of its pride, the fortress-like, fifteenth-century church with
a vast tower set upon a height. He liked Château-Thierry because Jean de
la Fontaine was born there, and called it "a peaceful-looking place,
just right for the dear fable-maker, who was so child-like and
sweet-natured, that he deserved always to be happy, instead of for ever
in somebody's debt." A soldier having seen the wasted country at the
front, might still describe Château-Thierry as a "peaceful-looking
place." But it was the first glimpse the Becketts had had of war's
abominable destruction. I took up nursing in the south of France before
the Zeppelins made much visible impression on London; and as I
volunteered for a "contagious" hospital, I've lived an isolated life far
from all horrors save those in my own ward, and the few I saw when I
went to nurse Brian. Perhaps it was well for us to begin with
Château-Thierry, whose gaping wounds are not mortal, and to miss tragic
Varreddes. Had Sermaize-les-Bains, which burst upon us later, been our
first experience, the shock might have been too great for Mrs. Beckett.
As it was, we worked slowly to the climax. Yet even so, we travelled on
with a hideous mirage of broken homes, of intimacies brutally laid bare,
floating between the landscape and our eyes. We could not get rid of
this mirage, could not brush it away, though the country was friendly
and fair of face as a child playing in a waterside meadow. The crudely
new bridges that crossed the Marne were the only open confessions of
what the river had suffered. But the Marne spirit had known wars enough
to learn "how sweet it is to live, forgetting." With her bits of
villages scattered like strewn flowers on her green flood, she floats
in a dream of her adventurous past and the glorious future which she has
helped to win for France.
It was hard to realize that the tiny island villages and hamlets on the
level shores had seen the Germans come and go; that under the gray
roofs--furry-soft as the backs of Maltese cats--hearts had beaten in
agony of fear; that along the white road, with its double row of
straight trees like an endless army on parade, weeping fugitives had
fled.
We were not aiming to reach Nancy that night, so we paused at Épernay.
The enemy behaved better there than in most Marne towns, perhaps because
Wagner once lived in it, or, more likely, under the soothing influence
of Épernay's champagne, which has warmed the cockles of men's hearts
since a bishop of the ninth century made it famous by his praise.
Nevertheless, there are ruins to see, for the town was bombarded by the
Germans after they were turned out. All the quarter of the rich was laid
waste: and the vast "Fabrique de Champagne" of Mercier, with its
ornamental frieze of city names, is silent to this day, its proud façade
of windows broken. Not a big building of the town, not a neighbouring
château of a "Champagne baron" has a whole window-pane visible, though
three years have rolled on since the cannonading did its work! Nowadays
glass is as dear as diamonds in France, and harder to get.
Outside Champagnopolis, in the wide wooden village of hospital huts, a
doctor told us a war ghost story. One night the Germans made a great
haul of champagne, of a good year, in a castle near by. They had knocked
off the heads of many bottles, naming each for a French general of
yesterday or to-day, when some officer who knew more history than the
rest remembered that Henri IV had taken Épernay in 1592. He named his
bottle for Henri de Navarre, and harangued his comrades on the
superiority of Wilhelm von Hohenzollern. As the speechmaker cracked the
neck with his sword, the bottle burst in a thousand pieces, drenching
everyone with wine. A bit of glass struck the electric lamp over the
table, and out went the light. For an instant the room was black. Then a
white ray flickered on the wall, as if thrown through the window by a
searchlight. Out of its glimmer stepped a man, with a long, laughing
face and a pointed beard. Round his neck was a high ruff. He wore a
doublet of velvet, and shining silk hose. In his hand was a silver
goblet, frothing over the top with champagne. "He drinks best who drinks
last!" cried he in French, and flung the goblet at the face of him who
named the bottle. At the same second there was a great explosion, and
only one soldier escaped; he who told the story.
Think, Padre, it was near Châlons that Attila was defeated, and forced
to fly from France for ever! I ought to say, Attila the first, since the
self-named Attila II hasn't yet been beaten back beyond the Rhine.
We--you, and Brian and I--used to have excited arguments about
reincarnation. You know now which of us was right! But I cling to the
theory of the spiral, in evolution of the soul--the soul of a man or the
soul of the world. It satisfies my sense of justice and my reason both,
to believe that we must progress, being made for progression; but that
we evolve upward slowly, with a spiral motion which brings us at
certain periods, as we rise, directly above the last earth-phase in our
evolution. If it's true, here, after nearly thirteen centuries, are the
Huns overrunning Europe once more. Learned Huns, scientific Huns, but
always Huns, repeating history on a higher scale, barbarously bent on
pulling down the liberty of the world by the power of brute force. Again
they're destined to be conquered as before, at a far bigger price. What
will the next turn of their spiral bring, I wonder? A vast battle of
intellect, perhaps, when wars of blood have been forgotten. And I
wonder, too, where has Attila been, since he was beaten in this
Champagne country of the Marne, and died two years later at his
wedding-feast in Hungary!
Did he appear in our world again, in the form of some great, cruel
general or king, or did his soul rest until it was reincarnated in the
form that claims his name to-day?
I could scarcely concentrate upon Châlons, though it's a noble town,
crowded with grand old buildings. My mind was busily travelling back,
back into history, as Peter Ibbetson travelled in his prison-dreams. It
didn't stop on its way to see the city capitulate to the Allies in 1814,
just one hundred years before the great new meaning came into that word
"allies." I ran past the brave fifteenth-century days, when the English
used to attack Châlons-sur-Marne, hoping to keep their hold on France. I
didn't even pause for Saint-Bernard, preaching the Crusade in the
gorgeous presence of Louis VII and his knights. It was Attila who lured
me down, down into his century, buried deep under the sands of Time. I
heard the ring of George Meredith's words: "Attila, my Attila!" But I
saw the wild warrior Attila, fighting in Champagne, not the dead man
adjured by Ildico, his bride. I saw him "short, swarthy, broad-chested,"
in his crude armour, his large head, "early gray," lifted like a wolf's
at bay. I saw his fierce, ugly face with its snub nose and little,
deep-set eyes, flushed in the fury of defeat as he ordered the famous
screen of chariots to be piled up between him and the Romano-Gauls. I
saw him and his men profiting by the strange barrier, and the enemy's
exhaustion, to escape beyond the Rhine, with eyes yearning toward the
country they were to see no more.
History calls that battle "one of the decisive battles of the world,"
yet it lasted only a day, and engaged from a hundred and seventy-four
thousand to three hundred thousand men. Oh, the spiral of battles has
climbed high since then!
I think I should have had a presentiment of the war if I'd lived at
Châlons, proud city of twenty-two bridges and the Canal Rhine-Marne. The
water on stormy days must have whispered, "They are coming. Take care!"
At Vitry-le-François there is also that same sinister canal which leads
from the Marne to the Rhine, the Rhine to the Marne. The name has a
wicked sound in these days--Rhine-Marne; and at Vitry-le-François of all
places. The men from over the Rhine destroyed as much as they had time
to destroy of the charming old town planned by Francis I, and named for
him. All the villages round about the new Huns broke to pieces, like the
toy towns of children: Revigny, sprayed from hand pumps with petrol, and
burnt to the ground: Sermaize-les-Bains, loved by Romans and Saracens,
obliterated; women drowned in the river by laughing German soldiers,
deep down under yellow water-lilies, which mark their resting place
to-day: everywhere, through the fields and forests, low wooden crosses
in the midst of little votive gardens, telling their silent tale.
Ah, but it is good that Mother Beckett saw Château-Thierry first, or she
might have covered her eyes and begged to go back to Paris! Here all
speaks of death and desolation, save the busy little hut-villages of the
Quakers. The "Friends" quietly began their labour of love before the
Battle of the Marne was ended, and they're "carrying on" still. The
French translate them affectionately into "_les Amis_."
It was at Bar-le-Duc that I met disaster face to face in so strange a
way that it needs a whole letter to tell you what happened.