Nancy is one of "Jim's towns," as Mother and Father Beckett say. When,
with Brian's help, they began mapping out their route, they decided to
"give something worth while" to the place, and to all the ruined region
round about, when they had learned what form would be best for their
donation to take. Some friend in Paris gave them a letter to the Préfet,
and we had not been in Nancy an hour when he and his wife called.
I'd never met a real, live préfet. The word sounded stiff and official.
When Mother Beckett tremulously asked me to act as interpreter, I dimly
expected to meet two polite automata, as little human as creatures of
flesh and blood can be. Instead, I saw a perfectly delightful pair of
Parisians, with the warm, kind manner one thinks of as southern. They
were frankly pleased that a millionaire's purse promised to open for
Nancy. Monsieur le Préfet offered himself to the Becketts as guide on a
sightseeing expedition next day, and Madame, the Préfet's wife, proposed
to exhibit her two thousand children, old and young, refugees housed in
what once had been barracks. "The Germans pretend to believe they are
barracks still, full of soldiers, as an excuse for bombs," she said.
"But you shall see! And if you wish--if you have time--we will take you
to see also what the Boches have done to some of our other towns--ah,
but beautiful towns, of an importance! Lunéville, and Gerbévillers, and
more--many more. You should know what they are like before you go on to
the Grande Couronne, where Nancy was saved in 1914."
Of course the Becketts "wished." Of course they had time. "Molly, tell
Mr. and Mrs. Préfet we've got more time than anything else!" said the
old man eagerly. "Oh, and I guess we've got a little money, too, enough
to spread around among those other places, as well as here. This is
going to be something like what Jim would want at last!"
When the Préfet and his wife rose to go, they invited not only the
Becketts but Brian and me to dine at their house that night. Mother
Beckett, on the point of accepting for us all, hesitated. The hesitation
had to be explained: and the explanation was--the O'Farrells. I had
hoped we might be spared them, but it was not to be. Our host and
hostess, hearing of the travellers of the Red Cross, insisted that they
must come, too. Mrs. Beckett was sure they would both be charmed, but as
it turned out, she was only half right. Mr. O'Farrell was charmed. His
sister had a headache, and intended to spend the evening in her room.
Padre, if I wrote stories, I should like to write one with that préfet
and his whole family for the heroes and heroines of it!
There is a small son. There are five daughters, each prettier than the
others, the youngest a tiny _filette_, the eldest twenty at most; and
the mother in looks an elder sister. When the war broke out they were
living in Paris, the father in some high political post: but he was by
ancestry a man of Lorraine, and his first thought was to help defend the
home of his forbears. The Meurthe-et-Moselle, with Nancy as its centre
and capital, was a terrible danger zone, with the sword of the enemy
pointed at its heart, but the lover of Lorraine asked to become préfet
in place of a man about to leave, and his family rallied round him.
There at Nancy, they have been ever since those days, through all the
bombardments by Big Berthas and Taubes. When houses and hotels were
being blown to bits by naval guns, thirty-five kilometres away, the
daily life of the family went on as if in peace. As a man, the Préfet
longed to send his wife and children far away. As a servant of France he
thought best to let them stop, to "set an example of calmness." And if
they had been bidden to go, they would still have stayed.
The Préfet's house is one of the eighteenth-century palaces of the Place
Stanislas; and in the story I'd like to write, I should put a
description of their drawing room, and the scene after dinner that
night.
Imagine a background of decorative walls, adorned with magnificent
portraits (one of the best is Stanislas, and better still is Louis XVI,
a proud baby in the arms of a handsome mother); imagine beautiful Louis
XV chairs, tables, and sofas scattered about, with the light of
prism-hung chandeliers glinting on old brocades and tapestries: flowers
everywhere, in Chinese bowls and tall vases; against this background a
group of lovely girls multiplied by many mirrors into a large company;
be-medalled officers in pale blue uniforms, handing coffee to the
ladies, or taking from silver dishes carried by children the delicious
macaroons which are to Nancy what Madeleines are to Commercy. Imagine
long windows opening into a garden: rosy lamplight streaming out, silver
moonlight streaming in; music; the wonderful voice of a man (Julian
O'Farrell) singing the "Marseillaise," the "Star-Spangled Banner," and
"Tipperary." Then into the midst of this breaking the tiresome whine of
the siren.
"What? A fourth time to-day?" cries somebody. "These creatures will wear
out their welcome if they're not careful!"
A laugh follows, to drown the bark of shrapnel, and a general shrugging
of the shoulders. But suddenly comes a cry that _la petite_--the baby
daughter of the house, sitting up in our honour--has run into the
garden.
The elder girls are not afraid for themselves, the great bombardments
have given them a quiet contempt of mere Taubes. But for the little
sister!--that is different. Instantly it seems that all the bombs
Germany has ever made may be falling like iron rain on that curly head
out there among the autumn lilies. Everybody rushes to the rescue: and
there is the child, sweet as a cherub and cool as a cucumber, in the
din. She stands on the lawn, chin in air, baby thumb on baby nose for
the Taube caught in a silver web of searchlights.
"_Sale oiseau!_" her defiant cry shrills up. "Just like you, to come on
my grown-up evening! But you shan't spoil it. No, sister, I don't want
to go in. I came out to say good-night to the chickens and rabbits, and
tell them not to be afraid."
Behind the lilies and late roses and laurels is quite a menagerie of
domestic animals, housed among growing potatoes, beans, and tomatoes.
_C'est la guerre!_ But rabbits and chickens are robbed of their
consolation; the baby is bundled into the house; and, once she is
safe--safe as any one can be safe in bombarded Nancy!--nobody thinks
about the air raid. _Que voulez-vous?_ If one thought about these
things, smiles a blonde girl in white, they might really get upon one's
nerves, and that would never do!
"It is this moonlight," she explains. "They will be back again once or
twice to-night, perhaps. But the streets will be as full as ever of
_poilus en permission_, walking with their sweethearts, in spite of the
hateful things!"
* * * * *
One makes one's adieux early in war times; but the moonlight was so
wonderful on that Taube-ridden night that Brian said he felt it like a
cool silver shower on his eyelids. "I believe I'm developing
night-eyes!" he laughed to me, as we walked ahead of the Becketts and
Julian O'Farrell, on our way across the gleaming square to our hotel.
"Surely there won't be another raid for an hour or two? Let's take a
walk. Let's go into the old town, and try to see some ghosts."
"Yes, let's!" I echoed.
I said good-night sweetly to the Becketts and stiffly to O'Farrell.
Brian was equally cordial to all three, and I feared that O'Farrell
might be encouraged to offer his company. But his self-assurance stopped
short of that. He went meekly into the darkened hotel with the old
couple, and I turned away triumphant, with my arm in Brian's.
The clock of the Town Hall struck ten, chimed, waited for the church
clock to approve and confirm, then repeated all that it had said and
sung a minute before.
We were going to look for ghosts of kings and dukes and queens; and like
ghosts ourselves, we stepped from moonlit shores into pools of shadow,
and back to moonlit shores again; past the golden Arch of Triumph, which
Stanislas built in honour of his daughter's marriage with Louis XV;
through the Carrière, where the tops of tall copper-beeches caught the
light with dull red gleams, like the glow of a carbuncle; past the
sleeping palace of Stanislas, into the old "nursery garden" of the
Pepinière, to the sombre Porte de la Craffe whose two huge, pointed
towers and great wall guard the old town of Duke René II.
There we stopped, because of all places this dark corner was the place
for Nancy's noblest ghost to walk, René the Romantic, friend of Americo
Vespucius when Americo needed friends; René the painter, whose pictures
still adorn old churches of Provence, where he was once a captive: René,
whose memory never dies in Nancy, though his body died 500 years ago.
What if he should rise from his tomb in the church of the Cordeliers, or
come down off his little bronze horse in the Place St. Epvre as ghosts
may by moonlight, to walk with his fair wife Isabella through the
huddled streets of the old town, gazing at the wreckage made by the
greatest war of history? What would he think of civilization, he who
held his dukedom against the star warrior of the century, Charles the
Bold? War was lawless enough in his day. When avenging a chancellor's
murder, the Nancians hanged 100 Burgundian officers on a church tower
for the besiegers outside the city wall to see. But the "noble Gauls"
whom Julius Cæsar called "knights of chivalry," would have drawn the
line then at showering bombs from the bay on women and children. We
fancied, Brian and I, that after a walk round Nancy René and Isabella
would retire, sadder and wiser ghosts, content to have finished their
lives in gentler times than ours. Back into the shadows might they fade,
to sleep again, and take up their old dream where the noise of
twentieth-century shrapnel had snapped its thread. Their best dream must
be, we thought, of their battle of Nancy: Charles the Bold on his black
war-horse, surrounded by Burgundian barons in armour, shouting, and
waving their banners with standards of ivory and gold; Charles of the
dark locks, and brilliant eyes which all men feared and some women
loved; Charles laughing with joy in the chance of open battle at last,
utterly confident of its end, because the young duke--once his
prisoner--had reinforced a small army with mercenaries, Swiss and
Alsatians. At most René had 15,000 soldiers, and Charles believed his
equal band of Burgundians worth ten times the paid northerners, as man
to man.
From the church tower where Charles's men had hung--where St. Epvre
stands now--René could see the enemy troops assembling, headed by the
Duke of Burgundy, in his glittering helmet adorned with its device of an
open-jawed lion. He could even see the gorgeous tent whose tapestried
magnificence spies had reported (a magnificence owned by Nancy's museum
in our day!), and there seemed to his eyes no end to the defile of
spears, of strange engines for scaling walls, and glittering
battle-axes. One last prayer, a blessing by the pale priest, and young
René's own turn to lead had come--a slight adversary for great Charles,
but with a heart as bold! The trumpet blast of La Rivière, sounding the
charge of Lorraine, went to his head like wine. He laughed when Herter's
mountain men began to sing "Le taureau d'Uri" and "La vache
d'Unterwald," to remind the proud Burgundian of his defeats at Granson
and Morat. Then came the crash of armour against armour, blade against
blade, and the day ended for Nancy according to René's prayers. The
southerners fled and died; and two days later, René was gazing down at
the drowned body of Charles the Bold, dragged out of a pond. Yes, a good
dream for ghosts of the chivalrous age to retire into, and shut the
door! But for us, in our throbbing flesh and blood, this present was
worth suffering in for the glory of the future.
There were other ghosts to meet in Nancy's old town of narrow streets
where moonlight trickled in a narrow rill. Old, old ghosts, far older
than the town as we saw it: Odebric of the eleventh century, who owned
the strongest castle in France and the most beautiful wife, and fought
the bishops of Metz and Treves together, because they did not approve of
the lady; Henri VI of England riding through the walled city with his
bride, Marguerite, by his side: ghostly funeral processions of dead
dukes, whose strange, Oriental obsequies were famed throughout the
world; younger and more splendid ghosts: Louis XIII and Richelieu
entering in triumph when France had fought and won Lorraine, only to
give it back by bargaining later; ghosts of stout German generals who,
in 1871, had "bled the town white"; but greater than all ghosts, the
noble reality of Foch and Castlenau, who saved Nancy in 1914, on the
heights of La Grande Couronne.
As we walked back to the new town, dazed a little by our deep plunge
into the centuries, I heard my name called from across the street. "Miss
O'Malley--wait, please! It's Julian O'Farrell. Have you seen my sister?"
Brian and I stopped short, and O'Farrell joined us, panting and out of
breath. "She's not with you?" he exclaimed. "I hoped she would be. I've
been searching everywhere--she wasn't in the hotel when I got home, and
it's close to midnight."