Father Beckett must have suffered dark hours of reaction after seeing
those soldier-sons of American fathers, if there had been time to think.
But we flashed back to Nancy in haste, for a late dinner and adieux to
our friends. Brian and I snatched the story of our day's adventure from
his mouth for Mother Beckett; and luckily he was too tired to give her a
new version. I heard in the morning that he had slept through an air
raid!
I, too, was tired, and for the same reason: but I could not sleep.
Waking dreams marched through my mind--dreams of Jim as he must have
looked in khaki, dreams which made an air raid more or less seem
unimportant. As the clocks of Nancy told the hours, I was in a mood for
the first time since Gerbéviller to puzzle out the meaning of Paul
Herter's parable.
What had he meant by saying that his mission would be no more dangerous
than a rat-trap for a bit of toasted cheese?
I had exclaimed, "That sounds as if you were to bait the trap!" but he
had not encouraged me to guess. And there had been so much else to think
of, just then! His offer of introductions to specialists for Brian had
appealed to me more than a vague suggestion of service to myself "some
day."
But now, through the darkness of night, a ray like a searchlight struck
clear upon his cryptic hint.
Somehow, Herter hoped to get across the frontier into Germany! His
question, whether I had loved Jim Beckett, was not an idle one. He had
not asked it through mere curiosity, or because he was jealous of the
dead. His idea was that, if I had deeply cared for Jim, I should be glad
to know how he had died, and where his body lay. Germany was the one
place where the mystery could be solved. I realized suddenly that Doctor
Paul expected "some day" to be in a position to solve it.
"He's going into Germany as a spy," I said to myself. "He's a man of
German Lorraine. German is his native language. Legally he's a German
subject. He'll only have to pretend that he was caught by accident in
France when the war broke out--and that at last he has escaped. All that
may be easy if there are no spies to give him away--to tell what he's
been doing in France since 1914. The trouble will be when he wants to
come back."
I wished that I could have seen the man again, to have bidden him a
better farewell, to have told him I'd pray for his success. But now it
was too late. Already he must have set off on his "mission," and we were
to start in the morning for Verdun.
The thought of Verdun alone was enough to keep me awake for the rest of
the night, to say nothing of air raids and speculations about Doctor
Paul. It seemed almost too strange to be true that we were to see
Verdun--Verdun, where month after month beat the heart of the world.
The O'Farrells had not got permission for Verdun, nor for Rheims, where
we of the great gray car were going next. Still more than our glimpse
of the trenches were these two places "extra special." The brother and
sister were to start with us from Nancy, but we (the Becketts, Brian,
and I) were to part from them at Bar-le-Duc, where we would be met by an
officer from Verdun. Two days later, we were to meet again at Paris, and
continue--as Puck impudently put it--"_our_ rôle of ministering angels,"
along the Noyon front and beyond.
This programme was settled when--through influence at Nancy--Father
Beckett's passes for four had been extended to Verdun and Rheims. I
breathed a sigh of relief at the prospect of two more days without the
O'Farrells; and all that's Irish in me trusted to luck that "something
might happen" to part us forever. Why not? The Red Cross taxi might
break down (it looked ready to shake to pieces any minute!). Dierdre
might be taken ill (no marble statue could be paler!). Or the pair might
be arrested by the military police as dangerous spies. (Really, I
wouldn't "put it past" them!). But my secret hopes were rudely jangled
with my first sight of Brian on the Verdun morning.
"Molly, I hope you won't mind," he said, "but I've promised O'Farrell to
go with them and meet you in Paris to-morrow night. I've already spoken
to Mr. Beckett and he approves."
"This comes of my being ten minutes late!" I almost--not quite--cried
aloud. I'd hardly closed my eyes all night, but had fallen into a doze
at dawn and overslept myself. Meanwhile the O'Farrell faction had got in
its deadly work!
I was angry and disgusted, yet--as usual where that devil of a Puck was
concerned--I had the impulse to laugh. It was as if he'd put his finger
to his nose and chuckled in impish glee: "You hope to get rid of us, do
you, you minx? Well, I'll _show_ you!" But I should be playing his game
if I lost my temper.
"Why do the O'Farrells want you to go with them?" I "camouflaged" my
rage.
"It's Julian who wants me," explained the dear boy. (Oh, it had come to
Christian names!) "It seems Miss O'Farrell has taken it into her head
that none of us likes her, and that we've arranged this way to get rid
of them both--letting them down easily and making some excuse not to
start again together from Paris. O'Farrell thought if I'd offer to go
with them and sit in the back of the car while he drove I could persuade
her----"
"Well, I don't envy any one the task of persuading that girl to believe
a thing she doesn't wish to believe," I exploded. "My private opinion
is, though, that her brother's sister needs no persuading. The two of
them want to show me that they have power----"
Brian broke in with a laugh. "My child, you see things through a
magnifying glass! Is your blind brother a prize worth squabbling over? I
can be of use to the Becketts, it's true, when we travel without a
military escort, or with one young officer who knows more about
seventy-fives than about the romance of history. I can tell them what
I've read and what I've seen. But at Verdun you'll be in the society of
generals; and at Rheims of as many dignitaries as haven't been bombarded
out of town. The Becketts don't need me. Perhaps Miss O'Farrell does."
"Perhaps!" I repeated.
Brian can see twice as much as those who have eyes, but he would not see
my sarcasm. Just then, however, Mrs. Beckett joined us in the hall of
the hotel, where we stood ready to start--all having breakfasted in our
own rooms. She guessed from my face that I was not pleased with Brian's
plan.
"My dear, I'd go myself with poor little Dierdre O'Farrell instead of
Brian!" she said. "Verdun isn't one of Jim's towns. Rheims is--but I'd
have sacrificed it. There can't be much left there to see. Only--_two
whole days_! Father and I haven't been parted so long in our lives since
we were married. I thought yesterday, when you were away in those
trenches, what a coward I'd been not to insist on going, and what if I
never saw Father again! I hope you don't think I'm too selfish!"
Poor darling, _selfish_ to travel in her own car with her own husband! I
just gave her a look to show what I felt; but after that I could no
longer object to parting with Brian. Puck had got his way, and I could
see by the light in his annoyingly beautiful eyes how exquisitely he
enjoyed the situation. Brian and Brian's kitbag were transferred to the
Red Cross taxi, there and then, to save delay for us and the officer who
would meet us, in case the wretched car should get a _panne_, en route
to Bar-le-Duc. As a matter of fact, that is what happened; or at all
events when our big, reliable motor purred with us into Bar-le-Duc, the
O'Farrells were nowhere to be seen.
Our officer--another lieutenant--had arrived in a little Ford; and as we
were invited to lunch in the citadel of Verdun we could not wait. I felt
sure the demon Puck had managed to be late on purpose, so that my
Verdun day might be spoiled by anxiety for Brian. Thus he would kill two
birds with one stone: show how little I gained by the enemy's absence,
and punish me for not letting him make love!
The road to Verdun was a wonderful prelude. After three years' Titanic
battling, how could there be a road at all? I had had vague visions of
an earthly turmoil, a wilderness of shell-holes where once had gleamed
rich meadows and vineyards, with little villages set jewel-like among
them, and the visions were true. But through the war-worn desert always
the road unrolled--the brave white road. Heaven alone could tell the
deeds of valour which had achieved the impossible, making and remaking
that road! It should have some great poem all to itself, I thought; a
poem called "The Road to Verdun." And the poem should be set to music. I
could almost hear the lilt of the verses as our car slipped through the
tangle of motor _camions_ and gun-carriages on the way thither. As for
the music, I could really hear that without flight of fancy: a deep,
rolling undertone of heavy wheels, of jolting guns, of pulsing engines,
like a million beating hearts; and out of its muffled bass rising the
lighter music of men's voices: soldiers singing; soldiers going to the
front, who shouted gaily to soldiers going to repose; soldiers laughing;
soldier-music that no hardship or suffering could subdue.
We had seen such processions before, but none so endless as this, going
both ways, as far as the eye could reach. We had seen no such tremendous
parks of artillery and aviation by the roadside, no such store of shells
for big guns and little guns, no such pyramids of grenades for trenches
and aeroplanes. We were engulfed in war, swallowed up in war. It was
thrilling beyond words.
But all the road flashed bright with thrills. There was a thrill at "le
Bois de Regrets," forest of dark regret for the Prussians of 1792, where
the French turned them back--the forest which Goethe saw: a thrill more
keen for the pointing sign, "Metz, 47 kilomètres," which reminded us
that less than thirty miles separated us from the great German
stronghold, yet--"_on ne passera pas_!" And the deepest thrill of all at
the words of our guide: "_Voilà la porte de Verdun! Nous y sommes_."
Turning off the road, we stopped our car and the little Ford to look up
and worship. There it rose before us, ancient pile of gray stones, altar
of history and triumph, Verodunum of Rome, city of warlike, almost royal
bishops and rich burghers: town of treaties, sacked by Barbarians; owned
and given up by Germans; seized by Prussians when the French had spiked
their guns in 1870; and now forever a monument to the immortal manhood
of France!
Perhaps it was the mist in my eyes, but at first sight Verdun did not
look ruined, as I saw it towering up to its citadel in massive strength
and stern dignity. The old houses on the slope stood shoulder to
shoulder and back to back, like massed men fighting their last stand. It
was only when we had started on again, and passing through the gate had
slipped into the sorrowful intimacy of the streets, that Verdun let us
see her glorious rags and scars.
You would think that one devastated town would be much like another to
look at save for size. But no! I am learning that each has some
arresting claim of its own to sacred remembrance. Nancy has had big
buildings knocked down like card houses by occasional bombardment of
great guns. Sermaize, Gerbéviller, Vitrimont and twenty other places we
have seen were thoroughly looted by the Germans and then burned, street
by street. But Verdun has been bombarded every day for weeks and months
and years. The town is a royal skeleton, erect and on its feet, its
jewelled sceptre damaged, but still grasped in a fleshless hand. The
Germans have never got near enough to steal!
"You see," said the smart young captain who had come out to meet us at
the gate and take us to the citadel, "you see, nothing has been touched
in these houses since the owners had to go. When they return from their
places of refuge far away, they will find everything as they left
it--that is, as the Boche guns have left it."
Only too easy was it to see! In some of the streets whole rows of houses
had had their fronts torn off. The rooms within were like stage-settings
for some tragic play. Sheets and blankets trailed from beds where
sleepers had waked in fright. Doors of wardrobes gaped to show dresses
dangling forlornly, like Bluebeard's murdered brides. Dinner-tables were
set out for meals never to be finished, save by rats. Family portraits
of comfortable old faces smiling under broken glass hung awry on pink or
blue papered walls. Half-made shirts and petticoats were still caught by
the needle in broken sewing-machines. Dropped books and baskets of
knitting lay on bright carpets snowed under by fallen plaster. Vases of
dead flowers stood on mantelpieces, ghostly stems and shrivelled brown
leaves reflected in gilt-framed mirrors. I could hardly bear to look! It
was like being shown by a hard-hearted surgeon the beating of a brain
through the sawed hole in a man's skull. If one could have crawled
through the crust of lava at Pompeii, a year after the eruption, one
might have felt somewhat as at Verdun now!
On a broken terrace, once a beloved evening promenade, our two cars
paused. We got out and gazed down, down over the River Meuse, from a
high vantage-point where a few months ago, we should have been blown to
bits, in five minutes. Our two officers pointed out in the misty autumn
landscape spots where some of the fiercest and most famous fights had
been. How the names they rattled off brought back anxious nights and
mornings when our first and only thoughts had been the _communiqués_!
"Desperate battle on the Meuse." "Splendid stand at Douaumont." "New
attack on Morthomme." But nothing we saw helped out our imaginings.
There was just a vast stretch of desolation where vinelands once had
poured their perfume to the sun. The forts protecting Verdun were as
invisible as fairyland, I said. "As invisible as hell!" one of our
guides amended. And then to me, in a low voice unheard by pale and
trembling Mother Beckett, he added, "If Nature did not work to make ugly
things invisible, we could not let you come here, Mademoiselle. See how
high the grass has grown in the plain down there! In summer it is full
of poppies, red as the blood that feeds their roots. And it is only the
grasses and the poppies that hide the bones of men we've never yet put
underground. Nature has been one of our chief sextons, here at Verdun. I
wish you could have seen the poppies a few months ago, mixed with blue
marguerites and cornflowers--that we call 'bluets.' We used to say that
our dead were lying in state under the tricolour flag of France. But I
have made you sad, Mademoiselle. _Je regrette!_ We must take you quickly
to the citadel. Our general will not let you be sad there."
We turned from the view over the Meuse and walked away in silence. I
thought I had never heard so loud, so thunderously echoing, a silence in
my life.
Oh, no, it was not sad in the citadel! It was, on the contrary, very
gay, of a gaiety so gallant and so pathetic that it brought a lump to
the throat when there should have been a laugh on the lips. But the lump
had to be swallowed, or our hosts' feelings would be hurt. They didn't
want watery-eyed, full-throated guests at a luncheon worthy of bright
smiles and keen appetites!
* * * * *
The first thing that happened to Mother Beckett and me in the famous
fortress was to be shown into a room decorated as a ladies' boudoir. All
had been done, we were told almost timidly, in our honour, even the
frescoes on the walls, painted in record time by a young lieutenant, who
was an artist; and the officers hoped that they had forgotten nothing we
might need. We could both have cried, if we hadn't feared to spoil our
eyes and redden our noses! But even if we'd not been strong enough to
stifle our tears, there was everything at hand to repair their ravages.
And all this in a place where the Revolution had sent fourteen lovely
ladies to the guillotine for servilely begging the King of Prussia to
spare Verdun.
The lieutenant who met us at Bar-le-Duc had rushed there in
advance of us, in order to shop with frantic haste. A long list must
have been compiled after "mature deliberation"--as they say in
courts-martial--otherwise any normal young man would have missed out
something. In the tiny, subterranean room (not much larger than a cell)
a stick of incense burned. The cot-bed of some hospitable captain or
major disguised itself as a couch, under a brand-new silk table-cover
with the price-mark still attached, and several small sofa cushions,
also ticketed. A deal table had been painted green and spread with a
lace-edged tea-cloth, on which were proudly displayed a galaxy of
fittings from a dressing-bag, the best, no doubt, that poor bombarded
Bar-le-Duc could produce in war time. There were ivory-backed hair and
clothes brushes; a comb; bottles filled with white face-wash and
perfume; a manicure-set, with pink salve and nail-powder; a tray decked
out with every size of hairpin; a cushion bristling with pins of
many-coloured heads; boxes of rouge, a hare's-foot to put it on with;
face-powder in several tints; swan's-down puffs; black pencils for the
eyebrows and blue for the eyelids; sweet-smelling soap--a dazzling and
heavily fragrant collection.
"Oh, my dear, what _did_ they think of us?" gasped Mother Beckett. "What
a shame the poor lambs should have wasted all their money and trouble!"
"It _mustn't_ be wasted!" said I. "Think how disappointed they'd be if
they came in here afterward and found we hadn't touched a thing!"
"But----" she protested.
"You wouldn't hurt the feelings of the saviours of France? I'm going to
make us both up! And there's no time to waste. They've given us fifteen
minutes' grace before lunch. For the honour of womanhood we mustn't be
late!"
I sat her down in the only chair. I dusted her pure little face with
pearl-powder and the faintest _soupçon_ of rouge. I rubbed on her sweet
lips just the suspicion of pink, liked by an elderly _grande dame
française_, who has not yet "abdicated." I then made myself up more
seriously: a blue shadow on the lids, a raven touch on the lashes; a
flick of the hare's-foot under my eyes and on my ear-tips: an extra coat
of pink and a brilliant (most injurious!) varnish on the nails. Then,
with a dash of _Rose Ambrée_ for my companion's blouse and _Nuits
d'Orient_ for mine, we sallied forth scented like a harem, to do honour
to our hosts.
Luncheon was in a vast cavern of a vaulted banqueting-hall, in the
deepest heart of that citadel, where for eleven years Napoleon kept his
weary English prisoners. Electric lights showed us a table adorned with
fresh flowers (where they'd come from was a miracle, but soon we were to
see other miracles still more miraculous), French, British, and American
flags, and pyramids of fruit. The _Rose Ambrée_ and _Nuits d'Orient_
filled the whole vast _salle_, and pleased the officers, I was sure.
They bowed and smiled and paid us compliments, their many medals
glittered in the light, and their uniforms were resplendent against the
cold background of the walls. I wished that, instead of one girl, I had
been a dozen! But I did my best and so did Mother Beckett, who
brightened into a charming second youth, the youth of a happy mother
surrounded by a band of sons.
The lumps that had been in our throats had to be choked sternly down,
for not to do justice to that meal would be worse than leaving the rouge
and powder boxes unopened! The menu need not have put a palace to shame.
In the citadel of Verdun it seemed as if it must have been evolved by
rubbing Aladdin's lamp, and I said so as I read it over:
Huîtres d'Ostende
Bisque d'Écrevisses
Sanglier rôti
Purée de Pommes de Terre
Soufflée de Chocolat
Fruits
Bonbons
"Oh, we've never been hungry at Verdun, even when things were at their
liveliest," said the officer sitting next to me. "Providence provided
for us in a strange way. I will tell you how. Before the civil
population went away, or expected to go, there was talk of a long siege.
The shopkeepers thought they would be intelligent and sent to Paris for
all sorts of food. Oh, not only the grocers and butchers! Everyone. You
would have laughed to see the jewellers showing hams in their windows
instead of diamonds and pearls and gold purses, and the piles of
preserved meat and fruit tins at the perfumers! The confectioners
ordered stores of sugar and the wine merchants restocked their cellars.
Then things began to happen. Houses were bombed, and people hustled out
in a hurry. You have seen some of those houses! The place was getting
too hot; and the order came for evacuation. Not much could be taken
away. Transport was difficult in those days! All the good food had to
be left behind, and we thought it would be a pity to waste it. Our chief
bought the lot at a reasonable price--merchants were thankful to sell.
So you see we did not need Aladdin's lamp."
"I don't _quite_ see!" I confessed. "Because, that's a long time ago,
and these oysters of Ostende----"
"Never saw Ostende!" he laughed. "They are a big bluff! We always have
them when"--he bowed--"we entertain distinguished guests. The Germans
used to print in their papers that we at Verdun could not hold out long,
because we were eating rats. So we took to cutting a dash with our
menus. We do not go into particulars and say that our oysters have kept
themselves fresh in tins!"
"But the wild boar?" I persisted. "Does one tin wild boar?"
"One does not! One goes out and shoots it. _Ma foi_, it's a good
adventure when the German guns are not asleep! The fruit? Ah, that is
easy! It comes as the air we breathe. And for our bonbons, the famous
sugared almonds of Verdun were not all destroyed when the factory blew
up."
With this he handed me a dish of the delicious things. "The story is,"
he said, "that a certain Abbess brought the secret of making these
almonds to Verdun. We have to thank Henry of Navarre for her. He had a
pleasant way, when he wished to be rid of an old love with a compliment,
of turning her into an Abbess. That time he made a lucky stroke for us."
At the end of luncheon we all drank healths, and nearly everyone made a
speech except Mrs. Beckett. She only nodded and smiled, looking so ideal
a little mother that she must have made even the highest officers
homesick for their _mamans_.
Then we were led through a mysterious network of narrow passages and
vaulted rooms, all lit with electric lamps, and striking cold and
cellary. We saw the big hospital, not very busy just then, and the
clean, empty operating theatre, and gnome-caverns where munitions were
stored in vast, black pyramids. When there was nothing left to see in
the citadel, our hosts asked if we would like to pay a visit to the
trenches--old trenches which had once defended Thiaumont.
"I don't think my wife had better----" Mr. Beckett began; but the little
old lady cut him short. "Yes, Father, I just _had_ better! To-day, being
among all these splendid brave soldiers has shown me that I'm weak--a
spoiled child. I felt yesterday I'd been a coward. Now I _know_ it! And
I'm _going_ to see those trenches."
I believe it was partly the powder and lip salve that made her so
desperate!
Her husband yielded, meek as a lamb. Big men like Mr. Beckett always do
to little women like Mrs. Beckett. But she bore it well. And when at
last we bade good-bye to our glorious hosts, she said to me, "Molly, you
tell them in French, that now I've met _them_ I understand why the
Germans could never pass!"