Our guide was right. Chauny was sadder than the rest, because there had
been more of beauty to ruin. And it was ruined cruelly, completely! Even
Gerbéviller, in Lorraine, had been less sad than this--less sad because
of Soeur Julie, and the quarter on the hill which her devotion saved;
less sad, because of the American Red Cross reconstruction centre, for
the fruit trees. Here there had been no Soeur Julie, no reconstruction
centre yet. The Germans, when they knew they had to go, gave three weeks
to their wrecking work. They sent off, neatly packed, all that was worth
sending to Germany. They measured the cellars to see what quantity of
explosives would be needed to blow up the houses. Then they blew them
up, making their quarters meanwhile at a safe distance, in the convent.
As for that convent--you will see what happened there when the Boches
had no further use for it!
In happy days before the war, whose joys we took comfortably for
granted, Chauny had several châteaux of beauty and charm. It had pretty
houses and lots of fine shops and a park. It was proud of its _mairie_
and church and great _usine_ (now a sight of horror), and the newer
parts of the town did honour to their architects. But--Chauny was on the
direct road between Cologne and Paris. Nobody thought much about this
fact then, except that it helped travel and so was good for the
country. It is only now that one knows what a price Chauny paid for the
advantage. Instead of a beautiful town there remains a heap of cinders,
with here and there a wrecked façade of pitiful grace or broken dignity
to tell where stood the proudest buildings.
The sky was empty of enemy 'planes; but our guide hurried us through the
town, where the new road shone white in contrast with our cars; and
having hidden the autos under a group of trees outside, led us on foot
toward the convent. The approach was exquisite: a long, long avenue of
architectural elms, arbour-like in shade, once the favourite evening
promenade of Chauny. That tunnel of emerald and gold would have been an
interlude of peace between two tragedies--tragedy of the town, tragedy
of the convent--if the ground hadn't been strewn with torn papers, like
leaves scattered by the wind: official records flung out of strong boxes
by ruthless German hands, poor remnants no longer of value, and saved
from destruction only by the kindly trees, friends of happy memories.
"The Boches didn't take time to spoil this avenue," said our officer.
"They liked it while they lived in the convent; and they left in a
hurry."
Just beyond the avenue lies the convent garden; and though it is autumn,
when we stepped into that garden we stepped into an oasis of
old-fashioned, fragrant flowers, guarded by delicate trees, gentle as
the vanished Sisters and their flock of young girl pupils; sweet, small
trees, bending low as if to shield the garden's breast from harm.
I wish when Chauny is rebuilt this convent might be left as a _monument
historique_, for, ringed by its perfumed pleasance, it is a glimpse of
"fairylands forlorn."
One half believes there must have been some fairy charm at work which
kept the fire-breathing German dragon from laying this garden waste when
he was forced out of his stolen lair in the convent! Little remains of
the house, and in the rubbish heap of fallen walls and beams and
plaster, narrow iron bedsteads, where nuns slept or young girls dreamed,
perch timidly among stones and blackened bricks. But in the garden all
is flowery peace: and the chapel, though ruined, is a strange vision of
beauty framed in horror.
Not that the Germans were merciful there. They burned and blew up all
that would burn or blow up. The roof fell, and heaped the floor with
wreckage; but out of that wreckage, as out of a troubled sea, rise two
figures: St. Joseph, and an almost life-size, painted statue of the
Virgin. There the two stand firmly on their pedestals, their faces
raised to God's roof of blue, which never fails. Because their eyes are
lifted, they do not see the flotsam and jetsam of shattered stained
glass, burnt woodwork, smashed benches, broken picture-frames and torn,
rain-blurred portraits of lesser saints. They seem to think only of
heaven.
Though I'm not a Catholic, the chapel gave me such a sense of sacredness
and benediction that I felt I must be there alone, if only for a moment.
So when our officer led the others out I stayed behind. A clear ray of
late sunshine slanted through a broken window set high in a side wall,
to stream full upon the face of the Virgin. Someone had crowned her with
a wreath of fresh flowers, and had thrust a few white roses under the
folded hands which seemed to clasp them lovingly, with a prayer for the
peace of the world. The dazzling radiance brought face and figure to
life; and it was as if a living woman had taken the statue's place on
the pedestal. The effect was so startling that, if I were a Catholic, I
might have believed in a miracle. Protestant as I am, I had the impulse
to pray: but--(I don't know, Padre, if I have ever told you this)--I've
not dared to pray properly since I first stole the Becketts' love for
Brian and me. I've not dared, though never in my life have I so needed
and longed for prayer.
This time I couldn't resist, unworthy as I am. The smile of peace and
pardon on the statue's illumined face seemed to make all sin forgivable
in this haunt of holy dreams. "God forgive me, and show me how to
atone," I sent my plea skyward. Suddenly the conviction came that I
_should_ be shown a way of atonement, though it might be hard. I felt
lighter of heart, and went on to pray that Jack Curtis's hope might be
justified: that, no matter what happened to me, or even to Brian, Jim
Beckett might be alive, in this world, and come back safely to his
parents.
While I prayed, a sound disturbed the deep silence. It was a far-away
sound, but quickly it grew louder and drew nearer: at first a buzzing as
of all the bees in France mobilized in a bee-barrage. Then the buzzing
became a roar. I knew directly what it was: enemy aeroplanes.
I could not see them yet, but they must be close. If they were flying
very low, to search Chauny for visitors, I might be seen if I moved.
Those in the garden were better off than I, for they were screened by
the trees, but trying to join them I might attract attention to myself.
As I thought this, I wondered why I didn't decide upon the thing most
likely to solve all my problems at once. If I were killed, Brian would
grieve: but he had the Becketts to love and care for him, and--he had
Dierdre: no use disguising that fact from my intelligence, after the
episode of the dog! What a chance for me to disappear, having done for
Brian all I could do! Oh, why didn't I add another prayer to my last,
and beg God to let me die that minute?
I'll tell you why I did not pray this, Padre, and why, instead of trying
to expose my life, I wished--almost unconsciously--to save it. I hardly
realized why then, but I do realize now. It is different in these days
from that night in Paris, when I wished I might be run over by a
motor-car. At that time I should have been glad to die. Now I cling to
life--not just because I'm young and strong, and people call me
beautiful, but because I feel I _must_ stay in the world to see what
happens next.
I kept as still as a frightened mouse. I didn't move. I scarcely
breathed. Presently an aeroplane sailed into sight directly overhead,
and flying so low that I could make out its iron cross, exactly like
photographs I'd seen. Whether the men in it could see me or not I can't
tell; but if they could, perhaps they mistook me for one of the statues
they knew existed in the ruined chapel, and thought I wasn't worth
bombing.
In that case it was St. Joseph and the Virgin who protected me!
In a second the big bird of prey had swept on. I was sick with fear for
a moment lest it should drop an "egg" on to the garden, and kill Brian
or the Becketts, or the lieutenant who had wished to spare us this
danger. Even the O'Farrells I didn't want hurt; and I was pleased to
find out that about myself, because they are a far more constant danger
for me than all the aeroplanes along the German front; and when I came
face to face with realities in my own soul, I might have discovered a
wicked desire for them to be out of the way at any price. But since
Dierdre proved herself ready to die for Brian, I do admire if I don't
like her. As for Julian--would it be possible, Padre, to miss a person
you almost hate? Anyhow, when I tried to imagine how I should feel if I
went back to the garden and saw him dead, I grew quite giddy and ill.
How queer we are, we human things!
But no one was hurt. The whole party hid under the trees; and as the
cars were also hidden at a distance, the German fliers turned tail,
disappointed; besides, the anti-aircraft gun which we'd been told about,
and had seen on our way to the convent, was potting away like mad, so it
wasn't healthful for aeroplanes to linger merely "on spec."
Mother Beckett was pale and trembling a little, but she said that she
had been too anxious about me, in my absence, to think of herself, which
was perhaps a good thing. I noticed, when I joined them in the garden,
after the roar had changed again to a buzz, that Dierdre stood close to
Brian, and that his hand was on her shoulder, her hand on Sirius's
beautiful head. Yet I felt too strangely happy to be jealous. I suppose
it must have been through my prayer--or the answer to it.
* * * * *
When all was clear and the danger over (our guide said that the "birds"
never made more than one tour of inspection in an afternoon) we started
off again. Father Beckett suggested that his wife had better go home and
rest, but she wouldn't hear of it. And when we reached a turning of the
road which would lead us to Coucy-le Château, it was she who begged our
lieutenant to let us run along that way, "just far enough for a glimpse,
a _tiny_ glimpse."
"My son wrote me it was the most wonderful old château in France," she
pleaded. "I've got in my pocket now a snapshot he sent me."
The Frenchman couldn't resist. You know how charming the French are to
old ladies. "It isn't as safe as--as the Bank of England!" he laughed.
"Sometimes they keep this road rather hot. But to-day, I have told you,
things are quiet all along. We will take what Madame calls a tiny
glimpse."
Orders were given to our chauffeur. Brian was with the O'Farrells,
coming on behind, and of course the Red Cross taxi followed at our heels
like a faithful dachshund. Our big car flew swiftly, and the little one
did its jolting best to keep up the pace, for time wouldn't wait for
us--and these autumn days are cutting themselves short.
Presently we saw a thing which proved that the road was indeed "hot"
sometimes: a neat, round shell-hole, which looked ominously new! We
swung past it with a bump, and flashed into sight of a ruin which
dwarfed all others we had seen--yes, dwarfed even cathedrals! A long
line of ramparts rising from a high headland of gray-white
chalk-ramparts crowned with broken, round towers, which the sun was
painting with heraldic gold: the stump of a tremendous keep that reared
its bulk like a giant in his death struggle, for a last look over his
shield of shattered walls. This was what German malice had made of
Coucy, pride of France, architectural masterpiece of feudal times!
"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 noblest 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 château 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 César de Bourbon
was born, the son of Henri Quatre of Navarre and Gabrielle d'Estrées?
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 shell 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 grasslands, 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 _Hôpital
des Épidémies_ 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-glasses, 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 moonshine 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 Balafré_"; 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 bumping 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, grassy 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 refreshing 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 pass through endless halls supported by white marble
pillars, which were really spaces 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
Compiègne, as Venice shines across the dark lagoon.