THE STORM
"There's going to be war," said Benoît, on our doorsteps in July.
"No," said Crillon, who was there, too, "I know well enough there'll be
war some day, seeing there's always been war after war since the world
was a world, and therefore there'll be another; but just now--at
once--a big job like that? Nonsense! It's not true. No."
Some days went by, tranquilly, as days do. Then the great story
reappeared, increased and branched out in all directions. Austria,
Serbia, the ultimatum, Russia. The notion of war was soon everywhere.
You could see it distracting men and slackening their pace in the going
and coming of work. One divined it behind the doors and windows of the
houses.
One Saturday evening, when Marie and I--like most of the French--did
not know what to think, and talked emptily, we heard the town crier,
who performs in our quarter, as in the villages.
"Ah!" she said.
We went out and saw in the distance the back of the man who was tapping
a drum. His smock was ballooned. He seemed pushed aslant by the wind,
stiffening himself in the summer twilight to sound his muffled roll.
Although we could not see him well and scarcely heard him, his progress
through the street had something grand about it.
Some people grouped in a corner said to us, "The mobilization."
No other word left their lips. I went from group to group to form an
opinion, but people drew back with sealed faces, or mechanically raised
their arms heavenwards. And we knew no better what to think now that
we were at last informed.
We went back into the court, the passage, the room, and then I said to
Marie, "I go on the ninth day--a week, day after to-morrow--to my depot
at Motteville."
She looked at me, as though doubtful.
I took my military pay book from the wardrobe and opened it on the
table. Leaning against each other, we looked chastely at the red page
where the day of my joining was written, and we spelled it all out as
if we were learning to read.
Next day and the following days everybody went headlong to meet the
newspapers. We read in them--and under their different titles they
were then all alike--that a great and unanimous upspringing was
electrifying France, and the little crowd that we were felt itself also
caught by the rush of enthusiasm and resolution. We looked at each
other with shining eyes of approval. I, too, I heard myself cry, "At
last!" All our patriotism rose to the surface.
Our quarter grew fevered. We made speeches, we proclaimed the moral
verities--or explained them. The echoes of vast or petty news went by
in us. In the streets, the garrison officers walked, grown taller,
disclosed. It was announced that Major de Trancheaux had rejoined, in
spite of his years, and that the German armies had attacked us in three
places at once. We cursed the Kaiser and rejoiced in his imminent
chastisement. In the middle of it all France appeared personified, and
we reflected on her great life, now suddenly and nakedly exposed.
"It was easy to foresee this war, eh?" said Crillon.
Monsieur Joseph Bonéas summarized the world-drama. We were all pacific
to the point of stupidity--little saints, in fact. No one in France
spoke any longer of revenge, nobody wished it, nobody thought of as
much as getting ready for war. We had all of us in our hearts only
dreams of universal happiness and progress, the while Germany secretly
prepared everything for hurling herself on us. "But," he added, he
also carried away, "she'll get it in the neck, and that's all about
it!"
The desire for glory was making its way, and one cloudily imagines
Napoleon reborn.
In these days, only the mornings and evenings returned as usual,
everything else was upside down, and seemed temporary. The workers
moved and talked in a desert of idleness, and one saw invisible changes
in the scenery of our valley and the cavity of our sky.
We saw the Cuirassiers of the garrison go away in the evening. The
massive platoons of young-faced horsemen, whose solemn obstruction
heavily hammered the stones of the street, were separated by horses
loaded with bales of forage, by regimental wagons and baggage-carts,
which rattled unendingly. We formed a hedgerow along the twilight
causeways and watched them all disappear. Suddenly we cheered them.
The thrill that went through horses and men straightened them up and
they went away bigger--as if they were coming back!
"It's magnificent, how warlike we are in France!" said fevered Marie,
squeezing my arm with all her might.
The departures, of individuals or groups, multiplied. A sort of
methodical and inevitable tree-blazing--conducted sometimes by the
police--ransacked the population and thinned it from day to day around
the women.
Increasing hurly-burly was everywhere--all the complicated measures so
prudently foreseen and so interdependent; the new posters on top of the
old ones, the requisitioning of animals and places, the committees and
the allowances, the booming and momentous gales of motor-cars filled
with officers and aristocratic nurses--so many lives turned inside out
and habits cut in two. But hope bedazzled all anxieties and stopped up
the gaps for the moment. And we admired the beauty of military
orderliness and France's preparation.
Sometimes, at windows or street-corners, there were apparitions--people
covered with new uniforms. We had known them in vain, and did not know
them at first. Count d'Orchamp, lieutenant in the Active Reserves, and
Dr. Bardoux, town-major, displaying the cross of the Legion of Honor,
found themselves surrounded by respectful astonishment. Adjutant
Marcassin rose suddenly to the eyes as though he had come out of the
earth; Marcassin, brand-new, rigid, in blue and red, with his gold
stripe. One saw him afar, fascinating the groups of urchins who a week
ago threw stones at him.
"The old lot--the little ones, and the middling ones and the big
ones--all getting new clothes!" says a triumphant woman of the people.
Another said it was the coming of a new reign.
* * * * * *
From the Friday onwards I was engrossed by my own departure. It was
that day that we went to buy boots. We admired the beautiful
arrangement of the Cinema Hall as a Red Cross hospital.
"They've thought of everything!" said Marie, examining the collection
of beds, furniture, and costly chests, rich and perfected material, all
arranged with delighted and very French animation by a team of
attendants who were under the orders of young Varennes, a pretty
hospital sergeant, and Monsieur Lucien Gozlan, superintendent officer.
A center of life had created itself around the hospital. An open air
buffet had been set up in a twinkling. Apolline came there--since the
confusion of the mobilization all days were Sundays for her--to provide
herself with nips. We saw her hobbling along broadwise, hugging her
half-pint measure in her short turtle-like arms, the carrot slices of
her cheek-bones reddening as she already staggered with hope.
On our way back, as we passed in front of Fontan's café, we caught a
glimpse of Fontan himself, assiduous, and his face lubricated with a
smile. Around him they were singing the Marseillaise in the smoke. He
had increased his staff, and he himself was making himself two, serving
and serving. His business was growing by the fatality of things.
When we got back to our street, it was deserted, as of yore. The
faraway flutterings of the Marseillaise were dying. We heard
Brisbille, drunk, hammering with all his might on his anvil. The same
old shadows and the same lights were taking their places in the houses.
It seemed that ordinary life was coming back as it had been into our
corner after six days of supernatural disturbance, and that the past
was already stronger than the present.
Before mounting our steps we saw, crouching in front of his shop door
by the light of a lamp that was hooded by whirling mosquitoes, the mass
of Crillon, who was striving to attach to a cudgel a flap for the
crushing of flies. Bent upon his work, his gaping mouth let hang the
half of a globular and shining tongue. Seeing us with our parcels, he
threw down his tackle, roared a sigh, and said, "That wood! It's
touchwood, yes. A butter-wire's the only thing for cutting that!"
He stood up, discouraged; then changing his idea, and lighted from
below by his lamp so that he flamed in the evening, he extended his
tawny-edged arm and struck me on the shoulder. "We said war, war, all
along. Very well, we've got war, haven't we?"
In our room I said to Marie, "Only three days left."
Marie came and went and talked continually round me, all the time
sewing zinc buttons onto the new pouch, stiff with its dressing. She
seemed to be making an effort to divert me. She had on a blue blouse,
well-worn and soft, half open at the neck. Her place was a great one
in that gray room.
She asked me if I should be a long time away, and then, as whenever she
put that question she went on, "Of course, you don't a bit know." She
regretted that I was only a private like everybody. She hoped it would
be over long before the winter.
I did not speak. I saw that she was looking at me secretly, and she
surrounded me pell-mell with the news she had picked up. "D'you know,
the curate has gone as a private, no more nor less, like all the
clergy. And Monsieur the Marquis, who's a year past the age already,
has written to the Minister of War to put himself at his disposition,
and the Minister has sent a courier to thank him." She finished
wrapping up and tying some toilet items and also some provisions, as if
for a journey. "All your bits of things are there. You'll be
absolutely short of nothing, you see."
Then she sat down and sighed. "Ah," she said, "war, after all, it's
more terrible than one imagines."
She seemed to be having tragic presentiments. Her face was paler than
usual; the normal lassitude of her features was full of gentleness; her
eyelids were rosy as roses. Then she smiled weakly and said, "There
are some young men of eighteen who've enlisted, but only for the
duration of the war. They've done right; that'll be useful to them all
ways later in life."
* * * * * *
On Monday we hung about the house till four o'clock, when I left it to
go to the Town Hall, and then to the station.
At the Town Hall a group of men, like myself, were stamping about.
They were loaded with parcels in string; new boots hung from their
shoulders. I went up to mix with my new companions. Tudor was topped
by an artilleryman's cap. Monsieur Mielvaque was bustling about,
embarrassed--exactly as at the factory--by the papers he held in his
hand; and he had exchanged his eyeglasses for spectacles, which stood
for the beginning of his uniform. Every man talked about himself, and
gave details concerning his regiment, his depot, and some personal
peculiarity.
"I'm staying," says the adjutant master-at-arms, who rises impeccably
in his active service uniform, amid the bustle and the neutral-tinted
groups; "I'm not going. I'm the owner of my rank, and they haven't got
the right to send me to join the army."
We waited long, and some hours went by. A rumor went round that we
should not go till the next day. But suddenly there was silence, a
stiffening up, and a military salute all round. The door had just
opened to admit Major de Trancheaux.
The women drew aside. A civilian who was on the lookout for him went
up, hat in hand, and spoke to him in undertones.
"But, my friend," cried the Major, quitting the importunate with a
quite military abruptness, "it's not worth while. In two months the
war will be over!"
He came up to us. He was wearing a white band on his cap.
"He's in command at the station," they say.
He gave us a patriotic address, brief and spirited. He spoke of the
great revenge so long awaited by French hearts, assured us that we
should all be proud, later, to have lived in those hours, thrilled us
all, and added, "Come, say good-by to your folks. No more women now.
And let's be off, for I'm going with you as far as the station."
A last confused scrimmage--with moist sounds of kisses and litanies of
advice--closed up in the great public hall.
When I had embraced Marie I joined these who were falling in near the
road. We went off in files of four. All the causeways were garnished
with people, because of us; and at that moment I felt a lofty emotion
and a real thrill of glory.
At the corner of a street I saw Crillon and Marie, who had run on ahead
to take their stand on our route. They waved to me.
"Now, keep your peckers up, boys! You're not dead yet, eh!" Crillon
called to us.
Marie was looking at me and could not speak.
"In step! One-two!" cried Adjutant Marcassin, striding along the
detachment.
We crossed our quarter as the day declined over it. The countryman who
was walking beside me shook his head and in the dusky immensity among
the world of things we were leaving, with big regular steps, fused into
one single step, he scattered wondering words. "Frenzy, it is," he
murmured. "_I_ haven't had time to understand it yet. And yet, you
know, there are some that say, I understand; well, I'm telling you,
that's not possible."
The station--but we do not stop. They have opened before us the long
yellow barrier which is never opened. They make us cross the labyrinth
of hazy rails, and crowd us along a dark, covered platform between iron
pillars.
And there, suddenly, we see that we are alone.
* * * * * *
The town--and life--are yonder, beyond that dismal plain of rails,
paths, low buildings and mists which surrounds us to the end of sight.
A chilliness is edging in along with twilight, and falling on our
perspiration and our enthusiasm. We fidget and wait. It goes gray,
and then black. The night comes to imprison us in its infinite
narrowness. We shiver and can see nothing more. With difficulty I can
make out, along our trampled platform, a dark flock, the buzz of
voices, the smell of tobacco. Here and there a match flame or the red
point of a cigarette makes some face phosphorescent. And we wait,
unoccupied, and weary of waiting, until we sit down, close-pressed
against each other, in the dark and the desert.
Some hours later Adjutant Marcassin comes forward, a lantern in his
hand, and in a strident voice calls the roll. Then he goes away, and
we begin again to wait.
At ten o'clock, after several false alarms, the right train is
announced. It comes up, distending as it comes, black and red. It is
already crowded, and it screams. It stops, and turns the platform into
a street. We climb up and put ourselves away--not without glimpses, by
the light of lanterns moving here and there, of some chalk sketches on
the carriages--heads of pigs in spiked helmets, and the inscription,
"To Berlin!"--the only things which slightly indicate where we are
going.
The train sets off. We who have just got in crowd to the windows and
try to look outside, towards the level crossing where, perhaps, the
people in whom we live are still watching for us; but the eye can no
longer pick up anything but a vague stirring, shaded with crayon and
jumbled with nature. We are blind and we fall back each to his place.
When we are enveloped in the iron-hammered rumble of advance, we fix up
our luggage, arrange ourselves for the night, smoke, drink and talk.
Badly lighted and opaque with fumes, the compartment might be a corner
of a tavern that has been caught up and swept away into the unknown.
Some conversation mixes its rumble with that of the train. My
neighbors talk about crops and sunshine and rain. Others, scoffers and
Parisians, speak of popular people and principally of music-hall
singers. Others sleep, lying somehow or other on the wood. Their open
mouths make murmur, and the oscillation jerks them without tearing them
from their torpor. I go over in my thoughts the details of the last
day, and even my memories of times gone by when there was nothing going
on.
* * * * * *
We traveled all night. At long intervals some one would let a window
drop at a station; a damp and cavernous breath would penetrate the
overdone atmosphere of the carriage. We saw darkness and some porter's
lantern dancing in the abyss of night.
Several times we made very long halts--to let the trains of regular
troops go by. In one station where our train stood for hours, we saw
several of them go roaring by in succession. Their speed blurred the
partitions between the windows and the huge vertebrae of the coaches,
seeming to blend together the soldiers huddled there; and the glance
which plunged into the train's interior descried, in its feeble and
whirling illumination, a long, continuous and tremulous chain, clad in
blue and red. Several times on the journey we got glimpses of these
interminable lengths of humanity, hurled by machinery from everywhere
to the frontiers, and almost towing each other.