BAR-LE-DUC
BAR-LE-DUC, _Sunday, June 17th, 2 a.m._
Scribbling in an indescribable brown-upholstered room, where one lies
on the outside of a dark and menacing bed covered by one’s own coat, a
strong odor of stable coming in at the window and a horrid black cat
wandering about. It’s no night to sleep. Two o’clock has just softly
sounded from some old bell. I didn’t hear one o’clock, I am thankful to
say. I was in a sort of trance of fatigue when we got here at eleven.
Miss P. motored us into Nancy, straight into the setting sun. My
eyes were so tired that I didn’t try to pierce the hot glaze, but
there’s a memory of running through green fields, with black crosses,
saline installations (Rosières aux Salines), manufacturing towns
(Dombasle-sur-Meurthe), and Gothic towers (St. Nicholas du Port), and
a dash through the new factory suburbs of Nancy into the delicate and
perfect loveliness of the Place Stanislas. Neither E. M. nor I had a
permit to go to Bar-le-Duc, the point of departure for Verdun, but Mrs.
P. had, so she was deputed to order dinner at the Café Stanislas, while
we went to the Hôtel de Ville to try to find the _Secrétaire Général_,
Mr. Martin, a special friend of E. M.’s, and do what I call “cutting
barbed wire.” It seemed at one time as if the high adventure of Verdun
might have to be abandoned, as the _Secrétaire Général_, who alone could
give us the necessary permission, had been called to Pont-à-Mousson to
investigate the results of a raid of German _avions_ there and at Pompey
that morning. However, when fate has made up its mind that things shall
happen, any deadlock is cleared up by the puppets themselves, literally
on a string this time, for as we were standing there in the room with the
impotent substitute of the _Secrétaire Général_, the telephone rang, and
who was it but the so desired gentleman calling up about something on
the long-distance wire. E. M. literally grabbed the receiver, explained
the situation, and he gave the necessary authority to his substitute,
and we in turn gave the oft-repeated story of our lives from the cradle
to the present moment, and finally could depart with papers in order for
dinner at the Café Stanislas. Again as we walked across the lovely Place
my soul was stirred with memories of peace, love, and the arts of peace.
I seemed to understand anew those words, “The arts of peace,” and in a
half-dream I looked up at the heavens. Again pale, charming faded tints
of blues and grays and pinks were the background for the urns and figures
of the sky-line of the pure and lovely buildings that surround it, and a
crescent moon with something untouched and virginal flung a last charm
about it all.
[Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF AMPHITRITE BY JEAN LAMOUR, PLACE STANISLAS,
NANCY]
We found Mrs. C. P. waiting at the same table at which I had sat two
nights before with the sons of Mars and the man of God. We were just
beginning our dinner when, looking out of the window, we saw something
strange and for a moment unclassifiable, in an almost impossible
juxtaposition of ideas. No one’s mind would be sufficiently mobile to
grasp what it was without blinking a bit. The great, portentous black
cross on its wings was what started the mind working properly. It was
the Taube brought down at Pont-à-Mousson that morning, being drawn on
a _camion_ through the delicious, delicate tracery of Jean Lamour’s
wrought-iron gate!
1755-1917!
We dashed out; a crowd was already gathering. A young French aviator with
a curious look in his eyes was watching it being set up. Having espied
the wings on his uniform, we asked “what and where and how” and are
“they” dead or prisoners? Some one said, “_C’est lui_,” indicating the
young man, who did not answer our questions, but continued to stand quite
still in some sort of dream or _détente_ of nerves. But a man in the
crowd said:
“He brought it down at Pont-à-Mousson, and _they_ are prisoners.” We were
standing by the statue of _Stanislas le Bienfaisant, Stanislas le Bon_,
his reign _le règne des talents, des arts et des vertus_ (these last not
as we know them in 1917), and he _was_ looking on strange things! We went
back to the café, consumed in haste and distraction the very nice little
dinner, topped off by strawberries and cream and the celebrated _macarons
des Sœurs Macarons_, and again I found myself dashing to the station,
which one thinks is near and isn’t, accompanied by my two fair friends,
all going at the same _allure militaire_ that I had taken forty-eight
hours before with the two Breton officers and the Chaplain of the 52d.
Wild dash at the station for our hand-luggage; and stampings of
safe-conduct, then a hunt for the porter, who, with an excess of zeal
(and hope), had reserved a coupé for us and put up the fateful words
_dames seules_. Now there is no such thing as _dames seules_ at the
front. Many officers were standing in the corridor, one on crutches,
so we tore the forbidding words from the windows, and the compartment
automatically, though courteously, filled.
Among them two immense, dark-bearded men from the Midi, with accents to
defeat the enemy, and a pale officer from near the Swiss frontier, as we
afterward discovered. He smiled when I said to the dark one sitting by
me, after the greetings and thanks:
“You come from Marseilles?” (He came from a little place five miles from
there.)
The officer on crutches stretched his leg with a contraction of the face
and a sigh of relief. They were all _en route_ for home, from the same
regiment, the seven precious days of _permission_ counting from the hour
they reach their homes till the hour they leave them, after months in the
field. They had fought in Belgium, on the dunes, these men of the south,
those first eighteen months, up to their waists in water, often for weeks
at a time. They found the Lorraine landscape that so soothed my soul only
fairly pretty, and spoke soft praises of _le Midi_.
They all had the strange, bold, hard, shining look about the eyes, with a
deeper suggestion of sadness, that men just returning from action have.
It is the warrior look—one kills or one is killed, one conquers or is
conquered; there is no _via media_.
The pale officer from Savoy said: “There should never be any war; _c’est
trop terrible_; but, once given the fact that war exists, all means to
victory are justifiable.” And the bright, hard look deepening on his face
made me suddenly think of Charles Martel and Charlemagne, and I knew
it was the way French warriors have looked through the ages, but, oh!
France. “_Oh doux pays!_”
At Bar-le-Duc, dating from the Merovingians, at least, we descended (our
bags passed out of the windows by the officers), and went through a dark,
silent, linden-scented town, obliged to drag our own belongings through
an interminable street, over a bridge across tree-bordered black water,
till we got to this abode, known to men by the name of Hôtel de Metz et
du Commerce. What the devils call it I don’t know; I have just chased the
black cat out, and if I don’t get some sleep I shall not get to Verdun.
There’s no linden scent coming in at my window here.
BAR-LE-DUC, _eight o’clock a.m._
Waiting in the sandy-floored dining-room of the hotel. All three of us
very cross. At dawn not only the light, but the sounds of chopping of
wood, emptying of pails, and invectives of various sorts came in at the
dreadful windows. At seven the maid mounted to know if we wanted the
water in the tea or the tea in the water. That tea “threw” them. Not a
sign of the famous Bar-le-Duc jellies that one has eaten all one’s life,
even _outre-mer_. We compared notes of furry, rumpled sheets, dented
pillows, dark coverlets, dreadful scents, and unmistakable sounds. We are
now somewhat restored by hot and very good _café au lait_, and Mrs. C.
P. is looking out of the door for signs of Mr. de Sinçay, who has just
stepped out of his motor.