The clean-shaven man (who appeared to have been completely won over by
his smoke), and the fluffy gnome, who had completed the arrangement of
my _paillasse_, now entered into conversation with myself and B.; the
clean-shaven one seating himself in Harree’s stead, the gnome declining
(on the grounds that the bed was already sufficiently loaded) to occupy
the place left vacant by the tassel’s exit, and leaning against the
drab, sweating, poisonous wall. He managed, however, to call our
attention to the shelf at B.’s head which he himself had constructed,
and promised me a similar luxury _toute de suite_. He was a Russian,
and had a wife and _gosse_ in Paris. “My name is Monsieur Au-guste, at
your service”—and his gentle pale eyes sparkled. The clean-shaven
talked distinct and absolutely perfect English. His name was Fritz. He
was a Norwegian, a stoker on a ship. “You mustn’t mind that feller that
wanted you to sweep. He’s crazy. They call him John the Baigneur. He
used to be the bathman. Now he’s _Maître de Chambre_. They wanted me to
take it—I said, ‘F—— it, I don’t want it.’ Let him have it. That’s no
kind of a job, everyone complaining and on top of you morning till
night. ‘Let them that wants the job take it’ I said. That crazy
Dutchman’s been here for two years. They told him to get out and he
wouldn’t, he was too fond of the booze” (I jumped at the slang) “and
the girls. They took it away from John and give it to that little
Ree-shar feller, that doctor. That was a swell job he had, _baigneur_,
too. All the bloody liquor you can drink and a girl every time you want
one. He ain’t never had a girl in his life, that Ree-shar feller.” His
laughter was hard, clear, cynical. “That Pompom, the little Belgian
feller was just here, he’s a great one for the girls. He and Harree.
Always getting _cabinot_. I got it twice myself since I been here.”
All this time the enormous room was filling gradually with dirty light.
In the further end six figures were brooming furiously, yelling to each
other in the dust like demons. A seventh, Harree, was loping to and fro
splashing water from a pail and enveloping everything and everybody in
a ponderous and blasphemous fog of _Gott-ver-dummers_. Along three
sides (with the exception, that is, of the nearer end, which boasted
the sole door) were laid, with their lengths at right angles to the
wall, at intervals of three or four feet, something like forty
_paillasses_. On each, with half a dozen exceptions (where the
occupants had not yet finished their coffee or were on duty for the
_corvée_) lay the headless body of a man smothered in its blanket, only
the boots showing.
The demons were working towards our end of the room. Harree had got his
broom and was assisting. Nearer and nearer they came; converging, they
united their separate heaps of filth in a loudly stinking single mound
at the door. Brooms were stacked against the wall in the corner. The
men strolled back to their mattresses.
Monsieur Auguste, whose French had not been able to keep pace with
Fritz’s English, saw his chance, and proposed “now that the Room is all
clean, let us go take a little walk, the three of us.” Fritz understood
perfectly, and rose, remarking as he fingered his immaculate chin
“Well, I guess I’ll take a shave before the bloody _planton_ comes”—and
Monsieur Auguste, B., and I started down the room.
It was in shape oblong, about 80 feet by 40, unmistakably
ecclesiastical in feeling; two rows of wooden pillars, spaced at
intervals of fifteen feet, rose to a vaulted ceiling 25 or 30 feet
above the floor. As you stood with your back to the door, and faced
down the room, you had in the near right-hand corner (where the brooms
stood) six pails of urine. On the right-hand long wall, a little beyond
the angle of this corner, a few boards, tacked together in any fashion
to make a two-sided screen four feet in height, marked the position of
a _cabinet d’aisance_, composed of a small coverless tin pail identical
with the other six, and a board of the usual design which could be
placed on the pail or not as desired. The wooden floor in the
neighborhood of the booth and pails was of a dark colour, obviously
owing to the continual overflow of their contents.
The right-hand long wall contained something like ten large windows, of
which the first was commanded by the somewhat primitive cabinet. There
were no other windows in the remaining walls; or they had been
carefully rendered useless. In spite of this fact, the inhabitants had
contrived a couple of peep-holes—one in the door-end and one in the
left-hand long wall; the former commanding the gate by which I had
entered, the latter a portion of the street by which I had reached the
gate. The blocking of all windows on three sides had an obvious
significance: _les hommes_ were not supposed to see anything which went
on in the world without; _les hommes_ might, however, look their fill
on a little washing-shed, on a corner of what seemed to be another wing
of the building, and on a bleak lifeless abject landscape of scrubby
woods beyond—which constituted the view from the ten windows on the
right. The authorities had miscalculated a little in one respect: a
merest fraction of the barb-wire pen which began at the corner of the
above-mentioned building was visible from these windows, which windows
(I was told) were consequently thronged by fighting men at the time of
the girl’s promenade. A _planton_, I was also told, made it his
business, by keeping _les femmes_ out of this corner of their _cour_ at
the point of the bayonet to deprive them of the sight of their
admirers. In addition, it was dry bread or _cabinot_ for any of either
sex who were caught communicating with each other. Moreover the
promenades of the men and the women occurred at roughly speaking the
same hour, so that a man or woman who remained upstairs on the chance
of getting a smile or a wave from his or her girl or lover lost the
promenade thereby….
We had in succession gazed from the windows, crossed the end of the
room, and started down the other side, Monsieur Auguste marching
between us—when suddenly B. exclaimed in English “Good morning! How are
you today?” And I looked across Monsieur Auguste, anticipating another
Harree or at least a Fritz. What was my surprise to see a spare
majestic figure of manifest refinement, immaculately apparelled in a
crisp albeit collarless shirt, carefully mended trousers in which the
remains of a crease still lingered, a threadbare but perfectly fitting
swallow-tail coat, and newly varnished (if somewhat ancient) shoes.
Indeed for the first time since my arrival at La Ferté I was confronted
by a perfect type: the apotheosis of injured nobility, the humiliated
victim of perfectly unfortunate circumstances, the utterly respectable
gentleman who had seen better days. There was about him, moreover,
something irretrievably English, nay even pathetically Victorian—it was
as if a page of Dickens was shaking my friend’s hand. “Count Bragard, I
want you to meet my friend Cummings”—he saluted me in modulated and
courteous accents of indisputable culture, gracefully extending his
pale hand. “I have heard a great deal about you from B., and wanted
very much to meet you. It is a pleasure to find a friend of my friend
B., someone congenial and intelligent in contrast to these swine”—he
indicated the room with a gesture of complete contempt. “I see you were
strolling. Let us take a turn.” Monsieur Auguste said tactfully, “I’ll
see you soon, friends,” and left us with an affectionate shake of the
hand and a sidelong glance of jealousy and mistrust at B.’s respectable
friend.
“You’re looking pretty well today, Count Bragard,” B. said amiably.
“I do well enough,” the Count answered. “It is a frightful strain—you
of course realise that—for anyone who has been accustomed to the
decencies, let alone the luxuries, of life. This filth”—he pronounced
the word with indescribable bitterness—“this herding of men like
cattle—they treat us no better than pigs here. The fellows drop their
dung in the very room where they sleep. What is one to expect of a
place like this? _Ce n’est pas une existence_”—his French was glib and
faultless.
“I was telling my friend that you knew Cézanne,” said B. “Being an
artist he was naturally much interested.”
Count Bragard stopped in astonishment, and withdrew his hands slowly
from the tails of his coat. “Is it possible!” he exclaimed, in great
agitation. “What an astonishing coincidence! I am myself a painter. You
perhaps noticed this badge”—he indicated a button attached to his left
lapel, and I bent and read the words: On War Service. “I always wear
it,” he said with a smile of faultless sorrow, and resumed his walk.
“They don’t know what it means here, but I wear it all the same. I was
a special representative for The London Sphere at the front in this
war. I did the trenches and all that sort of thing. They paid me well;
I got fifteen pounds a week. And why not? I am an R.A. My specialty was
horses. I painted the finest horses in England, among them the King’s
own entry in the last Derby. Do you know London?” We said no. “If you
are ever in London, go to the” (I forget the name) “Hotel—one of the
best in town. It has a beautiful large bar, exquisitely furnished in
the very best taste. Anyone will tell you where to find the ——. It has
one of my paintings over the bar: “Straight-jacket” (or some such name)
“the Marquis of ——’s horse, who won last time the race was run. I was
in America in 1910. You know Cornelius Vanderbilt perhaps? I painted
some of his horses. We were the best of friends, Vanderbilt and I. I
got handsome prices, you understand, three, five, six thousand pounds.
When I left, he gave me this card—I have it here somewhere—” he again
stopped, sought in his breastpocket a moment, and produced a visiting
card. On one side I read the name “Cornelius Vanderbilt”—on the other,
in bold handwriting—“to my very dear friend Count F.A. de Bragard” and
a date. “He hated to have me go.”