PAUL LE PONTOIS
THERE is in the far north-west of France a broad, white highway which
runs from Châlons, crosses the green Meuse valley, mounts the steep,
high, tree-fringed lands of the Côtes Lorraines, and goes almost straight
as an arrow across what was, before the war, the German frontier at
Mars-la-Tour into quaint old Metz, that town with ancient streets,
musical chimes, and sad monument to Frenchmen who fell in the disastrous
never-to-be-forgotten war of '70.
This road has ever been one of the most strongly guarded highways in the
world, for, between the Moselle, at Metz, and the Meuse, the country is a
flat plain smiling under cultivation, with vines and cornfields
everywhere, and comfortable little homesteads of the peasantry. This was
once the great battlefield whereon Gravelotte was fought long ago, and
where the Prussians swept back the French like chaff before the wind, and
where France, later on, defeated the Crown Prince's army. The peasants,
in ploughing, daily turn up a rusty bayonet, a rotting gun-stock, a
skull, a thigh-bone, or some other hideous relic of those black days;
while the old men in their blouses sit of nights smoking and telling
thrilling stories of the ferocity of that helmeted enemy from yonder
across the winding Moselle. In recent days it has been again devastated
by the great world war, as its gaunt ruins mutely tell.
That road, with its long line of poplars, after crossing the ante-war
French border, runs straight for twenty kilomètres towards the abrupt
range of high hills which form the natural frontier of France, and then,
at Haudiomont, enters a narrow pass, over twelve kilomètres long, before
it reaches the broad valley of the Meuse. This pass was, before 1914, one
of the four principal gateways into France from Germany. The others are
all within a short distance, fifteen kilomètres or so--at Commercy, which
is an important sous-prefecture, at Apremont, and at Eix. All have ever
been strongly guarded, but that at Haudiomont was most impregnable of
them all.
Before 1914 great forts in which were mounted the most modern and the
most destructive artillery ever devised by man, commanded the whole
country far beyond the Moselle into Germany. Every hill-top bristled with
them, smaller batteries were in every coign of vantage, while those
narrow mountain passes could also be closed at any moment by being blown
up when the signal was given against the Hun invaders.
On the German side were many fortresses, but none was so strong as these,
for the efforts of the French Ministry of War had, ever since the fall of
Napoleon III., been directed towards rendering the Côtes Lorraines
impassable.
As one stands upon the road outside the tiny hamlet of Harville--a quaint
but half-destroyed little place consisting of one long street of ruined
whitewashed houses--and looks towards the hills eastward, low concrete
walls can be seen, half hidden, but speaking mutely of the withering
storm of shell that had, in 1914, burst from them and swept the land.
Much can be seen of that chain of damaged fortresses, and the details of
most of them are now known. Of those great ugly fortifications at
Moulainville--the Belrupt Fort, which overlooks the Meuse; the
Daumaumont, commanding the road from Conflans to Azannes; the Paroches,
which stands directly over the highway from the Moselle at Moussin--we
have heard valiant stories, how the brave French defended them against
the armies of the Crown Prince.
It was not upon these, however, that the French Army relied when, in
August, 1914, the clash of war resounded along that pleasant fertile
valley, where the sun seems ever to shine and the crops never fail.
Hidden away from the sight of passers-by upon the roads, protected from
sight by lines of sentries night and day, and unapproachable, save by
those immediately connected with them, were the secret defences, huge
forts with long-range ordnance, which rose, fired, and disappeared again,
offering no mark for the enemy. Constructed in strictest secrecy, there
were a dozen of such fortresses, the true details of which the Huns
vainly endeavoured to learn while they were war-plotting. Many a spy of
the Kaiser had tried to pry there and had been arrested and sentenced to
a long term of imprisonment.
Those defences, placed at intervals along the chain of hills right from
Apremont away to Bezonvaux, had been the greatest secret which France
possessed.
Within three kilomètres of the mouth of the pass at Haudiomont, at a
short distance from the road and at the edge of a wood, stood the ancient
Château de Lérouville, a small picturesque place of the days of Louis
XIV., with pretty lawns and old-world gardens--a château only in the
sense of being a country house and the residence of Paul Le Pontois,
once a captain in the French Army, but now retired.
Shut off from the road by a high old wall, with great iron gates, it was
approached by a wide carriage-drive through a well-kept flower-garden to
a long _terrasse_ which ran the whole length of the house, and whereon,
in summer, it was the habit of the family to take their meals.
Upon this veranda, one morning about ten days after the dinner party at
Hill Street, Sir Hugh, in a suit of light grey tweed, was standing
chatting with his son-in-law, a tall, brown-bearded, soldierly-looking
man.
The autumn sun shone brightly over the rich vinelands, beyond which
stretched what was once the German Empire.
Madame Le Pontois, a slim, dark-eyed, good-looking woman of thirty, was
still at table in the _salle-à-manger_, finishing her breakfast in the
English style with little Ninette, a pretty blue-eyed child of nine,
whose hair was tied on the top with wide white ribbon, and who spoke
English quite well.
Her husband and her father had gone out upon the _terrasse_ to have their
cigarettes prior to their walk up the steep hillside to the fortress.
Life in that rural district possessed few amusements outside the military
circle, though Paul Le Pontois was a civilian and lived upon the product
of the wine-lands of his estate. There were tennis parties, "fif'
o'clocks," croquet and bridge-playing in the various military houses
around, but beyond that--nothing. They were too far from a big town ever
to go there for recreation. Metz they seldom went to, and with Paris far
off, Madame Le Pontois was quite content, just as she had been when Paul
had been stationed in stifling Constantine, away in the interior of
Algeria.
But she never complained. Devoted to her husband and to her laughing,
bright-eyed child, she loved the open-air life of the country, and with
such a commodious and picturesque house, one of the best in the district,
she thoroughly enjoyed every hour of her life. Paul possessed a private
income of fifty thousand francs, or nearly two thousand pounds a year,
therefore he was better off than the average run of post-war men.
He was a handsome, distinguished-looking man. As he lolled against the
railing of the _terrasse_, gay with ivy-leaf geraniums, lazily smoking
his cigarette and laughing lightly with his father-in-law, he presented a
typical picture of the debonair Frenchman of the boulevards--elegance
combined with soldierly smartness.
He had seen service in Tonquin, in Algeria, on the French Congo and in
the Argonne, and now his old company garrisoned Haudiomont, one of those
forts of enormous strength, which commanded the gate of France, and had
never been taken by the Crown Prince's army.
"No," he was laughing, speaking in good English, "you in England, my dear
beaupère, do not yet realise the dangers of the future. Happily for you,
perhaps, because you have the barrier of the sea. Your writers used to
speak of your 'tight little island.' But I do not see much of that in
London journals now. Airships and aeroplanes have altered all that."
"But you in France are always on the alert?"
"Certainly. We have our new guns--terrible weapons they are--at St.
Mihiel and at Mouilly, and also in other forts in what was once German
territory," was Paul's reply. "The Huns--who, after peace, are preparing
for another war, have a Krupp gun for the same purpose, but at its trial
a few weeks ago at Pferzheim it was an utter failure. A certain
lieutenant was present at the trial, disguised as a German peasant. He
saw it all, returned here, and made an exhaustive report to Paris."
"You do not believe in this peace, and in the sincerity of the enemy,
eh?" asked Sir Hugh, with his hands thrust deep into his trousers
pockets.
"Certainly not," was Paul's prompt reply. "I am no longer in the army,
but it seems to me that to repair the damage done by the Kaiser's freak
performances in the international arena, quite a number of national
committees must be constituted under the auspices of the German
Government. There are the Anglo-German, the Austro-German, the
American-German and the Canadian-German committees, all to be formed in
their respective countries for the promotion of friendship and better
relations. But I tell you, Sir Hugh, that we in France know well that the
imposing names at the head of these committees are but too often on the
secret pay-rolls of the Wilhelmstrasse, and the honesty and sincerity of
the finely-worded manifestations of Hun friendship and goodwill appearing
above their signatures are generally nothing but mere blinds intended to
hoodwink statesmen and public opinion. Germany has, just as she had
before the war, her paid friends everywhere," he added, looking the
general full in the face. "In all classes of society are to be found the
secret agents of the Fatherland--men who are base traitors to their own
monarch and to their own land."
"Let us go in. They are waiting for us. We are not interested in
espionage, either of us, are we?"
"No," laughed Paul. "When I was in the army we heard a lot of this, but
all that is of the past--thanks to Heaven. There are other crimes in the
world just as bad, alas! as that of treachery to one's country."