A LETTER FROM ÉLISABETH
It was nine o'clock; there was no holding the position; and the colonel
was furious.
He had brought his regiment in the middle of the night--it was in the
first month of the war, on the 22nd of August, 1914--to the junction of
those three roads one of which ran from Belgian Luxemburg. The Germans
had taken possession of the lines of the frontier, seven or eight miles
away, on the day before. The general commanding the division had
expressly ordered that they were to hold the enemy in check until
mid-day, that is to say, until the whole division was able to come up
with them. The regiment was supported by a battery of seventy-fives.
The colonel had drawn up his men in a dip in the ground. The battery was
likewise hidden. And yet, at the first gleams of dawn, both regiment and
battery were located by the enemy and lustily shelled.
They moved a mile or more to the right. Five minutes later the shells
fell and killed half a dozen men and two officers.
A fresh move was effected, followed in ten minutes by a fresh attack.
The colonel pursued his tactics. In an hour there were thirty men killed
or wounded. One of the guns was destroyed. And it was only nine o'clock.
"Damn it all!" cried the colonel. "How can they spot us like this?
There's witchcraft in it."
He was hiding, with his majors, the captain of artillery and a few
dispatch-riders, behind a bank from above which the eye took in a rather
large stretch of undulating upland. At no great distance, on the left,
was an abandoned village, with some scattered farms in front of it, and
there was not an enemy to be seen in all that deserted extent of
country. There was nothing to show where the hail of shells was coming
from. The seventy-fives had "searched" one or two points with no result.
The firing continued.
"Three more hours to hold out," growled the colonel. "We shall do it;
but we shall lose a quarter of the regiment."
At that moment a shell whistled between the officers and the
dispatch-riders and plumped down into the ground. All sprang back,
awaiting the explosion. But one man, a corporal, ran forward, lifted the
shell and examined it.
"You're mad, corporal!" roared the colonel. "Drop that shell and be
quick about it."
The corporal replaced the projectile quietly in the hole which it had
made; and then without hurrying, went up to the colonel, brought his
heels together and saluted:
"Excuse me, sir, but I wanted to see by the fuse how far off the enemy's
guns are. It's two miles and fifty yards. That may be worth knowing."
"By Jove! And suppose it had gone off?"
"Ah, well, sir, nothing venture, nothing have!"
"True, but, all the same, it was a bit thick! What's your name?"
"Paul Delroze, sir, corporal in the third company."
"Well, Corporal Delroze, I congratulate you on your pluck and I dare say
you'll soon have your sergeant's stripes. Meanwhile, take my advice and
don't do it again. . . ."
He was interrupted by the sudden bursting of a shrapnel-shell. One of
the dispatch-riders standing near him fell, hit in the chest, and an
officer staggered under the weight of the earth that spattered against
him.
"Come," said the colonel, when things had restored themselves, "there's
nothing to do but bow before the storm. Take the best shelter you can
find; and let's wait."
Paul Delroze stepped forward once more.
"Forgive me, sir, for interfering in what's not my business; but we
might, I think, avoid . . ."
"Avoid the peppering? Of course, I have only to change our position
again. But, as we should be located again at once. . . . There, my lad,
go back to your place."
Paul insisted:
"It might be a question, sir, not of changing our position, but of
changing the enemy's fire."
"Really!" said the colonel, a little sarcastically, but nevertheless
impressed by Paul's coolness. "And do you know a way of doing it?"
"Yes, sir."
"What do you mean?"
"Give me twenty minutes, sir, and by that time the shells will be
falling in another direction."
The colonel could not help smiling:
"Capital! You'll make them drop where you please, I suppose?"
"Yes, sir."
"On that beet-field over there, fifteen hundred yards to the right?"
"Yes, sir."
The artillery-captain, who had been listening to the conversation, made
a jest in his turn:
"While you are about it, corporal, as you have already given me the
distance and I know the direction more or less, couldn't you give it to
me exactly, so that I may lay my guns right and smash the German
batteries?"
"That will be a longer job, sir, and much more difficult," said Paul.
"Still, I'll try. If you don't mind examining the horizon, at eleven
o'clock precisely, towards the frontier, I'll let off a signal."
"What sort of signal?"
"I don't know, sir. Three rockets, I expect."
"But your signal will be no use unless you send it off immediately above
the enemy's position."
"Just so, sir."
"And, to do that, you'll have to know it."
"I shall, sir."
"And to get there."
"I shall get there, sir."
Paul saluted, turned on his heel and, before the officers had time
either to approve or to object, he slipped along the foot of the slope
at a run, plunged on the left down a sort of hollow way, with bristling
edges of brambles, and disappeared from sight.
"That's a queer fellow," said the colonel. "I wonder what he really
means to do."
The young soldier's pluck and decision disposed the colonel in his
favor; and, though he felt only a limited confidence in the result of
the enterprise, he could not help looking at his watch, time after time,
during the minutes which he spent with his officers, behind the feeble
rampart of a hay-stack. They were terrible minutes, in which the
commanding officer did not think for a moment of the danger that
threatened himself, but only of the danger of the men in his charge,
whom he looked upon as children.
He saw them around him, lying at full length on the stubble, with their
knapsacks over their heads, or snugly ensconced in the copses, or
squatting in the hollows in the ground. The iron hurricane increased in
violence. It came rushing down like a furious hail bent upon hastily
completing its work of destruction. Men suddenly leapt to their feet,
spun on their heels and fell motionless, amid the yells of the wounded,
the shouts of the soldiers exchanging remarks and even jokes and, over
everything, the incessant thunder of the bursting bomb-shells.
And then, suddenly, silence! Total, definite silence, an infinite lull
in the air and on the ground, giving a sort of ineffable relief!
The colonel expressed his delight by bursting into a laugh:
"By Jupiter, Corporal Delroze knows his way about! The crowning
achievement would be for the beet-field to be shelled, as he promised."
He had not finished speaking when a shell exploded fifteen hundred yards
to the right, not in the beet-field, but a little in front of it. The
second went too far. The third found the spot. And the bombardment began
with a will.
There was something about the performance of the task which the corporal
had set himself that was at once so astounding and so mathematically
accurate that the colonel and his officers had hardly a doubt that he
would carry it out to the end and that, notwithstanding the
insurmountable obstacles, he would succeed in giving the signal agreed
upon.
They never ceased sweeping the horizon with their field-glasses, while
the enemy redoubled his efforts against the beet-field.
At five minutes past eleven, a red rocket went up. It appeared a good
deal farther to the right than they would have suspected. And it was
followed by two others.
Through his telescope the artillery-captain soon discovered a
church-steeple that just showed above a valley which was itself
invisible among the rise and fall of the plateau; and the spire of the
steeple protruded so very little that it might well have been taken for
a tree standing by itself. A rapid glance at the map showed that it was
the village of Brumoy.
Knowing, from the shell examined by the corporal, the exact distance of
the German batteries, the captain telephoned his instructions to his
lieutenant. Half an hour later the German batteries were silenced; and
as a fourth rocket had gone up the seventy-fives continued to bombard
the church as well as the village and its immediate neighborhood.
At a little before twelve, the regiment was joined by a cyclists company
riding ahead of the division. The order was given to advance at all
costs.
The regiment advanced, encountering no resistance, as it approached
Brumoy, except a few rifle shots. The enemy's rearguard was falling
back.
The village was in ruins, with some of its houses still burning, and
displayed a most incredible disorder of corpses, of wounded men, of dead
horses, demolished guns and battered caissons and baggage-wagons. A
whole brigade had been surprised at the moment, when, feeling certain
that it had cleared the ground, it was about to march to the attack.
But a shout came from the top of the church, the front and nave of which
had fallen in and presented an appearance of indescribable chaos. Only
the tower, perforated by gun-fire and blackened by the smoke from some
burning joists, still remained standing, bearing by some miracle of
equilibrium, the slender stone spire with which it was crowned. With his
body leaning out of this spire was a peasant, waving his arms and
shouting to attract attention.
The officers recognized Paul Delroze.
Picking their way through the rubbish, our men climbed the staircase
that led to the platform of the tower. Here, heaped up against the
little door admitting to the spire, were the bodies of eight Germans;
and the door, which was demolished and had dropped crosswise, barred the
entrance in such a way that it had to be chopped to pieces before Paul
could be released.
Toward the end of the afternoon, when it was manifest that the obstacles
to the pursuit of the enemy were too serious to be overcome, the colonel
embraced Corporal Delroze in front of the regiment mustered in the
square.
"Let's speak of your reward first," he said. "I shall recommend you for
the military medal; and you will be sure to get it. And now, my lad,
tell your story."
And Paul stood answering questions in the middle of the circle formed
around him by the officers and the non-commissioned officers of each
company.
"Why, it's very simple, sir," he said. "We were being spied upon."
"Obviously; but who was the spy and where was he?"
"I learnt that by accident. Beside the position which we occupied this
morning, there was a village, was there not, with a church?"
"Yes, but I had the village evacuated when I arrived; and there was no
one in the church."
"If there was no one in the church, sir, why did the weather-vane point
the wind coming from the east, when it was blowing from the west? And
why, when we changed our position, was the vane pointed in our
direction?"
"Are you sure of that?"
"Yes, sir. And that was why, after obtaining your leave, I did not
hesitate to slip into the church and to enter the steeple as stealthily
as I could. I was not mistaken. There was a man there whom I managed to
overmaster, not without difficulty."
"The scoundrel! A Frenchman?"
"No, sir, a German dressed up as a peasant."
"He shall be shot."
"No, sir, please. I promised him his life."
"Never!"
"Well, you see, sir, I had to find out how he was keeping the enemy
informed."
"Well?"
"Oh, it was simple enough! The church has a clock, facing the north, of
which we could not see the dial, where we were. From the inside, our
friend worked the hands so that the big hand, resting by turns on three
or four figures, announced the exact distance at which we were from the
church, in the direction pointed by the vane. This is what I next did
myself; and the enemy at once, redirecting his fire by my indications,
began conscientiously to shell the beet-field."
"He did," said the colonel, laughing.
"All that remained for me to do was to move on to the other
observation-post, where the spy's messages were received. There I would
learn the essential details which the spy himself did not know; I mean,
where the enemy's batteries were hidden. I therefore ran to this place;
and it was only on arriving here that I saw those batteries and a whole
German brigade posted at the very foot of the church which did the duty
of signaling-station."
"But that was a mad piece of recklessness! Didn't they fire on you?"
"I had put on the spy's clothes, sir, _their_ spy's. I can speak German,
I knew the pass-word and only one of them knew the spy and that was the
officer on observation-duty. Without the least suspicion, the general
commanding the brigade sent me to him as soon as I told him that the
French had discovered me and that I had managed to escape them."
"And you had the cheek . . . ?"
"I had to, sir; and besides I held all the trump cards. The officer
suspected nothing; and, when I reached the platform from which he was
sending his signals, I had no difficulty in attacking him and reducing
him to silence. My business was done and I had only to give you the
signals agreed upon."
"Only that! In the midst of six or seven thousand men!"
"I had promised you, sir, and it was eleven o'clock. The platform had on
it all the apparatus required for sending day or night signals. Why
shouldn't I use it? I lit a rocket, followed by a second and a third and
then a fourth; and the battle commenced."
"But those rockets were indications to draw our fire upon the very
steeple where you were! It was you we were firing on!"
"Oh, I assure you, sir, one doesn't think of those things at such
moments! I welcomed the first shell that struck the church. And then the
enemy left me hardly any time for reflection. Half-a-dozen fellows at
once came climbing the tower. I accounted for some of them with my
revolver; but a second assault came and, later on, still another. I had
to take refuge behind the door that closes the spire. When they had
broken it down, it served me as a barricade; and, as I had the arms and
ammunition which I had taken from my first assailants and was
inaccessible and very nearly invisible, I found it easy to sustain a
regular siege."
"While our seventy-fives were blazing away at you."
"While our seventy-fives were releasing me, sir; for you can understand
that, once the church was destroyed and the nave in flames, no one dared
to venture up the tower. I had nothing to do, therefore, but wait
patiently for your arrival."
Paul Delroze had told his story in the simplest way and as though it
concerned perfectly natural things. The colonel, after congratulating
him again, confirmed his promotion to the rank of sergeant and said:
"Have you nothing to ask me?"
"Yes, sir, I should like to put a few more questions to the German spy
whom I left behind me and, at the same time, to get back my uniform,
which I hid."
"Very well, you shall dine here and we'll give you a bicycle
afterwards."
Paul was back at the first church by seven o'clock in the evening. A
great disappointment awaited him. The spy had broken his bonds and fled.
All Paul's searching, in the church and village, was useless.
Nevertheless, on one of the steps of the staircase, near the place where
he had flung himself upon the spy, he picked up the dagger with which
his adversary had tried to strike him. It was exactly similar to the
dagger which he had picked up in the grass, three weeks before, outside
the little gate in the Ornequin woods. It had the same three-cornered
blade, the same brown horn handle and, on the handle, the same four
letters: H, E, R, M.
The spy and the woman who bore so strange a resemblance to Hermine
d'Andeville, his father's murderess, both made use of an identical
weapon.
* * * * *
Next day, the division to which Paul's regiment belonged continued the
offensive and entered Belgium after repulsing the enemy. But in the
evening the general received orders to fall back.
The retreat began. Painful as it was to one and all, it was doubly so
perhaps to those of our troops which had been victorious at the start.
Paul and his comrades in the third company could not contain themselves
for rage and disappointment. During the half a day which they spent in
Belgium, they saw the ruins of a little town that had been destroyed by
the Germans, the bodies of eighty women who had been shot, old men hung
up by their feet, stacks of murdered children. And they had to retire
before those monsters!
Some of the Belgian soldiers had attached themselves to the regiment;
and, with faces that still bore traces of horror at the infernal visions
which they had beheld, these men told of things beyond the conception of
the most vivid imagination. And our fellows had to retire. They had to
retire with hatred in their hearts and a mad desire for vengeance that
made their hands close fiercely on their rifles.
And why retire? It was not a question of being defeated, because they
were falling back in good order, making sudden halts and delivering
violent counter-attacks upon the disconcerted enemy. But his numbers
overpowered all resistance. The wave of barbarians reformed itself. The
place of each thousand dead was taken by two thousand of the living. And
our men retired.
One evening, Paul learnt one of the reasons for this retreat from a
week-old newspaper; and he was painfully affected by the news. On the
20th of August, Corvigny had been taken by assault, after some hours of
bombardment effected under the most inexplicable conditions, whereas the
stronghold was believed to be capable of holding out for at least some
days, which would have strengthened our operations against the left
flank of the Germans.
So Corvigny had fallen; and the Château d'Ornequin, doubtless abandoned,
as Paul himself hoped, by Jérôme and Rosalie, was now destroyed,
pillaged and sacked with the methodical thoroughness which the Huns
applied to their work of devastation. On this side, too, the furious
horde were crowding precipitately.
Those were sinister days, at the end of August, the most tragic days
perhaps that France has ever passed through. Paris was threatened, a
dozen departments were invaded. Death's icy breath hung over our gallant
nation.
It was on the morning of one of these days that Paul heard a cheerful
voice calling to him from a group of young soldiers behind him:
"Paul, Paul! I've got my way at last! Isn't it a stroke of luck?"
Those young soldiers were lads who had enlisted voluntarily and been
drafted into the regiment; and Paul at once recognized Élisabeth's
brother, Bernard d'Andeville. He had no time to think of the attitude
which he had best take up. His first impulse would have been to turn
away; but Bernard had seized his two hands and was pressing them with an
affectionate kindness which showed that the boy knew nothing as yet of
the breach between Paul and his wife.
"Yes, it's myself, old chap," he declared gaily. "I may call you old
chap, mayn't I? It's myself and it takes your breath away, what? You're
thinking of a providential meeting, the sort of coincidence one never
sees: two brothers-in-law dropping into the same regiment. Well, it's
not that: it happened at my express request. I said to the authorities,
'I'm enlisting by way of a duty and pleasure combined,' or words to that
effect. 'But, as a crack athlete and a prize-winner in every gymnastic
and drill-club I ever joined, I want to be sent to the front straight
away and into the same regiment as my brother-in-law, Corporal Paul
Delroze.' And, as they couldn't do without my services, they packed me
off here. . . . Well? You don't look particularly delighted . . . ?"
Paul was hardly listening. He said to himself:
"This is the son of Hermine d'Andeville. The boy who is now touching me
is the son of the woman who killed . . ."
But Bernard's face expressed such candor and such open-hearted pleasure
at seeing him that he said:
"Yes, I am. Only you're so young!"
"I? I'm quite ancient. Seventeen the day I enlisted."
"But what did your father say?"
"Dad gave me leave. But for that, of course, I shouldn't have given him
leave."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, he's enlisted, too."
"At his age?"
"Nonsense, he's quite juvenile. Fifty the day he enlisted! They found
him a job as interpreter with the British staff. All the family under
arms, you see. . . . Oh, I was forgetting, I've a letter for you from
Élisabeth!"
Paul started. He had deliberately refrained from asking after his wife.
He now said, as he took the letter:
"So she gave you this . . . ?"
"No, she sent it to us from Ornequin."
"From Ornequin? How can she have done that? Élisabeth left Ornequin on
the day of mobilization, in the evening. She was going to Chaumont, to
her aunt's."
"Not at all. I went and said good-bye to our aunt: she hadn't heard from
Élisabeth since the beginning of the war. Besides, look at the
envelope: 'M. Paul Delroze, care of M. d'Andeville, Paris, etc.' And
it's post-marked Ornequin and Corvigny."
Paul looked and stammered:
"Yes, you're right; and I can read the date on the post-mark: 18 August.
The 18th of August . . . and Corvigny fell into the hands of the Germans
two days later, on the 20th. So Élisabeth was still there."
"No, no," cried Bernard, "Élisabeth isn't a child! You surely don't
think she would have waited for the Huns, so close to the frontier! She
would have left the château at the first sound of firing. And that's
what she's telling you, I expect. Why don't you read her letter, Paul?"
Paul, on his side, had no idea of what he was about to learn on reading
the letter; and he opened the envelope with a shudder.
What Élisabeth wrote was:
"_Paul_,
"I cannot make up my mind to leave Ornequin. A duty
keeps me here in which I shall not fail, the duty of
clearing my mother's memory. Do understand me, Paul.
My mother remains the purest of creatures in my eyes.
The woman who nursed me in her arms, for whom my
father retains all his love, must not be even
suspected. But you yourself accuse her; and it is
against you that I wish to defend her. To compel you
to believe me, I shall find the proofs that are not
necessary to convince me. And it seems to me that
those proofs can only be found here. So I shall stay.
"Jérôme and Rosalie are also staying on, though the
enemy is said to be approaching. They have brave
hearts, both of them, and you have nothing to fear, as
I shall not be alone.
ÉLISABETH DELROZE."
Paul folded up the letter. He was very pale.
Bernard asked:
"She's gone, hasn't she?"
"No, she's there."
"But this is madness! What, with those beasts about! A lonely
country-house! . . . But look here, Paul, she must surely know the
terrible dangers that threaten her! . . . What can be keeping her there?
Oh, it's too dreadful to think of. . . ."
Paul stood silent, with a drawn face and clenched fists. . . .