VI

We met Elsa at the _Gare de l’Est_ in Paris the evening after our

arrival. Brand’s nervous anxiety had increased as the hour drew near,

and he smoked cigarette after cigarette, while he paced up and down the

_salle d’attente_ as far as he could for the crowds which surged there.

Once he spoke to me about his apprehensions.

“I hope to God this will work out all right.... I’m only thinking of

her happiness.”

Another time he said:

“This French crowd would tear her to pieces if they knew she was

German.”

While we were waiting we met a friend of old times. I was first to

recognise Pierre Nesle, who had been attached to us as interpreter and

_liaison_ officer. He was in civil clothes and was wearing a bowler

hat and a light overcoat, so that his transformation was astonishing.

I touched him on the arm as he made his way quickly through the crowd,

and he turned sharply and stared at me as though he could not place me

at all. Then a look of recognition leapt into his eyes and he grasped

both my hands, delightedly. He was still thin and pale, but some of his

old melancholy had gone out of his eyes and in its place there was an

eager, purposeful look.

“Here’s Brand,” I said. “He’ll be glad to see you again.”

“_Quelle chance!_” exclaimed Pierre, and he made a dash for his friend

and before Brand could remonstrate kissed him on both cheeks. They

had been good comrades, and after the rescue of Marthe from the mob

in Lille it was to Brand that Pierre Nesle had opened his heart and

revealed his agony. He could not stay long with us in the station as he

was going to some political meeting, and perhaps it was well, because

Brand was naturally anxious to escape from him before Elsa came.

“I am working hard--speaking, writing, organising--on behalf of

the _Ligue des Tranchées_,” said Pierre. “You must come and see me

at my office. It’s the headquarters of the new movement in France.

Anti-militarist, to fulfil the ideals of the men who fought to end war.”

“You’re going to fight against heavy odds,” said Brand. “Clémenceau

won’t love you, nor those who like his Peace.”

Pierre laughed and used an old watchword of the war.

“_Nous les aurons!_ Those old dead-heads belong to the past. Peace has

still to be made by the men who fought for a new world.”

He gave us his address, pledged us to call on him, and slipped into the

vortex of the crowd.

Brand and I waited another twenty minutes, and then in a tide of new

arrivals we saw Elsa. She was in the company of Major Quin, Brand’s

friend who had brought her from Cologne, a tall Irishman who stooped a

little as he gave his arm to the girl. She was dressed in a blue coat

and skirt, very neatly, and it was the glitter of her spun-gold hair

that made me catch sight of her quickly in the crowd. Her eyes had a

frightened look as she came forward, and she was white to the lips.

Thinner, too, than when I had seen her last, so that she looked older

and not, perhaps, quite so wonderfully pretty. But her face lighted up

with intense gladness when Brand stood in front of her, and then, under

an electric lamp, with a crowd surging around him, took her in his

arms.

Major Quin and I stood aloof, chatting together.

“Good journey?” I asked.

“Excellent, but I’m glad it’s over. That little lady is too

unmistakably German. Everybody spotted her and looked unutterable

things. She was frightened, and I don’t wonder. Most of them thought

the worst of me. I had to threaten one fellow with a damned good hiding

for an impertinent remark I overheard.”

Brand thanked him for looking after his wife, and Elsa gave him her

hand and said, “_Danke schön_.”

Major Quin raised his finger and said, “Hush. Don’t forget you’re in

Paris now.”

Then he saluted with a click of spurs, and took his leave. I put Brand

and his wife in a taxi and drove outside, by the driver, to a quiet old

hotel in the Rue St. Honoré, where we had booked rooms.

When we registered, the manager at the desk stared at Elsa curiously.

She spoke English, but with an unmistakable accent. The man’s

courtesy to Brand, which had been perfect, fell from him abruptly

and he spoke with icy insolence when he summoned one of the boys to

take up the baggage. In the dining-room that night all eyes turned

to Elsa and Brand, with inquisitive, hostile looks. I suppose her

frock, simple and ordinary as it seemed to me, proclaimed its German

fashion. Or perhaps her face and hair were not so English as I had

imagined. It was a little while before the girl herself was aware of

those unpleasant glances about her. She was very happy sitting next

to Brand, whose hand she caressed once or twice and into whose face

she looked with adoration. She was still very pale, and I could see

that she was immensely tired after her journey, but her eyes shone

wonderfully. Sometimes she looked about her and encountered the stares

of people--elderly French _bourgeois_ and some English nurses and a

few French officers--dining at other tables in the great room with

gilt mirrors and painted ceiling. She spoke to Brand presently in a low

voice.

“I am afraid. These people stare at me so much. They guess what I am.”

“It’s only your fancy,” said Brand. “Besides, they would be fools not

to stare at a face like yours.”

She smiled and coloured up at that sweet flattery.

“I know when people like one’s looks. It is not for that reason they

stare.”

“Ignore them,” said Brand. “Tell me about Franz, and Frau von Detmold.”

It was unwise of him to sprinkle his conversation with German names.

The waiter at our tables was listening attentively. Presently I saw him

whispering behind the screen to one of his comrades and looking our

way sullenly. He kept us waiting an unconscionable time for coffee,

and when at last Brand gave his arm to Elsa and led her from the room,

he gave a harsh laugh as they passed, and I heard the words, “_Sale

Boche!_” spoken in a low tone of voice yet loud enough for all the room

to hear. From all the little tables there came titters of laughter and

those words “_Sale Boche!_” were repeated by several voices. I hoped

that Elsa and Brand had not heard, but I saw Elsa sway a little on her

husband’s arm as though struck by an invisible blow, and Brand turned

with a look of passion, as though he would hit the waiter or challenge

the whole room to warfare. But Elsa whispered to him, and he went with

her up the staircase to their rooms.

The next morning when I met them at breakfast Elsa still looked

desperately tired, though very happy, and Brand had lost a little

of his haggard look, and his nerve was steadier. But it was an

uncomfortable moment for all of us when the manager came to the

table and regretted with icy courtesy that their rooms would not be

available another night, owing to a previous arrangement which he had

unfortunately overlooked.

“Nonsense!” said Brand shortly. “I have taken these rooms for three

nights, and I intend to stay in them.”

“It is impossible,” said the manager. “I must ask you to have your

baggage packed by twelve o’clock.”

Brand dealt with him firmly.

“I am an English officer. If I hear another word from you I will call

on the Provost Marshal and get him to deal with you.”

The manager bowed. This threat cowed him, and he said no more about

a change of rooms. But Brand and his wife, and I as their friend,

suffered from a policy of passive resistance to our presence. The

chambermaid did not answer their bell, having become strangely deaf.

The waiter was generally engaged at other tables whenever we wanted

him. The hall porter turned his back upon us. The page-boys made

grimaces behind our backs, as I saw very well in the gilt mirror, and

as Elsa saw.

They took to having their meals out, Brand insisting always that I

should join them, and we drove out to the Bois and had tea there in

the _Châlet des Iles_. It was a beautiful afternoon in September,

and the leaves were just turning to crinkled gold and the lake was

as blue as the cloudless sky above. Across the ferry came boatloads

of young Frenchmen with their girls, singing, laughing, on this day

of peace. Some of the men limped as they came up the steps from the

landing-stage. One walked on crutches. Another had an empty sleeve.

Under the trees they made love to their girls and fed them with

rose-tinted ices.

“These people are happy,” said Elsa. “They have forgotten already the

agony of war. Victory is healing. In Germany there is only misery.”

A little later she talked about the Peace.

“If only the _Entente_ had been more generous in victory our despair

would not be so great. Many of us, great multitudes, believed that the

price of defeat would be worth paying because Germany would take a

place among free nations and share in the creation of a nobler world.

Now we are crushed by the militarism of nations who have used our

downfall to increase their own power. The light of a new ideal which

rose above the darkness has gone out.”

Brand took his wife’s hand and stroked it in his big paw.

“All this is temporary and the work of the Old Men steeped in the old

traditions which led to war. We must wait for them to die. Then out of

the agony of the world’s boyhood will come the new revelation.”

Elsa clasped her hands and leaned forward, looking across the lake in

the Bois de Boulogne.

“I would like to live long enough to be sure of that,” she said,

eagerly. “If we have children, my husband, perhaps they will listen to

our tales of the war as Franz and I read about wolves and goblins in

our fairy-tales. The fearfulness of them was not frightening, for we

knew we were safe.”

“God grant that,” said Brand, gravely.

“But I am afraid!” said Elsa. She looked again across the lake, so blue

under the sky, so golden in sunlight; and shivered a little.

“You are cold!” said Brand.

He put his arms about her as they sat side by side, and her head

drooped upon his shoulder and she closed her eyes, like a tired child.

They went to the opera that night and I refused their invitation to

join them, protesting that they would never learn to know each other

if a third person were always present. I slipped away to see Pierre

Nesle, and found him at an office in a street somewhere off the Rue du

Louvre, which was filled with young men, whose faces I seemed to have

seen before under blue shrapnel helmets above blue tunics. They were

typewriting as though serving machine-guns, and folding up papers while

they whistled the tune of “Madelon.” Pierre was in his shirt-sleeves,

dictating letters to a _poilu_ in civil clothes.

“Considerable activity on the Western front, eh?” he said when he saw

me.

“Tell me all about it, Pierre.”

He told me something about it in a restaurant where we dined in the

Rue du Marché St. Honoré. He was one of the organising secretaries of

a society made up exclusively of young soldiers who had fought in the

trenches. There was a sprinkling of intellectuals among them--painters,

poets, novelists, journalists--but the main body were simple soldiers

animated by one idea--to prevent another war by substituting the

commonsense and brotherhood of peoples for the old diplomacy of secret

alliances and the old tradition of powerful armies.

“How about the Peace Treaty and the League of Nations?” I asked.

Pierre Nesle shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.

“The Peace Treaty belongs to the Napoleonic tradition. We’ve got beyond

that now. It is the programme that has carefully arranged another and

inevitable war. Look at the world now! Look at France, Italy, Germany,

Austria! We are all ruined together, and those most ruined will, by

their disease and death, drag down Europe into general misery. _Mon

vieux_, what has victory given to France? A great belt of devastated

country, cemeteries crowded with dead youth, bankruptcy, and

everything five times the cost of pre-war rates. Another such victory

will wipe us off the map. We have smashed Germany, it is true, for a

time. We have punished her women and children for the crimes of their

War Lords, but can we keep her crushed? Are our frontiers impregnable

against the time when her people come back for revenge, smashing the

fetters we have placed on them, and rising again in strength? For ten

years, for twenty years, for thirty years, perhaps, we shall be safe.

And after that, if the heart of Europe does not change, if we do not

learn wisdom from the horror that has passed, France will be ravaged

again, and all that we have seen our children will see, and their

suffering will be greater than ours, and they will not have the hope we

had.”

He stared back into the past, not a very distant past, and I fancy that

among the figures he saw was Marthe, his sister.

“What’s the remedy?” I asked.

“A Union of Democracy across the frontiers of hate,” he answered, and I

think it was a phrase that he had written and learnt by heart.

“A fine phrase!” I said, laughing a little.

He flared up at me.

“It’s more than a phrase. It’s the heart-beat of millions in Europe.”

“In France?” I asked pointedly. “In the France of Clémenceau?”

“More than you imagine,” he answered, boldly. “Beneath our present

chauvinism, our natural exultation in victory, our inevitable hatred of

the enemy, commonsense is at work, and an idealism higher than that.

At present its voice is not heard. The old men are having their day.

Presently the new men will arrive with the new ideas. They are here,

but do not speak yet.”

“The Old Men again!” I said. “It is strange. In Germany, in France, in

England, even in America, people are talking strangely about the Old

Men as though they were guilty of all this agony. That is remarkable.”

“They were guilty,” said Pierre Nesle. “It is against the Old Men in

all countries of Europe that Youth will declare war. For it was their

ideas which brought us to our ruin.”

He spoke so loudly that people in the restaurant turned to look at him.

He paid his bill and spoke in a lower voice.

“It is dangerous to talk like this in public. Let us walk up the Champs

Élysées, where I am visiting some friends.”

Suddenly a remembrance came back to him.

“Your friends, too,” he said.

“My friends?”

“But yes; Madame Chéri and Hélène. After Edouard’s death they could not

bear to live in Lille.”

“Edouard, that poor boy who came back? He is dead?”

“He was broken by the prison life,” said Pierre. “He died within a

month of Armistice, and Hélène wept her heart out.”

He confided a secret to me. Hélène and he had come to love each other,

and would marry when they could get her mother’s consent--or, one day,

if not.

“What’s her objection?” I asked. “Why, it’s splendid to think that

Hélène and you will be man and wife. The thought of it makes me feel

good.”

He pressed my arm and said, “_Merci, mille fois, mon cher_.”

Madame Chéri objected to his political opinions. She regarded them as

poisonous treachery.

“And Hélène?”

I remembered that outburst, months back, when Hélène had desired the

death of many German babies.

“Hélène loves me,” said Pierre simply. “We do not talk politics.”

On our way to the Avenue Victor Hugo I ventured to ask him a question

which had been a long time in my mind.

“Your sister, Marthe? She is well?”

Even in the pearly twilight of the Champs Élysées I was aware of

Pierre’s sudden change of colour. I had touched a nerve that still

jumped.

“She is well and happy,” he answered gravely. “She is now a

_religieuse_, a nun, in the convent at Lille. They tell me she is a

saint. Her name in religion is Soeur Angélique.”

I called on Madame Chéri and her daughter with Pierre Nesle. They

seemed delighted to see me, and Hélène greeted me like an old and

trusted friend, giving me the privilege of kissing her cheek. She had

grown taller, and beautiful, and there was a softness in her eyes when

she looked at Pierre which made me sure of his splendid luck.

Madame Chéri had aged, and some of her fire had burnt out. I guessed

that it was due to Edouard’s death. She spoke of that, and wept a

little, and deplored the mildness of the Peace Treaty which had not

punished the evil race who had killed her husband and her boy and the

flower of France.

“There are many German dead,” said Pierre. “They have been punished.”

“Not enough!” cried Madame Chéri. “They should all be dead.”

Hélène kissed her hand and snuggled down to her as once I had seen in

Lille.

“_Petite maman_,” she said, “let us talk of happy things to-night.

Pierre has brought us a good friend.”

Later in the evening, when Pierre and Hélène had gone into another room

to find some biscuits for our wine, Madame Chéri spoke to me about

their betrothal.

“Pierre is full of strange and terrible ideas,” she said. “They are

shared by other young men who fought bravely for France. To me they

seem wicked, and the talk of cowards, except that their medals tell of

courage. But the light in Hélène’s eyes weakens me. I’m too much of a

Frenchwoman to be stern with love.”

By those words of hers I was able to give Pierre a message of

good-cheer when he walked back with me that night, and he went away

with gladness.

With gladness also did Elsa Brand set out next day for England where,

as a girl, she had known happy days, and where now her dream lived with

the man who stood beside her. Together we watched for the white cliffs,

and when suddenly the sun glinted on them she gave a little cry, and

putting her hand through Brand’s arm, said, “Our home!”