The next day we started for Réchamp, not sure if we could get through,
but bound to, anyhow! It was the coldest day we’d had, the sky steel,
the earth iron, and a snow-wind howling down on us from the north. The
Vosges are splendid in winter. In summer they are just plump puddingy
hills; when the wind strips them they turn to mountains. And we seemed
to have the whole country to ourselves--the black firs, the blue
shadows, the beech-woods cracking and groaning like rigging, the bursts
of snowy sunlight from cold clouds. Not a soul in sight except the
sentinels guarding the railways, muffled to the eyes, or peering out
of their huts of pine-boughs at the cross-roads. Every now and then we
passed a long string of seventy-fives, or a train of supply waggons or
army ambulances, and at intervals a cavalryman cantered by, his cloak
bellied out by the gale; but of ordinary people about the common jobs of
life, not a sign.
The sense of loneliness and remoteness that the absence of the civil
population produces everywhere in eastern France is increased by the
fact that all the names and distances on the mile-stones have been
scratched out and the sign-posts at the cross-roads thrown down. It was
done, presumably, to throw the enemy off the track in September: and the
signs have never been put back. The result is that one is forever losing
one’s way, for the soldiers quartered in the district know only the
names of their particular villages, and those on the march can tell you
nothing about the places they are passing through. We had got badly
off our road several times during the trip, but on the last day’s run
Réchamp was in his own country, and knew every yard of the way--or
thought he did. We had turned off the main road, and were running along
between rather featureless fields and woods, crossed by a good many
wood-roads with nothing to distinguish them; but he continued to push
ahead, saying:
“We don’t turn till we get to a manor-house on a stream, with a big
paper-mill across the road.” He went on to tell me that the mill-owners
lived in the manor, and were old friends of his people: good old local
stock, who had lived there for generations and done a lot for the
neighbourhood.
“It’s queer I don’t see their village-steeple from this rise. The
village is just beyond the house. How the devil could I have missed the
turn?” We ran on a little farther, and suddenly he stopped the motor
with a jerk. We were at a cross-road, with a stream running under the
bank on our right. The place looked like an abandoned stoneyard. I never
saw completer ruin. To the left, a fortified gate gaped on emptiness; to
the right, a mill-wheel hung in the stream. Everything else was as flat
as your dinner-table.
“Was this what you were trying to see from that rise?” I asked; and I
saw a tear or two running down his face.
“They were the kindest people: their only son got himself shot the first
month in Champagne--”
He had jumped out of the car and was standing staring at the level
waste. “The house was there--there was a splendid lime in the court. I
used to sit under it and have a glass of _vin cris de Lorraine_ with the
old people.... Over there, where that cinder-heap is, all their children
are buried.” He walked across to the grave-yard under a blackened
wall--a bit of the apse of the vanished church--and sat down on a
grave-stone. “If the devils have done this _here_--so close to us,” he
burst out, and covered his face.
An old woman walked toward us down the road. Réchamp jumped up and ran
to meet her. “Why, Marie Jeanne, what are you doing in these ruins?” The
old woman looked at him with unastonished eyes. She seemed incapable of
any surprise. “They left my house standing. I’m glad to see Monsieur,”
she simply said. We followed her to the one house left in the waste of
stones. It was a two-roomed cottage, propped against a cow-stable,
but fairly decent, with a curtain in the window and a cat on the sill.
Réchamp caught me by the arm and pointed to the door-panel. “Oberst von
Scharlach” was scrawled on it. He turned as white as your table-cloth,
and hung on to me a minute; then he spoke to the old woman. “The
officers were quartered here: that was the reason they spared your
house?”
She nodded. “Yes: I was lucky. But the gentlemen must come in and have a
mouthful.”
Réchamp’s finger was on the name. “And this one--this was their
commanding officer?”
“I suppose so. Is it somebody’s name?” She had evidently never
speculated on the meaning of the scrawl that had saved her.
“You remember him--their captain? Was his name Scharlach?” Réchamp
persisted.
Under its rich weathering the old woman’s face grew as pale as his.
“Yes, that was his name--I heard it often enough.”
“Describe him, then. What was he like? Tall and fair? They’re all
that--but what else? What in particular?”
She hesitated, and then said: “This one wasn’t fair. He was dark, and
had a scar that drew up the left corner of his mouth.”
Réchamp turned to me. “It’s the same. I heard the men describing him at
Moulins.”
We followed the old woman into the house, and while she gave us some
bread and wine she told us about the wrecking of the village and the
factory. It was one of the most damnable stories I’ve heard yet. Put
together the worst of the typical horrors and you’ll have a fair idea of
it. Murder, outrage, torture: Scharlach’s programme seemed to be
fairly comprehensive. She ended off by saying: “His orderly showed me a
silver-mounted flute he always travelled with, and a beautiful paint-box
mounted in silver too. Before he left he sat down on my door-step and
made a painting of the ruins....”
Soon after leaving this place of death we got to the second lines and
our troubles began. We had to do a lot of talking to get through the
lines, but what Réchamp had just seen had made him eloquent.
Luckily, too, the ambulance doctor, a charming fellow, was short of
tetanus-serum, and I had some left; and while I went over with him to
the pine-branch hut where he hid his wounded I explained Réchamp’s
case, and implored him to get us through. Finally it was settled that
we should leave the ambulance there--for in the lines the ban against
motors is absolute--and drive the remaining twelve miles. A sergeant
fished out of a farmhouse a toothless old woman with a furry horse
harnessed to a two-wheeled trap, and we started off by round-about
wood-tracks. The horse was in no hurry, nor the old lady either; for
there were bits of road that were pretty steadily currycombed by shell,
and it was to everybody’s interest not to cross them before twilight.
Jean de Réchamp’s excitement seemed to have dropped: he sat beside me
dumb as a fish, staring straight ahead of him. I didn’t feel talkative
either, for a word the doctor had let drop had left me thinking. “That
poor old granny mind the shells? Not she!” he had said when our crazy
chariot drove up. “She doesn’t know them from snow-flakes any more.
Nothing matters to her now, except trying to outwit a German. They’re
all like that where Scharlach’s been--you’ve heard of him? She had only
one boy--half-witted: he cocked a broomhandle at them, and they burnt
him. Oh, she’ll take you to Réchamp safe enough.”
“Where Scharlach’s been”--so he had been as close as this to Réchamp! I
was wondering if Jean knew it, and if that had sealed his lips and given
him that flinty profile. The old horse’s woolly flanks jogged on under
the bare branches and the old woman’s bent back jogged in time with it.
She never once spoke or looked around at us. “It isn’t the noise we
make that’ll give us away,” I said at last; and just then the old woman
turned her head and pointed silently with the osier-twig she used as a
whip. Just ahead of us lay a heap of ruins: the wreck, apparently, of
a great château and its dependencies. “Lermont!” Réchamp exclaimed,
turning white. He made a motion to jump out and then dropped back into
the seat. “What’s the use?” he muttered. He leaned forward and touched
the old woman’s shoulder.
“I hadn’t heard of this--when did it happen?”
“In September.”
“_They_ did it?”
“Yes. Our wounded were there. It’s like this everywhere in our country.”