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THE HAPPY FOREIGNER
by
ENID BAGNOLD
1920
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE: THE EVE
PART I. THE BLACK HUT AT BAR
CHAPTER I. THE TRAVELLER
PART II. LORRAINE
CHAPTER II. METZ
CHAPTER III. JULIEN
CHAPTER IV. VERDUN
CHAPTER V. VERDUN
CHAPTER VI. THE LOVER IN THE LAMP
CHAPTER VII. THE THREE "CLIENTS"
CHAPTER VIII. GERMANY
CHAPTER IX. THE CRINOLINE
CHAPTER X. FANNY ROBBED AND RESCUED
CHAPTER XI. THE LAST NIGHT IN METZ: THE JOURNEY
PART III. THE FORESTS OF CHANTILLY
CHAPTER XII. PRECY-SUR-OISE
CHAPTER XIII. THE INN
CHAPTER XIV. THE RIVER
CHAPTER XV. ALLIES
CHAPTER XVI. THE ARDENNES
PART IV. SPRING IN CHARLEVILLE
CHAPTER XVII. THE STUFFED OWL
CHAPTER XVIII. PHILIPPE'S HOUSE
CHAPTER XIX. PHILIPPE'S MOTHER
CHAPTER XX. THE LAST DAY
PROLOGUE
THE EVE
Between the grey walls of its bath--so like its cradle and its
coffin--lay one of those small and lonely creatures which inhabit the
surface of the earth for seventy years.
As on every other evening the sun was sinking and the moon, unseen, was
rising.
The round head of flesh and bone floated upon the deep water of the
bath.
"Why should I move?" rolled its thoughts, bewitched by solitude. "The
earth itself is moving.
"Summer and winter and winter and summer I have travelled in my head,
saying--'All secrets, all wonders, lie within the breast!' But now that
is at an end, and to-morrow I go upon a journey.
"I have been accustomed to finding something in nothing--how do I know
if I am equipped for a larger horizon!..."
And suddenly the little creature chanted aloud:--
"The strange things of travel,
The East and the West,
The hill beyond the hill,--
They lie within the breast!"
PART I
THE BLACK HUT AT BAR
CHAPTER I
THE TRAVELLER
The war had stopped.
The King of England was in Paris, and the President of the United States
was hourly expected.
Humbler guests poured each night from the termini into the overflowing
city, and sought anxiously for some bed, lounge-chair, or pillowed
corner, in which to rest until the morning. Stretched upon the table in
a branch of the Y.W.C.A. lay a young woman from England whose clothes
were of brand-new khaki, and whose name was Fanny.
She had arrived that night at the Gare du Nord at eight o'clock, and the
following night at eight o'clock she left Paris by the Gare de l'Est.
Just as she entered the station a small boy with a basket of violets for
sale held a bunch to her face.
"No, thank you."
He pursued her and held it against her chin.
"No, thank you."
"But I give it to you! I _give_ it to you!"
As she had neither slept on the boat from Southampton nor on the table
of the Y.W.C.A., tears of pleasure came into her eyes as she took them.
But while she dragged her heavy kitbag and her suitcase across the
platform another boy of a different spirit ran beside her.
"Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle! Wait a minute..." he panted.
"Well?"
"Haven't you heard ... haven't you heard! The war is over!"
She continued to drag the weighty sack behind her over the platform.
"She didn't know!" howled the wicked boy. "No one had told her!"
And in the train which carried her towards the dead of night the taunt
and the violets accompanied her.
At half-past two in the morning she reached the station of Bar-le-Duc.
The rain rattled down through the broken roof as she crossed the lines
of the platform on the further side, where, vaguely expecting to be met
she questioned civilians and military police. But the pall of death that
hung over Bar stretched even to the station, where nobody knew anything,
expected anything, cared anything, except to hurry out and away into
the rain.
She, too, followed at last, leaving her bag and box in the corner of a
deserted office, and crossing the station yard tramped out in the thick
mud on to a bridge. The rain was falling in torrents, and crouching for
a minute in a doorway she made her bundles faster and buttoned up her
coat. Roofs jutted above her, pavements sounded under her feet, the
clock struck three near by. If there was an hotel anywhere there was no
one to give information about it. The last train had emptied itself, the
travellers had hurried off into the night, and not a foot rang upon the
pavements. The rain ran in a stream down her cap and on to her face;
down her sleeves and on to her hands.
A light further up the street attracted her attention, and walking
towards it she found that it came from an open doorway above which she
could make out the letters "Y.M.C.A."
She did not know with what complicated feelings she would come to regard
these letters--with what gratitude mixed with irritation, self-reproach
with greed.
Climbing the steps she looked inside. The hall of the building was paved
with stone, and on a couple of dozen summer chairs of cane sat as many
American officers, dozing in painful attitudes of unrest. By each ran a
stream of water that trickled from his clothes, and the streams, joining
each other, formed aimless rivers upon the floor.
The eye of a captain opened.
"Come in, ma'am," he said without moving. She wondered whether she
should.
The eye of a lieutenant opened.
"Come in, ma'am," he said, and rose. "Take my chair."
"Could you tell me if there is any hotel?"
"There is some sort of a shanty down the street. I'll take you."
Further up the street a faint light shone under a slit between two
boards. There was no door near it, no keyhole or shutter. The American
thundered at the boards with a tin of jam which he took out of his
pocket. The noise was monstrous in the blackness, but the town had heard
noises more monstrous than that, and it lay in a barred and blind,
unanswering stupor.
"God!" said the American, quickly angered, and kicked the board till the
slit grew larger. The light went out.
"Some one is coming round to the door," said Fanny, in time to prevent
the destruction of the board.
Higher up the street bolts were being withdrawn and a light fell upon
the pavement.
"Who's there?" creaked a voice. The American moved towards the light.
"The hotel is shut to Americans," said the voice.
"The devil it is," shouted the American. "And why, then?"
"Man killed here last night," said the voice briefly. Fanny moved
towards the light and saw an old man with a shawl upon his shoulders,
who held a candle fixed in the neck of a bottle.
"I am English," she said to the old man. "I am alone. I want a room
alone."
"I've a room ... If you're not American!"
"I don't know what kind of a hole this is," said the American
wrathfully. "I think you'd better come right back to the 'Y.' Say, here,
what kind of a row was this last night you got a man killed in?"
"Kind of row your countrymen make," muttered the old man, and added
"Bandits!"
Soothing, on the one hand, entreating on the other, the girl got rid of
her new friend, and effected an entrance into the hotel. ("If hotel it
is!" she thought, in the brief passage of a panic while the old man
stooped to the bolts of the door.)
"I've got rooms enough," he said, "rooms enough. Now _they've_ gone.
Follow me."
She followed his candle flame and he threw open a door upon the ground
floor.
"I've no light to give you."
"Yet I must have a light."
Grumbling, he produced half an inch of wax candle.
"Hurry into bed and that will last you. It's all I have."
The bed wore a coloured rug, bare and thin, an eiderdown, damp and
musty. Spreading her wet mackintosh on the top she rolled herself up as
well as she could, and developing a sort of warmth towards morning,
slept an hour or two. The daylight showed her nothing to wash in, no
jug, no basin, no bell to pull.
As no one would come to her, as there was nothing to be gained by
waiting, she got up, and going into the hall, entered a dark
coffee-room in which breakfast was served at its lowest ebb, black
coffee, sugarless, and two pieces of dry bread.
Yet, having eaten, she was able to think: "I am a soldier of five sous.
I am here to drive for the French Army." And her thoughts pleased her so
well that, at the moment when her circumstances were in their state of
least perfection, she exclaimed: "How right I was to come!" and set off
down the street to find her companions.
A mile out of the town upon the banks of a tributary of the Meuse stood
a deserted glass factory which had been converted by the French into a
garage for a fleet of thirty cars. Above the garage was a large attic
used as a dormitory for the mechanics, soldier-cooks, drivers and
clerks. In a smaller room at the end slept the non-commissioned
officers--the _brigadier_ and the two _maréchaux des logis_.
A hundred yards from the factory, built upon the brink of the stream
which was now in flood, and reached from the road by a narrow wooden
bridge, stood a tarred hut of wood and tarpaulin. It was built upon
simple lines. A narrow corridor ran down the centre of it, and on either
hand were four square cells divided one from the other by grey paper
stretched upon laths of wood--making eight in all. At one end was a
small hall filled with mackintoshes. At the other a sitting-room.
This was the home of the women drivers attached to the garage. In one
of these paper cells, henceforward to be her own, Fanny set up her
intimate life.
* * * * *
Outside the black hut the jet-black night poured water down. Inside, the
eight cubicles held each a woman, a bed, and a hurricane lantern. Fanny,
in her paper box, listened to the scratching of a pen next door, then
turned her eyes as a new and nearer scratching caught her ear. A
bright-eyed rat stared at her through the hole it had made in the wall.
"Food is in!"
Out of the boxes came the eight women to eat pieces of dark meat from a
tin set on the top of the sitting-room stove--then cheese and bread. The
watery night turned into sleet and rattled like tin-foil on the panes.
"Where is Stewart?"
"She is not back yet."
Soon the eight crept back to their boxes and sat again by the lamps to
read or darn or write. They lived so close to each other that even the
most genial had learnt to care for solitude, and the sitting-room
remained empty.
The noise of Stewart's feet sounded in the corridor. She swung a lantern
in her hand; her face was shining, her hair streaming.
"Is there any food?"
"It's on the stove."
"Is it eatable?"
"No."
Silence for a while, and then one by one they crept out into the black
mud beyond the hut to fill their cans with hot water from the
cook-house--and so to bed, on stretchers slung on trestles, where those
who did not sleep listened through the long night to those who slept
too well.
"Are you awake?" came with the daylight. "Ah, you are washing! You are
doing your hair!" There was no privacy.
"How cold, how cold the water, is!..." sighed Fanny, And a voice through
the paper wall, catching the shivering whisper, exclaimed: "Use your
hot-water bottle!"
"What for?"
"Empty it into your basin. If you have kept it in your bed all night you
will find the water has the chill off."
Those who had to be out early had left before the daylight, still with
their lanterns swinging in their hands; had battled with the cold cars
in the unlighted garage, and were moving alone across the long desert of
the battlefields.
On the first morning she was tested on an old ambulance, and passed the
test. On the second morning she got her first run upon a Charron car
that had been assigned to her.
Driving into Bar-le-Duc in the early morning under a grey flood of rain
she asked of a passer-by, "Which is the Rue Thierry?" She got no answer.
The French, too poor and wet, did not trouble to reply; the Americans
did not know. As she drove along at the side of the road there came a
roar out of the distance, and a stream of American lorries thundered
down the street. Men, women and children ran for their lives to gain the
pavements, as the lorries passed, a mud-spout covered Fanny's face and
hands, and dripped from her windscreen.
"Why do they drive like that?" she wondered, hunting blindly for her
handkerchief, and mopping at her face. She thought there must be some
desperate need calling for the lorries, and looked after them
with respect.
When she had found her street, and fetched her "client," she drove at
his order to Souilly, upon the great road to Verdun. And all day,
calling at little villages upon the way, where he had business, she
drove with the caution of the newcomer. It seemed to her that she had
need for caution. She saw a Ford roll over, leave the road, and drop
into the ditch. The wild American who had driven it to its death, pulled
himself up upon the road, and limping, hailed a passing lorry, and went
upon his way.
She saw a horse gallop out of a camp with a terrified Annamite upon its
back. Horse and Annamite shot past her on the road, the yellow man's
eyes popping from his head, his body slipping, falling, falling. When
she would have slowed the car to watch the end of the flight her client
cried to her: "Why do you wait?"
Enormous American guns, trailed behind lorries driven by pink-faced boys
swayed from side to side on the greasy road, and threatened to crush her
like an egg-shell.
Everywhere she saw a wild disregard for life, everywhere she winced
before the menace of speed, of weight, of thundering metal.
In the late afternoon, returning home in the half-light, she overtook a
convoy of lorries driven by Annamites.
Hooting with her horn she crept past three lorries and drew abreast of
the fourth; then, misjudging, she let the tip of her low mudguard touch
the front wheel of the foremost lorry. The touch was so slight that she
had passed on, but at a cry she drew up and looked back. The lorry which
she had touched was overhanging the edge of the road, and its radiator,
striking a tree, had dropped down into the valley below. Climbing from
her car she ran back and was instantly surrounded by a crowd of Annamites
who chirped and twittered at her, and wrung their little hands.
"What can I do?..." she said to them aloud, in distress.
But they understood nothing, and seemed to echo in their strange bird
language, "What can _we_ do ... what can _we_ do?..." ("And I..." she
thought in consternation, "am responsible for this!")
But the last lorry had drawn alongside, and a French sergeant descended
from it and joined the Annamites. He walked to the edge of the road, saw
the radiator below upon a rock, and shrugged his shoulders. Catching
sight of Fanny's face of horror he laughed.
"_Ne vous en faîtes pas, mademoiselle_! These poor devils sleep as they
drive. Yes, even with their eyes open. We started nine this morning. We
were four when we met you--and now we are three!"
On the third morning the rain stopped for an hour or two. Fanny had no
run till the afternoon, and going into the garage in the morning she set
to work on her car.
"Where can I get water?" she asked a man.
"The pump is broken," he replied. "I backed my car against it last
night. But there is a tap by that broken wall on the piece of
waste ground."
She crossed to the wall with her bucket.
Standing upon the waste ground was an old, closed limousine whose engine
had long been injured past repair. One of the glass windows was broken,
but it was as roomy and comfortable as a first-class railway carriage,
and the men often sat in it in a spare moment.
The yard cleared suddenly for the eleven o'clock meal. As Fanny passed
the limousine a man appeared at the broken window and beckoned to her.
His face was white, and he wore his shirt, trousers, and braces. She
stopped short with the bucket in her hand.
"On est delivré de cette bande!" he said, pointing to the yard, and she
went a little nearer.
"Wait till I get my coat on," he said softly to her, and struggled into
his coat.
He put both his hands on the window ledge, leant towards her, and said
clearly: "Je suis le président Wilson."
"You are the President Wilson," she echoed, hunting for the joke, and
willing to smile. He passed her out his water-bottle and a tin box. "You
must fill these for me," he said. "Fill the bottle with wine, and get me
bread and meat. Be quick. You know I must be off. The King expects me."
Where have you come from?"
"I slept here last night. I have come far. But I must be quick now, for
it's late, and ... I believe in Freedom!" he finished emphatically.
"Well, will you wait till I have made you up a parcel of food?"
"Only be quick."
"Will you wait in the car? Promise to wait!"
"Yes. Be quick. Look sharp."
She put down her bucket and stretched up her hand for the bottle and the
box. He held them above her a second, hesitating, then put them into
her hand. She turned from him and went back into the yard. As she
approached the door of the room where the men sat eating she looked
round and saw that he was watching her intently. She waved once,
soothingly, then slipped into the long room filled with the hum of
voices and the smell of gravy.
"There is a poor madman in the yard," she whispered to the man nearest
her. The others looked up.
"They've lost a man from the asylum. I heard in the town this morning,"
said one. "We must keep him here till we telephone. Have you told the
brigadier, mademoiselle?"
"You tell him. I'll go back and talk to the man. Ask the brigadier to
telephone."
"I'll come with you, mademoiselle," said another. "Where is he?"
"In the old limousine by the water tap. He is quiet. Don't frighten him
by coming all together." Chairs and benches were pushed back, and the
men stood up in groups.
"We will go round by the gate in case he makes a run for it. Better not
use force if one can help it...."
Fanny and her companion went out to the car. "Where is my food and
wine?" called the man.
"It's coming," answered Fanny, "they are doing it up in the kitchen."
"Well, I can't wait. I must go without it. I can't keep the King
waiting." And he opened the door of the limousine. As he stood on the
step he held a bundle of rusty weapons.
"What's that you've got?"
"Bosche daggers," he said. "See!" He held one towards her, without
letting it go from his hand.
"Where did you find those?"
"On the battlefields." He climbed down the steps.
"Stay a moment," said Fanny. "I'm in a difficulty. Will you help me?"
"What's that? But I've no time...."
"Do you know about cars?"
"I was in the trade," he nodded his head.
"I have trouble ... I cannot tell what to do. Will you come and see?"
"If it's a matter of a moment. But I must be away."
"If you leave all those things in the car you could fetch them as you
go," suggested Fanny, eyeing the daggers.
The man whistled and screwed up one eye. "When one believes in Freedom
one must go armed," he said. "Show me the car."
Going with her to the car-shed he looked at the spark-plugs of the car,
at her suggestion unscrewing three from their seatings. At the fourth he
grew tired, and said fretfully: "Now I must be off. You know I must. The
King expects me."
He walked to the gate of the yard, and she saw the men behind the gate
about to close on him. "You're not wearing your decorations!" she
called after him. He stopped, looked down, looked a little troubled.
She took the gilt safety pin from her tie, the safety pin that held her
collar to her blouse at the back, and another from the back of her
skirt, and pinned them along his poor coat. An ambulance drove quickly
into the yard, and three men, descending from it, hurried towards them.
At sight of them the poor madman grew frantic, and turning upon Fanny he
cried: "You are against me!" then ran across the yard. She shut her eyes
that she might not see them hunt the lover of freedom, and only opened
them when a man cried in triumph: "_We'll_ take you to the King!"
"Pauvre malheureux!" muttered the drivers in the yard.
Day followed day and there was plenty of work. Officers had to be driven
upon rounds of two hundred kilometres a day--interviewing mayors of
ruined villages, listening to claims, assessing damage caused by French
troops in billets. Others inspected distant motor parks. Others made
offers to purchase old iron among the villages in order to prove thefts
from the battlefields.
The early start at dawn, the flying miles, the winter dusk, the long
hours of travel by the faint light of the acetylene lamps filled day
after day; the unsavoury meal eaten alone by the stove, the book read
alone in the cubicle, the fitful sleep upon the stretcher, filled night
after night.
A loneliness beyond anything she had ever known settled upon Fanny. She
found comfort in a look, a cry, a whistle. The smiles of strange men
upon the road whom she would never see again became her social
intercourse. The lost smiles of kind Americans, the lost, mocking
whistles of Frenchmen, the scream of a nigger, the twittering surprise
of a Chinese scavenger.
Yet she was glad to have come, for half the world was here. There could
have been nothing like it since the Tower of Babel. The country around
her was a vast tract of men sick with longing for the four corners of
the earth.
"Have you _got_ to be here?" asked an American.
"No, I wanted to come."
The eye of the American said "Fool!"
"Are you paid to come here?" asked a Frenchman.
"No. In a sense, I pay to come." The eye of the Frenchman said,
"Englishwoman!"
Each day she drove in a wash of rain. Each night she returned long after
dark, and putting her car in the garage, felt her way up the inky road
by the rushing of the river at its edge, crossed the wooden bridge, and
entered the cell which she tried to make her personal haven.
But if personal, it was the personality of a dog; it had the character
of a kennel. She had brought no furnishings with her from England; she
could buy nothing in the town. The wooden floor was swamped by the rain
which blew through the window; the paper on the walls was torn by rats;
tarry drops from the roof had fallen upon her unmade bed.
The sight of this bed caused her a nightly dismay. "Oh, if I could but
make it in the morning how different this room would look!"
There would be no one in the sitting-room, but a tin would stand on the
stove with one, two, or three pieces of meat in it. By this she knew
whether the cubicles were full or if one or two were empty. Sometimes
the coffee jug would rise too lightly from the floor as she lifted it,
and in an angry voice she would call through the hut: "There is no
coffee!" Silence, silence; till a voice, goaded by the silence, cried:
"Ask Madeleine!"
And Madeleine, the little maid, had long since gone over to laugh with
the men in the garage.
Then came the owners of the second and third piece of meat, stumbling
across the bridge and up the corridor, lantern in hand. And Fanny,
perhaps remembering a treasure left in her car, would rise, leave them
to eat, feel her way to the garage, and back again to the safety of her
room with a tin of sweetened condensed milk under her arm. So low in
comfort had she sunk it needed but this to make her happy. She had never
known so sharp, so sweet a sense of luxury as that with which she
prepared the delicacy she had seized by her own cunning. It had not
taken her long to learn the possibilities of the American Y.M.C.A., the
branch in Bar, or any other which she might pass in her travels.
Shameless she was as she leant upon the counter in some distant village,
cajoling, persuading, spinning some tale of want and necessity more
picturesque, though no less actual, than her own. Secret, too, lest one
of her companions, over-eager, should spoil her hunting ground.
Sitting with her leather coat over her shoulders, happy in her solitude,
she would drink the cup of Benger's Food which she had made from the
milk, and when it was finished, slide lower among the rugs, put out the
lights, and listen to the rustle of the rats in the wall.
"Mary Bell is getting married," said a clear voice in the hut.
"To the Wykely boy?" answered a second voice, and in a sudden need of
sound the two voices talked on, while the six listeners upon their
stretchers saw in the dark the life and happiness of Mary Bell blossom
before them, unknown and bright.
The alarm clock went off with a scream at five.
"Why, I've hardly been asleep!" sighed Fanny, bewildered, and, getting
up, she lit the lamp and made her coffee. Again there was not time to
make the bed. Though fresh to the work she believed that she had been
there for ever, yet the women with whom she shared her life had driven
the roads of the Meuse district for months before she came to them, and
their eyes were dim with peering into the dark nights, and they were
tired past any sense of adventure, past any wish or power to better
their condition.
On and on and on rolled the days, and though one might add them together
and make them seven, they never made Sunday. For there is no Sunday in
the French Army, there is no bell at which tools are laid aside, and not
even the night is sacred.
On and on rolled the weeks, and the weeks made months, till all November
was gone, and all December, and the New Year broke in fresh torrents
of rain.
Fanny made friends all day and lost them again for ever as she passed on
upon the roads. Sometimes it was a sentry beside whom her "clients" left
her for an hour while they inspected a barracks; sometimes it was an old
woman who called from a doorway that she might come and warm her hands
at the fire; sometimes an American who helped her to change a tyre.
There were times, further up towards Verdun, where there were no old
women, or young women, or villages, when she thought her friends were
mad, deranged, eccentric in their loneliness.
"My sister has a grand piano ..." said one American to her--opening
thus his conversation. But he mused upon it and spoke no further.
"Yes?" she encouraged. "Yes?"
He did not open his mind until she was leaving, when he said simply to
her: "I wish I was back home." And between the two sentences all the
pictures of his home were flowing in his thoughts.
An old woman offered her shelter in a village while her clients were
busy with the mayor. In the kitchen there was a tiny fire of twigs.
American boys stamped in and out of the house, laughing, begging the
daughter to sew on a button, sell them an egg, boys of nineteen and
twenty, fair, tall, and good-looking.
"We shall be glad when they are gone," said the old woman looking at
their gay faces. "They are children," she added, "with the faults of
children."
"They seem well-mannered."
"They are beautiful boys," said the peasant woman, "and good-mannered.
But I'm tired of them. Children are all very well, but to have your
house full of them, your village, your family-life! They play all day in
the street, chasing the dogs, throwing balls. When our children come out
of school there's no holding them, they must be off playing with the
Americans. The war is over. Why don't they take them home?"
"Good-day, ma'am," said a tall boy, coming up to Fanny. "You're sure
cold. We brought you this." And he offered her a cup of coffee he had
fetched from his canteen.
"Yes, they're good boys," said the old woman, "but one doesn't want
other people's children always in one's life."
"Is this a park?" Fanny asked a soldier in the next village, a village
whose four streets were filled with rows of lorries, touring cars and
ambulances. On every car the iron was frail with rust, the bonnets of
some were torn off, a wheel, two wheels, were missing, the side ripped
open disclosing the rusting bones.
"Pardon, madame?"
"What are you doing here?"
"We are left behind from the Fourth Army which has gone up to Germany. I
have no tools or I would make one car out of four. But my men are
discouraged and no one works. The war is over.
"Then this is a park?"
"No, madame, it is a cemetery."
Months went by, and there came a night, as wet and sad as any other,
when no premonitory star showed in the sky, and all that was bright in
Fanny's spirit toned itself to match the monotonous, shadowless pallor
about her.
She was upon her homeward journey. At the entrance to the hut she
paused; for such a light was burning in the sitting-room that it
travelled even the dark corridor and wandered out upon the step. By it
she could see the beaded moisture of the rain-mist upon the long hair
escaped from her cap.
A group of women stood within, their faces turned towards the door as
she entered.
"Fanny...."
"What is it?"
"We are going to Metz! We are ordered to Metz!" Stewart waved a letter.
Was poverty and solitude at an end? They did not know it. In leaving the
Meuse district did they leave, too, the boundless rain, the swollen
rivers, the shining swamps, the mud which ebbed and flowed upon the land
like a tide? Was hunger at an end, discomfort, and poor living? They had
no inkling.
Fanny, indifferent to any change, hoping for nothing better, turned
first to the meat tin, for she was hungry.
"Metz is a town," she hazarded.
"Of course!"
"There will be things to eat there?"
"No, very little. It was fed from Germany; now that it is suddenly fed
from Paris the service is disorganised. One train crosses the devastated
land in the day. I hear all this from the brigadier--who has, for that
matter, never been there."
"Then we are going for certain?"
"We are sent for. Yes, we are going. We are to be attached to the
Headquarters Staff. Pétain is there. It might even be gay."
Fanny laughed. "Gay!"
"Why not?"
"I was thinking of my one pair of silk stockings."
"You have silk stockings with you!"
"Yes, I ... I am equipped for anything."
There came a morning, as wet and sad as any other, when Stewart and
Fanny, seated in the back of an ambulance, their feet overhanging the
edge, watched the black hut dwindle upon the road, and wondered how any
one had lived there so long.
PART II
LORRAINE
CHAPTER II
METZ
With its back to the woods and hills of Luxembourg, with its face to the
desolation of Northern France, the city of Metz stood at the entry of
Lorraine like the gate to a new world.
The traveller, arriving after long hours of journey through the
battlefields, might sigh with relief, gape with pleasure, then hurry
away down deflagged streets, beneath houses roped with green-leafed
garlands, to eat divinely at Moitrier's restaurant, and join the dancing
in the hall below.
Not a night passed in Metz without the beat of music upon the frosty
air. It burst into the narrow streets from _estaminets_ where the
soldiers danced, from halls, from drawing-rooms of confiscated German
houses where officers of the "Grand Quartier Général" danced a triumph.
Or it might be supposed to be a triumph by the Germans who stayed in
their homes after dark. They might suppose that the French officers
danced for happiness, that they danced because they were French, because
they were victorious, because they were young, because they must.
It was not, surely, the wild dancing of the host whose party drags a
little, who calls for more champagne, more fiddles?
In the centre of the city of Metz sat the Maréchal Pétain, and kept his
eye upon Lorraine. He was not a man who cared for gaiety, but should the
Lorraines be insufficiently amused he gave them balls--insufficiently
fed, he sent for flour and sugar; all the flour and sugar that France
could spare; more, much more, than Paris had, and at his bidding the
cake-shops flowered with _éclairs, millefeuilles, brioches, choux à la
crême_, and cakes more marvellous with German names.
France, poor and hungry, flung all she had into Alsace and Lorraine,
that she might make her entry with the assuring dazzle of the
benefactress. The Lorraines, like children, were fed with sugar while
the meat shops were empty--were kept dancing in national costume that
they might forget to ask for leather boots, to wonder where wool and
silk were hiding.
Fêtes were organised, colours were paraded in the square, torchlight
processions were started on Saturday nights, when the boys of the town
went crying and whooping behind the march of the flares. Artists were
sent for from Paris, took train to Nancy, and were driven laboriously
through hours of snow, over miles of shell-pitted roads, that they might
sing and play in the theatre or in the house of the Governor. To the
dances, to the dinners, to the plays came the Lorraine women, wearing
white cotton stockings to set off their thick ankles, and dancing in
figures and set dances unknown to the officers from Paris.
The Commandant Dormans, head of all motor transport under the Grand
Quartier Général, having prepared his German drawing-room as a ballroom,
having danced all the evening with ladies from the surrounding hills,
found himself fatigued and exasperated by the side of the head of
Foreign Units attached to the Automobile Service.
"I thought you had Englishwomen at Bar-le-Duc," he said to the latter.
"I have--eight."
"What are they doing at Bar-le-Duc? Get them here."
"Is there work, sir?"
"Work! They shall work from dawn to sunset so long as they will dance
all night! Englishwomen do dance, don't they?"
"I have never been to England."
"Get them here. Send for them."
So through his whim it happened that six days later a little caravan of
women crossed the old front lines beyond Pont-à-Mousson as dusk was
falling, and as dark was falling entered the gates of Metz.
They leant from the ambulance excitedly as the lights of the streets
flashed past them, saw windows piled with pale bricks of butter, bars of
chocolates, tins of preserved strawberries, and jams.
"Can you see the price on the butter?"
"Twenty-four...."
"What?"
"I can't see. Yes.... Twenty-four francs a pound."
"Good heavens!"
"Ah, is it possible, éclairs?"
"Eclairs!"
And with exclamations of awe they saw the cake shops in the Serpenoise.
German boys cried "American girls! American girls!" and threw paper
balls into the back of the ambulance.
"I heard, I heard...."
"What is it?"
"I heard German spoken."
"Did you think, then, they were all dead?"
"No," but Fanny felt like some old scholar who hears a dead language
spoken in a vanished town.
They drove on past the Cathedral into the open square of the Place du
Theâtre. Half the old French theatre had been set aside as offices for
the Automobile Service, and now the officers of the service, who had
waited for them with curiosity, greeted them on the steps.
"You must be tired, you must be hungry! Leave the ambulance where it is
and come now, as you are, to dine with us!"
In the uncertain light from the lamp on the theatre steps the French
tried to see the English faces, the women glanced at the men, and they
walked together to the oak-panelled Mess Room in a house on the other
side of the empty square. A long table was spread with a white cloth,
with silver, with flowers, as though they were expected. Soldiers waited
behind the chairs.
"Vauclin! That _foie gras_ you brought back from Paris yesterday...
where is it, out with it? What, you only brought two jars! Arrelles,
there's a jar left from yours."
"Mademoiselle, sit here by Captain Vauclin. He will amuse you. And you,
mademoiselle, by me. You all talk French?"
"And fancy, I never met an Englishwoman before. Never! Your
responsibility is terrible. How tired you must be!... What a journey!
For to-night we have found you billets. We billet you on Germans. It is
more comfortable; they do more for you. What, you have met no Germans
yet? They exist, yes, they exist."
"Arrelles, you are not talking French! You should talk English. You
can't? Nor I either...."
"But these ladies talk French marvellously...."
Some one in another house was playing an ancient instrument. Its music
stole across the open square. Soldiers passed singing in the street.
A hundred miles ... a hundred years away ... lay Bar-le-Duc, liquid in
mud, soaked in eternal rain. "What was I?" thought Fanny in amazement.
"To what had I come, in that black hut!" And she thought that she had
run down to the bottom of living, lain on that hard floor where the poor
lie, known what it was to live as the poor live, in a hole, without
generosity, beauty, or privacy--in a hole, dirty and cold, plain
and coarse.
She glanced at her neighbour with wonder and appreciation, delight and
envy. There was a light, clean scent upon his hair. She saw his hands,
his nails. And her own.
A young Jew opposite her had his hair curled, and a faint powdery bloom
about his face.
("But never mind! That is civilisation. There are people who turn from
that and cry for nature, but I, since I've lived as a dog, when I see
artifice, feel gay!")
"You don't know with what interest you have been awaited."
"We?"
"Ah, yes! And were you pleased to come?"
"We did not know to what we were coming!"
"And now?..."
She looked round the table peacefully, listened to the light voices
talking a French she had never heard at Bar.
"And now?..."
"I could not make you understand how different...." (No, she would not
tell him how they had lived at Bar. She was ashamed.) But as she was
answering the servant gave him a message and he was called away. When he
returned he said: "The Commandant Dormans is showing himself
very anxious."
The Jew laughed and said: "He wants to see these ladies this evening?"
"No, he spares them that, knowing of their journey. He sends a message
by the Capitaine Châtel to tell us that the _D.S.A._ gives a dance
to-morrow night. The personal invitation will be sent by messenger in
the morning. You dance, mademoiselle?"
"There is a dance, and we are invited? Yes, yes, I dance! You asked if I
was happy now that I am here. To us this might be Babylon, after
the desert!"
"Babylon, the wicked city?"
"The gay, the light, beribboned city! What is the 'D.S.A.'?"
"A power which governs our actions. We are but the C.R.A.... the
regulating control. But they are the Direction. 'Direction Service
Automobile.' They draw up all traffic rules for the Army, dispose of
cars, withdraw them. On them you depend and I depend. But they are
well-disposed towards you."
"And the Commandant Dormans is the head?"
"The head of all transport. He is a great man. Very peculiar."
"The Capitaine Châtel?"
"His aide, his right hand, the nearest to his ear."
Dinner over, the young Jew, Reherrey, having sent for two cars from the
garage, drove the tired Englishwomen to their billets. As the cars
passed down the cobbled streets and over a great bridge, Fanny saw water
gleam in the gulf below.
"What river is that?"
"The Moselle."
A sentry challenged them on the far side of the bridge. "Now we are in
the outer town, the German quarter."
In a narrow street whose houses overhung the river each of the section
was put down at a different doorway, given a paper upon which was
inscribed her right to billets, and introduced in Reherry's rapid German
to her landlady.
Fanny in her turn, following the young man through a dark doorway, found
herself in a stone alley and climbed the windings of a stairway. A girl
of twelve or thirteen received her on the upper landing, saying "Guten
Abend," and looking at her with wonder.
"Where is your mother?" said Reherry.
"She is out with my eldest sister."
"What is your name?"
"Elsa."
"Then, Elsa, look after this lady. Take her to her room, the room I saw
your mother about, give her hot water, and bring her breakfast in the
morning. Take great care of her."
"Jawohl, mein Herr."
Reherry turned away and ran down the stairs. Elsa showed Fanny to a room
prepared for her.
"You are English?" said Elsa, and could not take her eyes off her.
"Yes, I am English. And are you German?" (Question so impossible, so
indiscreet in England...)
"I am real German, from Coblentz. How did you come here, Fräulein?"
"In a car."
"But from England! Is there not water?"
"I crossed the water in a ship, and afterwards I came here in a car."
"You have a motor car? But every one is rich in England."
"Oh, not very..."
"Yes, every one. Mother says so."
The girl went away, then brought her a jug of hot water.
"I hope," said Fanny, venturing upon a sea of forgotten German, "I hope
I haven't turned you or your sister out of this room."
"This is the strangers' room," said Elsa. "I thank you."
When she had gone, Fanny looked round the room. It was too German to be
true. The walls were dark red, the curtains dark red, the carpet,
eiderdown, rep cover of the armchair, plush on the photograph frames,
embroidered mats upon the washstand, tiles upon the stove, everything a
deep, dark red. Four mugs stood upon the mantelpiece, and ... she rubbed
her eyes ... was it possible that one had an iron cross upon its
porcelain, one the legend "Got mit uns," the third the head of the
Kaiser, the fourth the head of the Kaiserin? "That is too much! The
people I shall write to won't believe it!"
Her bed was overhung by a large branch of stag's horn fixed upon the
wall.
She felt the bed, counted the blankets, found matches on the
mantelpiece, a candle in the candlestick, room in the stove to boil a
kettle or a saucepan. Hot water steamed from her jug, a hot brick had
been placed to warm her bed, a plate of rye bread cut in slices and
covered with a cloth was upon the table.
Foreign to her own, the eyes which had rejoiced in this room ... yet the
smile of German comfort was upon it.
She lay down beneath the branching antlers, and smiled before she went
to sleep: "One pair of silk stockings ... to dance in Babylon ..."
* * * * *
In the morning a thin woman dressed in black brought her breakfast--jam,
rye bread, coffee and sugar.
"Guten Morgen," said the woman, and looked at her curiously. But Fanny
couldn't remember which language she ought to talk, and fumbled in her
head so long that the woman went away.
She dressed and went out, meeting Stewart by her doorway. Together they
crossed the bridge, the theatre square, and went towards the Cathedral
with eager faces. They did not look up at the Cathedral, at the statute
of old David upon which the Kaiser had had his own head carved, and upon
whose crossed hands the people had now hung chains fastened with a
padlock--they did not glance at the Hôtel de Ville in the square beyond,
but, avoiding the tram which emerged from the narrow Serpenoise like a
monster that had too long been oppressed, they hurried on up the street
with a subdued and hungry gaiety.
There was a Need to be satisfied before anything could be seen, done, or
said. A Need four years old, now knocking at the doors of heaven,
howling to be satisfied.
Before the windows of a shop they paused, but Stewart, standing back and
looking up the street, said: "There is a better further on!" and when
they had gone on a few paces Fanny whispered, hurrying, "A better still
beyond!" At the third shop, the Need, imperative, royal, would wait no
longer, and drove them within.
"How many?" asked the saleswoman at the end of ten minutes.
"Seven _éclairs_ and a cream bun, said Stewart.
"Just nine _éclairs_," said Fanny.
"Seventeen francs," said the woman without moving an eyelash.
This frenzy cooled, their pockets lighter, they walked for pleasure in
the town. The narrow streets streamed with people--French soldiers and
officers, Lorraine women in the costumes of pageantry, and German
children who cried shrilly: "Amerikanerin, Amerikanerin!"
An English major passed them. They recognised his flawless boots before
they realised his nationality. And, following his, the worst boots in
the world--worn by a couple of sauntering Italian officers, gay in olive
and silver uniform. German men in black slouch hats hurried along
the streets.
It had been arranged that they should eat their meals in a room
overlooking the canal, at the foot of the Cathedral--and there at eleven
o'clock they went, to be a little dashed in spirit by the reappearance
of the Bar-le-Duc crockery.
The same yellow dish carried what seemed the same rationed jam; the
square blocks of meat might have been cooked in the Bar cook-hut, and
brought with them over the desert; two heavy loaves stood as usual on
the wooden table. The French Army ration was the same in every town.
"Mesdames," said the orderly assigned to them, "there are two
sous-officers without who wish to speak with you."
"Let them come in."
Two blue figures appeared in the doorway and saluted. The first brought
a card of invitation from the Commandant Dormans. The second was the
brigadier from the garage with a list of the cars assigned to
the drivers.
"Perhaps these ladies would come down and try their cars after lunch?"
he suggested, and lunch being over they walked with him through the
winding streets. At the gates of a great yard he paused and a sentry
swung them open. Behind the gates lay a sandy plain as large as a parade
ground, which, except for gulleys or gangways crossing it at intervals,
was packed from end to end with row after row of cars; cars in the worst
possible condition, torn, twisted, wheelless, cars with less dramatic
and yet fatal injuries; some squatting backwards upon their haunches,
some inclined forwards upon their knees--one, lately fished up from a
river, had slabs and crusts of ice still upon its seats--one, the last
dragged in at the tail of a breakdown lorry, hung, fore-wheels in the
air, helpless upon a crane. Here, in the yard, was nothing but broken
iron and mouldering carriage work--the cemetery of the Transport of the
Grand Quartier.
Lining all one side of the yard ran a shed, closed and warmed and
lighted, where living cars slept in long rows mudguard to mudguard, and
bright lamps facing outward.
As the Englishwomen walked in a soft rustle could be heard up and down
the lighted shed, for each half-hidden driver working by his car turned
and shot a glance, expectant and mocking, towards the door.
"Ben quoi, i'paraît qu'c'esst vrai! Tu vois!"
"Qu'est-ce qu'il dit, c'ui-là?"
"C'est les Anglaises, pardi!"
"Tu comprends, j'suis contre tout ca. I'y a des fois ou les femmes c'est
bien. Mais ici ..."
"Tu grognes? On va r'devenir homme, c'est tres bien!"
"C'est idiot! Qu'est-ce qu'elles vont faire ici!"
"On dirait--c'est du militarisme francais!"
"Le militarisme francais j'm'en f----! Tu verra, cela va faire encore du
travail pour nous."
"Attends un peu!"... And murmurs filled the shed--glances threaded the
shadows, chilling the spirit of the foreign women adventuring upon the
threshold.
"Four Rochets," said the _brigadier_, consulting his paper, "two
Delages, two FIATS ... Mademoiselle, here is yours, and yours. The
Lieutenant Denis will be here in a moment. He fears the Rochets will be
too heavy for you, but we must see."
The lieutenant who had been at dinner the night before entered the shed,
greeted them, and turned to Stewart. "That car is too heavy for your
strength, mademoiselle. It is not a car for a lady."
"I like the make," she said stiffly, conscious of the ears which
listened in the shed.
"See if you can start her now, mademoiselle," said the _brigadier_,
arranging the levers.
There was a still hush in the shed as Stewart bent to the handle. Fanny,
standing by the Rochet which had been assigned to her, felt her
heart thumping.
("Tu vas voir!" whispered the little soldiers watching brightly from
behind the cars. "Attends, attends un peu! Pour les mettre en marche,
les tacots, c'est autre chose!")
Stewart, seizing the handle, could not turn it. In the false night of
the shed the lights shone on polished lamps, on glass and brass, on
French eyes which said: "That's what comes of it!"--which were ready to
say--"March out again, Englishwomen, ridiculous and eager and defeated!"
Fanny, looking neither to right nor left, prayed under her breath
--"Stewart, Stewart we can never live in this shed if you can't start
her. And if you can't, nobody else can...."
There was a spurt of life from the engine as it back-fired, and Stewart
sprang away holding her wrist with the other hand. The lieutenant, the
brigadier, and a driver from a car near by crowded round her with
exclamations.
"You advanced the spark too much," said the driver to the _brigadier_.
"_Tenez_! I will retard it."
"She shan't touch the car again." said the lieutenant. "It is too
heavy."
"Leave the controls alone," said Stewart, scowling at the driver. "Give
me room ..." She caught the handle with her injured hand, and with a
gasp, swung the Rochet into throbbing life.
There was a murmur of voices down the shed, and each man with a slight
movement returned to the work he had been doing; the polishers polished,
the cleaners swept, and a little chink of metal on metal filled the
garage. The women were accepted.
The day had vanished. Cars, yard and garage sank out of sight. Out in
the streets the lamps woke one by one, and from the town came shouts and
the stamp of feet marching. It was Saturday night and a torchlight
procession of soldier and civilians wound down the street. The band
passed first, and after it men carried fire-glares fastened upon sticks.
The garage gates turned to rods and bars of gold till the light left
them, and the glare upon the house-fronts opposite travelled slowly down
the street.
Fanny slipped out of the yard and crept along behind the flares like a
shadow on the pavement. At the street corner she passed out on to the
bridge over the Moselle, and leant against the stonework to watch the
plumes of fire as they glittered up the riverside upon the tow-path. The
lights vanished, leaving the darkness so intense that she could only
feel her way over the bridge by holding to the stonework with her hand.
A sentry challenged her and when she had passed him she had arrived at
the door of her German lodging.
Climbing the stairs a slow breeze of excitement filled out the sails of
her spirit. "My silk stockings ... my gold links, and my benzene
bottle!" she murmured happily. Now that of all her life she had the
slenderest toilet to make--three hours was the time she had set
aside for it!