VERDUN
"Come in," she said in English, lifting her head and all her mind and
spirit out of the pit of the pillow.
Feet came further into the room and a shivering child held a candle in
her face. "Halb sechs, Fräulein," it said. But the Fräulein continued to
stare at him. He thought she was not yet awake--he could not tell that
she was counting countries in her head to find which one she was in--or
that she was inclining towards the theory that she was at school in
Germany. He was very cold in his shirt and little trousers, and he
pulled at her sheets. "Fräulein!" he said again with chattering teeth,
and when she nodded more collectedly the little ghost slipped out
relieved by the door. "Russian colonel ... I must get up. Fancy making
that boy call me! Why couldn't someone older ... I must get up."
He had left the electric light burning in her room, but out in the
corridor all was black and hushed as she had left it the night before
when she had gone to bed. Behind the kitchen door there was a noise of
water running in the sink. She opened the door, and there was the
wretched child again, still in his shirt, rinsing out her coffee-pot by
the light of one candle. Well, since he was doing it ... Poor child! But
she must have her coffee. By the time she was dressed he tapped again
and brought in the tray with coffee, bread and jam on it. Setting it
down, he looked it over with an anxious face. "Zucker," he said, and
disappeared to fetch it. She filled her thermos bottle with the rest of
the coffee which she could not finish, and put two of the slices of grey
bread into the haversack, then crept downstairs and out into the black
street where the gas lamps still burnt and the night sentry still paced
up and down in the spectral gloom. Over the river hung a woolly fog,
imprisoning the water; but as she crossed the bridge she noticed where
its solidity was incomplete and torn, and into the dark water which lay
at the bottom of such crevasses a lamp upon the bridge struck its
arrowed likeness. It was a good seven minutes' walk to the garage, and
she tried to get warm by running, but the ice crackling in the gutters
and between the cobble stones defied her, and her hands ached with cold
though she put them in turn right through her blouse against her heart
to warm them as she ran. Fetching her car she drove to the Hôtel Royal,
and settled down to wait.
A porter came out and swept the steps of the hotel, and a puff of his
dust caught her in the face. He laid a fibre mat on each stone step, and
clipped them with little metal clips.
"Are you for us?" asked a _sous-lieutenant_, looking first up and down
the empty street and then at the car. He had blue eyes and a long, sad
moustache that swept down the lower half of his face and even below his
chin, making him look older than he should.
"I am for a Russian colonel," she said, liking his mild face.
"That's right. Yes, a Russian colonel. Colonel Dellahousse. But can you
manage by yourself? Can you really? I will tell him...."
He disappeared up the steps and through the swing door of the hotel. A
moment later he was out again.
"He will come to you himself, he will see you. But we want to go to
Verdun! Could you drive so far? You could? Yes, yes, perhaps. Yet here
he comes...."
In dark civilian clothes the Russian came down the hotel steps. He was
tall, serious, upright, rich. His face beneath his wide, black hat was
grave and well cared for. The sombre glitter of his eye was grave, his
small dark beard shone in the well-controlled prime of its growth. From
the narrow line of white collar to the narrower thread of French
watchchain--from the lean, long feet to the lean, white hands she took
him in, and braced herself, adjusted herself, to meet his stately
gravity. If there was something of the Mephistopheles in fancy dress
about him, it was corrected by his considerate expression.
"Have you had breakfast?" he began, speaking French with a softly nasal
accent.
"How kind of you to think of it! Yes, thank you, monsieur."
"I have to go to Verdun," he put it to her. "I have business there." It
was as though he expected that she would let him off without difficult
explanations, would exclaim: "There is some mistake! Some other car,
some other driver is intended for your work!"
But she remained silent except for a smile of acknowledgment, and with a
sigh he summoned the lieutenant and went back into the hotel. In a few
minutes the Frenchman came out again. "Monsieur Dellahousse would like
to know if you know the way?" he inquired.
"He doesn't want to take me? Isn't that it?" asked Fanny, smiling but
anxious.
"He is a little doubtful," admitted the lieutenant. "You must
excuse...."
"Perhaps I appear flippant to him. But I am grave, too, grave as he, and
I long to go, and the car and I, we are trustworthy. I do, indeed, know
the way to Verdun."
He went in again, and for answer the porter brought out the bags, and
Colonel Dellahousse followed, carrying a sealed black bag with care
under his arm. She was sure he had said to the Frenchman: "But what sort
of a woman is she? One does not want to have difficulties." And as sure,
too, that the other had answered: "I know the English. They let their
women do this sort of thing. I think it will be all right."
She no longer felt defiant towards the spoken and unspoken criticism she
met everywhere: "What kind of women can these be whose men allow them to
drive alone with us for hours, and sometimes days?" but had begun to
apologise for it even to herself, while it sometimes caused her
bewilderment.
She drove them back through the waking town and out by the Verdun gates,
and soon up on to the steep heights above the town among frozen fields
and grasslands white with frost. The big stone tombs of 1870 stuck out
of a light ground fog like sails upon a grey sea, and it was not long,
at Jeandelize, before the 1914 graves began, small isolated wooden
crosses. They touched the brink of the battlefields; a rain of dead
gunfire began along the sides of the road, shell-holes with hairy edges
of dried thistles and, at the bottom of each, green moss stiffened with
ice. The road grew wilder and wilder and took on the air of a burnt-out
moor, mile after mile of grey, stricken grass, old iron, and large
upturned stones. Wherever a pair of blasted trees was left at the road's
side a notice hung in mid-air, on wires slung from tree to tree
across the road.
"Halt--Autos!" shouted the square, black, German orders from the boards
which swung and creaked in the wind.
"Nach Verdun," said the monster black arrows painted on trees and stone,
pointing, thick, black and steady, till it seemed that the ghost of the
German endeavour still flung itself along the road. "Nach Verdun! Nach
Verdun!" without a pause, with head down. "Nach Verdun," so that no one
might go wrong, go aside, go astray, turn back against the order of the
arrow. Not an arrow anywhere answered "Nach Metz."
For miles and miles nothing living was to be seen, neither animal, nor
motor, nor living man; only the stray fires of the Chinese fluttered
here and there like blue and red marsh fires a mile or so back from the
main road. Once as she flew along she shied like a horse and twisted the
wheel as a wild screaming and twittering rose at the side of the car,
and glancing back she saw three figures wriggle and laugh in mockery and
astonishment. They had risen round the embers of a dead fire, and stood
swaying on their feet and showing white teeth in orange faces. One had
the long hair of a woman flapping about his ears.
They reached Etain, and turned the sharp corner in the street lined with
hollow houses, passed under a tunnel of thick camouflage, leafy as an
arbour, mouldy as the rags upon a corpse, and came on the first
pill-boxes of the Hindenburg line.
Another twelve miles and the twin towers of Verdun appeared over the
brow of a hill.
"I thought it but dust!" exclaimed the Russian. "I thought it a ruin; it
is a town!"
"Wait, wait till you get nearer...."
Then down the last long hill and over the paved Route d'Etain into the
suburbs of Verdun. As they neared it the town began to show its awful
frailty--its appearance of preservation was a mockery. Verdun stood
upright as by a miracle, a coarse lace of masonry--not one house
was whole.
"Stop!" ordered the Russian, and at the foot of the steep, conical hill
which wore Verdun upon its crest they stopped and stared. The town was
poured over the slopes of the hill as though a titanic tipcart had let
out its rubbish upon the summit. Houses, shops and churches, still
upright, still formed Verdun, kept its shape intact, unwilling that it
should fall to dust while these deadly skeletons could keep their feet.
Light glared through the walls, and upon the topmost point of all the
palace of the bishop was balanced, its bones laced against the sky. The
Russian, who had stood up in the car, sat down. "Now go on...."
The streets which circled the base of the hill had been partially
cleared of fallen rock and stonework, and the car could pick its way
between the crazy shop-fronts, where notices of vanished cobblers,
manicurists, butchers, flapped before caverns hollowed by fire, upon
fingers of stone already touched by moss.
Here and there soldiers moved in bands at their work of clearing. But
the black hat, the drab coat of the civilian had long been left behind
--and here the face of a woman was unknown as the flying dragons of the
world's youth.
Now and then with a crash the remains of a house fell, as the block of
stonework which alone supported it was disarranged by the
working soldiers.
"Where am I to go?" asked Fanny, as the street wound round the base of
the hill.
"I will climb over beside you and direct you," said the French
lieutenant, and dropped into the front seat.
"Where do these soldiers sleep? Not among these ruins?"
A block of masonry fell ahead of them and split its stones across the
street.
"Be careful! You can get round by this side street. Up here.... In these
ruins. No living soul can sleep in Verdun now."
"Where, then?"
"Don't you know? They sleep _beneath_ Verdun, in this hill around which
we are circling. I am looking for the entrance."
"Inside this hill? Under the town?"
"But you've heard of the _citadelle?_"
"Yes, but... this hill is so big."
"There are fifteen kilometres of tunnel in this hollow hill, and
hundreds of steps lead up to the top by the palace, where there is a
defence of barbed wire and guns. Look, here is the entrance."
They left the car. Before them was a small dark hole in the side of the
hill, an entrance not much higher than a man, into which ran a single
rail line of narrow gauge. A sentry challenged them as they walked
towards him.
Entering the hill they found themselves in a tunnel lit by electric
bulbs which hung in a dotted line ahead of them.
"Wait!" ordered the deep voice of the Russian, and he strode from them
into the depths of the tunnel with the Eastern swing of Ali Baba
entering his cave.
Fanny stood by the mild lieutenant, and they waited obediently.
"I must tell you a secret," he said to her. "Monsieur Dellahousse is
very glad to be here. He said this morning: 'The Governor has sent me a
woman to break my neck!'"
"But he took me...."
"Could he refuse you?--For he felt that it was a glove of challenge
thrown down by the Governor of Metz. They do not get on together.... He
took you with dignity, but he was convinced that he placed himself in
the jaws of death."
"When do we go back? We cannot now be in Metz before dark."
"But haven't they told you? Never warned you? How monstrous! We are
staying here."
"And I return alone?"
"No, you stay too. You are lent to us for five days. They should have
told you!"
"Oh, I stay too. In this tunnel, here! How odd, how amusing!"
"Monsieur Dellahousse has gone to ask the Commandant of the _citadelle_
to house us all. Here he comes."
The Russian returned under the chain of lights. "Follow me," he said,
and led them further into his cavern.
They followed him like children, and as they advanced the lieutenant
whispered: "We are now well beneath the town. It lies like a crust above
our heads. Exactly beneath the palace you will see the steps go up...."
"What is the railway line for?"
"Bread for the garrison. There are great bakeries in the _citadelle_."
Further and further still.... Till the Russian turned to the right and
took a branching tunnel. Here, lining the curve of the stone wall were
twenty little cubicles of light wood, raised a few inches from the moist
floor, and roofless except for the arch of the tunnel that ran equally
above them all. These were the rooms assigned to the _officers de
passage_, officers whom duty kept for a night in Verdun. Each cubicle
held a bed, a tin basin on a tripod, a minute square of looking-glass, a
chair and a shelf, and each bore the name of its temporary owner written
on a card upon the door.
"Twenty ... twenty-one ... and twenty-two," read the Russian from a
paper he carried, and threw open the door of twenty-two.
"This is yours, mademoiselle"; he bowed and waved her toward it. Fanny
entered the room, which, from his manner, might have been the gilded
ante-chamber of his Tzar.
She heard him enter his own room, and through the partition the very
sighing of his breath was audible as it rustled upon his lips! He tried
to give her the illusion of privacy, for, wishing to speak to her, he
left his room again to tap at her door, though his voice was as near her
ear whether at door or wall.
"I hope you are content, mademoiselle?" he said through the woodwork.
"Delighted, monsieur."
"You will sleep here," he continued, as though he suspected her of
sleeping anywhere but there, "and dine with us in the officers' mess at
seven. Until then, please stay in the _citadelle_ in case I need you."
She heard his footsteps go up the corridor, the lieutenant following
him. "I will unpack," she thought, and from her knapsack drew what she
had by chance brought with her. Upon the shelf she arranged a tin of
_singe_--the French bully beef--a gilt box of powder, a toothbrush, a
comb, a map, a packet of letters to be answered, and a magneto spanner.
There was an hour yet before dinner and she wandered out into the
corridors to explore the _citadelle_. A soldier stood upon a ladder
changing the bulb of an electric light.
Catching sight of her he hurried from his ladder, and passing her with
a stiff face, saluted, and disappeared.
Soon she began to think that this was the busy hour in the fortress: the
corridors rustled gently, the unformed whispering of voices echoed
behind her. The walls seemed to open at a dozen spots as she walked on,
and little men with bright, grave faces hurried past her about
their duties.
"Perhaps they are changing the guard...."
Yet a face which had already passed her three times began to impress its
features upon her, and she realised suddenly that it was curiosity, not
duty, that called the soldiers from their burrows. The news was spreading,
for out of the gloom ahead fresh parties of onlookers appeared, paused
disconcerted as she wished them "good evening," nodded or saluted her in
haste, then hurried by.
An officer with grizzled hair stepped into the passage from a doorway.
As she neared him she saw he wore the badges of a commandant.
"Who is this?" he asked in a low voice of the soldier who followed at
his heels.
"J'n'en sais rien, mon commandant," The soldier stiffened as a watch-dog
who sees a cat.
Fanny hastened nearer. "I drive a Russian officer," she explained. "I
hope I have your permission to stay here."
"Ah!" exclaimed the officer, looking at her in surprise. "Colonel
Dellahousse told me 'a driver'; he did not add that the driver was a
lady. Where have they put you? Not in the cubicles of the _officiers de
passage?_ No, no, that must be changed, that won't do. Come, you shall
sleep in the room next to the bishop's room, as he is absent. It is in
my corridor."
Fanny followed him, and noticed that the corridor was now clear of
soldiers. The commandant paused before a door decorated with flags and
led her into another corridor lined with cubicles much larger than those
she had seen at first.
"Open number seven."
The soldier took his bunch of keys and opened the door.
"Now fetch mademoiselle's effects from the other corridor. Which number
was your room, mademoiselle?"
"Twenty-two. But I can fetch them ... I have really nothing."
The soldier withdrew.
"He will get them. You dine with us, I hope, to-night at seven. Are you
English, mees?"
"Yes, English--with the French Army. I am really so grateful...."
"The other room was not possible. I like the English, mees. I have known
them at my home near Biarritz. You and I must talk a little. Do you
care to read?"
"Oh, yes, if I get time...."
"Any books you may want please take from my sitting-room, number
sixteen in this corridor. _Tenez!_ I have an English book there--'The
Light that Failed'--I will get it for you."
"Oh! I have read ... But thank you."
_"De rien, de rien!_ I will get it now." He hastened up the corridor and
returned with the book in his hand.
The soldier, too, returned, bearing the seven objects which had
accompanied her travels.
"You will clean mademoiselle's shoes, brush her uniform, and bring her
hot water when she needs it," ordered the commandant, and the soldier
saluted impassively--a watch-dog who had been told that it was the
house-cat after all.
Left alone, she searched all her pockets for some forgotten stick of
chocolate, and finding nothing, sat down upon the bed to wait hungrily
till seven. The air in the tunnels was heavy and dry, and throwing off
her tunic she lay down on the bed and slept until footsteps passing her
door awoke her.
She became aware that the inhabitants of her corridor were washing their
hands for dinner, and sitting up sleepily found that it was already
seven. In a few minutes she hurried from her room and out into the main
tunnel, glad to get nearer the fresh air which filtered in through the
opening at the far end.
Reaching a door which she had noticed before, marked "_popote_," she
paused a second, listening to the hum of voices within, then pushed at
the door and entered.
Instantly there was a hush of astonishment as seventy or eighty
officers, eating at a long trestle table, sharply turned their heads
towards her, their forks poised for a second, their hands still. Then,
with a quick recovery, all was as before, and the stream of talk
flowed on.
The first section of the table was reserved for strangers passing
through Verdun, and here sat a party of young Russian officers in light
blouse-tunics, an American or two, and a few French officers. At the
next section sat the officers of the _citadelle_, a passing general, and
at the left hand of the commandant, Monsieur Dellahousse and the mild
lieutenant.
Overhead the stone roof of the tunnel was arched with flags, and
orderlies hurried up and down serving the diners.
Fanny, halfway up the long table, wavered in doubt. Where, after all,
was she supposed to sit? At the top section, as a guest--or, as a
driver, among the whispering Russians at the "stranger" section? Her
anxiety showed in her face as she glanced forwards and backwards and an
orderly hurried towards her. "Par ici, mademoiselle, par ici!" and she
followed him towards the head of the table. Her doubts dissolved as she
saw the gap left for her by the friendly arm of the lieutenant, and,
arrived at the long wooden bench upon which they sat, she bowed to the
commandant, and lifting one leg beneath her skirt as a hen does beneath
its feathers, she straddled the difficult bench and dropped
into position.
"Beer, mademoiselle? Or red wine?" asked the Russian, suddenly turning
to her; and the commandant, released from his conversation, called out
gaily: "The mees will say 'water'--but one must insist. Take the wine,
mees, it is better for you." The idea of water had never crossed Fanny's
mind, but having decided on beer she changed it politely to red wine,
which she guessed to be no other than the everlasting _pinard_.
"I know them...." continued the commandant, smiling at the general. "I
know the English! My home is at Biarritz and there one meets so many."
And this old man thus addressed, a great star blazing on his breast, and
tears of age trembling in his blue eyes, lifted his hand to attract her
attention, and said to Fanny in gentle English: "Verdun honours a
charming guest, mademoiselle."
_"Verdun ... honours...."_ His words lingered in her ear. She a guest,
_she_ honoured ... _here_!
Up till now the novelty of her situation had engrossed her, the little
soldiers watching in the tunnels, the commandant so eager to air his
stumbling English, these had amused her.
And when she had perceived herself rare, unique, she had forgotten why
she was thus rare, and what strange, romantic life she meddled in.
Here in this womanless region, in this fortress, in this room, night
after night, month after month, the commandant and his officers had sat
at table; in this room, which, unlike the tomb, had held only the
living, while the dead and the threatened-with-death inhabited the
earth above.
They had finished dinner and Monsieur Dellahousse signalled to Fanny
that she might rise. She rose, and at the full sight of her uniform he
remembered her duties and said stiffly: "Be good enough to wait up till
ten to-night. I may need you."
They passed out again down the length of the tables. Near the door the
Russian paused to speak with his countrymen, who rose and stood
respectfully round him. Fanny and the lieutenant went on alone to
the corridor.
"You have travelled with him before?" she asked.
"Oh, yes. I am lent to him to help him through the country. He is on a
tour of inspection for the Red Cross; he visits all the camps of Russian
prisoners liberated from Germany."
"But are there many round Verdun?"
"Thousands. You will see to-morrow. And be prepared for early rising. If
he doesn't send for you by ten to-night I will tell the orderly to let
you know the hour at which you will be wanted to-morrow morning. The
car is all ready to start again?"
"I am going out to her now."
He turned away to join the Russian, and Fanny passed the sentry at the
tunnel's mouth, and stood in the road outside.
Verdun by night, Verdun by starlight, awaited her.
Up the slopes of the hill, every spar, brick and beam, carried its
bristle of gold. At her own head's imperceptible movement flashes came
and went between the ribs of the Bishop's Palace. The sentry by the
tunnel stood between the upper and the underground:--with his left eye
he could watch the lights that strung back into the hollow hill, with
his right, the smiling and winking of the stars in the sky.
"Fait beau dehors." His voice startled her. She turned to him, but he
stood immobile in the shadow as though he had never spoken. She could
not be sure that he had indicated to her that every man has his taste
and his choice.
She set to work on her car which stood in the shelter of an archway
opposite, and for half an hour the sky trembled unregarded above her
head. When she had finished she stood back and gazed at the Rochet with
an anxious friendly enmity--the friendship of an infant with a lion.
"The garage is eighty miles away," she sighed, "with its friendly men
who know all where I know so little.... Ah, do I know enough? What have
I left undone?" For she felt, what was the truth, that the whole
expedition depended on her, that the stately Russian had perhaps never
known what it was to have a breakdown--that in Moscow, in Petrograd, in
his faraway life, he had sat in town cars behind two chauffeurs, unaware
of the deadly traps in rubber and metal.