children were modified in two ways, inclining now toward the elongated
head, with pointed chin, dark hair, dark eyes, and mantling color, now
toward the round-headed, square-jawed, blond type, with full, dreamy,
blue eyes. But under these modifications one felt that there was a
persistent something that was their own, neither German nor French nor
anything else, for all the mingling; the Alsatian root and stem, with an
inalienable, peculiar life mounting in it, its very own, its race-gift.
And this essential gift, this rich, diverse inheritance, had been
received from each point of the compass. From the south, through the
defiles of the Alps, the great Latin traditions had infiltered. From the
north and east had come Germanic thought, with its mystical reactions,
its metaphysical inclinations, its marvelous legends, and its romantic
chronicles of gods and half-gods. From the west, from Gaul, came grace
and courtesy and the deathless wish for liberty. Was ever a people more
richly endowed? Yet, how shall even such a seed grow if it never lie
quiet in the warm darkness of the earth?...
Then I turned from the paths of learning, and went over to the very
well-kept ambulance, in charge, since several years, of the ladies from
Mulhouse, whom I had met at dinner the night before.
And I stood by the bed of a dying negro of the Fifteenth New York
Infantry, his eyes already glazed, and thought how he was to leave the
broad valley of the Thur for that other wider Valley of the Soul, where,
it is said, we are all of one color. And I am inclined to believe it, for
the further I go, even in this life, the less real difference I find in
people; even the white, unfortunately, are extraordinarily alike about
most things; and one can but wonder why the few high differences, rather
than the low and easy likenesses, are discouraged by so many good men.
Then I sought out the church of pink stone, passing a pink fountain
in the chestnut-planted square it fronts on, where blue-clad soldiers
were coming and going, busy about their midday meal. And, entering the
church, I thought, after commending the soul of the negro to its Maker,
of St.-Amarin, who has given his name to the broad, sweet valley and its
pleasant town.
The chronicles have it that he erected an oratory hereabouts with his
own hands. Later when St.-Prix, the holy bishop of Auvergne, was passing
by, on his way to the court of Childeric to obtain permission to build
a church, he stopped at the oratory to rest and found its builder lying
ill of a fever. St.-Prix making the sign of the cross upon his breast,
immediately the fever falls, and Amarin finds himself bathed in a gentle
sweat. He arises, gives thanks to God, and in gratitude offers to
accompany St.-Prix to the king’s court.
Now, some time before, St.-Prix had run afoul of a vicious, thick-souled
man named Hector, Count of Marseille. The matter being brought to court,
in the final judgment the holy bishop had been acquitted, and the wicked
Hector convicted and put to death.
But the family of Hector was proud and vengeful and powerful (in our days
we’ve seen such), and learning that St.-Prix had set out on the journey,
sent a squad of archers and other soldiery to make away with him _en
route_.
These came upon him, accompanied by St.-Amarin, in a village known as
Volvic. Now when Amarin saw the assassins stretching their bows, the
first thought of the natural man was to get out of harm’s way. But
St.-Prix, further advanced in sanctity and therefore more perceptive
of the invisibilities, seizing him by the arm, said to him the words,
alas! so incomprehensible to us, children of the age: “If you lose this
opportunity for martyrdom, you will perhaps never find it again!”
At this Amarin stood his ground, though one has a feeling from the little
one knows of him that he had a natural love for life. He was the first to
be massacred, “his soul leaving his body in the company of angels.”
The assassins, thinking their work well done, were about to depart, when
St.-Prix called to them, saying: “But I am he whom you seek. Do with me
what you will.” Whereupon one of the evil men, Radebert by name, gave him
a sword-thrust through the breast. And as he cried out the words each one
of us should ever have ready on his tongue (Heaven knows they are needed
often enough), “Forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do,” another
thrust caused his brains to spurt from his head. Whereupon angels were
seen again descending, and the murderers, appalled by a great light that
filled the valley, took their flight.
Sitting quietly in the pink church of St.-Amarin (its interior is noble
of breadth and length, though not high), I thought how sweet is the
mystical gift, and that one but stingily endowed in other ways, without
houses or lands, or even learning or beauty or grace, if he have but the
inner light, draws many unto him.
So alluring are such that kings in anguish call for them; even the
wasters of life, they know not why, sometimes seek them out; others have
been known to forget their money-making, or stop their spending, and
render themselves physically uncomfortable, trying to get at the strange
and secret gift they offer.
For the permanent interest of life is the unseen, and neither visible
joys nor visible griefs can compete with it, nor any of the ways of the
flesh, however pleasant or however straight.
And who would not sometimes dwell on these inner stages of the
life-journey? With joy on the first period, which is that of innocence,
passing with a sigh to the second, which is that of deviation; with
a moistening of the dry heart to the third, that of reconciliation.
Finally in humility to the fourth and last, which is that of pilgrimage,
where the soul, accepting the two great natural abhorrences, old age and
dissolution, hopeth for redemption and renewal....
And then I found the clock was striking twelve and I left the inner
world (alas! rarely is my stay in it long, even if no clock strikes) and
hurried to the _popote_.
XII
THE HARTMANNSWILLERKOPF
“_Now thou art come upon a feast of death_”
Very pleasant luncheon, after the accounting of the flesh, though not
dallied over, as Captain Perdrizet, a man (Heaven reward him; I never
can) of much _élan_ and quite a little perception of values, suggested
changing my afternoon program, which was that of calling on various
members of the high and comfortable bourgeoisie, whose “fleeting
mansions” are known to me in many lands. When I found that, instead of
basking in the comforts of this same bourgeoisie, eating their sweet and
pleasant cakes, sitting in their deep armchairs, looking at the portraits
of their ancestors, fingering their bric-à-brac and looking out at their
view, I might, if the special commander of the special sector so willed
it, make a pilgrimage to the sacramental Hartmannswillerkopf, where
fifty thousand sleep—and where others even then as we spoke were laying
themselves down, my heart was greatly quickened and my soul, after its
manner, began to burn.
The sun was coming out between heavy showers as Captain Perdrizet and I
departed hastily for Wesserling, where the permission was to be got. Now
Wesserling rather deserves a page of its own, for many reasons, though,
having a single thought—that of the pilgrimage—I gave but a glance
at the very interesting little war-museum, stamped hastily on memory
the quite delicious emplacement of the old château, now divided into
various large and comfortable dwellings of the people on whom I was to
call, and commanding the lovely valley to the west. Captain Perdrizet,
who proved at every step to be a man of sequence as well as enthusiasm,
took me straight to Commandant de Saint-Denis. After some conversation,
which I politely didn’t catch, but which terminated by: “_Oui, si c’est
comme ça_” (I looked perhaps more reasonable than I felt with that heat
about my heart), “but I must telephone to the commandant of the sector
at Camp Wagram, and from there you must proceed with an armed escort.”
Gratefully, but with exceeding celerity, we shook the dust of the
_Kommandantur_ from our feet, and returned through the valley as far as
Willer, when we began to rise in a world of mist and breaking light, from
time to time deluged by a diamond-like shower. Up, up through hills that
one can no longer call changeless, for they are hills with their heads
nicked off, neither branch nor leaf left on the stumps that outline their
notched and shabby crests. Past batteries and gun-emplacements, embedded
in wet foliage, many of them made by American troops last summer. Deep
through a world of rusty beeches, with pine forests splashed like ink
on near hills, here and there the torch of a larch—_mélèze_, it is
called—and it is the only one of its family that grows yellow in autumn
and sheds its foliage, and doubtless kind heaven made it so, that it
might be a lamp in dark forests. There was the sound of rushing waters;
and everywhere that beauty of moving, blue, helmeted figures afoot, on
horseback, or on muleback was woven into highway and forest path, and to
mind came immortal verses, of which I changed two words:
Know’st thou the mountain-bridge that hangs on cloud?
_Blue men_ in mist grope o’er the torrent loud.
In caves lie coiled the dragon’s ancient brood.
For do not everywhere “in caves” great guns “lie coiled” whose “ancient
brood” are these munition-heaps spawned upon the mountain-side?
[Illustration: AMERICAN TROOPS AT MASEVAUX CELEBRATING THE FOURTH OF JULY]
[Illustration: FRENCH TROOPS AT MASEVAUX CELEBRATING THE FALL OF THE
BASTILE, JULY 14TH]
Up, still up, past a long convoy of munitions and food mounting slowly
and heavily to the sacrificial Hartmannswillerkopf, which seems like
a great altar under whose stone lie many saints—and the number of its
cemeteries is one hundred and thirteen, while God alone knows the
unnamed, unnumbered graves, and those yet to be dug. I find that rarely
do the bones of soldiers travel far, and so it should be, for what spot,
even of a father’s inheritance, is so truly his as that where he has
fallen? No litigation of man can despoil him of it, and even when he and
his deeds are forgotten it is still his. So let him lie.
Everywhere from the forest came strong, damp odors of things fugitive
and deciduous. The violently released sap of shell-splintered and broken
trees mingled its odors with that other natural smell of falling leaf.
Lush mosses exuding still deeper, earthier odors were folded about the
broken shafts in soft, green velvet swathings. And some of these forest
wounds were new, some old and almost healed, like the human griefs of the
war.
At a sharp turn in the road we leave the motor, passing on foot many
camouflaged dugouts, and, somewhat breathless, reach the collection of
low wooden huts known as “Camp Wagram.” Each little building has layers
of fresh pine branches on its roof, and its sides are painted in piebald
or zebra-like patterns.
We were shown into the dugout of the commandant, commanding the 363d
Infantry, whom we found writing at a little pine table. He received us
smiling, and not surprised, our visit having been announced by telephone.
A smallish man with very attentive eyes, whose quiet exterior and strong
Burgundy accent cover, I am told, a heart of gold, together with quick
judgment and complete fearlessness.
He gives me a military cape to replace my heavy fur coat, and we start
out to Camp Meudon, farther up, where we are presented to another
commandant who is frankly, though politely, surprised to see a woman
where no woman has been.
A few harmless jokes about being at Meudon, yet, alas! so far from
Paris, are exchanged, after which, followed by the armed escort, we
mount through the wet, shabby forest to the very top of the Molkenrain.
There crouching in some bushes we peer out through them to the
Hartmannswillerkopf, that culminating, coveted point of the great
plateau, where men have wrestled unto death these four years past. Brown,
withered, not a tree on it left, its form is traversed only by a long
black line—the German trenches.
Behind and on each side of “Le Hartmann,” as it is called “for short,” is
a great, misty, German plain; toward the left, in the extreme background,
is the three-crested hill of the “Hohkoenigsberg”; great flamelike
patches of cloud lay upon it, transmuting its stones and mortar into
something gorgeous and unsubstantial. To our right and beyond stretched
another great German plain, in front of which curtains of sun-shot cloud
were falling and rising. One moment villages and fields and white ribbons
of road shone, the next they would be blotted out by pillars of mist, and
others came into view.
“If they see us, they will fire,” warned the commandant as I made an
involuntary movement to rise, when another quick diamond-like shower beat
about us.
“But isn’t it too dark?” I asked; that world of the Hartmann sector
seemed so indistinct in shifting light and rain.
“They’ve seen us when it was darker than this,” he answered, rather
grimly, with the expression of one remembering lost men.
Passing to another vantage-ground of the Molkenrain, whence we could see
the Sudel, now entirely in French hands, we met a group of blue men,
emerging beautifully out of the colored mist under the silver heaven.
They were carrying hot soup to other blue men in the brown trenches of
the Hartmann.
Standing for no uncompleted emotions as far as the Hartmann is concerned,
Captain Perdrizet stopped a glowing-eyed, red-cheeked, black-haired
Meridional stripling and told him to let me have a taste from the can he
was carrying. I drank, thinking “there are many ways of winning the war,”
from a dipper for which a trusty, much-camouflaged hand had first to hunt
in its steaming depths. As I thanked him I wondered within myself should
I wish him a quick young death or a long life and a toothless old age? As
will be seen I’m obsessed by the veterans.
About this time Commandant Moreteaux said: “But Madame will only have
seen the Hartmann in mist and rain. Why not come a second time and lunch
with me to-morrow?”
I looked at Captain Perdrizet, he at me, and both being, as I have
said, mortals of “first movement,” and knowing holy enthusiasm, we
accept—though I bethink me somewhat late of our chief, the commandant of
the Military Mission, who marks the shining course of my Alsatian hours,
and who might have other plans. It was “to see.”
As we came down in the gathering gloom, over the shell-ravaged sides of
the mountain, I was conscious of a deep, in some way sweet, feeling that
I might be going to see, to _feel_, it all again. And, too, as is the way
of the heart, it seemed then somewhat to belong to me.
I was not as one who never more will pass.
Everywhere in the brown, wet forest pale-blue forms stood aside to make
way for us. As we reached Camp Wagram, where I re-exchanged the long,
blue military cape for my coat, great shots began to echo through the
hills, and the flare of guns illuminated the thin, dark, scraggly crests.
It was still war. Near, so near, men were breathing out their souls, to
be “scattered by winds and high, tempestuous gusts.”
As we stood making our adieux, a radio was brought to Commandant
Moreteaux, and we heard then and there that Foch had received the German
Parlementaries, and given them seventy-two hours, from eleven o’clock
of that day, Friday, to say “Yes” or to say “No.” Nobody spoke when he
ceased reading. It seemed suddenly like the world’s end.
And it’s a good, quick place to get one’s world-news, there in the
Hartmannswillerkopf sector!
Then we said another and quite hasty _au revoir_, fearing night would
descend upon the valley before we could, for the motor had to go without
lights, and there was many a turn and twist at which to take a skidding
chance at fate.
The forest got blacker and blacker, there was the sound of rushing
waters, the rattle of munition-wagons, the stamp of hoofs, and voices of
dimly outlined men whose tunics were quite white in the twilight. The
odors, too, deepened with the coming darkness. I was chilled in body and
soul, for were not they also there, those other tens of thousands, whose
beds were dug in these damp hills, mingling in some way with the living?
How close the two worlds are I never knew until this war, where death is
ever near, and sometimes sweet, and often, often young. The hoary Reaper
with his scythe has been replaced by a figure, lithe and strong, a bugle
in his hand.
As we reached the dark valley the cannon cracked again, again the
night sky was illumined. The unnatural shapes of trees fallen one
against the other at sharp angles were black in the twilight fog; the
road was a loose, wet ribbon; more waters rushed. And who would see
the Hartmannswillerkopf in sunshine? This damp, gray, afternoon robe
of consecration, clasped with its clasp of emerald, carnelian, topaz,
amethyst, like to the clasp of a high-priest, is its true garb. And the
wide mantle of the November night was folding close over all its beauty
and its grief.
At Bitschwiller we call on Madame Jules Scheuer. She knows irremediable
grief and bears it with a noble courage. One of her sons fell far from
her in Champagne; the other, mortally wounded on the Hartmann, was
brought down one winter night to die in her arms, and lies forever in
the sweet, broad valley of the Thur, claiming so little of his vast
inheritance....
To the _popote_ at eight. Six Protestant pastors had been announced to
dine with us, two of mine in the act of being convoyed through Alsace
by four of theirs. The Americans were “looking over the ground,” they
delicately informed me. I didn’t ask “what ground”; with my name it might
have sounded argumentative, which I never, never am.
Now during these days of my Alsatian visit I had thought, at intervals,
that it might very possibly be a nuisance to have a woman always tagging
at some polite heel or other, but when I saw that six pastors could
happen to them all at once, I then and there ceased forever feeling
apologetic. I even fell to thinking that they hadn’t done so badly when
they got me.
I can’t say that, at dinner, all went as merry as a marriage feast,
because the Americans didn’t speak French, nor the officers English,
except de Maroussem, who could but didn’t, even seeming but remotely
interested in watching them consume the plenteous repast. And as for
myself, I was too dull with fatigue and too spent with the emotions of
the Hartmann to be able to do any “paying in person.” For a time, too,
those men of my race were the strangers to me, not the blue-clad men of
the Mission.
Suddenly, as we were unsuspectingly taking our coffee, one of the
shepherds began saying prayers over us with a drop in his voice after
each sentence, thanking God for their being there, for our being there,
for Alsace being there, and I don’t remember what else, save that it was
fairly comprehensive. After which everybody signed everybody’s menu, and
then as they were on the run through the garden of Alsace, lingering
nowhere, though scattering possibly seedless blessings everywhere,
they said good-by and went out forever into the rain. And they ought
to have thanked God for the dinner, which was a triumph, with vintage
wines served by two orderlies, under Monsieur de Maroussem’s chic though
somewhat detached eye.
As the door closed we fell to talking as people would when six clergymen
who came all at once leave all at once, though unexpectedly one came back
for his umbrella—producing a momentary hush.
One of mine had generously given me several boxes of cigarettes, produced
from deep, sagging pockets, and we stopped to have an “evangelical
puff” as some one called it, while I tried to explain what “nervous
prostration” is to those Frenchmen—and to explain why the largest of the
American clergymen, very nice, and looking like a lion-tamer, as some
one remarked, could have had it, and been in bed with it, for a year.
“_Chacun a sa petite misère_,” one of them said, “_mais c’est étrange,
tout de même._”
One of the officers of the St.-Amarin _popote_, Debrix, is the image
of the famous Coligny, and so called by his comrades, but he is, it
appears, an excellent Papist, while Perdrizet, who, if he had on a suit
of mail, might have borne the banner of the Virgin, following Godefroy
de Bouillon into Jerusalem, is an equally excellent Protestant, his
family having fled to Montbéliard after the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes, and these two are continually being joked about their natural—or
unnatural—camouflage. But in these days nobody really cares, alack!
alack! what anybody believes, scarcely, alack! what anybody does,
especially if they are quiet about it and it doesn’t interfere with the
other person’s plans. And that’s why the war will be forgotten just as
soon as the newspapers stop talking about it and business looks up and
the women get new clothes, which they need. However, as the dead soldiers
will mostly be in heaven, their smiles won’t be too unkind, though their
language!—if it’s anything like what I’ve discovered they use on earth!
I was finally convoyed home by a largish contingent of the sons of Mars.
As soon as we stepped from the door we were in ankle-deep mud; the sky,
black and flat and close, had a vaultlike heaviness, and the fog was
so clinging that I was as if wrapped in some soft, wet stuff. Monsieur
and Madame Helmer were kindly waiting up for me, but mercifully let
our good-night be short. And here I am with no more thought of sleep
than a meadow-lark at dawn, though that’s my only resemblance to the
meadow-lark, for I am tired, dead-tired, and my hair is still wet with
the mists of the Hartmann.
And how shall one sleep who has so lately touched the fringe of the
mountain-couch where many soldiers lie?
XIII
“LES CRÊTES.” “DÉJEUNER” AT CAMP WAGRAM. THE FREUNDSTEIN AND ITS PHANTOMS
_November 9th._—This morning at eight-thirty we started out, Captain
Perdrizet, Lieutenant Debrix, and I, for the famous trip along the crest
of the mountains that, on one side, hang over the valley of the Thur, and
on the other fall toward the Germanies. Having beheld with my eyes the
first and second line defenses of these crests and of the “Hartmann,” I
have come to some slight realization of how men have lived (and died)
four winters through on these weather- and shell-swept heights.
We had to go to the very end of the shining valley before beginning the
ascent to the crests, passing Wesserling, situated so charmingly on its
eminence in the ancient moraine, commanding the valley from both ways.
Once upon a time the Château of Wesserling belonged to Prince Löwenstein,
Abbot of Murbach, the history of the great Abbey of Murbach being closely
bound up with that of these valleys, for Charlemagne gave to the first
abbot, St.-Pyrmin, the whole country of the Thur, with St.-Amarin and
Thann and all the lesser towns. In the eighteenth century the Abbey was
converted into a noble Chapter with residence, and a big new church, at
Guebwiller, now in German hands. But the Chapter had a short life there,
and probably not a gay one, and during the Revolution it was suppressed.
The vineyards round about have been renowned since time immemorial, and
on Guebwiller’s southern slopes there is a wine celebrated even among
the most celebrated of Alsace, which enlivens without making noisy, and
inspires without depressing (evidently what the juice of the grape was
meant to do when the vine grew on the first hillsides of the world). It
is called “_Kitterle brisemollets_” (“Kitterle break your calves”), those
whom it delights evidently not journeying far, except in fancy.
A great book could be written about the wines of Alsace, the soft,
gleaming, light-colored wines of this land of sunny slopes, which may
become even as a Mecca for pilgrims arriving “dry” from over the seas. In
fact, quite a delightful perspective opens itself out.