at a newspaper. One cried out in a loud voice, “_Guillaume a ——_,” only
one can’t write the word. And going up we saw the news of the Kaiser’s
abdication in letters quite American in size.
Then in a very understandable zeal that I should miss nothing, the doctor
_à deux galons_, espying a khaki figure, said, “There comes an American,”
and I saw approaching a blond, round-faced young man with spectacles.
Something leaped within me as I turned to him. But he answered me in the
stiffest German accent possible, “Ja, pig news”; and when I said, “Yes,
we’ve won the war!” he answered, “Well, I do t’ink we god ’um shust now.”
Unreasonably, the thing that had leaped within me lay down. I said,
“Good-by.” He said, “So long.” And so much for American meeting American
on the hill of the village of Faverois.
Laferrière had marched all through this country, _sac-au-dos_, and in one
place he buried a comrade, and in another he knew hunger and thirst, and
in another he had watched the day break after a night battle. There is a
history to Faverois, too, but I don’t know it, and it’s just as well,
for I would be sure to tell it in this long vigil, and I _must_ finish
with the war.
Back to Dannemarie, the chauffeur driving like the wind, and Lieutenant
Ditandy finds out where the American officers have their headquarters.
There is a battalion[24] attached to the Seventh French Army. I am
conducted over a muddy street, past two classic dung-heaps, the kind so
evidently handed down from father to son, and go up some dark backstairs,
and there Colonel Wing and Major Griffiths are rung up by an orderly.
I give my name, and they all know of me. In a moment appear, young and
slim and untried and eager, the colonel and the major, glad to see an
American woman in Dannemarie. And then they took me to their more than
simple quarters out through another door and another court, where there
was the usual mud, but only the scent of a vanished dung-heap. How many
good American dollars they had “planked down” for this priceless compound
I know not. After a while we walked back to the motor waiting in the
square, and I presented them to the French officers. One of them said he
had been at Plattsburg with my husband that first historic summer, and
spoke of General Wood, whose aide he had then been, saying, with a flush,
“He is the greatest man in the United States, as well as the greatest
general,” and there in the square of Dannemarie I thought, “_Magna est
veritas_,” and then, “Too late, too late.”
On our way home, not far out of the town, we come across a group of
Americans and French colonials standing by the road. Lying on the
embankment was a young man with a fractured skull, his face deathly pale,
except for the contusions, already swollen and blue. His hair was matted
with blood and his red _checchia_ lay in the ditch. The stern young
officer of the many decorations (there were three rows of them) that I
had seen descending at the inn at Morzwiller, was there, on his beautiful
mare, and he held the halter of another very good beast, the one that
had just unhorsed his rider. We got out and the young man was placed
carefully in our motor to be taken to the hospital at Dannemarie, after
which we started to walk back to Masevaux—about thirty kilometers. In
war-time you don’t wonder “can you do it,” you just start out; sometimes
you get there alive, sometimes you don’t. This turned out all right, for
shortly after our motor, which had met an ambulance, came back for us.
[Illustration: AMERICA AND ALSACE]
And then we found ourselves passing through a sunset-world, cut by a
bar of level light, so strangely thick where it touched the golden
earth that it was almost like a ledge or a wall over which we looked
into wind-still, purple forests, and above us, like the tarnished gilt
ceiling of a temple, was the pale, amber sky. We talked somewhat of hope,
somewhat of life, from which the red thing had so suddenly gone, as
they alone can talk who have laid their heads close against the cruel,
beautiful, full breast of war.
As we drove into the Place du Chapitre a delicate white moon, seen
through the nearly bare lindens, was hanging in a deepening sky, close
above the soft, dark roofs of the houses of the _chanoinesses_. There was
no breath of wind. No cannon sounded. One’s heart, too, I found, was very
still. Millions of men waited face to face in dark lines, and that same
moon touched their bayonets, their helmets, and their drinking-cups. The
sun had set upon the last day of the World War....
The maid who brings my breakfast as I lie half dead, but not asleep,
after the burning, consuming night, opens my blinds.
French and American flags are flying from many windows. Something wets
my eyes. Then—if in my flesh or out of it I know not—I see a strange
brightness filling the Place du Chapitre, and a further glory bathes my
being in such sweet and cooling waters that I again am strong to pass,
with the Sons of Victory, into the New Day.
In the old house are sounds of feet running to and fro. From our windows
also blue and white and red flags are being hung. In the street are
heard, “_Ça y est_,” and “_L’armistice est signé_.”
XVI
DIES GLORIÆ
“_O Eastern Star! Peace, peace!_”
And I arose and went to the church where there was a great ceremony, for
it was the feast of St.-Martin, patron of Masevaux, as well as the end of
the war....
Afterward I stood outside on the wide rose-gray steps, under a sky of
matchless silver-blue, among groups of villagers, soldiers, and officers.
A blue infantry band, grouped under that blue vault against the pink
church, played the “Marseillaise” and “_Sambre et Meuse_,” with a great
blare of trumpets, quickening the heart-beats, then “The Star-Spangled
Banner,” and many eyes were wet with tears of hope and loneliness.
Amid the throng I noticed some new silhouettes, always in groups. They
were those of husky young men in civilian holiday garb; flat, black
hats, short, black jackets coming only to the waist, long, tight, black
trousers, pink vests, and high, white collars. These young men, who
looked no one straight in the eye, were strange-souled ones who had
burned with no fever of combat; the lamp of no cause had shone before
their faces; they had known no country for whom ’twas sweet and fitting
to die. Free not to serve in the French army, out of reach of the German
authorities, they had passed from adolescence to manhood during the
World War unsplashed by blood. And they will be a generation apart.
Even as they appeared on the day of victory in groups, apart. Later, in
tribulation of maturity, in weakness of old age and fear of death, they
may sigh that they were not among those who “dying are not dead,” and
would exchange the worn drapery of their couches for the “blue-black
cloud.” And those who have not known a hot youth will know a cold old age.
A motor was standing under the lindens of the Place du Chapitre and by
it a black-bearded, giant chauffeur who might have been among the hosts
of Louis le Débonnaire on the Field of Lies. I got in with Laferrière
and he took me up on a hillside, and from the height showed me a last
time the kingdoms and principalities into which his race had come. The
plain shone in a blue and exceeding beauty; we ourselves were caught
in a glistening web of air shot with color by the low-arching November
sun. Marking the course of the great river was a line of mist shimmering
in the same warm-tinted sun of Indian summer. “_L’été de St.-Martin_”
indeed. Here and there villages shone brighter than day, and the hills
were deep-colored, yet soft and unsubstantial. Victory, like a shining,
soft-rolled ball whose tangles were hidden, was in our hands—or like to a
crystal sphere as yet undarkened by events.
The grass of our hillside was dew-wet in the sun, white and frosty in the
shade. Each fallen, rust-colored beech leaf, each scarlet cherry leaf,
was set with something glittering. All, all was a-shine. Even the heart,
too, after the dark years.
I cried within myself, though I might have said it aloud, “O beauty of
life, why art thou so often hidden?” And I had in mind the eternal years,
though the newborn hour of victory was so passing sweet upon the hillside.
And looking at the splendid river whose course was marked by the shining
band of mist, I thought how deep the Lorelei was hidden in its timeless
waters, though ’tis said she betrays but once those listening to her
song. And long since, for the noise of battle, the hypnotic chanting of
the Rhine-maidens lulling their nation to dreams of boundless might had
not been heard. I thought, too, how the blood of the world’s armies had
put out the circle of fire about Brünnhilde, though whence it was first
kindled it may be again rekindled; and for all our dead—and theirs—in
the middle of Europe there are, I know not how many, tens of millions
to whom the fire-music is their light and heat, the river the symbol of
their strength; and what to do with it all? Walhalla has been destroyed
in the greatest roar of sound mortal ears have ever heard, but that
which wrought its pillars and its walls is still there, and in other
wide-doored mansions Wotan’s warriors may drink again deep cups of
hydromel.
Siegfried lies dead upon his bier, but Brünnhilde’s candle throws a
light upon his face, and though Loge seems no longer at his post, it
is believed he waits somewhere unseen, protecting, as best he may, the
Walkyries’ unquiet sleep, until they wake and ride again, crying, “_Je
ho, je te ho!_” inciting to battle and to sacrifice.
And as nations always have the governments their mystical qualities
create, in spite of the great defeat in the West and the solvent forces
in the East, I thought, “Is anything really changed in Germany of that
which makes each nation like only unto itself?” Old things may take new
names, but, the blood-madness past, they will walk again the banks of
their great river—listen once again to the Rhine-maidens, and Lorelei,
combing her hair, will sing once more for them, while the wonder-working
music that has so scorched us will draw again its circle. And the German
people may be more portentous in defeat than when their armies were
spilling over Europe—only, one who says this too soon will be stoned and
one who thinks it not at all be deceived.
Then from some distant church tower softly sounded the first noontide of
peace, and, turning, I left the Germanies to their predestined fate. “He
beheld and melted the nations,” and truly of them may be said “_Glück und
Unglück wird Gesang_.”
For to each one his own, and the power of rhythmic sound over the world’s
will can no more be separated from that nation’s destinies than can
certain inborn qualities of the French be separated from theirs. That
pervading sense of style, that illuminating, stimulating art, their
conversation, that incomparable arrangement of words, their prose; or,
in the mystical realm, that bright and singular thing they denominate
“_la Gloire_,” which one of my countrywomen[25] has written of in golden
words, and that other peculiar and essential translation into habit and
custom of the word “_honneur_,” and many more deathless qualities that
make France what she is and not something else....
Then I found myself following Laferrière over another diamond-set path
of rustling autumn leaves, and we got into the motor and went down the
hill into the beflagged and crowded town, drawn so brightly, yet so
transiently, out of its antique obscurity.
At the _popote_ many guests were assembled, among them three men of the
Anglo-Saxon race, come to eat in Masevaux the first-fruits of victory,
and later, not so very much later, perhaps that very night, they were to
tell of it to the world, each seeming to have, as it were, the end of a
telegraph wire cuddled in his pocket by his stylographic pen.
Many, I knew not who they were, came in after lunch to salute the
commandant, whose house and heart were wide open that day. Black-robed,
tremulous women, youngish officers with very lined faces on which,
over night-loss and night-grief, was written something at once soft
and shining and eager; but, with all the coming and going, a strange
new quiet pervaded everything. Noise had, for a time, gone from the
border-world.
Afterward we were taken up to see the room once lived in by Anna,
the wife, or rather widow, of the Oberforster. In it was the most
extraordinary piece of furniture, designed to occupy two sides of a
corner, that I have ever seen. It was a divan, a narrow, hard divan, at
right angles with itself and upholstered in mauve rep. Above the narrow
seat and reaching nearly to the ceiling was a series of mirrors set in
woodwork like many panes of glass, the mirror parts too high to see
oneself in. On the floor near it was a hard, tasseled cushion of old-gold
satin on which I am sure no foot had ever rested, for it seemed rather
to belong to the dread family of bric-à-brac. On the divan was a small,
woolen-lace cushion bearing the words “_nur ein Viertelstündchen_” in
shaded silks.
Voluptuous the divan was not, neither was it respectable, nor
comfortable, nor practical, nor anything natural to a divan, but it
doubtless represented some dim longing of the soul of her who bought and
installed it, some formless inclination toward beauty, out of the daily
round of the good housewife; perhaps even a “soul storm,” after the Ibsen
manner, had so externalized itself. Who knows, or ever will know, or
cares?
The wide bed was of the newest and horridest of _art nouveau_, and over
it was a spread of many pieces of coffee-colored machine-made lace put
together with colored wools. There was a writing-table near the window
at which you couldn’t write, for all the writing space was taken up with
little drawers or tiny jutting-out shelves, and an imitation bronze
vase, holding some faded artificial roses, was built into it, where
the hand would naturally slip along when writing. Over it, between the
windows, hung an illuminated verse, “_Allein soll ich denn reisen? die
Heimat ist so schön._” From the Oberforster’s album some one took and
presented to me a photograph of Anna, which I couldn’t connect with
that room, a rather sharp-nosed, mild-eyed woman whose head was leaning
against her husband’s head. And the husband is one among millions
of husbands who lie in their graves, for whom the pleasant habit of
existence is no more.
Downstairs on their upright piano, in the corner of the dining-room, are
those high piles of music of the masters, and much of it is arranged for
four hands.
In the afternoon a great weariness came upon me, and the light of victory
seemed to pale, but I knew that it was only within myself, because of the
long vigil in which I had burned both oil and wick. I stood listening
for a while to the military bands in the Halle aux Blés and the Place du
Marché, but the gorgeous fanfare of the trumpets reached me only dully,
as from a great distance.
Then many little boys, after the eternal manner of little boys, began to
set off firecrackers, and the sudden noises hurt my ears.
I went to my room, but was too wearied to compose myself to rest, and
soon came out, chilly and wandering. The sun had set upon the square and
something cold had began to come up from the earth; I seemed to have
finished both joy and mourning. I thought that perhaps forever I would be
alone, unable to partake of the world’s gladness.
I could not remember, in that afternoon ebb of vitality, that with
the evening hours would come rushing in the tide of nervous strength,
bringing again warmth to my heart, light to my spirit, and that
buoyantly I would be treading the _Via Triumphalis_ of this borderland.
A little later in a blue twilight, bluer close to the earth where those
many Sons of Victory pressed, I walked out with Laferrière past the
ancient, evocative Ringelstein, along the Doller, and we called on a very
charming woman who had also seen the war of 1870—Madame Caillaux. She
gave us a perfect cup of tea and was flanked by no veteran, and she, the
portion of whose youth and age had been war, was calm with the pleasant
calm of those who harmoniously have sewed together the ends of life.
When we came out a pale white moon had arisen over some black cedars
planted near the door, and as we walked slowly back, saluted by blue-clad
men, or standing aside to let munition-wagons rattle by, Laferrière told
me of some of the glorious deeds of his comrades of the _popote_, though
no word of himself.
In the Place du Chapitre the populace was already gathered about the
fountain of the stone flame. It was like looking at an old print,
recording old victories and old rejoicings, together with the eternal
hope of the people that new victories, unlike the old, may mean new
things for them.
I felt through my single being the surge of the generations, and against
my hand the beat of the changeless human heart, forever quickened or
retarded by the same things. Loving, hating, desiring, forgetting, and
finally relinquishing its beat, because it must. Though I remembered that
in all times there are men who prefer something else to life....
In the evening Madame Mény gave a great dinner for the officers of the
Mission, to which I was also bidden. Madame Mény is the daughter of
Madame Chagué and lives next door to her mother in an ancestral home
with high, sloping roof and deep windows, giving on the Place du Marché,
overlooking the fountain, which I can’t see from my window. The officers
wore all their decorations and even gloves, and I felt as a wren might
feel among the birds of paradise, and I wished again that I had brought
a good dress and something sparkling for my breast. When dinner was half
through came Captain Bacquart from Paris, belated on that Belfort train,
still at its old tricks. He was slightly condescending, as one might be
coming from the City of Light to the dusky provinces, but everything
he had to tell, even the things he had heard in the greatest solemnity
from Ministers of State, had been grabbed by the Mission out of the air
before he left Paris, and in addition everybody knew a lot of things
he didn’t know, that had happened while he was on the way. But we did
smile at the story of the routing out of a station-master, whose trust
was train-schedules and lost articles rather than events, to be asked
whether he knew if the armistice had been signed, by the species every
station-master hates even in peace-times—that is to say, travelers—and
“_Saperlotte!_” and “_Nom de Dieu!_” rose to the station vault when he
found that _that_ was what they wanted him for!
After dinner there was music and for a last time I heard Lavallée sing of
“_la douce Annette_.” Then another officer whom I had not seen before,
Lieutenant Ruchez, sang in a veiled but flooding voice many of Schumann’s
songs. It began by the commandant asking for the “Two Grenadiers,” and
for a time the old wounds ceased to burn, even though we thought of those
many whose prayer had been “Bury me in the earth of France.” On that
night of victory he sang, too, in his musician’s voice, “_Du meine Seele,
du mein Herz_,” and “_Ich grölle nicht wenn auch das Herz mir bricht_,”
and nobody found it strange. They knew how for all time lovers will
tremble at the words, “_Ewig verlor’ nes Lieb_,” or in ecstasy cry out,
“_Du meine Seele, du mein Herz_,” to the impulse of the immortal music.
Afterward we sang the “Marseillaise” with further and deeper thought of
those hosts who to its sound had gone up to a death of glory.
Then M. Mény opened more champagne and each one drained a last time the
red-gold hanap of victory.
And many, many shades haunt these borderlands, the clash of spear on
armor mingling with the roar of 75’s and 420’s.
When we came out midnight was striking. The ancient square was dark and
still where all the evening distorted forms had gesticulated in the flare
of torches, crying of victory and, too, of freedom, the word I scarcely
dare breathe, so strange and terrible may be its meaning.... Though what
shall more deeply move us than the hope that the unborn inclination of
our soul toward love in freedom shall find its being and its breath?...
The commandant and his staff accompanied me a last time across the
starless, moonless square to my dwelling, where there was a close
handclasping of friends in victory, for had I not been caught up in the
apotheosis of the Mission? I felt for a moment, as I stood on the broad
steps, like a figure in the background of some great allegorical painting.
For these men, as for me, the “moving finger having writ, was moving on.”
Soon they would go from the hillside to the plain they had so long looked
down upon. And the scroll of their history there is tightly rolled, nor
can any man say what is written on it.
But this they knew, and with a point of sadness, that their work of
intimate companionship, of trust, of hope and dolor shared in the valleys
of St.-Amarin, Masevaux, and Dannemarie was already in the past. And all
endings are sad, even those of victory.
The next morning, in a pale, chill, shifting fog, through which I had
glimpses of _camions_ full of shivering, velvet-bodiced, black-bowed
children _en route_ for the Belfort train to Paris, and huddled veterans
bound the same way, I passed forever from Masevaux, as a wind that goeth
and returneth not.
THE END
FOOTNOTES
[1] Permission.
[2] “We’ll get them,” and “we’ve got them.”
[3] _Prisonnier de Guerre_ (Prisoner of War).
[4] NOTE.—As far back as the end of the sixteenth century, there is, in
the annals of Masevaux, mention of the tanneries of the Braun family.
[5] Officers’ mess.
[6]
And the forgetful trooper
Who lets the hour pass
And dallies too long, alas!
Will be punished by his under-officer.
[7] The word “ballon” comes from the patois, _bolong_, _bois long_, which
took its name from the great forest, “La Selva Vosagus,” once covering
the Alsatian plain and its mountains.
[8]
Like to the hawk
That on auroral clouds
Doth rest his velvet wings,
Looking for prey,
So hovers my song.
[9] Hilaire Belloc, _The Road to Rome_.
[10] A letter from Laferrière of November 20th, recounting national
events, and the breaking up of the little group, says also: “_La
cafetière, la fameuse cafetière a une large felure qui fait craindre sa
fin prochaine. Ce serait un symbole?_”
[11] In spite of the Tower (Turenne was a La Tour d’Auvergne) the Roses
will bloom.
[12] After the signing of the armistice and the French occupation of the
two provinces in their entirety, another reorganization became necessary.
To each of the three divisions of Alsace-Lorraine was sent a _Commissaire
de la République_—the Commandant (I had almost said my Commandant)
Poulet was given charge of Upper Alsace with residence in the ancient
and comely town of Colmar. To Lower Alsace with residence at Strasbourg
was appointed M. le Conseiller d’Etat Maringer with the title of High
Commissioner, and to M. Mirman, the celebrated Mayor of Nancy, was given
Lorraine with residence at Metz.
[13] Edouard Schuré, _L’Alsace Française, Rêves et Combats_.
[14] AMERICAN COMMUNIQUÉS
_Tuesday morning._
This morning the First Army resumed the attack. In spite of desperate
opposition our troops have forced a crossing of the Meuse at Brieulles
and at Cléry-le-Petit. They are now developing a new line in the heavily
wooded and very difficult terrain on the heights east of the river
between these two points.
On the entire front the enemy is opposing our advance with heavy
artillery and machine-gun fire, notwithstanding which we are making
excellent progress. The west bank of the Meuse, as far north as opposite
Pouilly, lies in our hands.
In the course of several successful raids in the Voivre, detachments
of the Second Army have penetrated the enemy’s trenches, destroying
material, dugouts, and emplacements, and capturing prisoners.
_Tuesday evening._
The First Army under Lieut.-Gen. Liggett has continued its success.
Crossing the river south of Dun-sur-Meuse under a heavy artillery fire
which frequently wrecked the new constructed bridges, the troops of
Maj.-Gen. Hines’s Corps fought their way up the slopes of the east bank.