"A jolly view!"
Janet assented. She was sitting behind the pony, while Rachel had walked
up the hill beside the carriage, to the high point where both she and the
pony--a lethargic specimen of the race--had paused to take breath.
They were on a ridge whence there was a broad bit of the world to see. To
the north, a plain rich in all the diversities of English land--field and
wood, hamlet and church, the rising grounds and shallow depressions, the
small enclosures and the hedgerow timber, that make all the difference
between the English midlands and, say, the plain of Champagne, or a
Russian steppe. Across the wide, many-coloured scene, great clouds from
the west were sweeping, with fringes of rain and sudden bursts of light
or shadow, which in their perpetual movement--suggesting attack from the
sky and response from the earth--gave drama and symbol to the landscape.
On the south--things very different! First, an interlocked range of
hills, forest-clothed, stretching east and west, and, at the very feet of
the two women, a forest valley offering much that was strange to English
eyes. Two years before it had been known only to the gamekeeper and the
shooting guests of a neighbouring landowner. Now a great timber camp
filled it. The gully ran far and deep into the heart of the forest
country, with a light railway winding along the bottom, towards an unseen
road. The steep sides of the valley--Rachel and Janet stood on the edge
of one of them--were covered with felled trees, cut the preceding winter,
and left as they fell. The dead branch and leaf of the trees had turned
to a rich purple, and dyed all the inside of the long deep cup. But along
its edges stretched the forest, still untouched, and everywhere, in the
bare spaces left here and there by the felling among the "rubble and
woody wreck," green and gold mosses and delicate grasses had sprung up,
a brilliant enamel, inlaid with a multitude of wild flowers.
"Look!" cried Rachel.
For suddenly, down below them, a huge trunk began to move as though of
its own accord. Hissing and crashing like some gray serpent, it glided
down the hill-side, till it approached a group of figures and horses
congregated at the head of the valley, near an engine puffing smoke. Then
something invisible happened, and presently a trolley piled high with
logs detached itself from the group, and set out on a solitary journey
down the railway, watched here and there by men in queer uniforms with
patches on their backs.
"German prisoners!" said Janet, and strained her eyes to see, thinking
all the time of a letter she had received that morning from her soldier
brother fighting with the English troops to the west of Rheims:--
"The beggars are on the run! Foch has got them this time. But, oh, Lord,
the sight they've made of all this beautiful country! Trampled, and
ruined, and smashed! all of it. Deliberate loot and malice everywhere,
and tales of things done in the villages that make one see red. We
captured a letter to his wife on a dead German this morning: 'Well, the
offensive is a failure, but we've done one thing--we've smashed up
another bit of France!' How are we ever going to live with this people in
the same world after the war?"
And there below, in the heart of this remote English woodland, now being
sacrificed to the war, moved the sons of this very people, cast up here
by the tide of battle. Janet had heard that nobody spoke to them during
the work, except to give directions; after work they had their own wired
camp, and all intercourse between them and the Canadian woodmen, or the
English timber girls, was forbidden. But what were they saying among
themselves--what were they thinking--these peasants, some perhaps from
the Rhineland, or the beautiful Bavarian country, or the Prussian plains?
Janet had travelled a good deal in Germany before the war, using her
holidays as a mistress in a secondary school, and her small savings, in a
kind of wandering which had been a passion with her. She had known
Bavarians and Prussians at home. But here, in this corner of rural
England, with this veil of silence drawn between them and the nation
which at last, in this summer of 1918, was grimly certain, after four
years of vengeance and victory, what ferments were, perhaps, working in
the German mind?
Yes, there was the German camp, and beyond it under the hill the Canadian
forestry camp; whilst just beneath them could be seen the roof of the
large women's hostel.
Another exclamation from Rachel, as, on their left, another great tree
started for the bottom of the hollow.
"But haven't you seen all this before?" asked Janet.
"No, I never saw anything of lumbering."
The tone showed the sudden cooling and reserve that were always apparent
in Rachel's manner when any subject connected with Canada came into
conversation. Yet Janet had noticed with surprise that it was Rachel
herself who, when the harvest was nearly over, had revived the subject of
the camp, and planned the drive for this Saturday afternoon. It had
seemed to Janet once or twice that she was forcing herself to do it, as
though braving some nervousness of which she was ashamed.
The rough road on which they were driving wound gradually downward
through the felled timber. Soon they could hear the clatter of the
engine, and the hissing of the saws which seized the trees on their
landing, and cut and stripped them in a trice, ready for loading. Round
the engine and at the starting-place of the trolleys was a busy crowd:
lean and bronzed Canadians; women in leather breeches and coats, busily
measuring and marking; a team of horses showing silvery white against the
purple of the hill; and everywhere the German prisoner lads, mostly quite
young and of short stature. The pony carriage passed a group of them, and
they stared with cheerful, furtive looks at the two women.
Then the group of timber girls below perceived the approaching visitors,
and a figure, detaching itself from the rest, came to meet the carriage.
A stately woman, black-haired, in coat and breeches like the rest, with a
felt hat, and a badge of authority, touches of green besides on the khaki
uniform. Janet recognized her at once as Mrs. Fergusson, their comrade
for a time at college, and much liked both by her and Rachel.
She came laughing, with hands outstretched.
"Well, here we meet again! Jolly to see you! A new scene, isn't it? Life
doesn't stand still nowadays! One of my girls will take the carriage for
you."
A stalwart maiden unharnessed the pony and let him graze.
Mrs. Fergusson took possession of her visitors, and walked on beside
them, describing the different stages of the work, and sections of the
workers.
"You see those tall fellows farthest off? Those work the saws and cut up
the trees as they come down. Then the horses bring them to the rollers,
and the Canadians guide them with those hooks till the crane seizes hold
of them and lifts them on to the trolley. But before the hooks get
them--you see the girls there?--they do all the measuring; they note
everything in their books and they mark every log. All the payments of
the camp, the wages paid, the sums earned by the trolley contractor who
takes them to the station, the whole finance in fact, depends on the
_women_. I've trained scores besides and sent them out to other camps!
But now come, I must introduce you to the commandant of the camp."
"A Canadian?" asked Janet.
"No, an American! He comes from Maine, but he had been lumbering in
Canada, with several mills and, camps under him. So he volunteered a year
ago to bring over a large Forestry battalion--mostly the men he had been
working with in Quebec. Splendid fellows! But he's the king!"