A Hilltop on the Marne Part 12

At the library door he stopped, looked in, and said, "This is nice"; and before I could get together decent French enough to say that I was honored--or my house was--at his approval, he asked if he might be so indiscreet as to take the liberty of inviting some of his fellow officers to come into the garden and see the view. Naturally I replied that Monsieur le Chef-Major was at home and his comrades would be welcome to treat the garden as if it were theirs, and he made me another of his bows and marched away, to return in five minutes, accompanied by half a dozen officers and a priest. As they pa.s.sed the window, where I still sat, they all bowed at me solemnly, and Chef-Major Weitzel stopped to ask if madame would be so good as to join them, and explain the country, which was new to them all.

Naturally madame did not wish to. I had not been out there since Sat.u.r.day night--was it less than forty-eight hours before? But equally naturally I was ashamed to refuse. It would, I know, seem super-sentimental to them. So I reluctantly followed them out. They stood in a group about me--these men who had been in battles, come out safely, and were again advancing to the firing line as smilingly as one would go into a ballroom--while I pointed out the towns and answered their questions, and no one was calmer or more keenly interested than the Breton priest, in his long soutane with the red cross on his arm.

All the time the cannon was booming in the northeast, but they paid no more attention to it than if it were a threshing-machine.

There was a young lieutenant in the group who finally noticed a sort of reluctance on my part-which I evidently had not been able to conceal--to looking off at the plain, which I own I had been surprised to find as lovely as ever. He taxed me with it, and I confessed, upon which he said:--

"That will pa.s.s. The day will come--Nature is so made, luckily--when you will look off there with pride, not pain, and be glad that you saw what may prove the turning of the tide in the n.o.blest war ever fought for civilization."

I wonder.

The chef-major turned to me--caught me looking in the other direction--to the west where deserted Esbly climbed the hill.

"May I be very indiscreet?" he asked.

I told him that he knew best.

"Well," he said, "I want to know how it happens that you--a foreigner, and a woman--happen to be living in what looks like exile--all alone on the top of a hill--in war-time?"

I looked at him a moment--and--well, conditions like these make people friendly with one another at once. I was, you know, never very reticent, and in days like these even the ordinary reticences of ordinary times are swept away. So I answered frankly, as if these men were old friends, and not the acquaintances of an hour, that, as I was, as they could see, no longer young, very tired, and yet not weary with life, but more interested than my strength allowed. I had sought a pleasant retreat for my old age,--not too far from the City of my Love,--and that I had chosen this hilltop for the sake of the panorama spread out before me; that I had loved it every day more than the day before; and that exactly three months after I had sat down on this hilltop this awful war had marched to within sight of my gate, and banged its cannon and flung its deadly bombs right under my eyes.

Do you know, every mother's son of them threw back his head--and laughed aloud. I was startled. I knew that I had shown unnecessary feeling--but I knew it too late. I made a dash for the house, but the lieutenant blocked the way. I could not make a scene. I never felt so like it in my life.

"Come back, come back," he said. "We all apologize. It was a shame to laugh. But you are so vicious and so personal about it. After all, you know, the G.o.ds were kind to you--it did turn back--those waves of battle. You had better luck than Canute."

"Besides," said the chef-major, "you can always say that you had front row stage box."

There was nothing to do to save my face but to laugh with them. And they were still laughing when they tramped across the road to dinner. I returned to the house rather mortified at having been led into such an unnecessary display of feeling, but I suppose I had been in need of some sort of an outlet.

After dinner they came back to the lawn to lie about smoking their cigarettes. I was sitting in the arbor. The battle had become a duel of heavy artillery, which they all found "magnificent," these men who had been in such things.

Suddenly the chef-major leaped to his feet.

"Listen--listen--an aeroplane."

We all looked up. There it was, quite low, right over our heads.

"A Taube!" he exclaimed, and before he had got the words out of his mouth, Crick-crack-crack snapped the musketry from the field behind us--the soldiers had seen it. The machine began to rise. I stood like a rock,--my feet glued to the ground,--while the regiment fired over my head. But it was sheer will power that kept me steady among these men who were treating it as if it were a Fourteenth of July show. I heard a ping.

"Touched," said the officer as the Taube continued to rise. Another ping.

Still it rose, and we watched it sail off toward the hills at the southeast.

"Hit, but not hurt," sighed the officer, dropping down on the gra.s.s again, with a sigh. "It is hard to bring them down at that height with rifles, but it can be done."

"Perhaps the English battery will get it," said I; "it is going right toward it."

"If there is an English battery up there," replied he, "that is probably what he is looking for. It is hardly likely to unmask for a Taube. I am sorry we missed it. You have seen something of the war. It is a pity you should not have seen it come down. It is a beautiful sight."

I thought to myself that I preferred it should not come down in my garden. But I had no relish for being laughed at again, so I did not say it.

Soon after they all went to bed,--very early,--and silence fell on the hilltop. I took a look round before I went to bed. I had not seen Amelie since the regiment arrived. But she, who had done everything to spare me inconvenience, had fourteen officers quartered in her place, and goodness knows how many horses, so she had little time to do for me.

The hillside was a picture I shall never forget. Everywhere men were sleeping in the open--their guns beside them. Fires, over which they had cooked, were smouldering; pickets everywhere. The moon shed a pale light and made long shadows. It was really very beautiful if one could have forgotten that to-morrow many of these men would be sleeping for good--"Life's fitful dream" over.

XVI

September 8, 1914.

This morning everything and everybody was astir early. It was another gloriously beautiful day. The birds were singing as if to split their throats. There was a smell of coffee all over the place. Men were hurrying up and down the hill, to and fro from the wash-house, bathing, washing out their shirts and stockings and hanging them on the bushes, rubbing down horses and douching them, cleaning saddles and accouterments. There is a lot of work to be done by an army besides fighting. It was all like a play, and every one was so cheerful.

The chef-major did not come down until his orderly called him, and when he did he looked as rosy and cheerful as a child, and announced that he had slept like one. Soon after he crossed the road for his coffee I heard the officers laughing and chatting as if it were a week-end house party.

When Amelie came to get my breakfast she looked a wreck--I saw one of her famous bilious attacks coming.

It was a little after eleven, while the chef-major was upstairs writing, that his orderly came with a paper and carried it up to him. He came down at once, made me one of his pretty bows at the door of the library, and holding out a sc.r.a.p of paper said:--

"Well, madame, we are going to leave you. We advance at two."

I asked him where he was going.

He glanced at the paper in his hand, and replied:--

"Our orders are to advance to Saint-Fiacre,--a little east of Meaux,-- but before I go I am happy to relieve your mind on two points. The French cavalry has driven the Uhlans out--some of them were captured as far east as Bouleurs. And the English artillery has come down from the hill behind you and is crossing the Marne. We follow them. So you see you can sit here in your pretty library and read all these nice books in security, until the day comes--perhaps sooner than you dare hope--when you can look back to all these days, and perhaps be a little proud to have had a small part in it." And off he went upstairs.

I sat perfectly still for a long time. Was it possible that it was only a week ago that I had heard the drum beat for the disarming of the Seine et Marne? Was there really going to come a day when all the beauty around me would not be a mockery? All at once it occurred to me that I had promised Captain Simpson to write and tell him how I had "come through." Perhaps this was the time. I went to the foot of the stairs and called up to the chef-major. He came to the door and I explained, asking him if, we being without a post-office, he could get a letter through, and what kind of a letter I could write, as I knew the censorship was severe.

"My dear lady," he replied, "go and write your letter,--write anything you like,--and when I come down I will take charge of it and guarantee that it shall go through, uncensored, no matter what it contains."

So I wrote to tell Captain Simpson that all was well at Huiry,--that we had escaped, and were still grateful for all the trouble he had taken.

When the officer came down I gave it to him, unsealed.

"Seal it, seal it," he said, and when I had done so, he wrote, "Read and approved" on the envelope, and gave it to his orderly, and was ready to say "Good-bye."

"Don't look so serious about it," he laughed, as we shook hands. "Some of us will get killed, but what of that? I wanted this war. I prayed for it. I should have been sad enough if I had died before it came. I have left a wife and children whom I adore, but I am ready to lay down my life cheerfully for the victory of which I am so sure. Cheer up. I think my hour has not yet come. I had three horses killed under me in Belgium. At Charleroi a bomb exploded in a staircase as I was coming down. I jumped--not a scratch to show. Things like that make a man feel immune--but Who knows?"

I did my best to smile, as I said, "I don't wish you courage--you have that, but--good luck."

"Thank you," he replied, "you've had that"; and away he marched, and that was the last I saw of him.

I had a strange sensation about these men who had in so few days pa.s.sed so rapidly in and out of my life, and in a moment seemed like old friends.

There was a bustle of preparation all about us. Such a harnessing of horses, such a rolling-up of half-dried shirts, but it was all orderly and systematic. Over it all hung a smell of soup-kettles--the preparations for the midday meal, and a buzz of many voices as the men sat about eating out of their tin dishes. I did wish I could see only the picturesque side of it.

It was two o'clock sharp when the regiment began to move. No bands played. No drum beat. They just marched, marched, marched along the road to Meaux, and silence fell again on the hillside.