A Hilltop on the Marne - Mildred Aldrich
While I was, with amusement, putting up fences, the gardener next door
came down the hill in great excitement to tell me that the Germans were
on the road above, and were riding down across Pere's farm into a piece
of land called "la terre blanche," where Pere had recently been digging
out great rocks, making it an ideal place to hide. He knew that there
was an English scout in my house and thought I ought to know. I suppose
he expected the boy in khaki to grab his gun and capture them all. I
thanked him and sent him away. I must say my Irishman did not seem a
bit interested in the Germans. His belt and pistol lay on the salon
table, where he put them when he came downstairs. He made himself
comfortable in an easy chair, and continued to give me another dose of
his blarney. I suppose I was getting needlessly nervous. It was really
none of my business what he was doing here. Still he was a bit too sans
gene.
Finally he began to ask questions. "Was I afraid?" I was not. "Did I
live alone?" I did. As soon as I had said it, I thought it was stupid
of me, especially as he at once said,--"If you are, yer know, I'll come
back here to sleep to-night. I'm perfectly free to come and go as I
like,--don't have to report until I 'm ready."
I thought it wise to remind him right here that if his corps was at the
foot of the hill, it was wise for him to let his commanding officer know
that the Germans, for whom two regiments had been hunting for three
days, had come out of hiding. I fancy if I had not taken that tack he'd
have settled for the day.
"Put that thing on," I said, pointing to his pistol; "get your wheel out
of the barn, and I'll take a look up the road and see that it's clear.
I don't care to see you attacked under my eyes."
I knew that there was not the slightest danger of that, but it sounded
businesslike. I am afraid he found it so, because he said at once,
"Could you give me a drink before I go?"
"Water?" I said.
"No, not that."
I was going to say "no" when it occurred to me that Amelie had told me
that she had put a bottle of cider in the buffet, and--well, he was
Irish, and I wanted to get rid of him. So I said he could have a glass
of cider, and I got the bottle, and a small, deep champagne glass. He
uncorked the bottle, filled a brimming glass, recorked the bottle, drank
it off, and thanked me more earnestly than cider would have seemed to
warrant. While he got his wheel out I went through the form of making
sure the road was free. There was no one in sight. So I sent him away
with directions for reaching Couilly without going over the part of the
hill where the Uhlans had hidden, and drew a sigh of relief when he was
off. Hardly fifteen minutes later some one came running up from Voisins
to tell me that just round the corner he had slipped off his wheel,
almost unconscious,--evidently drunk. I was amazed. He had been
absolutely all right when he left me. As no one understood a word he
tried to say, there was nothing to do but go and rescue him. But by the
time I got to where he had fallen off his wheel, he was gone,--some one
had taken him away,--and it was not until later that I knew the truth
of the matter, but that must keep until I get to the way of the
discovery.
All this excitement kept me from listening too much to the cannon, which
had been booming ever since nine o'clock. Amelie had been busy running
between her house and mine, but she has, among other big qualities, the
blessed habit of taking no notice. I wish it were contagious. She went
about her work as if nothing were hanging over us. I walked about the
house doing little things aimlessly. I don't believe Amelie shirked a
thing. It seemed to me absurd to care whether the dusting were done or
not, whether or not the writing-table was in order, or the pictures
straight on the wall.
As near as I can remember, it was a little after one o'clock when the
cannonading suddenly became much heavier, and I stepped out into the
orchard, from which there is a wide view of the plain. I gave one look;
then I heard myself say, "Amelie,"--as if she could help,--and I
retreated. Amelie rushed by me. I heard her say, "Mon Dieu." I waited,
but she did not come back. After a bit I pulled myself together, went
out again, and followed down to the hedge where she was standing,
looking off to the plain.
The battle had advanced right over the crest of the hill. The sun was
shining brilliantly on silent Mareuil and Chauconin, but Monthyon and
Penchard were enveloped in smoke. From the eastern and western
extremities of the plain we could see the artillery fire, but owing to
the smoke hanging over the crest of the hill on the horizon, it was
impossible to get an idea of the positions of the armies. In the west
it seemed to be somewhere near Claye, and in the east it was in the
direction of Barcy. I tried to remember what the English soldiers had
said,--that the Germans were, if possible, to be pushed east, in which
case the artillery at the west must be either the French of English.
The hard thing to bear was, that it was all conjecture.
So often, when I first took this place on the hill, I had looked off at
the plain and thought, "What a battlefield!" forgetting how often the
Seine et Marne had been that from the days when the kings lived at
Chelles down to the days when it saw the worst of the invasion of 1870.
But when I thought that, I had visions very different from what I was
seeing. I had imagined long lines of marching soldiers, detachments of
flying cavalry, like the war pictures at Versailles and Fontainebleau.
Now I was actually seeing a battle, and it was nothing like that. There
was only noise, belching smoke, and long drifts of white clouds
concealing the hill.
By the middle of the afternoon Monthyon came slowly out of the smoke.
That seemed to mean that the heaviest firing was over the hill and not
on it,--or did it mean that the battle was receding? If it did, then the
Allies were retreating. There was no way to discover the truth. And
all this time the cannon thundered in the southeast, in the direction of
Coulommiers, on the route into Paris by Ivry.
Naturally I could not but remember that we were only seeing the action
on the extreme west of a battle-line which probably extended hundreds of
miles. I had been told that Joffre had made a frontier of the Marne.
But alas, the Meuse had been made a frontier-but the Germans had crossed
it, and advanced to here in little less than a fortnight. If that--why
not here? It was not encouraging.
A dozen times during the afternoon I went into the study and tried to
read. Little groups of old men, women, and children were in the road,
mounted on the barricade which the English had left. I could hear the
murmur of their voices. In vain I tried to stay indoors. The thing was
stronger than I, and in spite of myself, I would go out on the lawn and,
field-glass in hand, watch the smoke. To my imagination every shot
meant awful slaughter, and between me and the terrible thing stretched a
beautiful country, as calm in the sunshine as if horrors were not. In
the field below me the wheat was being cut. I remembered vividly
afterward that a white horse was drawing the reaper, and women and
children were stacking and gleaning. Now and then the horse would stop,
and a woman, with her red handkerchief on her head, would stand, shading
her eyes a moment, and look off. Then the white horse would turn and go
plodding on. The grain had to be got in if the Germans were coming, and
these fields were to be trampled as they were in 1870. Talk about the
duality of the mind--it is sextuple. I would not dare tell you all that
went through mine that long afternoon.
It was just about six o'clock when the first bomb that we could really
see came over the hill. The sun was setting. For two hours we saw them
rise, descend, explode. Then a little smoke would rise from one hamlet,
then from another; then a tiny flame--hardly more than a spark--would be
visible; and by dark the whole plain was on fire, lighting up Mareuil in
the foreground, silent and untouched. There were long lines of
grain-stacks and mills stretching along the plain. One by one they took
fire, until, by ten o'clock, they stood like a procession of huge
torches across my beloved panorama.
It was midnight when I looked off for the last time. The wind had
changed. The fires were still burning. The smoke was drifting toward
us--and oh! the odor of it! I hope you will never know what it is like.
I was just going to close up when Amelie came to the door to see if I
was all right. My mind was in a sort of riot. It was the suspense--the
not knowing the result, or what the next day might bring. You know, I
am sure, that physical fear is not one of my characteristics. Fear of
Life, dread of Fate, I often have, but not the other. Yet somehow, when
I saw Amelie standing there, I felt that I needed the sense of something
living near me. So I said, "Amelie, do you want to do me a great
service?"
She said she 'd like to try.
"Well, then," I replied, "don't you want to sleep here to-night?"
With her pretty smile, she pulled her nightdress from under her arm:
that was what she had come for. So I made her go to bed in the big bed
in the guest-chamber, and leave the door wide open; and do you know, she
was fast asleep in five minutes, and she snored, and I smiled to hear
her, and thought it the most comforting sound I had ever heard.
As for me, I did not sleep a moment. I could not forget the poor
fellows lying dead out there in the starlight--and it was such a
beautiful night.
XIV
September 8, 1914.
It was about my usual time, four o'clock, the next morning,--Sunday,
September 6,--that I opened my blinds. Another lovely day. I was
dressed and downstairs when, a little before five, the battle
recommenced.
I rushed out on the lawn and looked off. It had moved east--behind the
hill between me and Meaux. All I could see was the smoke which hung
over it. Still it seemed nearer than it had the day before. I had just
about room enough in my mind for one idea--"The Germans wish to cross
the Marne at Meaux, on the direct route into Paris. They are getting
there. In that case to-day will settle our fate. If they reach the
Marne, that battery at Coutevroult will come into action,"--that was
what Captain Edwards had said,--"and I shall be in a direct line between
the two armies."
Amelie got breakfast as if there were no cannon, so I took my coffee,
and said nothing. As soon as it was cleared away, I went up into the
attic, and quietly packed a tiny square hat-trunk. I was thankful that
this year's clothes take up so little room. I put in changes of
underwear, stockings, slippers, an extra pair of low-heeled shoes,
plenty of handkerchiefs,--just the essentials in the way of toilette
stuff,--a few bandages and such emergency things, and had room for two
dresses. When it was packed and locked, it was so light that I could
easily carry it by its handle on top. I put my long black military
cape, which I could carry over my shoulder, on it, with hat and veil and
gloves. Then I went down stairs and shortened the skirt of my best
walking-suit, an/d hung it and its jacket handy. I was ready to
fly,--if I had to,--and in case of that emergency nothing to do for
myself.
I had got all this done systematically when my little French friend--I
call her Mile. Henriette now--came to the door to say that she simply
"could not stand another day of it." She had put, she said, all the
ready money they had inside her corset, and a little box which contained
all her dead father's decorations also, and she was ready to go. She
took out the box and showed the pretty jeweled things,--his cross of
the Legion d'Honneur, his Papal decoration, and several foreign
orders,--her father, it seems, was an officer in the army, a great
friend of the Orleans family, and grandson of an officer of Louis XVI's
Imperial Guard. She begged me to join them in an effort to escape to
the south. I told her frankly that it seemed to me impossible, and I
felt it safer to wait until the English officers at Coutevroult notified
us that it was necessary. It would be as easy then as now--and I was
sure that it was safer to wait for their advice than to adventure it for
ourselves. Besides, I had no intention of leaving my home and all the
souvenirs of my life without making every effort I could to save them up
to the last moment. In addition to that, I could not see myself joining
that throng of homeless refugies on the road, if I could help it.
"But," she insisted, "you cannot save your house by staying. We are in
the same position. Our house is full of all the souvenirs of my
father's family. It is hard to leave all that--but I am
afraid--terribly afraid for the children."
I could not help asking her how she proposed to get away. So far as I
knew there was not a carriage to be had.
She replied that we could start on foot in the direction of Melun, and
perhaps find an automobile: we could share the expense. Together we
could find a way, and what was more, that I could share my optimism and
courage with them and that would help.
That made me laugh, but I didn't think it necessary to explain to her
that, once away from the shelter of my own walls, I should be just as
liable to a panic as any one else, or that I knew we should not find a
conveyance, or, worse still, that her money and her jewels would hardly
be safe inside her corset if she were to meet with some of the Uhlans
who were still about us.
Amelie had not allowed me to carry a sou on me, nor even my handbag
since we knew they were here. Such things as that have been hidden-all
ready to be snatched up--ever since I came home from Paris last
Wednesday--only four days ago, after all!
Poor Mile. Henriette went away sadly when she was convinced that my
mind was made up.
"Good-bye," she called over the hedge. "I seem to be always taking
leave of you."
I did not tell Amelie anything about this conversation. What was the
good? I fancy it would have made no difference to her. I knew pretty
well to what her mind was made up. Nothing in the world would have made
Pere budge. He had tried it in 1870, and had been led to the German
post with a revolver at his head. He did not have any idea of repeating
the experience. It was less than half an hour later that Mile.
Henriette came up the hill again. She was between tears and laughter.
"Mother will not go," she said. "She says if you can stay we must. She
thinks staying is the least of two evils. We can hide the babies in the
cave if necessary, and they may be as safe there as on the road."
I could not help saying that I should be sorry if my decision influenced
theirs. I could be responsible for myself. I could not bear to have to
feel any responsibility for others in case I was wrong. But she assured
me that her mother had been of my opinion from the first. "Only," she
added, "if I could have coaxed you to go, she would have gone too."
This decision did not add much to my peace of mind all that long Sunday.
It seems impossible that it was only day before yesterday. I think the
suspense was harder to bear than that of the day before, though all we
could see of the battle were the dense clouds of smoke rising straight
into the air behind the green hill under such a blue sky all aglow with
sunshine, with the incessant booming of the cannon, which made the
contrasts simply monstrous.
I remember that it was about four in the afternoon when I was sitting in
the arbor under the crimson rambler, which was a glory of bloom, that
Pere came and stood near by on the lawn, looking off. With his hands in
the pockets of his blue apron, he stood silent for a long time. Then he
said, "Listen to that. They are determined to pass. This is different
from 1870. In 1870 the Germans marched through here with their guns on
their shoulders. There was no one to oppose them. This time it is
different. It was harvest-time that year, and they took everything, and
destroyed what they did not take. They bedded their horses in the
wheat."
You see Pere's father was in the Franco-Prussian War, and his
grandfather was with Napoleon at Moscow, where he had his feet frozen.
Pere is over seventy, and his father died at ninety-six. Poor old Pere
just hates the war. He is as timid as a bird--can't kill a rabbit for
his dinner. But with the queer spirit of the French farmer he has kept
right on working as if nothing were going on. All day Saturday and all
day Sunday he was busy digging stone to mend the road.
The cannonading ceased a little after six--thirteen hours without
intermission. I don't mind confessing to you that I hope the war is not
going to give me many more days like that one. I'd rather the battle
would come right along and be done with it. The suspense of waiting all
day for that battery at Coutevroult to open fire was simply nasty.
I went to bed as ignorant of how the battle had turned as I was the
night before. Oddly enough, to my surprise, I slept, and slept well.
XV
September 8, 1914.
I did not wake on the morning of Monday, September 7,--
yesterday,--until I was waked by the cannon at five. I jumped out of
bed and rushed to the window. This time there could be no doubt of it:
the battle was receding. The cannonading was as violent, as incessant,
as it had been the day before, but it was surely farther off--to the
northeast of Meaux. It was another beautiful day. I never saw such
weather.
Amelie was on the lawn when I came down. "They are surely retreating,"
she called as soon as I appeared.
"They surely are," I replied. "It looks as if they were somewhere near
Lizy-sur-I'Ourcq," and that was a guess of which I was proud a little
later. I carry a map around these days as if I were an army officer.
As Amelie had not been for the milk the night before, she started off
quite gayly for it. She has to go to the other side of Voisins. It
takes her about half an hour to go and return; so--just for the sake of
doing something--I thought I would run down the hill and see how Mile.
Henriette and the little family had got through the night.
Amelie had taken the road across the fields. It is rough walking, but
she doesn't mind. I had stopped to tie a fresh ribbon about my cap,--a
tri-color,--and was about five minutes behind her. I was about halfway
down the hill when I saw Amelie coming back, running, stumbling, waving
her milk-can and shouting, "Madame--un anglais, un anglais." And sure
enough, coming on behind her, his face wreathed in smiles, was an
English bicycle scout, wheeling his machine. As soon as he saw me, he
waved his cap, and Amelie breathlessly explained that she had said,
"Dame americaine" and he had dismounted and followed her at once.
We went together to meet him. As soon as he was near enough, he called
out, "Good-morning. Everything is all right. Germans been as near you
as they will ever get. Close shave."
"Where are they?" I asked as we met.
"Retreating to the northeast--on the Ourcq."
I could have kissed him. Amelie did. She simply threw both arms round
his neck and smacked him on both cheeks, and he said, "Thank you,
ma'am," quite prettily; and, like the nice clean English boy he was, he
blushed.
"You can be perfectly calm," he said. "Look behind you."
I looked, and there along the top of my hill I saw a long line of
bicyclists in khaki.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, a little alarmed. For a moment I
thought that if the English had returned, something was going to happen
right here.
"English scouts," he replied. "Colonel Snow's division, clearing the
way for the advance. You've a whole corps of fresh French troops coming
out from Paris on one side of you, and the English troops are on their
way to Meaux."
"But the bridges are down," I said.
"The pontoons are across. Everything is ready for the advance. I think
we've got 'em." And he laughed as if it were all a game of cricket.
By this time we were in the road. I sent Amelie on for the milk. He
wheeled his machine up the hill beside me. He asked me if there was
anything they could do for me before they moved on. I told him there
was nothing unless he could drive out the Uhlans who were hidden near
us.
He looked a little surprised, asked a few questions--how long they had
been there? where they were? how many? and if I had seen them? and I
explained.
"Well," he said, "I'll speak to the colonel about it. Don't you worry.
If he has time he may get over to see you, but we are moving pretty
fast."
By this time we were at the gate. He stood leaning on his wheel a
moment, looking over the hedge.
"Live here with your daughter?" he asked.
I told him that I lived here alone with myself.
"Wasn't that your daughter I met?"
I didn't quite fall through the gate backwards. I am accustomed to
saying that I am old. I am not yet accustomed to have people notice it
when I do not call their attention to it. Amelie is only ten years
younger than I am, but she has got the figure and bearing of a girl.
The lad recovered himself at once, and said, "Why, of course not,--she
doesn't speak any English." I was glad that he didn't even apologize,
for I expect that I look fully a hundred and something. So with a
reiterated "Don't worry--you are all safe here now," he mounted his
wheel and rode up the hills.
I watched him making good time across to the route to Meaux. Then I came
into the house and lay down. I suddenly felt horribly weak. My house
had taken on a queer look to me. I suppose I had been, in a sort of
subconscious way, sure that it was doomed. As I lay on the couch in the
salon and looked round the room, it suddenly appeared to me like a thing
I had loved and lost and recovered--resurrected, in fact; a living thing
to which a miracle had happened. I even found myself asking, in my
innermost soul, what I had done to deserve this fortune. How had it
happened, and why, that I had come to perch on this hillside, just to
see a battle, and have it come almost to my door, to turn back and leave
me and my belongings standing here untouched, as safe as if there were
no war,--and so few miles away destruction extending to the frontier.
The sensation was uncanny. Out there in the northeast still boomed the
cannon. The smoke of the battle still rose straight in the still air. I
had seen the war. I had watched its destructive bombs. For three days
its cannon had pounded on every nerve in my body; but none of the horror
it had sowed from the eastern frontier of Belgium to within four miles
of me, had reached me except in the form of a threat. Yet out there on
the plain, almost within my sight, lay the men who had paid with their
lives--each dear to some one--to hold back the battle from Paris--and
incidentally from me. The relief had its bitterness, I can tell you. I
had been prepared to play the whole game. I had not even had the chance
to discover whether or not I could. You, who know me fairly well, will
see the irony of it. I am eternally hanging round dans les coulisses, I
am never in the play. I instinctively thought of Captain Simpson, who
had left his brother in the trenches at Saint-Quentin, and still had in
him the kindly sympathy that had helped me so much.
When Amelie returned, she said that every one was out at the Demi-Lune
to watch the troups going to Meaux, and that the boys in the
neighborhood were already swimming the Marne to climb the hill to the
battlefield of Saturday. I had no curiosity to see one scene or the
other. I knew what the French boys were like, with their stern faces,
as well as I knew the English manner of going forward to the day's work,
and the hilarious, macabre spirit of the French untried lads crossing
the river to look on horrors as if it were a lark.
I passed a strangely quiet morning. But the excitement was not all
over. It was just after lunch that Amelie came running down the road to
say that we were to have a cantonnement de regiment on our hill for the
night and perhaps longer--French reinforcements marching out from the
south of Paris; that they were already coming over the crest of the hill
to the south and could be seen from the road above; that the advance
scouts were already here. Before she had done explaining, an officer
and a bicyclist were at the gate. I suppose they came here because it
was the only house on the road that was open. I had to encounter the
expressions of astonishment to which I am now quite accustomed--a
foreigner in a little hole on the road to the frontier, in a partially
evacuated country. I answered all the usual questions politely; but
when he began to ask how many men I could lodge, and how much room there
was for horses in the outbuildings, Amelie sharply interfered, assuring
him that she knew the resources of the hamlet better than I did, that
she was used to "this sort of thing" and "madame was not"; and simply
whisked him off.