Part 10

We then betook ourselves upstairs to a class of older girls, from ten to thirteen or thereabouts, to whom Lieutenant Fress, with the greatest confidence, put the most difficult questions. It was a class of French history, and he began boldly with the Druids and finished with the war of 1914. He has a gift for teaching, and was so easy with those children, whom I should have been embarrassed, not to say terrified, to approach, that the answers came pleasantly and quickly. When at a certain moment, however, there was a delay, I got anxious, thinking to myself, suppose the Sister or Lieutenant Fress were to say to the class:

“You don’t know? Then we must ask this _aimable_ lady who has come across the ocean to visit you. _She_ will tell us.” And of Charles the Fat, then engaging our attention, I only remembered vaguely that he had had a saintly wife of whom he grew tired. There were other questions, too, about Louis of Aquitaine, which awakened only the faintest echoes in memory, but which to my relief were answered to complete satisfaction by a determined, dark-eyed, round-faced girl of twelve or thereabouts.

Lieutenant Fress then asked who could recite “_La Laitière et le Pot au Lait_.” All hands shot up, and the recitation proceeded with much _brio_.

“What does this teach us?” he boldly asked at the end.

At this a heavy-jawed, but very bright, near-together-eyed girl raised her hand without a second’s hesitation, and equally without a second’s hesitation answered:

“To think only of the present.” As is elegantly expressed in the enemies’ tongue, that girl wasn’t one of whom it would be said she would be “left hanging,” except of course as regards the imponderabilities.

Lieutenant Fress: “But is it well to think only of the present? What of imagination, and things that may happen in the future?”

A small, undersized girl with a deep-blue eye somewhat nervously answered:

“In imagination one builds castles in Spain.”

This was encouraging, but what she called _châteaux d’Espagne_ seemed not, however, to find great favor, for a silence fell on that bright-eyed class.

“But isn’t that all right?” continued Lieutenant Fress, giving a fillip. “Must we think only of the things we can see and touch?”

At the mention of seeing and touching, hands again shot up. He indicated a thick-haired, heavy-browed girl.

“In thinking of the things she doesn’t see, the good housewife would forget to cook the dinner, _et cela serait tommage_,” was the answer coming from the deepest depths of her consciousness.

On which we leave the schoolroom, with its extremely practical atmosphere, the argument being unanswerable, even by Lieutenant Fress. I could but think on that long line of peasants who have wrestled with realities, begotten, brought forth, tilled the soil, baked the bread, struggling all the time with their border-destiny, nature and history, even more than their own wills, having made them what they are. It struck me as reasonable that they should be a canny set, those little girls. Something alert, perceptive of realities, was forming them, they could not be over-given to dreams, for which one is both sorry and glad, according to the way one happens to feel about human things at the moment—and not necessarily the way they are. Even Marcus Aurelius tells us that “if a thing displease us” (I suppose he only forgot to add, “or if a thing please us”) “it is not that thing, but our view of that thing.” And certainly a lot of perfectly good things are spoiled by the point of view.

In the next room they were having a lesson in American history, quite in the note everywhere these days, and I know the Sister saw the hand of God as I entered at that special moment (she was a quiet-eyed, not very young Sister, who had trod further paths than those of learning). Then and there I heard the tale of the Boston Tea-party, and its consequences, of the War of the Rebellion, and the name of Lincoln, pronounced “Lancone,” who “wanted all men to be free and equal,” sounded through the room. No one, of course, expressed a doubt, nor ever will in schoolrooms, that men aren’t free, neither are they equal. As for myself, I thank God nearly every morning that some men always will be better than others, realizing that there is more difference between man and man than between man and beast, which truth was recalled to me but shortly by an equalitarian friend of the New Republic—but it’s not for schools, like many other truths. Even Saint Paul can do nothing except cry out, “Shall not the potter have power to shape the vessel as he will, some to honor, some to dishonor?” which again recognizes the fact of inequality without explaining it. However, there’s no use going into that now.

I soon found myself in a class of boys of twelve to fifteen years of age. They were having a lesson in German, and were reading a “piece” called “_Der arme Sepp_,” the history of whose misfortunes (he was a stable-boy, and the horse ran away and the wagon was broken, and he was received by his master with blows) didn’t seem to stick; for after it had been read out no boy, in answer to Lieutenant Fress’s questions, could recount the short and simple annals of poor Sepp.

They weren’t nearly so bright as the girls. Dull-eyed, pimply-faced, squeaky-voiced, they were wrestling with something that was for the time stronger than books—the eternal _Frühlings Erwachen_, that has always occupied philosophers and scientists—though not so much parents, who are apt to avoid the issues involved.

We passed finally into a class where young women were dissecting _Les Obsèques de la Lionne_, under the guidance of a brown-bearded, one-armed teacher in uniform. It was a small room, and you could have cut the air with a knife. And for the mist I could scarcely see the placard “_Pourquoi on ne peut pas conclure une paix fondée sur la parole d’Allemagne_” and the portraits of Clémenceau and Poincaré.

About this time I began to understand that La Fontaine is the pillar of the French educational system; and there is no doubt that he _did_ clear up a lot of doubtful things, in the most liquid use of the clearest of all languages.

We listened here to dissertations on the falseness of courts and courtiers, the charms of which were not touched on. How those who frequented them learned disastrous habits of dissimulation, not to say lying, and how ’twas better to live in obscurity (which for some reason is always supposed to be cheerful and where nobody ever lies perhaps because it isn’t worth while). Courts are not in favor anywhere just now, but everybody will admit they’ve had a glorious past; and as for democracy’s future, which the Bolsheviki and the New Freedom are decidedly handicapping, they _may_ run it a close second. This class was not so interesting, however, as were the children’s—discussions of intellectual propositions by people who aren’t intellectual being an awful bore at any time.

Toward the end there was a horrid moment, Lieutenant Fress bearing up with equanimity, when the over-bold teacher, interrupting the reading, asked the meaning of the word “_apothéose_.” Dead silence.

“_Continuez_,” he finally said, though a young woman with an immense amount of corn-colored hair waved low about some spectacled blue eyes, and wearing a large silver pin with the word “_Adieu_” on it, showed signs of being about to bring forth the answer.

They finished the fable in unison in their strong border-accent, which seemed to get thicker and thicker as we got farther up the flights of learning.

_Amusez les rois par tes songes,_ _Flattez-les, payez les d’agréables mensonges._ _Quelque intignation dont leur cœur soit rembli,_ _Ils goberont l’abbât, vous serez leur ami._

But methought it isn’t anything like what the “people” will have to “swallow,” when everybody is free and nobody is equal. And I wondered again at those who think to change the destinies of nations from without, by formulas or commands, when each evolves mysteriously, mystically, inevitably from within, out of its own particular shape and substance and strength. Even one from over the seas, clad in the supremest power a great nation has ever lent a mortal, though he pull the earth to pieces in the attempt, cannot change this law of nature. “_Que direz-vous, races futures?_”

And time respects nothing that is done without it.

As we came out into the square, little boys were bringing in armfuls of wood for their schoolroom stoves, others were already noisily scampering home for dinner in the crisp, sawdusty air; straight columns of smoke from many chimneys evoked women standing about noonday fires; there was a homely, human feeling about it all....

As I went through the school it seemed to me that the types of the 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?

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.”