Part 11

As we stood making our adieux, a radio was brought to Commandant Moreteaux, and we heard then and there that Foch had received the German Parlementaries, and given them seventy-two hours, from eleven o’clock of that day, Friday, to say “Yes” or to say “No.” Nobody spoke when he ceased reading. It seemed suddenly like the world’s end.

And it’s a good, quick place to get one’s world-news, there in the Hartmannswillerkopf sector!

Then we said another and quite hasty _au revoir_, fearing night would descend upon the valley before we could, for the motor had to go without lights, and there was many a turn and twist at which to take a skidding chance at fate.

The forest got blacker and blacker, there was the sound of rushing waters, the rattle of munition-wagons, the stamp of hoofs, and voices of dimly outlined men whose tunics were quite white in the twilight. The odors, too, deepened with the coming darkness. I was chilled in body and soul, for were not they also there, those other tens of thousands, whose beds were dug in these damp hills, mingling in some way with the living? How close the two worlds are I never knew until this war, where death is ever near, and sometimes sweet, and often, often young. The hoary Reaper with his scythe has been replaced by a figure, lithe and strong, a bugle in his hand.

As we reached the dark valley the cannon cracked again, again the night sky was illumined. The unnatural shapes of trees fallen one against the other at sharp angles were black in the twilight fog; the road was a loose, wet ribbon; more waters rushed. And who would see the Hartmannswillerkopf in sunshine? This damp, gray, afternoon robe of consecration, clasped with its clasp of emerald, carnelian, topaz, amethyst, like to the clasp of a high-priest, is its true garb. And the wide mantle of the November night was folding close over all its beauty and its grief.

At Bitschwiller we call on Madame Jules Scheuer. She knows irremediable grief and bears it with a noble courage. One of her sons fell far from her in Champagne; the other, mortally wounded on the Hartmann, was brought down one winter night to die in her arms, and lies forever in the sweet, broad valley of the Thur, claiming so little of his vast inheritance....

To the _popote_ at eight. Six Protestant pastors had been announced to dine with us, two of mine in the act of being convoyed through Alsace by four of theirs. The Americans were “looking over the ground,” they delicately informed me. I didn’t ask “what ground”; with my name it might have sounded argumentative, which I never, never am.

Now during these days of my Alsatian visit I had thought, at intervals, that it might very possibly be a nuisance to have a woman always tagging at some polite heel or other, but when I saw that six pastors could happen to them all at once, I then and there ceased forever feeling apologetic. I even fell to thinking that they hadn’t done so badly when they got me.

I can’t say that, at dinner, all went as merry as a marriage feast, because the Americans didn’t speak French, nor the officers English, except de Maroussem, who could but didn’t, even seeming but remotely interested in watching them consume the plenteous repast. And as for myself, I was too dull with fatigue and too spent with the emotions of the Hartmann to be able to do any “paying in person.” For a time, too, those men of my race were the strangers to me, not the blue-clad men of the Mission.

Suddenly, as we were unsuspectingly taking our coffee, one of the shepherds began saying prayers over us with a drop in his voice after each sentence, thanking God for their being there, for our being there, for Alsace being there, and I don’t remember what else, save that it was fairly comprehensive. After which everybody signed everybody’s menu, and then as they were on the run through the garden of Alsace, lingering nowhere, though scattering possibly seedless blessings everywhere, they said good-by and went out forever into the rain. And they ought to have thanked God for the dinner, which was a triumph, with vintage wines served by two orderlies, under Monsieur de Maroussem’s chic though somewhat detached eye.

As the door closed we fell to talking as people would when six clergymen who came all at once leave all at once, though unexpectedly one came back for his umbrella—producing a momentary hush.

One of mine had generously given me several boxes of cigarettes, produced from deep, sagging pockets, and we stopped to have an “evangelical puff” as some one called it, while I tried to explain what “nervous prostration” is to those Frenchmen—and to explain why the largest of the American clergymen, very nice, and looking like a lion-tamer, as some one remarked, could have had it, and been in bed with it, for a year. “_Chacun a sa petite misère_,” one of them said, “_mais c’est étrange, tout de même._”

One of the officers of the St.-Amarin _popote_, Debrix, is the image of the famous Coligny, and so called by his comrades, but he is, it appears, an excellent Papist, while Perdrizet, who, if he had on a suit of mail, might have borne the banner of the Virgin, following Godefroy de Bouillon into Jerusalem, is an equally excellent Protestant, his family having fled to Montbéliard after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and these two are continually being joked about their natural—or unnatural—camouflage. But in these days nobody really cares, alack! alack! what anybody believes, scarcely, alack! what anybody does, especially if they are quiet about it and it doesn’t interfere with the other person’s plans. And that’s why the war will be forgotten just as soon as the newspapers stop talking about it and business looks up and the women get new clothes, which they need. However, as the dead soldiers will mostly be in heaven, their smiles won’t be too unkind, though their language!—if it’s anything like what I’ve discovered they use on earth!

I was finally convoyed home by a largish contingent of the sons of Mars. As soon as we stepped from the door we were in ankle-deep mud; the sky, black and flat and close, had a vaultlike heaviness, and the fog was so clinging that I was as if wrapped in some soft, wet stuff. Monsieur and Madame Helmer were kindly waiting up for me, but mercifully let our good-night be short. And here I am with no more thought of sleep than a meadow-lark at dawn, though that’s my only resemblance to the meadow-lark, for I am tired, dead-tired, and my hair is still wet with the mists of the Hartmann.

And how shall one sleep who has so lately touched the fringe of the mountain-couch where many soldiers lie?

XIII

“LES CRÊTES.” “DÉJEUNER” AT CAMP WAGRAM. THE FREUNDSTEIN AND ITS PHANTOMS

_November 9th._—This morning at eight-thirty we started out, Captain Perdrizet, Lieutenant Debrix, and I, for the famous trip along the crest of the mountains that, on one side, hang over the valley of the Thur, and on the other fall toward the Germanies. Having beheld with my eyes the first and second line defenses of these crests and of the “Hartmann,” I have come to some slight realization of how men have lived (and died) four winters through on these weather- and shell-swept heights.

We had to go to the very end of the shining valley before beginning the ascent to the crests, passing Wesserling, situated so charmingly on its eminence in the ancient moraine, commanding the valley from both ways. Once upon a time the Château of Wesserling belonged to Prince Löwenstein, Abbot of Murbach, the history of the great Abbey of Murbach being closely bound up with that of these valleys, for Charlemagne gave to the first abbot, St.-Pyrmin, the whole country of the Thur, with St.-Amarin and Thann and all the lesser towns. In the eighteenth century the Abbey was converted into a noble Chapter with residence, and a big new church, at Guebwiller, now in German hands. But the Chapter had a short life there, and probably not a gay one, and during the Revolution it was suppressed.

The vineyards round about have been renowned since time immemorial, and on Guebwiller’s southern slopes there is a wine celebrated even among the most celebrated of Alsace, which enlivens without making noisy, and inspires without depressing (evidently what the juice of the grape was meant to do when the vine grew on the first hillsides of the world). It is called “_Kitterle brisemollets_” (“Kitterle break your calves”), those whom it delights evidently not journeying far, except in fancy.

A great book could be written about the wines of Alsace, the soft, gleaming, light-colored wines of this land of sunny slopes, which may become even as a Mecca for pilgrims arriving “dry” from over the seas. In fact, quite a delightful perspective opens itself out.

From Wolxheim comes a wine, once the favorite of Napoleon, which was always found on the imperial table. There are the wines of Rouffach, “home town” of the husband of Madame Sans-Gêne; of Kaisersberg, known fashionably and pertinently as “Montlibre” for a short space during the Revolution, and by the “Rang” of Thann; Alsatians once swore, “_Que le Rang te heurte!_” (“May the Rang strike you!”) There is, too, an exceptional, ancient, red vintage called “_Sang des Turcs_,” whose name recalls the twilight days of Turkish invasions and Soliman the Great.

But the Alsatian wines are mostly made from compact bunches of little, white, sweet grapes, with irislike colors shading them richly. The inhabitants, holding their _pinard_ in great veneration, feel it a sacred duty to see that it is _good_. It is called colloquially “_thé d’Octobre_” (“October tea”) one of the officers told me, after the manner of the famous “_purée septembrale_” (“September purée”) of Rabelais, who, it appears, greatly appreciated the wines of these hillsides. But they are pitiless concerning poor wines, which they call “fiddlers’ wines,” or “_Sans-le-Sou_,” or “_gratte-gosier_” (“throat-scratcher”), and “_grimpe-muraille_” (“wall-climber”), as he who drinks them is apt to try that and other useless feats, instead of sitting and dreaming or joking and being happy. These bad wines are also known collectively and disdainfully as _vins des trois hommes_ (wines of three men) because it appears it takes three men to accomplish the feat of drinking a single glass—the man who supports the drinker, the man who forces the treacherous liquid down his throat, and the third the unhappy victim. Now the once rich soil of the ancient mellow vineyards has got thin and stony; for the men who have grown them have been occupied with killing these past four years, and neglect for even a season can spoil the best and oldest vines.

In times of peace there are many textile manufactories in these valleys, too. After the Napoleonic wars _la main d’œuvre_ (labor) was scarce, just as it will be after our war, workmen being brought even from India, and to this day in the midst of modern machinery here, in the valley, there are places where they still keep to the ancient block system of stamping cloth, with the ritual hammer-stroke, this process giving more fadeless and beautiful colors than any machine-stamped, aniline-dyed stuffs that ever were. Such cloths are still called “_Indiennes_.”

And all around here the Swedes did as tidy a bit of work as was ever done by invading armies, the seventeenth century being for the valley a century of ravage and desolation. In one of the books[18] Mr. Helmer gave me last night I read that the cantons were so reduced during the Thirty Years’ War that places like Bitschwiller could register but four adults and eleven children, Moosch eleven adults and twenty-three children, St.-Amarin thirteen adults and forty-four children, and so on, the chief of their diet being acorns and roots and mice and other classic nutriment of epochs of destruction. There were moments when the Imperials, the Swedes, the French, and the Lorrains disputed the territory, and various troops camped on the Hartmannswiller and descended to the valley—and the _Roi Très Catholique_ was the ally of the Swedes, and the Abbey and its territories were under the Holy German Empire. But whoever was momentarily in possession, it was always disastrous for the inhabitants of the valley—and of what the children suffered these fatal figures I have quoted evoke some dull perception.

As we pass the pleasant villages of Fellering and Odern and Krüt, all shining in the radiance of a strong though intermittent sun, with here and there scarfs of rainbow-like mists draped about them, we foolishly mocked the weather wisdom of Mr. Helmer, who, on being asked as we started out, if the weather would hold, had regretfully said, “No.”

At Krüt we start to ascend the Wildenstein. Gorgeous matutinal effects continued their prismatic play everywhere on soft and fathomless black hills, the yellow lights on the _mélèze_ almost outshining the sun. On one mountain-side they made a line as would some procession of pilgrims bearing torches, and one almost thought one saw cowled heads and heard the chanting of a “_Pilgerchor_.”

The air we were breathing was strong yet tenuous, and I felt a great refreshment and exhilaration.

In these wide days of bending the hills, of folding the valleys, there has been, as it were, some unpacking of my mind, some shaking out of my soul, things long hidden have come to light, and the patched lining of memory has been freshened. Almost every event has appeared, accompanied by its secret meanings, in its relationship to secondary, generally unapparent, significances. I have had, too, a quickened sensitiveness to the beauty of the natural world. And can a journey do more for one than this?

It was a stiff mount to Huss in a sort of distilled pine fragrance, with a continual looking back, where the billowing lightsome pink and yellow scarfs, woven of sun and mist, were flinging themselves more and more wastefully about the shining valleys. Near the top our motor’s _bougies_ got clogged with oil, and a thin, white fog, now opaque, now sun-shot, began to close in on us. We arranged the _bougies_, but there was nothing for human hands to do about that white fog, and we found ourselves suddenly, at a turn in the road, tightly inclosed by it, and were seemingly alone on the heights, where the only thing that appeared to grow and thrive were the stretches of wire entanglements, like great patches of dried heather. Everywhere were groupings of black crosses, with their tricolor badges, above wind-swept, fog-enveloped, sun-bathed graves, dug on these treeless heights.

But there, in that thin, high air, I suddenly became conscious of the volatilization of the spirit, and knew those graves indeed for empty....

One last time, as we passed Camp Boussat, named after the colonel who fell here, and looking like a mining-camp, the mist shifted, showing the jeweled, gossamer-clad valley, and then we were again fog-locked, and I saw its beauty no more—only brown seas of wire entanglements losing themselves in those shrouds of cottony white, which lifted here and there to show some detail of the strange life on the bleak crests. There were dugouts everywhere, and very low buildings camouflaged in wood-colors and crisscross designs. In them were men washing, men cooking, men smoking, all in astonishment, which sometimes gave place to grins, and doubtless pleasantries in the best Gallic manner, at the appearance of the weaker sex on their grim, bare mountain-tops.

We passed endless gun-emplacements, and cemented munition-depots, barely visible through thick layers of pine branches, and near them heads would be sticking out of what seemed mere holes in the earth.

About this time Captain Perdrizet, whose ardent spirit had been considerably dampened by the closing in of that thick, cold fog, began also to fear we should be late for _déjeuner_ at Camp Wagram, from which, it appeared, we were separated by several valleys and a few hills of the eternal sort. The motor’s _bougies_ got clogged again (what part of its being they are I know not); the chauffeur got moody, Captain Perdrizet more visibly vexed, Debrix quieter and more philosophic (he is a _littérateur_ when there’s no war, and has written a beautiful poem about Thann); as for myself, knowing strange and enkindling things were behind me, others doubtless before me, and that whatever happened would be interesting, I felt myself sweetly detached from time and circumstances, which for one of deadly punctuality is saying much.

A peculiarity of the motor’s ailment was that it couldn’t go down as fast as it could go up, so, a-limp, a-crawl, a-hump, we descended into a valley packed extravagantly with that thick, unspun cotton-like atmosphere, leaving the dead and living alike to their bare heights. At a certain village whose name I forget (I can hear the reader saying, “Thank God she has forgotten it, and we can perhaps get on to Camp Wagram for lunch”)—at a certain village, however, I repeat, two ravens went across our path, going to the left of the motor. Said Perdrizet, on taking in the dire occurrence, his color like to the white fog and his hair and mustache like to the raven’s, “We’ll never get there!”

Now I am superstitious, too, and glory in it, for, though it gives me a good deal of otherwise avoidable worry, it colors life. From time to time friends and circumstances load me with a new one, and I go staggering on. Two ravens crossing the road to the left _was_ a novelty, and I see anxious days to come when motoring for engagements where one must be in time—or one thinks one must. And superstition has nothing to do with the processes of the brain, rather lodges itself elusively anywhere and everywhere in one’s being.

The two officers consulted their timepieces again, finding a trifling and consoling difference of twenty minutes (looked at from one way). The chauffeur’s watch didn’t go, and I never carry one. As the motor stopped again, Perdrizet began to fidget extremely much, and to say that if it weren’t for me he’d kill the chauffeur, and decided that we couldn’t take in the village of Goldbach, almost entirely destroyed in this war, where Madame Sans-Gêne first saw the light of day, and later the duke.

However, in spite of the two ravens and the _Erdwible_,[19] or other spirits of those forest-hills, we at last found ourselves twisting up the road to Camp Wagram, an hour late, and we began to sound noisily the horn of arrival. The commandant and his young captain had been long awaiting us on their hillside. With many apologies on our part because of the delay, and on theirs because of the fog, we went into the little, low mess-room built of rough boards, with its heavy camouflage of fresh pine branches on its low roof, its windows of oiled paper, and its sides painted like a green-and-yellow tiger.

The commandant did something to his watch as we sat down, and then gallantly yet unblushingly remarked that it was just 12.30, but that even _had_ we been late it would have only meant a longer anticipation of something pleasant. My companions both gave smiles of satisfaction for that, on the Hartmann, where men are almost entirely concerned with killing or being killed, the commandant was living up to the French reputation in more ways than one. I thought, too, that it was a very happy beginning, looking well, so to speak, among the _hors d’œuvre_. Captain Perdrizet had told me the day before that if the commandant had to requisition every man and mule in the sector there would be an excellent lunch. Now the very good food was accompanied by a delicious, warm Burgundy from the commandant’s own part of the world, and at dessert a bottle of Pommery & Greno, very cold, a souvenir of his service in Champagne, was poured. All drank sparingly of both, after the manner of Latins. Some asked delicately, even humbly, as one really wanting information, concerning the rumor that the United States were “going dry,” and wondered why it was to be. I rather wondered myself, up there on the Hartmann, forgetful for a moment of the unpleasant things I know about distilled liquors in the Home of the Free and the Land of the Brave.

Said the commandant, puzzled, looking at his not large glass of ruby liquid, “_Un peu de vin en mangeant, tout de même?_ ...” (“But a little wine at one’s meals?...”)

Said another officer, with a quickly restrained gesture of distaste: “_Est-ce vrai qu’il faut boire seul et debout et entre les repas en Amérique?_” (“Is it true that one must drink alone and standing up and between meals in America?”)

I was saved an answer to this question, which was a fairly near picture of some of the national customs, by the shaking, deafening sound of an exploding shell. Those paper windows didn’t seem to mind it, though everything on the table rattled. The commandant looked at the captain, who disappeared, returning almost immediately to say that an artilleryman with his horses had been killed—and the doctor, who had started to the door, sat down again.

A few minutes later, as we were beginning the _tournedos grillés, maître d’hôtel_, the telephone rang, and a radio was brought in hot and given to me for a souvenir. It was one sent by the German parlementaries saying that as they were unable to get back to Germany by road on account of broken bridges, they would be obliged to proceed by air, and that their ’plane would be marked by two white flames—_zwei weisse Flammen_.

“It sounds safe, but all the same I don’t envy the officer detailed to accompany them,” said somebody; and they all smiled and seemed glad they weren’t in the airplane. I’ve noticed in the past two or three days that military men are beginning to prize life again.

I was sitting opposite the commandant, on my right was Doctor Lantieri with four stripes on his sleeve, and on my left was young Captain de Santis, who had met us. Curiously enough, both were of Corsican descent, and showed it so distinctly that when some one mentioned the great Italian bag of Austrian prisoners after the cessation of hostilities, and how the “Tiger” had said you simply couldn’t hold them back, I got a bit worried, though nobody else seemed to mind.

The young captain took from his pocket a couple of proclamations dropped by German aviators on the Hartmann yesterday—and furthermore presented me with a large panoramic view of the Champagne sector, where he had fought. I thought it was something rightly belonging to his family, but there was that in his proud, Corsican gesture which forbade refusal.

=The German People Offers Peace.=

The new German democratic government has this programme:

=“The will of the people is the highest law.”=

The German people wants quickly to end the slaughter.

The new German popular government therefore has offered an

=Armistice=

and has declared itself ready for

=Peace=

on the basis of justice and reconciliation of nations.

It is the will of the German people that it should live in peace with all peoples, honestly and loyally.

What has the new German popular government done so far to put into practice the will of the people and to prove its good and upright intentions?

a) The new German government has appealed to President Wilson to bring about peace.

=It has recognized and accepted all the principles which President Wilson proclaimed as a basis for a general lasting peace of justice among the nations.=

b) The new German government has solemnly declared its readiness to evacuate =Belgium= and to restore it.

c) The new German government is ready to come to an honest understanding with France about

=Alsace-Lorraine.=

d) The new German government has restricted the =U-boat War=.

=No passengers steamers not carrying troops or war material will be attacked in future.=