Part 12

e) The new German government has declared that it will withdraw all German troops back over the German frontier.

f)—The new German government has asked the Allied Governments to name commissioners to agree upon the practical measures of the evacuation of Belgium and France.

These are the deeds of the new German popular government. Can these be called mere words, or bluff, or propaganda?

Who is to blame, if an armistice is not called now?

Who is to blame if daily thousands of brave soldiers needlessly have to shed their blood and die?

Who is to blame, if the hitherto undestroyed towns and villages of France and Belgium sink in ashes?

Who is to blame, if hundreds of thousands of unhappy women and children are driven from their homes to hunger and freeze?

=The German people offers its hand for peace.=

After which, being the only woman who had ever lunched in the H.W.K. sector, I was photographed by the doctor with the four stripes. Then in a fog thickly enfolding us, as well as the mountains, we started out with gas-masks, compasses and pistols, plus an armed escort, toward the German lines, for they wanted to show me the ruins of the Castle of Freundstein, now an observation post, directly overhanging the great plain I had seen yesterday. Much banter between the commandant and Captain Perdrizet, their eyes very alert, as to the right road, the one that wouldn’t lead us into the enemies’ hands. Suddenly a firing of French guns began right over our befogged heads, with a near swish and crack, and answering duller German guns. In the thick fog, even those men accustomed to sensations seemed quite keyed up, and the commandant had become like some woodsman, looking closely at the trunks of battered trees, some with old scars, some with new, and other indications, invisible to me, along the path. Finally, at a certain crossroad, he stopped, saying: “_That_ would lead us straight to them. Even now a pointed casque might appear, though, with the probable armistice in sight, they will be less venturesome.”

I: “What would they do?”

He: “Throw hand-grenades first and then”—he looked at the others—“there’d be a scuffle.”

It didn’t sound attractive, I must say, the potentialities of the fog seeming even quite horrid, and I was entirely ready to hunt in the opposite direction for the path to the Freundstein, which, according to the compass, lay pleasantly due west. Dreadful, unexploded things, too, were lying about, in new and ancient shell-holes, and there was much careful stepping among broken tree-trunks and half-demolished barbed wire, and I got a horrid rip in the last of my American boots.

Here and there was a black cross, and the possibility of being underneath one, instead of above one, if we _did_ meet a German patrol, came before me. With all one’s poetizing or philosophizing, there _is_ a difference, and one’s a long time dead—as I know Lieutenant Lavallée would agree.

Suddenly the path began to rise, the commandant giving an exclamation of relief as he saw a steep ladder almost in front of us, apparently leaning against a wall of fog. Captain Perdrizet’s eyes began to shine again; he’d been quite subdued, not to say cast down.

“It’s like a scene of opera, isn’t it?” he exclaimed. And then he proceeded up the ladder, tipped, it seemed, at an angle of forty-five degrees the wrong way, I wondering how on earth I was to get down, unless I fell. Then we descend from a ledge over heaps of century-old, moss-grown mortar deep into the tower, and, passing through a long, subterranean passage, find ourselves in a tiny, closet-like room of ageless masonry. Stationed at an opening are two men with telephones over their ears, binoculars, compass, and charts lying on the sill of the opening in the masonry, which is shaped like this ⌓ and looks to the northeast, toward the Hartmann and the Sudel, and other consecrated heights, as well as the great, covered German plain—whose contours were more impenetrably veiled than its future. I had had a feeling, crouching in the wet bushes the day before, gazing out on its wide splendors in shifting sun and shower, that I would look no more upon it, nor upon the little, worn, brown crest of the Hartmann, cut by the black line of the German trenches, running through the naked wilderness of branchless trees—though I had not known why.

When we had blithely retraced our steps to the highroad, cracking many uncomplicated jokes, pleasing largely because we felt that kindness toward the universe so distinctive of the front, when no actual killing is going on, we suddenly encountered, almost bumping into them, two swearing, sweating, heavily laden _poilus_, who had got lost in the fog looking for their detachment. On seeing us they threw down their accoutrement on a wet bank and expressions strong and classic began to cut the air. A sergeant, risen up from somewhere at the unmistakable sounds, ran toward them, calling and gesticulating wildly. But, wiping their brows, they continued. They had taken the last step they were going to on that so-and-so and so-and-so mountain, and if they found their detachment or not they _enfiché’d_ themselves, only they didn’t use this elegant word to express their sentiments. The sergeant got more excited, and cried, “_Espèces de types_” and.... At this the commandant, foreseeing that the artillery exchange might get too loud for feminine ears, said to the biggest one (both were enormous), seeing his number: “You are looking for Camp Meudon, _mon ami_. It’s farther up; in an hour you are there. Follow the path up and always to the right.”

On which, like lambs, they who had sworn not to move from that spot till the hill crumbled shouldered their accoutrement, thanked Perdrizet in the best French manner for the cigarettes he gave them, and disappeared quickly, the strains of “Madelon” being loudly borne back to us on the fog.

“_Ce sont des enfants_” (“They are children”), said the commandant, with his kind smile, “and _good_ children.”

And that was the last word I heard concerning the war and “_les enfants de la Patrie_” on the Hartmann, for the hour of farewells had come.

And how deep was the mutual well-wishing enfolding that moment those who have seen peace breaking over the graves of the Hartmann, as I and they saw it, alone can know.

As we parted, they taking a higher path, disappearing almost immediately in the fog, and we the lower road back to the motor, I suddenly understood, too, the new look one sees in all men’s faces. Everywhere it is the same. It is that of men who have been ready to die, to “separate from the pleasant habit of existence, the sweet fable of living,” but who suddenly know they need not die, at least not now—nor _that_ way.

Coming down the heavily shrouded mountain-slope as quickly as possible, to be in time for my adieux to St.-Amarin before hastening over to Masevaux that same evening, Captain Perdrizet told me the legend of the “Phantoms of Freundstein.” I was then at a point of fatigue where present emotions were no longer possible, and time works such wonders that the most tragic tale of Freundstein, the Rock of Friends, was even as a poultice. And I could still be interested in hearing that to this very day there is a proverb, “_Er isch vom Freundstein_” (“He is from Freundstein”), which, said of a man, means so hospitable is he that his house belongs to his friends. And the legend runs after this fashion:

The last of the lords of Freundstein, Count Jerome, had a beautiful daughter, Christine by name, whom he adored, and whom he took with him everywhere, even to the chase, for which purpose a gorgeous litter had been made wherein she might rest. The Lord of Geroldseck, passing by one day, saw her as she lay asleep. Struck by her loveliness, he swore then and there that he would make her his.

Soon after he proceeded to Freundstein to ask her hand in marriage, but she answered that it was useless, as her heart already belonged to a certain very noble cavalier of Thann. Her father gave the same answer. One night a great noise was heard before the gates of Freundstein; it was the Lord of Geroldseck come with his vassals to take the castle and its lovely young châtelaine by assault. Freundstein resisted for three days. Then, seeing it was in vain, Christine and her father took final refuge in the high tower whose ruins rise above the chamber where we found the men with the telephones strapped to their ears. There had once been a sloping stairway in the tower, so broad that a horseman might ascend it. Up this road the Lord of Geroldseck pursued them. Arrived at the top, he was about to seize the girl, but her father, taking her in his arms, leaped with her into space. The gesture that Geroldseck made to retain her whom he loved caused him to lose his own balance, and he, too, fell and was killed. And their ghosts forever haunt the spot, and the echo, no matter what words are cried to the hills, always gives back the last, despairing call of Geroldseck:

“_Je t’aurai, je t’aurai, je t’aurai._”[20]

XIV

RETURN TO MASEVAUX

_November 9th._—I was received so warmly by the amiable Demoiselles Braun, who had my room ready for me; so kindly by Captain Bernard, who came a moment afterward to tell me he would call for me at seven-fifteen; so dearly by Laferrière, who also called for me, that I felt I had indeed got “home.” As we were walking along to the _popote_ Captain Tirman joined us in the darkness and told us that Bavaria had proclaimed itself a republic, and that there was news (military news by radio) of the abdication of the Kaiser. Somebody cried, “_Demain, de quoi demain sera-t-il fait?_” as we entered the house where the little cat, the forgetful, unabashed little cat, who but three short days before had done such well-nigh disastrous things to my fur coat, also awaited me.

Again a charming dinner, conversation about that first August of the war, the retreat from Mons, of Charleroi, and many, many other places; of forced marches and aching feet; of fatigue and hunger and thirst, now packed away gloriously in memory, though sometimes the strange look appeared on their faces as they talked. Stories were told of those who had gone to “_faire un bridge à Limoges_”[21] and remained there, and of others, like Mangin, who had come back, Mangin, the booty of whose glorious Tenth Army now overflows the Place de la Concorde. And of Foch who had _nearly_ gone there. And of the immense glory hanging over each and every battlefield, for, though black crosses were evoked, each was entwined with colors too bright for human eyes. And then we turned our thoughts from _tempus lachrymarum_ to the New Day, in whose sun, though not like to the brightness of those fallen, we all shine. The _long_ destiny is heavy and dark beside the light, bright way of heroes, and never did one realize till now how truly the gods love those whom they snatch young. We, after all, as one of the officers remarked, will die in our beds or by accident—and is it so desirable?

Then Sérin told his oft-repeated, but now dearly loved, story of “_Bravo, Capitano_,” of the _Capitano_ who thanked the Madonna for the thirteen trenches and the sea of barbed wire between himself and the enemy, but which I won’t tell. And Captain Antoni told the story of the wounded Boche who was given the _Croix de Guerre_, and how the French general said, as he entered the hospital ward:

“Are these the brave men who so valiantly held their position on the twenty-fourth? With inexpressible pleasure I give each one his well-merited _Croix de Guerre_,” and then proceeded down the line of beds. On Number 33 was lying a man with closely bandaged head, only one gleaming eye visible, and the _Croix de Guerre_ was pinned also on his valiant breast, and if it was removed by the Angel of Death or by orders of the colonel I forget. Neither is it recorded if the German smiled.

And I told of the swift passing of the autos, mine and the commandant’s, on the dark hills of the Route Joffre, when I was coming back from St.-Amarin and he going there. How sadly I had seen its kind lights rise along the heights and disappear, and there had been no friendly handclasp on the hills, nor words of thanks from me in the dim light of the blurred Pleiades and the young, half-veiled, white moon.

After dinner some one hazarded the word “bridge,” but there must have been that in my eye making for solitude rather than companionship, for the next thing I heard from some Frenchman, perceptive as to woman’s looks, was:

“_Madame est sans doute bien fatiguée et nous jouerons demain._”

And soon I was stumbling home on one or two or three blue-sleeved arms, in the inky darkness of a starless and moonless Masevaux.

I had found St.-Amarin charming, and I left with deep regret, but at Masevaux I was experiencing the sensation, very agreeable, I must say, of one who, having wandered, returns to his or her first love; and any one who has done it will know exactly how I felt, and I don’t have to tell them. As for those who have never returned, they wouldn’t understand if I did explain.

XV

THE VIGIL OF THE ARMISTICE

“_The Star is fall’n and Time is at his period_”

_November 11th, 1 A.M._—At ten-thirty Captain Tirman came back to the _popote_ where we were playing bridge—Sérin, Laferrière, Toussaint, and I. He was very pale, but there was something shining about his face.

“_Ça y est, l’armistice._”

Dead silence; we don’t even drop our cards. In his excitement a very naughty soldier’s word escapes him. He turns away in consternation, and the others, somewhat appalled, too, at last drop their cards. I try not to smile. General recovery; they hope I didn’t catch it. It was sufficient, however, to break that strange feeling of _absence_ of feeling that each one of us was experiencing.

“_Alors c’est fini, la guerre_,” some one finally said in a dazed way, and with the words the cruel thing seemed to drop heavily from us, as would some hideous, exhausting burden.

Toussaint, with his far look of one who loves forests, very strongly marked, said, “To think that it has found us like this playing bridge at the _popote_!”

Sérin: “I’ll not go to bed to-night.”

I: “Oh, my friends!” and then nothing more—my knees suddenly as if broken.

Laferrière (very quietly, after a pause): “I cannot but think of those who are not here.” And his words evoked great shining bands of the dear young, pressed closely, one against the other, out of their flesh, crowding the heavens.

Then Sérin, again with his _bon sourire d’enfant_, “_Il faut boire_.”

A bottle of _Asti spumante_ is produced by Laferrière, who in a dreamy way remembers that he is _chef de popote_. The stock of champagne is exhausted. Nearly every day, and sometimes twice a day for the past week, have not the radios, plucked out of the air by the commandant, plus the beauteous _communiqués_, necessitated the opening of bottles even unto the last?

Sérin, as we drink, all of us paralyzed by the sudden cessation of the world-horror, tells how one of his gendarmes would keep referring to the armistice as “_la Mistie_,” in two words, and we drink to _la Mistie_. But in spite of the too, too simple joke, how still, yet stern was each one’s heart!

About this time Toussaint seizes from the stove the marble “hunk” (it’s the only word for it), “_Amor condusse noi_,” and makes as if to throw it at the dead and gone Oberforster’s clock, stopped, as I said, some four years ago at 12.25.

Sérin again, with his most childlike expression: “_La Paix a éclaté!_ Peace has broken out, and I will break out worse than peace if I don’t do something!”

As I have said, Masevaux at that hour—it had got to be eleven o’clock—was as lustrous as an ink-pot, and all being still the prey of a strange paralysis of feeling, nobody suggested anything.

Peace, lovely, precious peace, dreamed of, desired through years of anguish, so _redly_ bought in money of the heart’s blood, was ours! Those crowding hosts gone out into the “dateless night” seemed suddenly to return, the only moving things on a stunned earth. They had not renounced in vain the dear clothing of the flesh.

But how could we understand in one moment the immensity of what had happened? Never have I felt myself so small, so almost non-existent—an insect that had fortuitously _not_ been crushed. But the soul’s great converging point _was_ reached. The war was done and won. Men need no longer kill each other by the tens of thousands, nor need women by the millions, because of it, weep.

We touched glasses again, but quietly, oh so quietly!

Some one sighs and no one speaks. After a while Toussaint, standing by the stove, again fingers “_Amor noi condusse_,” but it is taken out of his hands by one of the officers. Then Sérin suggests waking up the curé, getting the keys of the church, and ringing the bells. Tirman, in authority in the absence of the commandant, still at St.-Amarin, is gripped by that conservatism known to each and every one in command at great moments, and becomes cautious, even suspicious.

“_Mais non, c’est peut-être tout de même une blague. Attendons jusqu’à demain._” (He has quite recovered from his naughty word.)

Some one insists, “But Headquarters wouldn’t joke about a thing like that.”

Tirman, however, sits down at the piano, breaks out into the “Beautiful Blue Danube” and refuses to have the bells rung.

Sérin: “But what can one do here at Masevaux, black as the ace of spades and everybody snoring! _A Paris, il y aurait moyen de fêter même si c’est une blague!_”

I: “You are ready for anything.”

He: “_Et comment!_” With a light in his straightforward _good_ soldier’s eye, and somewhat as a child longing for the impossible, “Just think of them in Paris, the restaurants full, _et des femmes sentant bon_!”[22]

Then four dazed officers accompanied by a dazed lady proceeded to awaken the postmaster from his slumbers. That heroic expression of rejoicing accomplished, we groped our way to the Place du Chapitre. In one of the _chanoinesse_ houses Captain Bernard also dwells. Sometimes he has headaches on account of his wound, and to-night he had left us early to go home. On his not answering, some one hazarded the remark, “Perhaps he isn’t there” (Heaven knows there’s nowhere else to be but where one belongs, at Masevaux!), and it proved, indeed, to be pure defamation, for after a while he appeared at his window, or rather one heard him saying: “What’s the matter? I was sleeping the sleep of the just.”

“_Ça y est, l’armistice_,” some one cried out.

Then that man, who had been through every campaign and would forever wear “Verdun” stamped on his brow, made no answer.

And the night was dark, dark, the lovely moon too young to wait up, even for peace. We stumbled across the roughly paved square to my dwelling, and there we clasped hands with a strange, new clasp, and I, the woman and the American, wanted to say something, anything, but I had only begun, “_Mes chers amis_,” when I felt my voice break. I turned quickly and went in. What need to speak? Hearts lay open that night.

_2 A.M._—Have been reading to quiet the heavily throbbing nerves. Picked out of the bookcase an hour ago _L’Histoire des Elèves de St.-Clément, Metz_, 1871. The names Gravelotte, St.-Privat, Malmaison, Sedan, confuse themselves in my mind with Ypres, Verdun, with Belleau Woods, with St.-Mihiel, Suippes, Eparges. I remember being told that in a terraced cemetery at St.-Mihiel three thousand Germans sleep. Though friend or foe, this night I see them all arisen, standing each one by his grave, clad in horizon-blue, khaki—or field-gray, all those who at some word of command had left the “pleasant habit of living, the sweet fable of existence,” and I whispered in great need of consolation, “I know that my Redeemer liveth and at the last day we shall rise.”

_3 A.M._—And how shall sleep come, lovely sleep, desired like the morning? I slept not that night of the 3d of August which held the whole war in its darkness, and now with the youth of the world lying in “the grave’s quiet consummation,” shall I sleep?

Then slowly I became conscious of emanations from a giant, near people in defeat, not knowing what new thing to will, casting off the old fidelities, which once had given them the horn of human plenty. Thrones were shaking; “when _peoples_ rage, _kings_ must weep”; a world was to be remade out of empty places and blood.... I remembered how a poet[23] had cried out, as a prophet, after that other war:

_Ton peuple vivra,_ _Mais ton empire penche, Allemagne!..._

And then I fell to thinking on love, I know not why, unless it was for the millions of lovers taken so suddenly from the world, or because of those yet left. How shall I say? But I knew that there were three things, not two—the lover, the beloved, and love. And of this last and separate thing one can have, in extremely sensitive states, impersonal cognizance, when for some reason (again what know I?) fancy has been set free, imagination stirred, and they go flinging themselves, not so much about the personal as about the common destiny. For a moment, so brief that it was gone even as it came, my soul caught the light that hangs over dear, persistent, far, illusory hills of fancy and inclination, and felt the mysterious break of feeling on the dim, shadowy lake of the heart. Vague, beaming forms passed along its shores, dissolving, lambent outlines, awakening desire for all the beauty of the wide earth, for things not in my personal destiny, and which, if they were to be, would be no better than that which is, not even so good. It was the greed of the human heart....

And I cried out from my many-times-turned pillow, “O Life, O Love, O Death, O too, too fragile illusion of existence!”

_4 A.M._—A soft, rich-toned bell is striking. A cold breath comes in at the window, a cock crows. There is the first sound of the click of sabots across the square; the Day of Peace is about to break over the world. But here in the bed of the young deserter from the German ranks, dead in Champagne, the war still has me in its arms and presses me close to its cold, oozing breast. The familiar odor of drying blood comes to me. Old groans strike on my ear. Those who, dying, are not dead crowd about me, and the “blue-black cloud” envelops me. I am weary unto dissolution. And Sleep, darling Sleep—not even a brush of your wings against me!

In this early morning, in the “little hour before dawn,” the grief of the world sits tight about my heart—the icy hurt for things dead and gone, and the heaviness of those who awaken to a world empty of what was once the heart’s concern and desire.

Old distastes, too, press on me, old distastes, I say, not hates. How hate any one like unto myself, hurrying along the night-path to the grave, mutual, frightened possessors of a shadowy, urgent immortality?

For these last few years I have entered, as it were, into some knowledge of charity, not that I like everybody, but I have come to realize that the distaste is often in myself and not due to some fault or lesser excellence in others. Truly in this whole journey I have encountered but two whom in an idle, hazy way I did not like; one was of an amorphic species and the other had judgments too violent, and at the same time too conventional and platitudinous, to permit interest. But even of these I shall ultimately think with indulgence.

_5 A.M._—Closed the book recording the deeds of those young, long, long fallen of St.-Clément’s school, and I pass to thinking how the word now on the lips of the world is freedom.