Part 7

Aurelle turned over some pages, very few, for, as Monsieur Jean Valines said, the happy sterility of the archives of Estrées during the Revolution recorded no other facts worthy of notice than two fêtes, a fire, and a flood. Next came the visit of the First Consul. He came to Estrées accompanied by his wife and several general officers, and was received by the authorities under a triumphal arch, erected at the Saint-Ferréol Gate, adorned with this inscription: "The Grateful Inhabitants of this City swear Allegiance and Fidelity to the Conqueror of Marengo."

The Mayor presented the keys of the town on a silver dish covered with bay leaves. "I take them, _citoyen maire_, and I return them to you," replied Bonaparte.

"The National Guard lined the route and cries of ’Long live Bonaparte! Long live the First Consul!’ were repeated enthusiastically a thousand times. The First Consul visited the Van Mopez factory and distributed a day’s pay among the workmen. The day ended with illuminations and a brilliant ball.

"A short time after his marriage with Marie-Louise, Napoleon came back, accompanied by the Empress. The square of Saint-Ferréol was a magnificent spectacle, decorated with red and white draperies and garlands of green leaves. A triumphal arch had been erected with the inscription: ’_Augusto Napoleoni Augustæque Mariæ Ludovicæ Strataville semper fidelis_.’"

A few more pages further on and it was March, 1814; for six days no couriers got through to Estrées from Paris, and then she heard of the fall of the Emperor.

"At three o’clock in the afternoon, the magistrates, assembled in the Town Hall, summoned the inhabitants with the ringing of bells. The Mayor appeared on the balcony of the large hall and proclaimed the allegiance of the town to the restored Bourbons. The spectators received this speech with oft-repeated cries of ’Long live the King!’ ’Long live Louis XVIII!’ and all put on the white cockade.

"The news soon came that Louis XVIII had landed at Calais and that he would pass through Estrées. A guard of honour was formed and a triumphal arch was erected at the Saint-Ferréol gate. It bore this inscription: ’_Regibus usque suis urbs Stratavilla fidelis_.’

"The clergy from every parish approached to compliment the King, and the Mayor presented the keys of the town on a silver dish adorned with fleurs-de-lis. The King replied, ’Monsieur le maire, I take the flowers, and give you back the keys.’ Then the sailors and footmen unharnessed the horses from the carriage, and drew him themselves into the town. The excitement of the crowd was impossible to describe; every house was decorated with blue and white draperies and green garlands, mottoes and white flags, covered with fleurs-de-lis.

"The King was present at a _Te Deum_ sung in Saint-Ferréol, and repaired, still drawn by sailors, to the Abbey of Saint-Pierre, where he was to lodge the night."

The evening drew slowly in; the quaint, thick lettering of the old book was becoming indistinct, but Aurelle wanted to finish the melancholy history of these inconstant people. Skipping the triumphal entry of Charles X, he came to the July insurrection.

"On the 29th of July, 1830, there were no newspapers; but letters and a few travellers arriving from Paris announced that the tricolour flag had been hoisted on the towers of Notre-Dame. A few days later they learnt that the fighting had stopped, and that the heroic population of the capital remained in possession of all their outposts.

"Louis-Philippe, accompanied by the Dukes of Orleans and Nemours, soon after passed Estrées on his way to Lille. He was received under a triumphal arch by the Mayor and Corporation. Every house was hung with draperies in the three colours. An immense crowd filled the air with their acclamations. The King arrived at the square of Saint-Ferréol, where the National Guard and several companies of _douaniers_ awaited him.

"The various corps of the urban guards in their best clothes; the strangeness of the rural guards, with a large number of Napoleon’s old soldiers in their ranks with their original uniforms; the intrepid seamen of Cayeux carrying in triumph their fishing prizes, ten old tricolour banners; the sailors, with their carbines, bandoliers and cutlasses in their hands, all made the gayest of spectacles, and the picturesque fête delighted the King and the officers of his staff."

There Jean Valines’ book concluded, but Aurelle, while watching the garden fading slowly in the twilight, amused himself by imagining what followed. A visit from Lamartine, no doubt; then one from Napoleon III, the triumphal arches and inscriptions, and quite lately, perhaps, Carnot or Fallières receiving from the mayor, in the square of Saint-Ferréol, the assurance of the unalterable devotion of the faithful people of Estrées to the Republic. Then in the future: unknown governors, the decorations, perhaps red, perhaps blue, until the day when some blind god would come and crush with his heel this venerable human ant-hill.

"And each time," he mused, "the enthusiasm is sincere and the vows loyal, and these honest tradesmen rejoice to see passing through their ancient portals the new rulers, in the choice of whom they have had no part.

"Happy province! You quietly accept the Empires which Paris brings forth with pain, and the downfall of a government means no more to you than changing the words of a speech or the flowers on a silver dish. If Dr. O’Grady were here he would quote Ecclesiastes to me."

He tried to remember it:

"What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?

"One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever.

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun."

"Aurelle," said Colonel Musgrave, who had quietly approached, "if you want to see the bombardment after dinner, go up to the top of the hill. The sky is all lit up. We attack to-morrow morning."

And a distant muffled thundering floated on the calm evening air. A melancholy and ancient peal of bells rang out from the Spanish belfry in the market-place. The first stars twinkled above the two ironical towers of the church of Saint-Ferréol and the proud old town fell asleep to the familiar sound of battle.

*CHAPTER XX*

Colonel Musgrave was drinking his coffee in the handsome _salon_ of the merchant, Van Mopez; he opened a pink official telegram and read:

"Director of Commissariat to Colonel Musgrave. Marseilles Indian Depot overcrowded meet special train 1000 goats with native goatherds find suitable quarters and organize temporary farm."

"Damn the goats!" he said.

His job being to feed Australians, he thought it hard that he had to bear in addition the consequences of the religious laws of the Hindoos. But nothing troubled Colonel Musgrave long; he sent for his interpreter.

"Aurelle," he said, "I am expecting a thousand goats this evening; you will take my motor and scour the country. I must have a suitable piece of ground in five hours and a small building for the shepherds. If the owner refuses to let you hire them, you will commandeer them. Have a cigar? Good-bye."

Having thus disposed of this first anxiety, he turned to his adjutant.

"We now want an O.C Goats!" he said. "It will be an excellent reason for getting rid of Captain Cassell, who arrived yesterday. _Captain_! I asked him what he did in peace-time—musical critic of the _Morning Leader_!"

So that is how Captain Cassell, musical critic, was promoted goatherd-in-chief. Aurelle found a farmer’s wife whose husband had been called up, and he persuaded her, at the cost of much eloquence, that the presence of a thousand goats in her orchards would be the beginning of all sorts of prosperity. He went in the evening to the station with Cassell to fetch the goats, and they both passed through the town at the head of the picturesque flock, herded by ancient Indians, who looked exactly like the shepherds in the Bible.

Colonel Musgrave ordered Cassell to send him a hundred goats per day for the front. After the fourth day Cassell sent over a short note by one of the children from the farm, announcing, as if it were quite a natural thing, that his flock would be exhausted the next day and asking for another contingent of goats.

On opening this extraordinary missive, the colonel was so choked with rage that he forgot to proclaim, according to custom, that Cassell was a damned fool. The numbers were too simple for an error to be possible. Cassell had received one thousand goats; he had sent off four hundred, he ought to have six hundred left.

The colonel ordered his car and commanded Aurelle to take him to the farm. A pretty, deeply cut road led them there. The buildings were in the rustic, solid style of the end of the eighteenth century.

"It is a charming spot," said the interpreter, proud of his find.

"Where is that damned fellow Cassell?" said the colonel.

They found him in the kitchen having a French lesson from the farmer’s daughter. He got up with the easy grace of a rural gentleman whom friends from town had surprised in his hermitage.

"Hullo, colonel," he said, "I am very glad to see you."

The colonel went straight to the point:

"What’s this damned letter that you sent me this morning? You received a thousand goats; you sent me four hundred of them. Show me the others."

The ground behind the farm sloped gently down to a wooded valley; it was planted with apple-trees. Near a stable, sitting in the mud, the Hindoo shepherds tasted prematurely the joys of Nirvana.

A horrible smell arose from the valley, and, coming nearer, the colonel saw about a hundred swollen and rotting carcases of goats scattered about the enclosure. A few thin kids dismally gnawed the bark of the apple-trees. In the distance, among the copses which covered the other side of the valley, one could see goats which had escaped browsing on the young trees. At this lamentable sight, Aurelle pitied the unfortunate Cassell.

The colonel maintained a hostile and dangerous silence.

"Isn’t it beautiful, colonel," said the musical critic with soft and stilted speech, "to see all those little white spots among the green?"

* * * * *

"Could not one," suggested Aurelle on the return journey, "ask the advice of a competent man? Perhaps goats cannot stand sleeping out of doors in this damp climate, and perhaps also they are not being fed properly."

The colonel frowned.

"In the South African war," he said after a silence, "we used a large number of oxen for our transport. One day these damned oxen started dying by hundreds, and no one knew why. Great excitement at headquarters. Some general found an expert, who, after boring the whole army with his questions, ended by declaring that the oxen were cold. He had noticed the same sickness in the north of India. There they protected the beasts by making them wear special clothing. Any normal individual with common sense could see that the oxen were simply overworked. But the report followed its course, and arrived at general headquarters, and from there they wired to India for a few thousand rugs for cattle.

"So far all went well, the oxen died as fast as ever, the well-paid expert had a damned good time—up to the arrival of the rugs. It is very easy to put clothing on an Indian cow who waits patiently with lowered head. But an African bullock—you try, and see what it’s like. After several trials, our drivers refused to do it. They sent for the expert and said to him, ’You asked for rugs for the beasts: here they are. Show us how to put them on.’ He was damned lucky to get out of hospital in six months."

That same evening another pink telegram arrived from the Director of Commissariat:

"Goats arrive at the front half dead pray take steps that these animals may have some wish to live."

Colonel Musgrave then decided to telegraph to Marseilles and ask for an expert on goats.

The expert arrived two days later, a fat farmer from the South, sergeant of Territorials. With the help of Aurelle, he had a long conversation with the colonel.

"There is one thing," he said, "that goats cannot get on without, and that is heat. You must make very low wooden sheds for them; without any openings; let them stew in their own juice, and they will be happy!"

He remarked to the interpreter when the colonel had gone, "Didn’t I tell them a good tale about their goats, _hé_? In the South they live out in the open and are as well as you or I. But let’s talk seriously. Couldn’t you get your English to manage an extension of leave for me, to look after their beasts, _hé_?"

They had begun to build the huts described by the man from the South, when the Indian Corps wrote to Colonel Musgrave that they had discovered a British expert whom they were sending him.

The new seer was an artillery officer, but goats filled his life. Aurelle, who looked after him a good deal, found out that he regarded everything in nature from the point of view of a goat. A Gothic cathedral, according to him, was a poor shelter for goats: not enough air, but that could be remedied by breaking the windows.

His first advice was to mix molasses with the fodder which was given to the animals. It was supposed to fatten them and cure them of that distinguished melancholy which the Indian troops complained of. Large bowls of molasses were therefore distributed to the Hindoo shepherds. The goats remained thin and sad, but the shepherds grew fat. These results surprised the expert.

Then he was shown the plans of the huts.

He was astounded.

"If there is one thing in the world that goats cannot do without," he said, "it is air. They must have very lofty stables with large windows."

Colonel Musgrave asked him no more. He thanked him with extreme politeness, then sent for Aurelle.

"Now listen to me," he said: "you know Lieutenant Honeysuckle, the goat expert? Well, I never wish to see him again. I order you to go and find a new farm with him. I forbid you to find it. If you can manage to drown him, to run over him with my car, or to get him eaten by the goats, I will recommend you for the Military Cross. If he reappears here before my huts are finished, I will have you shot. Be off!"

A week later Lieutenant Honeysuckle broke his leg by falling off his horse in a farmyard. The Territorial from Marseilles was sent back to his corps. As for the goats, one fine day they stopped dying, and no one ever found out why.

*CHAPTER XXI*

One morning, Aurelle, seeing an English Staff officer come into his office in a gold-peaked hat with a red band, was surprised and delighted to recognize Major Parker.

"Hullo, sir! I _am_ glad to see you again! But you never told me about that"—and he pointed to the signs of authority.

"Well," said the major, "I wrote and told you that Colonel Bramble had been made a general. He now commands our old brigade and I am his brigade major. I have just been down to the Base to inspect our reinforcements, and the general ordered me to pick you up on the way back and bring you in to lunch. He will send you back this evening. Your colonel is quite agreeable. We are camped for the moment next to the village where the padre was killed; the general thought you would like to see his grave."

Two hours later they drew near the front and Aurelle recognized the familiar landmarks: the little English military village with a policeman holding up his hand at every corner; the large market town, scarcely bombarded, but having here and there a roof with its beams exposed; the road, where one occasionally met a man in a flat steel helmet loaded like a mule; the village, the notice boards, "This road is under observation," and suddenly, a carefully camouflaged battery barking out of a thicket.

But Major Parker, who had seen these things every day for three years, discoursed on one of his favourite themes:

"The soldier, Aurelle, is always done in by the tradesman and the politician. England will pay ten thousand a year to a lawyer or a banker, but when she has splendid fellows like me who conquer empires and keep them for her, she only gives them just enough to keep their polo ponies. And again——"

"It is just the same in France——" began Aurelle; but the car stopped suddenly opposite the church of a nightmare village, and he recognized H——. "Poor old village, how it has changed!" he said.

The church, ashamed, now showed its profaned nave; the few houses still standing were merely two triangles of stone sadly facing one another; and the high building of the weaving factory, hit by a shell in the third story, was bent over like a poplar in a storm.

"Will you follow me?" said the major. "We have had to put the H.Q. of the brigade outside the village, which was becoming unhealthy. Walk twenty paces behind me; the sausage balloon is up and it’s no good showing them the road."

Aurelle followed for a quarter of an hour through the bushes, and suddenly found himself face to face with General Bramble who, standing at the entrance to a dug-out, was watching a suspicious aeroplane.

"Ah, messiou!" he said. "That’s good!" And the whole of his rugged red face lit up with a kindly smile.

"It will be like a lunch in the old days," he continued, after Aurelle had congratulated him. "I sent the Staff captain out with the interpreter—for we have another interpreter now, messiou—I thought you would not like to see him in your place. But he has not really replaced you, messiou; and I telephoned to the Lennox to send the doctor to lunch with us."

He showed them into the Mess and gave Major Parker a few details of what had been happening.

"Nothing important; they have spoilt the first line a bit at E 17 A. We had a little strafe last night. The division wanted a prisoner, so as to identify the Boche reliefs—yes, yes, that was all right—the Lennox went to fetch him. I have seen the man, but I haven’t had their written report yet."

"What, not since last night?" said Parker. "What else have they got to do?"

"You see, messiou," said the general, "the good old times are over. Parker no longer abuses red hats. No doubt they are abusing him in that little wood you see down there."

"It is true," said Parker, "that one must be on the Staff to realize the importance of work done there. The Staff is really a brain without which no movement of the regiments is possible."

"You hear, messiou?" said the general. "It is no longer the same; it will never be the same again. The padre will not be there to talk to us about Scotland and to abuse bishops. And I have no longer got my gramophone, messiou. I left it to the regiment with all my records. The life of the soldier is one of great hardship, messiou, but we had a jolly little Mess with the Lennox, hadn’t we?"

The doctor appeared at the entrance to the tent.

"Come in, O’Grady, come in. Late as usual; there is no creature so wicked and so dense as you."

The lunch was very like those of the good old times—for there were already good old times in this War, which was no longer in the flower of its youth—the orderlies handed boiled potatoes and mutton with mint sauce, and Aurelle had a friendly little discussion with the doctor.

"When do you think war will be finished, Aurelle?" said the doctor.

"When we win," cut in the general.

But the doctor meant the League of Nations: he did not believe in a final war.

"It is a fairly consistent law of humanity," he said, "that men spend about half their lives at war. A Frenchman, called Lapouge, calculated that from the year 1100 to the year 1500, England had been 207 years at war, and 212 years from 1500 to 1900. In France the corresponding figures would be 192 and 181 years."

"That is very interesting," said the general.

"According to that same man Lapouge, nineteen million men are killed in war every century. Their blood would fill three million barrels of 180 litres each, and would feed a fountain of blood running 700 litres an hour from the beginning of history."

"Ugh!" said the general.

"All that does not prove, doctor," said Aurelle, "that your fountain will go on running. For many centuries murder has been an institution, and nevertheless courts of justice have been established."

"Murder," said the doctor, "never appears to have been an honoured institution among primitive peoples. Cain had no reason to care for the justice of his country, if I mistake not. Besides, law courts have not suppressed murderers. They punish them, which is not the same thing. A certain number of international conflicts might be settled by civil tribunals, but there will always be wars of passion."

"Have you read ’The Great Illusion’?" said Aurelle.

"Yes," said the major, "it’s a misleading book. It pretends to show that war is useless, because it is not profitable. We know that very well, but who fights for profit? England did not take part in this war to conquer, but to defend her honour. As for believing that Democracies would be pacific, that’s nonsense. A nation worthy of the name is even more susceptible than a monarch. The Royal Era was the age of gold, preceding the Iron Age of the people."

"There’s an argument just like the old days," said the general. "Both are right, both are wrong. That’s capital! Now, doctor, tell me the story about your going on leave and I shall be perfectly happy."

After lunch, they all four went to see the padre’s grave. It was in a little cemetery surrounded by weeds; the ground broken up here and there by recent shell-holes. The padre lay between two lieutenants of twenty. Cornflowers and other wild plants had spread a living mantle over all three graves.

"After the war," said General Bramble, "if I am still alive, I shall have a stone carved with ’Here lies a soldier and a sportsman.’ That will please him."

The other three remained silent, restraining their emotion with difficulty. Aurelle seemed to hear, in the murmuring summer air, the undying strains of "Destiny Waltz" and saw the padre setting out once more on horseback, his pockets bulging with hymn-books and cigarettes for the men. The doctor meditated: "’Where two or three are gathered together, there I will be in the midst of them.’ What a profound and true saying! And how the religion of the dead still lives."

"Come," said the general, "we must go, the Boche sausage is up in the air, and we are four; it is too many. They tolerate two, but we must not abuse their courtesy. I am going on up to the trenches. You, Parker, will take Aurelle back, and if you want to go with them, doctor, I will tell your colonel that I have given you leave for the afternoon."

The three friends passed slowly across the silent plains, which only a few months before had been the formidable battlefield of the Somme. As far as the eye could see, there were low, undulating hillocks covered with thick, coarse grass, groups of mutilated tree-trunks marking the place of the famous wood, and millions of poppies made these dead fields glow with a warm and coppery light. A few tenacious rose-trees, with lovely fading roses, had remained alive in this wilderness, beneath which slept the dead. Here and there posts, bearing painted notices, like those on a station platform, recalled villages unknown yesterday, but now ranking with those of Marathon or Rivol: Contalmaison, Martinpuich, Thiepval.

"I hope," said Aurelle, looking at the innumerable little crosses, here grouped together as in cemeteries, there isolated, "that this ground will be consecrated to the dead who won it, and that this country will be kept as an immense rustic cemetery, where children may come to learn the story of heroes."