II THE FRONT (continued 2)

We lay the night at an inn that must have been at one time a seigneurial mansion, for it had a noble courtyard. I was shown to a room, and, having unpacked my valise, I turned on the taps, but no water issued; I applied a match to the gas-jet, but no flame appeared; I tried to open the window, but the sash stuck. I rang the bell; that at least responded. A maid appeared; I pointed to the taps and made demonstrations with the gas-jet. To all of which she replied quite simply, "Ah! monsieur, c'est la guerre!" I had heard that answer before. With such a plea of confession and avoidance had the boots at the Hôtel de la Poste at Rouen excused a gross omission to call me in the morning, and thus also had the aged waiter at the Métropole disposed of a flagrant error in my bill. But this time it was convincing enough; gas-workers and waterworks men and carpenters were all at the war, and in the town of Meaux water was carried in pitchers and light was purchased at the chandler's. In France you get used to these things and imitate with a good grace the calm stoicism of your Allies. For, after all, the enemy was pretty near, and as I retired to my couch I could hear the thunder of their guns.

FOOTNOTE:

XIV

THE CONCIERGE AT SENLIS

We rose early the next day, and, having paid our reckoning, were away betimes, for we were to visit the French lines and wished also to pay a flying visit to Senlis. As we left Crépy-en-Valois we entered the Forest of Compiègne, a forest of noble beeches which rose tall and straight and grey like the piers of Beauvais Cathedral, their arms meeting overhead in an intricate vaulting through which we saw the winter sun in a sapphire sky. We met two Chasseurs d'Afrique, mounted on superb Arabs and wearing red fez-like caps and yellow collar-bands. They were like figures out of a canvas of Meissonier, recalling the spacious days when men went into action with all the pomp and circumstance of war, drums beating, colours flying, plumes nodding, and the air vibrant with the silvery notes of the bugle. All that is past; to-day no bugle sounds the charge, and even the company commander's whistle has given way to certain soft words for which the German mocking-bird will seek in vain in our Infantry Manual. As for cuirass and helmet, the range of modern guns and rifles has made them a little too ingenuous. And, sure enough, as we drove into Compiègne we found a squadron of dragoons as sombre as our own, in their mouse-coloured couvre-casques and cavalry cloaks, though their lances glinted in the sun. Here all was animation. Informal conventicles of Staff officers, with whom we exchanged greetings, stood about the square in front of the exquisite Hôtel de Ville, with its high-pitched roof pierced with dormer-windows and crowned with many pinnacles. North and east of Compiègne lie the zones of the respective armies, all linked up by telephone, and here we had to exchange our passes, for even a Staff officer may not enter one zone with a pass appropriate to another. But our first objective was Senlis, which lay to the south of us between Compiègne and Paris.

The sun was high in the heavens as we turned south-west, and, keeping to the left bank of the river, skirted the forest. Faint premonitions of spring already appeared; catkins drooped upon the hazels, primroses made patches of sulphur in the woods, and one almost expected to see the blackthorn in blossom. Silver birches gleamed against the purple haze of the more distant woodlands. The road ran straight as an arrow. As we neared Senlis I was struck by the complete absence of all traffic upon the roads; no market carts came and went, neither did any wayfarer appear. Not a wisp of smoke arose from the chimneys above the screen of trees. We passed up a double avenue of elms—just such an avenue as that along which M. Bergeret discussed metaphysics and theology with the Abbé Lantaigne—yet not a soul was to be seen upon the trottoir. A brooding silence hung over the little town, a silence so deep as to be almost menacing. As we entered the main street I encountered a spectacle which froze my heart. Far as the eye could see along the diminishing perspective of the road were burnt-out homes, houses which once were gay with clematis and wisteria, gardens which had blossomed with the rose. And now all that remained were trampled flower-beds, tangled creepers, blackened walls, calcined rafters, twisted ironwork, and fallen masonry. And this was Senlis! Senlis which had been to the department of the Oise as the apple of its eye, a little town of quality, beautiful as porcelain, fragrant as a rose, and as a rose as sweet. As I looked upon these desecrated homes it seemed to me that the very stones cried out.

In all this desolation we looked in vain for any signs of life. It was not until we sought out the house of a captain of dragoons, a friend of my companion the Comte, that we found a human being in these solitudes. The house was, indeed, a melancholy ruin, but by the gate was a lodge, and in the lodge a concierge. He was a small man and middle-aged, and as he spoke he trembled with a continual agitation of body as though he were afflicted with ague. He led us into his little house, the walls of which were blackened as with fire and pierced in many places with the impact of bullets. And this was his tale.

One afternoon early in September—it was the second day of the month, he remembered it because there had been an untimely frost over night—he heard the crackle of musketry on the outskirts of the town, and a column of grey-coated men suddenly appeared in the street. An officer blew a whistle, and, as some of them broke through the gates of the mansion, the concierge fled across the lawn with bullets buzzing about his ears and shouts of laughter pursuing him as he ran. In and out among the elms he doubled like a frightened hare, the bullets zip-zipping against the tree-trunks, till he crawled into a disused culvert and lay there panting and exhausted. From his hiding-place he heard the crash of furniture, more shots, and the loud, ribald laughter of the soldiers. And then a crackle of flame and a thick smell of smoke. And after that silence. At dusk he crawled forth from his culvert, trembling, his hands and face all mottled with stinging-nettles and scratched with thistles; he found his master's house a smouldering ruin, and a thick pall of smoke lay over the town of Senlis like a fog. Somewhere a woman shrieked and then was still. About the hour of nine in the evening the concierge heard voices in disputation outside the lodge-gates, and as he hid himself among the shrubberies more men entered, and, being dissatisfied with their work, threw hand-grenades into the mansion and applied a lighted torch to the concierge's humble dwelling. They were very merry and sang lustily—the concierge thought they had been drinking; they sang thus, "comme ça!" and the concierge mournfully hummed a tune, a tune he had never heard before, but which he would remember all his life. I recognised it. It was Luther's hymn:

Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott.

Thus had passed the day. Meanwhile the maire, M. Odent, a good man and greatly beloved, had been arrested at the Hôtel de Ville. His secretary proposed to call his deputies. "No, no," replied the maire tranquilly, "one victim is enough." He was dragged along the streets to the suburb of Chammont, the headquarters of von Kluck, and his guards buffeted him and spat upon him as he went. Arrived there, he was condemned to death. He took his companions in captivity by the hand, embraced them—"très dignement," the concierge had been told—handed them his papers, and bade them adieu. Two minutes later he was shot, and his body thrown into a shallow trench with a sprinkling of earth. The concierge had seen it the next day; the feet were protruding.

All this the concierge told us in a dull, apathetic voice, and always as he told his body twitched and the muscles of his face worked. And he spoke like a man in a soliloquy as though we were not there. He seemed to be looking at something which we could not see. As we bade him adieu he stared at us as though he saw us not, neither did he return our salutation. We clambered back into our car and turned her head round towards Compiègne. I shall never see Senlis again.