With Those Who Wait

Once upon a time there wasn't any war. In those days it was my custom to drive over to Chateau-Thierry every Friday afternoon. The horses, needing no guidance, would always pull up at the same spot in front of the station from which point of vantage, between a lilac bush and the switch house, I would watch for the approaching express that was to bring down our week-end guests.

A halt at the bridge head would permit our friends to obtain a bird's-eye view of the city, while I purchased a measure of fresh-caught, shiny-scaled river fish, only to be had of the old boatman after the arrival of the Paris train. Invariably there were packages to be called for at Berjot's grocery store, or Dudrumet's dry goods counter, and then H. having discovered the exact corner from which Corot painted his delightful panorama of the city, a pilgrimage to the spot almost always ensued.

A glance in passing at Jean de la Fontaine's house, a final stop at "The Elephant" on the quay to get the evening papers, and then passing through Essommes with its delightful old church, Bonneil and Romery, our joyful party would reach Villiers just in time for dinner.

A certain mystery shrouded the locality where our home was situated. Normandy, Brittany, the Chateaux of Touraine, the climate of the Riviera, have, at various seasons been more attractive, not only to foreigners, but to the Parisians themselves, so aside from the art lovers who made special trips to Rheims, there was comparatively little pleasure travelling in our immediate neighbourhood, and yet what particular portion of France is more historically renowned? Is it not on those same fertile fields so newly consecrated with our blood that every struggle for world supremacy has been fought?

It would be difficult to explain just why this neglect of the lovely East; neglect which afforded us the privilege of guiding our friends, not only along celebrated highways, but through leafy by-paths that breathed the very poetry of the XVIIth. century, and stretched, practically untrodden, through Lucy-le-Bocage, Montreuil-aux-Lions, down to the Marne and La Ferté-sous-Jouarre.

It was wonderful rolling country that rippled back from the river; abounding not only in vegetation, but in silvery green harmonies so beloved of the Barbizon master, and sympathetic even by the names of the tiny hamlets which dotted its vine-covered hills.

Our nearest dealer in agricultural machines lived in a place called Gaudelu. We called him "MacCormick" because of his absolute and loquacious partiality for those American machines, and to reach his establishment we used to pass through delightful places called le Grand Cormont, Neuilly-la-Poterie, Villers-le-Vaste.

As I write these lines (July, 1918) the station at Chateau-Thierry is all of that city that remains in our hands. The bridge head has become the most disputed spot on the map of Europe; "The Elephant" a heap of waste in No Man's Land, while doubtless from the very place where Corot painted his masterpiece, a German machine gun dominating the city is belching forth its ghastly rain of steel.

That very country whose obscurity was our pride is an open hook for thousands of eager allies and enemies, while on the lips of every wife and mother, from Maine to California, Belleau Woods have become words full of fearful portent. I often wonder then, if the brave Americans who are actually disputing inch by inch my home and its surroundings have ever had time to think that a little village known as "Ecoute s'il pleut," might find its English equivalent in "Hark-how-it-rains!"

Two touching accounts of the second descent upon our country have come to my hands. A little orphan peasant lad, under army age, who fled with our caravan four years since, now pointer in the French artillery-writes as follows from "Somewhere in France"-June 6, 1918:

DEAR MADAME:

Just a line to tell you I am alive and well; unfortunately I cannot say as much for my grandparents, for you doubtless know what has again befallen our country. All the inhabitants have been evacuated.

I am absolutely without news of my grandparents. I learned to-day through a word from my brother Alfred that they had been obliged to leave home and had fled in an unknown direction. In spite of the rumour of a new invasion they did not intend to leave Villiers.

My sister left the first, with some of the young girls of the village. After twenty-four hours in Paris they were evacuated to a village in the Yonne.

My brother was obliged to go the next day, and at the present time is at Rozoy-en-Brie. I believe we made a halt there in 1914 when we fled as refugees. After three days at Rozoy, Alfred could stand it no longer, and with three companions they started home on bicycles, in order to see what had happened. They reached Villiers to find every house empty, and were almost instantly expulsed by shells. So now we are all scattered to the four winds of heaven. I am so sad when I think of my poor grand-parents, obliged to leave home and to roll along the high-roads at their age. What misery!

I am afraid our village is going to suffer much more than it did in 1914. That horde of scoundrels will spare nothing! And when will it all be over?

I hope that my letter will find you well and happy, and I beg you to believe me gratefully and respectfully yours,

LéON CHATELAIN

Maréchal des Logis

206e Artillerie-28e Batterie

Secteur 122.

"With the Mayor, and thanks to a neighbour's car, I was able to get away," writes Monsieur Aman Jean, the well-known painter, who had a home in Chateau-Thierry. "The situation was becoming unbearable and we three were the last to leave our unfortunate city. Behind us an army engineer blew up the post and telegraph office, the military buildings, the station, the store house, and finally the bridge. Our eyes were beginning to smart terribly, which announced the presence of mustard gas, and told us we had left none too soon.

"I will never forget the sight and the commotion of the road leading from Chateau-Thierry to Montmirail. Interminable lines of army transports on one side counterbalanced by the same number of fleeing civilians going in the opposite direction. Now and then a farm cart would pull aside to let a heavy military truck get by, and one can hardly imagine the state of a highway that is encumbered by a double current of refugees and soldiers hastening towards the front. The painful note was made by the unfortunate civilians who had put on their Sunday clothes, the only way they had of saving them. As to the picturesque, it was added by the multitude of little donkeys trotting beneath the weight of the machine guns, and by the equipment of the Italian troops. There were bright splashes of colour here and there, together with a heroic and lamentable animation. It impressed me most violently. It was wonderfully beautiful and pathetically horrible.

"On one side old people, women and children formed a long straggling cortège; while on the other-brilliant youth constituted a homogeneous and solid mass, marching to battle with calm resolution.

"The populations of the East are astonishingly courageous and resigned. That of Chateau-Thierry watched the evacuation of the Government Offices, the banks, the prefecture and the post office without the slightest alarm. The retreat was well advanced ere they dreamed of it. When finally the people realised that the enemy was at their very gates, they moved out swiftly without any commotion."

The German onslaught at the Marne in 1914 had been terrible but brief. The life of our entire region was practically suspended while the Hun wreaked his vengeance, not only on our armies, but our innocent civilians and their possessions. Shot and shell, organised looting and cruelty, were employed to cow the intrepid spirit of the French, but without success. When, finally their retreat came, hands were quick to repair material damage, refugees swiftly returned, and even the September rains joined in the effort to purify the fields which had been so ruthlessly polluted.

With the Hun on the Aisne, and a victory to our credit, there wasn't even a pause for breath. A new life seemed to surge forth, and all bent their energies towards effacing every trace of what had seemed like a hideous nightmare. Even the Eastern Railway, which had been closed on account of the destruction of some seven or eight bridges over the Marne, broke all records by repairing or replacing them in eleven days' time. And while this had no direct bearing upon our situation, the moral effect of even hearing the train-loads of men and munitions passing through our region, was certainly surprising.

Little by little things began to assume their normal aspect. Not that they ever entirely regained it, for there was always the dull rumbling of the cannon to remind us of bygone terrors, while the establishment of several emergency hospitals in the vicinity lent an animation to the highroads, formerly dotted with private cars, but now given over entirely to ambulances and supply trucks.

As to the uniforms, they quickly became such accustomed sights that a youthful civilian would have been the novelty.

Buoyed up by the success of our armies, every one expected an early peace, and even the busiest of us began making projects for the fair future. In the odd moments of relief from my somewhat onerous hospital duties, my only pleasure and distraction was to build castles in the air, and in the eternal Winter lights I laid many a plan for a little boudoir next my bedroom, which I had long desired to see realised.

When news of H.'s safety reached me, my imagination knew no limits.

The convalescent patients from all branches of trade, who at different times had filled the rooms of the chateau, converted into wards, had been very deft at repairing everything in the way of furniture that the Germans had defaced or neglected to appropriate. There were many skilful carpenters and cabinet makers among them, and I saw visions of employing them at their own trade, producing both occupation, which they craved, and funds which they needed, but were too proud to accept as gifts, and what a surprise that room would be for H.!

I even pushed my collector's mania so far as to pay a visit to an old bourgeois who lived in a little city called La Ferté-Milon, quite a bit north of us. The walls of his salon were ornamented with some charming eighteenth century paper representing the ports of France, and in excellent condition. I had long coveted it for my boudoir, and in days before the war had often dickered with him as to price. I now feared lest it should have been destroyed or disfigured, and regretted having wished to drive too keen a bargain, but on finding it intact, I am ashamed to say the collector's instinct got the better of the woman, and I used every conceivable argument to persuade him to come to my price. The old fellow was as obdurate as ever.

"But," I suggested, "don't you realise what a risk you are taking? Suppose the Germans were to get back here again before you sell it? You're much nearer the front than we! You will not only lose your money, but the world will be minus one more good thing, and we've lost too many of those already."

The withering glance with which this remark was received was as good as any discourse on patriotism.

"The Germans back here? Never! Why at the rate we're going now it will be all over before Spring and you'll see what a price my paper will fetch just as soon as peace comes!"

Peace! Peace! the word was on every lip, the thought in every heart, and yet every intelligence, every energy was bent on the prosecution of the most hateful warfare ever known. In all the universe it seemed to me that the wild animals were the only creatures really exempt from preoccupation about the fray. It might be war for man and the friends of man, but for them had come an unexpected reprieve, and even the more wary soon felt their exemption from pursuit. Man was so busy fighting his own kind that a wonderful armistice had unconsciously arisen between him and these creatures, and so birds and beasts, no longer frightened by his proximity, were indulging in a perfect revel of freedom.

During the first weeks of the conflict, the "cotton-tails," always so numerous on our estate, were simply terrified by the booming of the guns. If even the distant bombardment assumed any importance, they would disappear below ground completely, for days at a time. My old foxhound was quite disconcerted. But like all the rest of us they soon became accustomed to it, and presently displayed a self assurance and a familiarity undreamed of, save perhaps in the Garden of Eden.

VIEW OF CHATEAU-THIERRY

It became a common sight to see a brood of partridges or pheasants strutting along the roadside like any barnyard hen and chickens, and one recalled with amazement the times when stretching themselves on their claws they would timidly and fearfully crane their necks above the grass at the sound of an approaching step.

At present they are not at all sure that man was their worst enemy. The Government having decreed that there shall be no game shooting in the army zone, weazels, pole cats and even fox have become very numerous, and covey of quail that once numbered ten and fifteen, have singularly diminished by this incursion of wild animals, not to mention the hawks, the buzzards and the squirrels.

One Autumn morning I appeared at our gateway just in time to see a neighbour's wife homeward bound, the corpses of four white hens that Ma?tre Renard had borrowed from their coop, dangling from her arm. Her husband heard her coming, and on learning the motive of her wails, the imprecations brought down on the head of that fox were picturesquely profane to say the least. Presently the scene grew in violence, and then finally terminated with the assertion that the whole tragedy was the result of the Kaiser's having thrown open the German prisons and turned loose his vampires on France.

Be that as it may, there was certainly no more enchanting way of obtaining mental and physical relaxation than in wandering through those wonderful woodlands that abound in our vicinity, and which breathed so many inspirations to the Master of Fable, who at one time was their keeper. How I wish that good La Fontaine might have seen his dumb friends under present circumstances. What fantasies would he not have woven about them.

Season and the temperature were of little importance. There was never a promenade without an incident-never an incident, no matter how insignificant, that did not remind me of the peculiar phase under which every living creature was existing.

Once in the very early Spring, taking my faithful Boston bull, we stole away for a constitutional. Suddenly my little companion darted up close to the hedgerow, and on hurrying to the scene to find out the cause of this departure from her usual dignified demeanour, I found her standing face to face with a hare! Both animals, while startled, were rooted to the spot, gazing at each other in sheer fascination of their own fearlessness. It was so amazingly odd that I laughed aloud. But even this did not break the spell. It lasted so long that presently even I became a little puzzled. Finally it was the hare who settled the question by calmly moving away, without the slightest sign of haste, leaving my bull dog in the most comical state of concern that I have ever seen.

It was about this time that Fil-de-Ver, our donkey, decided to abandon civilised life in favour of a more roaming career in the woods, which he doubtless felt was his only true vocation. He had fared ill at the hands of the Germans, and during the entire Winter our own boys had used him regularly to haul dead wood. This kind of kultur he resented distinctly, and resolved to show his disgust by becoming more independent.

First he tried it out for a day or two at a time. Then he was gone a week, and finally he disappeared altogether.

Being of sociable disposition he joined a little herd of deer which was the pride and joy of our woods, and one afternoon I came upon this motley company down by a little lick we had arranged on the brink of a tiny river that crosses our estate.

As I approached they all lifted their heads. A baby fawn, frightened, scurried into the underbrush. But the others let me come quite close, and then gently, as though to display their nimbleness and grace, bounded away mid the tender green foliage, gold splashed here and there by the fast sinking sun. Fil-de-Fer stood a moment undecided. Presently, lifting his hind legs high into the air he gave vent to a series of kickings and contortions which might have been taken for a comical imitation, while a second later as though realising how ridiculous he had been, he fell to braying with despair, and breaking into a gallop fled in the direction of his new found friends.

Simultaneous with Fil-de-Fer's disappearance came the rumour that the Loup-garou was abroad and was sowing panic in its wake. Just what kind of animal the Loup-garou might be, was somewhat difficult to ascertain. No one in our vicinity had ever seen him, and from all I could gather he seemed to be a strange sort of apocalyptic beast, gifted with horns, extraordinary force, and the especial enemy of mankind.

There was something almost uncanny in the way the peasants would look at one and lower their voices when speaking of this weird phenomenon, and presently from having suspected my innocent donkey, I began to wonder if I were not in the presence of some local popular superstition.

The rumour was still persistent, when one evening at dark there was an urgent call from Headquarters asking that we send down for four or five patients that were destined for our hospital. I do not now recall for just what reason I went alone, save for a twelve-year-old village lad, but what I do remember was the respectful moral lecture that I received from an old peasant woman who met our cart on the high-road just before we turned off into the Bois du Loup.

Night, black and starless, was upon us before we had penetrated half a mile into the woods. My youthful companion began to sing martial airs, and stimulated his courage by beating time with his feet on the bottom of the cart. A chill Autumn rain commenced to fall, tinkling against the rare leaves that now remained on the trees, blinding both horse and driver, and greatly impeding our progress. Presently I noticed that our lantern had gone out, and fearing lest we be borne down upon by some swift moving army truck, I produced a pocket lamp and descended from my seat.

A handful of damp matches, much time and good humour were consumed ere I succeeded in getting a light, and just as I swung the lantern back into place, the air was pierced by a high-pitched, blood-curdling shriek!

Le Loup ... !

At the same moment there was a sharp crackling on the opposite side of the road, and an instant later a wild boar, followed by her young, brushed past me and darted into the obscurity.

My companion was livid. His teeth chattered audibly. He tried to pull himself together and murmured incoherent syllables. Personally, I was a bit unnerved, yet somewhat reassured. If my eyes had not deceived me, the mystery of the Loup-garou was now solved. And yet I felt quite sure that wild boar were unknown in our region.

At Chateau-Thierry I made enquiries and from soldiers and foresters learned that heretofore inhabitants of the Ardennes forest, these animals had been driven South when man had chosen to make the firing line of their haunts; and that, prolific breeders, they were now practically a menace to the unarmed civilian. From these same lovers of nature I gathered that for the first time in their recollection sea-gulls and curlews had likewise been seen on the banks of the Marne.

While the country now abounds in newcomers, many of the old familiar birds and animals are rapidly disappearing.

Larks are rare visitors these days, and the thrush which used to hover over our vineyards in real flocks, have almost entirely vanished. The swallows, however, are our faithful friends and have never failed to return to us.

Each succeeding Spring their old haunts are in a more or less dilapidated condition according to the number of successful visits the German aviators have chosen to pay us during the Winter, and I fancy that this upsets them a trifle. For hundreds of generations they have been accustomed to nest in the pinions of certain roofs, to locate in a determined chimney, and it is a most amusing sight to see them cluster about a ruined spot and discuss the matter in strident chirpings.

Last season, after a family consultation, which lasted well nigh all the morning, and during which they made repeated visits of inspection to a certain favourite drain pipe, I suddenly saw them all lift wing and sail away towards the North. My heart sank. Something near and dear seemed to be slipping from me, and one has said au revoir so oft in vain. So they too were going to abandon me!

In one accustomed to daily coping with big human problems, such emotion may seem trivial, but it was perhaps this constant forced endurance that kept one up, made one almost supersensitively sentimental. Little things grew to count tremendously.

At lunch time I sauntered forth quite sad at heart, when an unexpected familiar twittering greeted my ear, and I turned northward to see my little friends circling about the stables. Life closer to the front had evidently not offered any particular advantages, and in a few days' time their constant comings and goings from certain specific points told me that they had come back to stay.

But if friend swallow may be praised for his fidelity, unfortunately not so much can be said for another familiar passerby-the wild duck. October had always seen them flocking southward, and some one of our household had invariably heard their familiar call, as at daybreak they would pass over the chateau on their way from the swamps of the Somme to the Marais de St. Gond. The moment was almost a solemn one. It seemed to mark an epoch in the tide of our year. Claude, Ben?it, George and a decrepit gardener would abandon all work and prepare boats, guns and covers on the Marne.

Oh, the wonderful still hours just before dawn! Ah, that indescribable, intense, yet harmonious silence that preceded the arrival of our prey!

Alas, all is but memory now. Claude has fallen before Verdun, Ben?it was killed on the Oise, and George has long since been reported missing.

Alone, unarmed, the old gardener and I again awaited the cry of our feathered friends, but our waiting, like that of so many others, was in vain. The wild ducks are a thing of the past. Where have they gone? No one knows, no one has ever seen them. And in the tense hush of the Autumn nights, above the distant rumble of the cannon rose only the plaintive cry of stray dogs baying at the moon.

Dogs, mon Dieu, I wonder how many of those poor, forgotten, abandoned creatures having strayed into our barnyard were successively washed, combed, fed, cared for and adopted.

Some of them, haunted by the spirit of unrest, remained with us but a moment; others tried us for a day, a week, and still others, appreciative of our pains, refused to leave at all.

Oh, the heart rending, lonesome, appealing look in the eyes of a poor brute that has lost home and master!

It is thus that I came into possession of an ill tempered French poodle called Crapouillot, which the patients in our hospital insisted on clipping like a lion with an anklet, a curl over his nose and a puff at the end of his tail. A most detestable, unfortunate beast, always to be found where not needed, a ribbon in his hair, and despicably bad humoured.

He was succeeded by a Belgian sheep dog, baptised Namur, who in time gave place to one of the most hopelessly ugly mongrels I have ever seen. But the new comer was so full of life and good will, had such a comical way of smiling and showing his gleaming white teeth, that in memory of the joy caused by the Charlie Chaplin films, he was unanimously dubbed Charlot.

The mere sound of his name would plunge him into ecstasies of joy, accompanied by the wildest yapping and strange capers, which invariably terminated by a double somersault in the mud so anxious was he to convince us of his gratitude. Imagine then what might be obtained by a caress, or a bowl of hot soup.

Last in line, but by no means least, was a splendid English pointer, a superb, finely bred animal, who day in, day out would lie by the open fire, lost in a profound revery that terminated in a kind of sob. Poor, melancholy Mireille, what master was she mourning? For what home did she thus pine? How I respected and appreciated her sadness. How intensely human she became.

Finally when I could resist no longer I would take her long delicate head into my hands and gently stroke it, seeking to impart my sympathy. "I know that you never can be mine," I would murmur, "that you will ever and eternally belong to him to whom you gave yourself once and entirely. But these are sad anxious days for us all; we must bear together. And so as my own dogs have often been my only consolation in like times of misery and despair, oh, how I would love to comfort you-beautiful, faithful, disconsolate Mireille!"