Part 28 (1/2)
Armies, armies, fighting, men riding on horses, guns and wounded--like '15, like '70, like h.e.l.l. People like themselves leaving their cottages and farms, making, with such portable treasures as they had (food, relics, poultry, babes in arms), for the shelter of a town. No town could avail them, for in the towns sat the officers, and the marketplace offered only a bigger, a more organized destruction. But the hope of shelter would take them far afield. Anything was better than to see sabres splintering your walls, and a greasy flame replacing all that had been ancestral and intimate. Better to die in the open with friends--not smoked out of your own cellar to fall on a bayonet. They knew the secular ways of war: the dwellers on the plain were the foredoomed type of the refugee, the world over. Once in so often men fought, and poor people were homeless. And now none of the '_vieux de la vieille_' were there to guard.
These were the visions that a.s.sembled in Miss Stanley's brain while Marie, her lean fists clenched, reported the boy's wild talk. The lumps of fat hardened on her congealing soup; and still her mind went painfully, shuttle-wise, back and forth from her telegram--infinitely delayed, but clearly authentic--to the apocalyptic events surrounding her. Like most Americans perpetually defended by two oceans, Miss Stanley had no conception of invasion as a reality. The insult of an enemy on your own ground was one which she had never steeled herself to meet. There was no weapon in her little a.r.s.enal for a literal foe. Her knees trembled under her as she rose to look out of the window, after Marie, spent with eloquence, had left her.
Edmund Laye, by this, was with his regiment--even she might not know where. No point in trying to break through to London: his telegram, dated the day of his arrival in England, was already too old. The letter he promised her would go the way of all the letters he must have written, that she had never had. And she herself was caught: she had waited too long on that predestined plain. The noises she heard seemed rumblings of the earth and cracklings of the inflamed sky. Andecy manor had not yet seen one soldier, unless you reckoned the pilots of those soaring monoplanes. But their hours were numbered: soon--any moment, now--all that hidden rumor would break forth into visible fruit of fighting men--men with rifles, men with lances, men with mitrailleuses or howitzers. She was trapped. To try, even with no luggage, to make the miles to Sezanne, would be not so much to take her life in her hands as to kick it from her. Caught; and her nervous nostrils feigned for her a subtle odor of smoke. She turned from the window and went to the quiet room that had once been the chapel. Out of those windows she could not look, thank Heaven! The life of the Virgin, in villainous stained gla.s.s, barred her vision.
She was absolutely alone. Old Marie and Theophile were not people: they were strangers, creatures, animals--what not. She scarcely knew.
'Allies' meant nothing to her at the moment but marching men. Even Edmund--who would be killed unless they hid in caves and let their beauty rot in the dark. Fool that she had been not to go to England while there was time! Fool that she had been to forget that Edmund Laye, landing in England, would be first of all a Territorial--one of the thousands of slim reeds on which Kitchener was so heavily leaning. She had been obsessed with peace: sure that war could not touch her or what was privately, supremely, hers. She was a creature of peace; a little doctrinaire who supposed that, in the inverted moral world in which she walked, right made might. There was a deal of most logical self-pity in her tears. How did any of it concern her, that she should be cooped in a country manor to await horrors from unknown people? Why should Edmund Laye, who had chosen an antipodal career, be dragged back to present himself as a mark for some Prussian sh.e.l.l? The senselessness of it angered her. Nations meant little to her; the cosmos nothing. Alone in the chapel, she treated herself to a vivid personal rage. And still the strange tumult, that was more than half made of vibrations too slow for sound-waves, beat upon her nerves like an injury to the internal ear.
By twilight, the physical need of action came to her. She felt, in the subtler fibres of her mind, that if she stayed longer there half p.r.o.ne in her worm-eaten arm-chair, groveling mentally in this welter of concrete alarms, she should sink into a pit whence reason could not rescue her. She had been so calm in her folly, so lulled by the sense of her sacred detachment from this b.l.o.o.d.y business, so sure that neutrality protected you from fire and steel even in the thickest _melee_--she could not have been more ridiculous if she had worn a dress cut out of the Stars and Stripes. Now, some obscure inhibition told her, she must act. She must move her hands and feet, limber her cramped muscles, set the blood flowing properly in her veins, make herself physically normal, or her worthless mind would let her go mad. She must not think of death or outrage or torture.
She must forget the things she had heard those first days at Sezanne.
She must forget the gossip of Marie and Theophile and Seraphine, inventing, inventing, with a mediaeval prolixity and a racial gift for the _macabre_, on chill evenings by the fire. They had no need of news.
They dug up out of the b.l.o.o.d.y deeps of the past things the like of which she had never expected to hear. She must forget--shut her staring mouth and forget. Whatever visited itself on Andecy must not find a gibbering mistress there. Perhaps, if she pretended that Edmund knew, moment by moment, what she was doing, she could master her faltering flesh and her undisciplined mind. She had lost him forever, but she would try to be some of the things he thought her. Edmund Laye had called her flower-like. Well: flowers were broken, but they did not go mad. She must be--decent.
Her brisk pacing of the chapel did not allay her fears, but it brought back to her a sense of decorum. Her body had never lent itself to an immodest gesture; what--she caught at the notion--could be more immodest than visible fear? So gradually, by artificial means, she brought herself back into some dignity; scolding and shaking herself into a trooper's demeanor. She could not trust her mind, but perhaps she could get her instincts into fighting form. Cautiously she tried them--as you try a crazy foothold to see if it will bear your weight. Her muscles seemed to respond: suppleness, strength, coordination, were reported satisfactory. She thought she could promise not to fall a-s.h.i.+vering again. The noise in her ears faded; the vibrations ceased to rock her nerves. Miss Stanley flung open the chapel door, and walked firmly, ignoring echoes, down the brick-paved corridor to the kitchen.
Marie, Theophile, and little Jeanne watched, in a kind of apathy, the pot on the fire. In the dim corners of the big kitchen, Miss Stanley thought she saw strange figures. Inspection revealed a few frightened women and children from farms that had once been dependencies of Andecy.
Here was something to do--more blessed exercise for hands and feet.
'You, Francoise? and the little ones? And you, Mathilde? and the girl?
Good! It is time the children had food and went to bed. We must economize candles, so we will all eat here. The dining-room, in half an hour, will be a dormitory. Jeanne shall sleep in my room. Milk and gruel for the little ones, Marie, and _soupe aux choux_ for the rest of us.
Milk we will use while we have it. Eggs also. We cannot expect to keep the livestock forever. Bread we have not--until I bake it in my own fas.h.i.+on. It may come to that. Jeanne, you will eat with us older ones.
Come and help me make beds for the children. Luckily, there are cots for a whole community. In half an hour'--she took out her watch--'the babies sup and say their prayers. To-morrow, I prepare the chapel and the pupils' old dormitory for wounded. Wounded there will be, if what we hear from Sezanne--though they are all fools in Sezanne, from the fat mayor down--be true. My fiance is at the front. We wait here for our men, hein?' And she beckoned to Jeanne.
She had made her speech blindly, recklessly planning as she spoke, thinking that if she could convince her hearers she could perhaps convince herself. She looked for the effect on them when she had done.
The speech had worked. If it worked for them, it must work for her, too.
It could not be madness, if it had lighted up those sodden faces. And as she looked from one to another, she saw a flicker of pride, of patriotism, reflected in their eyes. Reflected from what? From her, without doubt. There must have been pride in her voice and glance when she spoke of Edmund Laye. Good! That was the line to take. There should be a brave show: she would work her muscles to death to keep it going.
Every due emotion should be cultivated in each limb and feature; every surface inch of skin should play its part. The drum and fife should play all the more bravely because her heart was hollow. Perhaps, if she got a fair start, a fine physical impetus toward courage, she could keep it up to the end.
'Come, Jeanne.' She beckoned the child.
The women stirred, and the children huddled against their skirts crept out upon the floor.
'Theophile, is the great gate locked?'
The old man shook his head vaguely. He had gone near to losing his few wits with the rumors from Sezanne which his ears had drunk up so greedily. His shaken mind was wandering windily about in reminiscences of '70 and legends of '15.
'It had best be locked at once. The lantern, Jeanne. Come.'
The child looked at her piteously.
'Oh, very well!' Miss Stanley pushed her gently aside. 'I shall not need it. There is still light enough. Fetch the bowls for the babies, Jeanne.
We must all get to bed, and be up with the dawn.'
Alone, she left the house and crossed the innumerable cobblestones of the huge courtyard to the outer gate. She knew the way of the heavy bolts and bars, for she had often escorted Theophile on his rounds before the official _coucher_ of the household; but her shaking fingers tapped the rusty iron ineffectually. She loathed her fingers: insubordinate little beasts! She struck her right hand smartly with her left, her left with her right, to punish them with real pain. The fingers steadied; she drove the foolish, antiquated bolts home.