VIII

To go from Le Mans to Falaise, from Falaise to St. Lo; from St. Lo to Morlaix, and thence to Poitiers would seem very easy on the map, and with a motor, in times gone by it was a really royal itinerary, so vastly different and picturesque are the various regions crossed. But now that gasolene is handed out by the spoonful even to sanitary formations, it would be just as easy for the civilian to procure a white elephant as to dream of purchasing sufficient "gas" to make such a trip.

There is nothing to do but take the train, and that means of locomotion not only requires time, but patience and considerable good humour. Railway service in France has been decidedly reduced, and while travelling is permitted only to those persons who must needs do so, the number of plausible motives alleged has greatly augmented, with the result that trains are crowded to the extreme limit. To tell the truth, a good third of the population is always moving. For how on earth is one to prevent the parents of a wounded hero from crossing the entire country to see him, or deny them the right to visit a lad at his training camp?

This then accounts for the appearance of the Breton peasant's beribboned hat and embroidered waistcoat on the promenades of the Riviera, the Arlesian bonnet in the depths of Normandy, the Pyrenese cap in Lorraine.

All this heterogeneous crowd forms a long line in front of the ticket office, each one encumbered with a basket or a bag, a carpetsack or a bundle containing patés and sausages, pastry and pickles, every known local dainty which will recall the native village to the dear one so far away.

It is thus that from Argentan to Caën I found myself seated between a stout motherly person from Auvergne, and a little dark man from whose direction was wafted so strong an odour of garlic that I had no difficulty discerning from what region he hailed. Next to him were a bourgeois couple whose mourning attire, red eyes and swollen faces bespoke plainly enough the bereavement they had just suffered. Silent, indifferent to everything and everybody, their hands spread out on their knees, they stared into the ghastly emptiness, vainly seeking consolation for their shattered dream, their grief-trammelled souls.

A heavily built couple of Norman farmers occupied the seats on either side of the door, and then came a tall young girl and her mother, a Belgian soldier, and finally a strange old creature wearing an antiquated starched bonnet, a flowered shawl, and carrying an umbrella such as one sees but in engravings illustrating the modes and customs of the eighteenth century. She was literally buried beneath a monumental basket which she insisted upon holding on her knees.

Every available inch of floor space was covered with crocks and kits full of provisions, and in the rack above our heads were so many boxes and bundles, bags and bales, remaining aloft by such remarkable laws of equilibrium that I feared lest any moment they fall upon our heads, and once this catastrophe occurred there seemed to be little hope of extricating oneself from beneath the ruins.

The conversation was opened by the Norman farmer who offered to relieve the little old woman of her basket and set it safely between his feet.

"Oh, non merci," she piped in a thin little wavering treble, and an inimitable accent which made it impossible to guess her origin.

"Oh, no, Monsieur, thank you," she continued. "It's full of cream tarts and cherry tarts, and custard pies made right in our own home. I'm taking them to my boy, and as we stayed up very late to make them so that they would be quite fresh, I should hate to have any of them crushed or broken. He did love them so when he was little!"

"Our son was just the same. As soon as he was able to eat he begged them to let him have some brioche. But his fever was too high when we got there, and he couldn't take a thing. 'That doesn't matter,' he said to his mother. 'Just the sight of them makes my mouth water, and I feel better already.'"

My Provençal neighbour could no longer resist. His natural loquaciousness got the better of his reserve.

"Well, the first thing my son asked for was olives, so I brought him enough to last, as well as some sausage which he used to relish. Oh, if only I could bring him a little bit of our blue sky, I'm sure he would recover twice as quickly."

The mother of the young girl now sat forward and asked the Norman farmer's wife where and how her son had been wounded.

"He had a splinter of shell in his left thigh. He'd been through the whole campaign without a scratch or a day of illness."

The woman's eyes sparkled with pride and tenderness.

The short man beside me, who informed me he was a native of Beaucaire on the Rhone, had one son wounded and being cared for in a hospital at Caën, a second prisoner in Germany, and two sons-in-law already killed.

According to a letter which the dear old flowered shawl spelled out to us word by word, her grandson had been wounded in seven different places, and had had one hand and one leg amputated. But he hastened to add that he was not worrying a bit about it.

The young girl's mother had one son in the ranks, and a second, aged seventeen, had enlisted and was about to leave for the front. She and her daughter were on their way to embrace him for the last time.

The Belgian soldier was just getting about after an attack of typhoid fever, and the motherly person on my left was travelling towards her husband, a territorial of ripe years whose long nights of vigil beneath bridges and in the mud of the Somme had brought him down with inflammatory rheumatism. Their son, they prayed, was prisoner—having been reported missing since the 30th of August, 1914. This coarse, heavy featured woman of the working classes, cherished her offspring much as a lioness does her young. She told us she had written to the President of the Republic, to her Congressman, her Senator, to the King of Spain, the Norwegian Ambassador, to the Colonel of the Regiment, as well as to all the friends of her son on whose address she had been able to lay hand; and she would keep right on writing until she obtained some result, some information. She could not, would not, admit that her boy was lost; and scarcely stopping to take breath she would ramble on at length, telling of her hopes and her disappointments to which all the compartment listened religiously while slowly the train rolled along through the smiling, undulating Norman country.

Each one did what he could to buoy up the mother's hopes.

The little Southerner seemed to possess a countless number of stories about prisoners, and he presently proceeded to go into minute detail about the parcels he sent to his own son, explaining the regulation as to contents, measures and weights, with so much volubility that the good soul already saw herself preparing a package to be forwarded to her long lost darling.

"You can just believe that he'll never want for anything—if clothes and food will do him any good. There's nothing on earth he can't have if only we can find him, if only he comes back to us."

And growing bolder as she felt the wealth of sympathy surrounding her, she looked over and addressed the woman in mourning, who at that moment smiled gently at her.

"We thought we knew how much we loved them, didn't we, Madame? But we'd never have realised how really deep it was if it hadn't been for this war, would we?"

The woman continued to smile sadly.

"More than likely you've got somebody in it too," persisted the stout Auvergnate, whose voice suddenly became very gentle and trembled a trifle.

"I had three sons. We have just buried the last one this morning."

All the faces dropped and a ghastly silence fell upon the group. Each one looked straight into the distance ahead of him, but the bond of sympathy was drawn still tighter, and in the moment of stillness that ensued I felt that all of us were communing with Sorrow.

Between Folligny and Lamballe, we were quite as closely huddled between three soldiers on furlough, a stout old priest, a travelling salesman, and a short gentleman with a pointed beard, a pair of eyeglasses and an upturned nose.

At one moment our train halted and waited an incredible length of time vainly whistling for the tower-man to lift the signal which impeded our progress.

The travelling salesman who was cross and weary finally left his seat, grumbling audibly.

"We'll never in the world get there on time. It's certain I shall miss my connection! What a rotten road! What management!"

"It's the war," murmered the priest pulling out a red checked handkerchief in which he buried his nose.

"You don't have to look far to see that," responded the other, still grumbling.

"Oh, it's plain enough for us all right. Those who are handling government jobs are the only fellows who don't know it, I should say."

"Bah! each of us has his troubles—each of us has his Cross to bear," murmured the Father by way of conciliation, casting his eyes around the compartment, much as he would have done upon the faithful assembled to hear him hold forth.

"Pooh! it's you priests who are the cause of all the trouble. It was you who preached and got the three year service law voted."

The poor Curate was fairly suffocated with surprise and indignation. He was so ruffled he could hardly find a word. In the meantime the travelling salesman taking advantage of his silence, continued:

"Yes, it was you and the financiers, and it's nothing to brag about either!"

The man with the upturned nose now wheeled about sharply. His blood was up and he strangely resembled a little bantam cockerel.

"Monsieur," he snapped, and his voice was clear and cutting, "if any one had a right to express a complaint on any subject whatsoever, it would certainly be the soldiers who are seated in this compartment. Now as they have said nothing, I cannot admit that you, a civilian, should take such liberties."

"But, Monsieur——"

"Yes, Monsieur, that's exactly what I mean, and as to the sentiments to which you have given voice they are as stupid as they are odious. We all know now that war was inevitable. The Germans have been preparing it for forty years."

"Monsieur!"

The two glared fixedly at each other for an instant; the one was very red, the other extremely pale. Then they turned about and resumed their places in each corner. The priest produced his breviary, the soldiers finished a light repast composed of bread and cheese.

They were all three peasants, easily discernible from the way they slowly chewed and swallowed, or caught up a crumb of cheese on the point of their knives. They had sat silent and listened to the outbursts without turning an eyelash. Then presently one of them lifted his head and addressing his companions in a deep bass voice:

"Well," said he, "this makes almost two days now that we've been on the way!"

"What have you got to kick about?" retaliated the other, shutting his knife and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "You're as well off here as you were in the trenches of Bois Le Pretre, aren't you?"

The third one said nothing, but recommenced carving a cane which he had abandoned for an instant, and which he was terminating with more patience than art, though the accomplishment of his task seemed to give him infinite pleasure.

As the commercial traveller had predicted, we were hours late and in consequence missed our connection, but the platform of a station where two lines meet, offers, under such circumstances, so diverse and diverting a spectacle that we hardly regretted the delay. It is here that any one interested in physiognomy can best study and judge the masses, for it is as though the very texture from which France is woven were laid bare before him. This spectacle is constantly changing, constantly renewed, at times deeply moving. No face can be, or is, indifferent, in these days and one no longer feels himself a detached individual observer; one becomes an atom of the crowd, sharing the anxiety of certain women that one knows are on their way to a hospital and who half mad with impatience are clutching the fatal telegram in one hand, while with the fingers of the other they thrum on one cheek or nervously catch at a button or ornament of their clothing.

Or again one may participate in the hilarious joy of the men on furlough, who having discovered the pump, stand stripped to the waist, making a most meticulous toilet, all the while teasing a fat, bald-headed chap to whom they continuously pass their pocket combs with audible instructions to be sure to put his part on the left side.

The waiting-rooms literally overflow with soldiers—some stretched out on the benches, some on the floor; certain lying on their faces, others on their backs, and still others pillowing their heads on their knapsacks.

One feels their overpowering weariness, their leaden sleep after so many nights of vigil; their absolute relaxation after so many consecutive days in which all the vital forces have been stretched to the breaking point.

From time to time an employé opens the door and shouts the departure of a train. The soldiers rouse themselves, accustomed to being thus disturbed in the midst of their slumber. One or two get up, stare about them, collect their belongings and start for the platform, noiselessly stepping over their sleeping companions. At the same time newcomers, creeping in behind them, sink down into the places which they have just forsaken, while they are still warm.

On a number of baggage trucks ten or a dozen Moroccan soldiers have seated themselves, crosslegged, and draped in their noble burnous, they gently puff smoke into the air, without a movement, without a gesture, without a sound, apparently utterly oblivious to the noisy employés, or the thundering of the passing trains.

On the platform people walk up and down, up and down; certain among them taking a marked interest in the old-fashioned, wheezing locomotives which seem fairly to stagger beneath the long train of antiquated coaches hitched behind them.

Here, of course, are to be found the traditional groups in evidence at every station; a handful of people in deep mourning on their way to a funeral; a little knot of Sisters of Charity, huddled together in an obscure corner reciting their rosary; families of refugees whom the tempest has driven from their homes—whole tribes dragging with them their old people and their children who moan and weep incessantly. Their servants loaded down with relics saved from the disaster in heavy, clumsy, ill-tied bundles, are infinitely pitiable to behold. They are all travelling straight ahead of them with no determined end in view. They seem to have been on the way so long, and yet they are in no haste to arrive. Hunger gnawing them, they produce their provisions, and having seated themselves on their luggage, commence a repast, eating most slowly, the better to kill time while waiting for a train that refuses to put in an appearance.

The buffet is so full of noise, smoke and various other odours, that having opened the door one hesitates before entering. There is a long counter where everything is sold; bread, wine, cider, beer and lemonade; sandwiches, patés, fruit and sweetmeats. One makes his choice and pays in consequence. At the side tables the civilians are lost mid the mass of blue uniforms.