"Thank you for obeying," I said. And just then someone came into the room.
Now, Padre, I have told you the great thing. What does it matter what happens to me, if only Jack Curtis's "feeling" comes true?
CHAPTER XXIII
It is two days since I wrote, Padre; and I have come back to Compiègne from a world of unnatural silence and desolation. Day before yesterday it was Roye and Nesle; the Château of Ham; Jussy, Chauny and Prince Eitel Friedrich's pavilion. To-morrow we hope to start for Soissons.
Yesterday we rested, because Mother Beckett had a shocking headache. (Oh, it was pathetic and funny, too, what she said when we slipped back into Compiègne at night! "Isn't it a comfort, Molly, to see a place again where there are whole houses?") After Soissons we shall return to Compiègne and then go to Amiens with several of the war correspondents, who have their own car. Women aren't allowed, as a rule, to see anything of the British front, but it's just possible that Father Beckett can get permission for his wife to venture within gazing distance. Of course, she can't—or thinks she can't—stir without me!
We took still another road to Noyon (one must pass through Noyon going toward the front, if one keeps Compiègne for one's headquarters) and the slaughter of trees was the wickedest we'd seen: a long avenue of kind giants murdered, and orchards on both sides of it. The Germans, it seems, had circular saws, worked by motors, on purpose to destroy the large trees in a hurry. They didn't protect their retreat by barring the road with the felled trunks. They left most of the martyrs standing, their trunks so nearly sawed through that a wind would have blown them down. The pursuing armies had to finish the destruction to protect themselves. Farms were exterminated all along the way; and little hamlets—nameless for us—were heaps of blackened brick and stone, mercifully strewn with flowers like old altars to an unforgotten god.
Roye was the first big place on our road. It used to be rich, and its 4,000 inhabitants traded in grain and sugar. How the very name brought back our last spring joy in reading news of the recapture! "Important Victory. Roye Retaken." It was grandly impressive in ruin, especially the old church of St. Pierre, whose immense, graceful windows used to be jewelled with ancient glass that people came from far away to see.
Jim had written his mother about that glass, consequently she would get out of the car to climb (with my help and her husband's) over a pile of fallen stones like a petrified cataract, which leads painfully up to the desecrated and pillaged high altar. I nearly sprained my ankle in getting to one of the windows, under which my eyes had caught the glint of a small, sparkling thing: but I had my reward, for the sparkling thing was a lovely bit of sapphire-blue glass from the robe of some saint, and the little lady was grateful for the gift as if it had been a real jewel—indeed, more grateful. "I'll keep it with my souvenirs of Jim," she said, "for his eyes have looked on it: and it's just the colour of yours which he loved. He'd be pleased that you found it for me." (Ah, if she knew! I can't help praying that she never may know, though such prayers from me are almost sacrilege.)