Then, in an instant, before the cars could turn, we did know why. Flies!... such flies as I had never seen ...nightmare flies. They rose from everywhere, in a thick black cloud, like the plague of Egypt. They were in thousands. They were big as bees. They dropped on us like a black jelly falling out of a mould. They sat all over us. It was only when our cars had swayed and stumbled up again, over that awful road, out of the haunted hole in the deep woods, and risen into fresh, moving air, that the horde deserted us. Julian O'Farrell had his hands bitten, and dear Mother Beckett was badly stung on the throat. Horrible!... I don't think I could have slept at night for thinking of the Ravin de Bitry, if we hadn't had such a refreshing run home that the impression of the lost, dark place was purified away.
Forest fragrance sprayed into our faces like perfume from a vaporizer. We seemed to pass through endless halls supported by white marble pillars, which were really spaces between trees, magically transformed by our blazing headlight. Always in front of us hovered an archway of frosted silver, moving as we moved, like a pale, elusive rainbow; and when we put on extra speed for a long, straight stretch, poplars carelessly spared by the Boches spouted up on either side of us like geysers. Then, suddenly, across a stretch of blackness palely shone Compiègne, as Venice shines across the dark lagoon.
CHAPTER XXV
Little did I think, Padre, to write you from Soissons! When last I spoke to you about it, we were gazing through field-glasses at the single tower of the cathedral, pointing out of purple shadows toward the evening star of hope. Then we lost ourselves in the Ravin de Bitry, and arrived thankfully at Compiègne two hours later than we had planned. We expected to have part of a day at Soissons, but—I told you of the dreadful flies in that ravine of death, and how Mother Beckett was stung on the throat. The next day she had a headache, but took aspirin, and pronounced herself well enough for the trip to Soissons. Father Beckett let her go, because he's in the habit of letting her do whatever she wants to do, fancying (and she fancies it, too) that he is master. You see, we thought it was only a fatigue-headache. Foolishly, we didn't connect it with the sting, for Julian O'Farrell was bitten, too, and didn't complain at all.
Well, we set out for Soissons yesterday morning (I write again at night) leaving all our luggage at the hotel in Compiègne. It was quite a safe and uneventful run, for the Germans stopped shelling Soissons temporarily some time ago, when they were obliged to devote their whole attention to other places. The road was good, and the day a dream of Indian summer, when war seemed more than ever out of place in such a world. If Mother Beckett looked ill, we didn't notice, because she wore her dust-veil. The same officer was with us who'd been our guide last time, and we felt like friends, as he explained, with those vivid gestures Frenchmen have, just how the Germans in September, 1914, marched from Laon upon Soissons—marched fast, singing, yelling, wild to take a city so important that the world would be impressed. Why, it would be—they thought—as if the whole Île-de-France were in their grasp! The next step would be to Paris, goal of all Germanic invasions since Attila.
It's an engaging habit of Mother Beckett's to punctuate exciting stories like this with little soft sighs of sympathy: but the graphic war descriptions given by our lieutenant left her cold. Even when we came into the town, and began to go round it in the car, she was heavily silent, not an exclamation! And we ought to have realized that this was strange, because Soissons nowadays is a sight to strike the heart a hammer-blow.
Of course the place isn't older than Rheims. It's of the same time and the same significance. But its face looks older in ruin—such features as haven't been battered out of shape. There's the wonderful St. Jean-des-Vignes, which should have interested the little lady, because the great namesake of her family St. Thomas à Beckett, lived there, when it was one of Soissons' four famous abbeys. There's the church of St. Léger, and the grand old gates of St. Médard, to say nothing of the cathedral itself. And then there's the history, which goes back to the Suessiones who owned twelve towns, and had a king whose power carried across the sea, all the way to Britain. If Mother Beckett doesn't know much about history, she loves being in the midst of it, and hearing talk of it. But when our Frenchman told us a story of her latest favourite, King Clovis, she had the air of being asleep behind her thick blue veil. It was quite a good story, too, about a gold vase and a bishop. The gold vase had been stolen in the sack of the churches, after the battle of Soissons, when Roman rule was ended in France. St. Remi begged Clovis to give the vase back. But the booty was being divided, and the soldier who had the vase refused to surrender it to a mere monarch. "You'll get what your luck brings you, like the rest of us!" said he, striking the vase so hard with his battle-axe that it was dented, and its beauty spoiled. Clovis swallowed the insult, that being the day of soldiers, not of kings: but he didn't forget; and he kept watch upon the man. A year later, to the day, the excuse he'd waited for came. The soldier's armour was dirty, on review; Clovis had the right as a general to reproach and punish him, so snatching the man's battle-axe, the king crushed in the soldier's head. "I do to you with the same weapon what you did to the gold vase at Soissons!" he said.
It wasn't until we had seen everything, and had spent over an hour looking at the martyred cathedral, from every point of view, inside and out, that Mother Beckett confessed her suffering. "Oh, Molly!" she gasped, leaning on my arm, "I'm so glad there's only one tower, and not two! That is, I'm glad, as it was always like that."
"Why," I exclaimed, "how odd of you, dearest! I know it's considered one of the best cathedrals in France, though it isn't a museum of sculpture, like Rheims. But the single tower worries me, it looks so unfinished. I'm not glad there's only one!"