With this he handed me a dish of the delicious things. "The story is," he said, "that a certain Abbess brought the secret of making these almonds to Verdun. We have to thank Henry of Navarre for her. He had a pleasant way, when he wished to be rid of an old love with a compliment, of turning her into an Abbess. That time he made a lucky stroke for us."
At the end of luncheon we all drank healths, and nearly everyone made a speech except Mrs. Beckett. She only nodded and smiled, looking so ideal a little mother that she must have made even the highest officers homesick for their mamans.
Then we were led through a mysterious network of narrow passages and vaulted rooms, all lit with electric lamps, and striking cold and cellary. We saw the big hospital, not very busy just then, and the clean, empty operating theatre, and gnome-caverns where munitions were stored in vast, black pyramids. When there was nothing left to see in the citadel, our hosts asked if we would like to pay a visit to the trenches—old trenches which had once defended Thiaumont.
"I don't think my wife had better——" Mr. Beckett began; but the little old lady cut him short. "Yes, Father, I just had better! To-day, being among all these splendid brave soldiers has shown me that I'm weak—a spoiled child. I felt yesterday I'd been a coward. Now I know it! And I'm going to see those trenches."
I believe it was partly the powder and lip salve that made her so desperate!
Her husband yielded, meek as a lamb. Big men like Mr. Beckett always do to little women like Mrs. Beckett. But she bore it well. And when at last we bade good-bye to our glorious hosts, she said to me, "Molly, you tell them in French, that now I've met them I understand why the Germans could never pass!"
CHAPTER XVIII
Almost any place on earth would be an anti-climax the day after Verdun—but not Rheims!
Just at this moment (it mayn't be much more) Rheims is resting, like a brave victim on the rack who has tired his torturers by an obstinate silence. Only a few people are allowed to enter the town, save those who have lived there all along, and learned to think no more of German bombs than German sausages; and those favoured few must slip in and out almost between breaths. Any instant the torturing may begin again, when the Boches have bombs to spare for what they call "target practice"; for think, how near is Laon!—and we'd been warned that, even at the portals of the town, we might be turned back.