Hence the proximity of hostilities has left but little outward and visible sign upon the ancient town. The tradesmen have, it is true, made some concessions to our presence, and one remarks the inviting legends "Top-hole Tea" in the windows of a pâtisserie and "High life" over the shop of a tailor. Four of us made a private arrangement with a buxom housewife, whereby, in return for four francs per head a day and the pooling of our rations, she undertook to provide us with lunch and dinner, thereby establishing a "Mess" of our own. Many such fraternities there were in the absence of a regular regimental mess. But these arrangements were more private than military, the only obligation on the ordinary householder being the furnishing of billets. Occasionally the cobbled streets became the scene of an unwonted animation when young French recruits celebrated their call to the colours by marching down the streets arm-in-arm singing ribald songs, or a squad of sullen German prisoners were marched up them on their way to the prison, within which they vanished amid the imprecations of the crowd. One such squad I saw arriving in a motor lorry, from the tailboard of which they jumped down to enter the gates, and one of them, a clumsy fellow of about thirteen stones, landed heavily in his ammunition boots from a height of about five feet on the foot of a British soldier on guard. The latter winced and hastily drew back his foot, but beyond that gave no sign; I wondered whether, had the positions been reversed and the scene laid across the Rhine, a German guard would have exhibited a similar tolerance. I doubt it.
The town itself seemed to be living on its past, for indubitably it had seen better days. An ancient foundation of the Jesuits now converted into the Map and Printing Department of the R.E.'s, a church whose huge nave had been secularised to the uses of motor transport, a museum which served to incarcerate the German prisoners, all testified to the vanished greatness, as did also the private mansions, which preserved a kind of mystery behind their high-walled gardens and massive double doors. There was one such which I never passed at night without thinking of the Sieur de Maletroit's door. The streets were narrow, tortuous, and secretive, with many blind alleys and dark closes, and it required no great effort of the imagination—especially at night when not a light showed—to call to mind the ambuscades and adventures with the watch which they must have witnessed some centuries before. The very names of the streets—such as the Rue d'Arbalête—held in them something of romance. To find one's billet at night was like a game of blind man's buff, and one felt rather than saw one's way. Not a soul was to be seen, for the whole town was under droit de siège, and the civilian inhabitants had to be within doors by nine o'clock, while all the entrances and exits to and from the town were guarded by double sentries night and day. Certain dark doorways also secreted a solitary sentry, and my own office boasted a corporal's guard—presumably because the Field-Cashier had his rooms on the first floor. The sanitation was truly medieval; on either side of the cobbled streets noisome gutters formed an open sewer into which housewives emptied their slop-pails every morning, while mongrel dogs nosed among the garbage. Yet the precincts were not without a certain beauty, and every side of the town was approached through an avenue of limes or poplars. But in winter the sodden landscape was desolate beyond belief, these roads presenting just that aspect of a current of slime in a muddy sea which they suggested to the lonely horseman on the eve of Waterloo in that little classic of De Vigny's known to literature as Laurette.
Such was the country and such the town in which we were billeted. Now upon a morning in February it happened that I was smoking a cigarette in the little garden, bordered by hedges of box, while waiting for my car, and as I waited I watched Jeanne, with her sleeves rolled up to her elbows and a clothes-peg in her mouth, busy over the wash-tub. "Vous êtes une blanchisseuse, aujourd'hui?" I remarked. She corrected me. "Non, m'sieu', une lessiveuse." "Une lessiveuse?" For answer Jeanne pointed to a linen-bag which was steeping in the tub. The linen-bag contained the ashes of the beech-tree; it is a way of washing that they have in some parts of France, and very cleansing. To specialise thus is lessiver. As we talked in this desultory fashion I let fall a word concerning a journey I was about to undertake to the French lines, a journey that would take me over the battlefield of the Marne. "La Marne! Hélas, quelle douleur!" said Jeanne, and wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron. "But it was a glorious victory," I expostulated. Yes, but Jeanne, it seemed, had lost a brother in the battle of the Marne. She pulled out of her bosom a frayed letter, bleached, stained, and perforated with holes about the size of a shilling, and handed it to me. I could make nothing of it. She handed me another letter. "Son camarade," she explained, and no longer attempted to hide her tears. And this was what I read:
Le 10 sept., 1914.
Chère Madame—Comme j'étais très bon camarade avec votre frère Paul Duval et que le malheur vient de lui arriver, je tient à vous le faire savoir, car peut-être vous serai dans l'inquiétude de pas recevoir de ces nouvelles et de ne pas savoir où il est. Je vous dirai que je vient de lui donner du papier à lettre et une enveloppe pour vous écrire et aussitôt la lettre finit il l'a mis dans son képi pour vous l'envoyé le plus vite possible et malheureusement un obus est arriver, et il à etait tué. Heureusement nous étions trois près de l'un l'autre et il n'y a eut de lui de touché. Je vous envoi la petite lettre qu'il venait de vous faire, et en même tant vous verrez les trous que les éclats d'obus l'on attrapper. Recevez de moi chère madame mes sincères salutations.
Jules Coppée.
Tambour au 151e Regiment d'Inf.,
2e Cie 42e Division, Secteur postale 56.
Crude and illiterate though it was, the letter had a certain noble simplicity. "Très gentil," I remarked as I returned it to Jeanne, and thought the matter at an end. But Jeanne had not done, and, with much circumlocution and many hesitations, she at last preferred a simple request. I was going to visit the battlefield of the Marne—yes? I assented. Well, perhaps, perhaps Monsieur would visit Paul's grave, and perhaps if he found it he would take a photograph. "Why, certainly," I said, little knowing what I promised. But the request was to have a strange sequel, as you shall hear. Sykes came to say my car was at the door. As I clambered in and turned to wave a farewell, Madame and Jeanne stood on the doorstep to wish me bon voyage. "J'espère que vous tuerez plusieurs Allemands," cried Madame in a quavering voice. "Veuillez ne pas oublier, M'sieu'," cried Jeanne wistfully. I waved my hand, and had soon left rue Robert le Frisson far behind me.
FOOTNOTE:
[8] The town described in this sketch is described not as it is, but as it was some months ago, and nothing is to be inferred from the title as to its present significance.