The little old town of Cassel on the hill—where once a Duke of York marched up and then marched down again—was beyond shell-range, though the enemy tried to reach it and dropped twelve-inch shells (which make holes deep enough to bury a coach and horses) round its base. There is an inn there—the Hotel du Sauvage—which belongs now to English history, and Scottish and Irish and Welsh and Australian and Canadian. It was the last place along the road to Ypres where men who loved life could get a dinner sitting with their knees below a table-cloth, with candle-light glinting in glasses, while outside the windows the flickering fires of death told them how short might be their tarrying in the good places of the world. This was a good place where the blinds were pulled down by Madame, who understood. Behind the desk was Mademoiselle Suzanne, “a dainty rogue in porcelain,” with wonderfully bright eyes and just a little greeting of a smile for any young officer who looked her way trying to get that greeting, because it was ever so long since he had seen a pretty face and might be ever so long again. Sometimes it was a smile met in the mirror against the wall, to which Suzanne looked to touch her curls and see, like the Lady of Shalott, the pictures of life that passed. A man would tilt his chair to get that angle of vision. Outside, on these nights of war, it was often blusterous, very dark, wet with heavy rain. The door opened, and other officers came in with waterproofs sagging round their legs and top-boots muddy to the tags, abashed because they made pools of water on polished boards.
“Pardon, Madame.”
“Ca ne fait rien, Monsieur.”
There was a klip-klop of horses' hoofs in the yard. I thought of D'Artagnan and the Musketeers who might have ridden into this very yard, strode into this very room, on their way to Dunkirk or Calais. Madame played the piano remarkably well, classical music of all kinds, and any accompaniment to any song. Our young officers sang. Some of them touched the piano with a loving touch and said, “Ye gods, a piano again!” and played old melodies or merry ragtime. Before Passchendaele was taken a Canadian boy brought a fiddle with him, and played last of all, after other tunes, “The Long, Long Trail,” which his comrades sang.
“Come and play to us again,” said Madame.
“If I come back,” said the boy.
He did not come back along the road through Ypres to Cassel.
From the balcony one could see the nightbirds fly. On every moonlight night German raiders were about bombing our camps and villages. One could see just below the hill how the bombs crashed into St.-Marie Capelle and many hamlets where British soldiers lay, and where peasants and children were killed with them. For some strange reason Cassel itself was never bombed.
“We are a nest of spies,” said some of the inhabitants, but others had faith in a miraculous statue, and still others in Sir Herbert Plumer.
Once when a big shell burst very close I looked at Mademoiselle Suzanne behind the desk. She did not show fear by the flicker of an eyelid, though officers in the room were startled.