I
THE August sun on the Riviera is a blinding white glare and a baking heat. In it the grapes ripen to deepest purple and olives fill themselves to bursting with golden oil. Men and women born and raised in the Midi have skins filled with dark pigments to protect them, and they can work in the fields without damage to their complexions. But to a blond daughter of chill and foggy New England the excess of light and heat assumed an aspect hostile and menacing; an enemy seeking to dry the juices out of her nerves, cover her fair skin with scaly brown spots, and deprive her of those charms by which and for which she had been living.
So Beauty Budd had to hide in the protection of a shuttered house, and have an electric fan to blow away the heat from her body. She rarely went out until after sundown, and since there was no one to look at her during the day, she yielded gradually to the temptation of not taking too much trouble. She would wear her old dressing gowns to save the new ones, and let her son see her with hair straggling. She got little exercise, there being nothing for her to do in a. house with servants.
The result was that terror which haunts the lives of society ladies, the monster known as embonpoint, a most insidious enemy, who keeps watch at the gates of one's being like a cat at a gopher hole. It never sleeps, and never forgets, but stays on the job, ready to take advantage of every moment of weakness or carelessness. It creeps upon you one milligram at a time — for the advances of this enemy are not measured in space but in avoirdupois. With it, everything is gain and nothing loss; what it wins it keeps. The battle with this unfairest of fiends became the chief concern of Beauty's life, and the principal topic of her conversation in the bosom of her family.
No use looking to the government for help. During the course of the war the inhabitants of the great cities would be rationed, and those of whole countries such as Germany and Britain; but over the warm valleys of the Riviera roamed cattle, turning grass into rich cream, and there were vast cellars and caves filled with barrels of olive oil, and new supplies forming in billions of tiny black globes on the gnarled and ancient trees. Figs were ripening, bees were busy making honey — in short, war or no war, a lady who received a thousand dollars' worth of credit every month in the invulnerable currency of the United States of America could have delivered at her door unlimited quantities of oleaginous and saccharine materials.
Nor could the trapped soul expect help from the servants who waited upon her. Leese, the cook, was fat and hearty, and Rosine, the maid, would become so in due course, and both of them were set in the conviction that this was the proper way for women to be. “C'est la nature,” was the formula of all the people of the South of France for all the weaknesses of the flesh. They looked with dismay upon the fashion of Anglo-Saxon ladies to keep themselves in a semi-starved condition under the impression that this was the way to be beautiful; they would loudly insist that the practice was responsible for whatever headache, crise de nerfs, or other malaise such ladies might experience. Leese fried her fish and her rice in olive oil, and her desserts were mixed with cream; she would set a little island of butter afloat in the center of each plate of potage, and crown every sort of sweet with a rosette or curlicue of fat emulsified and made into snow-white bubbles of air. If she was asked not to do these things, she would exercise an old family servant's right to forget.
So in desperation Beauty turned to her son. “Lanny, don't let me have so much cream!” she would cry. She adopted the European practice of hot milk with coffee; and Lanny would watch while she poured a little cream over her fresh figs, and would then keep the pitcher on his side of the table. “No more now,” he would, say when he caught her casting a glance at the tiny Sevres pitcher. But the boy's efforts were thwarted by the mother's practice of keeping a box of chocolates in her room. She would nibble them between meals; and very soon it became evident that the cunning monster of embonpoint could utilize the bean of a sterculiaceous tree exactly as well as the mammary secretion of Bos domestica. Beauty would be in a state of bewilderment about it. “Why, I hardly eat anything at all!” she would exclaim.
II
The explanation of all this was obvious. Beauty Budd was a social being, who could not live without the stimulus of rivalry. When she was going out among people, she would be all keyed up, and when food was put before her, she would be so absorbed in conversation that she would take only absentminded nibbles. But when she was shut up in the house alone, or with people upon whom she did not need to “make an impression,” then, alas, she had time to realize that she was hungry. Not even the thought of a world at war, and the sufferings of millions of men, could save her from that moral decline.
There were friends she might have seen; but in the tumult of fear which had seized the world she preferred to keep to herself. All the Americans in France were hating the Germans; but Beauty hated war with such intensity that she didn't care who won, if only the fighting would end. As for Lanny, he was doing what his father advised, keeping himself neutral. This being the case, they couldn't even speak to their own servants about the terror that was sweeping down upon Paris.
Lanny had to be “society” to his adored mother. He would invite her to a the dansant; putting a record on the phonograph, and letting her show him the fine points of the fashionable dances. He in turn would teach her “Dalcroze,” and make her do “plastic counterpoint”; she would be required to “feel” the music, and they would experiment and argue, and have a very good time. Then he would invite her to a concert, in which they would be both performers and audience; they would play duets, and he would make her work at it. No fun just playing the same things over; if you were going to get anywhere you had to be able to read. He would put a score before her and exhort and scold like a music master.
When Beauty was exhausted from that, he wouldn't let her lie down by the box of chocolates; no, it was time for their swim. When she got into her suit, he would walk behind her to the beach and survey the shapely white calves, and worry her by saying: “They are undoubtedly getting thicker!” The water was warm, and Beauty would want to float and relax, and let him swim around her; but no again, he would challenge her to a race along the shore. He would splash and make her chase him. But he never did succeed in persuading her to put on Robbie's goggles and sink down among the fishes.
They would read aloud, taking turns. Beauty couldn't concentrate upon a book very long, she was too restless — or else too sleepy. But when she had someone to read to her, that was a form of social life. She would interrupt and talk about the story, and have the stimulus of another person's reactions. In course of the years many books had accumulated in the house; friends had given them, or Beauty had bought them on people's recommendation, but had seldom found time to look at them. But now they would enjoy the company of M. France, whom they had met so recently. Lanny found Le Lys Rouge on the shelves, a fashionable love story treated with touches of the worldling's playful mockery. It had been his popular success, and proved a success with Beauty. It took her back to the happy days, the elite of the world enjoying the impulses of what they politely termed their hearts — the glands having not as yet been publicly discovered. Without difficulty Beauty saw herself in the role of a heroine who had become involved with three men, and couldn't figure out what to do. Having visited in Florence, she recalled the lovely landscapes, and they discussed the art treasures and art ideas in the book.
Lanny remembered that M. Priedieu, the librarian, had spoken about Stendhal. A copy of La Chartreuse de Parme had got onto the shelves, they had no idea how. Once more Beauty saw herself as a heroine, a woman for whom love excused all things. She was enraptured by detailed and precise analysis of the great passion. “Oh, that is exactly right!” she would exclaim, and the reading would stop while she told Lanny about men and women, and how they behaved when they were happy in love, or when they were sad; of different types of lovers, and what they said, and whether they meant it or not; how it felt to be disappointed, and to be jealous, and to be thwarted; how love and hatred became mixed and intertangled; the part that vanity played, and love of domination, and love of self, and love of the world and its applause. Beauty Budd had had a great deal of experience, and the subject was one of unending fascination.
Perhaps not all moralists would have approved this kind of conversation between a mother and a son. But she had told Lanny in Paris that if they came back to Juan, he would be a French boy. So he would have to know the arts of love, if only to protect himself. There were dangerous kinds of women, who could wreck the happiness of a man, old or young, and care not a flip of the fan about it. One should know how to tell the good ones from the bad — and generally, alas, it was not possible until it was too late.
There was another purpose, too; Beauty was defending herself, and Marcel, and Harry, or rather what she had done to Harry. Perhaps her conscience troubled her, for she talked often about the plate-glass man, and what might be happening to him in Pittsburgh. Love was bewildering, and many times you wouldn't be happy if you did and wouldn't be if you didn't. You might make a resolve to go off by yourself and have nothing more to do with love; but men had refused to let Beauty do it, and some day soon women would be refusing to let Lanny do it.
After which they would go back to Henri Beyle, soldier, diplomat, and man of the world, who had written under the pen name of Stendhal, and who would tell them how love had fared in the midst of the last World War — just a hundred years earlier, not so long ago in Europe's long story.
III
There came post cards from Marcel Detaze; he was well, busy, and happy to know they were safe at home. He was not permitted to say where he was, but gave the number of his regiment and battalion. The censoring of mail was strict, but no censor in France would object to a painter's declaring that he loved his beautiful blond mistress or to her replying that the sentiments were reciprocated. Beauty fed her soul upon these messages — plus Robbie's assurance that the war couldn't last more than three or four months. Maybe Marcel wasn't going to see any fighting; he would come home with a story of interesting adventure, and life would begin again where it had left off.
Everybody they had met in Paris, and everybody they met now, was confident that the French armies were going to hold the Germans while the Russian steam roller hurtled over Prussia and captured Berlin. The French military authorities had been so confident that they had planned a giant movement of their forces through Alsace and Lorraine; they would break the German lines at the south, then, sweeping north, cut the communications of the enemy advancing through Belgium and northern France. The papers told about the beginning of this counterattack and what it was intended to do; then suddenly they fell silent, and the next reports of fighting in this district came from places in France. Those who understood military affairs knew what this meant — that the armies of la patrie had sustained a grave defeat.
As to what was happening farther north, not all the censorship in the land could hide the facts from the public. One had only to take a map and mark on it the places where fighting was reported, and he would see that it was the German steam roller which was hurtling — and at the rate of ten or twenty miles a day. The little Belgian army was fighting desperately, but was being swept aside; its forts were being pulverized by heavy artillery, and towns and villages in the path of the invasion were being wrecked and burned. The still smaller British army which had been landed at the Channel ports was apparently meeting the same fate. The Kaiser was on his way to Paris!
IV
There came a letter from Sophie, Baroness de la Tourette. That very lively lady had been having an adventure, and wrote about it in detail — being shut up in a room in a fourth-class hotel in Paris, much bored with nothing to do. She had gone to spend the month of August with friends at a country place on the river Maas, which flows through the heart of Belgium. Sophie was a nonpolitical person, entirely devoted to having a good time; she rarely looked at newspapers, and when she heard people talking about war threats, she paid no attention, being unable to take seriously the idea that anybody would disturb the comfort of a person of her social posi T tion.
The ladies she was visiting shared her attitude. News traveled slowly in the country; and when at last they heard that the Germans had crossed the frontier, they did not worry; the army would be going to France, and it might be interesting to watch it pass. Only when they heard the sound of heavy guns did they realize that they might be in danger, and then it was too late; a troop of Uhlans with long lances came galloping up the driveway, and the automobiles and horses on the place were seized. Soon afterward arrived several limousines, and elegant officers descended, and with bowing and heel-clicking informed the ladies of the regrettable need to take the château for a temporary staff headquarters. They all had wasp waists, and wore monocles, long gray coats, gold bracelets, and shiny belts and boots; their manners were impeccable, and they spoke excellent English, and seemed to be well pleased with a lady who was introduced as Miss Sophie Timmons from the far-off state of Ohio.
Her friends had suddenly realized that under the law, being married to a Frenchman, she was French and might be interned for the period of the war. That night she sent her maid to the village and succeeded in hiring a cart and an elderly bony white horse; taking only a suitcase, she and the maid and a peasant driver had set out toward Brussels. There was fighting everywhere to the south and east of them, and the roads were crowded with refugees driving dogcarts, trundling handcarts, or carrying their belongings on their backs. More than once they had had to sit for long periods by the roadside to let the German armies pass, and the woman's letter was full of amazed horror at the perfection of the Kaiser's war machine. For a solid hour she watched motorized artillery rolling by: heavy siege guns, light field-pieces, wicked-looking rapid-firers; caissons, trucks loaded with shells, and baggage trains, pontoon trains, field kitchens. “My dear, they have been getting ready for this all our lifetime!” wrote the Baroness de la Tourette.
She watched the marching men in their dull field-gray uniforms, so much more sensible than the conspicuous blue and red of the French. The Germans tramped in close, almost solid ranks, forever and ever and ever — in one village they told Sophie of an unbroken procèssion for more than thirty hours. “And so many with cigars in their mouths!” she wrote. “I wondered, had they been pillaging the shops.”
The fugitives slept in their cart for fear it might be stolen; and after two days and nights they reached Brussels, which the Germans had not yet taken. From there they got to Ostend, where the British were landing troops, and then by boat to Boulogne, and to Paris by train. “You should see this city!” wrote Sophie. “Everybody has gone that can get away. The government has taken all the horses and trucks. Maybe the taxicabs have been hired by refugees — I'm hoping that a few will come back. All the big hotels are closed — the men employees are in the army. The Place de la Concorde is full of soldiers sleeping upon straw. The strangest thing is that gold and silver coins have disappeared entirely; they say people are hoarding them, and you can't get any change because there's only paper money. I am waiting for a chance to come south without having to walk. I hope the Germans do not get here first. It would be embarrassing to meet those officers again!”
V
When Marcel departed to join the army, he had brought the keys of his cottage to the servants at Bienvenu and left them for Madame Budd. The servants being French, the occasion had not been casual; they had wept and called upon God to protect him, which in turn had brought tears to the eyes of Monsieur. He had said that it was pour la patrie, and that they should take care of the precious Madame, if and when she returned; after those wicked Germans had been driven from the soil of France, they would all live happy forever after, as in the fairy tales.
Leese and Rosine of course knew all about the love affair. To them it was romance, delight, the wine and perfume of life; they lived upon it as women in the United States were learning to live upon the romances, real and imaginary, of the movie stars of Hollywood. Beauty's servants talked about it, not merely among themselves, but with all the other servants of the neighborhood; everybody watched, everybody shared the tenderness, the delight; everybody said, what a shame the young painter was so poor!
Now Beauty received a card from Marcel, saying that, if anything should happen to him, he wanted her to have his paintings. “I don't know if they will ever be worth anything,” he wrote; “but you have been kind to them, while to my relatives they mean nothing. Perhaps it might be well to move them to your house, where they would be safer. Do what you please about this.”
Beauty, watching for every hint in his messages, clasped her hand to her heart. “Lanny, do you suppose that means he's going to some post of danger?”
“I don't know why it should,” said the boy. “We have our own paintings insured, and certainly we ought to take care of his.”
Beauty had been going to the little house and sitting there, remembering the times when she had been so happy, and reproaching herself because she had not appreciated her blessings. Now she went with Lanny to carry out Marcel's commission. There were more than a hundred canvases, each tacked upon a wooden frame, and stacked in a sort of shed-room at the rear of the house. One by one Lanny brought them out and studied them — all those aspects of Mediterranean sea and shore which he knew better than anything else. He exclaimed over the loveliness of them; he was ready to set himself up as an art critic against all the world. Beauty wiped the tears from her eyes and exclaimed over the wickedness of a war that had taken such a lover, and stopped such work, and even made it impossible for Sophie to come to the Riviera unless she walked! There was a group of paintings from the trip to Norway. Lanny had never seen these or heard of them, for it had been before he was told about Marcel. The boy had heard so much about this cold and shining country, and here it was by the magic of art. Here was more than fiords and mountains and saeters and ancient farmhouses with openings in the roofs instead of chimneys; here was the soul of these things, old, yet forever new, so long as men loved beauty and marveled at its self-renewal. Here, also, was Greece with its memories, and Africa with its grim desert men, muffled and silent. The Bluebird was being made over into a hospital ship right now; but its two cruises with the soap king would live — “well, as long as I do,” said Lanny.
VI
The whereabouts of Marcel was supposed to be a secret, upon the preserving of which the safety of la patrie depended. But when you take thousands of young men from a neighborhood and put them into encampments not more than a hundred miles away, it soon becomes what the French call un secret de Polichinelle, something which everybody knows. The truck drivers talked when they came to the towns for supplies, and pretty soon Leese and Rosine were able to inform the family that the painter's regiment was on guard duty in the Alpes Maritimes.
Italy had declared for neutrality in this war; but it could not be forgotten that she had been a member of the so-called Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria. There was a powerful Italian party known as the Triplicists, who wanted to carry out the pledges, and in these days of quick political overturns France dared not leave her Provencal border unguarded. So Marcel had for a while what the British called a “cushy” job. But the trouble was that as the menace of the German steam roller increased, more and more men were being grabbed up and rushed to the north. Right away Beauty decided that she must visit that camp. She didn't wait to write, not knowing if the censor would let such a letter pass; she would just go to the place and lay siege to whatever authorities might be in command. Beauty had arts which she trusted, but which could not be exercised by mail.
The difficulty lay with transportation. They had their car, but Pierre Bazoche was in the army — oddly enough he was a sergeant, and gave orders to the beloved of his former employer. This seemed to the employer among the atrocities of war, but it amused Lanny, and he was sure it wouldn't worry Marcel. Pierre was a capable fellow, and his orders were doubtless proper.
Leese could always find among her innumerable relatives a man or woman to do anything that was needed, and she now produced an elderly truck driver of the flower farms of the Cap d'Antibes, who could be spared for this journey of romantic interest. He was washed and made presentable in Pierre's uniform, and managed to solve the problem of getting the essence, which had suddenly grown scarce and high in price, being needed in huge quantities to move the troops and guns for the saving of Paris.
Lanny sat in the front seat and made friends with old Claude Santoze, who was dark and hook-nosed, and doubtless descended from the Saracen invaders. His black hair was grizzling, and he had half a dozen children at home, but he wanted nothing so much as a chance to fight, and wanted to talk about the war and what Lanny knew about it. The youngster put on the mantle of authority, having a purpose of his own, which was to persuade Claude to say that a boy so intelligent and sensible was old enough to learn to drive a car, and that he, Claude, was willing for a suitable fee to take the time off to teach him.
Having accomplished this much, Lanny moved into the back seat and began a campaign with his mother. He could sail a boat, and run a motorboat, and why was a car any different? Like all boys of his time, Lanny was fascinated by machinery, and listened to the talk of motor owners and drivers and asked all the questions he dared. Now even the women of France were learning to drive, and surely the son of Robbie Budd, maker of machines, ought to be allowed to try. So in the end Beauty said yes; it was one of her characteristics that she found it so hard to say anything else.
VII
They were traveling up the valley of the river Var, amid scenery which took their minds off their troubles. Before many hours they were winding along the sides of mountains, and could only hope that the descendant of the Saracens was as alert as he looked. The chill of autumn was in the air, and the wind blew delightful odors from the pine forests. They were in what seemed a wilderness, when they came suddenly upon the encampment; Beauty was surprised, for she had taken it for granted that soldiers in wartime slept like rabbits in holes in the ground. She had not realized that they would have a town, with excellent one-story wooden buildings and regular streets laid out.
The exercising of feminine charm was going to be difficult. There was a barrier across the road, and the men on duty could not be cajoled into raising it for a car whose occupants had no credentials. The lady would have to submit her request in writing; so they drove back to a tiny village which had what called itself an auberge, and Beauty hired the only two bedrooms it contained. There she penned a note-could you guess to whom? Respectfully and with due formality she addressed herself to Sergeant Pierre Bazoche — the bright idea having occurred to her that a person of rank might be able to pull more wires than a humble private, even though a man of genius. Beauty informed the sergeant that she was the fiancée of Private Detaze, and requested the sergeant's kind offices to obtain a leave of absence for the private.
Lanny handed this in at the barrier, and after that there was nothing to do but wait. It was dark before the answer came, in the shape of the sergeant himself, looking distinguished in his long blue coat and baggy red pants, but not presuming on his new status. He lifted his kepi and bowed, and said that he was delighted to see them both. Like everybody else, his first wish was to know about the terrible events in the north; could it be that Paris was in danger? Could it be that the capital had been moved to Bordeaux? Only afterwards did he mention the matter which was so close to Beauty's heart. Nothing could be done that night, but he was taking steps to arrange matters in the morning so that Madame's wishes might be granted.
How were Beauty and her son going to spend an evening in that wretched village, with only a few huts of woodsmen and charcoal burners, and only candles in their rooms? Lanny had an original suggestion, fitting his own disposition: why not sit in the public room and talk with whoever might come in? The possibility of such a proceeding would never have crossed the mind of Beauty Budd; but the boy argued they would be nothing but peasant fellows, with whom he had chatted off and on all his days. If there was a lady in the room, they would surely mind their conversation. They would sip their wine, play their dominoes, sing their songs. If they were soldiers, they would want to be told about the war, like Pierre. They were Marcel's comrades, and one of them might some day save his life.
That settled it. Beauty decided that she wanted to know them all! So the two had their supper at one of the rough wooden tables in the little drinking place; fried rabbit and onions and dried olives and bread and cheese and sour wine. When they were through they did not leave, but called for a set of dominoes; and when the soldiers came straggling in — what a sensation! Lanny talked with them, and the whisper passed around: “Des Américains!” Ah, yes, that accounted for it; in that wonderful land of millionaires and cinema stars it must be the custom for rich and divinely beautiful blond ladies to sit in public rooms and chat with common soldiers. Before long Lanny revealed why they were there, and the sensation was magnified. Sapristi! C'est la fiancée de Marcel Detaze! II est peintre! II est bon enfant! C'est un diable heureux!
It happened just as Lanny said it would; they all wanted to know about the war. Here were rich people, who had traveled, had been in Paris when the war broke out — what had they seen? And a friend who had been in Belgium — what had she seen? Was it true, Madame, that the Germans were cutting off the hands of Belgian children? That they were spearing babies upon their bayonets and carrying them on the march? Beauty reported that her friend had not mentioned any such sights. She did not express opinions of her own. They were not there to make pro-German propaganda, nor to excite disaffection among the troops!
VIII
In the course of the next morning came Marcel; young, erect, and happy, walking upon air. He caught Beauty in his arms and kissed her, right there in front of an audience, including Lanny, and mine host with long gray mustaches, and several mule teams with drivers, all grinning. Romance had come to the Alpes Maritimes! The men could not have been more interested if it had been a company of movie stars to put them into a picture.
The military life agreed with Marcel; why shouldn't it? asked he — in that bracing mountain air, at the most delightful season of the year, living outdoors, marching and drilling, eating wholesome food, and not a care in the world, except the absence of his beloved. “Re-gardez!” he cried, and pointed to the mountains. “I will have something new to paint!” He showed Lanny the far snowy peaks, and the valleys filled with mist. “There's a new kind of atmosphere,” he said, and wanted to start on it right away. He had just come from sentry duty; on that mountain to the east he paced back and forth many hours at a stretch; it was good, because it gave him time to think and to work out his philosophy of life — and of love, he added. When Beauty spoke of danger, he laughed; he and the Italian sentries exchanged cigarettes and witticisms — “Jokes and smokes,” said Marcel, who was brushing up his English.
They had lunch in the auberge, and Marcel was like all the other soldiers, he wanted to talk about nothing but the war. “Did you bring me any papers?” Yes, Lanny had had that kind thought, and Marcel wanted to see them at once. The boy could see that his mother's feelings were hurt; the painter could actually look at an old newspaper when he had Beauty Budd in front of him! But that's what has to be expected, thought she. “Man's love is of man's life a thing apart; 'Tis woman's whole existence.”
Worse than that: before the lunch was over, Marcel revealed that he wasn't content with this idyllic existence in the mountains; he was pining to get up to the north, into the hell of death and destruction. He undertook to defend this attitude, even though he saw that it brought tears to the eyes of his beautiful blond mistress. “La patrie est en danger!” It was the war cry of the French Revolution, and now, more than a hundred years later, it was shaking the soul of Marcel Detaze. How could any Frenchman know that the goose-step was trampling the banks of the river Marne, only a few miles from Paris, and not desire to rush there, and interpose his body between the most beautiful city in the world and the most hateful of enemies?
Lanny knew that they wanted to be alone; their every glance revealed it, and he said that he would take a walk and see all he could of those grand mountains. Marcel pointed to the west and said: “All France is that way.” Then he pointed to the east and added: “All that is forbidden.”
So Lanny walked to the west, and when he was tired he sat and talked to a shepherd on a hillside; he drank the clear icy water of a mountain stream, and saw the trout darting here and there, and a great bird, perhaps an eagle, sailing overhead, and large grouse called capercaillie whirring through the pine forests. When he came back, toward dark, he saw by the faces of the lovers that they were happy, and by the quivering gray mustaches of the aubergiste and the smiles of his stout wife that all the world loved a lover. Madame had prepared a sort of wedding cake for the occasion, and it was washed down with wine by mule drivers and soldiers who sang love songs, for all the world like a grand opera chorus. “Nous partons, courage; courage aux soldats.”
IX
When they got home again they found that the Baroness de la Tourette had returned to Cannes; she and her maid had managed to crowd into a train, sitting up the whole night — but that was a small matter after the hardships they had been through. Sophie had tales to tell about Paris under what had so nearly been a siege. The German army of invasion had come swinging down on the city, turning like the spokes of a wheel with far-off Verdun as the hub. But when they got close to Paris they veered to the east, apparently planning to enclose the French armies at Verdun and the other fortifications. The minds of their commanders were obsessed by the memory of Sedan; if they could make such a wholesale capture, they could end this war as they had ended the last.
There is around Paris a convergence of waters known as “the seven rivers”; gentle streams, meandering through wooded lands with towns and villages along the banks, and many bridges. The Marne flows into the Seine just before it enters the city at the east. It was along the former river that the German von Kluck contemptuously exposed the right wing of his army; and General Gallieni assembled all the taxicabs and trucks in a great metropolis, rushed his reserves to the front, and hurled them against the enemy forces.
You saw hardly any young men in Paris during those fateful days of the battle of the Marne. The older men and women and children listened to the thunder of the guns that did not cease day or night; they sat upon the parapets of the river, and saw the wreckage of trees and buildings, of everything that would float, including the bodies of dead animals — the human bodies were being fished out before they got into the city. Overhead came now and then a sight of irresistible fascination, an aeroplane soaring, spying out the troop movements, or possibly bringing bombs. The enemy plane was known as a Taube — an odd fantasy, to turn the dove of peace into a cruel instrument of slaughter. Already they had dropped explosives upon Antwerp and killed many women and children. Nevertheless, curiosity was too great, and everywhere in the open places you saw crowds gazing into the sky.
The sound of the guns receded, and by this the people knew that one of the great battles of history had been fought and won. But they did not shout or celebrate; Paris knew what a victory cost, and waited for the taxicabs to bring back their loads of wounded and their news about the dead. The Germans were thrown back upon the Aisne, thirty miles farther north; so the flight of refugees from Paris stopped — and at last it became possible for a lady of title to get to the Riviera without having to walk.
With Sophie came Eddie Patterson, her amiable friend whose distinction in life was that he had chosen the right grandfather. The old gentleman had once engineered through the legislature of his state a franchise to build a railroad bridge; now he drew a royalty from the railroad of one cent for every passenger who crossed the river. Eddie was an amateur billiard player with various medals and cups, and was also fond of motorboating. He talked of giving his fastest boat to the French government to be used in hunting submarines; he would soon see it cruising the Golfe Juan day and night with a four-pounder gun bolted onto the bow.
Eddie Patterson was a slender and rather stoop-shouldered fellow who talked hardheadedly, and had never given any indication of having a flighty mind; but now he had somehow worked himself into a furious rage against the Germans and was talking about volunteering for some kind of service. Sophie was in a panic about it, and of course appealed for the help of her friend Beauty Budd, who agreed with her that men were crazy, and that none of them ever really appreciated a woman's love.
At any hour of the day or night Sophie and Eddie would get into an argument. “All that talk about German atrocities is just propaganda,” the baroness would announce. “Haven't I been there and seen? Of course the Germans shoot civilians who fire at them from the windows of houses. And maybe they are holding the mayors of Belgian towns as hostages; but isn't that always done in wartime? Isn't it according to international law?” Sophie talked as if she were a leading authority on the subject, and Eddie would answer with an impolite American word: “Bunk!” After listening to a few such discussions, Lanny made up his mind that neither of them really knew very much about it, but were just repeating what they read in the papers. Since there were hardly any but French and English papers to be had, a person like himself who wanted to be neutral had a hard time of it.
X
What women have to do is to keep their restless and frantic men entertained. So Lanny would be pressed into service to take Eddie Patterson fishing, or tempt him into roaming the hills to explore ancient Roman and Saracen ruins. But truly it was impossible to get away from the war anywhere in France.
Once they stopped to watch the distilling of lavender, high up on a wind-swept plateau. There were odd-looking contrivances on wheels, with an iron belly full of fire, and a rounded dome on top from which ran a long spout, making them look like fantastic birds. A crew of women and older men were harvesting the plants, tending the fires, and collecting the essence in barrels. Pretty soon Lanny was talking with them, and they became more concerned to ask him questions than to earn their daily bread. Americans were rich and were bound to know more than poor peasants of the Midi. “What do you think, Messieurs? Will les Allemands be driven from our soil? And how long will it take? And what do you think the Italians will do? Surely they could not attack us, their cousins, almost their brothers!”
On Lanny's own Cap d'Antibes the principal industry was growing flowers for perfumes, and in winter this is done under glass. It was estimated that there were more than a million glass frames upon that promontory; and naturally those people who owned them were troubled to hear about bombs being dropped from the sky, and about strange deadly craft rising from the sea and launching torpedoes. Such things sounded fabulous, but they must be real, because often you could see war vessels patrolling, and now and then a seaplane scouting, and there were notices in all public places for fishermen and others to report at once any unusual sight on the sea.
Now came the flower growers, wanting to talk about les affaires. What did these foreign gentry think about the chances of enemy bombing of the Cap? What would be the effect, supposing that a stray torpedo were to hit the rocks? Would it have force enough to shatter those million glass frames? And what did it mean that people who were supposed to be civilized, who had come to the Riviera by the tens of thousands, as the Germans had done — many great steamers loaded with them every winter — should now go away and repay their hosts in this dreadful manner?
There came a letter from Mrs. Emily Chattersworth, who had fled from Les Forêts when the Germans came near, and after the great battle had returned to see what had become of her home. “I suppose I can count myself fortunate,” she wrote, “because only half a dozen shells struck the house, and they were not of the biggest. Apparently they didn't get their heavy guns this far, and the French retired without offering much resistance. The Uhlans came first, and they must have had an art specialist with them, because they packed up the best tapestries and most valuable pictures, and took them all. They dumped a lot of furniture out of the windows — I don't know whether that was pure vandalism or whether they were planning to build breastworks. They did use the billiard table for that purpose, setting it up on edge; it didn't work very well, for there are many bullet holes through it. They used the main rooms for surgical work, and just outside the window are piles of bloody boots and clothing cut from the wounded. They raided the cellars, of course, and the place is a litter of broken bottles. In the center of my beautiful fleur-de-lis in the front garden is a shell hole and a wrecked gun caisson with pieces of human flesh still sticking to it.
“But what breaks my heart is the fate of my glorious forests.There was a whole German division concealed in them, and the French set fire to the woods in many places; the enemy came out fighting and were slaughtered wholesale. The woods are still burning and will never be the same in our lifetime. The stench from thousands of bodies which have not yet been found loads the air at night and is the most awful thing one could imagine. I do not know if I can ever endure to live in the place again. I can only pray that the barbarians will not have a second chance at it. The opinion of our friends here is that they are through and will be entirely out of France in another month or two.”
So there was more ammunition for Eddie Patterson! One by one the militarists among the Americans were joining up; some in the Foreign Legion, others in the ambulance service, many women for hospital work. The French aviation service was popular among the adventurous-minded young men — but to Sophie this was the most horrible idea of all, for those man-birds were hunting one another in the skies, and the casualties among them were appalling. In the first days all France had been electrified by the deed of one flier, who had driven his plane straight through the gasbag of a Zeppelin, and out at the other side. The mass of hydrogen had exploded and the huge airship had crashed, an inferno of flame; the aviator, of course, had shared its fate.
Beauty Budd would fling her arms about her boy and cry: “Oh, Lanny, don't ever let them get you into a war!” And then one day she received a letter which made her heart stand still:
“Chérie: Your visit shines as the most precious jewel of my memory. The news which I have to tell will make you sad, I fear — but be courageous for my sake. Your coming was the occasion of my having the opportunity to make the acquaintance of my commandant, and being able to volunteer for special service. I am being sent elsewhere to receive training, concerning which it is not permissible for me to write. For the present you may address me in care of l'Ecole Superieure d'Aeronautique at Vincennes.
“Your love is the sunshine of my life, and knows neither clouds nor night. I adore you. Marcel.”