""s'^i)- 
 
 T 

 
 
 Ex Libris 
 
 : c. 
 
 K. OGDEN 
 
 
 
 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 FRENCH WINDOWS
 
 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN AYSCOUGH 
 
 AUTHOR or "gracechurch," " levia-pondera,' 
 "monksbridge," etc. 
 
 NEW IMPRESSION 
 
 LONDON 
 EDWARD ARNOLD 
 
 I9I9 
 
 All Rights Reserved
 
 p c^ 
 B47a5^ 
 
 DeDtcation 
 
 TO 
 
 LADY AUSTIN LEE 
 
 Dear Lady Austin Lee, 
 
 As you have over and over again, while these 
 papers were appearing in the Month, spoken and 
 written of them in terms of warm and kindly eulogy, 
 I am venturing, now that they are reappearing as a 
 book, to ask your permission to dedicate the volume to 
 you. 
 
 During the latter portion of the eighteen months 
 that I was on service with the British Expeditionary 
 Force in France, I was within reach of the hospitality 
 of Sir Henry Austin Lee and yourself; and I shall 
 always remember gratefully how warm was the wel- 
 come extended to me by both of you, and how steady 
 and untiring that hospitality was. Do you remember 
 my reading one of these papers to you and your 
 friends? I resolved then that, whenever they should 
 appear as a book, I would offer it to yourself. 
 
 There is at least one reason why the slight gift should 
 not seem also inappropriate. However inadequate as 
 "War Pictures (and, indeed, they are mostly not "War 
 Pictures at all, but little vignettes of Peace torn off the 
 sterner page of War), they are sincere and reverent, 
 though very humble and modest, tributes to the French 
 
 V 
 
 4 n^ir.ir>r-->rs
 
 vi DEDICATION 
 
 and English soldier. And that admiration and love is 
 common ground between yourself and the writer. He 
 has been asked whether the scenes and characters 
 described are fruits of his imagination; and such a 
 question is not unfairly put to one whose other works 
 have been (with the exception of Gracechurcli) pure 
 fiction. But the answer is No ; every episode and every 
 character is drawn from reality and life: nothing is 
 imaginary. That which is described is what the writer 
 saw and heard, so far as he has been able to translate 
 into words what eyes and ears told him. 
 
 When he wrote the earlier papers he had no idea of 
 an extended series, or that the patience of the editor of 
 the Month would stand anything of the kind ; and that 
 is one reason why the very earliest (and in many ways 
 the most interesting) days of the war are dealt with 
 much more hurriedly than episodes, in themselves of 
 far less account, of a slightly later period, and the 
 reason why many other episodes of those earliest days 
 have been omitted altogether. 
 
 It may seem that the putting of the papers together 
 into a book would afford a specially convenient oppor- 
 tunity for the filling of those gaps by the addition of 
 new chapters, which might pretty easily be so fitted 
 into their places as not to appear intercalary. But the 
 author neither can nor will attempt to do that. Rightly 
 or wrongly, it has always been his practice to publish 
 what he has written without furbishing or addition. 
 And were he now to turn back and pick up those 
 dropped stitches, to himself at all events the patches 
 would be obvious and offensive: he could not treat of 
 those now far-away days without, in spite of himself, 
 working into his descriptions later experiences and
 
 DEDICATION vii 
 
 feelings. As they stand, meagre enough and patchy, 
 they are at least honest presentments of how things 
 struck him at the moment. Added chapters, written 
 now but dealing with the quite initial phase of the 
 great struggle, could not fail of being tinged with later 
 apprehensions. 
 
 The papers do not in the least pretend to be a com- 
 plete detail of the experiences even of one ignorant par- 
 ticipant : they are pictures clipped almost at haphazard 
 out of his memory. Much is quite intentionally passed 
 over, especially any episodes in which the writer him- 
 self bore a special part. 
 
 In the Month these pages bore the heading French 
 and English, a title which is very reluctantly 
 abandoned ; but during their appearance it came to the 
 writer's knowledge that another book had that name. 
 So another title for this volume had to be chosen, and 
 that of one of its chapters has been given to the whole. 
 
 JOHN AYSCOUGH. 
 
 \* To the Editor of the Month the Author offers his thanks 
 for permission to reprint these pages.
 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. 
 
 OBITER PICTA 
 
 
 » :< 
 
 .1 ■« 
 
 1 
 
 ir. 
 
 A PAEENTHESIS OF WAE . 
 
 
   
 
 
 , 12 
 
 III. 
 
 AT CROSS-WAYS . 
 
 
 »: i 
 
 
 . 32 
 
 IV. 
 
 ENGLISH 
 
 
 ' -A 
 
 
 , 52 
 
 V. 
 
 NEITHER 
 
 
 i: i 
 
 
 . 68 
 
 VI. 
 
 WAR DOGS .... 
 
 
 1 1 
 
 
 . 80 
 
 VII. 
 
 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES 
 
 
 t: * 
 
 
 . 94 
 
 VIII. 
 
 LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST? 
 
 
 t 
 
 
 . 119 
 
 IX. 
 
 PRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 
 t t 
 
 
 . 134 
 
 X. 
 
 OBITER DICTA 
 
 
 1 i 
 
 
 . 154 
 
 XI. 
 
 WEST FLANDERS . 
 
 
 II 1 
 
 
 . 173 
 
 XII. 
 
 LOVE IN A MIST . 
 
 
 t 1 
 
 
 189 
 
 XIII. 
 
 SILENCE .... 
 
 
 t 
 
 
 . 209 
 
 XIV. 
 
 CHUTNEY 'S MAJORITY . 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 . 241 
 
 XV. 
 
 ON THE BRIDGE . 
 
 
 > 4 
 
 
 . 262 
 
 XVI. 
 
 FINIS . . . ^ 
 
 > :< 
 
 >i :< 
 
 
 , 281 
 
 Vlll
 
 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 OBITEB PICTA 
 
 EvEKYTHiNG seeii became, at once to him wlio 
 writes, a picture, and took the permanence of 
 a picture, that mere action lacks. Events are 
 transient, and only assume fixity after they 
 have passed and taken their impregnable seat in 
 memory. All these things seen seemed a part of 
 memory while still before his eyes ; and from first 
 to last he never felt like a real man, looking at 
 them, but as a man in a picture — ^hundreds of 
 successive pictures, each of which was itself a 
 palimpsest : for the first intention of each, in the 
 Master-Painter's mind, had obviously been 
 "Peace," only an Imperial maniac had super- 
 vened and crudely over-painted "War" on 
 every one of them. It was only now and then 
 that this utter aloofness of sense would yield to 
 the vehement activity of sensation that there is 
 in dreams, the shallowest of dreams when the 
 
 I
 
 2 FEEXCH WINDOWS 
 
 sleeper knows lie is dreaming, aud expects to 
 wake, but meanwliile mnst be driven through 
 the vagaries against which he protests. At those 
 rarer times he, this reluctant dreamer of war, 
 groped impatiently for the hand that should 
 shake him awake and give him back the sane 
 realitv of ''Peace. . . . 
 
 The fii'st pictures were all of interminable rich 
 corn-lands, brown-gold in a splendid harvest, 
 endless wealth of corn that never should be 
 worth anvthing. The men who had sown the 
 wheat and cut it, who had bound it in sheaves 
 find piled the sheaves into stooks — like rows of 
 tents along the horizons — ^were all gone, and to 
 no farmsteads would the incalculable, opulent 
 harvest ever be carried home : for the farm-lads 
 had gone, changed to chasseurs and dragoons 
 ('•dragons'' our English fellows call them,) and 
 the horses had gone too. So there the sheaves 
 should stand till the rains rotted them, if they 
 should survive the passing and re-passing of 
 hundreds of thousands of war-men, houseless 
 and dog-wearv, who would seize them and make 
 beds of them, or little shelter-houses against the 
 pitiless wet, and scatter and trample them: few 
 would survive it, for every field would be a camp 
 in its turn, many taking their turn over and over 
 again, till each frugal, rich field changed itself to 
 a patch of mire, a parable of squalid waste.
 
 OBITER PICTA 3 
 
 Dnring those early pictures it was hard to 
 tell whether the toothed sky-line, in the breath- 
 less hot dusk, were a row of com-stooks (like an 
 endless war-train arrested by some block far 
 ahead and incomprehensible to miles of waggons 
 and men), or really a war-train like com-stooks. 
 Often, in the early light, when dawn was re- 
 arranging pictures out of the solid ink of night, 
 even the near fields would seem covered with 
 monstrous parades of hideous titanic snails, each 
 com-stook standing for a shell, the long, level 
 shadows for the ugly creeping body. 
 
 The first pictures of all had "WELCOME for 
 title: even the Havre streets had that name at 
 every corner of them, the Havre people had it 
 in their eyes, and every smiling lip expressed it 
 to the English soldier who could understand, 
 then, no other word of French: "Welcome, good 
 Englishman come to help our France at her 
 need." We had done nothing yet, but we had 
 come, against all the expectation of the Imperial 
 calculator who had thought, "England will never 
 go. Secure in her selfish island she will sit at 
 home and bask in her safety like a purring cat 
 that cares for no outward storm while her own 
 place is warm by the hearth. England has 
 nought to gain, and her friend's loss will never 
 cut her." 
 
 But England had come, and more than kept
 
 4 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 her word. Greater love no man can show than 
 that he should lay down his life for his friend: 
 and England had come with that supreme proof 
 in her hand; so welcome and thanks was on 
 every French face that looked upon the honest 
 English faces and read there the promise stiff 
 English tongues could not translate from fact 
 to mere vernacular word. And very proudly 
 French men and women carried, like valued 
 jewels, the cap or shoulder-badges begged of the 
 English soldier-lad as he went laughing or 
 whistling by. Hundreds of thousands of French 
 will keep those little trumpery, priceless gifts, 
 heirlooms of England's fidelity, for ever in their 
 families. \ 
 
 Changed now from a toy to a relic. 
 And gazed at through crystals of tears. 
 
 Need our War Office grudge themf 
 *'Eh, my God!" cried many a French lady to 
 him who writes, **what soldiers, what men your 
 English lads ! Smiling, singing, whistling, laugh- 
 ing always, new-shaved and ' coquets' they 
 go to meet death as to a tryst — and all for us.** 
 Then the long train-journey towards the 
 frontier — it also was broken, every^vhere there 
 was a stop, but the same assurance of thanks and 
 welcome. All night long the French ladies had 
 kept willijig vigil to bring little comforts of food
 
 OBITER PICTA 5 
 
 or coffee to the English soldier passing in the 
 dark, and thank him for his going on their 
 quarrel — no quarrel of their making, but forced 
 on them by the enemy tired of his long pretence 
 of peace — to help, so far as his one life could, to 
 hold the glowering eagle back. 
 
 War 's enmities every fool can understand ; but 
 what friendships war begets, and how immortal 
 those tragically-born children! Already our 
 English folk have learned wider meanings for the 
 once selfish word of Patriotism, and in scores of 
 thousands of English eyes you shall read now, 
 << For France also will I do all that my life 
 can. ' * 
 
 At the big, busy, frontier-town war became 
 first fully visible : iron-shuttered houses ; silence 
 of manufactures that for forty-four years had 
 known no holiday; a frugal, toilsome people all 
 turned idle, in a clutch of suspense, into the 
 streets ; the endless lines of troops and transport, 
 munitions of war; and no trace of peace any 
 longed visible anywhere — it all spelled the word 
 that no one spoke, * ' The enemy near the gate. ' * 
 Very, very soon he would enter by it, and be 
 wasteful master: the long legitimist rule of 
 peace and frugal comfort be changed to an iron 
 interregnum of alien tyrrany. All that evening 
 jthe pictures were of moving columns, throttling
 
 6 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 every road, roads along which a hundred years 
 ago Napoleon 's armies were hurrying to the last 
 fatal tryst of Waterloo : and every road leading 
 at brief interval to the waiting, disdainful enemy. 
 What would to-morrow's battle bring? That 
 day's own battle was as yet only a rumour, like 
 the sting of a spiteful wind in the ear — Mons. 
 The short, crude word was only a name yet, 
 with no clearer meaning than a cold conjecture. 
 
 The town seemed very long, and the watching 
 crowds endless ; their faces different not only in 
 contour but expression from those of the Havre 
 folk; here too there was welcome, but more 
 tense, hungrier, half-bred betwixt gratitude and 
 suspense. Now too was seen for the first time 
 the ugly cut-throat gesture, to be seen con- 
 tinually henceforth, of a hand sharply drawn 
 across a gullet, silently, or with the one word 
 " Demain!" significant invitation to the English 
 soldier of what he should, in the gesticulator 's 
 mind, do to-morrow to some German. That the 
 gesture was a woman's or a child's did not make 
 it less grim. 
 
 The suburbs stretched such long arms out into 
 the unpastoral country that one hardly knew 
 when they had changed to villages huddled up 
 to the town. But the villages gave more material 
 welcome, and from their houses, poor, mean
 
 OBITER PICTA 7 
 
 houses often, there were continual sorties of 
 women, children, old men, carrying offerings 
 to the marching soldiers from England — coffee, 
 wine, apples, sweets, cigarettes, slices of jammed 
 bread — and this went on afterwards in every 
 village till the time came when the villagers 
 themselves had nothing, for the German had 
 been there and taken everything; then the one 
 possible gift of water gave its plain, sad mes- 
 sage of ruined generosity. 
 
 But that was not yet; you could not realize 
 how near at hand it was on that sultry Sunday 
 evening. At Jenlain the noise of guns, from 
 Mons, became first audible, distant and vague, 
 like the rumble of the thunder that goes with 
 ** summer" lightning, and with no more menace 
 to the imagination. At Jenlain the first picture 
 of a camp in the fields made itself, a groping 
 picture blurred by the darkness, in which men 
 and horses and waggons hardly stood out, but 
 mixed with the hot night, and seemed only its 
 shadows ; till a fire here and there splashed the 
 muffled blackness with red, and showed coppery 
 faces and hands with no bodies to them. For 
 our officers there was a dinner-party that night 
 — in the village inn, that was half a farm, where 
 the stalwart, wholesome ''patron" and his 
 decent, shrewd wife, comely, friendly and active,
 
 8 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 bustled to show what they could do for the 
 English. Everyone about the place fussed and 
 ran, cooked and talked, and set places round 
 the big, clean kitchen table. A regular meal, 
 with soup, and stew, fruit and cheese and wine : 
 and it was eaten under the smiling eyes of the 
 hosts, who thought one of the officers too young 
 for war, and one of them (who writes this) by 
 far too old. A pretty-faced lad, with girlish blue 
 eyes and peach-cheeks, and expression of soft 
 innocence, crept to that old officer's elbow, 
 nudged, and drew a confidential hand murder- 
 ously across his own boyish throat, whispering, 
 '^Demain! Aux Allemands.'^ 
 
 The inn-keeper's nine-year-old daughter, 
 merry-eyed, nodded a cheerful approbation — it 
 was pleasanter to hear her father bid us drink 
 our King's health, as was done by all, standing. 
 Poor little Gabrielle, poor father and mother, 
 grandparents — that was the last supper to be 
 eaten in that prosperous, friendly home for many 
 a long day : next noon it was a flaming ruin, next 
 afternoon they fled by us on the road, Gabrielle 
 and all of them, with pitiful bundles in their 
 hands — a lump of bread, a blanket, a holy 
 picture, a superannuated dumb canary in a 
 cage. 
 
 After supper came the walk up the orderly 
 village street — all to be disordered havoc before
 
 OBITER PICTA 9 
 
 another niglit — and our first bedroom in the 
 fields. Long and wet the grass seemed, though 
 but with dew and mist, and very, very long the 
 way home to England : there were no home stars 
 to make the slry friendlier; there was no sky; 
 only a huddled blackness, crouching over us, 
 smothering down on us: and already the war 
 seemed one's only life, within which all former 
 life was swallowed up. 
 
 Sleep came reluctantly, unhandy yet at pick- 
 ing her way through that maze of blackness to 
 tired eyes that looked, and longed and waited 
 for her coming. She must be sole guest and 
 cannot brook others: and another was there, 
 firm-seated, before her : the one weary, ceaseless 
 preoccupation; the tiresome iterant sense, that 
 did not amount to thought, but was like the thud 
 of a pulse — " It is war." The weary waker, 
 staring up into the dark, felt it between him and 
 England :' no calculable leagues separated home 
 and him, but the incalculable, incomprehensible 
 fact of war that flung England and all home-life 
 away into an hnmeasurable distance, that left 
 him outcast from all that had seemed to mean 
 himself. 
 
 It was unpossible to get any answer to the 
 question, " What are they in England doing I" 
 They also, as last seen, had assumed the fixity 
 of pictures, and would not move, at any bidding
 
 10 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 of imagination, into newer groupings, present 
 occupations. Faces at a window must look out 
 at it for ever, in the same smiling anguish of 
 farewell : waving hands could never turn to any 
 other occupation. Like Josue's moon in Ajalon, 
 the last sun seen in England stood still for ever 
 at the same point in the heavens. War had come, 
 and changing everything, had frozen everything 
 into permanence; as if Memory had given 
 sanctuary to all familiar, lost things, and would 
 no longer suffer them to go out, and move, and 
 live, and be changeable. 
 
 Between the present night and all yesterdays 
 there lay a gulf so impossible to bridge by any 
 mere effort of will that one could not imagine 
 it wider, deeper, or more complete and impas- 
 sable, if Death itself had already intervened. 
 Were he, in fact, to come, what could he do 
 more? 
 
 " Free among the dead ..." How simple 
 and comprehensible that ancient dark saying of 
 the supreme poet had suddenly become. All 
 the tiny, innumerable shackles of life seemed 
 snapped, and their significance fallen into in- 
 significance. It did not even appear easy, or 
 fully sane, to wish for their resuscitation. So 
 immense an emancipation — should one really 
 desire to cancel it ? 
 
 Surely Agag had meant this: and must have
 
 OBITER PICTA 11 
 
 b©en besotted had he been willing to turn back, 
 and have, for some brief respital, all the bitter- 
 ness of death to drink again out of some un- 
 knoAvn, later cup. 
 
 So sleep stood aloof, and waited till the tired 
 body should thrust forth from the tired spirit 
 the vagrant musings that teased her in guise of 
 thoughts. And, ten miles away, under the black 
 mourning heaven, lay an already martyred 
 country, her silence crying aloud : " O God, how 
 long r' 
 
 And the sleepless night dragged on to the re- 
 luctant dawn that hated to discard her decent 
 black for the staring red that day must bring to 
 her. And, O God, in Whose Hands the hearts 
 of kings are, what spectres, red and black, must 
 Thou be crowding around the bed of that War 
 Lord who claims Thee so simply for coadjutor 
 and accomplice ? If to the innocent, reluctant 
 sharer in it sleep comes so slow-foot and un- 
 willing, how and in what nightmare fashion, shall 
 she creep to his bed, who whistled war out of its 
 snarling kennel to follow him afield . . J. Al- 
 ways his pet, pampered and overfed, it had so 
 long grown used to its master 's begging tricks of 
 peace that it hardly could believe the moment 
 come to play at them no longer, and show naked 
 fangs to a world that had watched and dreaded 
 when the reality should be confessed.
 
 II 
 
 "a pakenthesis of wae 
 
 The men were whistling " Mississippi " aa they 
 marched : and he, listening, tried, as he had tried 
 a hundred times before, to catch the slight, 
 elusive air, and whistle it too. Nothing easier 
 than to whistle it tvith them ; but he felt certain 
 that, if they should stop, he could not go on — 
 even if it were decorous to go on alone — ^by him- 
 self, and give the air correctly. A pestilent 
 tune ! easy and impossible, familiar now for 
 weeks, stale even, and yet refusing to cling to 
 memory except in the most obvious snatches. 
 
 '' It's because I don't know the words," he 
 said to himself. *' There's no connection in the 
 air, and I haven't got the words to connect up 
 the bits." 
 
 And his lips rounded themselves to whistle, 
 and a young French soldier watched them with 
 an odd expression. 
 
 "Halt!" 
 
 Something, miles ahead perhaps^ stopped the 
 
 12
 
 A PAKENTHBSIS OF WAE 13 
 
 wav: and for the twentieth time in an hour the 
 whole column halted. 
 
 The whistling ceased and the men fell to 
 chatting, and chaffing. 
 
 ** Fiddler," said a Sergeant, with a queer 
 friendly face, to a babyish-looking bugler, 
 ** you're asking for sore feet. I k7ww you 
 haven't soaped your socks." 
 
 ** There's only half a one to each foot to 
 soap," urged Fiddler. 
 
 ** It'd take all the less soap, and leave all the 
 more for your face," retorted the sergeant, who 
 seldom permitted himself to be defeated in argu- 
 ment. 
 
 He (the Ancient who could not whistle '* Mis- 
 sissippi " by himself) went to the roadside, to sit 
 down luxuriously upon a heap of stones : through 
 the long, dusty grass a field-telegraph-line ran, 
 hidden, and his foot caught in it, and nearly 
 brought him down. The young French soldier, 
 still watching him unapprovingly, observed the 
 beginning of the little accident and almost 
 smiled, but did not smile, since nothing came of it. 
 
 The French column was on the right of the 
 road, the English on the left, and the young 
 French soldier had to watch from the other side. 
 He turned to a comrade, of his own nation, 
 glanced at the Ancient, and made a certain
 
 14 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 gesture. The Ancient had often seen it before, 
 and had always hated it. It was brief and 
 simple, and consisted in a sharp drawing of the 
 flattened fingers of the right hand across the 
 throat, as though one should draw a knife across 
 someone's gullet — not really one's own. To as- 
 sist the imagination of dull observers the 
 words *' Aux allemands " might accompany the 
 gesture : but in this case there was no such ne- 
 cessity. Both French soldiers perfectly com- 
 prehended, and the elder nodded a quite passion- 
 less acquiescence as he followed the eyes of his 
 young comrade to the Ancient across the road. 
 The Ancient is so called here as being (for his 
 surroundings) an ancient personage. His white 
 hair and wrinkled hands had nothing to do with 
 all the militant youth about him : and he seemed 
 tired, not so much with marching as with the 
 longer walk of fifty-six years through life. One 
 would say that he was more used to sit at writing 
 by a table than on a stone-heap by the roadside. 
 He saw the young French soldier 's gesture, and 
 it hurt him a little, for, though he had never 
 seen the lad before, he liked him. He smiled 
 and stopped himself, not wanting to seem defiant 
 of disapproval. To cover the smile up he lighted 
 a cigarette, which the young French soldier alBO 
 disapproved — as savouring of nonchalance.
 
 A PARENTHESIS OF WAR 15 
 
 It should be said that the Ancient wore then 
 no uniform, but a black suit, grey with dust, and 
 shabby after many a march. 
 
 '* Quick march !" 
 
 And the column moved on again, and the men 
 began to sing. 
 
 It's a long way to Tipperary, 
 A long way to go: 
 It's a long, long way to Tipperary 
 And the sweetest girl I know. 
 Good-bye, Piccadilly, 
 Farewell, Leicester Square ! 
 It's a long,long way to Tipperary, 
 But my heart's right there. 
 
 They sang; it was no bawling shout, but the 
 clear, clean singing of hundreds of Irish throats 
 and lips. 
 
 To many of them Tipperary really stood for 
 home, and father and mother, wife, and child. 
 For them the song was no mere echo of the Music 
 Halls, but a hymn of home-sickness. 
 
 Hundreds of times the Ancient had heard those 
 words and that air: he remembered the first 
 time, and always will remember it . . . the pant- 
 ing August night, the serene, huge harvest moon 
 staring down on the limitless fields of peace 
 across which the comet-tail of war was dragging, 
 the choking dust, the night-silence violated by 
 a clatter of war-noises, shouting, and scraping
 
 16 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 of wKeels, shrill orders and counter-orders, and 
 the moan of a horse that conld do no more for 
 England than die, as the bravest and wisest can 
 do no more. Then a halt, and a half -lull in the 
 babel; and that tune and those words. 
 
 There are sweeter tunes, and finer words : but 
 instantly he who heard them for the first time 
 felt their grip and thrust about his heart, as one 
 feels the chill there who comes down in a swing. 
 Then first he resented, as he had resented scores 
 and scores of times since, the inept unworthiness 
 and vulgarism of the fifth and sixth lines. 
 Piccadilly and Leicester Square I Could the 
 rhymester fit nothing better to his wistful, home- 
 sick melody than that ? Could nothing racier 
 of Tipperary rise to his fancy 1 — as though a 
 Moujik soldier should begin to wail of Holy Rus- 
 sia and slobber down into a lament for Parisian 
 boulevards. 
 
 And yet, and yet the Ancient could never hear 
 the soldier-voices lifted in that song and dare to 
 let his face be seen. All the astounding clear- 
 ness and simplicity of dread war lifted and 
 glorified that song into a Marseillaise of Eng- 
 land's fidelity to France, the war-march of 
 British honesty come to lay down its life for its 
 friend. It was the same now: the song never 
 staled or grew hackneyed: each hearing of it
 
 A PARENTHESIS OF WAR 17 
 
 added association to it, and tune and words 
 brought with them a skein of pictures more 
 poignant in simplicity than any war that any 
 painter has ever left us. 
 
 As the Ancient arose from his heap of stones 
 and went back to his place in the column the 
 young French soldier still watched him, and the 
 bent, white head did not disarm his disapproval. 
 But it half puzzled him. He had been quick 
 enough to see on the old face a sharp struggle 
 against assaulting emotion : and he divined that 
 the bending of the head, erect enough before, 
 was to hide the emotion. 
 
 " That song," said his comrade, as they also 
 moved on, *' is as if one of us should sing of 
 Paris." 
 
 But the younger soldier was meridional, from 
 the valleys under the Pyrenees, and did not care 
 specially for Paris, which he had never seen. He 
 gave a slight nod and tramped on in silence, 
 wondering why the old man whose throat he 
 thought should be cut had been moved by that 
 singing. He was doubtless a prisoner, a German, 
 and probably a spy. 
 
 The Ancient walked on, and on either side of 
 him rode an English officer. 
 
 " One of these days," said one of them to him, 
 ** you will walk into the German pickets, and
 
 18 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 they '11 shoot you. And it will all be because you 
 wear no uniform. ' ' 
 
 The Ancient laughed, but did not argue the 
 point afresh. The other officer said : 
 
 ** I think that chasseur would cut your throat 
 now if you lagged behind and he could catch 
 you alone. He thinks you're a German prisoner, 
 and wonders why on earth we don't put you out 
 of your misery. ' ' 
 
 The Ancient thought so too, and laughed again. 
 But it still hurt him a little, for the French had 
 seemed by now quite an old friend, and one 
 dislikes the feeling that a friend desires one's 
 death. 
 
 The song went on, and the march went on, 
 and other songs followed. Then came another 
 halt, and another order to move on again; and 
 this time the Ancient fell back a little till his own 
 ** lot " had i^assed; the next '' unit " was a little 
 ;way behind. So he walked alone in a nearly 
 empty stretch of road. Not quite empty, for the 
 young French soldier had lagged too and was 
 just behind him. 
 
 *' Walk with me," said the Ancient, stopping, 
 till the chassuer was abreast; ^' I want to talk 
 to you. Do you mind?" 
 
 ** You talk French then ?" 
 
 *' A little, and badly.' 
 
 >>
 
 A PARENTHESIS OF WAR 19 
 
 ** I find you talk it well. You pronounce bet- 
 ter than the English. ' ' 
 
 ** I am English. Yes, I pronounce pretty well 
 for an Englishman: but I lack vocabulary, and 
 often I cannot say what I want in French, be- 
 cause I do not know the French for it, and so I 
 have to say something else instead: something 
 much less interesting. That is tiresome." 
 
 The young Frenchman laughed. 
 
 *' I should say," he observed, ''that you would 
 be able to say just what you wanted. ' ' 
 
 " No. But I can say this do you still wish 
 
 to cut my throat ? " 
 
 ** Monsieur !" 
 
 * ' Have you changed your mind ? ' * 
 
 *' Monsieur !" 
 
 * * I think you have. ' ' 
 
 ** Monsieur, I do not understand." 
 
 **Ah! My French is worse than I thought. 
 Can I not make you understand that I knew you 
 wished to cut my throat just now 1 ' ' 
 
 The young man from the south protested ; but 
 the Ancient only laughed at his protestations. 
 
 *' I wanted," he said, '' to have it out with 
 you; that was why I fell behind, hoping you 
 would fall behind too. No doubt it was an ac- 
 cident that you did fall behind. . " 
 
 ** Perfectly. 
 
 • • 
 
 >>
 
 20 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 *' Some accidents are sure to happen: I 
 counted on this one. I particularly wished to see 
 if you would still wish to kill me when we were 
 alone and had talked together. And I particu- 
 larly wanted to talk to you." 
 
 ^' Why, then?" 
 
 *' Because I liked you." 
 
 *' Though you supposed I desired to kill you !" 
 
 '* I did not suppose. I knew." 
 
 ** How can one like someone who wishes to 
 kill one ?" 
 
 *' I don't know. I was trying, just now, to 
 understand." 
 
 He was trying still. It seemed to him possible, 
 that, out of some hidden, perhaps morbid, cur- 
 rent of the emotions, a man should have a pe- 
 culiar attraction for another man who desired, 
 justly as it would seem to that other man, to be 
 his executioner, especially if, in the estimation 
 of the victim, the execution was really mistaken 
 and unjust. He could not recall any instance of 
 such a victim havng displayed — on the scaffold, 
 for instance — the least animosity towards the 
 man from whose hands he was about to receive 
 death. Rather it would seem as though the very 
 strange relation in which victim and executioner 
 stood created between them a subtle tie, clearly 
 felt by the victim.
 
 A PARENTHESIS OF WAR 21 
 
 " You are not now thinking of me," remarked 
 the young chasseur. 
 
 There was so delightfully human a touch of 
 boyish pique and vanity in this, that the Ancient 
 laughed aloud. 
 
 ** Not of you personally. I was trying to un- 
 derstand the difficulty you suggested. But why 
 have you changed your mind ? ' ' 
 
 ** Monsieur !" 
 
 ** Oh ' Monsieur ' ! But you do not now in 
 the least desire to cut my throat. If we were 
 alone, and out of sight of everybody, down there 
 in the woods, you would not think of it. ' ' 
 
 * * You are English — one of our good friends. ' ' 
 
 ** Yes, I am your friend. But you only know 
 that I say I am English. If I were really a spy 
 should I stick at a lie ?'* 
 
 * ' You do not tell lies. ' ' 
 
 ** I don't claun to. It was you who denied 
 that you had wished to " 
 
 ** Monsieur, will you not forgive that betise f 
 
 *' I forgave it all along. You are not stupid; 
 you must have seen that at once. ' ' 
 
 '' I saw," said the young man, looking across 
 the fields where the ungarnered corn stood, 
 * * that you liked me, the moment you turned and 
 asked me to walk with you. And it shamed me. 
 There was no Why. I had only wished to do 
 you an injury."
 
 22 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 *' I don't know. It would have been an injury 
 to yourself: cruelty and injustice are th» worst 
 things one can do to oneself. But I didn't see 
 that to me it would have made any difference." 
 
 ** No difference 1 To be dead or alive !" 
 
 ** I should still have been alive. You flatter 
 yourself. You cannot make me dead or alive, 
 you might have pushed me round a corner, that 
 is all." 
 
 ** An ugly corner." 
 
 ** That's selon : it depends — and not on you, 
 my comrade. Besides the best bit of the journey 
 may be just round the ugliest corner. ' ' 
 
 ** You are now reading," said the youth. 
 
 ** Yes: out of the book one has been writing 
 for fifty-six years. ' ' 
 
 " You are fifty-six years old? At first I 
 thought you much more — very old: and now* I 
 have been thinking you young. Your words 
 come jumping, light on the foot, and they jump 
 into me, as old words do not. ' ' 
 
 *' That is because we are friends. Friends are 
 aU of an age. And a friend's words come home 
 to a friend's heart as children come home and 
 sit down by the hearth that wants them. ' ' 
 
 They did not look at each other as they talked, 
 the French lad and his new, old, English friend : 
 sometimes their eyes rested on the same place,
 
 A PARENTHESIS OF WAR 23 
 
 the horizon, that lay higher than the road where- 
 on they marched; otherwise their eyes did not 
 meet. But they kept step; and the cadence of 
 their footfalls was the pulse of a deep unison. 
 
 Passing a cross-road they saw there another 
 body of French troops, infantry, waiting: and 
 among them was a young French priest, a volun- 
 teer-chaplain, in cassock and field-cap. 
 
 ** Excuse me, one minute, I want to go and 
 greet him; we also are comrades," said the 
 Ancient, and he made off quickly. 
 
 The young French soldier from the south 
 watched their meeting : he saw them shake hands, 
 li"ke old friends, though neither had ever seen 
 the other before, and saw that they spoke to- 
 gether mth easy intimacy, affectionately. When 
 the word to move away came, in less than five 
 minutes, and the French troops marched, the 
 Ancient and the young priest in the cassock 
 parted like brothers going different roads to- 
 wards the same duty. 
 
 When the Ancient rejoined the young soldier, 
 who had waited with a sort of boyish petulance, 
 the latter said, half jealously: 
 
 *' Another friend !" 
 
 "Oh, yes." 
 
 *"You knew him?" 
 
 " Not before. But he is my brother: we are 
 both priests."
 
 24 FEENCH WINDOWS 
 
 " Are all the English priests like you ?*' 
 
 ** I don't know them all. I hope not.'* 
 
 ** Why do you hope that ?" 
 
 *' Because I am half a priest and half a poet: 
 and it is better to be simply a priest altogether." 
 
 '* I should like to read your poems." 
 
 '' I don't write them. I don't know how. 
 Perhaps I am too happy." 
 
 '' I see you are happy — though you can 
 scarcely help weeping sometimes. Tell me a 
 thing, will you ?" 
 
 * * Anything I can. ' ' 
 
 **What makes you happy T' 
 
 There was a moment 's pause, and, for the first 
 time almost, the lad turned and looked at his 
 friend. He was blushing and the young man, 
 who was a soldier, and a peasant, and a gentle- 
 man, was ashamed of his question. 
 
 '' Oh ! I beg your pardon," he said hurriedly. 
 ''I am impertinent." 
 
 ^' That is impossible. There is no imperti- 
 nence between friends. Only I hesitated, because 
 to answer your question I might seem to preach." 
 
 **A priest must, sometimes." 
 
 **Yes. But I do it badly. It seems always 
 as if everyone must know all one had to teU — I 
 wish you would tell me your name. . . ." 
 
 **It is Constantin."
 
 A PAEENTHEIS OF WAE 25 
 
 **Well, Constantin: I am too shy to answer 
 your question. Have you ever been in love?" 
 
 *'I am now." 
 
 *'And it makes you happy?" 
 
 ** No, because I am far away — ^here in this 
 ugly war. That is miserable — to be away." 
 
 ** I also have been in love all my life: and we 
 are never away. Always together." 
 
 A whimsical memory of a word from a great, 
 homely, simple, genre writer, glanced into his 
 ever vagrant fancy, "Always the best of friends, 
 Pip, always the best of friends" — and the 
 Ancient smiled at his thought. 
 
 **It is a man you love?" said Constantin, in 
 a voice like a clear whisper. His eyes were again 
 on the high horizon, and the Ancient's were 
 there too : it was more intimate than if they had 
 turned and looked each into the other's face. 
 Against the yellow sky upon the ridge there 
 stood out a long black way-post, with arms, like 
 an empty cross. 
 
 'Yes, it is a Man," the Ancient answered. 
 And between you and Him there are no 
 quarrels ?" 
 
 *' None of His making. Mine have been the 
 ladder of our intimacy, each one a step upward 
 to something more like knowledge. To Him 
 they could make no difference ; He knew me all 
 along. ' * 

 
 26 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 " In my love," said Constantin, " there come 
 moments when it seems wisest not to know too 
 much — only to be blind : none of ns are perfect." 
 
 ** No, none of us. I am luckier than you, hav- 
 ing all the imperfections on my side." 
 
 The lad pondered this saying, and presently 
 said, abruptly, something that had nothing to do 
 with it. 
 
 "■ Should you talk like this to an English sol- 
 dier ?" 
 
 *' There is no such thing as an English soldier 
 in general. One talks to each man as he is. To 
 you I can talk thus — perhaps because we never 
 met before, and shall never meet again. ' ' 
 
 *' I shall meet you again if I can," said Con- 
 stantin, with decision. 
 
 The Ancient thanked him with a smile, and 
 said : ' ' Whether we do meet again or no we are 
 friends, and that matters more. To talk is not 
 so good as to remember." 
 
 "And you," cried the lad, jealously, *' will 
 remember me as the fellow who desired to cut 
 your throat." 
 
 *' I shall remember you," the Ancient an- 
 swered, ' ' as you are. ' ' 
 
 One of the English oflScers came riding back 
 to look for him. He laughed as he drew near, 
 and said:
 
 A PARENTHESIS OP WAR 27 
 
 " He hasu't stuck his bayonet into you ?" 
 
 " He has only made a little hole in my heart. 
 Do go away again. ' ' 
 
 ** It's not my fault if he cuts your throat." 
 
 The English Major turned his horse again, 
 laughing, and said over his shoulder: 
 
 " I did not understand his English," said 
 Constantin, ** but I do not like him. He came 
 to look after you. ' ' 
 
 The sun setting on the empty cornfields was 
 becoming marvellous ; a singular grey-pink light, 
 half pearl, half opal, clear and yet hard, like 
 porcelaine, had taken hold of everything. The 
 Ancient watched it with a wistful tenderness, 
 like worship. 
 
 *' There is no one to carry the corn," said 
 Constantin, watching his friend's eyes to see 
 what held them. 
 
 " No one." 
 
 *' Is it not sad to see them empty . . . those 
 fields?" 
 
 '' They are not." 
 
 Constantin looked, as though he had been 
 looking along some wand that pointed. 
 
 " You see someone ?" he asked. 
 
 The Ancient nodded, and the lad answered 
 himself. 
 
 '' The same One T' he aaid. ** The Man you 
 loyel"
 
 28 FEENCH WINDOWS 
 
 He did not turn to see if his friend nodded 
 again, but l;eld his eyes on the far horizon that 
 seemed hardly nearer than when they had first 
 looked at it. Presently he spoke again. 
 
 " That Man," he said, '' I hardly know Him. 
 I do not do many sins. But I hardly know Him ; 
 I, I am young " 
 
 *' So is He. Eternal and always young." 
 
 ** And I am a man " 
 
 '' So is He." 
 
 ' ' But I live among men, and them I can love. ' ' 
 
 Another echo smote the memory of the Ancient 
 from a poet this time, one of those poets who 
 had been able to say for him the things he could 
 only feel : a sad echo too. 
 
 A saw God sitting above me; 
 And I, I sat among men, 
 And I have loved these. 
 
 ** He also lives among men, and loves 
 them " 
 
 '' Why ?" asked the lad abruptly. 
 
 *'I often wonder. To teach us perhaps. In 
 that you and He are alike. But, Constantin, if 
 you can do that, that difficult divine thing, you 
 can do the other ; it is much easier. ' ' 
 
 " Easier to love Him ?" 
 
 '' Ever so much. What shabby turn does He 
 ever serve us ? When He is preoccupied, or
 
 A PARENTHESIS OF WAE 29 
 
 busy, or taken up iVith others ! You like 
 
 me V 
 
 ** Yes, because ijou like me- 
 
 jf 
 
 ** Yes; but you might come to me and find me 
 speaking to someone else. I can only talk to one 
 friend at a time." 
 
 ** That is true. I should not care to talk to 
 you when you had to try and speak with someone 
 else as well. ' ' 
 
 " That's the difference. One always has Him 
 to oneself — in all this crowded, talking world. ' * 
 
 ^' I have never talked to Him." 
 
 '* That is not His fault." 
 
 ** Nor He to me." 
 
 ** Neither is that His fault: it is your mis- 
 fortune. He is no vulgar pusher of Himself. 
 He only follows and waits and " 
 
 **What?" 
 
 ** Loves. It is a horrible thing to love and de- 
 serve love, and never get it. That is His story. 
 I know you can pity it. You saw in a moment 
 that I loved you : and, though I have never done 
 one single thing for you, you would feel pity for 
 me if you had not loved me back. ' ' 
 
 " Ah, but you have done something for me. 
 Ever so much. We met by the roadside, 
 strangers out of all the w^orld, and you saw in 
 me a silly, brutal fellow that wanted to kill you.
 
 30 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 Yes, it is true, I confess it ; and at the first sound 
 of your voice I knew you loved me. Is that 
 nothing I Who am I ? You can see ; a piou- 
 piou of the south, a fellow from nowhere, of no 
 account, and you — " 
 
 " Do stop, Constantin. It is impossible you 
 'can see so much, and not see more. You wanted 
 to kill me : justly as you thought — a cruel justice, 
 though. We have killed Him, not as a spy, and 
 all His revenge is to love us. You asked ' Why ' : 
 and, God knows, I can't say. There was a saint 
 once, and she cried, ' Of a truth Thou hast made 
 a fool of Thyself, Jesus Christ, for Thy love of 
 us.' " 
 
 That saying smote the heart of the lad, and 
 his clean, tender, sensitive mouth showed a twist, 
 like pain. His eyes and his lips could express 
 pain more easily than mirth. Him also the Gali- 
 lean was conquering. 
 
 *' She was a saint," he said, " but a woman; 
 I could not confess to her. To you I could, be- 
 cause you are a man, and not a saint. Look 
 there " 
 
 By the wayside, at a desolate corner of the 
 road, was a Calvary. " Consider," they had 
 written beneath the lonely figure, ' * if there be a 
 sorrow like to my sorrow, ' ' 
 
 And the lad understood at last that it was no
 
 A PARENTHESIS OF WAR 31 
 
 plaiut of pain, no outcry against cross, and nails, 
 and thorns. Only the supreme lament of un- 
 loved Divine Love, lonely and uncared for. 
 
 '* Let me confess here," said the lad. 
 
 And the old man in the shabby, worn-out gar- 
 ments, road-stained and dusty, sat down upon 
 the steps of the cross, while the dying sun red- 
 dened again those agonized, hungry arms, flung 
 wide and high above him, to draw all things to 
 their embrace. 
 
 And another echo struck liim. . . . *' With 
 the chords of a man : the strings of Adam. ' ' 
 
 But the lad's eyes were no longer seeking the 
 Dead Christ on the Cross, above him; they 
 sought the living Friend whom his friend saw in 
 the fields through which their road lay. 
 
 ** Tell me," he pleaded, *' a thing, to en- 
 courage me. Why do you love Him so much ? ' * 
 
 ** Because He has forgiven so much," said the 
 old man, making his own confession first.
 
 in 
 
 AT CROSS-WATS 
 
 A FLAT village sitting at cross-roads, with a 
 biggish church in the open space where the ways 
 met : and all the space, and both roads, jammed 
 with lines of troops and transport. Beyond the 
 village level fields, some marshy with withy-beds 
 that in England would have been likely to hold 
 foxes, and some green with the beetroot-foliage ; 
 not many trees, and any there were in long lines, 
 like lines of march. Far and low horizons with 
 nothing to break them, and of the same dun hue 
 as the cross sky. And mud. That was the 
 picture. 
 
 A dull village ; with nothing to mark it off from 
 the villages of yesterday; and, except for the 
 soldiers, no young men in it: only women, chil- 
 dren, and old or oldish men. All the troops at a 
 standstill. A discussion between the officer com- 
 manding a unit and one of his Captains, each 
 armed with a map and an opinion of his own : the 
 C. 0. favouring the road straight ahead, the 
 
 52
 
 AT CROSS-WAYS 33 
 
 younger officer that to the left. An Irish mess- 
 cook demanding of a woman at a house-door if 
 she had ' ' any Dooly to sell ' ' : she, with French 
 acumen, understanding, and producing milk. 
 
 Fiddler, the bugler, smiling on the civil public 
 in general, not without hope of apples. 
 
 An Army Service Corps driver, with his neck 
 tied up in flannel, addressing his two Belgian 
 horses in the purest idiom of Munster. He 
 changes their names daily: yesterday they were 
 Fairy and Flirt, to-day they are Ginger and 
 Blackstrap. But the Irish voice is always the 
 same, and it expresses a dogged conviction that 
 horses can't get on without oats. A motor-cyclist 
 dispatch-rider, who should be in the last throes 
 of becoming a senior wrangler, and is actually 
 a corporal, grim, mudded to the eyes, and yelp- 
 ing '' Keep to your right !" dashes through. 
 The group he splashes opine darkly that he might 
 as well be a spy as not. 
 
 Nothing else is happening, or may happen for 
 the next five hours. On the other hand all the 
 troops and transport may have melted off into 
 the grey landscape before the clock in the church 
 belfry strikes again. 
 
 The Ancient looks at the church, and makes 
 at it through the crowd. The doors are open 
 and he can get in. Very often the priests are all
 
 34 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 away, gone to carry their rifles somewhere in the 
 long line of defence stretching from the extreme 
 south-east to the extreme north-w'est of France. 
 Then the churches are locked, and the keys are 
 with the mayor. Here the priest is too old to 
 serve, and the church is open. 
 
 All the wide space of nave and aisles is deep in 
 straw: a regiment of cuirassiers were God's 
 guests in the church last night. They went away 
 at sunrise, and to-night perhaps another regi- 
 ment will come. 
 
 Over the entrance-doors is a wide gallery, with 
 quaint pictures, not easy to understand, painted 
 on its front, and on the walls behind and at either 
 side. They seem to refer to another war, all of 
 whose combatants have passed into the Great 
 Peace three hundred years ago. The drawing 
 is stiff and harsh, the colours rude, but no doubt 
 the peasants of these fields, who saw them when 
 they were painted, understand them well enough. 
 
 Bits of carving in the walls, and at the pillar- 
 heads, hint at an older church than the present, 
 certainly much older than the boastful, dilapi- 
 dated Renaissance high altar. That was very 
 gorgeous once, but could never Iiave been very 
 beautiful: its bulges and curligigs, its cupids 
 (they could never have looked like cherubs) all 
 belong to a bad and decadent taste, not the true
 
 AT CROSS-WAYS 35 
 
 and sane Renaissance. The tabernacle, huge, 
 and pretentiously ornate, sobered only by time 
 and decay, is ugly enough. But millions of 
 Communions have been given from it, and its 
 architecture never mattered. 
 
 It is empty now. No doubt the Blessed Sacra- 
 ment is in the presbytery. Our Lady^s Altar 
 has a forest of candlesticks and vases, hand- 
 some and poor, given by the members of a con- 
 fraternity. St. Joseph's, at the head of the op- 
 posite aisle, has a crack in the wall beside it, 
 into which a burnt-sienna coloured slug is insinu- 
 ating himself. 
 
 Against one of the big pillars a much newer 
 statue, on a wooden pedestal, stands, with, the 
 tricolore for background. On a lower table in 
 front of it are candles, and to some of them are 
 pinned written papers, with a soldier's name on 
 them, or *' Priez pour France." The figure is a 
 young girPs in silvery armour, bareheaded, with 
 long fair hair, and patient sad eyes, upturned; 
 her left hand holds a helmet ; clasped in her right 
 is the ancient Oriflamme of France — the Blessed 
 Maid, Joan. The Ancient, who has prayed to 
 the absent Master of the tabernacle; at His 
 Mother's shrine, and His foster-father's; kneels 
 to beg the patriot-martyr to forward those piti- 
 ful, tender entreaties pinned to the candles at her 
 feet.
 
 36 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 When he gets up again, he finds himself no 
 longer alone in the big church. A broad- 
 shouldered lad of twenty, with grave, dark eyes, 
 in a cavalry uniform, stands in the deep straw 
 just behind where he has been kneeling. 
 
 He nods soberly to the Ancient, and says: 
 
 ** So you pray to her ?" 
 
 ** Do not vou ?" 
 
 " I was not praying at all. I was watching 
 you. You pray to her, then ? ' ' 
 
 *' Did you think I was pretending V* 
 
 " No, Monsieur. But it seemed to me 
 strange." 
 
 '' And to me strange that you do not. You 
 are a French soldier. ' ' 
 
 ** Yes, I am a French soldier. It is that. If 
 I should pray to her it would be natural. ' ' 
 
 " So I think. But you leave it, it seems, to 
 me." 
 
 '' And you are English. That is what I thought 
 odd. She was your enemy. ' ' 
 
 *' The English were her enemies. She is in 
 heaven, and no one is her enemy. But you and 
 I — ^we are on earth : and we are not enemies. ' ' 
 
 *' No. Comrades." 
 
 ** Thank you, comrade. In this place one 
 would rather think of that. ' ' 
 
 The stalwart French lad gave a little smile,
 
 AT CROSS-WAYS 37 
 
 very courteous, and it had the effect of a bow; 
 but he must have been a little obstinate, for he 
 said: 
 
 " Yes, we are good friends now, your country 
 and mine. But then; when she was alive," and 
 he turned a thumb towards the statue, and shook 
 his curly head to complete his sentence. 
 
 '^ She is alive," the Ancient objected. 
 
 *' But your people killed her." 
 
 '^ Some of my people (and some of yours, I 
 think, killed all they could. Not her. No one 
 can kill you or me. ' ' 
 
 ' * Some German may kill us both. ' ' 
 
 " Your 3^oung body, and my old one. That's 
 all. It's no great triumph. It's only doing the 
 work of some disease, or some unskilled doctor, 
 or of mere old age, before the time; I mean a 
 little sooner than one had thought." 
 
 The cuirassier took his large hands out of the 
 pockets of his loose, red riding-breeches. I wish 
 there was a word for that soft, unblatant colour, 
 which is certainly not scarlet, nor crimson, nor 
 cherry-colour : there are some geraniums almost 
 of the tint, or they would seem so if they could 
 fade a little without witherng. 
 
 " Monsieur," said the soldier, '' I do not feel 
 like that. You speak of your body as if it were 
 of no account. ' '
 
 38 FEENCH WINDOWS 
 
 " My body isn't of mucli. There's not much 
 of it, and it isn 't interesting. I should be sorry 
 to think it was I." 
 
 '' Well, mine is me." 
 
 *' I hope not." 
 
 '' Why, then ? What fault have you to find 
 with it?" 
 
 " None, as your body. It is strong, and 
 healthy I should say, and of a good shape. And 
 the face at the top of it is all right. I find it 
 easy to talk to your face. But it would be im- 
 possible if that were all. One could as easily 
 talk to a dead wall with a carved head in stone 
 on it. It is to you one can speak — because there 
 is something else besides your body and your 
 face." 
 
 ' ' You mean, perhaps, my soul. ' ' 
 
 '' Certainly I do." 
 
 * * Eh, well ! My soul. Monsieur, I am twenty 
 years old and I have not met it." 
 
 ** An inhospitality ! If I went to your house 
 — where is it ? " 
 
 ** Near St. Maximin; I am Provencal." 
 
 '' Of the poets' country ! Well, if I went to 
 your house, and you were there, Avould you ignore 
 my presence I" 
 
 '' Monsieur, I should be honoured by your 
 visit. ' '
 
 AT CROSS-WAYS 39 
 
 *' Just a chance visit, of an old stranger, with 
 no claim upon you. But I would not risk it — 
 I should tire of waiting twenty years to meet 
 you." 
 
 '■'' But, Monsieur, that is different. I can see 
 you: no one has ever seen my soul." 
 
 " If so it is your fault. You must have been 
 hiding it — even from yourself." 
 
 *' Can you see it ?" 
 
 *' I am trying." 
 
 " Sans succes f 
 
 " No. There are glimpses: in spite of your 
 obstinacy. ' ' 
 
 *' You think I am obstinate I" 
 
 ** I am sure." 
 
 '* Well, yes. That is part of my character. 
 So they say at home." 
 
 It was so obvious that the young Provencal 
 enjoyed talking of himself that it even struck 
 him. 
 
 '* Monsieur," he said, abruptly, " I am wast- 
 ing your time." 
 
 *' Does that mean you are tired of talking to 
 me? " 
 
 " No. To the contrary. It is interesting: one 
 can understand — you talk French perfectly." 
 
 " That is not true: I hope it is equally untrue 
 about your soul. I happen to speak French
 
 40 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 quckly but ill. I use, you perceive, no 
 idioms.'* 
 
 *' 'Idioms ' are ' private expressions,' are they 
 not 1 ' ' The young soldier remarked with another 
 little smile. 
 
 * * In that sense I use idioms — but my own, not 
 those of France. However, if I can make you 
 understand, it does not matter." 
 
 " I understand, and I like this talk — one is 
 tired of the war, and the war, and the war. ' ' 
 
 *' I would rather talk of Peace. For I know 
 nothing about w^ar. ' ' 
 
 ' ' You are, I think, an interpreter. ' ' 
 
 ** No. I am a chaplain. " 
 
 ** Oh, I knew you were a priest. Are you a 
 chaplain only for the w^ar, or in permanence f " 
 
 ** I am always a chaplain. I belong to our 
 Army. ' ' 
 
 *' With a grade, is it not?" 
 
 ''Yes; of Colonel." 
 
 " Well, my Colonel, let us go on talking. Per- 
 haps I am indiscreet asking so many ques- 
 tions ?" 
 
 " Not at all. But do not say ' My Colonel ' : 
 I am not that; our own soldiers call me 
 'Father.'" 
 
 " You are, then, a monk." 
 No. I have not that honour. Only a 
 
 ti
 
 AT CROSS-WAYS 41 
 
 secular priest. But our people think all priests 
 their Fathers." 
 
 ''You called me once 'Comrade.' I liked 
 that. I may call you 'My Father and Com- 
 rade' f" 
 
 "Yes: and 'friend.' " 
 
 One of the large hands was held out at once 
 very courteously and friendly; and they shook 
 hands, close by the shrine of the Blessed Patriot- 
 Maid. 
 
 "Our entente cordiale," said the Frenchman, 
 smiling. 
 
 If nothing else ever came of it, it did not seem 
 to the Ancient that it would have been a waste 
 of time. Every Englishman and Frenchman 
 making friends seemed to him a sweetening of 
 the acidities of war. 
 
 "May I know my friend's name?" asked the 
 Provencal. "Mine is Pertuis Jacques." 
 
 "And the only part of mine you will ever be 
 able to pronounce is Jean." 
 
 And the Ancient pulled the envelope of a 
 letter from his pocket and gave it to the lad. 
 Jacques looked firmly at it, but confessed that 
 it was hopeless. 
 
 ' ' However, ' ' he said, " if I may I mil keep this 
   — in memory of my English priest." 
 
 " Have you many priest-friends ?"
 
 42 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 **None." 
 
 *'Your fault, Jacques." 
 
 *' Perhaps." 
 
 *'No. Certainly. Thousands are your com- 
 rades in this war. You must have met many." 
 
 **Yes. Monsieur, they are admirable France 
 is proud of them. They are the most brave, the 
 most devoted." 
 
 "Thank you, Jacques. I am not French, 
 though I love every field of France as if I had 
 been born on it. But you praise the high 
 courtiers of my own King." 
 
 **It is a wonderful thing," the young man said, 
 gravely, with an odd respect, ''this Catholic 
 Church of ours. I am a bad Catholic, as you 
 see ; nevertheless, I am proud of these priests of 
 ours, not only because they are French and I am 
 French ; you too, English, feel as I. If I praised 
 you, you would not be pleased " 
 
 *'You could not. It would be bad manners." 
 
 **Yes. But it pleases you to hear them 
 praised. Because they are more your brothers 
 than if they were of your nation and not priests. " 
 
 ''Yes, Jacques; it is a wonderful thing this 
 Catholic Church of ours — that makes even her 
 children who try not to be good so good in spite 
 of themselves. ' ' 
 
 *'You think I try not to be good?"
 
 AT CROSS-WAYS 43 
 
 **You try to be deaf and blind. . ." 
 
 * ' And you think me good ! ' ' 
 
 ''Dear Jacques, I think God made you, and 
 that He ;will not let His great work be spoiled 
 because a wayward lad is obstinate and will not 
 see what a great work it is." 
 
 The young soldier was sitting down now in the 
 deep straw, his back almost turned to the statue 
 of the Maid; the Ancient, half -kneeling, half- 
 sitting, had his face to it. Through one of the 
 large, plain windows a ragged glint of pale sun- 
 light smote in across the empty church, and 
 touched the face of the statue. The lips seemed 
 to express a more tender patience. 
 
 The lad picked up a straw and played with it ; 
 sometimes looking down ; then, lifting his sombre 
 eyes, met the old priest's with them, and he 
 threw the straw away. 
 
 *'Eh, but I am bored," he said. 
 
 ''With me?" 
 
 "Oh, no! I tell you this interests me. But 
 I am bored. It is the war." 
 
 "I think not, Jacques." 
 
 "If there were fighting; but you know how 
 it is " 
 
 "Yes. I know how it is. It is not the war. 
 Fighting would make you forget it, no doubt. 
 But it is you who bore yourself. ' '
 
 44 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 ''That is true." 
 
 *'I knew it was. What one cannot hide from 
 oneself one can never hide from a friend." 
 
 *'Why then do you say I am bored?" 
 
 "Because of this — stupidity of yours." 
 
 Jacque 's clear, olive-brown face flushed a little. 
 
 *'You do not think me intelligent, then?" he 
 said, with patent disappointment. 
 
 "God made you so. This stupidity is half an 
 affectation, half a bad habit." 
 
 "I have other bad habits." 
 
 "Very likely. They generally like to have 
 plenty of company." 
 
 "Shall I tell you them?" 
 
 "No, Jacques. I am not hearing your con- 
 fession. But I will say this — you find them 
 tedious masters." 
 
 "I think all masters are tedious. One's mas- 
 ter says ' Go there ' when one wishes to go another 
 way; and 'Do this' when one has meant to do 
 that — or nothing. ' ' 
 
 "Only when he and you are of two minds. 
 So bad men do not find the De^dl's orders tedious. 
 That shows a thing — you are bored to death 
 doing what he tells you. You are not bad yet. ' ' 
 
 " I remember," said the lad, with the straw 
 between his teeth again, "when I was good 
 enough. Can you figure that?"
 
 AT CROSS-WAYS 45 
 
 "Very easily. It requires no great imagina- 
 tion. 'Good enough' — though. Enough for 
 whom?" 
 
 "You must settle for yourself what I meant," 
 said the lad, half wistfully. 
 
 "I suppose you meant good enough for God. 
 Now you are not even good enough for yourself. ' ' 
 
 "Yet a while ago you called me good!" 
 
 "You must settle for yourself what I meant." 
 
 The Provencal smiled and put his hands down 
 in his lap. 
 
 "We are fencing," he said. "You want to 
 say things and are too shy. And I want to hear 
 them, and am too shy to ask. ' ' 
 
 "Yes, I am shy. But more than that. I am 
 afraid." 
 
 "Afraid?" 
 
 " Yes. Of saying the wrong thing. Because 
 I am stupid. ' * 
 
 "You also! I thought it was I. " 
 
 " You and I both. In different fashions. Mine 
 is the stupidity of not knowing how to say what 
 I know is true ; yours that of refusing to admit a 
 truth that you know is there." 
 
 "What truth?" 
 
 "That your body is not you. When you 
 please it, it does not please you. That is what 
 you mean when you say 'Eh, I am bored.' "
 
 46 FEENCH WINDOWS 
 
 **You have settled what I meant!'* 
 
 And again the grave, dissatisfied eyes softened 
 with a friendlv smile. 
 
 Up in the tower, high over their heads, there 
 came a grinding, clanking onise. The clock was 
 going to strike. 
 
 "We have talked a long while," said the 
 Ancient. "Perhaps my people have gone on, 
 and I shall have to try to find and follow them. 
 I suppose we must stop talking " 
 
 "You are sorry?" 
 
 "Yes. Because it is for ever. I did not come 
 in here to look for you, nor you to find me. But 
 we have met, and we are friends. And I hate to 
 see my friends no more." 
 
 "You are sure we shall meet no more?" asked 
 the lad, and he smiled, not flippantly, with a 
 lifted, pointing finger. 
 
 "Ah, Jacques! Who can tell? You may 
 become a saint, and God knows what I may 
 become. I meant here on this earth, in this 
 war." 
 
 "I knew what you meant. But — stay a little 
 longer. We have settled nothing." 
 
 The Ancient knew it w^as a bribe, but he did 
 not mind being bribed. After all no one can 
 do two things at once, and there might be some- 
 thing to do here.
 
 AT CROSS-WAYS 47 
 
 **No, we have settled nothing. We are not 
 Hkely to." 
 
 ** I have discouraged you?" said the young 
 soldier — he had a kind heart. ''That makes 
 me sorry. It is a pity I am not different." 
 
 **It is a pity we are not all of us different. 
 No, Jacques, you have not discouraged me. 
 Did you think me so conceited as to imagine that 
 a word or two of an old, strange man could alter 
 a young man 's established thought ? ' ' 
 
 * ' I did not, ' ' the Provencal answered, simply, 
 ''think you conceited. Perhaps," he added, 
 gently, in a very low, plain voice, "perhaps it is 
 I who am conceited." 
 
 "Listen, Jacques! There would be no conceit 
 in your refusing to make much account of what 
 a chance stranger chose to say to you — unknown, 
 uninvited ..." 
 
 "Not uninvited," the young man protested, 
 holding out an interrupting hand. "I have 
 been inviting you all the time." 
 
 "I am glad. Still you had no need to listen 
 to me : if you would listen to a Voice that never 
 stammers, nor makes mistakes, that is not old, 
 but a Young Man's, who understands all that I 
 can only guess at stumblingly, who understands 
 you much, much better and gentlier than you 
 understand yourself. ..."
 
 48 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 From the great chancel-arch there hung down, 
 high over both their heads, a plain huge cross, 
 and the Ancient tried not to look towards it, but 
 the image of the dying Young Man upon it, who 
 looks thence to draw all things to Himself, drew 
 his eyes too. 
 
 ''The Christ!" whispered the lad, refusing to 
 let his own eyes follow there. "/Je will be my 
 Judge. ' ' 
 
 ''Not till you have utterly condemned your- 
 self." 
 
 The young man shuddered. 
 
 "Afraid? Afraid of Him?'' cried the old 
 priest. "Afraid of being judged by Him? I 
 am not then. I should be afraid to be judged 
 by you. You who say, anyway, that you do not 
 even try to be good ; you who must pretend that 
 goodness is impossible — a counterfeit and show, 
 a cheat ; you would demand of every poor priest 
 simple perfection, and condemn us because we 
 are not angels but men. I would not be judged 
 by you: nor by any man, not even by a saint. 
 Only absolute Perfection and Omniscience could 
 be tolerable in one's judge. If you are afraid it 
 is because you have forgotten Him." 
 
 "I seemed to know once — do you think any 
 Frenchman forgets the day of his First Com- 
 munion?"
 
 AT CROSS-WAYS 49 
 
 *'Many try to. Many pretend to have suc- 
 ceeded." 
 
 *'I will not pretend. Always I remem- 
 ber." 
 
 *' Memory is a part of oneself. Nothing re- 
 membered is lost to oneself. A man cannot lay 
 aside his arms or his heart by refusing to acknow- 
 ledge their presence or function. Tell me this 
 other part of you." 
 
 *' There is nothing great to tell. Only I 
 remember it. He was real then. But He is a 
 Memory only, now." 
 
 ''When a man who has seen the King becomes 
 blind the King is only a memory to him. He 
 was not more real while the man who has fallen 
 blind could see him." 
 
 The young soldier never failed to listen, nor 
 ever failed to understand. But a wayward twist 
 of obstinacy clutched him, and he said, after the 
 twentieth part of a moment's weighing of v/hat 
 the Ancient had said: 
 
 *'You forget I am a Republican." 
 
 **Did I? I only remembered perhaps that 
 we are both men, and men have not cast aside 
 the true images of poetry when they have cast 
 out their kings." 
 
 "Comrade — you are not angry that I like best 
 that title I I beg your pardon. If I am
 
 50 FRENCPI WINDOWS 
 
 Republican you at least are the subject of a 
 Monarchy. ' ' 
 
 '^I am. Of the oldest conceivable. Of a 
 King even you have not dethroned, though you 
 are squandering yourself in an agonizing pre- 
 tence of rebellion. St. Paul cried out in anguish : 
 'The evil that I would not that I do: the good 
 that I would I do not. ' But in the beginning he 
 was different. Then it v/as the evil that he would 
 not he tried to do; he was young then. But 
 that other young Man you are afraid of met him 
 in the way and saved him from tearing himself 
 to rags of folly. Good-bye, Jacques. Alas, alas 
 it must be good-bye. I must go. And here in 
 this war you and I will meet no more: but you 
 and he will meet. You have met. His Wisdom 
 will be stronger than your silliness. Omnia 
 vincit amor. In that supreme combat He is 
 Omnipotent. He has looked on you and loved 
 you : and you will be ashamed to be proud still, 
 face to face with that infinite humility. . . .'* 
 
 All the time, since the clock had struck, they 
 had slowlj^ with many stoppings, been moving 
 do^vn the empty church towards the door. They 
 had reached it now, and they passed out by it 
 together. Most of the troops were gone. 
 
 *'That way. Monsieur!" a good-natured 
 woman, who had seen the priest go in, called
 
 AT CROSS-WAYS 51 
 
 out to him, from her door, pointing along the 
 road to the left. 
 
 Jacques watched him follow across the deep 
 mud of the open space : very deep mud, in which 
 the Ancient stumbled once, his ungainly boot 
 catching against a big stone hidden in the mire. 
 The young man, with a smile half wistful, half 
 whimsical, wholly gentle and kindly, watched 
 the hurrying old figure, round-shouldered, and 
 the white hair (overdue for cutting), and the 
 homely, ruddy face, as it turned to smile Fare- 
 well. And he confessed to himself, for he was 
 frank and honest, with all his petulant, young 
 perversity — 
 
 *'An ugly body. Unless there was something 
 in it that one cannot see I would not have talked 
 all this while to it. I would not care even to see 
 it again. But I do care. And I have nothing 
 to do. He does not know there are cross-roads 
 again half a kilometre out there. I will go with 
 him — to say Au Revoir — as far as the cross- 
 roads. Ay, and farther, perhaps." 
 
 Perhaps. 
 
 Does one expect to see right along every road 
 to its ultimate goal beyond the horizon, where 
 the quiet heaven bends down to mingle with the 
 upturned, humble face of earth? It is that am- 
 bition that frets and disappoints us.
 
 IV 
 
 ENGLISH. 
 
 A^ orchard flanking a well-to-do farm-house, 
 itself the last house in a village: the village 
 stone-built, like all the others in that region. 
 The cottages along the street more like farm- 
 houses than the actual one by the orchard, be- 
 cause the latter had smartened itself up, and 
 half villafied itself. The street curving down to 
 its middle-point like a slackly strung rope, and 
 in the hollow of tlie dip the church, locked and 
 empty, priestless; the priest a soldier some- 
 where. 
 
 In the street hardly any native life: our lot 
 just arrived, but scarcely any villagers showing : 
 shuttered houses, blind-eyed, perhaps hiding 
 cowering peasants, women, children, old men: 
 the emptiness of the street striking oddly, as 
 though it were midnight and daylight. 
 
 Two English officers, very dusty, after a march 
 
 that had begun at break of dawn, glancing about 
 
 as they trudged tiredly along to the billet in the 
 
 orchard. A door gingerly opened and an old 
 
 52
 
 ENGLISH 53 
 
 face thrust out. '' Monsieur ! Should we 
 flvr» 
 
 ''Fly? But no." One of the Englishmen 
 calls out '' What should one fly from?" 
 
 *' The Germans — one says they are at the next 
 village." 
 
 The Englishman does not believe — a mere 
 scare: and says so. '" We are stopping here to- 
 night, ' ' he argues. ' ' If they were at * * * * we 
 should not be staying here. ' ' 
 
 The old grey face, unconvinced, ready for mis- 
 fortune, haggard, but stonily calm, goes in, and 
 the door shuts : a bolt creaks : and the two Eng- 
 lishmen move on. 
 
 *' Should you have advised that?" asks the 
 younger of them. 
 
 '' To stay ? Why on earth should they flee 
 when no man pursueth ?" 
 
 '' I don't feel sure of that. There's something 
 in the air — a menace." 
 
 They came to the gate into the orchard, rather 
 a narrow gate, not convenient for getting great 
 ambulance-waggons through: the orchard itself 
 not very convenient for packing them; some 
 already in, their horses out and being watered, 
 or being taken out, others being got in up the 
 steep, soft slope from the road. 
 
 ]Jnder the trees, next the hedge on one side,
 
 54 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 officers' servants choosing spots for their mas- 
 ters' bedding, and unrolling the blankets. In a 
 corner, the men 's cooks making a fire, and piling 
 Tip their big cooking-pots (''Dixies" they call 
 them) round it, the officers' cooks lighting a 
 much smaller, opposition fire near where the 
 servants are laying out the blankets; another 
 servant '' laying the dining-room table," i. e., 
 setting enamelled tin mugs, numb-looking knives 
 and forks, on a waterproof sheet on the grass. 
 
 Some officers washing themselves, out of can- 
 vas buckets : one or two shaving, and also walk- 
 ing about. The Ancient decides both to wash 
 and shave, and gathers together the essentials, 
 then walks off to the farm. At the pump, and 
 at a horse-trough, a fierce Avashing and splash- 
 ing of men stripped to the waist. He asks, in- 
 sinuatingly, at the kitchen-door if there is any 
 room where he may go and wash too : the propo- 
 sition received favourably ; and he is escorted to 
 a room on the ground-floor, tiled, and opening 
 on to a walled garden with a few dahlias and a 
 good many high-stepping hens in it. The room 
 contains a big bedstead, almost grandiose, and 
 a chair with three legs and an empty butter-tub 
 sustaining the fourth corner; also a table cov- 
 ered vdth ragged American leather, on which 
 are three used paper collars coloured like
 
 ENGLISH 55 
 
 meerschaum pipes, an extremely small tin bowl, 
 and a bucket full of water presumably second- 
 hand. On a shelf is a fine old Renaissance 
 crucifix, on a chest of drawers a statue of Our 
 Lady of Lourdes with little pots of cow-medi- 
 cines at her feet. There is a framed photograph 
 (an enlargement, evidently, and woolly) of the 
 master of the house, in the uniform of a 
 Marechale Chef de Logis of a cavalry regiment : 
 the original far, far away. When did he last lie 
 in that hot-looking bed! Will he ever come back 
 to lie in it again! His unknown guest entreats 
 that he may: and tries to take the comfort of a 
 promise from the portrait — not a fateful face, 
 but round, well-satisfied; the figure dapper, 
 stoutish, prosperous. No tragic wistfulness in 
 the big, wide-opened, shrewd eyes. But eh ! 
 alas ! if only the fateful-faced ones fell, how 
 short would be the roll of the slain. ... 
 
 Outside the window in the garden it seems 
 there is another pump, and three exploring sol- 
 diers discover it; and after considerable, if 
 hasty, peeling, pump obligingly on each other. 
 The Ancient hands out his bucket and begs for 
 a clean re-fill. 
 
 On the tiled floor he manages almost a bath. 
 Then, a shave ; then a return to the orchard, and 
 supper which happens to be dinner also. It is
 
 56 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 dark now, and the few lights, here and there 
 among the crowded trees, show up Rembrandtish 
 groups and faces. 
 
 A motor-cyclist dispatch-rider arrives before 
 the cheese. 
 
 ''Up and off." 
 
 In the dark the '' beds " are hurriedly rolled 
 up again: fires are kicked out: pots and kettles 
 huddled away into their waggons : horses quickly 
 harnessed, their drivers condoling with them 
 over unfinished oats ; cracking of boughs as the 
 waggons struggle through the trees, quite in- 
 visible now in the moonless dark ; in wonderfully 
 few minutes what was a camp is a camp no 
 longer, and the ' ' unit ' ' waits in the road for the 
 order to march. Silent groups of peasants flit by, 
 homeless now : you can hear their shuffling feet, 
 their breathing as they pass close to you, hardly 
 a voice, even in a sob ; even the children make no 
 wail, hurry and dread hold them too silent. 
 AVhither they go they know not; why, they can 
 scarce know, those babies on whom (as on their 
 fathers gone already whither they know not) 
 the horrible, dull riddle of the war has fallen. 
 One wonders when they will come back — to- 
 morrow 1 Never f Is the darkness swallowing, 
 assimilating, them ? or will the da^vn's light see 
 them creeping chilly home, after a nightmare
 
 ENGLISH 57 
 
 of false alarm ? Part of the riddle. In a thou- 
 sand variants the riddle keeps asking itself all 
 day, all night, always. 
 
 One cannot see the village. Not a light in any 
 house of it. Not a glint of moonshine catches 
 belfry or gable anywhere. Swallowed, too, in 
 the thick, hot, dusty dark. 
 
 One thinks of Keats' village — '* emptied of its 
 folk this pious morn, ' ' its villagers all gone fol- 
 lowing the lowing kine to the festal sacrifice : not 
 by association does that bland and lovely picture, 
 come louping into memory — by contrast. No 
 pious eve this — or is it? Of what unfestal 
 sacrifice are these village-folk themselves the 
 victims ? 
 
 ''Quick march." 
 
 The cadence of five hundred feet, no sound 
 else. No song whistled or sung. And nothing 
 visible: no doubt each man can see his neigh- 
 bour, but no eye could pick out of the blackness 
 any shape of the whole marching column. It 
 moves along the bottom of the night as though 
 gulfed in a black and great water. No man of 
 all that march has ever seen the fields that flank 
 his road, nor ever will see them : what they may 
 be like he cannot guess, nor is he guessing: if 
 there be homes here they do not betray their 
 nearness, but huddle into the sombre, stealthy
 
 58 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 skirts of the night. There may be corn-lands, 
 garden-plots, trees, orchards — there may be any- 
 thing ; an army, friendly, or hostile. Somewhere 
 hereabouts are two armies, our own, of which 
 this little block of silent-moving men forms a 
 tiny part ; perhaps that of our French comrades ; 
 we do not know in the least; certainly not far 
 off, that of our swift, alert foe. We do not know : 
 not to know anything is for such as ourselves a 
 note of this early phase of the war. 
 
 And no one asks: no questions are heard, no 
 surmise. Perhaps every man wonders, but none 
 asks " Whither?" or ''Why?" The Ancient 
 wonders too : not whither, or why : for the name 
 of one place would mean as little to him, if he 
 knew it, as that of another: nor if he could be 
 told the actual purpose of each march would he 
 perhaps understand, for to him all war and 
 strategy are an unlearned language. Only he 
 wonders of what the men are thinking as they 
 go : of what homes, friends, partings ? 
 
 Sometimes one can tell by the sound of the 
 marching feet that they fall on a narrowed road 
 between high banks; oftener there must be flat 
 ground to left and right. 
 
 '' Halt !" 
 
 Cross-roads, and a momentary pause. Then 
 the way to the left is chosen and the column
 
 ENGLISH 59 
 
 moves again. UpMll this time. For a bare half- 
 mile. 
 
 Then there comes the clatter of a ridden horse 
 galloping after us, and its rider, finding the com- 
 manding officer, tells him, 
 
 " They are there. At the top of the hill. . . .'* 
 
 The Ancient, close by, hears him. 
 
 Another halt, and a turn about; to turn the 
 waggons is very difficult: they are not made to 
 turn on narrow roads, and on a narrow road 
 without flat ground on either side would be im- 
 •possible ; who can tell in this smother of darkness 
 whether this road be broad or narrow, what it is 
 like to right and left ? They are turned, and it 
 is *' Quick march !" again, downhill. Odd to 
 think who was behind ; to wonder how near ? 
 
 For a long way it is downhill, easier going for 
 tired feet, and for a long way the road passes 
 between steep high banks. The silence, and the 
 rhythmic monotone of the marching feet makes 
 one sleepy, deadly sleepy. What luxury if one 
 could lie down among the soft, deep dust of the 
 wayside and be asleep. Can one sleep walking; 
 is there only the somnambulance of disease? 
 Often the Ancient thought he must have slept 
 moving; perhaps only for a few moments, that 
 seemed to have been long. 
 
 Another halt at last : a long wait, and then the
 
 60 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 orders not to camp, but for all to rest where they 
 were. Some lay do\vii at once on the roadside, 
 some clambered up the high banks and lay 
 among the stubble they found at the top. The 
 Ancient scrambled up to the driving-seat of a 
 waggon, intending to sleep there. But the night 
 was cold now, and the sleep that had seemed to 
 swallow him up, to assault him like an obsession, 
 as he walked, would not come now that it was 
 bidden. Ficklest of friends ! So rude to thrust 
 herself on us uninvited at awkward moments, so 
 standing upon punctilio when entreated. 
 
 The horses slept : their driver slept : someone 
 inside the waggon was certainly asleep, as he 
 assured the public most resonantly. 
 
 The Ancient tried to sleep by telling himself a 
 story of matchless pointlessness and banality 
 about a man called Jones, who had twelve chil- 
 dren, and the eldest married Carolina Williams 
 and had twelve children, the eldest of whom, etc., 
 etc. But it would not do : he only began to have 
 a monstrous interest in the alliances of the Jones 
 family. 
 
 The man asleep inside the waggon slept on, 
 but ceased to snore. There was no sound now 
 except the occasional jingle of harness as a horse 
 shifted in his sleep. 
 
 At last there came another sound, very strange
 
 ENGLISH ei 
 
 and troubling, of someone weeping: of someone 
 invisible behind the curtain of the waggon, but 
 close, close to, crying very low and quietly. 
 There were no women there to weep: and the 
 memory of the Ancient, always errant and va- 
 grant, clapped into his mind that great saying 
 of the old heathen historian, concerning a tribe 
 of the very people now our enemies : * ' It is for 
 their women, indeed, to weep: for their men to 
 remember. ' ' 
 
 Was this Englishman who wept remembering 
 too ? 
 
 "What more gross than for one man to thrust 
 in and show himself aware of another man's 
 tears ? In broad daylight, face to face, the 
 Ancient could not have done it: he must have 
 turned away and hidden the indiscretion of hav- 
 ing noted. 
 
 But in this thick and lonely night, two awake 
 in the midst of a sleeping company, it seemed 
 different: the two watchers so near together, 
 hardly a foot of space between them, for one to 
 hold himself aloof, discreetly heedless, from the 
 trouble in some young heart so near his own, 
 seemed but a cold and callous hardness. 
 
 ** What is it r' he whispered, drawing the 
 curtain aside, and bending towards it. 
 
 It was so dark that the whiteness of the cur-
 
 62 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 tains barely showed less black than the night 
 herself; so much darker inside that no face be- 
 came visible. 
 
 ** Sir, I thought everyone was asleep. I didn't 
 know as you was there." A young voice, with 
 the northland burr in it that to the Ancient, 
 north-country born, always sounds homely, 
 friendly. 
 
 ' ' I beg your pardon ..." 
 
 " Nay, it's me as should. I niver thought to 
 trooble no one." 
 
 " It only troubles me to think you are in 
 trouble. I'm ashamed to have let you know I 
 heard you, only I couldn't help it. You and I 
 are the only ones awake, and one of us is sad — 
 I couldn't help speaking, though one man's 
 words can't alter another's trouble." 
 
 ** Sir, I thank you kindly. They're all strange 
 to me yet; I've ne'er a choom; there's bin no 
 time yet, nor yet no chance, o' making any. So 
 I think. And I couldna sleep : and ... I were 
 thinking of my gal." 
 
 " Are you engaged to be married ?" 
 
 *' Nay, I am married. There's the trooble. 
 Married not twelve months. And my wife she 
 was near her time — not full come it wasn't, but 
 near. Then the mobilization order came, and I 
 had to get over to Dublin ; and the very day we
 
 ENGLISH 63 
 
 embarked came a letter, not from her, but from 
 her sister; and it was gave me on board, and I 
 read it as we was moving down and the folk 
 cheering, and the sirens squealin', and it said 
 how Tessie'd worried o'er me going, and her 
 pains had coom on her: and the child had been 
 born, and she very ill an' all, and the nurse as 
 was Catholic, like yourself, sir, had christened 
 him after me, but he died an hour after. ..." 
 
 A little pause, a struggle too easy to divine, 
 though by hard force inaudible, and the young 
 voice took up its humble plain tale. 
 
 *' I'd told her, a hoondred times, as soon 
 there 'd be the little 'un to comfort her. And 
 she'd listen, an' cooldna say me Nay. She 
 know'd it 'ud comfort her. Yet it troobled her 
 an' all as the child 'ud coom and me not there 
 to give it e'er a welcome. * Eh, Jim, but 1 niver 
 thought to be left alone then/ she said, and I told 
 her nor me eether; but it was just Dooty, and 
 had to be doon ; and she couldna say me Nay to 
 that eether, nor she didna try. She didna 
 cry, but her face daunted me. She didna cry 
 not even when I coomed away; p'raps she 
 couldna, p'raps she wouldna — but she fell out 
 o' me arms, and it was like death she looked: 
 and that Irish nurse I told you of ran in, and
 
 64 FEENCH WINDOWS 
 
 made me a sign as I had better go, and I had 
 to go." 
 Another little struggling pause, and then : 
 ** Eh, Sir: when I knew as she hadna the child 
 to think on — we'd both on us bin thinking of it, 
 and plotting for it iver so long — when I couldna 
 say any more, as I'd said to myself o'er and o'er 
 again, * The child '11 coomf ort her : it '11 force her 
 to think of it, i'stid o' think, think, thinking o' 
 me ': and all the crowd o' the ship, and all the 
 crowds on the quays, cheering, and the sirens 
 yelling. . . . Eh, Sir, it were bitter 'ard. . . . 
 And just now it all coomed o'er me again: and 
 . . . Sir, ye'd niver guess what it is to a yoong 
 man to know as he can niver see his soon's face 
 as he's longed to see so many long days. The 
 times I've fancied it ! And the times I've plot- 
 ted for it, and said * I'll do this and that for the 
 child.' . . . and I'll niver see it: and the poor 
 lass to have but a peep of it, and then to see it 
 no more eether. And she's delicate: p'raps 
 she's gone to seek it . . . and if so our little 
 home's gone wi' her. I could niver fancy tryin' 
 to make anoother, if that as I brought her back 
 to is gone: niver. I couldna fancy being hoos- 
 band to another woman, nor father to anoother 
 woman's child. ..."
 
 ENGLISH 65 
 
 "What can a man say to comfort a pain like 
 that ? 
 
 He may know what he should say; may know 
 well where the only hope of comfort lies : but to 
 be glib in saying it, how smug and shallow must 
 one be for that ! And must God always need 
 an interpreter ? If He keeps His own reverent 
 silence, and will not always speak aloud to 
 wounded hearts of His children, must it be al- 
 ways that some blundering man may try to be 
 more eloquent than He ? 
 
 The young voice fell, and the old voice could 
 not soon trespass on the terrible sacred silence. 
 Silence herself sat between the old man and the 
 young, making friends of them. And the old 
 man could do nothing but keep saying to that 
 other Young Man of Nazareth, '* Do it yourself. 
 You care more than I. It was your wound: 
 heal it." 
 
 It was the young sonless father who spoke at 
 last. 
 
 **Sir," he said, whispering, ''are you asleep?" 
 
 *' Asleep ! God forbid that I could sleep: I'm 
 not so bad as that." 
 
 *' Bad, eh, boot you're kind." 
 
 A big young hand had come out through the 
 curtain, and its owner felt it wet. 
 
 " I didn't dare to say anything," said the old
 
 66 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 man. " I longed to, but I durst not. I'm stupid, 
 but I would not be impertinent." 
 
 *' I'd like it if you'd talk. You'd niver say a 
 word to hurt me : and I 'm lonesome for none to 
 talk to." 
 
 Then they did talk : the young man saying as 
 much as the old. Perhaps that way he got most 
 ease. But I am shy to set down all that sirange 
 talk here : for it was strange how two men, alone 
 in that darkness, awake in the midst of so many 
 sleepers, with so many dreams perhaps being 
 dreamed so near at hand, two men so divided by 
 age, by religion, by the course of life, could talk 
 of the great real things of life, neither knowing 
 the other's name, one at least not knowing the 
 other's face, and be at home together, in that 
 foreign land, and grow intimate as only sorrow 
 and the sharing of sorrow can make us : one of 
 them very generous in taking for help the mere 
 desire to help, the other very humble and rev- 
 erent at the simple, unwitting revelation of a 
 nature very manly, singularly pure and unself- 
 ish, marvellously reJ&ned, with a refinement that 
 no uncouth fashion of speech, nor rough phrase, 
 could hide or alter: of a nature very brave, for 
 all those tears, most manly and with a plain un- 
 braggart readiness for danger and for duty. 
 I have spoken, a moment since, of the differ-
 
 ENGLISH 67 
 
 ence of faith between the two men : but, between 
 them in the night there was God, and at that Di- 
 vine bridge they met, and stood together, not 
 seeing each other for the darkness, but seeing 
 Him. 
 Another of these beginnings without an end ?
 
 NEITHBB 
 
 The endless-seeming September drawing to its 
 end, but not yet drawn to it : blazing noons still, 
 and blazing afternoons : skies pittilessly cloudless 
 all the fierce day long, cloudless at sunfall, but 
 aflame without cloud-fuel to set on fire ; and then 
 a cloudless twilight, short and hurrying, another 
 war-day panting to its death in the night's grey 
 arms. Then the moon, huge and splendid, more 
 golden than silver, sun-hot looking; the harvest- 
 moon, staring over limitless harvest-fields at the 
 harvest ungarnered. At last, night — stabbed on 
 the horizons with lurid thrusts of death-fire, 
 visible pulses of war's throbbing fever. 
 
 But now, the mid-month past, the nights learn 
 to seem as chill as the days have been burning; 
 and, at daw^n, about the knees of the woods that 
 clamber down into the deep, steep valleys, 
 swings a veil of pale gauze, and in the valley- 
 bottoms too, not only in that wider one where 
 the river that has already christened a battle 
 
 68
 
 NEITHER 69 
 
 winds through water-meadows, but in all the 
 maze of narrow valleys where no river is. Soon, 
 at the sun's signal this ghostly oriflamme slips 
 from the wooded bluff, and hangs itself a few 
 waiting moments out in mid-air, pearl-white and 
 opal: then the sun conquers, and the white flag 
 yields itself and is not. 
 
 Then comes a night of rain, black and bitter, 
 and there is neither moon nor stars : and another, 
 with a clean-washed, shining day dividing them. 
 And so for many nights, rain, rain, rain: and 
 always boastful, flaring days between: and the 
 deep dust is deep mud. 
 
 Our camp on a table-land, treeless, standing 
 high above deep valleys almost tree-choked. 
 And presently we cease to be a camp, and the 
 whole unit is sanctuaried in an ancient place of 
 God: a high stone wall, grey by nature, greyer 
 by the caress of more than half a dozen centuries, 
 shuts in a twenty-acre plot, garden, crops and 
 homesteading. Over the wall one sees from far 
 off the high roof of a lovely chapel, and lower 
 roofs of enormous Gothic bams: once a Pre- 
 ceptory of the martyred Order of the Temple: 
 after the shameful murder of that Order, whose 
 blood from every land of Christendom cried to 
 Heaven's like Abel's, the Preceptory became a 
 house of St. Bernard's Order of Citeaux, and
 
 70 FEENCH WINDOWS 
 
 tHrougli the centuries the white monks tilled 
 these upland fields, keeping God's silence, far 
 from the clatter of arms and tongues. The huge 
 barns, two-storied, whose upper roofs are held 
 aloft by immense Gothic pillars of stone, were 
 their barns: and the great church, lancet- 
 windowed, Was their church. But the grey- 
 black building at the western end of the vast 
 farm-yard, half-fortalice, with towered angles, of 
 the eleventh century, was the Templars', and is 
 not a ruin yet. 
 
 At the Eevolution the Cistercians' long reign 
 here ceased, and the Sacrifice ceased, never to be 
 offered here again till an old priest from over- 
 seas, of the race of France 's traditional enemies, 
 should come with France's now war-friends, to 
 offer it once more; and the Preceptory and the 
 abbey has for over a century been simply a vast 
 farm-house. 
 
 The farmer was born in the Templars' house, 
 though he lives now in the homestead at the 
 opposite end of the long quadrangle, built out of 
 stones that were once a part of the abbey, and 
 not raw-looking or incongruous: or rather the 
 farmers, for there are two brothers, both away 
 now in the deeper furrow of the trenches. 
 
 The Cistercian church stables over a score of 
 huge plough-oxen, clad in the white habit of
 
 NEITHER 71 
 
 Citeaux ; sedate, solemn, but not severe of mein, 
 keeping St. Bernard's silence, toilsome, useful, 
 harmless, innocent, they seem to desecrate the 
 dead fane as little as any aliens could. In the 
 night-stillness, when the moon thrusts in through 
 the high, empty windows a long arm of virgin 
 light, and one can but surmise the white shapes 
 clustered in the blackness of the unlit sanctuary, 
 they are as seemly ghosts for the innocent 
 haunting of that choir as anyone could picture 
 there. Their lot of patient labour, their lifelong 
 tribute of plain duty, their dumb praise of Him 
 who laid their life too upon them, and made 
 them bear it, humbly and nobly, fulfilling each a 
 fragment of His immense purpose, does this not 
 also preach; the Cistercian silence unwittingly 
 carrying on its unending sermon ? 
 
 If Bembrandt were not dead ! what pictures 
 for him ! The long, broad, open space between 
 the barns, with groups of cattle and of soldiers, 
 camp-fires, red hands held out to the blaze, 
 dancing shadows of men on the barn-walls, 
 titanic figures black on the pallid-grey, and, be- 
 hind, the frowning fortalice-hospice, and be- 
 yond that, the last red relics of a dead day, a 
 blood-stained fringe on the blackening robe of 
 Night. . . . 
 
 A Friday morning; and, outside the great
 
 72 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 Renaissance entrance-gate of the homestead, 
 wounded men being laid down in the deep straw 
 of a long cart-shed : no carts there now, only the 
 pitiful long rows of tattered bodies of lads and 
 men : married men whose wives and children they 
 are praying may not presently be widows and 
 orphaned lads, unwed, unbetrothed unless it be 
 to Death, from whose inexorable tryst they seem 
 to have no shrinking: all, husbands and youths 
 alike, unf retf ul, without complaint : by each sits 
 Hope, gently, with unheard whispers to some of 
 the promise of life, to others the Greater Promise 
 of a Life now clearly perceived, which never can 
 be quite plainly seen till the learner has learned 
 how small a matter Death is. It is only the 
 bustle and preoccupation of life's trivialities 
 that makes so great entanglement of death's 
 knot, and dresses it up in the threat of finality; 
 common life itself is the knot, twisted up of false 
 needs and futile longings: we turn a sharp cor- 
 ner and Death holds out scissors ready to cut 
 the hopeless-seeming tangle. We find that the 
 dreaded frown and scowl is a cowardly legend, 
 that he is no angry stranger, eternal adversary 
 of life, but only a homely usher, mildly, with 
 smile of conscious apology, waiting to open a 
 door, beyond which his function ceases. 
 Among the rows of wounded the priest moves,
 
 NEITHER 73 
 
 seeking his own sons, though in truth he feels 
 father of them all. Here is one : Irish, not dan- 
 gerously wounded, but badly hurt and in great 
 pain of body ; in none at all of mind, but smiling, 
 cheery, very glad to talk, and to talk to a priest, 
 and, Irish-fashion, ready to assume that every 
 English-speaking priest is an Irishman; more 
 than half right this time. 
 
 Here is another: Scots, of the almost swarthy 
 Highland type, deep-eyed, black-browed, with 
 bard black hair, and skin through whose dark- 
 ness glows a dusky flush. He comes from a lit- 
 tle island lonely in the sad western sea, a crofter- 
 lad, and silent by habit of his lonely life, but not 
 hard to win to talk — of home; a home emptied 
 by the war of father, and of five brethren, all out 
 here : only the mother left to pray and to do six 
 men 's work as best she can : easier this work be- 
 cause of the emptied home; none to cook for, 
 none to mend for : and the praying may salt the 
 hard outdoor toil, and toil and praying God sets 
 to stand between her and futile loneliness. The 
 silent-natured lad makes pictures of his few 
 plain words, and it is easy to see them — the 
 great waste of ocean, and the great waste of sky 
 for background, and for fore-piece a bent and 
 praying woman, a frugal, rugged figure, doing 
 man's work that her men may do the work of
 
 74 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 unsung heroes here in these opulent fields of 
 France. She herself is very easy to divine from 
 the son's short, plain talking: a Mother in 
 Israel. If she had fifty sons, like Hecuba, she 
 would not grudge the sending from her side of 
 all of them to fight: it is God's battle they are 
 gone to fight; if He sends not all home He may 
 be trusted to lift them to a better place. This 
 son's right arm is shattered : will the priest write 
 to her! 
 
 Near him lies another Scot, not Catholic — as 
 far from Catholic as the General Assembly of 
 the Kirk may be from the College of Cardinals : 
 but he also has inviting eyes, and as the priest 
 makes to move on they beg him to linger. His 
 name is David, and, like David, he is of a ruddy 
 countenance : in the clear eyes there is a light of 
 innocence, like a dog's, and of fidelity, and lov- 
 ingness. 
 
 '' Sir-r," he almost whispers, with the be- 
 witching Scot's burring of the r, and a shyness 
 wholly compelling. " I would be glad if ye 
 would comfort me too. I'm Presbyterian: but, 
 perr-haps. ..." 
 
 *' No perhaps: if I can make you feel less 
 lonely. ..." 
 
 " It's that, sir: just that only. I'm not so 
 varra badly wounded: only it came over me
 
 NEITHER 75 
 
 hearing yon lad talking to ye of his folk, to talk 
 a wee of mine. There's nane here that would 
 under-r-stand, but I'm thinking you would . . . 
 hame 's hame, Catholic or Presbyterian, Hieland- 
 man or Lowland, and eh ! mine 's far away ..." 
 
 He soon dropped '* Sir," and called the 
 Papistical, prelatical priest " Father " and 
 meant it, and felt it. His own father was in 
 heaven; his mother had none on earth but him. 
 To her also the priest was to write. Simply and 
 shyly he talked of God: and in that common 
 Friend found instantly a bridge of meeting, that 
 strode at once athwart aU estrangement of belief. 
 
 '' Ye gave," he said soon, " a wee Christ upon 
 the Cross to yon Catholic fellow. Have ye, 
 Father, e'en one for me ? Eh ! it's strange! 
 I've seen a whole village smashed, and a whole 
 kirk, by the Germans ' shells, but the great Christ 
 upon the Cross stood untouched, His arms 
 spread out, His head leaned weary, His face 
 turned up to cry His Father 's mercy on us men 
 that killed Him . . . and all the shells couldna 
 break Him; and He said, I mind, ' When I am 
 lifted up I'll draw all to myself.' Father, pray 
 Him to draw me. I've been a wilful laddy, and 
 His words have been dour and dismal talk to 
 me . . . and I went aye my ain gait, that wasna 
 His, and I liked laughing-tallv, and merry things,
 
 76 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 and noo I know what suffering is, and I can 
 understand better. . . . Father, ye '11 mind to 
 ask Him mak' me His ain laddie. Ma mither 
 gave me, willing, to the war, as His gave Him, 
 willing, to the death : ye '11 write to her, and pray 
 for her? And I'll keep this Christ upon the 
 Cross ye gave me all my life long, if any more of 
 it is for me, and I'll never forget ye. Father, 
 never: if He gives it me to win hame again, I'll 
 pray always for ye: and most on Saturday at 
 e'en, when we make the evening exercise pre- 
 paring for the Sabbath, and if not ..." 
 
 '' If you get Home before me, to that other 
 Home, you will pray still for me, that I may 
 come there too ?" 
 
 '' Deed will I ! Good-bye, Father. . . .'» 
 
 And, next, an enemy. God save the silly mark, 
 for the priest has none. A Pole : a lad of nine- 
 teen, but of a big, stalwart figure; tall, strong 
 and stout, and, somehow, ox-like ; heavy of build, 
 broad of chest and shoulder, slow (one would 
 say) of motion, when life and strength were his, 
 and now all life ebbing fast to its close. 
 
 He had been wounded on Sunday — and this 
 was Friday : shot through the bottom of the back 
 so as to be utterly helpless, incapable of move- 
 ment, and yet, alas, not killed. They had found 
 him early today, lying on his face in the dank,
 
 NEITHER 71 
 
 sodden woods; his bodv sodden and dank too: 
 all gangrened now from head to foot. Through 
 five horrible nights of pitiless rain he had lain 
 alone, unfed, untended, anguished, slowly rotting 
 from youthful life to inevitable death. Pitiful 
 Jesus ! what a Purgatory for such little faults as 
 his ! 
 
 He could not move : he could only lie upon his 
 face — and wait. 
 
 He had no French, little German: but enough 
 of the latter to confess himself. He could not 
 move, and the priest could only lie dowtn beside 
 him in the blood-reeking straw, to get near 
 enough to hear the sobbing whispers of his con- 
 fession. 
 
 He had no beauty, nor comeliness, like a 
 Greater than he: only a big, once strong, body, 
 all rotted now. An ungainly head, of a low 
 mentality as to shape: lips green and terrible; 
 eyes like the eyes of an ox, slow, large, inex- 
 pressive: and the one expression in them, 
 *' Why ?" 
 
 He had no talk of home: of father, mother, 
 brethren : or of fatherland. No talk of any sort. 
 Hardly words enough, in the speech of his coun- 
 try's thief and spoiler, to confess himself. And 
 no time: the dregs of life almost all spilled — 
 at life 's threshold. Yet he confessed : as though,
 
 78 FEENCH WINDOWS 
 
 throughout the ineffable anguish of those five 
 ghastly night's rain, he had been preparing 
 for the chance encounter of a priest, or, if not, 
 for the certain coming of the Great Priest of 
 all who surely would not suffer him to die alone. 
 Then the anointing. He tried to turn outwards 
 the palms of the terrible hands on which he lay ; 
 but could not. He tried with awful endeavor, 
 to turn his head for the anointing of eyes, and 
 ears and nostrils and mouth; but could not 
 All that remained to him of power he used to 
 lift himself, as he lay face downwards, at each 
 recurrence of the Name Ineffable, in the Latin 
 Office : and each time he forced the stiffened, 
 frightful lips to form the sound of the Name 
 Incorruptible. . . . *' Jesus !" *' Jesus !" 
 
 All the rest of the Latin was to him incom- 
 prehensible; but that Supreme Word he knew, 
 and waited for ; and for every recurrence of it he 
 was ready ; and the great, half -dead body obeyed 
 the dying will, and undying loyalty, of the sim- 
 ple peasant-soul; and slowly, with awful insis- 
 tence, the soul bade the body lift itself, and the 
 bowed head bow lower, and the fearful lips form 
 themselves into the sound that is for the sav- 
 ing of the nations . . . '^ Jesus !" '' Jesus !" 
 ** Misericordia !" So that the old priest, lying 
 beside the dying lad in the blood and straw,
 
 NEITHER 79 
 
 shrank almost, for ruth and reverence, from 
 uttering It, knowing that He whose It is was 
 there, and that the Greater Priest than he was 
 waiting for that loyal soul to fold it to His Heart 
 . . . and at the last recurrence of It, the Polish 
 peasant-warrior, feeling himself called to the 
 Great Peace, twisted the ghastly gangrened lips 
 into a childish smile, lifted himself in a supreme 
 effort, bowed his head at his King's Feet, and 
 whispering '' JESUS," needed no further 
 speech of ours. 
 
 About the dead lad, who had died in no quarrel 
 of his country's, but in that of one of his coun- 
 try's merciless riflers and despoilers, at the hard, 
 plain call of sheer obedience, hung no terrible 
 odours such as Nature would have told us should 
 be there: but, such a fragrance as those who 
 know the sweetness of the Name he worshipped 
 might expect.
 
 VI 
 
 WAK DOGS 
 
 A MERRY-AiEED moming, that miglit have lost 
 its way into the war out of some September 
 when Peace was as much taken for granted as 
 All Fools' Day: a morning all sun-laughter, and 
 titter of little winds that played together hide 
 and seek among the forest-leaves: good forest 
 smells too — some dry and incense-like; others 
 cooler, moister, leaf-smells and earth-smells, but 
 all breath of the empty, pondering woodland. 
 A sky, clear, aloof, ocean-blue, with fleets of 
 small cloud-ships at sea in it. 
 
 Last night's camp, in a sloping orchard by the 
 wayside, already half-f orgotten : abandoned at 
 daybreak, only reached long after the nightfall 
 of yesterday, it belongs to past things, dimly 
 held in memory, as much as any chance ac- 
 quaintance of a journey made long ago. 
 
 Even the road along which one has since 
 
 passed not easy to recall: — which village came 
 
 first — the long one, straggling down from a bluff 
 
 80
 
 WAR DOGS 81 
 
 to a stony river; or the hamlet wedged about a 
 toy church in a saucer of the downs? the gaunt 
 stone farm, half like a fortalice, compact within 
 blind walls; or the other that seemed as much 
 an outcrop of the soft, rich soil as the opulent 
 ricks about it ? 
 
 Noon not nearly come; but certainly, one 
 would say, dinner-time. 
 
 For some while the march had been athwart a 
 table-land, sparsely treed ; now it ends at the lip 
 of a wide, but deep valley; water-meadows laid 
 flat along the bottom, the sides hung with close- 
 packed trees. Through them the road slopes 
 and twists down to a town — to two towns, one on 
 either side of a ridge, the only one that spans 
 the river. 
 
 Once in the little town the column is halted, 
 and the halt lasts perhaps an hour. 
 
 A white town, of clean, shining houses, with 
 spruce gardens, and some assumption of pro- 
 vincial consequence, and gentility: too large for 
 a dominant chateau, but with a score of houses 
 that would do for chateau in a smaller place. 
 
 The Ancient, idly observant, is observed idly, 
 and perhaps con jectur ally. 
 
 Standing in a narrow place, with the fine gates 
 of a good house at one end of it, he is considered 
 meditatively by a small group — a cobbler,
 
 82 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 evidently, with scrubby bair; a lean lad with 
 gaunt, melancholy eyes; and two women. The 
 women's eyes are not melancholy, but fierce: 
 not deep, like the boy's, with the darkness that 
 comes from depth, as does the darkness of a tarn 
 in a hollow of the woods, but shallow and black, 
 with the blackness that is merely colour, like a 
 blob of ink splashed on a white board : hard eyes, 
 and shrewd, watching not telling. 
 
 They are mother and daughter, the Ancient 
 decides: and the middle-aged woman's eyes are 
 harder than the old one's. The cheeks of both 
 are white; the mother's like white parchment, 
 the daughter's like white paper. 
 
 The cobbler, catching the stranger 's eye, ogles 
 the * ' English ' ' cigarette, unlighted, in his hand, 
 and benevolentl}^ (but with arriere pensee) 
 suggests matches. 
 
 " Matches !" cries the younger woman, not 
 much above a whisper, but with a sharp sibila- 
 tion that seems almost to echo in the little 
 wedge-shaped place. '' Matches !" 
 
 The cobbler, meeker than most cobblers, half 
 withdraws the twisted knuckles he was bringing 
 from behind the tattered leathern apron : but the 
 Ancient, undismayed, holds his own hand out 
 for the matches, with half a dozen English 
 cigarettes in it.
 
 WAR DOGS 83 
 
 " Come!" says the woman, '' I will show you 
 a thing. They were here last night ..." 
 
 '' The Germans . . J" 
 
 *' The devils. Come; you will see." 
 
 The old woman nods, and nods, with bitter 
 approval. 
 
 The cobbler begins to shake his frowsy head, 
 but spits instead. 
 
 " It is that . . . ," he observes, spitting again 
 to clear his mouth for the full enjoyment of the 
 cigarette he lights apologetically. 
 
 Towards the fine gates of wrought iron the 
 two women move, and the younger one com- 
 mands rather than invites the Ancient to fol- 
 low on. 
 
 She does not talk much — yet. She is willing 
 to allow the stranger 's mind to remain fallow for 
 the impression she intends. 
 
 Inside the fine gates there is a smart garden, 
 not very large, perhaps not in the best taste, but 
 with much ostentation of a certain taste : rather 
 ugly statues, very ugly fountains, stone balus- 
 trades fencing nothing in particular. The 
 statues represent not heathen deities, naked and 
 unadorned, but heathenish modern females, half- 
 naked, and lost to any shame. 
 
 But the garden is, somehow, ruinous : not with 
 tlie dilapidation of time, and decay, but squalid
 
 84 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 witli the havoc of wanton spoiling : the havoc of 
 yesterday, raw and brutal. If dirt is matter out 
 of place, the garden is all dirty: broken chairs 
 strew it, new chairs, not broken by long or care- 
 ful use, but smashed in careful misuse: ugly, 
 costly ornaments litter it, thrown out of the 
 window, and broken in their fall: some of them 
 deserved little better, but the throwers had not 
 destroyed them in protest against their sham 
 beauty, but because they took the beauty for 
 granted and were minded to ruin it. Other 
 things had been tossed out because they were 
 useful, kitchen-gear and suchlike, and the throw- 
 ers chose to render them useless. 
 
 The doorsteps were foul and littered, as if a 
 generation of Auction Sales had passed over 
 them — and Auctioneer's myrmidons, who can 
 render beggarly in a day the decency of imme- 
 morial tenancy. But here it was thieves who 
 had passed, and they had done it all in the time 
 between one sunset and another: rags and tat- 
 ters; smashed bottles; filth from God knows 
 whence; children's toys — dolls' limbs of car- 
 casses, torn pictures, school-prizes. . . . 
 
 In the entrance-hall the dirt seemed more 
 dirty, because one was within-doors. The thick, 
 costly carpet, smart and blatant a week ago, was 
 like the floor of a cattle-shed, only cattle do not
 
 WAR DOGS 85 
 
 spill trays of food upon their floors, nor are they 
 sick upon them. 
 
 And parts of women's dresses, veils, and 
 gloves, gowns and shawls, or shreds of them, had 
 been rifled from above stairs, strewn here and 
 trampled. 
 
 In every room there was the same squalor of 
 ruin: where no worse had been done, furniture 
 was overthrown, broken, or torn, where tearing 
 was possible. In every room there were ghastly 
 remnants of feasts; a grand-piano had been a 
 supper-table, and the key-board was a splash- 
 board, where soup that could not be swallowed 
 had been flung; stews had been emptied among 
 the chords, into which were thrust also broken 
 vases, reams of unused, but crumpled and foul, 
 writing-paper, hundreds of picture postcards, 
 and letters from friends or kinsfolk of the dese- 
 crated home's owners. 
 
 In grim, and almost silent, triumph, the 
 Ancient's two guides led him through these 
 ruined places: the windows were all tight-shut, 
 and there were everywhere sour smells of spilled, 
 stale wine, and spilled, stale food, vinegar, salad 
 (this was often on the sofas and chairs, often on 
 the floor, often splattered on the walls and 
 hangings), horrible relics of stews and hashes, 
 livid lumps of discarded meat. . . .
 
 86 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 The staircase was only a steeper variant of the 
 hall, a ladder of shame and shamelessness. The 
 upstairs rooms were much worse. Perhaps be- 
 cause they had really been nicer than the rooms 
 of state and show below. Here one could see 
 there had been less expense, more comfort : still 
 here also it was easy to see there had been opu- 
 lence and neatness, and good order as well. Ev- 
 erything was at topsy-turvy now. Sheets twisted 
 round table-legs; mirrors broken; wardrobes 
 flung, face downwards on the floors, and smashed 
 open from behind ; heavy and rich curtains torn 
 down, as though for extra blanketing, and left 
 on beds where revellers had slept: boxes of 
 tooth-powder used, one would say, for playful 
 missiles, and so their pinky contents powdering 
 sofas, armchairs, carpets. 
 
 It was hard to say which had been ladies' 
 rooms, which men's; for the same monkeyish 
 industry in havoc was visible everywhere — good 
 men's clothing, torn or fouled, thrust on to 
 ladies ' toilet-tables, and women's inner garments 
 festooning the racks of what had been a gun- 
 room. 
 
 Up here there were fouler and more sickening 
 smells, and the Ancient's two guides interrupted 
 their silence to explain them, in language that 
 English women would have been shy of.
 
 WAR DOGS 87 
 
 " Look at the beds !" they urged . . . which 
 was what the Ancient had only done once — ^be- 
 fore he understood. '* I said ' DEVILS'; what 
 do you call it 1 That filth. . . . Then came the 
 insistent superfluous explanation. 
 
 They would not spare him. He must see 
 everything — and smell it. He must understand 
 that these had been officers, they who had done 
 these things : oflficers, and, no doubt, their order- 
 lies, who would only dare to do what their iron 
 masters approved, and did too. 
 
 The Ancient must see the stables, littered with 
 the books and clothing of the ladies of the house ; 
 with the playthings from the children's nursery; 
 with drawing-room cushions, dinner ware, toilet 
 ware. . . . 
 
 At last he did escape, back into the clean sun- 
 light of the little place. 
 
 *' There !" hissed the younger woman. ** You 
 have seen." 
 
 Then, suddenly, with brawny arms akunbo, 
 she thrust her face into his, and cried : 
 
 '' I should not mind, I, if that house were all. 
 They are rich folk, those. From Paris. They 
 can buy a new home. In Paris, eating well, 
 drinking good wine, they will not miss it all." 
 
 And, as she spoke, the Ancient saw in her a 
 great-granddaughter of the tricoteuses. Livid,
 
 88 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 furious, cold, pitiless, her fury was not all for 
 the invader, or chiefly even, as it seemed; but 
 for the rich. 
 
 ^' Hein ! I pity not that one. He and his. 
 They are not of our pays. Not of us. They are 
 of Paris. They buy this house, and stuff it, with 
 all that stuff that could feed half our street, and 
 come here in summer, to eat and drink, and play : 
 then the Boche comes and spoils it all. So be it. 
 Amen. I do not care, I. " 
 
 Certainly she was of the tricoteuses, and a 
 type the Ancient had not yet seen. Only one 
 type, by the grace of God, and not typical, as of 
 the French women in general. Very unlike the 
 French women he had mostly known, sober, 
 kindly: unenvious, content to toil and enjoy 
 frugally the frugal fruits of industry and pru- 
 dence — with God's blessing on it. 
 
 ** But, come !" she cried, grabbing the An- 
 cient's shoulder, " and I will show you. You 
 shall see what I pity. Ah-h." 
 
 And with a very swift turn she pushed him 
 through an open door and up a steep stone stair 
 to a home that consisted of a single floor, three 
 or four rooms, all very small. 
 
 ** This," she almost yelled, " was, two days 
 ago, the home of one of us, of our pays, of one 
 who ploughed it, and picked it, bit by bit, out of
 
 WAR DOGS 89 
 
 the ground, with Ms hands, and his wife's, and 
 his wife's mother's hands, and his son's hands, 
 and his daughter's hands. Look, HERE !" 
 
 There was the same ruin, and havoc, and filth, 
 and devilment: only more crowded, and more 
 striking, and more visibly damnable, for being 
 crammed into so much smaller spaces and for 
 being the ruin of a poorer, slower effort at de- 
 cency and order and comfort. The garments 
 were sadder, I think, because they had cost so 
 much less money, so much more time, so much 
 more labour. There was little here that had 
 been superfluous : little that had stood for sheer 
 ornament : by slow degrees the things that make 
 the difference between poverty and ease of life 
 had been earned and added to the home. All 
 alike, now, lay soiled, battered, trampled, 
 derided, desecrated. Children's garments, fash- 
 ioned by tired hands after the children had been 
 laid to bed ; men's garments patched and mended, 
 with frugal care; the mother's own fete-clothes, 
 saved from year to year, and never despised as 
 out of fashion; all dragged about, fouled, torn, 
 ruined: the bits of furniture, gathered at slow 
 intervals, the strictest necessaries first, then the 
 few witnesses of a late-won prosperity — an arm- 
 chair, an escritore — all broken, thrown down, 
 insulted. . . .
 
 90 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 
 Here is what I pity!" cries tlie virago. 
 
 And you? What does your England know of 
 such work as this? Your place is an island, 
 they tell. Does the Boche come to you? Does 
 he play these hell-games in your poor-folks' 
 hard, hard-earned homes? Remember I" 
 
 She no longer housed her words sparingly : but 
 vomited them, with a fury of prodigality. She 
 neither waited for, or wanted, any response. 
 She wanted to enjoy the spitting out of her rage ; 
 she liked it better than the daintest meal. And 
 yet all her vehemence was less eloquent than the 
 pitiful ruin in which she stood. The few rooms 
 had been clean, with all the proud cleanliness of 
 a part not of sentiment, as it is with the English 
 peasant, but a part of economy: and how it 
 could have been made so foul in so brief a time 
 was hard to understand. No description could 
 convey the result of squalor, achieved by mere 
 destruction, misuse, a spiteful resolve to spoil, 
 and to insult insensate things. 
 
 • • • • • • 
 
 When the Ancient escaped the column had 
 moved on, and he had to hurry after it, with his 
 late guide's ''Eemember" stinging in his ears. 
 
 As it happened the march was nearly finished 
 for that day. Crossing the bridge, to the other
 
 :WAR DOGS 91 
 
 little town with another name, winding up by 
 a steep white road, he found the ''unit" turned 
 aside into a flat field with the deep valley twisted 
 round it on three sides. A lovely place: and a 
 miracle that it had not suggested to someone a 
 great castle. The field was full of cows, and 
 some of the soldiers were already trying to catch 
 and milk them : but even when caught it was not 
 easy to milk them. There were woods nearly all 
 round, and presently puffs of smoke detached 
 themselves from among the trees, followed by the 
 familiar noise. Whose guns? Ours or the 
 enemies? Both, it seemed; and it was not easy 
 to guess which were which : it was less easy still 
 to make out at what they were firing. Down 
 river one could see far, between the widely 
 parted lips of the valley: above the two towns 
 the river took an immense sweep, almost en- 
 circling the place where we were ; down river the 
 woods of the right bank, as we looked at it, were, 
 it should seem, held by our artillery : the left by 
 the enemy: but where the curve came it ap- 
 peared that part of them was held by us, part 
 by the foe. 
 
 To be where we were sounds rather danger- 
 ous, and perhaps was so : after a few hours it was 
 dangerous enough for us to receive an order to 
 quit. But, at the time, it only seemed very
 
 92 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 lovely: the day was so smiling and good-tem- 
 pered; the mysterious woods seemed so little to 
 lose their immemorial peace by the odd tenants 
 they held unseen. Half-way up the hillside, in 
 one place, in a clearing among the trees, was a 
 large house, surrounded by many barns, with a 
 trim, sloping garden in front : not a chateau, but 
 the w^ealthy abode of a Maitre de Forges: his 
 usines lay along the river-side beneath, under 
 the keen eyes of his windows. Three or four 
 times, or more, a German aeroplane came close 
 over us, like a dazzling white bird up in the blue : 
 and instantly shells began to burst all around it. 
 When one was driven away another came — often 
 during the afternoon. None was brought down. 
 
 The afternoon grew hot, for the breeze fell : it 
 was hard to keep awake, after the start at day- 
 break, and the long march. 
 
 So the Ancient sallied forth to explore. He 
 found a street of villas, each overlooking the 
 valley, and each with a pretty garden : all empty. 
 It was easy to enter, for the Germans had been 
 there, and had broken the doors open. 
 
 From one to another the Ancient passed, 
 finding in each the same ruin, havoc, spoiling, 
 desecration, filth, and shame; you would say 
 that bands of malevolent apes had been holding 
 spiteful, senseless, ingeniously destructive Carni-
 
 WAR DOGS 93 
 
 val there: as though, long kept under by the 
 superiority of Man they had seized a moment of 
 anarchy for revenge — not revenge of an injury, 
 but of Man's hated superiority. So they had 
 outraged Man's sense of decency and reverence; 
 had marked for peculiar insult and desecration 
 the things Man holds sacred by nature — the 
 privacies of his women-folk, the play of his 
 children, the shrine of his hearth.
 
 VII 
 
 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES 
 
 One Sunday evening towards sundown our unit 
 stood still, lined up along a roadside in a cheerful 
 village of Northern France — French Flanders: 
 what was once Spanish Flanders. 
 
 The wonderfully skilful move from the Aisne 
 had been carried out with amazing quietness 
 and success. The whole British Army had 
 silently flitted north, and stood to bar the way 
 to Calais : its place had been deftly taken by the 
 French. 
 
 There had been nights and nights of weird, 
 
 silent marching through the dark ; often through 
 
 forests, often passing through sleeping villages, 
 
 sometimes through sleeping towns ; then a train 
 
 journey, bitterly cold, for that night was one of 
 
 hard frost. Each section entrained at a different 
 
 place and detrained at a different place, so there 
 
 was no clashing and no confusion. For this 
 
 reason we ourselves had been carried to a point 
 
 beyond our destination, and had to march back. 
 
 94
 
 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES 95 
 
 We went straight through a large town, the only 
 one we had seen by daylight since the very first 
 day of our arrival at the front. The men 
 glanced right and left, rather longingly, at the 
 shops and cafes, and with peculiar interest at a 
 big circus in a plot of waste ground; but we 
 marched straight through and were soon out in 
 the country again. A pretty, home-like country, 
 not flat, but with rounded, grassy contours and 
 sloping valley-pastures with cows in them, and 
 farm-houses, not very un-English. Then a 
 mining district, with populous long villages, 
 straggling rather slipshod along the highway, one 
 naked street to each and no side-streets or lanes : 
 not poverty-stricken at all, but not gracious or 
 home-like, somewhat loveless and unlovely like 
 mining villages anywhere. 
 
 That Sunday evening we were just emerging 
 from the mining region, but not quite emerged. 
 There were plenty of folk, and they were all 
 turned out to watch us go by; they were too 
 civil to make many remarks, but they smiled 
 instead, and nodded encouraging heads, and 
 patted their hands together for applause. 
 
 The Ancient did indeed overhear a little 
 remark, and retorted on the lad who made it. 
 
 ''I was just as young as you — forty years 
 ago.''
 
 96 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 "Monsieur talks French!" half a dozen 
 voices broke out. "Where do you come 
 from! Where are you going? When will 
 the war end?" 
 
 "Madame, I never know anything, and if 1 
 did I shouldn 't be allowed to tell you. ' ' 
 
 ' ' There ! That is prudence ; that is right. ' ' 
 
 And all the heads of the questioners wagged 
 approvingly. 
 
 The lad who had found the Ancient elderly had 
 edged nearer, and was clearly disposed for con- 
 versation. There were two others with him. 
 
 "Is Monsieur an AumonierT" 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 "Protestant, no doubt?" 
 
 "Not unless the Pope is a Protestant. I have 
 the honour to be of his household," 
 
 Everybody was much interested. "There! a 
 Catholic like us. The English King is a good 
 man, he sends Catholic priests for the Catholic 
 soldiers. There is something!" 
 
 They had been kindly and civil before : think- 
 ing the old man was a Pasteur and Protestant, 
 they had respected his age, and the calling that 
 sent him to minister to the spiritual needs of 
 another faith; but now there was a sort of 
 intimacy and relationship in their smiling en- 
 couragement. I wonder how many times during
 
 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES 97 
 
 the war it came in upon one what a wonderful 
 great thing the Catholic Church is. 
 
 *' Monsieur," said the lad whose innocent little 
 remark had been overheard, *'my brother here 
 is to be a priest. But the Germans are in his 
 Seminary. We are refugees — from Arras." 
 
 He was a big lad (taller than his elder brother) 
 and had a singular sweetness of innocence in his 
 face: and he took the old priest's hand and 
 pressed it as affectionately as if he had been his 
 grandson. 
 
 *'I," said the third lad, ''am their cousin: 
 also a refugee. We have no news of our parents. 
 I wish the English would go and drive the Boches 
 out of Arras." 
 
 "Are you also going to be a priest I" 
 
 "No. I am an artillery-student: in a month 
 or two I shall be old enough to go and fight. 
 Pray for me. Father. ' ' 
 
 "And for me, and for Eaoul," put in the first 
 lad, "and for our parents. They don't know 
 what has happened to us." 
 
 The word was passed that we were to stop in 
 that village : we were talking by the railings of 
 a big, rather gaunt chateau, and there it seemed 
 we were to take up our quarters. 
 
 "It is empty," explained Ernest (Ernest was 
 my first friend), "it belongs to the people we are
 
 98 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 staying with: but they do not live in it. May 
 I take you to them?'* 
 
 They were charming people: not aristocrats, 
 but wealthy bourgeois, with frank, open manners, 
 and brimming over with hospitality. They lived 
 in an immense, most comfortable, farm behind 
 the chateau, and it was their ambition that w^e 
 should use the chateau as a hospital. We went 
 and looked at it. It had innumerable vast rooms 
 very lofty and airy, all paved with diamond- 
 shaped slabs of black and white marble. The 
 Commanding Officer agreed that it would make 
 a good hospital, and promised to use it if we 
 stayed — we never knew. 
 
 We slept in it that night: but long before it 
 was light had orders to move on. Just as we 
 started, in a thick dank fog, a huge bundle of 
 letters was thrust into the Ancient's hands. He 
 walked on, waiting till it should be light enough 
 to read them. At last it was light enough; the 
 fog, still thick, had turned first dusky yellow, 
 then grey, then white. 
 
 It was cold work reading the letters; the 
 Ancient 's hands as he held them up were numbed 
 by the frosty fog. Absorbed in home-news he 
 walked slowly, sometimes standing still alto- 
 gether, and fell behind the unit, which disap- 
 peared in the fog. Presently the bundle of
 
 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES 99 
 
 letters under his arm slipped and fell down in 
 the mud. As he straightened himself up again 
 a voice demanded : 
 
 "Where are you going?*' 
 
 Not an easy question to answer, as he never 
 knew the name of the place whither the unit was 
 bound. The man who put it was a French 
 sentry, an elderly soldier, armed with a beard, 
 and also with a bayonet that was groping un- 
 comfortably near the Ancient's ribs. 
 
 "Where are you going?" 
 
 "Wherever the unit is going. It is in 
 front. ' ' 
 
 "There is no English unit in front. Where 
 do you come from?" 
 
 "Last night we slept at Hesdigneul. My 
 unit is Field Ambulance No. 15: of the 5th 
 Division. ' ' 
 
 "You say you are English." 
 
 "I didn't say so, but I am, as you can hear 
 by my French. ' ' 
 
 "Other foreigners talk French with a foreign 
 accent besides the English; perhaps you are 
 German. ' ' 
 
 The bayonet was hovering, quite longingly, 
 round the Ancient's ribs, and the point of it 
 gave a little poke at his chest. 
 
 "I am not German. If you allow your
 
 100 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 bayonet to make a mistake you will get into 
 trouble, Monsieur. I belong to the English 
 Army. ' ' 
 
 '*To what arm'* 
 
 ''I have told you. To No. 15 Field Ambu- 
 lance." 
 
 *'Are you a doctor!" 
 
 ''No. I am a chaplain. See, all these letters 
 addressed to me; that is my name: that is the 
 corps I am attached to. ' ' 
 
 Perhaps he could not read ; he certainly could 
 not read the Ancient 's rather long name. 
 
 "It seems to me you have a great many letters 
 and papers. That is more like a spy. Besides 
 you are not in any uniform." 
 
 He made no bones of his desire to complete the 
 introduction between his bayonet and the sup- 
 posed spy's chest. He was a rather one-idead 
 person, and seemed constitutionally obstinate. 
 
 * ' If you imagine I am a spy take me prisoner, 
 and march me along till you come to my unit, 
 they will soon tell you who I am. ' ' 
 
 '*I tell you there is no English unit in front. 
 I have just come down the road and met no 
 
 one. ' ' 
 
 The Ancient was certainly pleased to see the 
 figures of two other French soldiers looming 
 through the fog, which was now much less thick.
 
 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES 101 
 
 He laughed to himself to remember how cheered 
 Maggie Tulliver had been when the other gipsies 
 came upon the scene, thinking that if she had 
 to be murdered it would be more sociable to be 
 killed by a larger party. To tell the truth he 
 never expected to be killed. 
 
 ''Here!" my captor called out, "I've an old 
 prisoner: an old Boche: an old spy." 
 
 The other two soldiers drew near much 
 interested. They were quite young, and looked 
 good-natured. 
 
 ''Messieurs," protested the Ancient laughing, 
 "he accuses me quite justly of being old. I 
 apoligize. But unless you help me to persuade 
 him that I am not a Boche and not a spy, I shall 
 never get any older." 
 
 The sentry stated his case against me: and 
 poked his bayonet at my bundle of letters with 
 extreme disapproval. 
 
 "If you could read English you would be 
 perfectly welcome to read the letters," said 
 the Ancient. ' ' They are from friends. ' * 
 
 "Spies' friends," urged the sentry. 
 
 "No. My friends. Look here, one of them 
 is from the General commanding my army 
 Corps. If you can find him, take me to him, 
 and see what he says." 
 
 JJnf ortunately, as the Ancient knew very well,
 
 102 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 the letter, being on small ordinary note-paper, 
 did not look at all official or convincing. 
 
 *'If his friend is the General commanding an 
 Army Corps, ' ' observed one of the new arrivals, 
 *' you'd better avoid any accidents." And he 
 knocked up the point of the hovering bayonet 
 with cheerful insouciance. 
 
 My first friend grumbled and repeated all his 
 grounds of suspicion: my new friends listened 
 ;;udicially to my arguments and found them 
 reasonable. 
 
 **Just hold these letters while I light a 
 cigarette, ' ' the Ancient requested : with painfully 
 shallow diplomacy, continuing his speech for the 
 defence. 
 
 *' English cigarettes?" commented one of the 
 soldiers. 
 
 *'Yes — may I offer you a few?" 
 
 Permission was not refused. Even the austere 
 sentry absent-mindedly grasped a handful : from 
 that moment it was clear that he had receded 
 from his high position. 
 
 The Ancient went on talking, opening a parcel 
 as he spoke. It contained woolly articles — socks, 
 mittens, etc. 
 
 ''Perhaps," he surmised, ''you have not been 
 
 The surmise was correct. The sentry, indeed, 
 able to change your socks very recently t"
 
 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES 103 
 
 mentioned a date so remote that the Ancient 
 rather hoped he would not .remove them quite 
 instantly. Having administered the socks the 
 Ancient did not await any summing-up or judg- 
 ment as to his defence, but wished his friends 
 good-morning and moved off. 
 
 *'u4 tantSt!" the j^ounger soldiers called out. 
 
 The sentry laid down his weapon and pro- 
 ceeded to change his socks. 
 
 A hundred yards farther on the Ancient met 
 one of the men of his unit — 
 
 ''They 're all in that field. We're waiting for 
 orders." 
 
 There was scarcely any mist now, and the sun 
 had risen. In the fog, twenty minutes before, 
 the elderly sentry had, I suppose, not seen the 
 English troops drawn off into the field. 
 
 Very soon we got orders to move on, and went 
 through a town; then about four kilometres 
 beyond it we again halted : and there was another 
 long wait. During the wait an old, shabby 
 peasant on a bicycle was arrested, at the instance 
 of a Staff Officer (ours was not the only unit 
 halted there), who thought he had a spy-some 
 look. 
 
 The Ancient was asked to pump him, and did 
 so, but not with acerbity. Having so recently 
 been taken for a spy himself, perhaps he was
 
 104 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 inclined to indulgence. His verdict was that 
 the old peasant seemed guilty of nothing worse 
 than fright and stupidity. 
 
 Presently the Commanding Officer came to the 
 Ancient and asked if he would like to go with 
 a section on special duty. He said ^'Yes," and 
 prepared to go. The last time he had left the 
 unit on a special duty it had proved rather 
 "lively"; and, as all the talk now was of some- 
 thing peculiarly lively impending, he imagined 
 this would be more so. He did not therefore 
 wish his servant to go with him, as the man was 
 married and had children. 
 
 Finding him the Ancient said : 
 
 "I am going off somewhere on some special 
 duty, and I want you to get my things. You're 
 not coming." 
 
 " No ? Did the CO. say I wasn 't to, sir ? " 
 
 **I didn't ask for you. You will, please, stop 
 with the unit. It isn't your section that's going: 
 and I expect we shall have a lively time. You 
 came last time. This time I shall not take you: 
 you have a wife, and children." 
 
 The Ancient gave the man certain directions, 
 in case he himself did not come back. He had 
 a conviction that he would not come back. So 
 much for presentiments: for as it happened the 
 special duty was not in the least dangerous !
 
 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES 105 
 
 *'Well," observed the soldier-servant ob- 
 stinately, ''I hope you'll ask the CO. to let me 
 go. I'm going, sir, wherever you go. And — 
 that's flat. Wife or no wife. If an old gentle- 
 man like you can go, a young fellow like me can. 
 And I'm your servant ; and it '11 be a shame if you 
 leave me behind. ' ' 
 
 Of course the reader, knowing that there was 
 to be no danger, will laugh: but the Ancient, 
 who hadn't the reader's advantages, and felt 
 oddly sure that he would not return to the unit, 
 did not feel at all inclined to laugh at the young 
 man's insistence. He was a big, rather hard- 
 bitten Lancashire man, not soft-spoken or ex- 
 pansive. It was the first time his master had 
 imagined him to be at all specially devoted. 
 
 A couple of hours w^ent by. The other troops 
 had moved on. Our own unit had drawn off 
 into a flat stubble-field — more like a ploughed 
 field — between two villages. 
 
 About two o'clock the CO. came again and 
 said to the Ancient: 
 
 *'We expect a very large number of wounded 
 — not only to-day, but for some time. Major O., 
 Gapt. H., and Mr. M. are going to run a hospital 
 in B., the town we passed through this morning: 
 and I want you to go in first and take over the 
 building from the French authorities. The
 
 106 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 A.D.M.S. will take you in his car. He is going 
 
 now. ' ' 
 
 Then the Ancient did ask to take his servant 
 with him. 
 
 The building proved to be a very large school, 
 consisting of several blocks with huge halls. A 
 certain number of bedsteads — perhaps 80 — had 
 already been sent in, with their mattresses : and 
 a number of French women soon appeared eager 
 to lend other bedding. None looked rich, many 
 quite poor, and the Ancient felt bound to explain 
 that any beds, duvets, etc., lent would certainly 
 be ruined, soaked with blood, etc. But it made 
 no difference ; these good creatures went off and 
 came back hauling in all and more than all that 
 they could give. 
 
 Presently the other officers arrived, and soon 
 the wounded began to come in, in great numbers. 
 During the thirteen days we remained more than 
 twelve hundred passed through our hands. Our 
 doctors were operating incessantly : the work in 
 the wards was shared by young volunteer 
 doctors, and some not full-blown doctors, I think, 
 from England. They were charming fellows, 
 and their sympathy and goodness was splendid 
 and touching. Major 0. was now my temporary 
 CO., and he proved a very pleasant one, always 
 good-tempered, though harassed by an immense
 
 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES 107 
 
 responsibility and an appalling glut of work. 
 His organization was excellent, and he never 
 fussed or harried anyone. Yet he had not nearly 
 enough men, and had to get out of those he had 
 far more than a reasonable amount of work. Of 
 course we had no nurses, and only the orderlies 
 of one section of a Field Ambulance — about eight 
 non-commissioned officers and men, for day work 
 and night work, and the immense clerical work. 
 Under such circumstances a chaplain could only 
 turn himself into an orderly too, and there was 
 an immensity of work, and very beautiful and 
 entrancing wOrk. 
 
 In the town were four hospitals. Our own to 
 which one was really attached: a French volun- 
 tary hospital under the care of the Dames de 
 France; the French Hospice Civil et Militaire, 
 with two huge wards for English wounded only, 
 under the care of Lieutenant M. ("A Surgeon in 
 Khaki") ; and an enormous English hospital far 
 away at the other side of the town, with no 
 Catholic chaplain. So that the Ancient's short 
 legs had plenty of running about. 
 
 As to the Hospice, where he said his daily 
 Mass, he felt no great responsibility, for it was 
 under Franciscan nuns, two of whom were Irish, 
 and had a chaplain, the Abbe Buchendhomme, 
 who talked English as well as he did, and was
 
 108 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 beyond all praise devoted and tender to the 
 English wounded. Still it had to be visited 
 regularly. 
 
 In the hospital of the Damea de France were 
 certain wounded French soldiers known to the 
 Ancient whom he visited rather for pleasure 
 than out of responsibility. But the other big 
 English hospital had no Catholic chaplain, and 
 that had to be visited at least daily. So that 
 altogether a twenty-four-hour day was always 
 too short. 
 
 Our own wounded in all three hospitals were 
 marvels of courage and patience. It would take 
 much more space than this whole article to 
 instance their most touching and splendid excel- 
 lence as patients. In both English hospitals we 
 had a certain number of German wounded, and 
 as a rule they made far ''heavier weather'* over 
 their wounds. Not always though. 
 
 One night, about two o'clock after midnight, 
 a very tall young German, of quite splendid 
 physique, was carried in, shot through the chest ; 
 it was the Ancient 's lot to tend him : and he did 
 it with a perfectly weird sense of reverence, for 
 the young man looked absolutely like certain 
 pictures familiar to all Christians. His long, 
 dark nut-brown hair, his rich but not very long 
 beard, of a much darker tinge, but still not
 
 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES 109 
 
 black, still with chestnut-red glints in it; the 
 fathomless sad eyes, grave, inward, upward, 
 pitiful, ineffably noble and majestic, yet gentle 
 and terribly humble; the mouth exquisitely 
 tender, spiritual, pure, sensitive to anguish, and 
 full of compassion. I say it was weird; the 
 weirdest thing that ever came my way. 
 
 "Taller by the shoulders than all the people 
 . . . the most beautiful of the Children of 
 Men. ..." God knows what phrases of the 
 prophets came knocking at the old priest's 
 memory as he tended that stricken stranger. 
 The poor fellow was starved, and the old man 
 fed him, and suddenly whispered : 
 
 ''Evangelisch oder Katholischf" 
 
 *'Katholisch. . . ." 
 
 And he confessed himself. 
 
 Just as he had finished, one of the young 
 doctors from England I have mentioned came 
 near, and said : ' * Can I help you ? ' ' 
 
 He also was struck instantly by the amazing 
 resemblance to the pictures of tradition. A look 
 of almost embarrassed wonder showed in his 
 face. 
 
 **Do you also notice it?" whispered the 
 Ancient in English. 
 
 "Who could help noticing it!" 
 
 In the other English hospital there were more
 
 110 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 German wounded, and some terrible cases. 
 These were very patient. Only they made it 
 all more fearfully harassing by their appalling 
 German sentimentalism that stood as it were 
 spectator of their own misery. 
 
 In the very large English hospital at the other 
 end of the town was one ward in which was 
 placed only men of whose recovery there seemed 
 little hope. It was a sad place to visit : only too 
 well filled always. 
 
 One day, almost immediately on entering it, 
 the Ancient was summoned by a series of very 
 peremptory nods and beckonings to a mere boy, 
 pathetically childish-looking, who was sitting 
 up, the better to attract attention, in the middle 
 of his stretcher. He was badly shot in the head, 
 and his bandages had a queer caricaturish re- 
 semblance to a turban: coming down a little 
 over one eye, it caused him to hold his head side- 
 ways, and peer up sideways in an inquisitive 
 alert fashion that was like a starling. There was 
 not much of him, and what there was was very 
 lean. 
 
 "Kommen Sie liier," he kept calling, with 
 volleys of smiles. "Ich ivilnsche sprecJien zu 
 IJinen. Sie sind KatJiolischf Ja! Preldtf Ja, 
 ja:ich verstehe." 
 
 He was full of impatience. He had been, he
 
 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES 111 
 
 said, looking out for a priest, and offering all the 
 money he had to the orderlies to bring him one. 
 They had assured him that he would soon get 
 one for nothing, but he had not been quite 
 ready to believe. He thought they might only 
 want to save themselves trouble. He said he 
 was not quite sixteen, and he certainly only 
 looked fifteen: a most merry creature, though 
 he fully realized that he was probably going 
 to die. 
 
 ''Now!" he cried, triumphantly, ''I'm going 
 to confess!" 
 
 And he did, in no subdued tones ; with extra- 
 ordinary preparation, and with a most touching 
 boyish simplicity and devotion. 
 
 All the time he knelt up in the middle of his 
 stretcher, his little face full of "recollection," 
 his small thin hands clasped, the bright black 
 eyes tightly closed. 
 
 "Now!" he said decisively, when he had been 
 absolved. "Now, that part's done. Now — 
 anoint me, please." 
 
 He stretched himself out as flat — as flat, 
 alas! as if he had been in a coffin. And 
 eagerly turned to the priest each part that 
 was to be anointed. 
 
 " And now!" when that was finished, "now, 
 my Father — give me Our Lord!"
 
 112 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 *'Yes, dear little son: but I must go to a 
 church and . . . ." 
 
 ''Well, go! Go, Father; be quick. It 
 wouldn 't do to die till you come back. ' ' 
 
 He didn't look like dying so soon: but still 
 there might be no time to lose, and the priest 
 went, bringing back with him more than one 
 Host, as there were several terrible-looking cases. 
 
 When the little lad had received the Holy 
 Viaticum he smiled and said: 
 
 "Now it's all right. . . . Auf wiedersehen, 
 mein Vater!" 
 
 And the priest turned to move among the 
 dying to seek for others of his own. 
 
 The only other, actually dying, who was a 
 Catholic was also German. He was dying of a 
 fearful abdominal wound, and for him there 
 seemed almost no hope. He never ceased to 
 move his head, in a ghastly rhythm, from side 
 to side as he spoke, and he spoke very much. 
 He also had evidently prepared himself for con- 
 fession with as much patient care as though he 
 had been in a Retreat : he made it with intense 
 fervour, and received Extreme Unction with the 
 same absorption of reverence : then Holy Viati- 
 cum. Then the priest read German prayers for 
 him, out of the book he knew he would find in 
 the lad's pocket: a wonderful little book—
 
 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES 113 
 
 prayers for everything, for the Sacraments, for 
 Mass, for occasions when neither Sacrament or 
 Mass was available, for morning when on the 
 line of march, for night when the day's march 
 was over, for use before a battle, for use after a 
 victorious action, for use after a battle that had 
 not been victorious, for use when wounded, for 
 use in hospital, for use when death should be 
 drawing near. 
 
 '' I am sorry," said the old priest at last, 
 *Hhat I read the German so badly. I have 
 almost entirely forgotten it." 
 
 *'Yes. Yiou read it badly, but I can under- 
 stand." 
 
 Then he started to talk and talked for a long 
 time. Something in this wise : 
 
 * * My name is Anton Schuster.* From Wildbad 
 in Westphalia. I am twenty years old — nearly. 
 My father and mother are alive: and I have 
 seven brothers and sisters. Four sisters. Three 
 brothers." (Always that weary head turned 
 quickly from left to right, and right to left.) 
 ''They love me, as I love them, with the whole 
 heart. We live in a small town in a flat place. 
 Foggy at this season. The fog comes in at day- 
 fall from the swampy lands outside and fills the 
 streets. Then my mother goes to the window — 
 * Tbe names only are fictitious.
 
 114 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 a long window, with plants in it. And, as she 
 draws the curtain, she looks out — between the 
 plants — down the two streets: for our house is 
 at the corner of two streets. She will be doing 
 that now — the day falls, does it not? She will 
 do it every evening through the autumn, through 
 the winter: and some evenings she will see, far 
 down the street, a soldier coming home. 
 'Anton!' she will think in her mother-heart. 
 'Anton coming home. Wounded, perhaps.' 
 But it will never be Anton. Never. The 
 soldier will come near through the fog, and turn 
 in at some other house. Never at our house. 
 What day is this?" 
 
 ''Tuesday, dear son." 
 
 "And on Friday I should be twenty. But 
 there will be no Friday for me. I shall never be 
 twenty. And how old are you, my Father?" 
 
 ' ' Fifty-six years old. ' ' 
 
 *'And you will live, perhaps, thirty more. I 
 should be fifty then. Only I shall have been 
 dead thirty years. And the war will be an old 
 thing in history; and when you die too it will 
 not be in a strange land — is this France? or 
 Belgium, or where?" 
 
 "France, my little son." 
 
 "You will not die among enemies who hate 
 yon! Who curse you and "
 
 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES 115 
 
 *'Do you think I hate you? You must see 
 that I love you, my poor, poor son." 
 
 **Ah, you! Yes. You are a priest, my 
 Father. Priests can love everybody. But the 
 rest here — they hate, hate, hate me." 
 
 *'Has not everyone been kind to youf" 
 
 **Yes. Oh, yes. Quite. Very kind. But 
 outside . . . they hate me: and to-morrow I 
 shall be carried outside." 
 
 The weary head moved to and fro with a 
 passion of horror. 
 
 ''Anton! Do you give yourself any chance! 
 Try not to torment yourself. Try to sleep." 
 
 ''To sleep! What a hurry you are in. I 
 shall sleep soon enough, and long enough. When 
 I sleep I shall never wake. Our mother used to 
 come and waken me — to get up and work: the 
 honest, hard, kind work. She will not wake me 
 this time." 
 
 "It will be your Father this time. And 
 Gottes-Mutter." 
 
 Very, very long the sad youth went on, never 
 tiring of his frightful spectatorship of his own 
 sadness. 
 
 Next morning I found he was dead : the other 
 lad not dead, but suflBciently recovered to have 
 been sent away down the line to a base 
 hospital.
 
 116 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 That evening there were eleven to bury : when 
 the priest had finished the Office, he turned from 
 the long sad trench, and v/as taking off his 
 stole. 
 
 ''But," said the custode of the cemetery, 
 "there is the German. He also was, they say, 
 a Catholic." 
 
 *'Is he not among thosei" 
 
 "He? No. He is to be put over 
 there." 
 
 He pointed to a corner of the great field of 
 death, a Haceldama for that alien stranger. 
 
 The little procession of English soldiers, bear- 
 ing the dead German youth, moved silently 
 towards the place. The English and Germans, 
 less than a league away, gave him minute guns 
 all unknowingly, the dull October dusk fell 
 drearily. Perhaps at that moment Anton's 
 mother was looking through the plants at her 
 window. During the burial of the English and 
 French dead a large group of French women had 
 stood reverently by. Most of them had gone 
 away then : the few who stayed were of the hard, 
 hard tricoteuses type, and did not stay for love. 
 They moved also towards that alien corner, and, 
 as the poor body of the lad was laid into its 
 place, some of them hissed.
 
 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES 117 
 
 It was a comfort to see the scared, horrified 
 faces of the English soldiers. 
 
 I earnestly hope no reader will think those 
 hissing women typical of the French heart. 
 
 Long afterwards in another cemetery the 
 Ancient thanked a very gentle French lady who 
 spent all her spare time decking the graves of 
 the hundred English soldiers buried there. It 
 was a work of pure tenderness and charity : she 
 knew well that their friends could never know, 
 could never see what she did, and thank her. 
 
 ''That," she said simply, "is why I do it. 
 They cannot come: those wives, and mothers, 
 and sisters. I have to be the mother and sister 
 of these sleepers." 
 
 ' ' And he ? " asked the Ancient, pointing. 
 
 There was one wooden cross, with a German 
 officer's name upon it; he also had died, among 
 the English, and been buried among them. His 
 cross was like the others, but the French custom 
 is to paint a tear upon the cross, and there was 
 one on each English cross, on the German none : 
 and on the German grave only the red sand, no 
 plant or flower. 
 
 ''He"? Ah, Monsieur, he was an enemy," 
 urged the gentle little lady. 
 
 *'In the grave there are no enemiea."
 
 118 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 Next time the Ancient came there he saw that 
 that stranger's grave was no longer bare. Pa- 
 triot, flaming patriot, as every French woman is, 
 she had set sweet herbs to grow upon it, and 
 pansies. 
 
 ^' * Pansies for thoughts,' " thought the 
 Ancient.
 
 VIII 
 
 love's labour's lost? 
 
 One afternoon about six o'clock the A.D.M.S. — 
 Assistant Director of Medical Services, that is 
 to say the principal Medical Officer of the Divi- 
 sion — came to the Ancient and said: 
 
 "To-night, at any moment in fact, we may 
 expect a considerable number of wounded, and 
 we have only this field to receive them in.'' 
 
 The field was, so far as beauty of surroundings 
 went, exquisitely situated: flat itself, it formed 
 the table of a little plateau from which steep 
 grassy meadows fell to a rich river-bottom, 
 beyond which were hanging woods. But, lovely 
 as the scene around was, the situation was par- 
 ticularly exposed: it was entirely bare of cover 
 and jutted out into the valley: the woods were 
 full of batteries, themselves of course the object 
 of continual bombardment; and enemy aircraft 
 had been continually hovering over the field 
 itself, and continually driven away by our own 
 anti-aircraft bombs. 
 
 119
 
 120 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 *'I should like," said the A.D.M.S., ''to find 
 some better place for the wounded. Can you 
 help us?" 
 
 ''I will try. I will go at once and see. But 
 I have been exploring the little town and I did 
 not notice any building likely to contain large 
 rooms. There seems to be no chateau. But 
 there is a school and there is a church. I expect 
 it will have to be one of them. ' ' 
 
 He went off at once to make a more diligent 
 search, and found just what he had expected, 
 no house that promised anything. There were 
 several villas, prosperous the day before yester- 
 day, now all disordered and dishonoured, none 
 with any large hall or room. The other houses 
 were very small, and had mostly a deserted air, 
 for the Germans had only left that morning and 
 their inhabitants had fled and were not yet 
 returned. 
 
 The school was a tall, old-fashioned building 
 consisting apparently of many little rooms on 
 several floors. To carry wounded men up a 
 narrow staircase would be out of the question. 
 
 There only remained the church: and the 
 Ancient had some difficulty in finding the keys 
 of it. The priest was away fighting for France, 
 the Mayor had gone away on the arrival of the 
 Germans, and there was hardly a soul about.
 
 LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST 121 
 
 There really were people in some of the houses, 
 but they were still unwilling to show themselves. 
 They knew that the battle was being fought 
 hard by and did not know who would win it : if 
 it should be the Germans of course the dreaded 
 enemy would come back. 
 
 However the Ancient went into one of these 
 little houses, the door of which was not locked, 
 and in an out-house at the back he found an old 
 man cowering on the ground, half -covered with 
 straw, and hiding behind a very small cow. At 
 Urst he did not seem disposed for conversation: 
 he was perhaps a little deaf, and he was certainly 
 very much frightened. 
 
 "Are you all alone!" asked the Ancient. 
 
 The old man only grunted. Either he had not 
 heard or he thought ** least said is soonest 
 mended." 
 
 The Ancient went close up to him and said: 
 "Courage, my friend. I am only an old person 
 myself, an English priest; you needn't be afraid. 
 There are no Boches here, only some English 
 troops." 
 
 "Many?" 
 
 * * No. Not very many. ' ' 
 
 "I wish there were fifty thousand. But there 
 is only this one cow. ' ' 
 
 "We do not want your cow; we don't want
 
 122 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 anything. But I want to know how I can get 
 into the church. I am going to make it into a 
 hospital for the wounded. ' ' 
 
 The old man slowly stood up ; he was evidently 
 stiff ; his poor bones were rheumatic, and I dare 
 say he had been cowering there, afraid to stir, 
 for a day and a night. 
 
 ''Where," asked the Ancient carelessly, "is 
 your wife ? ' ' 
 
 "Where there are no Boches: in heaven." 
 
 "And you live alone? Is there no one 
 
 else?" 
 
 "There is," said the old man slowly, "my 
 grandson. His father is at the war." 
 
 The Ancient peered about for the grandson. 
 
 "He," whispered the old man, "is . . . 
 behind the rabbits." 
 
 He was giving some hay to the cow, who 
 appeared to have an excellent appetite. 
 
 The Ancient went out of the little shed and 
 searched for the grandson. There was a tiny 
 garden, and at the end of it some currant bushes, 
 rank and barren-looking. Behind them, on a 
 sort of tressle, were half a dozen rabbit-hutches ; 
 behind the hutches were some remarkably fine 
 nettles. Cowering among the nettles was a thin 
 boy with a white face and terrified eyes. 
 
 *'Come! you need not be afraid," said the
 
 LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST? 123 
 
 Ancient repeating his formula, ''I am an English 
 priest. I belong to the English Army. Do 
 come out. What is your name 1 ' ' 
 
 "Guillaume," stammered the boy, and the 
 Ancient at once perceived that it was a lie. 
 During the horrible eternity of hours the lad had 
 been squatting there among the nettles his poor 
 wits had been devising this piteous little ruse. 
 Perhaps the Bodies, if they found him, would 
 not kill the Emperor 's name-sake. 
 
 As he could not cry, the Ancient laughed. 
 
 *'I'm sure your grandfather doesn't call you 
 that," he said, with decision. '*He is all right. 
 No one has hurt him: no one is going to. The 
 English are here. He is feeding the cow. What 
 does he call youT* 
 
 " FrauQois." 
 
 "That is my name too. I want to get into 
 the church. Who has a key? The Mayor has 
 saved himself: there is no priest." 
 
 * ' The priest is fighting. ' ' 
 
 **Yes, I know. I know he did not run away. 
 Is there any other key? I want to arrange a 
 hospital in the church. But I can't get in. Do 
 help me." 
 
 "I know how to get in. I know where there 
 is a key. The sacristan is my uncle. Not old, 
 like most sacristans, and he has gone to the war.
 
 124 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 But I lost a key: I used to help him, aud he 
 gave me sous. But I lost the key, and I only 
 found it three day ago. You really are English! 
 Why do you talk French?" 
 
 ''Because I supose you do not talk English. 
 Come FranQois." 
 
 His grandfather had hobbled down and said: 
 *'See, he has only one hand. The other was 
 nearly cut off on a chaff-cutter, when he was 
 seven years old, and it turned out bad. They had 
 to cut it off. If the Boches had found him they 
 would have cut off the other and his head to 
 make up for his not having two. It is, as Mon- 
 sieur knows, their custom to cut off boys ' hands. 
 Finding only one they would naturally cut off 
 this boy's head — to make up." 
 
 Francois shook with terror. 
 
 ''It is no use telling him such things," urged 
 the Ancient. "Besides we are not to suppose 
 that all Boches are equally cruel." 
 
 The old man trembled now. 
 
 "You are sure," he quavered miserably, "that 
 you are English?" 
 
 * ' Absolutely sure. I never liked the Germans. 
 But it is absurd to think they are all devils." 
 
 "It is anyway clear," said the grandfather, 
 "that Monsieur is not French." 
 
 The Ancient knew very well that the old fellow
 
 LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST 125 
 
 was not alluding to his accent, but lie said 
 cheerfully : 
 
 ' ' I know my tongue is not. But my heart is. ' ' 
 
 They were all three walking up the little 
 garden. It was growing dusk. All the while 
 came the ugly, angry noise of fierce artillery-fire. 
 
 *' FranQois," said the Ancient, *'do be quick. 
 I want that key. I have lost a lot of time." 
 
 The key was in a pair of blue cotton trousers 
 hung behind the door in the cottage. 
 
 *' There is nothing in this cottage," observed 
 the old man earnestly, " except what you see. 
 No money. We have none. Money is in rich 
 people's houses." 
 
 " I wonder," thought the Ancient, " w^ere it 
 
 is." 
 
 It seemed a good thing that the Germans had 
 not come there ; the poor old fellow would have 
 said just the same things. 
 
 There were no lights in any of the cottages. 
 But a few women had crept out. They must 
 have seen from some peeping-holes the Ancient 
 go into the cottage where Francois and his 
 grandfather lived. 
 
 '' Mesdames," said the Ancient, sick of his 
 formula ," Francois is going to open the church 
 for me. I am going to arrange a little hospital 
 in it. I am an English priest. We expect many
 
 126 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 wounded. Is there anything you could bring 
 
 meV 
 
 Poor creatures! They had been cowed; and 
 had cause, no doubt, for weary anxiety still: 
 who could tell how this battle would go? But 
 they were French, and full of generosity; and 
 were wives, or sisters, or mothers of soldiers. 
 
 *'Wliat does Monsieur want?" asked a woman 
 with a fine but not very gentle face. She was 
 perhaps the last to whom, of all the little group 
 that had gathered round him, the Ancient would 
 have appealed. Thus we are stupid, and judge 
 good books by their austere binding. 
 
 **Ah, Madame! What do I not want? There 
 is the church — and that is all. To lay a shat- 
 tered brave down on the hard flags — that also is 
 hard." 
 
 ''Of the hardest. Come, Mesdames!" 
 
 And the hard-featured woman assumed com- 
 mand. They all went off after her. In ten 
 minutes they, and others whom they had en- 
 listed, brought the Ancient twenty-seven mat- 
 tresses, nearly fifty blankets ; and in half an hour 
 they had brought him, in all, forty-eight mat- 
 tresses or beds, over sixty blankets and duvets, 
 many pillows, and milk, wine and eggs and a lit- 
 tle cognac — and they had hardly dared to eat 
 all day or all the day before.
 
 LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST? 127 
 
 **It is poor people's stuff," said Madame of 
 the hard face, ''but. Monsieur, it is all we have." 
 
 ''I cannot thank you. God must. Your 
 French St. Martin gave Jesus Christ half his 
 cloak, and how He boasted of it in Heaven that 
 night! He is showing these beds to St. Martin, 
 and St. Denis, and St. Remy now, and saying, 
 'Look what your daughters have given me to lie 
 upon — their own beds: their only beds: the 
 beds whereon their babies were born.' Eh, 
 Mesdames, He will be proud of His Church's 
 eldest daughter." 
 
 **Ali! Monsieur, then, is Catholic too? Tant 
 mieux! We did not know for sure. English 
 Pasteurs come and say they are Catholic, and 
 afterwards we find they are not of our faith. 
 "We thought you might be a pasteur also. But 
 we knew you wanted what we could give pour 
 vos braves: it was enough: your soldiers come 
 here and are killed for us. It is not much that 
 we give an old bed for them to die on. ' ' 
 
 *'Now," said another woman, "shall we help 
 you ? You are alone to do everything — and have 
 you done all that?" 
 
 ' ' Yes. I had to do something while I waited : 
 but I was not alone, Frangois helped me. There 
 would not be room in the aisles, so we moved all 
 the benches. Francois with his one hand does
 
 128 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 as much as two men with two hands each. ' ' He 
 had indeed worked like a Trojan: and his old 
 grandfather helped too. He had a rather rough 
 old tongue now he had found it. 
 
 **It is a pity," he had observed, pointing a 
 rheumatic finger at the pulpit, ''that M. I'Abbe 
 cannot be there to preach. That would help the 
 wounded to sleep." 
 
 The little church soon began to look quite like 
 a hospital. The beds lay in rows up the nave 
 and south aisle — the north was full of the benches 
 and chairs. Also the two chapels made tiny 
 wards. 
 
 "I will go and finish making my soup," said 
 Madame of the hard face, "it will be hot, and 
 perhaps the poor men w^ill like it, though it is 
 only oiir soup, not grande chose, you under- 
 stand. ' ' 
 
 "I also have some soup nearly ready," another 
 woman declared; "it isn't splendid but it has a 
 hen in it. My old man was frightened when a 
 shell fell in the paddock and tumbled over on her. 
 He is heavy, my bonhomme, and she was ecrasee, 
 so I undressed her and put her in the pot." 
 
 " Look here," said the Ancient, "it is a shame 
 to steal your soup " 
 
 " Sh! When the thief is given leave he 
 becomes an honest man," declared the hard-
 
 LOVE 'S LABOUR 'S LOST ? 129 
 
 faced woman; whose name, by the way, proved 
 to be Madame Martel. 
 
 '' Yes. But listen. I know this soup is for 
 your dinners, and for the dinners of your fam- 
 ilies. But see, I have here this packet. It con- 
 tains English stuff called Oxo, each of the little 
 cubes will make half a litre of soup. But it needs 
 boiling water and I have none. AVill you take 
 the cubes — there are a hundred of them — and 
 make soup of them for me, between you, and 
 bring it here when I am ready for it ?" 
 
 *' We will mix it with some of our thin soup, 
 and the vegetables will make it better. ' ' 
 
 << Very well. It is most singularly good of 
 you to take so much trouble. ' ' 
 
 ** And you? You are not precisely a little 
 boy. The work has made Monsieur very 
 hot." 
 
 ** And very dirty. But that doesn't matter, 
 Doesn't this chapel make a nice little ward?" 
 
 *' Yes. It is a pity She" (with a nod at the 
 Blessed Virgin's statue) '^ can't come down to 
 soigner the wounded. She would like that. She 
 is a Mother and knows what it is like to see her 
 Son hurt. ' ' 
 
 This again was Madame Martel. She and the 
 Ancient were now alone in the little chapel. 
 
 * ' You have sons I ' '
 
 130 FEENCH WINDOWS 
 
 {( 
 
 Two. They are both at the war. They are 
 twins — Philippe and Philippin." 
 
 " May they both come home safe and sound. 
 I will say Mass for them. ' * 
 
 " Monsieur," she said quietly, '' for Philippe 
 the Mass should be en noir. He was killed the 
 iirst day.'* 
 
 She did not sob, nor were her eyes wet. 
 
 '' Monsieur," she said, touching the priest's 
 arm, '' do not weep. Heureux ceux qui meurent 
 pour la patrie. Out of the soil of this France 
 we who are peasants live. She feeds her children 
 from her breast. She has a right to her sons' 
 lives. They die to save that mother's breast 
 from pollution. Heureux ceux qui meurent pour 
 la patrie: heureux ceux qui pleurent pour les 
 braves. My lad's blood will wash out the stain 
 of one German footstep anyway. I go to make 
 the soup." 
 
 It was nearly dark now in the church: they 
 had lighted a few lamps, and one of them was 
 set on the steps of the pulpit. Frangois was 
 seated there waiting to be told what he should 
 do next : a girl was talking to him in a low voice. 
 
 Her head was swathed in hideous bandages, 
 and horrible straps of plaster were stuck across 
 her face : one of them entirely covered the right 
 eye.
 
 LOVE 'S LABOUR 'S LOST ! 131 
 
 *' How did you get hurt?" the Ancient asked 
 her gently. 
 
 '' I am not hurt. I did it myself — and my 
 mother helped me." 
 
 She moved away, and the Ancient saw that 
 she was very lame. 
 
 ** Monsieur," whispered Francois, " she was 
 afraid of the Boches. She is beautiful, only she 
 is lame and can only walk a little and slowly. 
 She had splendid hair — lots of it. She cut it all 
 off, in jags, close to the skull, and made herself 
 horrible with those bandages. It was her old 
 uncle. Monsieur Fere of the pharmacie, who gave 
 her the plaster. She is frightful, is she not? I 
 suppose she is ashamed. And she is vain and 
 dresses very prettily, and she is of the most 
 clean. She is ashamed of those filthy rags in 
 which she dressed herself." 
 
 Was she? Perhaps; for we are always being 
 ashamed of the wrong things. 
 
 " Look Monsieur," said Francois, with a tug 
 at the Ancient's coat, " two English officers who 
 are at the door." 
 
 They came to see what had been done, and 
 were full of conunendation. 
 
 " Jeanne Fere is ashamed lest they see her," 
 whispered Francois. "See she hides behind the 
 door till she can slip out. If Philippin Martel
 
 132 FEENCH WINDOWS 
 
 came home quickly from the war; what would 
 she do if he came before her hair grew? She is 
 betrothed to Philippin Martel." 
 
 The English officers went round the church, 
 praised what had been done, and went away.* 
 No wounded, they reported, had come in yet. 
 
 '* Monsieur," asked one of the women, coming 
 down the little place on which the church stood, 
 *' are you not hungry? I could make an 
 omelette." 
 
 " Not hungry at all, but filthy. Could you 
 lend me a cuvette, with water and soap?" 
 
 '' Of course. But Monsieur, only the angels 
 can see in this light : and they don 't mind. Clean 
 hearts and dirty hands often go together. Mon 
 Dieul what is that?" 
 
 Nothing very strange: only a shell that had 
 fallen on a tallish house down the street, perhaps 
 a hundred yards away; not in the direction of 
 our field but eastward of the church — if the altar 
 was duly orientated. Soon another fell nearer 
 to the church, and it became apparent that the 
 Germans were now making the church a mark; 
 it stood high on the edge of a steep bluff at the 
 end of the place. It seemed obvious that they 
 were not only aiming at the church but getting 
 the range. 
 
 • They are both killed now.
 
 LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST! 133 
 
 The lamps inside the church were feeble 
 enough, and so far did not light up the windows : 
 but when it should be quite dark they might. 
 It seemed best to the Ancient to go in and put 
 them all out, one by one, which he did. 
 
 He guessed already that the little hospital the 
 women had furnished with beds would never be 
 used. The place would be considered too 
 dangerous. And so it proved. 
 
 He went and reported to the orderly officer of 
 the A.D.M.S., a very kind and friendly Major. 
 
 " All your trouble for nothing," he said re- 
 gretfully, ^ ' it would have been an excellent little 
 dressing-station; but the field, when it is quite 
 dark, will be safer. I'm afraid we shall have to 
 give up the church." 
 
 The A.D.M.S. decided that it must be so. 
 
 And so all the labour of love of those poor 
 women was wasted — * * Or else, no, ' ' as they say 
 in Scotland.
 
 IX 
 
 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 From the 18th to the 31st of October (1914) the 
 Ancient was, as has been told in the seventh of 
 these papers, helping certain officers of his unit 
 to carry on a Clearing Hospital at B., an old 
 town of what was once Spanish Flanders — and 
 is now a part of the French Department of the 
 Nord. Besides our own there was, quite at the 
 other end of the town, another very large Clear- 
 ing Hospital for British troops, and this, having 
 no Catholic Chaplain of its own, though not 
 officially in his care, did actually during those 
 days form part of the Ancient's charge. Not 
 far from it was a much smaller hospital, carried 
 on by the Dames de France, and visited by the 
 Ancient because certain of its patients had 
 originally been brought in from the battle-field 
 to our own hospital, and kept by us for several 
 days. Of them a word presently. There was 
 a fourth hospital, called the Hospic Civil et 
 Militaire. In peace time it was simply a 
 
 134
 
 FRENCH WINDOWS 135 
 
 hospice for old men and women, in charge of 
 Franciscan nuns, and much resembling a Convent 
 of Little Sisters of the Poor. Just before the 
 war began, however, immense additions had 
 been made to it, and the nuns immediately 
 handed over the new block for the reception of 
 wounded soldiers, they themselves undertaking 
 the nursing, in addition to their already heavy 
 work in the care of their regular inmates, who 
 remained in an earlier, but quite modern and 
 excellent, wing. The Sisters continued to in- 
 habit the very old, and I should say much worse 
 than obsolete, portion of the buildings (dating 
 from the sixteenth or early seventeenth century) 
 nearest the street : noisy, close, airless, dark, and 
 dismal. These buildings were crowded round a 
 small and gloomy courtyard, and one only had 
 to glance at them to appreciate the self-sacrifice 
 of those devoted and noble w^omen. They were 
 all excellent, but their Superioress was a quite 
 remarkable person, capable, ever-ready, and a 
 first-rate organizer. She was a trained anses- 
 thetist, and almost nightly would be at work in 
 the operating theatre till it was night no longer, 
 and then would take a very brief sleep ; she was 
 always in chapel in her place, when the Ancient 
 went to say Mass there at half -past six or seven. 
 To her Queen Alexandra wrote a very gracious
 
 136 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 and kindly letter, thanking her and her nuns for 
 their care of the English soldiers : for two large 
 wards had been given over entirely to our 
 wounded, while wounded English officers were 
 welcomed in other parts of the hospice. One of 
 our Medical Officers, a genial and very clever 
 New Zealander, had charge of these cases, and 
 was a skilled operator. I do not propose to say 
 more of him and his work at B. lest it should 
 seem that he and I were playing a very popular 
 game, for in his book '' A Surgeon in Khaki" he 
 has had far too much to say of *' Monsignor."* 
 
 Those Masses in the hospice chapel one will 
 not easily forget. There were the nuns — most 
 of whom had been at work half, and more than 
 half, the night, and all the long day before: 
 some of whom were too old for any work, and 
 crept slowly to their places, with failing step that 
 would soon carry them on a very long journey: 
 into the gathering silence of their last days here 
 had burst the terrible clatter and din of war. 
 
 There were good folk from the toWn; almost 
 all in deep mourning. And almost always there 
 were tressels before the altar, on which lay a 
 young hero's coffin presently to be carried out 
 to its jBbial rest. Sometimes there were two or 
 three, sometimes half a dozen. Draped with the 
 
 * He has been killed since these words were written.
 
 FRENCH WINDOWS 137 
 
 Tricolour, those silent heroes seemed praying for 
 the soil of France to be purged from the Sang 
 Impur that stained it ; their deaths prayed for it. 
 
 One morning a Lancashire soldier went with 
 the Ancient to hear that Mass. His stalwart 
 frame stood up pretty high above the old bent 
 figures of fathers come to pray for the sons they 
 had given to France. A quick, involuntary, 
 sidewards shake of the head gave a very simple, 
 eloquent tribute of pity and respect. He looked 
 beyond that little patient, mourning crowd, to 
 the veiled circle of the nuns. Then they sang, 
 and the rather weird thin music was all a 
 threnody, unmistakable, and a cry to Christ for 
 France. 
 
 ''What did you think of it?" the Ancient 
 asked him at the end. 
 
 " I never saw the like," he answered, and 
 somehow it was enough. 
 
 " Eh!" he said later on, still with that side- 
 wards abrupt head-shake, "England isn't cut 
 like that." 
 
 One afternoon he went with his master to go 
 round the whole of that hospital, carrying a sack 
 containing about five thousand cigarettes. Of 
 course it took a long time, as the wards seemed 
 countless, and each soldier liked to have his 
 cigarettes given to him individually, and natur-
 
 138 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 ally wished to talk a little. The extreme com- 
 fort, the exquisite cleanliness, and the perfect 
 peace and stillness of those light, lofty, airy and 
 yet well-warmed wards immensely impressed the 
 young Lancashire man. It was abundantly clear 
 on what a kindly and sympathetic footing the 
 nuns were with their soldier-patients : and what 
 specially touched the young Englishman was 
 that the lads who helped the Sisters as bran- 
 cardiers in the wards were ecclesiastical stu- 
 dents, who had to lay aside for awhile their 
 treaties to read in this great book of charity. 
 
 French soldiers are always delighted to get 
 hold of English cigarettes, and they seemed even 
 more pleased to have the chance of talking with 
 an Englishman who was at once a priest and an 
 officer. To him the only drawback was that the 
 talk had to be so brief. (It must be borne in 
 mind that this was only a visit of friendliness: 
 they had a perfectly devoted, most kind and 
 large-hearted, French chaplain of their own.) 
 For they were quite delightful : and as ready to 
 open their hearts as their mouths. Each of 
 them was a different window opened into that 
 splendid and gracious thing the heart of the 
 French people, and giving each a different 
 glimpse of character, surroundings, calling, and 
 locality. For there were lads and fathers of
 
 FRENCH WINDOWS 139 
 
 families, ''educated" and uneducated, blond 
 and stalwart Normans, dark and lean southern- 
 ers, Parisians, Lyonnais, Marseillais, Gascons, 
 men from the western sea-board, mountaineers 
 from Alps and Pyrenees, cuUivateurs and clerks, 
 sons of the chateau and of the slum, merry-eyed 
 Proven§aux, and wistful-faced youths from the 
 solemn and silent landes. It would have been 
 fascinating employment for an afternoon to sit 
 by any one of them, and enjoy the generously 
 given confidence, to look leisurely at the home- 
 pictures deftly painted in a word or two, and 
 change into a friendship what could only be the 
 realization that it was worth having and freely 
 offered : to hurry on was abominable, and it was 
 hard to turn back at the door of the ward to see 
 such friendly eyes watch one's going, such 
 intimate and kindly little gestures of farewell, 
 and hearing so tempting a chorus of '' Au revoir, 
 Monsieur ! A tantot !" 
 
 '' Au revoir, mes gosses, Men sur! quelque 
 part, quelque temps. Au revoir." 
 
 Ah where! Ah when? 
 
 That was the worst of those terribly crowded 
 days at B. — the hurry: for the work in our own 
 hospital was always much more than enough to 
 keep one very busy indeed, and the visits to the 
 other three hospitals had to be snatched from
 
 140 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 the time belonging to it, in something the fashion 
 in which some housekeepers squeeze money for 
 good works out of the housekeeping money they 
 have to administer ! When setting out from his 
 own hospital, to dash off to one of the others, 
 the Ancient always had an uneasy sense that he 
 ought not to go at all, and at each of the others 
 he felt that he ought to stay here and not go 
 back at all. 
 
 As to the French wounded brought in among 
 our own men from the battle-field to our hospital, 
 four or five became specially friends of the 
 Ancient, and are friends still, writing to him very 
 regularly. One was a young Sergeant, from 
 Savoie; very dark, with great black eyes that, 
 when they were not singularly gentle and tender, 
 looked fierce and quarrelsome. He was almost 
 black with smoke and dust when he came in; 
 he had had no means of washing for a week, and 
 later on the Ancient perceived that he was 
 extremely coquet, half a dandy, and that the 
 grime and filth had annoyed him even more than 
 the very bad wound in his hip. He was grateful, 
 out of all proportion, for the little soins the 
 Ancient was able to render him: and his thanks 
 were voluble to eloquence. 
 
 " I believe," said the Ancient laughing, ''that 
 talking is your trade."
 
 FRENCH WINDOWS 141 
 
 *' So it is. I am comme metier, commis- 
 voyageur." 
 
 All the same it was not quite easy to picture 
 him as a commercial traveller. He was all over 
 a young warrior, and rather a blood-thirsty 
 looking one. It would have made a conscientious 
 objector feel creepy to hear him talk of Germans, 
 and tell of things he had seen ; and for my part 
 I thought it much healthier to be an Englishman 
 making soup for him than a Boche asking him 
 for quarter. I could too distinctly hear him say 
 with those blazing eyes of his, ' ' As for your soul, 
 ask the Bon Dieu to take it, if he likes it. For 
 me, I am preventing your body from doing any 
 more harm." He w^as a lonely person; not, he 
 said, apt to make friends. He had one great 
 love— for his mother. 
 
 *^ You see," he said once, ''she has no one else. 
 I am all the child she has. And I never had a 
 father. He must have been bad : for she is good, 
 look you, good, good, good. A dog of a gentle- 
 man, he. And it is I who stand between her 
 and a broken heart. Please do not say anything. 
 Only if I go back, and then do not come back — 
 write to her. Eh?" 
 
 He never seemed to sleep; for, at whatever 
 hour of the night the Ancient came into the ward, 
 those gaunt eyes were turned to the door, wide
 
 142 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 open, and burning like a black fire. In another 
 place I hope to tell how tenderly he did for me 
 a work of gracious charity. 
 
 A very different lad was a young Norman 
 cultivateur who came in on the same night. The 
 Ancient found him lying on a stretcher in a very 
 large and very crowded ward. Only a third of 
 the wounded could be given any sort of bed : the 
 rest lay on the floor, on straw or on the stretchers 
 in which they had been brought in. He was 
 wounded in the thigh, and suffered plenty of 
 pain, but quite stolidly. He never asked for 
 anything, or seemed to expect anything. 
 
 ^' Are you hungry or thirsty?" asked the 
 Ancient, kneeling down in the corner (it was 
 almost behind a door) by his side. 
 
 " All the two, Monsieur. But that makes 
 nothing. ' ' 
 
 " I can't make much either, but I can make 
 coffee and soup, and I '11 go and do it. ' ' 
 
 He seemed mildly surprised, and he mildly 
 smiled. When they were brought he watched 
 the Ancient over the brim of the cup, as a horse 
 might watch the man who had brought him 
 unexpected hay, over the edge of a manger. 
 
 '' I am sure," said the Ancient, ''you are 
 Norman." 
 
 *'Itisthat."
 
 FRENCH WINDOWS 143 
 
 "CuUivateurf" 
 
 i < 
 
 Yes. Who told you?" 
 The look of your big hands." 
 I am from St. Martin I'Egiise. Widow 
 Guilbert is my mother. She keeps the little 
 coffee-shop at the corner past the bridge. There 
 is a little land. I work on it. Henri too. Only 
 he is doing this: like me. I am Charles." 
 
 *' Your brother, Henri f" 
 
 '' Matilde's husband." 
 
 *' Is Madame Matilde your only sister ?" 
 
 *' There is also Gervaise, but she died three 
 days before the Day of the Kings. Jean is 
 doing this: like me." 
 
 '' He is husband of Madame Gervaise ?" 
 
 ''That is it:— Eh, but I was cold. That 
 warms the stomach." 
 
 " Yes. But you must have blankets — < — " 
 
 *' Monsieur also makes blankets! Is the war 
 nearly finished ? ' ' 
 
 '' God knows that ! I'm going to get blankets. 
 Then you can sleep." 
 
 He was a Chasseur a Cheval. And when the 
 Ancient came back Charles Guilbert said: 
 
 ** My horse was killed; ga m'enihete. He 
 hadn't done any harm to Guillaume." 
 
 *' Nor you either, for that matter," said the 
 Ancient laughing.
 
 144 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 " No. But I would if I could. He has caused 
 them to kill my horse. I like horses best. They 
 do not mock themselves of one, if one is hete. 
 When you go to Mass the people round the 
 church, outside, amuse themselves thus; ga 
 m'embete. Most of all when girls do it. I find 
 that out of place. For girls are only a sort of 
 men, less strong, and expect much help in the 
 fields when it is harvest. Then they mock 
 themselves of you (when they are all together 
 and you go by, and they need no help any more). 
 Do you find that right?" 
 
 *' Oh no! I suppose there is one worse than 
 the others?" 
 
 *' You know that also ? Philomene is the 
 worst. And it is she who expects most help in 
 harvest time." 
 
 *' A disagreeable girl, evidently." 
 
 " Perhaps not. You know Normandy well?" 
 
 *' Very little indeed. But my people came 
 from there — from very near your pays: from 
 Arques la Bataille." 
 
 *' From Arques I The next pays." 
 
 And so for ever so long Charles Guilbert 
 talked, and was happy, of his home, and his 
 work in the fields (sighing to get back to it), 
 and a certain small brother Philippin. Long 
 afterwards Philippin crept up on to the
 
 FRENCH WINDOWS 145 
 
 Ancient's knee, in the neat, plain, prosperous 
 Norman home, to ask whispered questions about 
 Charles a la guerre. 
 
 But the Ancient never saw Philomene, and the 
 Veuve Guilbert sniffed when he inquired casually 
 concerning that young woman's health. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the ward at B., Charles talked 
 with contented eyes of toil and home, and you 
 would never have thought that he had a lump 
 of " skrapnel," as he called it, in his thigh. 
 
 I am getting on rather slowly. But that was 
 what one always felt; one was getting on very 
 slowly, with so much to do. And if you hurry 
 too much, lonely creatures don't get much com- 
 fort out of you. I think a wounded French lad, 
 in a crowded English hospital, where no one talks 
 French, is apt to feel lonely ; and it seems to me 
 that God, who has all Eternity to do things in, 
 must be patient with an old man who has but 
 a very little time. It never worried one to fancy 
 that He was saying, '* Why aren't you doing 
 something else ?" if the thing being done had 
 cropped up, and was a decent thing in its way. 
 
 It must not be imagined that only the French 
 wounded were grateful and gracious for the small 
 homely services rendered to them. Our own, 
 English, Irish, and Scots, were just as kind. It 
 was a very busy but a very happy time, if one
 
 146 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 can say that decently of a time during which one 
 saw so much suffering. It had its little jokes 
 too, as when a young soldier, whose own clothes 
 had been torn to ribbons and utterly spoiled by 
 blood and dirt, set forth from the hospital, for 
 the train that was to take him to Boulogne, in 
 an uncommonly shabby black coat and a pair of 
 black trousers that made knicker-bocker breeches 
 on his unduly long legs. He was quite un- 
 perturbed by the chaff that his rig occasioned, 
 and assumed a certain clerical air that was far 
 funnier than his trousers. 
 
 The end of those days came, as everything 
 came, rather suddenly. And one foggy morning 
 (with a promise of sun, however) we marched 
 away from B. to rejoin our headquarters where- 
 ever we could find them. 
 
 We passed through three villages that day, 
 and in the first we had our first sight of the 
 Indian troops. About four in the afternoon we 
 came to M., a considerable village, of one long 
 and wide street, whose houses were substantial 
 and comfortable-looking. At a largo, as it would 
 be called in Naples, stood the church, large and 
 fine ; and at right angles to it, a bit further down 
 the hill, the Maine. We sought the Mayor 
 within, to arrange about billets, and found him 
 — a crooked, crunched-up, weazened, prcpostei'-
 
 FRENCH WINDOWS 147 
 
 ously-cranky-looking personage, with a brown 
 death's-head for a face, and awful hands with 
 talons for fingers. Those fingers were bent and 
 twisted in all directions, as were his lean legs, 
 as were his flappy ears — as were all his features. 
 
 He looked absurdly eighteenth-century — old 
 before the Revolution, but not too old, when it 
 came, to enjoy with all his twisted being the 
 denouncing of royalists. 
 
 He looked so exaggeratedly unpleasant that 
 it was impossible not to feel convinced that he 
 must be pleasanter than his looks. Still, he 
 was not pleasant, and he was far from desiring 
 to seem so. Ultimately, however, he gave us a 
 ramshackle school for the men, and without his 
 permission I discovered a place that I was quite 
 determined should be our billet for that night. 
 It was a chateau, a real chateau, just beyond 
 the village; the house itself very large indeed, 
 and around it what had been extensive and 
 imposing grounds. Yet it was obvious at the 
 first glance that it was no longer a chateau in 
 the sense of being the abode of any family of 
 position. It looked, but was not, unoccupied. 
 None of its doors or countless windows had the 
 air of being ever opened. It refused to have 
 an outlook, and was cynically shut up in itself. 
 It was not in the least ruinous; nevertheless
 
 148 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 Ichahod was stamped all over it. The grounds 
 must have been once the pride and pleasure of 
 fine folk who had a taste for what was fine, and 
 not ugly. They were now, not neglected but 
 superseded: the parterres lay under close- 
 cropped grass where sheep nibbled: against the 
 statues calves rubbed themselves. There was a 
 pretty lake with an island, and a really beautiful 
 stone bridge led to it from the bank, itself sus- 
 tained by a solid retaining Wall of ''rustic" 
 stone (Inigo Jones type), topped by a handsome 
 stone balustrade. Almost all the windows on 
 the ground floor and first floor were shuttered — 
 tall, wide windows such as only imposing saloons 
 would boast. There were two higher floors. 
 
 The Ancient went back to the Mayor and 
 asked boldly for billets at the chateau. 
 
 '' There is abundance of room," he declared, 
 " and we don't want anything but shelter. We 
 have our own food, and our own bedding." 
 
 The Mayor pretended difficulties, but could 
 not formulate them, and the billets were given. 
 
 Then the Ancient went off — it was half a mile 
 or more away — to get possession. Passing 
 through a sufficiently imposing gateway with a 
 lodge beside it, he encountered an old man, who 
 instantly proclaimed himself too deaf to hear 
 anything — but into his ear an obvious grand-
 
 FRENCH WINDOWS 149 
 
 daughter came forth from the lodge to whisper, 
 with the best results. 
 
 *'Is M. le Marquis away — at the war, per- 
 haps 1 ' ' asked the Ancient of the little girl. 
 
 (He felt convinced that M. le Marquis was as 
 far away as the French Revolution.) 
 
 ''There is no M. le Marquis," s:iid the little 
 girl. 
 
 ''There was," said the grandfather. 
 
 "When?" 
 
 "Oh, dans le temps, when there were kings." 
 
 "It is Monsieur Chose now," said the grand- 
 daughter. 
 
 "What does he make!" 
 
 ' ' Bicycle-saddles. ' ' 
 
 "Is he here?" 
 
 "Not yet. About seven o'clock he comes. 
 Madame is here." 
 
 "His wife?" 
 
 "No. His wife's mother. Madame is dead. 
 Monsieur Pierre is at the war. Monsieur Louis 
 is here — but he is going soon. Mademoiselle 
 will open the door." 
 
 ''Voila/' said the grandfather. 
 
 And the Ancient went on. At the great, 
 stern-looking door, a singularly inhospitable- 
 looking dog was in waiting. He resembled a 
 wolf, and was a wolf 's grandson. He had a slink-
 
 150 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 ing manner, and beautiful teeth. His objection 
 to any one's ringing the bell was undisguised; 
 when the bell did ring he wailed aloud. 
 
 "I hope they'll be quick," thought the An- 
 cient. 
 
 They were not at all quick, and it wasn't 
 "they" at all, when it was anybody. It was 
 Mademoiselle. A girl of fifteen, neatly dressed, 
 with a tucked-up gown, and a smell of soft-soap 
 hovering round her. 
 
 *'I have billets, please, Mademoiselle, from 
 the Mayor, for four officers. We shall not give 
 you any trouble, for we have each a servant, 
 and we bring our own food and our bedding." 
 
 **I will ask Madame." 
 
 And she shut the door, and the dog looked 
 gratified, evidently saying, **Ah! I told you so." 
 
 ''But you're quite wrong, 7non vieux," said 
 the Ancient, and the dog wailed aloud. 
 
 In no hurry appeared Madame — stoutish, not 
 unprosperous, but scarcely arrived (on the road 
 to gentility) at the dignity of being hourgeoise. 
 Neither she nor Mademoiselle were surly, but 
 they were far from affecting geniality. How- 
 ever, the result was admission. A queerly tall, 
 but most dignified hall ; then a sombre and gaunt, 
 but impressive staircase : the whole inside of the 
 house panelled with mahogany, and the stairs
 
 FRENCH WINDOWS 151 
 
 themselves and the balustrades — right up to the 
 fourth floor — of mahogany, still highly polished 
 and not in the least damaged, or decayed. 
 
 At each landing were immense mahogany 
 doors, with exquisitely carved gilt locks and 
 door-handles: every door inexorably closed, but 
 each obviously leading to suites of vast rooms. 
 
 At the fourth floor Madame and Mademoiselle 
 paused. 
 
 *' Wherever Monsieur chooses, here," said 
 Madame. 
 
 Even up here the rooms were fine, and they 
 were furnished — with excellent furniture of a 
 good period (Louis XVI.) ; and the wall-papers 
 were of delightful design and still fresh — after 
 over a hundred years: some of the rooms were 
 not papered, but hung with damask silk. 
 
 ''You see," said Madame, ''there are beds 
 enough. ' ' 
 
 Perhaps the Ancient's consuming wonder as 
 to whose all this had been showed itself in his 
 face, as he looked around. 
 
 "It is all my son-in-law's now," said Ma- 
 dame, and the Ancient asked no questions. 
 
 There was nowhere the smallest hint of occu- 
 pation. There were excellent beds, in really fine 
 bedsteads, but no bedding. And one felt a con- 
 viction that no one ever entered here, at night,
 
 152 FRENCH "WINDOWS 
 
 except ghosts. As for the ghosts they hardly 
 pretended to hide themselves. Out of every mir- 
 ror they seemed to peer — whereas the living look 
 into mirrors. 
 
 In this sumptuous wilderness we encamped 
 that night. But first the Ancient had to go and 
 find the other officers; and also the Cure, to ar- 
 range about Mass in the morning. 
 
 The Cure was an old man, and very pleasant, 
 and quite delighted at the idea of having eighty 
 English soldiers in his church next morning. It 
 was a fine church, and well kept ; very large and 
 crowded next morning with a devout congrega 
 tion. During the Mass, said by the Ancient, the 
 Cure mounted the pulpit and said all sorts of 
 things out of his own head about the Ancient 
 (for he knew nothing on earth about him) to his 
 people, who evidently liked it. At that Mass the 
 whole family from the chateau ** assisted." 
 
 Afterwards the Ancient asked M. le Cure 
 about them, but he had nothing to say out of his 
 own head. 
 
 "Oh! Monsieur Chose — he makes bicycle- 
 saddles. A respectable person. " 
 
 ** But the chateau — it cannot always have be- 
 longed to him." 
 
 ''But no. Only since two years. " 
 
 "And before the -Revolution?"
 
 FRENCH WINDOWS 153 
 
 ''Ah: before the Revolution it belonged to 
 M. le Marquis de la R." 
 
 And that was all that the Ancient ever could 
 discover about a place that had ''history" 
 peering out of every corner of it. He couldn't 
 even discover why M. Chose had cared to buy 
 it, since he certainly could not be said to live 
 in it — he actually did live in the kitchen. 
 
 To make public confession — I have always giv- 
 en way to rash judgment about M. Chose. His 
 name was, of course, not Chose : it was a foreign 
 name, and he was not like a Frenchman, nor was 
 his son; nor were Madame and Mademoiselle 
 like French women. I feel sure they were not. 
 That is not the rash judgment. But one found 
 German-paid folk in so many places far from 
 Germany, and there seemed so little reason for 
 finding M. Chose there — that one wondered. No 
 one in the village would talk freely about them 
 
 M. Chose and M. le Maire — were they pen- 
 sioners? Pensioners of that enemy who had 
 planted his pensioners everywhere before the 
 war?
 
 OBITER DICTA 
 
 Half an hour after Mass on that Sunday morn- 
 ing, which was All Saints' Day, we marched 
 away from M. At the end of a straight bit of 
 road with a hump in it we could see the spire of 
 H. ; the town we could not see, because of the 
 hump. We marched straight through, and soon 
 after eleven o'clock had rejoined the headquar- 
 ters of our unit at the village of P. They were 
 billeted in and about a small but agreeable 
 chateau in a wee pare — which is not always in 
 France jDrecisely the same thing as an English 
 park. In this instance it consisted of a small 
 grass-plot, two cucumber-frames and a green- 
 house, nineteen trees, and half an acre of kitchen 
 garden. . 
 
 After a fortnight's absence it was pleasant to 
 meet our comrades again, and hear their news. 
 They were not able definitely to announce the 
 conclusion of the war, but in those early days 
 
 most of us were inclined to the belief with which 
 
 154
 
 OBITER DICTA 155 
 
 Mr. Herbert Paul credits the late Charles Kings- 
 ley, ''that something tremendous was going to 
 happen about the middle of next week." 
 
 Always eager, like Mrs. Elton, to ex- 
 plore (though without the convenience of a 
 barouchelandeau), the Ancient sallied forth to 
 examine the village. It was a morning all unlike 
 November; a July sun and an August breeze 
 played at summer together, like two belated 
 truants; and everything seemed laughing. 
 
 The village was full of folk, and there were 
 many chattering groups about the church. 
 
 ' ' Madame, can you tell me, please, ' ' asked the 
 Ancient of a young mother with a little boy 
 clinging to her gown, and a baby in her arms, 
 "where M. le Cure lives?" 
 
 "Monsieur, he lives nowhere." 
 
 "Ah! he, too, no doubt, is gone to the war?" 
 
 " He is gone. Monsieur, beyond the war, 
 where for him there is Peace." 
 
 She spoke in low tones and her eyes glanced 
 towards a lady, swathed in new black, who 
 passed from the churchyard. The groups of vil- 
 lage-folk and young soldiers drew back as she 
 went by, and they ceased chattering, with grave 
 and reverent faces, as men do when the great 
 King Death passes. Many uncovered, not in 
 greeting, but for reverence.
 
 156 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 ''Monsieur," said the young mother, when 
 that desolate and sable figure had gone by down 
 the sunlit street, ''she was his sister. She lived 
 with him. Two weeks ago the Boches were here. 
 Their officer went to M. le Cure — ^lie was too old 
 for military service, and stayed here. They 
 asked him for the keys of the church-tower, and 
 he explained to them that since the separation 
 of Church and State the churches belong to the 
 Republic, and the church-keys are in the Maire 's 
 hands. Where there is a friendly Maire the 
 Cure is allowed to have a key of the church — 
 but it is a courtesy. M. le Cure told them that 
 he had not the tower-key, that it was at the 
 Maire. Then they ordered him to stand up, and 
 shot him. That is all. ' ' 
 
 Immediately after an early luncheon we all 
 marched on, and did not reach our quarters for 
 that night till after nine o'clock. Not that it 
 was all continuous marching, for there were long 
 blocks and waits. Our road lay, in the early 
 afternoon, through deep and narrow lanes, and 
 more than once we had to squeeze in close to the 
 hedge and wait while other troops went by. 
 Among these was a brigade of Moroccan Cav- 
 alry, coming the contrary way, so that their 
 faces were towards us as they came winding up 
 the hill in the bright sunshine, and we could get
 
 OBITER DICTA 157 
 
 «* good look at them. They were not, it will be 
 understood, French colonials, but irregular na- 
 tive horse, mostly Arabs, though with a notable 
 sprinkling of jet-black Nubians. Their costumes 
 were furiously picturesque — close-fitting jackets 
 and very loose trousers of pale but bright blue, 
 broad canary-coloured sashes, blood-red fez, and 
 high boots of buff leather. The younger men 
 were often handsome, after an insolent, barbaric 
 fashion; the elders were mostly ill-favoured 
 enough and of forbidding countenance, with 
 hard and angry eyes. Even those who were 
 young and comely had an overbearing, defiant 
 manner — ''cheeky," as I heard one of our men 
 remark. All looked fierce and truculent. One 
 would guess that where sheer defiant pluck 
 might be needed they would not fall short, but 
 that their discipline and subordination might 
 leave something to be desired. 
 
 "And what," asked one of our young officers 
 (an Irishman from the Black North) of the An- 
 cient "do you think of them?" 
 
 " I think they make a splendid picture, but 
 they look particularly unbaptized." 
 
 "Do 7 look unbaptized!" 
 
 "Oh, you? Well mon vieux, you look as if 
 conditional baptism might in your case be a safe 
 precaution. ' '
 
 158 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 The Moroccans would have liked to gallop 
 through, but the lane was too narrow and too 
 thickly packed for that. Sometimes they could 
 trot half a dozen yards, then had to halt, then 
 might move on at foot-pace, then trot again, and 
 so on. 
 
 "Etes vous," demanded one of the cavaliers, 
 who sat impatiently enough in his high saddle 
 waiting for the block in front to lessen. "Etes 
 vous Sheikh f' 
 
 " Qui, mon fils," answered the Ancient, '' je 
 suis Sheikh Catholique." 
 
 The lad seemed to think it rather funny. He 
 touched his own hair, and nodded towards the 
 Ancient's White locks, approvingly, but touched 
 his own moustache, and looked at the Ancient's 
 shaven lip not approvingly. To the Arab the 
 shaven lip is shocking, scandalous. To this one 
 it seemed perversely improper, since all the 
 young English soldiers who were not Sheikhs 
 were moustached. 
 
 ** Notre habitude," observed the Ancient, 
 ' ' Maleysh-Kulloolum beni Adam." 
 
 The youth showed two rows of perfect teeth, 
 and said: 
 
 '' Salaam!" 
 
 The Ancient, looking forward, saw there 
 would be another move.
 
 OBITER DICTA 159 
 
 " Hadr!" he told his cavalier. 
 
 And the lad laughed as he shook up his rein 
 and moved on. He told the little joke to his 
 comrades, and as they trotted forward they also 
 laughed, turned in their saddles, shook brown 
 hands in air in greeting, and told one another 
 how odd it was to see an old Sheikh of the 
 Catholics, standing thus dusty in the trampling 
 rush of the war's wayside; but I think they 
 rather liked it, and no true Arab despises a 
 priest. Was not Isa bin Miriam highest of all 
 saints ? 
 
 The Ancient, watching them disappear, 
 seemed to miss them, and bethought him of a 
 morning in Tripoli, when an Arab had bela- 
 boured a harmless old person squatted on the 
 steps of the church where the Ancient was about 
 to say Mass. 
 
 *'Let him be. He does no evil," the Ancient 
 expostulated. 
 
 **He makes interruption. He gets in the way 
 when the holy man comes to make his prayer. 
 The great prayer is not to be impeded by the 
 body of this one who seeks only half -pence." 
 
 What seemed queer was that the old fellow did 
 not take at all in ill-part his own drastic re- 
 moval. 
 
 ^'You would not," demanded the lad of
 
 160 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 him, '' cheat God of the prayers that are 
 His?" 
 
 '' No, no." And he lifted wrinkled hands of 
 disavowal. " To God prayer. To man pity." 
 
 Well, we got on at last. Then, after but a 
 short mile of marching, another block: and this 
 time the Ancient climbed up into a queer little 
 country cart, driven by one of our men, to rest 
 land wait. The man was from the Scots Low- 
 lands, and had the kindly burr of the north in 
 his mouth. He soon told all about himself. 
 " Presbyterian?" '' Yes." '' Of the Kirk of 
 Scotland, or the Free Kirk, U.P.'s, or what?" 
 * ' Rightly I 'm a wee Free. But in the Army I 'm 
 just Presbyterian. ' ' He had four brothers, two 
 out here, one of them killed; one in the Navy, 
 and one, the youngest, only sixteen, ''minding 
 the mither" at home. Benjy they called him, 
 though his right name was Alexander, because 
 he got "aye the biggest servings at dinner." It 
 was a mercy it was not him the Germans had 
 killed. The brother who had fallen had an Eng- 
 lish chum who '' broke" his death in a letter 
 to Benjy. ' * You may conclude, ' ' said he, ' ' that 
 James is dead, for I saw his head blown off." 
 '' That," observed my one of the five brothers, 
 '' is what you may ca' leading up to it." It 
 appeared that my one (whose name was Adam)
 
 OBITER DICTA 161 
 
 had been to a Catholic service once, led thither 
 by a chum who assured him that it would divert 
 him. "But it was na' that way at all," he de- 
 clared, ''I thought it pretty, and verra solemn. 
 The minister that preached gave me a knock or 
 two, though he didna ken I was there." " Per- 
 haps the knocks came from somewhere else 
 where they do know." ''And that was what I 
 was jalousin' my ain seP. So I pirtly decided 
 not to go again just then, as it was not entirely 
 convenient to me to change. There's nae use 
 exposin' the conscience till ye've a readiness to 
 let it have its ain wull o' ye." 
 
 But if the reader is to be made to play eaves- 
 dropper to all the talk that came in the Ancient 's 
 way, we shall not get on much. 
 
 After all it was November, and, brilliant as 
 the day had been, it had to obey the almanack 
 and close in betimes. There was a long twilight, 
 warm enough at first, but gathering a sharp chill 
 as the mists began to rise over the fields. Here- 
 abouts there were, now and then, clusters of 
 huge and tall poles for the drying of hops ; as 
 the white fog crept in and swathed about them, 
 and the night fell, they had a grizzly suggestion 
 of colonies of gibbets, especially as blackened 
 bunches of withered hops hung to many of them, 
 swaying in the breeze. That which at noon had
 
 162 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 been a panting zephyr came now scolding, fussy 
 puffs with a tooth in them. 
 
 It grew so chilly that the Ancient was not 
 sorry to get down and walk again when the 
 " Quick March " came. He fell behind a bit to 
 say a rosary, but men kept moving by, and he 
 thought (if he thought at all) they were his own: 
 men still. At last he found that they were not: 
 but it didn't seem to matter, every one was going 
 the same way. 
 
 There really was, somehow, a Sunday-evening 
 feeling in the air. At home the people would 
 be in church. Even here the war seemed for 
 the moment only a bizarre fringe on the edge of 
 man's common, homely wear of peace. Even 
 here the marching troops were a very narrow 
 foreground; behind, nestling to the mothering 
 earth's kindly breast, lay the villages 
 
 It was across a wide flat we moved now; no 
 longer through lanes but along an unfenjed 
 road; the mist was not everywhere, but only 
 where, perhaps, the ground was more moist. 
 When there was mist it lay low, like white pools ; 
 above it was the clear blackness of the deepen- 
 ing night. 
 
 The men all went quicker than the Ancient, 
 who was in truth sauntering, enjoying the 
 seclusion that seemed only insisted upon by the
 
 OBITER DICTA 163 
 
 passing of so many strangers. As they went by 
 they were chattering, not loudly, each to his 
 neighbour. It all seemed wonderfully friendly 
 and peaceful: and beyond the thin line of 
 tramping feet, and beating hearts, lay the dead 
 silence of those vacant fields. 
 
 But at last the troops had all gone by, and the 
 Ancient realized that he was alone, and had no 
 business to be. So he moved on more quickly, 
 not sorry to have a whole road to himself, and 
 no dust. 
 
 Presently a mounted orderly rode by; but, 
 before he passed, he stopped to ask if B. was 
 over yonder. 
 
 " I don't know a bit. I never know what 
 place is ahead till I get there." 
 
 *'And you never get lost, sir?" 
 
 ** Not out and out. I'm lost now in one sense. 
 That is to say, my lot are somewhere in front, 
 and I don't exactly know where. But I shall 
 soon overtake them." 
 
 ''Well; good-night, sir." 
 
 And he trotted on into a pool of mist that 
 came up as high as his knees ; liis body was up 
 in the clear air. He looked like a man drowning 
 in milk. 
 
 Quarter of an hour later two soldiers on horse- 
 back came in the opposite direction.
 
 164 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 '' Have you met a Field Ambulance T' 
 
 '' Yes, sir. Two." 
 
 " You didn't know their numbers ?" 
 
 '' One was the 14th." 
 
 (The Ancient wanted the 15th.) 
 
 '* Straight ahead ?" 
 
 ** Yes, sir. Good-night." 
 
 Ten minutes later there were cross-roads, and 
 at them, under some trees, was a little wine- 
 shop. Outside were half a dozen soldiers. They 
 declared that the Field Ambulance had gone 
 down the road to the left. It seemed rather 
 rude, after asking, and getting that reply, to 
 kept on straight ahead. But the Ancient had 
 a conviction that it was straight ahead that his 
 own Field Ambulance had gone. So he loitered 
 and lit a cigarette, and presently the men wont 
 indoors '' to see what time it was." Then he 
 walked on. Soon there Avas another clump of 
 trees ; and a sort of cabaret, that was half palm, 
 under them. In the inky shadow a group of 
 cavalry were sitting, with a stealthy effect, 
 silent on their horses. One of the men came 
 out on the road and said: 
 
 " We think we're lost " 
 
 '' I have been wondering if I was '^ 
 
 *'0h! you don't belong here?" 
 
 "Anything but; I belong to Salisbury Plain."
 
 OBITEE DICTA 165 
 
 ** Lor'! That's a good step, ain't it, sir?" 
 
 And he and the Ancient laughed very cheer- 
 fully together. 
 
 "I was on Salisbury Plain once," said the 
 trooper, '^ at Tidworth." 
 
 " I hope you liked it?" 
 
 '' I dare say I shouldn't mind it now. I 
 thought it was the North Pole then." 
 
 Twenty minutes after that the Ancient did 
 overtake a Field Ambulance, but not the right 
 one. However, they said that the right one was 
 in front — a good bit in front. It was in the 
 market-square of B.* that he overtook it. The 
 square was full of troops, and the big place 
 looked picturesque enough; a large church with 
 a massive tower stood at one side, and there 
 was a fine Town-House, half Gothic, half 
 Renaissance. But we were not to stop in B. 
 
 ' < We 're to go on to the Lunatic Asylum, ' ' one 
 of the men explained. '' P'raps Kayzer's there 
 — right place for him, too." 
 
 The Maison des Alienes was only just beyond 
 the town, in a really pretty park with splendid 
 wrought-iron gates. The building itself was im- 
 mense, and of fine design, like a royal chateau. 
 And there was a large block apart, for the Pres- 
 ident and staff — itself like another chateau. 
 
 *Not the B, already mentioned.
 
 166 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 Our men, however, were billeted in the home- 
 farm and our officers in an out-building where 
 I think faggots were made. Before long the 
 President appeared, and insisted on removing 
 the Ancient, somewhat scandalized, apparently, 
 at the notion of a prelate's sleeping on a bundle 
 of straw (which makes an excellent bed). For 
 six nights the Ancient therefore occupied a huge 
 bedroom in the administrative block, with grand 
 furniture, electric light, and all the other ameni- 
 ties of a civilization that had seemed quite for- 
 gotten. The President, Madame, and their 
 three children all gave their guest the kindest 
 welcome: and the Aumonier of the Asylum in- 
 sisted on serving his Mass every day. There 
 was a large and handsome chapel, and the 
 charge of the Alienees was in the hands of the 
 nuns. There was a most excellent bath-house, 
 and when the Ancient proceeded thither, encum- 
 bered with towels, sponge and soap, it was edify- 
 ing but embarrassing to find the whole Commun- 
 ity on their knees outside it, surrounded by such 
 of the lunatics as were not agitees. 
 ' But nothing could equal the fraternal welcome 
 of the Aumonier, who had his own little house 
 in the pare. He displayed the Ancient (who 
 never was exactly spectacular) to his bonne, 
 with amazingly daring inaccuracy of description.
 
 OBITER DICTA 167 
 
 seeing that the described was on the spot; and 
 he had the Rector of the Little Seminary over 
 from B. on purpose to feast his eyes on him. 
 
 *' Him," he boasted, *' did I find writing let- 
 ters on a bmidle of faggots in the wood-house, 
 with a heap of straw for fauteuil. There is 
 nothing like the humility of the English." 
 
 '' The English," observed the Ancient meekly, 
 * ' are famed the world over for their humility. ' ' 
 
 The Rector of the Little Seminary gave a puff 
 at his pipe, removed it, and said with triumph : 
 f^ St. Augustine laid it down that the English 
 were non Angli sed Angeli." 
 
 '* Was it not St. Gregory? — and he had only 
 seen tv/o of us; very young ones." 
 
 " He empties," observed the Aumonier, in an 
 awe-struck aside, *'his own waste-paper basket." 
 
 ' ' Tiens ! ' ' cried the Rector, with another puff. 
 
 '' Also," declared Marie, the old bonne, pop- 
 ping her head round the door, " when the fire 
 went low, he put on coals with liis fingers, and 
 applied a sheet of La Croix in front, to make it 
 blow up. I saw through the chink, and knew not 
 which indiscretion should be the worst, to suf- 
 fer it, or to interfere." 
 
 * ' You should not have suffered it, ' ' the Rector 
 decided, with an air of one to whom the decision 
 of theological questions was child's play.
 
 leS FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 I trust no one thinks I am laughing at those 
 kindly creatures. They were so simple and so 
 overflowing with goodness and welcome, so eager 
 to make charitable mountains out of funny little 
 mole-hills ; their own eyes were so full of good- 
 ness and humility that they saw it everywhere; 
 one was a little ashamed, but not in the least dis- 
 posed to laugh at them. 
 
 " Come," said the Rector, to his friend, *' you 
 should give him wine, and cognac, and perhaps 
 a little benedictine. Eh?" 
 
 ''Not at all," cried the Aumonier, delighted 
 with his own deep knowledge of the English, ' ' it 
 is tea. Tea all day long." 
 
 Tea was made, and they watched it poured 
 forth and swallowed as one might watch the 
 drinking of a powerful and dubious drug. 
 
 *' And really you like it I To me it is un- 
 palatable," observed the Rector. 
 
 It certainly was unpalatable. One teaspoon- 
 ful of tea to three pints of hot water makes a 
 queer drink enough. 
 
 " He takes," noted the Rector, summing up 
 and registering the fruits of eager observation, 
 ' * but one cup. There is always exaggeration in 
 report. One small cup. It is not the case that 
 they drink it in immense quantities." 
 
 When Marie had retreated with the balance
 
 OBITER DICTA 169 
 
 of the tea, promising to keep it till to-morrow 
 in case Monseigneur should be again thirsty, the 
 Eector edged a little nearer. 
 
 '' We are brothers," he began. ** Therefore 
 there can be no indiscretion — does the English 
 Protestant Government pay the Catholic Chap- 
 lains?" 
 
 '' Certainly it does." 
 
 The Rector coughed. Though a brother, he 
 dreaded to overstep the frontier of discre- 
 tion. 
 
 *' Do you want to know how much?" 
 
 That was precisely what he did want — so did 
 the Aumonier. The Ancient told them how 
 much : and they lifted astonished hands. 
 
 *' More than a bishop!" they cried in unison. 
 It gave them as much pleasure as if the money 
 had been a legacy to themselves. They were so 
 carried away that they successively embraced 
 the Ancient. 
 
 * * Well, well ! ' ' murmured the Aumonier. 
 
 * * Tiens ! ' ' cried the Rector, * ' what a Govern^ 
 ment ! ' ' 
 
 Oh, dear ! How entirely I fail to get on. How- 
 ever, I may love to keep in memory that little 
 parlour, and the kindly French-Flemish faces, 
 the echoes of those gentle and brotherly voices^ 
 it makes nothing in the telling, and can hardly
 
 170 FRENCH WINDOW^ 
 
 be called a AVar Picture. But there it was — in 
 and out of the war, everywhere, ran these inter- 
 woven strands of peace, and love and neigh- 
 bourly kindness, so that the memory of it can 
 never be of an arras, grim and frightful, hid- 
 ing all humanity and leaving only warriors stern 
 and angry-eyed ; not that the warriors who came 
 my way were angry-eyed or stern; they also 
 were before all things human, and mostly gentle, 
 as fits young and strong men encountering an 
 old and weak man. 
 
 One afternoon two of our officers asked the 
 Ancient to go in to B. with them and show them 
 the Cathedral — which was not a Cathedral, only 
 it was big and ancient, and such churches are 
 apt to get brevet rank. The town had a lively 
 air, being the headquarters not only of one of 
 our Divisions, but of an Army Corps, and full of 
 troops and movement. It was there I first saw 
 specimens of the new Army, and a very fine body 
 of young men they were. That, however, was 
 not on the afternoon I am now speaking of, but 
 a month later when we had come back to this 
 neighbourhood after a few weeks beyond the 
 frontier in real Flanders — i.e., the part of Flan- 
 ders that forms part of Belgium. B. itself is 
 very Flemish, as many of the names over the 
 shops showed, and also the faces of the people.
 
 OBITER DICTA 171 
 
 Flemish is really the vernacular of the peasant 
 class, and French, I think, is only the language 
 they learn in school. 
 
 The large church, too, is Flemish in character, 
 and that note of character is specially struck by 
 the immense, ornate, pulpit of carved wood, 
 standing far down the nave and arresting the 
 first attention of every visitor. Any one who 
 remembers the pulpit of Ste. Gulule in Brussels 
 will know the sort of thing: a thing not very 
 appealing to the individual taste of the present 
 writer, but undoubtedly fine, and a splendid ef- 
 fort of a particular craft. 
 
 At one end of the church, near the west doors, 
 was a huge and realistic reproduction of the 
 grotto at Lourdes, a little too huge and a little 
 too realistic, perhaps, for the taste of an archi- 
 tectual purist. But it arrested the attention of 
 my two ofiicers, who wanted to know all about 
 it. How well the Ancient will always remember 
 that dun November afternoon in the big, dim 
 church. Kneeling on the steps in front of the 
 grotto, with the two young men at his side, he 
 tried to tell them, at great length, the story of 
 our Lady's apparitions to Bernadette and all 
 that came of them, from that first apparition 
 which was taking place in the far south, by the 
 Cave under the Pyrenees, while he himself was
 
 172 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 being born in a fierce snow-storm near the York- 
 shire moors. 
 
 The young men were not in the least bored, 
 nor scoffing, nor incredulous, but listened as 
 though he who told the wonderful story had him- 
 self seen what he described: and afterwards, 
 when it was finished, one of them said : 
 
 ''It is a wonderful Church yours, Monsignor, 
 and it is no wonder she holds the hearts of her 
 children in her hand. ' ' 
 
 And, as we came out into the early dusk, they 
 said very gracious things of the privilege it w^.s 
 to visit such a place with one who could tell them 
 all its significance.* 
 
 '' For my part," M. declared, '* I shall always 
 remember this afternoon, and how I heard from 
 you the story of Our Lady of Lourdes." 
 
 * ' And shall I forget your patience ? ' ' 
 
 * R. I. P.
 
 XI 
 
 WEST FLANDEES 
 
 At noon on Friday we left B., and we had only 
 arrived there late on Sunday night: yet it 
 seemed as though one had known it, M. I'Au- 
 monier, old Marie, and the Rector of the Semi- 
 nary half one's life. 
 
 About eleven o'clock the Ancient had knocked 
 at the Aumonier's front door, which " gave" 
 upon the tall iron railings fencing in the pare 
 from the high road to C, and when Marie opened 
 it there was M. 1 'Aumonier in the little hall. 
 
 ' ' Ah, ha ! " he called out, ' ' I knew it was you. 
 I knew your way of knocking — Vous avez la 
 Tnaniere nerveuse." 
 
 '* We are off," said the Ancient, *' in an hour 
 or less." 
 
 " Going away! Where to? To the war?" 
 
 And the kind creature's pale grey eyes grew 
 
 moist at once. 
 
 He found the occasion so solemn that he 
 
 173
 
 174 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 opened the door of the best parlour, and drew 
 the Ancient in there — but he did not shut the 
 door, for he knew that Marie would wait outside 
 and want to listen. For weeks, even months, 
 together no one ever entered that best parlour, 
 which only existed for the sake of the best furni- 
 ture, the chairs on which no one ever sat, the 
 table at which no one ever wrote or worked. 
 There hung the Bishop's portrait, with sky-blue 
 flesh-shadows, and a chrome-yellow pectoral 
 cross, with the illuminated address for pendant 
 presented to the Aumonier on the occasion of his 
 silver jubilee. At the top of the address peered 
 a rather Masonic-looking eye out of a triangle 
 vSurrounded by golden rays, and under it a lamb 
 lay fast asleep on a book with markers like five- 
 franc pieces. 
 
 " Going!" cried the little Aumonier, and he 
 sniffed undisguisedly. But he took snuff to af- 
 ford a pretext for the moisture in his eyes, and 
 blew his nose like a fog-horn. Half a century 
 before, when the Ancient was a little boy, he 
 had regarded the power of blowing one's nose 
 with that noise as a supreme sign of adult 
 manhood, and had envied it. 
 
 Marie out in the hall sniffed louder. 
 
 "Come in then," her master called out, ** and 
 Monseigneur will bless us."
 
 WEST FLANDERS 175 
 
 In she came, and the two of them knelt down, 
 looking like two elderly babies. 
 
 " Now get up," said the Ancient peremptorily 
 to the Aumonier, '' and bless me." 
 
 " I couldn't do that," protested the Aumonier 
 shyly. 
 
 " Oh, yes, you could. Just try." 
 
 And Marie was clearly of opinion that he 
 ought to try. 
 
 ''It's very greedy," said the Ancient, '' to 
 take all the blessing and give none." 
 
 The little Aumonier gave a little sob, and 
 shook his head, and blest; and old Marie took 
 her apron out of one eye to watch. 
 
 '*M. 1 'Aumonier and I," she said, when the 
 blessing was done, '' will always be talking of 
 you. ' ' 
 
 '' Oh, yes!" cried he. ''But when it is a cold 
 night, and the fog is wet, and I lie in my good 
 bed, warm, warm, then shall I be unhappy think- 
 ing of you — you, Monseigneur, lying in a grenier 
 on sticks, or straw. For my part I do not see 
 that war is for old persons." 
 
 " Eh, mon clier, isn't it worse for the young, 
 for those young who never come home from it? 
 When the bit of road left has to be short it 
 doesn't seem to matter so much through what 
 rough places it may take us. But now I must
 
 176 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 go. And you, my dear friends, dig a little hole 
 in your hearts and bury me in it, and lay fresh 
 prayers on it often. Will you?" 
 
 * ' Daily, daily, ' ' promised the little Aumonier. 
 Then he fell on his new old friend's neck, and 
 folded him in an ample embrace. 
 
 Half an hour later, as we marched past, out- 
 side the railings, there on the doorstep stood M. 
 1 'Aumonier, waving his snuff-box, and smiling 
 dolorously; and behind him in the open door was 
 old Marie with her apron still at one eye, half- 
 mast as it were. It seemed hard to the Ancient 
 to believe that a week before he had never heard 
 of the existence of either of them. 
 
 As the crow flies it is scarcely two miles from 
 B. to the Belgian frontier, and as the crow flies 
 it is not ten to V., where we slept that night: 
 but I think, as we went, it was nearly a twenty- 
 mile march. 
 
 In the afternoon we passed by R., and just 
 afterwards met a French brigade marching into 
 quarters there. Watching them go by the 
 Ancient stood on the roadside armed with a fat 
 bag full of medals, and the bag sprung a leak, so 
 that a medal or two oozed out and lay on the 
 ground at his feet without his knowing it. A 
 very tired-looking, quite old, French soldier came 
 loping by, hung about with innumerable little
 
 WEST FLANDERS 177 
 
 bags and straps and trappings. A real poilu, 
 shaggy, hairy, with ashen ekin, and black lean 
 hands. Eather a crafty old eye, and a twisted 
 old mouth with one rather crafty-looking old 
 tooth in it. 
 
 '' Barlasch of the Guard!" thought the An- 
 cient. 
 
 Then the old poilu stopped, and swooped, and 
 came up with the medals. 
 
 '* A vous?" he asked, in a husky voice, his 
 eyes blinking. 
 
 **A vous, mon brave, si vous en voulez." 
 
 ' ' Alors ! ' ' And he hauled up one of his many 
 bags and stowed away the medals. 
 
 ''I also was a child once," he said explana- 
 torily. 
 
 *' I am not precisely a child," laughed the 
 Ancient. 
 
 Barlasch shook his head sharply from right to 
 left, which meant '' So one sees." 
 
 ** Look," said the Ancient, " take this also." 
 And he gave him a small crucifix. 
 
 **Eh! Un petit Christ. Joli Qa. Hein? Je 
 la garderai." And he polished the cross upon 
 his grimy sleeve. 
 
 *' I had another once," he said, in his husky 
 voice. '' When I was a little one. But I lost 
 Him,"
 
 178 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 *'Votre petit Christ r' 
 
 Barlasch nodded. 
 
 ** Well, you've found Him again. He was 
 little once; before they killed Him." 
 
 " Tiens!" cried Barlasch, and he held out one 
 of his knotty, black hands and shook the An- 
 cient's. " A tantot," he said, moving on. 
 
 How tired he looked; almost stumbling, as he 
 slouched along ! He had come a long way since 
 he also was wi petit : perhaps too far. 
 
 ** A little child shall lead us," thought the 
 Ancient, and he asked the Child to go to the old 
 weary soldier's help. 
 
 But hundreds, it seemed like thousands, of 
 other soldiers were streaming by : some really 
 marching, in the middle of the road, though 
 easily, and without our stiffness and " correc- 
 tion:" others walking, how and where they chose, 
 along the edges of the broad unfenced road. 
 
 One of these had watched the little episode 
 between the old poilu and the old priest, and he 
 had sat down as though to rest. When Barlasch 
 had slouched on he got up and came back a 
 little way. 
 
 '* Is there," he asked the Ancient, ^'zm petit 
 Christ for me also?" 
 
 He was a lad, of perhaps one and twenty, with 
 laughing eyes, and a wayward, kindly mouth.
 
 WEST FLANDERS 179 
 
 It was a vagrant thought enough that made 
 the Ancient, comparing him and Barlasch re- 
 member how it was said to Peter, '* When thou 
 wast young thou didst gird thine own self and 
 whither thou wouldest thither walkedst thou. 
 But when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch 
 forth thine hands, and others shall gird thee, 
 and carry thee whither thou wouldest not." 
 
 The two soldiers seemed to divide that youth 
 and age between them. The lad was still in the 
 stage of going whither he would; the old man 
 had gone there, and now, dog-weary of it all, 
 others were carrying him whither he would not. 
 
 He shambled slowly enough, and was not yet 
 fifty yards away. To ease the burdens he car- 
 ried he was lifting his arms on either side of 
 him, giving a sort of hoist with them. It was 
 not very fanciful to think that the old man 
 looked like one moving on strapped to a weary 
 cross. So do many of us struggle on — fastened 
 to the cross we have made for ourselves — 
 whither we would not. Let the Child save them. 
 
 " Un petit Christ pour moi aussi. Monsieur!" 
 urged the lad with the wilful eyes. 
 
 He took the little gift graciously, with smiling 
 deference. Surely Someone Else was looking 
 on the young man and loving him. 
 
 " You will keep itT' said the Ancient.
 
 180 FRENCH iWINDOWS 
 
 ** Pres de mon cceur!" 
 
 *' Dans votre coeur plutot, mon petit." 
 
 The kind, happy eyes understood and the lad 
 promised. 
 
 " Oui, Monsieur, dans le cceur — Je garderai 
 cette croix." 
 
 But there were now ever so many more, de- 
 manding, with outstretched hands, crosses or 
 medals. 
 
 There were many hundreds in the bag, and the 
 bag was empty before the men had all gone by. 
 
 ** Je n'en ai pas a donner a toute I'Armee 
 Fran§aise!" the Ancient had protested laugh- 
 ingly, as the bag became light, to one of them, 
 
 " Je ne suis pas I'Armee Frangaise," retort- 
 ed the owner of the outstretched hand. " Je ne 
 suis qu'un petit soldat, moi." 
 
 Many said a pretty word or two. Some were 
 very tired, and said nothng but a thank you. 
 One said '' A la bonne Entente!" as though the 
 giving and the taking of the little medal were a 
 sort of wayside sacramental of friendliness 
 between a son of the Church's eldest daughter 
 and a liegeman of Our Lady's Dowry. 
 
 They were mostly medals of God's Great 
 Mother, and the Ancient could but trust that 
 they who claimed them might be reminded of 
 her sky-clean mantle and be drawn under its
 
 WEST FLANDERS 181 
 
 protection. The least effect must be to each of 
 these soldiers, caught up in the great tangle of 
 the great war, that he should remember the more 
 clearly the double Motherhood stooping over 
 him, Hers in Heaven who is its Queen, and hers 
 on earth whom the Virgin Christ calls His bride 
 and spouse. 
 
 Well, we had the road clear at last, and moved 
 on, and came at last to V., an ugly, squalid, big 
 village or little town of mean black-mudded 
 streets. The afternoon had turned sour-tem- 
 pered, and was for raining, but compromised 
 with a dripping fog. We went first into the 
 yard of a big steam flour-mill: and there fires 
 were made, and the men's tea was got ready. 
 
 As the red flames flared up, the shabby day- 
 light confessed itself mere darkness, and almost 
 suddenly one noticed that behind the groups of 
 soldiers, who gathered round the first, their 
 faces and khaki all reddened the night was cow- 
 ering in. The men, tired maybe, seemed to talk 
 less than usual, as they stared into the fires, 
 and held out their hands to the blaze. 
 
 " They talk ugly here" one of them observed 
 in low tones to his neighbour. '' I suppose it's 
 Belgian what they talk. French sounds a deal 
 nicer. ' '
 
 182 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 The other man nodded, but did not pursue the 
 philological inquiry. 
 
 After a wliile our own tea was ready, and we 
 had it in a very floury room, mth an empty sack 
 apiece for fauteuil. M. I'Aumonier would have 
 been much scandalized. All the same the tea 
 was hot and tasted very good — one did not much 
 like, then, the peculiar sweetness that condensed 
 milk gives : but I had some the other day again, 
 and the taste of it brought back those days, and 
 those who were one 's comrades then, and I liked 
 it. 
 
 After tea we stood about in the ugly, dirty 
 [street ; and after an hour or so were told that we 
 were billeted in the Mairie. It was, somehow, 
 like a school-house, and new, and rather clean 
 and bare. There we dined and someone said, 
 looking up at the fearsome prints of King Albert 
 and Queen Elizabeth on the wall, that it was 
 respectable to be in a Kingdom, instead of a 
 Republic, once more. 
 
 Next morning we went on to E., arriving there 
 quite early. It looked pretty as we drew near 
 to it, and even the actual village was much nicer 
 than V. To the left, as we came in, in a really 
 park-like pare, there was a large placid-looking 
 chateau that lay dreaming in a sunny haze; the 
 old master was there, they told us at the lodge-
 
 WEST FLANDERS 183 
 
 gates, his sons all away at the war — everyone 
 always spoke of the war as if it were somewhere 
 else. Not far from the chateau was a hamlet of 
 half a dozen houses and a mill, and in one quite 
 small house the whole of us, nearly three hun- 
 dred, were billeted. The Ancient sallied forth, 
 by himself, to explore. The village consisted of 
 two streets, now packed with French artillery 
 and cavalry: the houses w^ere homely looking 
 and not ugly ; and there was a large church, and 
 a large convent of nuns. It was a pretty church, 
 and old and pleasant; and the convent, which 
 joined the back of the chateau, had the air of 
 nestling under its protection. 
 
 In the church they were beginning a Requiem, 
 and the dead person was carried in just as the 
 Ancient arrived. A very old nun, they said : but 
 the nuns who acted as chief mourners, walk- 
 ing nearest to the bier, holding tall white lilies 
 in their hands were young girls — novices. 
 
 The Office was very well sung, and almost 
 everyone in the large crowded church joined in 
 the plain-chant. There were many soldiers, 
 French and Belgian, and they were all very 
 reverent and devout. Somehow, the Dies Irae 
 sung by them, in the midst of the war, added to 
 its thousand meanings a new one, august and 
 awful like the others.
 
 184 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 It would have made a marvellous picture : the 
 open bier (there was no catafalque) with its 
 sumptuous but simple pall, the novices nearest 
 to it, the older nuns next, and then the great 
 crowd of soldiers and priests and village-folk, 
 iand behind all the arches and sunlit windows of 
 the fine old Flemish church. 
 
 It is all gone now. The church is gone, and 
 the village, the convent and presbytery: not a 
 house left, except the chateau. Out of our ham- 
 let we ourselves were shelled that very night. 
 The old nun got her peaceful burial only just in 
 time. 
 
 When the Requiem was over, and the dead 
 nun had been laid in her grave by the convent 
 wall, there was another funeral, a stranger this 
 time: a young French soldier-lad who had been 
 killed near the village the day before. A French 
 priest, not a chaplain, read the Office; himself a 
 young soldier, too, a rouge-pantalon — the red 
 trousers are gone now: the war has carried off 
 them and a hundred other prettinesses that have 
 been found useless. For the war is all grim fact, 
 and '' pomp and circumstance" is a discarded 
 tradition. 
 
 I fancied that the priest, who was a fantassin, 
 had been comrade of the lad he was laying back 
 into the bosom of our mother earth; what he
 
 WEST FLANDERS 185 
 
 had to do moved him visibly, audibly. His fine, 
 sensitive mouth was hard to control, and the 
 words shook as they came out. *' Even though 
 he be dead, yet shall he live. And no man living 
 that believeth in Me shall be dead for ever." 
 And all his mother came into his eyes as he 
 watched the raw coffin disappear under the rat- 
 tling clods of earth. 
 
 The old nun and the young soldier lay quite 
 near to one onother: one so close to her home, 
 the others so far from his; both bound on the 
 same journey, with the same patient Guide. 
 
 Then the Ancient went and found the parish 
 priest to arrange for Mass on the morrow. His 
 presbytery was quite near the church, in a shady 
 green garden. It is all destroyed now: and it 
 looked so permanent. Generations of priests 
 had lived there, and it was notable and dignified. 
 I suppose the Cures of E. had been personages 
 of some local importance. Out of the windows 
 one saw the grey old church and the homely, 
 gentle-looking convent. There are no windows 
 left, and there are only ruins to be seen from 
 the trampled garden. There is no such place 
 as E. any more. Do we realize that sort of thing 
 here in England? 
 
 From the presbytery the Ancient went strol- 
 ling through the village, and made a friend.
 
 186 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 A smith was shoeing a cavalry horse, and a 
 young cuirassier was watching it with his hands 
 in his big pockets. The horse would not stand 
 still, and the smith lost his temper and kicked 
 the beast. 
 
 The cuirassier shook his head and moved off. 
 
 *' You dislike that, too?" said the Ancient. 
 
 *' Yes. If I stayed there I should say things. 
 And perhaps too much. I think the man has 
 been tried: he has been shoeing horses since 
 dawn: and many of them are mechants." 
 
 *' You are meridional f" 
 
 *' Yes. A cultivateur from the Pyrenees. We 
 live near to Lourdes. You know about 
 Lourdesl" 
 
 So we talked of Lourdes, and Argeles, '* the 
 loveliest valley in the world": and he talked of 
 his home ; what a queer superstition it is of the 
 English that only they care much for home ! If 
 they heard French peasants talk of home ! With 
 what a sickness of longing, with what an aching 
 passion of tenderness ! 
 
 Jean Marie had a mother: his father was 
 dead; had died in the bad winter when many 
 cattle were drowned, and many garnered crops 
 ruined, by the overflow of the Gave. His mother 
 had three sons, all at the war. And she wrote
 
 WEST FLANDERS 187 
 
 constantly to all three. That is, her brother who 
 was M. le Cure, wrote the letters for her. 
 
 *' Tiens! he writes like the Pope, mon oncle," 
 boasted Jean Marie. '' And he taught us, Jules, 
 and Gaston and me; we also write well — he 
 taught us to choose the correct expressions. But 
 my mother she would not learn. She said No, 
 she would not wish to do a thing that our father 
 could not do. That would be out of place." 
 
 They were all very Catholic. M. le Cure saw 
 to that — and I do not think his task was diffi- 
 cult; not if Jules and Gaston were like Jean 
 Marie. The big stalwart young man had a face 
 on which the devil had written nothing. I should 
 think that anything foul or base would drop 
 down through his heart as stones flung into 
 clear water fall and leave all clean above. 
 
 For an hour he and the Ancient talked, and 
 often since have they talked on paper. Once 
 Jean Marie wrote from home. '' Being here,'* 
 said he, '' I naturally think of you.'* 
 
 Could any word be kinder? Being at his 
 mother's side it was natural he should think of 
 the old strange father he had found on the road- 
 side in the war. 
 
 " I have nine days' permission," he wrote, 
 " and of course I have told them all about you. 
 M. le Cure, my uncle, says I must have been
 
 .188 FEENCH WINDOWS 
 
 indiscreet. He requests that I offer to you his 
 most respectful souvenirs. I hope you have not 
 been thinking me indiscreet." 
 
 That was only one of many letters and the 
 latest is not many days odl. 
 
 While the Ancient talked to him a Colonel 
 jumped out of a motor-car, and rushed up to 
 him. They had not met since the Colonel was 
 a slim subaltern (at Malta) with a most exquis- 
 ite voice for singing. He was now long married, 
 with big children — and a presence.
 
 XII 
 
 liOVE IlSr A MIST 
 
 When, on Saturday night, November 7, v^ were 
 shelled out of our quarters in the hamlet outside 
 E. we did not retreat far, but went back, I sup- 
 pose a kilometre, along the road by which we had 
 come in the morning — the high road from the 
 French frontier, and B. 
 
 It was a very flat road, very Flemish, with 
 spongy flat meadows on either side of it, and 
 here and there a small farm. Even by daylight 
 there would have been no view, and we marched 
 along under a dusky glimmer that could hardly 
 be called moonlight, though the moon was not 
 quite in her last quarter. On that day Mercury 
 had made a transit across the sun's disc, but his 
 little trip had not been noted by us, who were 
 more concerned mth the behavior of Mars, and 
 left Mercury to his devotee the Crown Prince. 
 
 Our new quarters were less cramped than 
 
 those out of which we had been forced to flee: 
 
 there was, at all events, more room for the men. 
 
 189
 
 190 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 A little back from the liigli road, which was 
 here a raised causeway between swampish fields, 
 lay a farm, with thatched ramshackle bars, and 
 a small ramshackle dwelling house. The farmer, 
 like the man in the Gospel, seemed disposed to 
 argue that the door was shut (which it certainly 
 was) and his children with him in bed, and that 
 he would prefer not to be troubled. We, how- 
 ever, took up the line of Mrs. Malaprop, that he 
 had nothing to do with preference and aversion : 
 and ultimately he shambled out, with a weak 
 smile and a pale lanthorn. While waiting for 
 him we had had ample time to admire the great 
 feature of his residence — its dung-heaps, or 
 midden. The midden is, so to speak, the park 
 of your Flemish homestead. On it every window 
 depends for its view; there the children play, 
 and there the cattle chew their cud of sweet — 
 or bitter — fancy: there the farmer relaxes him- 
 self in hours of leisure, turning it over with pen- 
 sive appreciation to awake fresh odours : beside 
 it sits his wife, her labour done, and surveys its 
 oozy mounds, which are all the hills she knows. 
 
 This one was particularly extensive — and 
 treacherous. Without, probably, any means of 
 subsequently washing oneself or one's gar- 
 ments, it was startling to find how deeply the 
 unwary visitor sank in it.
 
 LOVE IN A MIST 191 
 
 " Is that your 'ead sticking out ?" I heard one 
 of our humourists (a Londoner) call out to a too 
 adventurous comrade. '' Put yer tongue out 
 and I'll 'aul yer up." 
 
 Well, our host appeared, smiling and sleepy, 
 and he made our two hundred and eighty men 
 honorary members of his barns. 
 
 In they trooped, laughing, pushing, crowding, 
 and exchanging pleasantries. 
 
 ** It's a bit of a shame disturbin' the rat 
 battalion — up to strength, and no error — they 
 was billeted 'ere first," observed our London wit. 
 " 'Ere, Ponto; 'ere, Fido," he called out, slap- 
 ping his thigh and making whistling noises as 
 though opening an acquaintance with strange 
 dogs. 
 
 A dry barn, full of dry hay or straw, makes a 
 pleasant bedroom : I hope those barns were dry, 
 but they looked sodden and oozy, as though 
 meant for overflow meetings — ^from the midden. 
 
 The fourteen officers had more aristocratic 
 quarters, a small kitchen that smelt of cows and 
 mice, and a smaller kitchen that smelt of cheese 
 and second-hand clothes. It was so dark that 
 we optimistically resolved to assume that the 
 mud floors were clean. 
 
 ** They 're as clean as you are anyhow. Chut- 
 ney," I heard our New Zealander boast to our
 
 192 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 youngest officer. '' I saw you trip on the 
 midden." 
 
 *' I believe the floor's made of midden," re- 
 torted Chutney with some acumen; * Spatted 
 midden, squeezed down, and aired." 
 
 Whatever it was made of it was our bedstead. 
 Our bedding was our own, and had perhaps its 
 own secrets. Don't despise us if we were dirty; 
 how clean would you be if you never had a bath ? 
 
 By the time our blankets had all been laid 
 down, as near to each other as might be, there 
 was no floor left. Mine was laid against the door 
 of a cupboard, out of which little mousey noises 
 came once or twice during the night: in the 
 morning they became more articulate. 
 
 ** Ope, ope," squeaked two very small voices, 
 and four little hands slapped on the panels 
 insistently. 
 
 " Ope, ope." 
 
 *' That's Flemish," explained Chutney, who 
 was becoming a linguist. *'I bet it means 
 * open.' " 
 
 It did, and when I had taken up my bed in 
 order to open, out came a couple of wee figures, 
 as small a boy as ever I saw, in the smallest (but 
 not the cleanest) shirt I had ever seen with a 
 pair of breeches some ten inches long, worn like 
 a stole, and a sister (who was younger and would
 
 LOVE IN A MIST 193 
 
 have been smaller had that been possible) attired 
 in a sort of strait waistcoat and curl-papers. 
 
 Over the low mounds, consisting of officers, 
 these two little persons made hastily across 
 country to the kitchen door. No doubt they 
 were shy, but, I think, they thought it rather 
 funny too. 
 
 The Ancient did not think it worth while to 
 go to bed again, as he was due to say Mass 
 betimes in the parish church at E. The cause- 
 way between the house and the midden was his 
 dressing-room, an inverted milking-pail his 
 dressing-table; the same pail, not inverted, his 
 washing-stand. The water in it looked dismally 
 like that which lay in puddles in the midden, and 
 it had both body and bouquet. 
 
 There was a thick wet fog, and even the barns 
 beyond the midden were out of sight; the men's 
 voices came oddly out of nowhere, like jokes out 
 of eternity. 
 
 In such a fog, had there been any way to find, 
 it would not have been difficult to lose it. But 
 one only had to turn to the left on reaching the 
 road and keep on. Apart from the fog, there 
 would have been but little light yet; people 
 meeting on that road could have no idea what 
 each other might be like till within a foot or two 
 of each other. Only once, while still quite out
 
 194 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 in the country, did the Ancient meet anybody: 
 then it was a party of soldiers— would they prove 
 to be Germans? It seemed likely enough that 
 during the night the village might have been 
 taken by the Germans. 
 
 " What should you do, Ancient," his brother- 
 officers sometimes asked him, ''if in your 
 wanderings you should wander into a German 
 outpost r' 
 
 '' I shouldn't have to do anything. They 
 would probably do anything that might be 
 required." 
 
 It may here be remarked that some of those 
 brother-officers, who have now read these papers, 
 protest that they never did call him ' ' Ancient ' * 
 — which is quite true. And some ladies, play- 
 fellows of his in old Gracechurch days and, so to 
 speak coeval with him, object that it is a very 
 silly title. Very likely, but it was adopted to 
 avoid the use of another which seemed too grand 
 for this place, and to escape from the too fre- 
 quent recurrence of the first personal pronoun. 
 
 The soldiers did not prove to be Germans but 
 French, their blue uniform looking almost black 
 in the fog; they were cold, and silent, a sort of 
 early-morning moroseness clinging about them 
 like the dank mist. 
 
 The French still held the village, though most
 
 LOVE IN A MIST 195 
 
 of the troops that had filled it yesterday were 
 gone. So far as one could see in the fog, no harm 
 had been done yet. The only lives lost dur- 
 ing the night had been those of fifteen horses, 
 in a field behind the church, killed bv the burst- 
 ing of a '' Black Maria." Even now the place 
 is held by us, though it is no longer a village— 
 as has been said: houses, church, convent, all 
 obliterated, only the chateau, out in its park, still 
 standing. 
 
 When the Ancient got back to the Flemish 
 farm after Mass he found the men lined up in 
 the road ready to march, which they did in a few 
 minutes. The fog had now grown thinner, which 
 gave it the effect of having drawn back, so that 
 the near fields were visible but those beyond still 
 conjectural, hidden in what was now a white 
 mist. 
 
 That was for some hours a day of marching 
 and countermarching. We went always along 
 flat roads between flat fields, passing through 
 several hamlets and shabby villages : everywhere 
 there were French troops, nowhere did we fall 
 in with any English. As the days strengthened 
 the sun came out and the last rags of mist were 
 torn from even the distant trees. The trees were 
 seldom of much account and always grew along 
 the hedges of the square monotonous fields:
 
 196 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 wherever there were any their slight cover was 
 sedulously used by the bivouacking French 
 soldiers. 
 
 ' As we went through one hamlet it seemed as 
 if the soldiers watched us pushing on for the 
 open country beyond with an air half amused, 
 half puzzled. However, we kept on our way for 
 another twenty minutes then a halt was called, 
 and the whole unit had to turn and go back. We 
 were quite close to the line of German trenches. 
 We all seemed amused and the men chaffed. 
 
 ' ' Pity we didn 't carry on a bit, we might have 
 had German sausages for dinner," I heard them 
 declaring. 
 
 About one o'clock we had a more British din- 
 ner in a flat, sticky, ploughed field. Afterwards 
 two officers asked me if I would go on with them 
 in search of billets, and off we went. After some 
 wandering through lanes we got back to the high 
 road between E. and R., reaching it at a point 
 where there was a small wayside-shrine. Hard 
 by, four wooden crosses, with the names painted 
 on them, marked the last resting-place of four 
 British soldiers whose life's march had ended 
 there : they had been killed, I think, on the 24th 
 of October. 
 
 Opposite was the entrance-road of a biggish 
 farm, but some men in a waggon told us it was
 
 LOVE IN A MIST 197 
 
 already occupied by troops of another division. 
 We had the same luck, or ill-luck, at half a dozen 
 other places we tried. Finally we reached a 
 hamlet called 0., at cross-roads, and tried an- 
 other house that looked hopelessly too small : but 
 that also was pre-engaged. Then we went on 
 a few hundred yards and came to a very poor 
 estaminet on the road side, a brick cottage with 
 slated roof, one story high, but long. There the 
 Ancient was left in case the unit might come by, 
 and the other two officers went to try two little 
 farms visible across the fields. 
 
 It was rather dull waiting, and he had to 
 wait a long while. Now and then a Flemish 
 yokel would saunter disjointedly up, peer away 
 across the flat and ugly country, and sigh him- 
 self into the estaminet. The afternoon grew 
 chilly, and as the sun set there were strange 
 clouds high up in the faint topaz-tinted, sky, 
 clouds like red palm-branches crossed trophy- 
 wise. The lonely Ancient watching them 
 prayed they might be omens of victory and 
 peace. Well, there is always peace and victory 
 up where they were, in the aloof heavens ; palms 
 stand for martyrdom, too, and it was a martyr- 
 country, that Belgium on whose outraged soil he 
 stood. 
 
 It is a nipping and an eager air" thought 
 
 li
 
 198 FEENCH WINDOWS 
 
 the Ancient. There was no wind, but now and 
 then a chill breathing, as out of a cold mouth. 
 The red palms faded and the sky changed her 
 topaz robe for shabbier night-gear. Quoting 
 Hamlet made the Ancient's ever vagrant fancy 
 turn to another Mad Prince. Was he also, per- 
 haps, looking up at the sad heavens 1 Had they 
 lany reproach for him, any menace? Could he 
 ever bear to be alone in such a silence as might 
 make audible the voices of indignant shades? 
 He who had cried '* Havoc!" and let loose the 
 dogs of war, had he any horror of himself? Up 
 and down, to keep himself warm, the Ancient 
 paced the muddy road outside that shabby wine- 
 shop. The folk inside could not be very merry 
 in their cups: there came no sound of laughter, 
 hardly any of voices. 
 
 Presently a girl came to the door : would Mon- 
 sieur come in and have a cup of coffee? 
 
 '' All, vou talk French?" 
 
 '* Yes, Monsieur; I am not Fleming, I am Wal- 
 loon. Resfugiee. We are almost all refugiees 
 in there." 
 
 She was not of course, the mistress of the 
 place. Neither master or mistress spoke 
 French, though France was so near. 
 
 Inside it was almost completely dark. There 
 were perhaps twenty people there. A dozen
 
 LOVE IN A MIST 199 
 
 refugees, whose homes had ceased to exist ; and 
 the rest the host, and hostess, and their few and 
 sombre customers. There was hardly any talk- 
 ing. They had the war in their hearts, and gos- 
 sip was strangled by it. I do not think that, af- 
 ter all, any one was drinking. An old woman 
 sat near the dull stove, a little child at her 
 knees, whose small fat palms she kept softly 
 slapping with her owti bony and lean old hands. 
 
 << My grandmother and my brother," ex- 
 plained the girl who had called the Ancient in, 
 seeing his eyes turned towards them. 
 
 He went up and spoke to the old homeless 
 creature. 
 
 " Yes, Monsieur," she answered, ** all our 
 folk are on the Cross. Let the Crucified turn to 
 them." 
 
 * ' And we to Him. Of Him there is no doubt. ' * 
 
 We did not talk long or much. Shall a strang- 
 er intermeddle with our grief? 
 
 There was a fine air of reverence towards her 
 age and anguish among all the rest. The girl 
 told the Ancient very simply that it must be 
 j much worse for the very old. 
 
 < < My grandmother never went out, ' ' she said, 
 
 11 ** she sat at home. She never made journeys in 
 
 her life. And how can she hope to see the end 
 
 of the war? If we go back some day, how can
 
 200 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 she hope to be with us? For us young ones it 
 is different. Even the war can't last always." 
 '' May God send you happy days, my poor 
 child." 
 
 " We must take such days as He sends. I 
 am fiancee. But he is killed — ^was killed in the 
 very beginning, at Namur." 
 
 When the Ancient came out into the dusk 
 again, to continue his marching up and down, 
 there was plenty to think of. Oh, God, how 
 long! Eh, how many more must there be now, 
 fresh-slain, to cry from under the altar before 
 the white throne — ''How long, Lord, dost 
 Thou not judge and avenge our blood!" 
 
 And in the soft sad sighing of the night-breath 
 came the answer : ' ' Eest a little season till your 
 fellow-servants also, and your brothers, that 
 shall be killed as you, till their number be ful- 
 filled." 
 
 Surely these are they who come out of great 
 tribulation, and even them also prayer can fol- 
 low mth its wistful arms of reverent pity. 
 
 The thought of the ruined homes so sharply 
 brought there home to him, in that meagre and 
 ,poor place, must needs send the Ancient's heart 
 yearning to his own. How could he help think- 
 ing of it, and of the face he loved best looking 
 out of a window to see him go — on that drizzling
 
 LOVE IN A MIST 201 
 
 August afternoon that seemed so endlessly long 
 ago? How terrible had been the patience of 
 that noble face, how awful the obedience of its 
 smile, that had to come because the great heart 
 so near breaking, insisted. 
 
 Only a few days before that parting had he 
 knelt at her knees, as over half a century before 
 he had knelt there to hear for the first time of 
 the Anguish and Murder of God. 
 
 '' I have to tell you something that you will 
 not like." 
 
 *' You are going to the war. We must each 
 do our part." His to go; hers to suffer. And 
 her old, old white hand was laid upon his old 
 white head. 
 
 That the war should strike men; well, so long 
 as wars must be : but that it should strike women, 
 and so much more cruellv ! For it is crueller to 
 sit at home, wondering, wondering, fearing, 
 hungry in ignorance for news that may be so 
 awful when they come, that is much more cruel 
 than to go, out among strange scenes and people, 
 with insistent duties to fill the hours; eh! what 
 will be the women's testimony against the man 
 who, in the restless chambers of his irresponsible 
 mind, forged the war on the ruthless anvil of 
 his heartless heart? 
 
 It was very long before the other two officers
 
 202 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 came back. They had at last found two farms 
 close together, both miserable enough, but the 
 barns of both together would just hold our men, 
 and in one were a couple of small rooms that 
 must hold us. We went there, and there for 
 about five years (a fortnight nominally) we 
 stayed almost idle, for it was our turn to stand 
 back — and feel as though we were forgotten, 
 stranded in some oozy back-water of the war. 
 
 The woman of the farm where we officers had 
 our wretched quarters had the noisiest, most 
 piercing voice ever heard out of a nightmare. 
 She was yoangish and strong, and all her 
 strength had its citadel in her big, loose-lipped 
 mouth. She also possessed the gift of ubiquity. 
 Her screaming voice was everywhere at once. 
 To her husband, I think, it was a singular holi- 
 day that her scoldings should be divided among 
 so many strangers instead of falling, like sting- 
 ing thongs of raw hide, on his helpless slouching 
 back. She was, most likely, a worthy creature 
 and resolved to be a good wife ; to yell her hus- 
 band into prosperity, and scream her little girls 
 into affluence and ultimate good marriages. The 
 only things she had no time for was to be ever 
 in the least pleasant; in war-time luxuries are 
 out of place, and that luxury was the first she
 
 LOVE IN A MIST 203 
 
 discarded. In times of peace, charity bade one 
 surmise, she might be an engaging person. 
 It is impossible to convey the slushy dirtiness 
 of that place. The grand approach (and only 
 one) was through the midden. Our two tiny 
 rooms opened on it, and every time any one of 
 us came in — there were fourteen of us without 
 counting our servants — we brought some of it 
 in with us. And the fields beyond were quag- 
 imires of sticky mud, for the snow came now, 
 and rotted them. At night there were hard 
 frosts, but the sun came in the day and melted 
 enow and frost and rotted the deep soft Flemish 
 earth. It was bitterly cold and we were fireless, 
 and the only chance of air and ventilation lay in 
 keeping the windows wide open so that the snow 
 came driving in, and the ruthless north-east 
 wind. The room we all sat in was twelve feet 
 by ten, and fourteen people (with their belong- 
 ings) do crowd a room of that size. Once we 
 were all in, it was terribly inconvenient for the 
 others when anyone wanted to go out. Before 
 the beds could be laid out on the filthy floor the 
 table had to be taken to bits and got rid of. 
 
 The Ancient confesses, meekly, that the appal- 
 ling cold was more terrible to him than the dirt: 
 his feet were always what is called dead, and
 
 204 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 they were never dry. Every night he went out 
 in the dark to wash them in snow, sitting, 
 as needs must, in the snow to do it. It might 
 keep them clean, but it certainly did not make 
 them warm. 
 
 The German lines were pretty near, and the 
 noise of the great guns never ceased, but was 
 always most at nights. Of course our farm was 
 far within range had the enemy chosen, as any 
 moment they might choose, to pick it out. 
 Sometimes one could tell by the noise that a 
 Black Maria had burst in one of the fields close 
 to us. 
 
 Midden Hall, as we called it, was certainly an 
 unpleasant mansion : its barns small, rotten, and 
 filthy and itself unspeakable. But it must not 
 be supposed that it had no pleasures. 
 
 There were our own men to look after, and 
 there was time enough to go farther afield. All 
 round us were French troops, and the hamlet at 
 O. (our own hamlet) was crowded with them, so 
 was the big village of R. a mile or so away. 
 There were Belgian troops too, but these were 
 resting, i. e., mending the road between us and R. 
 Hardly any of them spoke French: I suppose 
 they belonged to Flemish battalions. Utterly 
 devoid of Flemish the Ancient was determined
 
 LOVE IN A MIST 205 
 
 to open relations with them all the same : and it 
 was done by means of medals, scapulars, and 
 little Crucifixes, on an afternoon of driving snow, 
 biting wind, and deep, deep mud. What had 
 been the road was a mud-river, from eighteen 
 inches to two feet deep. On the following after- 
 noon the Ancient went again to R., accompanied 
 this time by the '' Surgeon in Khaki," our New 
 Zealander, and another young officer whom one 
 may call Stern, not because he was, but because 
 his real name was rather like it. 
 
 As soon as we appeared on the stretch of 
 road where the Belgian soldiers were working 
 they crowded up, those not yet medalled ex- 
 tremely eager to be supplied. If they could not 
 talk English or French they could smile, and 
 perhaps a conversation consisting of smiles goes 
 as far towards friendship as a wordier one and 
 [scowls therewith. 
 
 Unfortunately they had decided that the 
 Ancient was a bishop: and that much Flemish 
 even we could understand. The Ancient's 
 frowns of disclaimer apparently only con- 
 vinced them that he was a bishop of 
 irascible temper. 
 
 *' You'd better let it alone," declared the New 
 Zealander, '^ or they'll think you're something
 
 206 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 worse. Till you can talk Dutch you 're a bishop, 
 and they like it." 
 
 Whether the advice was conscientious or the 
 reverse, one had to take it : that it was not con- 
 scientious seemed the more probable from the 
 fact that the New Zealander proceeded to en- 
 courage the possibly drooping spirits of these 
 warriors by a graphic description (in dumb 
 show) of a decisive victory gained by our side, 
 of which no official notification had been seen by 
 Stern or me. 
 
 ** It all does good," our New Zealander ex- 
 plained as we walked on. "I'm all for medals. 
 They're a grand thing for the Entente." 
 
 At E. I had already some old friends (of 
 twenty-four hours' standing), who signalled the 
 arrival of the *' English Colonel-Priest." At 
 first we went into the church, which was large, 
 and pseudo-Gothic, i.e., Gothic with strong 
 Renaissance leanings in matters of detail. It 
 was now a bivouac, and stands of arms stood 
 here and there in the clean straw with which the 
 pavement was strewn, and groups of soldiers lay 
 asleep under the monuments of those who had 
 fallen asleep long ago. Other groups chatted, 
 or walked about. After a word or two with 
 some of these (they were all French) they hinted
 
 LOVE IN A MIST 207 
 
 that yesterday their comrades had been given 
 medals and scapulars. So vnih his back against 
 a confessional the Ancient, with the New Zea- 
 lander and Stern for deacon and subdeacon, 
 began his distribution. It lasted over half an 
 hour, and many hundreds of the poor lads were 
 made happy. At that time French chaplains 
 were not, by regulation, allowed to give medals 
 or pious objects to their men, though the pro- 
 hibition -was, I fancy, never much insisted on 
 after the w^ar began, and soon fell into 
 oblivion. 
 
 What they all wanted most was " un petit 
 Christ," but the Ancient had not Crucifixes 
 enough for so many men. Most had to content 
 themselves with medals and scapulars: I must 
 Bay all were grateful for what they did get. But 
 there were three whole battalions in the village, 
 and they crowded into the church so hopelessly 
 that we had to come out into the street and finish 
 our distribution there. The scene in the 
 church would have made a fine painting had 
 some old Flemish artist come out of his tomb to 
 fix it on his canvas. The westering wintry sun 
 poured in through the high plain glass windows, 
 lighting up arches and pillars; the choir and 
 altars were in an aloof shadow: and so was all
 
 208 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 one wall: in a colder twilight was the straw- 
 (strewn floor, broken by stacked arms and hud- 
 dled groups of sleeping soldiers : round the con- 
 fessional was the crowd of eager, but respectful 
 men of war, torn so lately from quiet farms, or 
 gentle arts of peace, pressing forward to receive 
 each his sacred emblem of the great Prince of 
 Peace, the Counsellor, the Wonderful, or of his 
 sweet Maid-Mother. 
 
 " I must say I do like it," quoth our New 
 -Zealander, when all our treasures spent, we 
 turned home. " I hope Ancient [sic] you'll 
 always let me come with you when you're going 
 to do it." 
 
 ** Ah, but I don't generally know. It crops 
 up. I knew to-day, but as a rule I don't know 
 beforehand. ' ' 
 
 Chutney was jealous when he heard. 
 
 *' You never asked me to come, Ancient," he 
 complained. 
 
 [He certainly never said Ancient, though he 
 had most right being youngest of us all, a mere 
 boy, full of a boy's quips and laughter. And he 
 never, never will grow old. The Young Man 
 from Nazareth has looked on him, and loved 
 him, and taken him where there is no age, nor 
 wrinkle, nor any such thing.]
 
 LOVE IN A MIST 209 
 
 t< 
 
 You, Chutney! You know very well you 
 were gun-running for Carson in the Black 
 North till the war came. Would giving popish 
 gear to papists be in that line?" 
 
 *' Ah, dear Ancient! I'm learning things. 
 Don't." 
 
 And the Ancient, who greatly loved the lad, 
 was ashamed.
 
 XIII 
 
 SILENCE 
 
 Winter, as has been already hinted, came while 
 we had our quarters at Midden Hall, "West 
 Flanders. And when it came, it came with a 
 murderous thrust, like the horribly expert lunge 
 of a long cold sword, out of the east, finding out 
 our vitals. A wind born in Siberia, breeched 
 amid the primeval desolation and bleakness of 
 Russian steppes, and attaining its swift majority 
 on the great, grim glowering Central Plain of 
 Europe (enemy territory) brought it to us, and 
 seemed disposed there to leave it. 
 
 While the wind was driest, most parching, 
 hardest, it was coldest, with the unsparing awful 
 chill that seems to get its fangs into the heart 
 itself, and freeze the very blood-springs. The 
 frost it brought was at first black and invisible — 
 When you can see the frost, white on the stubble 
 and spangled wayside weed, it is never so piti- 
 less. It was only felt, in shaking limb, tense 
 brow, crackling skin, curdled blood, cracked lip ; 
 
 210
 
 SILENCE 211 
 
 it washed, up and down the whole body, like an 
 icy refluent wave getting in between flesh and 
 bone, and further in yet between body and soul. 
 To turn the naked face to the wind was to offer 
 it to tlie lash of a cruel whip. 
 
 Then the snow came ; and the wind, rollicking 
 over a thousand miles of snow, was not warmed 
 
 by it. 
 
 One thought " Crimean winter! Does war 
 breed hard mnters as it breeds other hard 
 things?" 
 
 But with the snow it grew a little lighter. The 
 black airs of those first days of the murderous 
 frost softened to dingy grey: the inhuman iron 
 of the low skies yielded to softer, lower clouds of 
 lead. At midday there might be a little sun, at 
 afternoon was a frosty mist, pallid 
 
 " Like a face-cloth to th© face " 
 
 clinging to the snow-bound flats. Even at night 
 the fog held but low down, clutched to the 
 world's cold bosom. Above, it was clear, and 
 black and lonelier. Trees waded in the white 
 mist, knee-high but their branches swung free 
 in the wind, and, high up, their naked black 
 fingers snatched at a star or two, even at a 
 frightened moon running between rags of cloud. 
 On one of the last afternoons at Midden Hall
 
 212 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 ^tern and the Ancient sallied forth to walk. 
 They turned towards Ypres, only fallen into the 
 beginning of its long agony then. The fields 
 tilted a little, upwards towards a belt of wood, 
 and it was pretty, in a wan fashion — like a wood- 
 cut of Bewick's. Beyond the little wood the 
 way dipped again to cross-roads, where a dozen 
 cottages huddled round a small inn. At that 
 spot soon afterwards many men were killed ; the 
 enemy found it out and shells fell there when- 
 ever our people went that way. 
 
 A pale gleam of sunlight came running east- 
 ward, like a hopeless bulletin from the short 
 day's death-bed: it made the snow whiter, and 
 the group of mean dwellings in front more 
 sullenly black. 
 
 *'It is like a Christmas card," says the 
 Ancient. 
 
 *' Yes. The noise of the guns doesn't show in 
 the picture," Stern comments shrewdly. 
 
 At the cross-roads we looked right, left, 
 and in front. The leftwards road led to 
 Dickebusch. 
 
 ' ' Wliere does that road go ? " we asked, point- 
 ing in front, of a French soldier who stood, 
 flapping himself with his arms to get warm, at 
 the corner. 
 
 To death, I should say," he replied cheer- 
 
 (<
 
 SILENCE 213 
 
 fully, without pausing in his flapping. " To 
 shell-fire and the result." 
 
 *' He thinks the English are all mad, it would 
 be a pity to disappoint him," declared the 
 Ancient. 
 
 And we kept ahead, leaving the little huddle 
 of dull, brooding-looking houses, behind us. 
 There was another tilt upward of the stark and 
 frozen fields : it was scarce a hill, the low ridge 
 to which the road led. Still it was hill enough 
 tto bound the view that way. To the right the 
 fields ended in a gaunt spinney; a dozen cows 
 were standing about, red, I suppose, but black 
 to the eye against the snow. Presently we over- 
 took a man, armed with a large, ill-folded 
 umbrella. He ranged alongside and walked 
 quicker as though he had purposely loitered 
 for us to get abreast and was disposed for con- 
 versation. He asked a great many questions 
 — and seemed in high spirits. (The Allies' 
 affairs were not sup]30sed to be roseate just 
 then.) 
 
 *' Tell him lies," suggested Stern calmly. 
 
 *' Fairy-tales are not lies," said the Ancient, 
 bethinking himself of such fairy-tales as Pip told 
 Pumblechook and Mrs. Joseph Gargery when 
 cross-questioned after his first interview with 
 Miss Havisham.
 
 214 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 The gentleman -with the umbrella seemed 
 worried by the fairy-tales and nettled by them. 
 
 At the top of the little lift in the road we could 
 see straight ahead, across downward tilted fields, 
 to a very near horizon scarfed in woodland. 
 Here we stood still and watched. The fringe of 
 woodland was scarcely two kilometres from us. 
 
 ** Ah," says our inquisitive friend, *' so you 
 think it's all going very well?" 
 
 ** Splendidly," quoth Stern. 
 
 ** Then there'll be good news soon," and the 
 owner of the umbrella chuckled, and grinned, 
 and sidled off across the snow to our right, 
 where some more cows were standing motionless 
 in the frozen stubble. 
 
 It appeared necessary for him now to wield 
 the umbrella; he half opened it, shut it again, 
 waved it, half opened it again, but without going 
 f^ery near the cows, who appeared quite un- 
 moved by his gesticulations. If he meant to 
 drive them he seemed singularly contented 
 with very slight results — since the results were 
 mil. 
 
 On the white fields his figure would be visible^ 
 even to the naked eye, from further off than the 
 woods over yonder : so would our own figures be, 
 But through field-glasses his gesticulations might 
 seem less village-idiot-like.
 
 SILENCE 215 
 
 ** That," observed Stern with conviction, '' is 
 a scoundrel." 
 
 At that moment a shell fell, and burst in the 
 snow, not fifty metres to the left of where we 
 tetood. Almost immediately another came, a 
 Black Maria, and burst a little nearer, still on 
 the left; and still the umbrella was busily en- 
 gaged. 
 
 "^Bout turn.' Eh?" said Stern, and we 
 started homeward not very talkative. Other 
 shells came, but fell wider; and, in spite of the 
 umbrella, the Ancient felt safer when the little 
 ridge was between those woodlands and himself 
 and his friend. 
 
 *'I suppose," he said, after a long silence, and 
 not cheerfully, ^^ that really was a spy." 
 
 '' If he isn't, then I'm one," answered Stern 
 coolly, as he stood still to fill and light his 
 pipe. 
 
 Somehow it was depressing. 
 
 That was our last afternoon at Midden Hall. 
 Next morning we had orders to be gone. I can- 
 not say that our screaming hostess seemed 
 much perturbed at our departure. 
 
 Through 0. we went; then along a flat road 
 with trees on one side; behind R. ; then up a 
 slowly rising road to the ridge that there divides 
 Belgium from France. A very gallant, gaunt
 
 216 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 body of men at one point came riding down on 
 lean horses, and we had to lie to, thrust into the 
 hedge, to let them pass. Some, of the officers 
 even, had no boots, but had their feet swathed 
 up in putties. Many of the men were quite 
 tattered: all had a singular, shining air of gal- 
 lantry and high heart. Alas, many horses were 
 riderless; he who rides on the Pale Horse hav- 
 ing set their masters on the crupper of his own 
 saddle and ridden off with them to the City of 
 Great Peace. Every uniform was war-stained: 
 mud-stained, rain-stained, snow-stained, battle- 
 stained: and the dingier the uniform the more 
 gallant and noble seemed the wearer. 
 
 '' Who are you?" asked the Ancient, clinging 
 to the slippery top of a high bank. 
 
 " Royal Horse Guards Blue," cried the 
 trooper, laughing out of his clear blue English 
 eyes into the Ancient 's. As plainly as if he had 
 time to say it, adding, ' ' Ever seen us in London ; 
 my little shabby gentleman!" 
 
 London would never have made that caval- 
 cade the poignant, splendid picture it was. A 
 little step, sirs, but an infinite, from the swell 
 soldier of London streets to the shabby hero 
 there. 
 
 Beyond the dip of the hill was a tiny village — 
 full of wintry sunshine, and biting wind that
 
 SILENCE 217 
 
 flapped the shutters of a cabaret. The Royal 
 Horse Guards Blue were there too, still riding 
 through. A very young officer, but very big, 
 had got off his horse, and was unwinding a 
 blood-sopped bandage off his foot. A girl came 
 out of a cottage with clean strips of linen, soft 
 and old; she was for kneeling to bind the hurt 
 foot. But the lad blushed, and would not suffer 
 that: he took the rags and thanked her, with a 
 very gracious and sweet smile, but would do it 
 himself. 
 
 *' Ladies," said he, using the word he meant, 
 ** do not kneel to us others, men. But thank 
 you, thank you, very much indeed. ' ' 
 
 " Of nothing. Monsieur." 
 
 The Ancient held his horse while he wound his 
 bandage, and the horse nibbled, with lip only, 
 at the Ancient's ear. A very old man and 
 a very young boy came and watched. 
 
 "When the tall lad of an officer had finished, 
 mounted, saluted the girl, and ridden on, with 
 his bandaged, unbooted foot in the stirrup, the 
 old man asked in piping treble, pointing after 
 him and his troopers: 
 
 *' De quel regiment. Monsieur?" 
 
 *' D'un regiment des Gardes-a-Cheval de 
 notre roi, Monsieur." 
 
 " Quels braves!" cried the old man. Neither
 
 218 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 he nor the girl, nor the little fellow, laughed or 
 smiled. It did not seem to strike them that a 
 King's guard might be more resplendent in 
 tailor's stuff. 
 
 " But you are French?" queried the Ancient. 
 
 [We were in Belgium still.] 
 
 " French, Monsieur. From near Arras. 
 Refugies.'* 
 
 Thus it was always. Belgian refugees in 
 France, French in Belgium: the bitter wave of 
 exile surfing over the frontier like a sad tide over 
 an invisible bar. 
 
 The last of the cavaliers disappeared round 
 the twist of road leading up out of the village, 
 and presently our own men came down. After 
 that shallow dip the way swerved up again to 
 the higher ridge on the top of which Belgium and 
 France met. 
 
 The Ancient walked on alone, eager to be In 
 France again. The ridge had a saddle-back, and 
 in the very seat of the saddle sat a hamlet — a 
 small, clean, cabaret, and less than a half -score 
 cottages. Hungry and thirsty, the Ancient went 
 into the cabaret and asked for coffee and bread. 
 A comfortable middle-aged woman gave them 
 to him, and her small people came to the door 
 of the house-place to watch. Over their heads the 
 Ancient could see their grandmother, knitting
 
 SILENCE 219 
 
 and saying a rosary at the same time. Above 
 the shelves, ranged with bottles, in the outer 
 room, hung the crucifix : you see it everywhere in 
 the cabarets hereabouts. 
 
 " Pray for mine," the Ancient asked the 
 grandmother, giving a little red badge of God's 
 Heart to each of the children. 
 
 '' Eh, oui. Monsieur perhaps has left a 
 sister at home f — never mind, she prays for 
 him. ' ' 
 
 ** I never had a sister. It is my mother who 
 prays." 
 
 '' The mother of Monsieur must be old — as I 
 am." 
 
 [Her daughter was much younger than the 
 Ancient.] 
 
 ^' A great deal older, I think." 
 
 Then they all fell to talking, the children too, 
 and were very kind and friendly. Some men 
 came in, and the guest was displayed to them 
 with much complacence, as if he had been a rare 
 old specimen, taken alive, and borrowed from a 
 museum. 
 
 The coffee was being made hot over the stove, 
 and the Ancient said: 
 
 " I am going out. I want to run into France. 
 I shall come back immediately. ' ' 
 
 It was about thirty yards into France. There
 
 220 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 was a wMte post on the road-side with *' France " 
 on a flap on one side of it, and '' Belgique" on 
 a flap on the other. 
 
 Two of our officers had come up and the 
 Ancient said to them: 
 
 * ' Come and be in France. ' ' 
 
 And they all three went there. Three or four 
 French soldiers were watching, and they slightly 
 plumed themselves when they saw Major 0. 
 bring out a Kodak. There was also a Belgian 
 soldier, who affected to be unaware of the 
 camera, and looked what time it was by his 
 wrist-watch three times in two minutes. 
 
 ** Come and be the Entente Cordiale,'* sug- 
 gested the Ancient, " M. le Commandant is go- 
 ing to make a photograph." 
 
 They all came, the Belgian warrior assenting 
 with a glance of surprise towards the camera 
 that might have deceived the very elect. But 
 he had cuffs, and adjusted them. 
 
 He ranged himself to the Ancient's right — in 
 his own country: the Frenchmen went to the 
 Ancient's left — in theirs. Half the Ancient was 
 in the Kingdom, half in the Republic. 
 
 "Monsieur I'Abbe," observed the Belgian, 
 absent-mindedly, with a watchful eye on the 
 camera, " donne le cote gauche a la France."
 
 SILENCE 221 
 
 " Oui, Monsieur, j'ai en France le flanc gauche 
 — ou se trouve le coeur." 
 
 ** Nous V0U3 remerQions, Monsieur !" cried one 
 of the Frenchmen : but the Belgian was arrang- 
 ing the set of his mouth, and made no repartee. 
 
 When the Ancient went back for his coffee, 
 Madame said: 
 
 ' * We have put away the little badges Monsieur 
 gave our petits. When the bishop comes next 
 time they shall wear them." 
 
 The New Zealander was one of the two 
 officers — who had also come in; and he pro- 
 ceeded to explain the Ancient in more striking 
 colours. 
 
 * ' Writes books ! ' ' cried Madame. 
 
 * * Tiens ! ' ' cried Madame 's mother. 
 
 *' What puts Monseigneur in the books ?" 
 demanded the eldest little girl. 
 
 " All sorts of things. You, perhaps," said the 
 New Zealander, pinching the child's ear — as if 
 he had been Napoleon. 
 
 " Monsieur aime bien les enfants," quoth the 
 watching mother smilingly. 
 
 Presently we all went on, down a long hill into 
 France : and half-way down it a breathless little 
 girl came running, her pigtail sticking out behind 
 like the handle of a casserole.
 
 222 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 ** Monsieur! Monsieur!" she called out, and 
 the Ancient ranged up. 
 
 "Maman!" she gasped. ''Petit souvenirs. 
 Pour Monsieur. Monseigneur ..." and she 
 proffered a yellow envelope containing post- 
 cards of the hamlet in the saddle-back, " . . . de 
 la part de maman. ..." 
 
 So we were in France again : and the westering 
 sun was getting ready to seek his early (ill- 
 earned) rest behind a French horizon. 
 
 The Ancient looked to right and left lovingly. 
 
 " Like coming home," he thought. 
 
 The landscape was really prettier — there was 
 a landscape anyway — and it lay in a tenderer 
 yellow-white mist, and every roof scattered 
 through the quiet fields sheltered a French 
 hearth, though God only knew how many gaps 
 there were at every one of those hearths. 
 
 But the sun set, and the day died, and the 
 dusk fell, and our eastern enemy the wind came 
 looking for us, and found us, even there. Not a 
 French wind: Pomeranian I should say, it was 
 so snappish and waspish. In its teeth it held 
 sharp, microscopic ice-needles, like files gro^vn 
 tiny from industrious in-breeding. Whew! it 
 was cold. That sort of wind makes no noise : it 
 comes not to brag, but to bite: not to say "I'll
 
 SILENCE 223 
 
 freeze the marrow in your bones," but to do 
 it. A wind that comes from kissing the savage 
 northern plains of Germany is (like Habbakuk) 
 capable of anything. 
 
 The Ancient's bones felt like the backbone of 
 a scarecrow in a frozen field as he and his unit 
 marched into St. J., a long draughty village, with 
 a long uncompromising church without anything 
 (chapel, transept, buttress) to break its red- 
 brick length. 
 
 Our first billet was in the school, and there we 
 sat down to supper at the children's desks. 
 When your supper is chiefly soup, a desk of 
 somewhat acute angle makes a queer dinner- 
 table and your lap is likely to get as much as 
 your mouth. 
 
 But in the village was a Convent, and in the 
 Convent were nuns, and the birds of the air 
 carried the matter. Prelates are rarer birds in 
 northern France and in all Flanders than that 
 other bird that carries matters. The nuns were 
 gravely scandalized to hear talk of prelates 
 lapping up soup out of preciptious soup-plates 
 in school class-rooms; and a deputation came 
 to see. 
 
 ** Ma Soeur " saw and was more deeply shocked 
 than ever.
 
 224 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 '^ This," said she, as though quelling a revolu- 
 tion, '' must cease." 
 
 ** I cannot possibly go to the Convent alone," 
 protested the victim of the revolution, *' all the 
 officers must be together. ' ' 
 
 * ' You all come, ' ' quoth Ma Sceur. And we all 
 went. 
 
 The Convent was called the Maison St. Joseph 
 and proved to be very big — nearly a tenth of the 
 size of the smallest nun 's heart. All of us were 
 ordered there, soldiers and all. As for the officers 
 we were given a large airy parlour for living- 
 room, where we could move about, write letters 
 convenientlv, and eat our meals in extreme com- 
 fort. Chutney fairly blushed when a white 
 table-cloth was laid by a nun in a white 
 cornette, and awe settled on us all when the 
 nun (herself unmoved) brought a dinner-napkin 
 for each officer. Leo XIII. and Pius X. looked 
 down upon us from the walls with blandest 
 tolerance. 
 
 '* Ma Soeur," observed the nun with the 
 napkins, ''hopes the officers will smoke when 
 they wish." 
 
 " Ask her," murmured Chutney in the An- 
 cient's ear, " if we may play bridge." 
 
 The Commanding Officer frowned, and was 
 beginning a chill rebuke of Chutney 's presump-
 
 SILENCE 225 
 
 tion, but the little nun instantly declared that 
 there could be no possible objection. 
 
 Presently Ma Soeur looked in to endorse these 
 permissions and see if we were comfortable. 
 
 ' * Only, ' ' said she, ' ' I should be grateful if the 
 officers would go up to their rooms at nine 
 o 'clock. ' ' 
 
 " Gentlemen," said the CO., *' you will leave 
 this room every night at 8.45." 
 
 " No, sir," quoth the spoiled Ancient, "Ma 
 Soeur says 8.60." 
 
 Afterwards the CO. gave a little exhortation. 
 [At the beginning of the campaign his nose had 
 had an habitual tilt, eloquent of criticism, when- 
 ever there was allusion to the Catholic Church.] 
 ** Eemember, gentlemen," said he, '' that, by 
 the great kindness and courtesy of these holy 
 ladies, you are their guests. A lot of officers 
 are odd enough guests for such a house: and 
 think how easily we may put them out more than 
 our presence itself must put them out. Take 
 care that in everything you remember where you 
 are, and in what sort of house. ' ' 
 
 I am sure it was a very kindly and respectful- 
 ly meant little exhortation : and equally sure that 
 none of those who carefully and respectfully 
 listened to it had the least need of any such 
 reminder. Everywhere in France I heard the
 
 226 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 same word used of the English troops and their 
 officers by the French clergy and the French 
 nuns, " Ces tons Anglais." 
 
 ** Sir," declared the Ancient to his CO. after- 
 wards, ' ' I am sure there is not a nun in France 
 who would not welcome the English who are 
 come to stand beside their own soldiers in this 
 war." 
 
 And as the days went on it was easy to see 
 that the Sisters of Charity at St. J. were not 
 less contented with their military guests than 
 their guests were with their open - hearted 
 welcome. 
 
 We were given excellent beds, and some of us 
 bedrooms to ourselves. The Ancient had two 
 beds in his room, and after not having seen one 
 for so long it seemed a wasted opportunity not 
 to be able to occupy both. The hospitality of 
 the nuns provided even a night-cap — so ample 
 that it must have been knitted for a bishop. In 
 the room there was also a stove, and, in spite of 
 his earnest protests that he did not want it 
 lighted, the Ancient, on going up to bed, found 
 it literally red-hot all over. Shutters, blinds and 
 curtains were all drawn close, and the Ancient 
 hurriedly prayed to the Three Holy Children for 
 guidance in his emergency. For the first time 
 since it had begun to blow he began to think of
 
 SILENCE 227 
 
 coming to terms with the ill-conditioned wind 
 outside. 
 
 Even the Ancient's servant had been thought 
 of. He came tapping at the door now. 
 
 *' Sir," said he, wide-eyed, *' the nuns have 
 had a bed made up for me, in a bedstead, in a 
 room : all to myself. Had I better sleep in it ?" 
 
 "Why not ?" 
 
 " "Well. It seems such neck. And it might 
 breed jealousness, if the fellows knew. Only, 
 of course, it's just along of me being your 
 servant." 
 
 " Well, go to bed, and don't tell the other 
 fellows." 
 
 From St. J., we could walk to B., and did so, 
 where the Ancient paid a surprise visit to the 
 Maison des Alienes and the little Aumonier. He 
 opened the door himself, with a finger in his 
 breviary, but he instantly called loudly for 
 Marie, who came running from the kitchen, 
 armed with a casserole, fully convinced that the 
 Germans had come back. Finding how matters 
 stood, she looked so much disposed to pat the 
 Ancient's back with her casserole that he could 
 only hope it was cool and empty. 
 
 On another afternoon we walked to the Mont 
 des Oats, a place some four or five miles from 
 St. J. A very windy ridge, visible far and wide,
 
 228 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 was the Mont des Cats, and somehow the look of 
 it made the Ancient think of Wuthering Heights. 
 
 *' Do take us there," some of our officers 
 begged of the Ancient, ^' on the top of the hill 
 there's a huge monastery. And a German 
 Prince — of Hesse-Something — ^was killed there 
 ten days ago: there was fighting all round the 
 place. The monks buried him. But fourteen 
 Germans came in the night, a few days after- 
 wards, and dug him up and stole him. Do take 
 us to see the monastery." 
 
 Stern, the New Zealander, and Chutney, with 
 the Ancient, made up the party. It was a 
 pleasant walk, wintry, but through rather pretty 
 ever-rising frozen fields. On the way Chutney 
 came to the Ancient's side and said: 
 
 '' Tell us what it means — would you mind 1 — 
 being a Cistercian." 
 
 Nature and youth and high spirits were for 
 ever insisting on the lad's being perky: he was 
 all quips and laughter. But something else — 
 a very sweet and clear heart — made him gentle, 
 and oddly meek at times. And he had the 
 rather rare grace of being singularly ready to 
 respect what he did not yet understand. 
 
 **You see," he said, *'I don't know anything 
 about monks. Perhaps the others do," 
 
 ** Do you r'
 
 SILENCE 229 
 
 ** Not I,'* said Stern and our New Zealander, 
 '' Well, it isn't very easy to explain, in a few 
 words, to three felloAvs like you, what Cistercians 
 are ; what monks are for. There are even some 
 of our own people, nowadays, who are so shallow, 
 and so unfortunately influenced by the air they 
 breathe in such a place, say, as London, who do 
 not appreciate monks, and wonder if they are 
 not out of date. If God is out of date (as the 
 air those men, of whom I speak, breathe, thinks 
 He is) then monks are out of date too. Their 
 reasonableness depends on His existence, and 
 the reality of His claims. They are just for God. 
 They do not fly to philanthropy to excuse them- 
 selves. First of all I must explain that our 
 Church has always vehemently defended the 
 thing we call Vocation — that every man, among 
 his other liberties, has the inborn right to follow 
 his owTi special and particular vocation. Most 
 men sooner or later have the vocation (among 
 other things) to marry, and so help to carry on 
 the world. But we deny that every man on 
 earth has that particular vocation. A million 
 have it, there is one man in the next million who 
 has not: — In the beginning of the Church there 
 were men who felt themselves so out of tune 
 with what we call the world, the social bustle of 
 life around them, that they went out from it,
 
 230 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 carrying nothing of it witli tliem, into the wilder- 
 ness — as the Baptist had done, and niany of the 
 holy Hebrew race before him. They lived any- 
 where, in holes of the rocks in shallow penthouse 
 lairs with the jutting, scooped out, Nile-bank for 
 roof. They scratched up the earth around their 
 caves or wattled huts, and grew such coarse pulse 
 as would come, for their food. And always, all 
 day long, and half night long too (often for whole 
 nights), they gave themselves up to tryst with 
 Him from whom we fly. Did you ever hear 
 this?— 
 
 " • I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; 
 I fled Him down the arches of the years; 
 I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways 
 Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears 
 I hid from Him, and under running laughter. 
 Up vistaed hopes I sped; 
 And shot precipated 
 
 Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, 
 From those strong Feet that followed, followed after. 
 ***** 
 
 For though I knew His love who followed 
 
 Yet was I sore adread 
 
 Lest, having Him, I must have nought beside.' 
 
 *' Most of us have always that dread (and 
 guard against it) of being like Peter, James and 
 John who, seeing Him revealed on the mountain, 
 came down seeing nothing else nisi solum Jesum: 
 the terror lest, once giving God the inch we 
 could spare, He should take the whole ell of us.
 
 SILENCE 231 
 
 "We think Infinity is bleak, even tliat of Infinite 
 Love. So huge that it must burst our heart if 
 we let it in : and we turn to little things as being 
 near and neighbourly. And perhaps some of us 
 like to be just a little above our company (not 
 so high above as to be beyond appreciation) and 
 it damps us to think of an intimacy wherein 
 every glance at our Friend would threaten con- 
 trast, and reproach of our inferiority. The 
 solitaries of whom I speak fled to that from 
 which we fly. Their object was to be overtaken 
 hy Him the sound of whose following frightens 
 us. They hungrily went to learn that which we 
 are in hourly fear of knowing — God and His 
 claims. You and I — how little can we know 
 each other, though we have each other's faces 
 to see, voices to hear, gestures to note, acts to 
 witness ? Can one know God, whose Face you 
 and I never saw, whose words never fell in our 
 ears, whose gesture is the vast creation, and 
 His action the ordered obedience of the universe? 
 To that knowledge they set themselves. He was 
 their school, their schoolmaster, and their lesson. 
 Him only — that was their subject : they were not 
 ashamed to be men of one book, seeing that in 
 its ages was everything. They gave themselves 
 to what we call contemplation as a life-work. 
 Not a new-fangled notion in Christianity, nor
 
 232 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 even a discovery of Christianity, for the great, 
 ancient religions of the east all have it, and had 
 it long before Christianity was born in Jewry. 
 The greatest sage in the east has always been, 
 and still is, he who holds it no waste to go out 
 into the loneliness where the infinite voice can be 
 heard, and let his life's achievement be nothing 
 more than an eavesdropping at Divine Wisdom. 
 
 ** Well, among the solitaries there would often 
 be a man of special character, of peculiar quality, 
 and him the others would take for leader. Under 
 his presidency, or abbacy, the scattered group 
 would be unified into a community. The 
 solitary was still to be found, remaining simply 
 a hermit. The united solitaries were monks. 
 And as all union presently implies law, though 
 ever so voluntarily accepted, each community 
 came to have some sort of rule — if at first it 
 came to no more than the recognition of special 
 hours for special duties and services. As the 
 ages slowly passed, the monastic idea grew, and 
 certain great exponents and masters of it arose, 
 the greatest St. Benedict, who fashioned out of 
 ancient and new material the vast Benedictine 
 fortress, still impregnable. 
 
 ' ' Please remember how our Church insists on 
 liberty of vocation: some Orders arose with one 
 special vocation (plus the main vocation to
 
 SILENCE 233 
 
 monasticism) — education, tending sick and 
 wounded, redemption of captives, preaching, a 
 thousand things, as changing life produced new 
 needs. No one need be a monk: no one need 
 be this or that sort of monk. But the Church 
 insists that he who chooses to seek God along 
 that road must have it open to him. 
 
 ** The monks you are coming to see are pure 
 contemplatives — and so an Order of much rarer 
 vocation now than the Orders which superadd 
 special activities. For a thousand ordinary 
 priests (what we call secular priests) there may 
 not be one monk of any sort : among ten thousand 
 monks there may not be one Cistercian : only the 
 Church insists that that one must be free to be 
 the thing to which he believes God beckons him. 
 No republic has ever held so valiantly to the 
 indi\idual liberties as the great monarchy of the 
 Catholic Church — a Kingdom in the universe, 
 a Vice-royalty in this far province of earth. 
 
 " The Cistercian's life is very austere. He 
 eats no meat, nor eggs ; butter, cheese, milk, only 
 at certain seasons. He wears no linen. He 
 toils hard in the field. He rises in the coldest 
 middle of the night and makes worship with his 
 brethren in choir. And he keeps perpetual 
 silence. While the world chatters, he thinks —   
 of God. No doubt a monk will show us over the
 
 234 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 monastery: he may speak to us while doing it. 
 The Abbot may speak to his monks when any 
 need for a spoken direction arises : and the monk, 
 needing such, may ask it of him. The master 
 of novices speaks to them, as need is to teach 
 them their way of life, they to him in any doubt 
 of it. But the life of the monastery is silent." 
 
 We had all along been in sight of the monas- 
 tery; and, while the Ancient tried to explain its 
 meaning, forgetting many points that should 
 have been remembered, marring many by haste 
 and shyness and fear of too intolerable a prolix- 
 ity, his young listeners (especially the youngest) 
 often held their eyes upon its long roofs, and 
 sharp turrets ; high up there against the cold sky- 
 line it had in its huge bulk something of the air 
 of a f ortalice — a strong Castle of God, procalim- 
 ing itself an outpost. 
 
 *' There is something I should like to add," 
 said the Ancient, '' since you listen so patiently." 
 [Chutney shook his head, not protesting im- 
 patience or repudiation.] " Here it is. In all 
 Christendom no race of men has been more 
 numerous than that which tills the soil. To 
 some they seem outcast of the social life, not 
 amused by the variety and episode of burgher 
 life; but, anyway, leading lives of great monot- 
 ony, with backs bent, and eyes turned mostly
 
 "SILENCE 235 
 
 downward, towards that dust whence we all 
 come, and whither we all return. Can you not 
 imagine that to every husbandman in our 
 Church it must be a gracious and uplifting thing 
 to remember such a place as we see yonder ? Must 
 not its sane and noble infection catch him 1 
 
 * There,' thinks he, ' are husbandmen like me 1 
 Their life of toil in furrow and farmstead is 
 mine. They see no variation but that of the sea- 
 sons, no more than I : monotony of labour is their 
 lot, as it is mine : looking do^vnward, then, as I 
 delve, can I not be seeing Heaven as they, and 
 growing hourly more at home (like them) with 
 my one neighbour God!' As he trudges home- 
 ward through the misty dusk, and hears their 
 bell ring out on the frosty air, onust he not say, 
 
 * I to my hard-earned frugal meal, to my hearth, 
 and to my rest: they, empty-bellied, to their 
 prayer and praise, their brief hard repose, and 
 then their vigil with the Great Sentinel of all,' 
 and 7mist he not join his dumb heart in praise 
 with theirs ? Must not his empty fields seem less 
 lonely ? And one last thing before we go up and 
 knock at that door. A thing I have often tried 
 to say ... in the Catholic Church there is a cer- 
 tain thing, what I call a quality, that arrests 
 every open-eyed man who scans her. You have 
 come to see it^ since you have been forced to look
 
 236 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 at her here in France. It is that quality that 
 preaches louder than any preacher in any pulpit. 
 You, at least, Martin, I kfiow have heard its call. 
 Polemics, controversy, special pleading, would 
 simply bore you, and set all your opposition alert 
 on guard. But that quality" arrests you; and 
 because it is a fact, patent in itself, it impresses 
 you more than any assertion of it could. Well, 
 that quality is one of the heirlooms of the 
 Catholic Church, bequeathed to her by her own 
 children; and lives like those of these monks 
 maintain its store and add to it in every age." 
 
 It was snowing fast now, and for a few minutes 
 there wavered a white arras between us and the 
 monastery, now quite near. 
 
 When we rang at the outer gate there was a 
 clanging echo, somewhat bleak and empty- 
 sounding. Presently the door opened and we 
 were taken along vaulted, chill corridors of stone, 
 to a stone parlour, with no ornament but the 
 crucifix. 
 
 The three young men seemed to catch the 
 Cistercian infection and sat wordless. After a 
 few minutes delay, a monk entered; he only 
 bowed, without speaking, to the four strangers; 
 then the Ancient asked permission to see the 
 abbey. The monk bowed again, and turned to 
 show us out into the corridors, up stone steps,
 
 SILENCE 237 
 
 into a fine cloister. Throughout he only spoke 
 in answer to a question, and then briefly, though 
 not curtly. He was courteous, but grave ; aloof, 
 not austere, though nearly; silence was not 
 merely his habit but his atmosphere, and he 
 breathed it, expiring it as well as inhaling: 
 silence was not his prison but his freedom; he 
 escaped out of talk into it whenever his captors 
 let him go . 
 
 It was an immense place. 
 
 We saw the refectory, vast and fine, with the 
 fineness of complete simplicity, the absence of all 
 ornament or superfluity. On the boards were 
 laid out spoons, forks, mugs, trenchers, for the 
 next meal. 
 
 '^ When will it be ?" whispered Chutney. 
 *' Ask him." 
 
 The Ancient asked. 
 
 ** To-morrow. At midday.'* 
 
 (Chutney rubbed his nose.) 
 
 We saw the chapter-house. And the dormi- 
 tories — vast and very cold, but airy and intensely 
 clean. And the kitchens, vast ('' and unsugges- 
 tive of grub," whispered Chutney). And the 
 immense, most beautiful church. 
 
 Here our monk pointed to the floor, where a 
 slab recorded that the Drawing Master of the 
 Princesses, daughters of King George III. of
 
 238 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 England, lay beneath, and had left his life's 
 earnings towards the building of this fane. 
 
 Three monks were praying in the church. 
 One out on the pavement; a very tall man evi- 
 dently, with a noble face. He never glanced a4; 
 us, and we hardly presumed to do more than 
 glance at him. 
 
 '* I never," said Chutney afterwards, *' saw 
 a man pray like that. It swallowed him 
 up." 
 
 Out in the cloister our monk told us that it 
 was the Abbot. 
 
 I ** He does not, then," said the Ancient, 
 ** always wear the cross."* 
 
 ** He wears it," said the monk, ''always." 
 
 We saw the library. A fine, panelled room, 
 where nearly a dozen monks were reading: the 
 light was rather dim in there now : and the white 
 figures, dotted here and there, gave a singular 
 impression of stillness : outside there was always 
 the tedious iteration of the war's pulse, the 
 sullen, thick, muffled, beating of the guns. Not 
 one of the monks so much as raised his head 
 to see who entered. To ourselves our coming 
 there seemed as impertinent to their life as the 
 fretful fuming of the war down there in the 
 plains. 
 
 .* Abbots, like bishops, wear the pectoral cross.
 
 SILENCE 239 
 
 ** Have any of your monks gone away as 
 chaplains 1" asked the Ancient, when we were 
 all outside in the cloister. 
 
 '* Some have gone as soldiers. They are in 
 the trenches.'* 
 
 ** Ask him," begged Chutney, '* about the 
 German prince." 
 
 The Ancient asked, repeating the legend of the 
 prince's abduction after death, and then only 
 our monk smiled. 
 
 " A prince of Hesse was killed here, two weeks 
 ago. He was never buried here. His officers 
 took him away at once. Others were killed here 
 at the same time — Germans, and French. These 
 we buried here. Come and see. ' ' 
 
 He led us out into the garden — a large plateau 
 surrounded on three sides by the abbey and its 
 workshops. 
 
 ** Here," said our monk. 
 
 There was a sort of raised mound, perhaps 
 thirty feet long and ten broad : already very neat, 
 and covered with smooth sods. About a dozen 
 and a half of wooden crosses. 
 
 *' Germans and French together f" 
 
 " In pace/' said the monk, bowing, with each 
 hand in the opposite sleeve. 
 
 No one spoke: and the red sun was slipping 
 down behind the far, flat horizon far beneath us.
 
 240 FRENCH WINDOWS. 
 
 The snow liad all ceased, and the night came on 
 clear and hard. 
 
 * * We must pray, ' ' whispered the monk at last, 
 ** for all. We cannot separate them." 
 
 *' Absit." 
 
 We went straight thence to the gate, where 
 he turned to leave us. 
 
 " Shake hands with them all," begged the 
 Ancient in his ear, *' they are all Protestants 
 and never saw a Cistercian before. ' ' 
 
 He drew his cold hands from his sleeves and 
 immediately shook hands with each — not coldly. 
 
 ' ' I suppose, ' ' said the lad Chutney, ' * we shall 
 never see each other again. ' ' 
 
 The monk smiled and lifted a pointing finger 
 towards the sky. 
 
 '' Well," said Chutney, as we walked quickly 
 down the frozen slope on our homeward way, 
 ' ' one learns a lot. ' *
 
 XIV 
 
 CHUTNEY ^S MAJORITY 
 
 *' One learns a lot," said Chutney, as we walked 
 down the hill; the frozen stubble, clogged with 
 new snow, hidden, but still stiff enough to crackle 
 a little as it broke under our feet. Eh, how cold 
 one's feet were — always were ! *' Cold hands, 
 warm heart;" if the saying went " Cold feet, 
 warm heart " the poor Ancient's old heart must 
 have been warm enough in those days. 
 
 *' Well, one learns a lot," said Chutney, and 
 the lad came closer to his friend's side and, 
 taking his arm, pressed it. His hands should 
 have been death-chill, according to the proverb. 
 
 Stern nodded, and the New Zealander nodded, 
 but neither spoke. 
 
 '• Tell us things," begged Chutney. But the 
 Ancient held his peace. Things, thought he, 
 had best be left to tell themselves. They were, 
 he thought, telling themselves; why should he 
 interrupt? The monastery on the bleak ridge 
 
 241
 
 242 FRENCH WINDOIVS 
 
 (one huge black bulk now, with black turrets, 
 and the pallid yellow of the sky behind, where 
 sunset had been) was telling things in a poignant 
 Cistercian silence. 
 
 Before the last wan relics of the day were 
 huddled behind night's curtain the full moon 
 was casting soft grey shadows, from every tree 
 and hop-hole, over the glistening white slopes. 
 It was all as silent as a great mortuary. St. 
 Bernard seemed for the moment to have laid his 
 finger on the lips of the very guns. And all the 
 silence listened, and to every listener comes the 
 Word. 
 
 Because these papers are, in their most or- 
 dered sequence but parentheses, and have often 
 followed no sequence at all, I may put in here 
 something that happened several months later. 
 
 The Ancient was in Normandy. The day be- 
 fore he had been to seek out the village-home 
 of the soldier farm-lad, Guilbert, of which visit 
 he has spoken long ago. After his talk with 
 Guilbert 's mother, and Guilbert 's sister, and the 
 lad's small nephew and niece, he had come out 
 into the rather wistful dusk of a dun swift-fall- 
 ing evenijig; and in a minute or two a young 
 Belgian soldier overtook him. 
 
 ** Bon soir, Monsieur." 
 
 ** Bon soir, camarade."
 
 CHUTNEY 'S MAJORITY 243 
 
 ** Eh ! Vous etes done aussi militaire ?" 
 
 ** Militaire et pretre, camarade." 
 
 *' Tiens ! Aumonier alors ? Bon." 
 
 Eanged alongside he kept silence a few steps 
 and then — 
 
 '' While you were in there Id has," with a jerk 
 of the head sideways and backward over his 
 shoulder, '' I watched. I stood outside and 
 watched, through the window. Indiscret, pent- 
 etre V 
 
 ** Ca depend." 
 
 ** Eh ! Why I watched, it was for no harm." 
 
 '' So I guessed. Why then "?" 
 
 *' I caught a glimpse, in passing; and I had to 
 come back and look more. That was a home in 
 there : en f amille, vous savez % That was why I 
 watched. J'avais faim." 
 
 He was a stoutish youth, and well fed. It 
 wasn't bread-hunger. 
 
 ** Nostalgie ?" 
 
 '■'■ C'est Qa," said the recruit. And he shook 
 his head with the staccato, sharp, gesture of the 
 head in its socket which so often expresses the 
 sentiment of the unsentimental. 
 
 *' One is far from home here." He went on, 
 ** You and I — you English: me Belgian — ^we are 
 far from ours. That was why I watched. I 
 have often passed the big hotel windows, and I
 
 244 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 don't want to watch; though inside one can see 
 the Messieurs dining at pretty tables, and there 
 are silver, and flowers; and you can see them 
 laughing. And it is like that when one passes 
 the big houses. You could often see in through 
 the persiennes. I have looked, yes. But a peep 
 is enough. 'Not my world, Jacques,' think 
 I, and go on: not home-sick. To me that is 
 nothing. But yonder " (and again came the 
 backward jerk of the head that had been a little 
 bent). ** L£i bas. That was like mine. My 
 world. Poor folks en famille. So I watched: 
 and when you came out I followed — to get nearer 
 to it. Nostalgic! Oui c'est qa; Monsieur 
 I'Aumonier; dur k supporter." 
 
 ** Tell me then, about yours— les votres. It 
 was to tell them about their lad, whom I had 
 soigne a little when he was wounded, that I 
 went." 
 
 So he told ; not much — there was no great mat- 
 ter to tell, though plenty to understand— and the 
 telling comforted him. 
 
 '' One could not tell it," he ended, " to anyone 
 like an ofiQcer or a fine person. But priests — 
 they are like us ; of the people. Eh ?" 
 
 * ' Yes : always, of the people. ' ' 
 
 *' C'est Qa." 
 
 ** But one should not, perhaps, dislike those
 
 CHUTNEY 'S MAJORITY 245 
 
 of another class ? Not manly that, do you 
 find r' 
 
 *' Eh non ! But the moon up there, I don't 
 dislike it — comprenez vous? It's up there; 
 we're down here, you and I. Eh f" 
 
 ** Certainly," said the Ancient, laughing, 
 *' though we've got to get higher up there than 
 the moon. ' ' 
 
 " Sans doute," agreed the recruit genially 
 accepting the shy parable. '^Bien loin, quand 
 meme, eh 1 Une jolie petite promenade, d'ici 
 jusque 1^." 
 
 Well, that was on the day before. 
 
 On this afternoon, an afternoon of indolent 
 humid sunshine, and soft moist airs, with a timid 
 promise of spring in it (though the trees were 
 still clad only in their delicate black winter lace 
 against a coldish blue sky) came the Ancient to 
 Arques — Arques la Bataille, as it has been called 
 since Henry of Navarre won, hard by, the victory 
 that was to make him Henry of France. 
 
 It was a very odd thing to be there, a vagrant 
 of the war, wandering alone through the vast 
 ruins of the castle whence his forefather had one 
 morning ridden forth for England, never to come 
 back. The place was so lovely that it seemed 
 strange that anyone leaving it could be content 
 never to come back. Perhaps the other vagrant
 
 246 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 adventurer, like the soldier yesterday, had had 
 nostalgie, and from Devonshire felt his heart- 
 strings tugging, tugging towards the home 
 among these Norman dales where he had been a 
 lad. We do not hear if those grabbing courtiers 
 and cousins of the Base-born brought their 
 mothers with them. The Ancient sat on the 
 ruined drawbridge and looked up at the narrow 
 window of the tower above it, picturing a Nor- 
 man mother's face there as her lad gave his back 
 to her, to go and snatch lands from peaceful 
 Saxon Thanes who had done him never a harm. 
 Eh, what a wistful face, what tremulous brave 
 lips, what love-hungry ears : what a standard of 
 renunciation the little waving rag of white linen 
 — the Ancient hoped that the light-hearted ad- 
 venturer had grace enough to turn in his saddle 
 and signal back fidelity. 
 
 An immense space do the ruins cover : and all 
 around them a wide, very deep moat, dry now, 
 and one supposes always dry. From the further 
 lip of the moat are exquisite views on every side. 
 On one, the broad and stately valley, meads and 
 river, woodland and opposing hill. At the foot 
 of the steep, the shining white town, and the 
 shining white church. Backward of the fortalice 
 a net of deep dales, where rich pasture and rich 
 copse strive in peacefullest combat for beauty.
 
 CHUTNEY 'S MAJORITY 247 
 
 Down into one of these twisting, steeply tilted 
 valleys clambered the Ancient, setting himself 
 a certain point of high woodland as his point of 
 attainment. There arrived, he would go no 
 further, but sit and read. An English newspaper 
 unopened, a French volume of *' Memoires 
 Intimes " half read, were under his arm: a 
 singular contrast those two documents. One a 
 gasp of announcement: as though one should 
 stick his sword into the seething stew of the War- 
 Pot and snatch out a bit, and hold it up to brag 
 about, or to explain why it was not bigger: 
 terribly hasty, partial, perhaps incorrect, but 
 actual, eager, half -blind, with a stumbling sus- 
 pense, as a man running who can scarce see for 
 the blood in his eyes. The other, the French 
 book, stuffed with snippets, all detail, all pre- 
 occupation with indoor matters and not a sus- 
 picion of a great outside world crying Fudge! 
 like Mr. Burchell. Elsewhere has the writer 
 quoted the shrewd judgment of him who found 
 Thackeray's '' Vanity Fair " the best spiritual 
 reading he knew: let him read the Memoirs of 
 his fellow-duke. Let anyone who would taste 
 how sour a mean worldliness can taste in the 
 mouth read St. Simon: proud reading, I should 
 say, for a republican ashamed of petty republican 
 jostlings. How the lean-eyed jealous courtier
 
 248 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 liates the King, and must flutter round him, and 
 think, think, think of him always. The sun out- 
 side, and the sane wholesome green world out- 
 side, are nothing to him; the Roi Soleil inside, 
 and his fusty bad-hearted world inside, are 
 everything to him. The favour of the man he 
 dislikes and despises, which he has not, and 
 which he knows he will never get, are his bread 
 and wine to hunger for. Faugh ! what a devil 's 
 sacrament ! Of his own good parts he is much 
 aware — and content to let them run to a rotten 
 seed. Decent, he is well-pleased to breathe an 
 indecent air ; honest enough at heart, he willingly 
 neighbours with dishonesty: till he does not 
 know when he is spiteful, secret slanderer, blood- 
 poisoned with the disease of the body whereof 
 he insists on being a limb — or some trivial un- 
 regarded member. . . . 
 
 Down the steep slope of short, dry down-grass 
 clambered the Ancient, and St. Simon slipping 
 from under his arm goes skipping do^vn before 
 him. A wounded soldier, en convalescence 
 home from the war, with one eye left, stands still 
 in the road below to pick the duke up and restore 
 him to his owner. He has a crutch also, for the 
 bones in one foot are shattered. 
 
 '' In a hurry — like the book, Monsieur ?" 
 
 '* Not a bit,'' says the Ancient, arriving, and
 
 CHUTNEY 'S MAJORITY 249 
 
 laughing. ' ' But once you go downhill you can 't 
 choose your own pace, or exactly where you'll 
 stop. N'est-ce pas ?" 
 
 '' Monsieur est philosophe ?" 
 
 *' Pas beaucoup. Mais experimente. ..." 
 
 '' Well," said the soldier, squeezing a double 
 smile out of his one eye, '* after that — / was 
 going down-hill: home " 
 
 * ' Home is up-hill, ' ' and they both laughed. 
 
 " Bon ! But now I wdll turn and me promener 
 with Monsieur (if he permits always). It is 
 pretty up there," nodding towards the crest of 
 the road. 
 
 ''So I guessed. I was going there to 
 read." 
 
 A cart came by, laden with logs, and the 
 waggoner (a lad whose limbs wanted screwing 
 up like neglected fiddle-strings) called out to the 
 soldier, and they exchanged a dozen words in 
 Norman patois — not the prettiest in France. 
 
 *' Eh well," said the soldier presently, when 
 the cart and waggoner had gone down the road. 
 " His turn will come soon. He won't be carting 
 logs much longer. I used to do that. Now I'm 
 an artilleur and one of my eyes is peering about 
 under the ground to see where I am. He shan't 
 find me just yet. ' ' 
 
 ** Esperons."
 
 250 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 **Pas de luxe, lii bas," observed the soldier, 
 waving his crutch towards the war. 
 
 '' So I found." 
 
 So we talked of our small experiences, and, as 
 no one was listening, no one was bored. We 
 talked of many things. He asked about my 
 book, seeing that it was French. Who wrote it, 
 what was it about ? Then — 
 
 "■ Louis XIV., he was very small, wasn't he ?" 
 
 " Uncommon small. Le grand Monarque." 
 
 *' Eh, mon philosophe ? And Napoleon — ^lit- 
 tle too f" 
 
 ** About up to there," and the Ancient indi- 
 cated, with his still unopened newspaper, a but- 
 ton which was by no means the top button of 
 the artilleryman's blackish-blue jacket. 
 
 "Voila! For me it is hopeless. Those 
 famous persons were all little creatures. I am 
 too big — hors concours." 
 
 It did not seem to trouble him. He remained 
 impregnably cheerful. 
 
 ''Long legs," suggested the Ancient, ** are 
 not bad for marching — uphill." 
 
 " But big legs have big bodies to carry — ^up- 
 hill (Eh, mon philosophe, je vous comprends 
 bien; vous insinuez quelqu' allegoric). And my 
 body, to me, is heavy for my big legs to carry- 
 uphill."
 
 CHUTNEY 'S MAJORITY 251 
 
 *' Let your soul help. Make it. That's what 
 it's for. Say to her ' Madame. This body of 
 mine can't carry itself and you. You'll get a 
 spill if you lie asleep up there. Be so good as to 
 get down and pull. ' ' ' 
 
 So they talked: the huge, gentle lad knowing 
 well that it was a sort of fencing, and liking it ; 
 not disliking it if he got a little thrust near 
 enough to the heart that was there in him. 
 
 They came to the crest of the road. A copse 
 on the left, and a quarry in front where an old 
 bent peasant was loading a long narrow cart. 
 To the right, bulging meadows that leant out 
 over the dale, and beyond them another copse. 
 At the top a road full of mysterious interest — 
 because the Ancient knew he should never walk 
 along it, or see what was round the first cor- 
 ner. 
 
 *' Now," said the soldier, ** Monsieur wants 
 to read — and look; in there is a fallen tree cut 
 down by some Frenchman (are we not careful 
 for Monsieur, we other Frenchmen ?) for Mon- 
 sieur to sit upon. As for me I will go on up 
 there, and round by another way that I know, so 
 that Mon Philosophe may not have to see me go- 
 ing downhill home." 
 
 He held out his big hand, and his smile was 
 very kind : in his one eye there was not room for
 
 252 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 it, nor even on his mouth, it seemed to be in his 
 hand too. 
 
 *' Only one little eye," he said, and his laugh 
 was only his smile made audible, '' but with it 
 I shall go on seeing Monsieur, mon petit Philo- 
 sophe. (No offence — Napoleon was little ! we 
 settled that, n'est-ce pas 1) But there are two 
 ears still, and they shall go on listening to all 
 the things Monsieur never said. I am not en- 
 tirely bete; I can understand. The unsaid things 
 are the best of the sermon sometimes. ' ' 
 ** But it is you who preach." 
 " Me preach ! I do not even practice." 
 ** Both, I think. To me your one eye preaches, 
 and your merry limp. I also have been listen- 
 ing." 
 
 So he went ; and the Ancient watched him till 
 the twist of the road hid him. He whistled Tip- 
 perary out of compliment, thinking it perhaps 
 our Marseillaise. At the corner he waved his 
 crutch and saluted, and the crutch itself seemed 
 part of his smile. 
 
 The Ancient went into the copse and sat down 
 upon the fallen tree. Truant-thoughted always, 
 there ran into his mind, not the words (for he 
 has an untextual, unquoting memory) but the 
 idea in the words of a delighful American: 
 ** Preachers must surely be in great danger of
 
 CHUTNEY 'S MAJORITY 253 
 
 perishing for lack of spiritual instruction, from 
 only hearing themselves." Ah, but did not the 
 witty American forget the sermons that preach- 
 ers are always meeting in the lives and faces of 
 those who cross their daily path ? 
 
 One cannot learn everything at once or from 
 the same teacher, nor has every man all the 
 gifts of God. Those he has (the one he has, if it 
 seems to us that he has only one) he must share 
 >vith us if we know we need it. 
 
 The old man's cart was full, and he had led it 
 lumbering dov/n the road. There was no sound 
 for a while; then came the rap-tap of a wood- 
 pecker. 
 
 '^ 'The woodpecker tapping the hollow elm 
 tree,' observed Mrs. Mould," thought the An- 
 cient. '' ' Ha, ha,' laughed Mr. Mould, closing 
 his eyes in a perfect luxury, ' we shall be glad to 
 hear from you again, Mrs. M. Hollow elm tree, 
 eh! Ha, ha. . . . I've seen worse than that in 
 the Sunday papers, my love.' How Dickens 
 revelled in undertakers — the Moulds, the 
 Orams. ..." 
 
 So the Ancient tore open his newspaper and 
 fell to reading: but the flutter of the big white 
 leaves sent the woodpecker away, and there was 
 no sound at all. 
 
 The Ancient was reading of the Dardanelles;
 
 254 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 but in his thoughts Chutney was gently moving, 
 and his smile looked out between the printed 
 words. On the night which was the last before 
 the Ancient left the unit, just as he was begin- 
 ning to undress, a knock had come to his door — 
 in his bedroom at the Convent in St. J., and 
 Chutney came in, shy and not merry. 
 
 *^ I had to come and say good-bye alone," he 
 said. '^ I hope you do not mind ? Dear Mon- 
 signor ! I wonder if you realize what it will be 
 here without you ? If you don't, you're the 
 only one that doesn't. And no one of them all 
 will miss you as I shall. You think it is not so. 
 I haven't seen half as much of you as some of 
 them: but not because I didn't want to. I'm 
 not so clever as some of them. I couldn't talk 
 to you about books and things; and I didn't 
 want to bore you. But, dear Monsignor, all my 
 happiest times out here have been with you. 
 All. And — not one of them loves you as I do — 
 not one." 
 
 He turned quickly to the door, and made no 
 pretence of doing anything else with his fingers 
 than what they were doing with the tears on his 
 boyish cheeks. 
 
 The Ancient tried to thank him, and the lad 
 said, 
 
 * * Oh yes ! If we do not meet again it will not
 
 CHUTNEY 'S MAJORITY 255 
 
 be my fault. When the war is over may I come 
 and see you in your home ? I wouldn 't stay too 
 long. ' ' 
 
 *' Indeed, indeed, Chutney, we must meet 
 again. At home. Happier days than these. A 
 happier place." 
 
 Of this was the Ancient thinking while he 
 read of Gallipoli. And his eye fell down the 
 printed sheet and there was the lad's name: his 
 real name : and a date : the date on which the 
 baby of our unit had attained his majority — 
 killed in action in performance of his heroic, 
 merciful duty, for to heal wounds, not to make 
 them, was his war-task. 
 
 It was very long before the Ancient left his 
 place in the quiet wood. But there had been 
 no more reading. As easily could he have read 
 St. Simon in a church where they were singing 
 Requiem. If remembering and loving be indeed 
 as well worth laying by our dead as flowers, 
 whose sweetness will presently change to ill 
 odours of decay, then was not the poor Ancient 
 wasteful of time during those sad hours that he 
 sat there all alone with grief. 
 
 Are they not over ready to chide us for yield- 
 ing to sorrow ? Ho who lets the cause of our 
 pain come to us must know that the pain will
 
 256 FEENCH WINDOWS 
 
 come, and mean it also. If we turn too hardily 
 from it are we not likely to miss what it came to 
 do for us ? Tbey do not expect us to receive 
 without anguish sharp wounds in the rest of us, 
 but wounds in our heart we are bidden to treat as 
 if the pain were subjective and voluntary, a pain 
 that need only be there while we yield to it. No 
 doctor is brutal enough to chide us for suffer- 
 ing in our body, or bid us cast the agony away 
 as if it were a morbid, self-invited misery. 
 
 Are men so unselfish that really there is com- 
 monly much danger of our feeling too greatly 
 blows that have not touched our own skin ? 
 
 If we could always cry '' Come ! / am alive 
 still. It is only another man who is dead. My 
 time isn't shortened. Nothing has been taken 
 of mine; let me hurry on lest my pleasures and 
 profit get on too far for me to overtake them : ' ' 
 would it be good for us f 
 
 I do not believe much in his power of sym- 
 pathy who refuses to suffer except in the mate- 
 rial part of him. 
 
 It was dusk before the Ancient found himself 
 walking down the steep hill that is the village 
 street of Arques : a dusk, chill and with a rising 
 of dank mist in it, more proper to the season 
 than the humid sunshine of the early afternoon 
 had been.
 
 CHUTNEY 'S MAJORITY. 257 
 
 At the door of a long white house, a door up 
 four steps from the street, stood an elderly- 
 woman knitting and talking over her shoulder 
 to someone inside. 
 
 Over her head hung a little faded bush. 
 
 * * Monsieur, ' ' said she, ' ' one does not only sell 
 wine here. Tea also. English tea." 
 
 "■ We do not grow tea in England," confessed 
 the Ancient, with meek disavowal of his coun- 
 try's greatness. 
 
 '' Tiens !" 
 
 '' But we certainly like it. If you please I 
 will see what English tea is like. Once, Madame, 
 in Egypt I was going to buy a very queer antique 
 Egyptian pot, but remarked par parentJiese that 
 it was ugly all the same. * Ugly !' cried the 
 vendor much offended, ' 'Tis not m?/ taste. / 
 did not manufacture this antique. It was 
 made in Birmingham — the English taste I sup- 
 posed.' " 
 
 *' Nor did I make the English tea I sell," said 
 the matron, laughing. '' I supposed they made 
 it in London. ' ' 
 
 *' Let us hope not." 
 
 It was excellent tea; quite strong; and the 
 woman was an excellent woman too. She said 
 times were very hard for her trade — for every- 
 one's trade in such a place as Arques, where
 
 258 FEENCH WINDOWS 
 
 nothing that was wanted in the war was made — 
 except young men and they were all gone. Her 
 sons were gone, and her nephews, also the sons 
 of her stepmother (who were decent fellows 
 considering). It was hard to make enough sous 
 to make francs with, and sous didn't buy much 
 these times. And one liked to send parcels to 
 one 's sons Id has at the war, with gourmandises 
 in them. A customer was almost a gift of the 
 Tout-Puissant. 
 
 *' Come ! I have also English Kekk," she re- 
 membered. *■ ' 'Auntly Kekk. ' ' 
 
 And from a cupboard she produced a cake 
 with the flavour of that ilk. 
 
 *' Before the war English travellers came 
 here: and this one I bought in Dieppe. Real 
 'Auntly Kekk." 
 
 Huntley and Palmer 's grease-proof paper still 
 clung to it like a cerement. 
 
 '' But," said Madame presently, ** I ennuie 
 Monsieur." 
 
 ** No, Madame. It is very kind of you to 
 talk." 
 
 *' Ah, then ! Monsieur is triste. Him also 
 the war has hurt ? Forgive me ! One's o^vn 
 pin scratches, but one knows not what knife may 
 have cut in under another person's cloak. So 
 one talks, and is a gene.'*
 
 CHUTNEY 'S MAJORITY 259 
 
 *' No, Madame. There is no gene in kindliness. 
 But I have just read of the death of one who 
 was very young, whom I knew, and loved. ' ' 
 
 ** Everywhere ! Everywhere !" she said, in a 
 low plain voice, and shook her head. Then gent- 
 ly went out of the little parlour back into the 
 house-place, where her husband was. 
 
 When the Ancient called her back to ask what 
 he owed her, her little girl came with her, cling- 
 ing to her gown. 
 
 * ' Nothing, ' ' said the mother. ' ' I do not want 
 Monsieur to pay anything." 
 
 Sympathy can afford to dress herself oddly. 
 This was Madame 's way. 
 
 '' But, no," said the Ancient, '' you do not 
 think it would comfort me to remember this 
 petite and know that some of the bread you find 
 it so hard to earn for her I had swallowed ?" 
 
 * ' Eh, it is hard to earn the bread. But I did 
 wish Monsieur would just be my guest (a poor 
 woman's guest) this one time." 
 
 The little girl, with broad blue Norman eyes, 
 lifted her fat fist to her mother, pulling her 
 mother's apron over it to hide it, with the other 
 hand. 
 
 " Ah, Monsieur ! that's as bad. Much worse: 
 for it is double what I could have asked for the 
 tea."
 
 260 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 ' ' Not worse at all. It is the begiiming of her 
 doV 
 
 Our argument was interrupted by the arrival 
 of another customer in the house-place where 
 the little bar was. He greeted Madame 's hus- 
 band, and her small daughter said, 
 
 * ' It is our big Paul. ' ' 
 
 " The son of my husband's sister," observed 
 Madame. 
 
 The little girl trotted out to him : and showed 
 him her dot. Which brought him to us. It was 
 my big artilleryman. Indoors he looked bigger 
 than ever. 
 
 His aunt and he exchanged a few words in 
 Norman patois unintelligible to the Ancient, the 
 little girl listening with grave eyes. 
 
 ' * I must go, ' ' said the Ancient. 
 
 " I should have asked if I might walk with 
 you as far as to the gare:'^ said the big Paul, 
 " but, alas, you have another companion since 
 we parted." 
 
 All the eyes in Arques could not have held 
 more gentle sympathy than this one : the mother 
 was softly stroking the flaxen hair of her petite, 
 and the silent, quiet caress was somehow sym- 
 pathy too. 
 
 '' I should like you to come with me," said 
 the Ancient. *' That companion of whom you
 
 CHUTNEY 'S MAJORITY 261 
 
 speak, la tristesse, comes often in these days. 
 One makes no stranger of her. Ah — if it were 
 only to me she came ! ' ' 
 
 So we went out together, and were friends. 
 But after that day we never met again, for the 
 Ancient had not the heart to go back soon to 
 Arques, and in a little while he was called away 
 to another part of France.
 
 xy 
 
 ON THE BRIDGE 
 
 One afternoon the Ancient found himself, for 
 the first time in many years, in Paris. Through 
 it he had often passed, southward for Italy, or 
 Switzerland, or the Pyrenees; or south-east for 
 Germany; or on his way from England, to a 
 French country house : but on all those occasions 
 he had simply driven from one railway-station 
 to another without a pause : it was many, many 
 years since he had walked the Paris streets, or 
 lingered by the Seine, or entered any church, 
 or public building, of the great city. 
 
 There is much in Paris that, seen once, is 
 indelible from memory — the island of the Seine, 
 and Notre Dame; the river-front of the Louvre 
 (in spite of Louis Philippe and his L.'s), or its 
 inner arms stretched out to the Carrousel; the 
 Place de la Concorde, and the view from it, up 
 the slack bowstring of the Elysees, towards the 
 Arc de Triomphe : but after so long an absence 
 
 262
 
 ON THE BRIDGE 263 
 
 much was forgotten, and there was change 
 enough too. 
 
 Standing at the base of the Egyptian Obelisk 
 that marks the death-place of the Monarchy, the 
 Ancient had nothing between him and the 
 Carrousel- Arch but that endless monotone of flat 
 garden which he had known broken by the 
 stark, charred ruin of the Tuileries. With that 
 to his left, there were new palaces to his right, 
 and a new bridge, with grandiose gold and 
 marble boundary pillars, like huge gateposts 
 without a gate. 
 
 Behind Notre Dame the Ancient had 
 sought out the '* little Doric Morgue" and had 
 not found it: in spite of Browning's boasting 
 first line in his small great poem. Now he would 
 go and find something that could hardly need 
 much seeking — the way must be across the new 
 bridge. A very splendid bridge, with more 
 splendid views in every direction from it up 
 river and down, forwards towards the vast 
 empty space in front of the Invalides, and back- 
 ward whence the Ancient had come. 
 
 Almost everyone crossing it was in uniform: 
 as was he : but many of the others were wounded. 
 
 '* That certainly," thought the Ancient, ** is 
 the Invalides. There are plenty of domes, but 
 there's no mistaking that dome."
 
 264 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 He stood still, not for imcertainty, but to take 
 in the wonderful reach of river, and the huge 
 pearls of the buildings shimmering out of a 
 tenuous opaline scarf of mist. 
 
 *' Is Monsieur seeking a direction ?" asked an 
 artilleryman, saluting and smiling. 
 
 ' ' Well, you can make my certainty more sure. 
 I am on a little pilgrimage ; and the object of my 
 pilgrimage lies, I feel sure, under that golden 
 dome ?" 
 
 * * The Emperor ! Oh yes. He is there. That 
 is the Invalides." 
 
 He was standing still, and now turned. 
 
 *' May I go with you, mon Colonel, and join 
 my homage ?" he asked. 
 
 English officers in uniform are not supposed 
 to walk the streets with soldiers : but to say so 
 seemed but a poor response to the lad's eager 
 kindliness, especially as he must know the regu- 
 lations without reminder. 
 
 '' The Emperor," said he, " was a little 
 artilleryman himself, and I should think he 
 would like the homage of an English Colonel and 
 a French artif lot offered together. May I come ? ' ' 
 
 So they went together. And presently the 
 Ancient knew all about his young guide and 
 companion. Francois his nom de hapteme, his 
 age twenty, his home Lyons, where he and his
 
 ON THE BRIDGE 265 
 
 mother kept a little shop together. La Veuve 
 Gorsse, her name. Of rather a good family — 
 not noble, mind you, but bien elevee; feu M. 
 Gorse dead since Francois was a baby in the 
 young wife's arms. They were very happy, he 
 and his mother. Of course she had memories — 
 but he had only hopes, and in them her memories 
 had resurrection. 
 
 ''Is it not wonderful, mon Colonel f Ces 
 femmesf they love, and God beckons a little 
 finger to the one they love, and they lose him, 
 and their heart breaks: then they look in their 
 baby's eyes, and read a message, and a mandate, 
 and the baby's tearless eyes dry tlieir eyes, tear- 
 drowned, arid they gather the broken bits of 
 their hearts and piece them together, and build 
 a temple for the baby to live in, and they live in 
 it too. And Memory lives in it, between them, 
 though the baby only sees her now and then. 
 The baby only has hopes, he. But the mother 
 plaits them and her memories together, until at 
 last all her memories have growm into hopes too. 
 Is it not ? I cannot tell you, my Colonel, how 
 happy we are. We are poor folk; not very poor, 
 we have all we need, and enough to help others 
 with: only, all we have we earn. It is more 
 interesting, eh ? A piece of bread you earn is 
 a bit of your history. Is it not ? ' '
 
 266 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 Over and over again the lad spoke of their 
 happiness: and once, the Ancient, heathenishly, 
 shuddered: as though dreading the eavesdrop- 
 ping of Nemesis. 
 
 A great crowd was passing out of the gates of 
 the Invalides, a greater moving in. One had 
 to go slowly, and still the lad chattered on. His 
 voice was vibrant with life and gaiety, and he 
 smiled again and again for sheer friendly happi- 
 ness and goodwill. He was very meridional; 
 not swarthy at all, or even dark; but small, 
 compactly knit, all his little figure set on wires, 
 and every gesture a whole sentence, every 
 syllable of which was a nerve. 
 
 The large, somewhat austere, inner quadrangle 
 was full of people : in one corner were a number 
 of German guns, in another several captured 
 aeroplanes. There was much comment, but 
 low-voiced: no gabble, or shrill chatter. Of the 
 women who looked at the guns most were in 
 mourning: the pressing crowd made way for 
 them, but hardly noticeably. A young widow 
 close to us seemed scarcely to turn her eyes to 
 the guns, but bent them on her tiny son, who 
 leant against her dress. She drew the child away 
 very soon, tearless, with a singular grave dignity 
 in her immovable white face. 
 
 ** Perhaps one of those things," said Frangois,
 
 ON THE BRIDGE 267 
 
 when she was lost in the crowd, " made her petit 
 fatherless. He will not forget. ..." 
 
 To the Ancient it seemed that everyone was 
 doing the same thing: not gabbling, but re- 
 membering. 
 
 '' Yesterday," said Frangois, " I came here, 
 and saw a General give medals. Gallieni, I 
 think : a fine face : a fine man. Slim, lean, like a 
 lean dog that will not tire till he has his teeth in 
 the beast he follows. A soldier all over him. 
 You saw it in his back, in his eyes, in his mouth. 
 There wasn 't much talk in his mouth. ' Soldiers, ' 
 said he, 'you know what they have done' (a 
 finger pointing to those guns) ; 'how they and 
 others like them have turned French homes into 
 stone-heaps. You know that a sang impur 
 stains our land : but your own blood has flowed, 
 and will flow, to erase that foul stain from our 
 soil of France. I am proud that France uses 
 my hands to-day to set near your hearts the 
 symbol of the maternal gratitude with which 
 her own heart is full towards you and your 
 million comrades. While your heart beats it will 
 keep time with the pulse of the Great Heart of 
 France, and should the signal sound for it to 
 cease to beat, on some other field than that 
 where already France has seen your glory, you
 
 268 FEENCH WINDOWS 
 
 will know that in the shrine of Her Heart your 
 name shall be immortal.' " 
 
 So they, the Ancient and the widow's yonng 
 hope, gave themselves to the stream that pressed 
 on, through the dim, gaunt passages of the great 
 hospice of heroes, to the sleeping chamber of the 
 Arch-hero. 
 
 The light there is always unearthly, not pallid, 
 but half -cloistral : a very singular light that 
 seems at every hour to be that of DawTi. 
 
 The silence of the place is as poignant as its 
 light : and folds into itself the only sound there 
 ever is, that of reverent feet : for no voice is ever 
 there for Echo to report, but that of Fame ; and 
 she stands brooding there, as though her work 
 were done and lay finished in yonder tomb, 
 breathing a name with every pulse of her un- 
 dying heart. 
 
 • ••••••• 
 
 Out into the spring sunshine the Ancient and 
 his new friend came together. 
 
 ' ' You have been there before ? ' ' asked the lad. 
 
 '* Very often. But not for many years. And 
 every time the same shame is on me. Do you 
 know how I, an Englishman, spell shame ? ' ' 
 
 '^ How, Monsieur ?" 
 
 *' Ste. Helene. Nothing we can ever do, or 
 write, will alter it. He was never our captive.
 
 ON THE BBIDGE 269 
 
 "We never leapt into the sky and caught your 
 Eagle. He flew to us, in the name of our island 
 hospitality: and our hospitality was that rock 
 and its pitiful, vulgar vexings of his end. I 
 wish Dante had waited to w^rite till he could have 
 put Sir Hudson Lowe in his Inferno, with his 
 own name scrawled round his hollow head on a 
 red tape for punishment." 
 
 They walked on, and the lad declared that his 
 new friend ought to see the gardens of the 
 Luxembourg — the most delightful spot, said he 
 in Paris. So thither they went, though the 
 Ancient was very far from thinking those 
 gardens the beauty-spot of Paris. Thence, 
 through the Latin quarter, they walked to the 
 Pantheon, but found it closed. In one of the 
 half -empty streets (the Latinists all gone, I 
 suppose, to the war) they met two elderly priests 
 making their afternoon promenade. They stood 
 still and looked after the Ancient and the young 
 Lyonnais, smiling kindly. 
 
 *' Tiens!" said one of them. '' That is good 
 to see. Voild V Entente !" 
 
 *' L' Entente Cordiale illustree/' agreed the 
 other, nodding his head cheerfully, up and down. 
 
 The Ancient saluted, and then they took off 
 their big hats and bowed very low. Of course 
 Francois saluted too.
 
 270 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 " Good people those," he observed, when all 
 our little ceremonies were over and we had 
 moved on. 
 
 '^ In England," said the Ancient laughing, 
 " we think all our priests good." 
 
 '' Oh yes! And we are good Catholics, my 
 mother and I. I was brought up to respect 
 them — I meant kind, warm-hearted folk, those 
 two. They love soldiers — one could see that — 
 and it pleased them to see a little French soldier 
 walking with an English militaire," 
 
 *' They will put you in their breviaries like an 
 image." 
 
 *' Tant mieux! It is good to have one's name 
 mentioned — up there. My father is there — but 
 perhaps they think * Oh yes ; of course ! Fathers 
 will say anything of their only son. ' ' ' 
 
 Then the lad talked again of his mother, and 
 of a little girl she had adopted. 
 
 * * That was when I was a young boy, ' ' he said, 
 ** before I could earn anything. She asked if I 
 minded. For, of course, we hadn't much to 
 spare then. But that petite had no one ; and my 
 mother longed to take the little helpless one and 
 make a daughter of her. Of course I did not 
 mind. And now she is a big girl, and altogether 
 good. Now that I have had to come away to 
 go to the war my mother has her to comfort her,
 
 ON THE BRIDGE 271 
 
 and is not all alone. I suppose God thought of 
 that all along." 
 
 We went into a little quiet cafe, and had coffee 
 together, and the lad wanted to pay — out of a 
 tiny, lean purse. But the Ancient explained 
 that it was the old person who always did the 
 paying. 
 
 It is not necessary to repeat all the young 
 soldier said. He had a very sweet and honest 
 heart, but he was, it seemed, wild ; or had been. 
 He thought youth the season of jDleasure, and it 
 was not difficult to see that he ran wherever 
 pleasure called. 
 
 He did not perceive that his Colonel was 
 something else : he saw only the khaki and the 
 badges, and seemed to have no idea as to the 
 meaning of the little patch of ruddy purple at 
 the throat. So he rattled. And the Ancient, 
 weighing it all, resolved to say nothing : because 
 of something he was resolved to say. 
 
 " Francois," he said at last, "are you going 
 to the front T' 
 
 '* Yes, my Colonel. To-morrow, or the next 
 day." 
 
 " And shall you go to confession first ?" 
 
 " To confession !" 
 
 " Yes. You seem to have been a wild boy: 
 is it long since you confessed yourself I ' '
 
 272 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 "Long! Yes. Many, many years. Not since 
 I was a little boy. 
 
 ^' And you have done much to confess." 
 
 '^ Oh, plenty." 
 
 Then he laughed: his laughter ringing out, 
 with frankest merriment. 
 
 *' Oh you English!" he cried. " Always the 
 same. Always practical! You are Catholic — 
 and the Catholic Church says ' Confess yourself : 
 so you say no more, but do it. It is splendid. 
 But it is not like us other French. We recognize 
 a principle — Yes : not to do that is blind : a want 
 of logic. But you put the principle at once into 
 practice: we not. I am thoroughly Catholic: I 
 believe: I would go to Mass if anyone tried to 
 stop me going. But to confess! Oh you 
 English! I am twenty years old. That is not 
 the season for confession. It is the season for 
 doing the things to confess ■" 
 
 ''When!" 
 
 ''Plus tard." 
 
 " There may be no 'plus tard.' 1 have been 
 lately where you go to-morrow or next day. I 
 know what it is like. You cannot know till you 
 see. There you will meet the enemy. You will 
 meet God too, as you have not met Him, per- 
 haps, anywhere before. He gives you rendezvous:
 
 ON THE BRIDGE 273 
 
 if you do not keep it you may never meet Him 
 again: never: not in all Eternity." 
 
 ' ' My Colonel ! my dear friend of one after- 
 noon, are you not solemn ?" 
 
 *' Life is solemn. You will see how solemn 
 when you get where you go to-morrow. You 
 told me just now that the war forced men to 
 think, and that you had put your little affairs 
 in order. Set your great things in order too. 
 I am sure that is why we met on yonder bridge, 
 and became in a moment friends — that I might 
 tell you this. We are comrades : an old militaire 
 and a young : comrades may say to each other all 
 that jumps into their mouths out of their hearts. 
 I am sure you are not angry. ' ' 
 
 "Angry! No! How could you make me 
 angry ? I never saw you till two hours ago, and 
 now I feel as if had loved you all my life. But 
 what you ask is contrary to all my habits. My 
 mother has asked it a thousand times, and I only 
 kissed her, and laughed, and said ' Maman, I am 
 young yet. Let me alone. I must run about 
 awhile.' Only you must not think I am 
 angry. ' ' 
 
 Again he laughed merrily. 
 
 *' It is because you are so English that I 
 laugh. And I thought you so wonderfully 
 French. I suppose that is why you do things,
 
 274 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 you English — because you are so definite: so 
 practical. ' ' 
 
 *' It doesn't seem to me practical, certainly, to 
 set one 's small matters in order and leave one 's 
 great matters unsettled, in disorder, for chance 
 to arrange. Chance arranges nothing. If you 
 were dying of a sickness you would send for a 
 priest r' 
 
 '^ Bien, sur. I am a good Catholic." 
 
 * ' And you may be dying now : in spite of 
 the sun and gay air, and your strong health, 
 and laughter. Think of it. I will say no 
 more." 
 
 The Ancient felt almost sure of one thing — 
 the lad, though he would have listened politely, 
 would have paid no heed at all had he supposed 
 that he was listening to a priest's advice: it 
 would have been a professionalism, mere words 
 of course. Such advice coming from another 
 soldier, though an old one, would have a 
 different appeal: would it have effect as well 
 as weight? 
 
 All the rest of the afternoon they spent to- 
 gether : and of that matter of confession no other 
 word was said, though FrauQois often broke into 
 a laugh and the Ancient knew he was thinking 
 of it. Almost all the lad's talk was of his home,
 
 ON THE BRIDGE 275 
 
 and of his mother; less often of his adopted 
 sister. 
 
 At last he and the Ancient parted. 
 
 *' Here is my name and address," said the 
 Ancient, scribbling on a scrap of paper his sur- 
 name only, sans titre, and the place where he was 
 living. This he folded round a crucifix, and a 
 medal of God's Mother. 
 
 '^ I will write to you," the lad promised, 
 *' from the trenches. And this is my mother's 
 address — would you write to her and tell her 
 you saw me, and that I was well, and happy ?" 
 
 The Ancient promised, and they shook hands 
 and parted, never to meet again here. 
 
 Less than a week afterwards the Ancient had 
 a letter from the boy. 
 
 *'It is all as you said," he wrote. "There 
 were twenty-nine of us, here where I am, when 
 I joined. Nine are killed. But I want at once 
 to tell you something, my Colonel and comrade 
 and friend; the very day I reached this place I 
 found a village church with a priest in it, and I 
 confessed myself, and next morning I received 
 the good God. And, please, send me little 
 crosses, like the one you gave me, and medals 
 of the Holy Virgin, for I want to give them to
 
 276 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 my comrades. I persuaded nearly all of tliosa 
 nine who are now killed to confess themselves. 
 I will persuade others. What you said is true : 
 God gave me rendezvous here: I am glad I did 
 not fail to keep tryst. I suppose that was why 
 you and I met on the bridge. Do write soon, 
 soon, soon. And send me those things. And 
 write to my mother and tell her (though I have 
 told her) that I have done what you asked. She 
 will not be jealous that I should have done for 
 you what I always refused to do for her. She 
 will be penetree with joy. You seem women and 
 priests always ask such things, and one smiles 
 and puts it aside : but when another soldier asks 
 it is different : after you had gone away, in Paris 
 on Monday night, I felt very lonely. I wanted 
 to run after you. All Paris seemed empty. 
 And your voice went on in my ears always saying 
 the same thing. And coming up here in the 
 train it was the same. But, though I pretended 
 to myself to laugh at my English Colonel's queer 
 practical ideas, I had (I am sure) given up 
 struggling even before I left Paris. I knew I 
 should do what you asked — but not there. You 
 said God had given me rendezvous, here in the 
 battle-field, and I came here knowing I should 
 find Him waiting, and I knew I would have to 
 give in and come to Him. I am very happy.
 
 ON THE BRIDGE 277 
 
 To-morrow I shall receive the good God again. 
 Write soon, soon, soon. Your little comrade, 
 Francois. ' ' 
 
 The Ancient made a fat parcel of crosses, 
 scapulars, rosaries, and medals, and sent it : and 
 of course he wrote. And he wrote to the wid- 
 owed mother of the boy, and received from her a 
 -vonderful letter of joy and gratitude and fear. 
 She said how tender and sweet her lad had al- 
 ways been, how loving and devoted, how hard- 
 working for her, and self-denying, but exuberant 
 with youth and vitality, and so, wayward; she 
 could find no words to express her deep thank- 
 fulness that he had, after so many years ' neglect, 
 confessed himself and received Our Lord. But 
 she could hardly think for terror : every moment 
 was a horror of suspense. . . . 
 
 Another letter came from the lad written very 
 soon after the first; full of buoyant hope and 
 courage, and beating (as every French soldier's 
 letters beat) like a pulse, with a passion of love 
 for France. Can the sons of a mother who has 
 never known anything but secure prosperity 
 feel exactly that sort of agony of love and 
 worship ? Each separate French heart seems 
 to feel that the wounds in the breast of France, 
 their outraged mother, dealt there by the same
 
 278 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 enemy before and now, can hardly be healed 
 without the outpouring of its own blood. 
 
 Then three weeks passed, and no letter came, 
 and the Ancient's heart sank within him. That 
 Francois would forget, or be lazy, he knew was 
 not possible. At last he could bear the suspense 
 no longer, and wrote to the lad's Commanding 
 Oflficer. Between the sending of that letter and 
 the receipt of a reply came one from Lyons, 
 from Madame Gorsse, terror-stricken. She had 
 heard nothing, for near three weeks; had Mon- 
 signor heard *? 
 
 Then came the answer from the Commanding 
 Officer : the young soldier Gorsse had been killed, 
 doing his duty, on such a day, and his comrades 
 had laid his shattered body to rest in the holy 
 
 ground by the little church of . The lad's 
 
 mother had already been told. 
 
 To write to her was almost impossible but not 
 so impossible as not to write. In what words 
 could any writer deal with a sorrow so over- 
 whelming as the Ancient knew hers must be ? 
 But to stand silent, for dread and shyness, would 
 be the abyss of selfishness. 
 
 The poor woman's answer was hard to read: 
 she was, plainly, heart-broken: and out of her 
 broken heart the words came in an awful cry of 
 agony. That her boy had given his life for
 
 ON TPIE BRIDGE 279 
 
 France was her pride, but could not yet be her 
 comfort. I dare not try to say more of that 
 letter — those letters, for many came, and come 
 still. 
 
 Does any reader remember a young Savoyard 
 Sergeant whom the Ancient had soigne in the 
 hospital at B. in October, 1914 ? He was in 
 depot at Lyons, and to him the Ancient wrote, 
 asking him to do a very difficult thing. 
 
 *' I know," he confessed, in asking it, '' how 
 hard it is: to bid a young soldier like you go 
 and seek out this stricken mother, to whom you 
 are a stranger, and speak to her in her terrible 
 anguish. But, if you would do that great act 
 of charity, I am sure it would comfort her as 
 nothing else might : just because you are, like her 
 son, young and a soldier." 
 
 The Ancient was sure he would go : there was 
 something chivalrous and fine in his character 
 (is it not in the character of every French 
 soldier ? ) that would draw him to the side of the 
 lonely mother: the Ancient could picture his 
 manly, respectful, sympathy, and deep rever- 
 ence. He did go: and the mother wrote of his 
 visit with a noble appreciation and wonderful 
 depth of gratitude. As for him, his letter was 
 like one written by a man who has just come out 
 of a holy place.
 
 280 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 Should any French men or women ever read 
 these papers the writer of them hopes that, with 
 the singular sure instinct of their race, they will 
 find in them a very humble, but very reverent, 
 act of love and veneration for the great heart of 
 the French people.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 FINIS 
 
 For tlie last time those patient and kindly people 
 who have been his readers for nearly two years 
 foregather with the Ancient, and to him the 
 parting is grievous. As the papers themselves 
 tell of many a friend made by the war's way- 
 side, so have other friends been made by him in 
 the telling : those wayside friends were, in many 
 an instance, seen but once, though for ever to be 
 remembered; these latter friends have never 
 been seen at all, but from home, from beloved 
 France, from America — Northern and Latin — 
 they have written, often with that special 
 Avarmth of generous intimacy that even shy 
 people find possible when addressing one whom 
 they will not count a stranger but whom they 
 feel sure of never meeting except in his printed 
 page. 
 
 The thought of meeting them again in that 
 fashion has given to the writing of the later of 
 these papers a peculiar pleasure ; and the thought 
 
 281
 
 282 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 of so meeting them no more comes to the writer 
 as reluctantly as that of any other parting. 
 Besides, the closing of the series seems like a 
 second and more final farewell to those other 
 friends of which the papers themselves describe 
 (very hurriedly) the welcome arrival. 
 
 Very soon these loosely strung leaves will be 
 clipped together in a book, and no book of the 
 writer's ever took so long in the making as this 
 one will have done: so that much more has 
 happened during the writing of its pages than 
 ever was the case in the instance of any other 
 book of his — and one thing in especial, a thing 
 dreaded through all his life, a thing that must 
 make whatever may remain to him of life wholly 
 different from the long years before. For his 
 first remembered impression of life was the reali- 
 zation that he was his mother's son, and almost 
 the next his realization of the terror lest he 
 should lose her. The dread of that loss re- 
 mained ever afterwards the only real dread of 
 his life : no sorrow, no misfortune, threatened or 
 fallen, seemed to affect the substance of happi- 
 ness so long as that supreme calamity was 
 spared. For fifty-eight years it was spared, and 
 for that immense reprieve he can but cry his 
 thanks to Divine patience. That the calamity 
 fell upon his life during the writing of these
 
 FINIS 283 
 
 pages must make this, to him, a different sort of 
 book from any that he has written, must make 
 of the whole book a lingering farewell. 
 
 I trust no critics will turn to this particular 
 page: it is not for their reading, but a private 
 message to those gentle, kindly, patient readers 
 of whom I have spoken above. And they, I 
 think, will make excuse if this last chapter is 
 one, not so much of added episode as of retro- 
 spect — long, wistful, backward glances, over 
 travelled ground 
 
 Our unit mobilized in Dublin, its rendezvous a 
 sunny plat of ground in Phoenix Park hard by 
 the Chief Secretary's Lodge: the sight of that 
 house filled the Ancient's breast with regrets 
 that the irresistable author of Obiter Dicta and 
 Res JudicatcE should ever have left his native, 
 sunny fields of letters for the sour, storm-bound, 
 thankless exile of politics and state-craft. 
 
 But to no regrets was the (still unchristened) 
 Ancient left long a prey: by a happy accident 
 his presence became known, within an hour or 
 two of his arrival, to the Jesuits of Gardiner 
 Street, and forthwith was he snatched up and 
 clutched close in the warm arms of their hospi- 
 tality. Is anything on earth more hospitable 
 than an Irishman 1 Is there anything like the 
 hospitality of Jesuits ? And the combination o:^
 
 284 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 Irishman and Jesuit produced a result that 
 leaves in the mind of the petted Ancient an 
 unforgettable picture. Is not the essence of 
 hospitality the giving of the impression of wel- 
 come ? And that impression was imprinted, 
 deep and indelible, on every moment of those 
 six and thirty hours. Yes, there is another 
 priceless ingredient in the most treasured hos- 
 pitality — when it carries the conviction not only 
 of welcome but of affection. And the Ancient, 
 old and battered, was made in every moment 
 to feel (by men born when he was a grown lad) 
 like a beloved younger brother being equipped 
 for war by the tenderness of loving kindred. All 
 showed this: but by none was it shown more 
 touchingly than by the Provencial — who seemed 
 a fascinating youth to his guest — and by one 
 young Father who has now for very long been 
 himself a chaplain in the foremost of the front. 
 It was only on the morning of departure that 
 the Ancient, at his first meal in camp, met all 
 his brother-officers together. They were all 
 strangers and unknown to him then, and on 
 that occasion they did not say very much to 
 him : each perhaps was thinking of his own home 
 and friends from whom he had just parted. 
 Of the Ancient they had already said, as they 
 confessed afterwards, **How can that old man
 
 FINIS 285 
 
 be expected to stand it ? Has the War Office 
 ever seen liim 1 ' ' 
 
 The park, as we left it in the shining August 
 morning, seemed oddly, touchingly lovely: and 
 the Ancient looked his last of it with many a 
 thought of a dear and dead, very gracious, kins- 
 woman whose guest he had been there in the 
 unvexed days of peace that seemed already 
 historic and classic. 
 
 Going down to our somewhat distant place of 
 embarkation, on the opposite side of the city, 
 all along its quays and streets, we made a long 
 and pretty slow procession. People crowded to 
 watch us go, and endless were the salutes and 
 blessings they gave the Ancient as they caught 
 sight of him. *' God bless you. Father dear, 
 and bring you safe home." May God bless 
 them, and bring them also peace. 
 
 It was a long business embarking, but done at 
 last. Then sirens squealed uncouth farewells, 
 a band or a bit of a band played, soldiers cheered, 
 women waved and wept, and turned to their 
 fathers' arms, or bent to dry their children's 
 eyes, their own streaming ; some struck up AuJd 
 Lang Syne, and sang as much of it as they knew 
 by heart, and our ship slowly moved out into 
 the water-way, and with ever gathering purpose 
 and speed turned seawards and away.
 
 286 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 The bay of Dublin! Howth and Ireland ^s 
 Eye, the Wicklow mountains, and the Dublin 
 mountains ; would one ever see them again ? 
 All the Irish half of me yearned to it all — of 
 what nation on earth am I ? Two Irish grand- 
 parents, one English, one Welsh: and priceless, 
 countless French friends, and surely one's 
 friendships have something to say to one's na- 
 tionality as well as one's kinships. 
 
 That setting sail brought back ever so vividly 
 three sailings for India when the Ancient was 
 beginning his army life, when so much the 
 biggest half of life lay still in front: Were we 
 going to India now ? No one knew; the Cap- 
 tain's orders were sealed and were not opened 
 yet: some said we were: some said Belgium, 
 some France ; it was all guessing. Anyway, we 
 turned south and east, and into the west Ire- 
 land and the August day sank together. Our 
 unit was an Irish one, and a large proportion 
 of the men were Catholics — only one of the 
 officers. Next morning the Ancient was allowed 
 to get his men together and speak to them; of 
 what lay before them, and what it behoved 
 them to do. For almost all the rest of the 
 voyage they were coming to him, in his cabin, 
 to confession. I think they all came. 
 We sailed on Tuesday evening: on Thursday
 
 FINIS 287 
 
 morning we were turning into Havre, the French 
 folk on the quays watching our arrival in this 
 new role with a grave appreciation. The com- 
 ing of British troops to France had not always 
 been exactly the arrival of brothers. 
 
 It was not till late evening that we reached 
 our rest-camp outside Havre. We stayed there 
 two nights, and on Saturday entrained for — we 
 knew not where. On Sunday we detrained at 
 Valenciennes and marched to Jenlain: before 
 midday on Monday we were at La Rosiere by 
 Mons: and so we were '' at the war" as our 
 French friends called it. 
 
 The first cold douche was the order to retire 
 from La Rosiere. "With more than one way- 
 side halt we came at half -past six in the evening 
 to Villerspol, and thought to bivouac there for 
 the night in an orchard of crowded trees. But 
 about nine there came the sudden order to be off, 
 and there was no camp that night: through the 
 moonless dark, and dust, and thunderous heat, 
 we marched; and finally, long after midnight, 
 were told to rest in our tracks by the roadside — 
 near Villereau. About four a.m. we were off 
 again, and twelve hours later came to our halt 
 near Troisville. Our first batch of wounded, 
 fifty-five I think, came in that evening. 
 
 About four next morning we were off again,
 
 288 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 but hardly any distance, first to Reumont, then 
 Bertry, then Maurois, where we opened a dress- 
 ing-station, and wounded were brought in im- 
 mediately. These three villages were all by Le 
 Cateau and that battle was being fought. Half 
 an hour after noon came the second cold douche 
 — our abrupt flight thence: and so, for many 
 days, the great Retreat. 
 
 During a halt of several hours, on that first 
 night, more wounded came in, and the horrible 
 rain came with them: our camp was a bogged 
 stubble-field. 
 
 By eight o'clock next morning we were in St. 
 Quentin, where our wounded were ' ' evacuated, ' ' 
 handed over to a Clearing Hospital. By nine 
 or so we were off again : in the afternoon, I think, 
 the Germans arrived. 
 
 By Ozeley we came to Cugny, and at six next 
 morning were off once more, reaching Noyon 
 before noon. The Ancient had leave to stay 
 behind for an hour, and so was able to see that 
 glorious Cathedral, like some huge stone caravel, 
 drifted down from the middle ages and moored 
 to this ; a stately ship of memories in a by- water 
 of time, dozing in the dreamy yellow light. 
 Once back from the main streets, full enough 
 of troops, all the pleasant prosperous little city 
 ^eemed asleep in peace. In a few hours the
 
 FINIS 289 
 
 Germans came to wake it, and have stayed 
 on. 
 
 Over the Oise bridge tlie Ancient hurried after 
 his unit, and got a lift. On a gun-carriage that 
 had no gun a not very young officer was huddled, 
 trying not to sleep (for seventy-six hours, I 
 think he said, he had had no sleep), and he was 
 trying to hold the bridle of his horse that came 
 stumbling after him, also trying not to sleep. 
 Which looked weariest I 
 
 The officer opened heavy eyes, smiled at the 
 dusty Ancient, and patted the place beside him : 
 and fell asleep again. So the Ancient scrambled 
 up, and took the horse's bridle, and his host 
 lurched against him, and found a pillow on his 
 shoulder. 
 
 Not far over the bridge, beyond Pontoise 
 village, was the unit, camped in a field by the 
 flat road; behind were scrubby plantations, to 
 the right a wood. A pleasant place ; and pleasant 
 things happened there — the first bath, and the 
 first letters. Only a fortnight without any 
 word from home, and it seemed a generation. 
 At six on Saturday evening began a four-mile 
 march (that lasted five hours) to Charlespont. 
 Then, three hours' sleep at the top of the ditch 
 by the roadside, and at half -past two off again. 
 It was Sunday, but our march did not end at
 
 290 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 Coutroy till it was too late for Mass: however, 
 we had a service in the village church, whence 
 the Cure had gone to serve in the war. That 
 was the first of many times that we used a 
 French church, and very homely it seemed: no 
 Catholic is ever a foreigner or ** abroad" within 
 the walls of one of his own churches. 
 
 In a lovely morning very early we left Coutroy 
 village, and had a long march through splendid 
 country, often like a vast park. Close by 
 the exquisite, and exquisitely placed, fortress- 
 palace of Pierrefonds we passed, shining like a 
 Gargantuan pearl flung among emerald folds of 
 forest and billowing field. Not a month before, 
 the Ancient had been the guest of the Imperial 
 lady who takes her travelling-title from it, and 
 had listened to her wonderful talk. In the late 
 afternoon we came to Crepy en Valois, marched 
 through it, and camped in a field by the high 
 road. 
 
 The Germans were following close, and next 
 morning betimes we were for the road again. 
 Through Nanteuil we came to Ognes, and 
 camped on a breezy upland stubble, sloping 
 down to green clumps of plantation. Before 
 five next morning we were on the road to Montge, 
 and ended our march before afternoon. 
 
 The evening of the following day brought us
 
 FINIS 291 
 
 to Montpichet, where we had another cold 
 douche — the news from Paris that the Govern- 
 ment of the Republic had fled to Bordeaux. 
 Was it 1840 over again ? In 180 the French 
 Government had not at first taken so far a flight. 
 Was not this a more fateful omen I 
 
 From Montpichet we continued our retreat 
 through Tournau, marching all night, to the 
 Chateau de Monceaux, where we arrived in the 
 early morning. It lies hard by the villages of 
 Liverdy and Cagny: coming out of the church 
 of the latter the Ancient found himself face to 
 face with a friend and neighbor, an officer of 
 artillery; and they sat among the tombs and 
 compared notes. 
 
 *' What division are you in ?" 
 
 '* Were jou at Le Gateau I What was it 
 like V 
 
 We were ordered out of Monceaux at five next 
 morning: but — oh, joy ! not onwards: 'bout 
 turn: the Retreat was over. The rest of our 
 marches had the Germans in front. 
 
 They were wonderful days those of our re- 
 treat: of breathless interest, and, after the 
 very first hour or two, singularly cheerful, in 
 spite of all the douches. The men were always 
 cheerful, unquestioning, confident. It was a big 
 strategic movement— perhaps a decoy: they
 
 292 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 didn't know. Anyway, it was all right; and the 
 marches were packed with interest: the road al- 
 ways worth seeing. The troops of the Retreat 
 saw much more of France than those who came 
 afterwards, and our men like to be moving and 
 seeing things. 
 
 Of course we saw no papers : we had no news : 
 our talk was all inter-unit: we never knew what 
 other Army Corps, other Divisions, even other 
 Brigades, were doing. Some of us never knew 
 what we were doing ourselves : never knew where 
 we were marching, or, very clearly, in what di- 
 rection. The maps some of us had were section- 
 al, and showed only the day's march, or less. 
 When we were nearest Paris some of us hardly 
 knew we were near it at all : thousands of us, I 
 suspect, had no idea that the Germans were fol- 
 lowing hot-foot on our rear: most, so far as 
 numbers went, had no notion, as I believe, that 
 we were being pushed. 
 
 But when the turn came we soon learned that 
 "we had turned: every hour brought us on new 
 traces of the enemy, who had been where we 
 how were, and was gone. We heard of him in 
 every village, and saw mementoes of his passage 
 everjrwhere. He was close in front: had been 
 here yesterday, last night, this morning. We 
 had not re-taken the old road. We had come all
 
 FINIS 293 
 
 the long way from Mont and Belgium: it was 
 to the Marne we were hastening. Before we 
 reached Saacy, and crossed it, we began to have 
 German soldiers among our wounded: soon we 
 began to see German dead lying on the ditch- 
 heads, and among the underwood, by the road- 
 side. Before we crossed the Marne, I say, at 
 Saacy and Mery, when we went out at night (as 
 as Charmesneuil) wounded-hunting, we found 
 German soldiers, dead, dying, stricken: half- 
 afraid, as it seemed to me, these living, to be 
 found. 
 
 We saw large batches of German prisoners, 
 unwounded. Our low-tide was passed. 
 
 Then came the Marne, and its counter-tide: 
 which was in fact the first announcement of the 
 ultimate decision of the war. But, during the 
 actual battle, did we who were in it understand 
 it and its final significance ? Certainly one of 
 us did not. That the complexion of the war's 
 harsh face was changed, that we knew. That 
 Paris was saved we knew very soon. That this 
 time the sang impur was not to stain the breast 
 of Lutetia herself. 
 
 The Germans in front must now be moving in 
 hot haste: they left other things than wounded 
 behind in the ditches and fields, quantities of 
 arms and equipment, waggons full of clothing.
 
 294 FRENCH WINDOWS 
 
 blankets, food, and boots. Odd things some of 
 them had made off with, and now abandoned — 
 among others the Ancient saw a bulky, highly 
 nnportable, standing stereoscope fitted with 
 hundreds of beautiful slides on ground-glass, 
 arranged on an "endless band ": it was strange 
 to look through the twin eye-holes and see Ro- 
 man streets and churches, St. Peter's, the Forum, 
 the Palatine; Tivoli and the temple of Vesta; 
 Naples and the Toledo ; Marseilles and the Can- 
 nebiere; Mont Cervin and Mont Blanc; Coppet 
 and Mme. de Stael's Villa — a hundred well-re- 
 membered places. Somebody meant it for the 
 pride (and shame) of a Teuton home, and some- 
 body had had a slip ' ' twixt cup and lip. ' ' 
 
 Among other things there were scores and 
 scores of pale, sallow blue great-coats, and some 
 of them one of us gave to our German prisoners 
 to wrap themselves Avithal against the cold rain. 
 
 By Courcelles and Gandeloup we came to 
 Chezy-en-Ormois : next day, through savage rain, 
 to Billy -en-Orques, which the enemy had hur- 
 ried through a few hours earlier. On the mor- 
 row by St. Remy and Hartennes to Chacrise — 
 and now the Aisne region was reached, and the 
 long Aisne battle begun. From Chacrise, to 
 Serches: close to, but hidden from, the Aisne. 
 For a fortnight, on the plateau called Monte de
 
 FINIS 295 
 
 Soissons. The fortnight seemed an autumn: 
 and it seemed as if we were to be always there : 
 but quite suddenly we were for the road again. 
 And there came the third period of daily march- 
 ings — only they were nightly. Every night we 
 marched ; through tall and eerie forests, through 
 mist, through thick moonless darkness, through 
 exquisite moonlit midnights, through nights of 
 clear cold and frost and stars. By day we rested 
 and kept cover : and cross-ways the French were 
 moving to take our place upon the Aisne; we 
 were hastening with 
 
 "... unperturbed chase. 
 Deliberate speed, majestic instancy " 
 
 north ; to stand in the way of the Gates of Calais. 
 No fear of confusing the memories of those 
 marches with the first: all was different. The 
 first hang always in a harvest-glow of cloudless 
 heat, dust, brazen light. The last in a strange 
 night-silence, mist-wrapped, or in a cold splen- 
 dour of frost and moon : thus ; Mont de Soissons 
 to Droizy, a short march, through fields of 
 frozen fog. Droizy to Longpoint — arriving with 
 a sort of stage moon silvering an enormous pile 
 of stage ruins, too splendid to seem true. Long- 
 pont to Lieu Eestaure, and another abby, not 
 at all restaurs. To Bethisy St. Martin. To Le
 
 296 FEENCH WINDOWS 
 
 Meux; and there entrained. A long night of 
 horrible cold in a train unwarmed, with broken 
 windows, and relentless frost outside. At Pont 
 Remy detrained, and day-marches resumed, 
 plenty of them, enough to see us into French 
 Flanders, and over the frontier into Flanders 
 of Belgium. And so winter, and the ending of 
 that first stage of the war. 
 
 It would take a book to describe that first 
 stage in its mere itinerary, without expanding 
 into episode — such wayside episodes as make 
 this book up. Books have been already written 
 about it; but mostly, I suppose, real war-books, 
 by men qualified to write such ; this one, as was 
 said long ago at its outset, makes no claim to be 
 of that sort. It sets down little things, leaving 
 the big things to other writers able to treat of 
 them: its appeal is not to the war-student, but 
 to simple folk like the writer, who may care to 
 hear of other simple folk who came his way, met 
 him, and passed on, on the high-way of the war 
 — with whom, living or dead, be Peace. 
 
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