If A 
 
. 
 
THE MARNE 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 BY 
 
 EDITH WHARTON 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 "THE REEF," "SUMMER," "THE HOUSE OF MIRTH" 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 1918 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY 
 THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
TO THE MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 CAPTAIN RONALD SIMMONS, A.E.F. 
 WHO DIED FOR FRANCE 
 
 AUGUST 12, 1918. 
 
 388132 
 
THE MARNE 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 EVER since the age of six Troy Bel- 
 knap of New York had embarked for 
 Europe every June on the fastest steamer 
 of one of the most expensive lines. 
 
 With his family he had descended at 
 the dock from a large noiseless motor, 
 had kissed his father good-bye, turned 
 back to shake hands with the chauffeur 
 (a particular friend), and trotted up the 
 gang-plank behind his mother s maid, 
 while one welcoming steward captured 
 Mrs. Belknap s bag and another led 
 away her miniature French bull-dog 
 also a particular friend of Troy s. 
 
 From that hour all had been delight. 
 For six golden days Troy had ranged the 
 decks, splashed in the blue salt water 
 
HE MARNE 
 
 brimming his huge porcelain tub, lunched 
 and dined with the grown-ups in the Ritz 
 restaurant, and swaggered about in front 
 of the children who had never crossed 
 before and didn t know the stewards, or 
 the purser, or the captain s cat, or on 
 which deck you might exercise your dog, 
 or how to induce the officer on the watch 
 to let you scramble up for a minute to the 
 bridge. Then, when these joys began to 
 pall, he had lost himself in others deeper 
 and dearer. Another of his cronies, the 
 library steward, had unlocked the book 
 case doors for him, and buried for hours 
 in the depths of a huge library armchair 
 W (there weren t any to compare with it 
 on land) he had ranged through the 
 length and breadth of several literatures. 
 These six days of bliss would have 
 been too soon over if they had not been 
 the mere prelude to intenser sensations. 
 On the seventh morning generally at 
 Cherbourg Troy Belknap followed his 
 
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 mother, and his mother s maid, and the 
 French bull, up the gang-plank and into 
 another large noiseless motor, with an 
 other chauffeur (French this one) to 
 whom he was also deeply attached, and 
 who sat grinning and cap-touching at the 
 wheel. And then in a few minutes, so 
 swiftly and smilingly was the way of Mrs. 
 Belknap smoothed the noiseless motor 
 was off, and they were rushing eastward 
 through the orchards of Normandy. 
 
 The little boy s happiness would have 
 been complete if there had been more 
 time to give to the beautiful things that 
 flew past them; thatched villages with 
 square-towered churches in hollows of the 
 deep green country, or grey shining towns 
 above rivers on which cathedrals seemed 
 to be moored like ships ; miles and miles 
 of field and hedge and park falling away 
 from high terraced houses, and little em 
 broidered stone manors reflected in reed- 
 grown moats under ancient trees. 
 
 [3] 
 
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 Unfortunately Mrs. Belknap always 
 had pressing engagements in Paris. She 
 had made appointments beforehand with 
 all her dressmakers, and, as Troy was 
 well aware, it was impossible, at the 
 height of the season, to break such en 
 gagements without losing one s turn, and 
 having to wait weeks and weeks to get a 
 lot of nasty rags that one had seen, by 
 that time, on the back of every other 
 woman in the place. 
 
 Luckily, however, even Mrs. Belknap 
 had to eat; and during the halts in the 
 shining towns, where a succulent lunch 
 eon was served in a garden or a flowery 
 court-yard, Troy had time (as he grew 
 bigger) to slip away alone, and climb to 
 the height where the cathedral stood, or 
 at least to loiter and gaze in the narrow 
 crooked streets, between gabled cross- 
 beamed houses, each more picture-book- 
 ishly quaint than its neighbours. 
 
 In Paris, in their brightly-lit and be- 
 
 [4] 
 
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 flowered hotel drawing-room, he was wel 
 comed by Madame Lebuc, an oJrl French 
 lady smelling of crape, who gave him 
 lessons and took him and the bull-dog 
 for walks, and who, as he grew older, 
 was supplemented, and then replaced, by 
 an ugly vehement young tutor, of half- 
 English descent, whose companionship 
 opened fresh fields and pastures to Troy s 
 dawning imagination. 
 
 Then in July always at the same date 
 Mr. Belknap was deposited at the 
 door by the noiseless motor, which had 
 been down to Havre to fetch him; and 
 a few days later they all got into it, and 
 while Madame Lebuc (pressing a packet 
 of chocolates into her pupil s hand) 
 waved a damp farewell from the door 
 way, the Pegasus motor flew up the 
 Champs Elysees, devoured the leafy 
 alleys of the Bois, and soared away to 
 new horizons. 
 
 Most often they were mountain hori- 
 
 [5] 
 
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 zons, for the tour invariably ended in 
 the Swiss Alps. But there always seemed 
 to be new ways (looked out by Mr. Bel- 
 knap on the map) of reaching their 
 destination; ways lovelier, more winding, 
 more wonderful, that took in vast sweep 
 ing visions of France from the Seine to 
 the Rhone. And when Troy grew older 
 the vehement young tutor went with 
 them; and once they all stopped and 
 lunched at his father s house, on the edge 
 of a gabled village in the Argonne, with 
 a view stretching away for miles toward 
 the Vosges and Alsace. Mr. and Mrs. 
 Belknap were very kind people, and it 
 would never have occurred to them to 
 refuse M. Gantier s invitation to lunch 
 with his family; but they had no idea of 
 the emotions stirred in their son s eager 
 bosom by what seemed to them merely 
 a rather inconvenient deviation from 
 their course. Troy himself was hardly 
 aware of these emotions at the time, 
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 though his hungry interest in life always 
 made him welcome the least deflection 
 from the expected. He had simply 
 thought what kind jolly people the 
 Gantiers were, and what fun it was to 
 be inside one of the quaint stone houses, 
 with small window-panes looking on old 
 box-gardens that he was always being 
 whisked past in the motor. But later he 
 was to re-live that day in all its homely 
 details. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THEY were at St. Moritz as usual. 
 He and M. Gantier had been for a tramp 
 through the Val Suvretta, and, com 
 ing home late, were rushing into their 
 evening clothes to join Mr. and Mrs. 
 Belknap at dinner (as they did now reg 
 ularly, Troy having reached the virile 
 age of fifteen, and having to justify 
 the possession of a smoking-jacket and 
 patent leather shoes) . He was just out of 
 his bath, and smothered in towels, when 
 the tutor opened the door and thrust in 
 a newspaper. 
 
 "There will be war I must leave to 
 
 morrow." 
 
 Troy dropped the towels. 
 
 War! War! War against his beauti 
 ful France! And this young man, his 
 dearest friend and companion, was to be 
 
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 torn from him suddenly, senselessly, torn 
 from their endless talks, their long walks 
 in the mountains, their elaborately 
 planned courses of study archaeology, 
 French literature, mediaeval philosophy, 
 the Divine Comedy, and vistas and vistas 
 beyond to be torn from all this, and to 
 disappear from Troy Belknap s life into 
 the black gulf of this unfathomable thing 
 called War, that seemed suddenly to have 
 escaped out of the history books like a 
 dangerous lunatic escaping from the 
 asylum in which he was supposed to be 
 securely confined ! 
 
 Troy Belknap was stunned. 
 
 He pulled himself together to bid a 
 valiant farewell to M. Gantier (the air 
 was full of the "Marseillaise" and 
 "Sambre-et-Meuse") and everybody 
 knew the Russians would be in Berlin in 
 six weeks; but, once his tutor was gone, 
 the mystery and horror again closed in 
 on him. 
 
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 France, his France, attacked, invaded, 
 outraged and he, a poor helpless Ameri 
 can boy, who adored her, and could do 
 nothing for her not even cry, as a girl 
 might! It was bitter. 
 
 His parents, too, were dreadfully up 
 set; and so were all their friends. But 
 what chiefly troubled them was that they 
 could get no money, no seats in the trains, 
 no assurance that the Swiss frontier 
 would not be closed before they could 
 cross the border. These preoccupations 
 seemed to leave them, for the moment, 
 no time to think about France ; and Troy, 
 during those first days, felt as if he were 
 an infant Winkelried with all the shafts 
 of the world s woe gathered into his in 
 adequate breast. 
 
 For France was his holiday world, the 
 world of his fancy and imagination, a 
 great traceried window opening on the 
 universe. And now, in the hour of her 
 need, all he heard about him was the 
 
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 worried talk of people planning to desert 
 her! 
 
 Safe in Paris, Mr. and Mrs. Belknap 
 regained their balance. Having secured 
 (for a sum that would have fitted up 
 an ambulance) their passages on a 
 steamer sailing from England, they could 
 at length look about them, feel sorry, 
 and subscribe to all the budding war 
 charities. They even remembered poor 
 Madame Lebuc, stranded by the flight of 
 all her pupils, and found a job for her 
 in a refugee bureau. 
 
 Then, just as they were about to sail, 
 Mrs. Belknap had a touch of pneumonia, 
 and was obliged to postpone her depart 
 ure; while Mr. Belknap, jamming his 
 possessions into a single suit case, dashed 
 down to Spain to take ship at Malaga. 
 The turn affairs were taking made it ad 
 visable for him to get back as quickly as 
 possible, and his wife and son were to 
 follow from England in a month. 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 All the while there came no news of 
 M. Gantier. He had rejoined his depot 
 at once, and Troy had had a post-card 
 from him, dated the sixth of August, and 
 saying that he was leaving for the front. 
 After that, silence. 
 
 Troy, poring over the morning papers, 
 and slipping out alone to watch for the 
 noon communiques in the windows of the 
 Paris Herald, read of the rash French 
 advance in Alsace, and the enemy s re 
 taliatory descent on the region the Bel- 
 knaps had so often sped over. And one 
 day, among the names of the ruined 
 villages, he lit on that of the little town 
 where they had all lunched with the 
 Gantiers. He saw the box-garden with 
 the hornbeam arbour where they had 
 gone to drink coffee, old M. Gantier cere 
 moniously leading the way with Mrs. 
 Belknap; he saw Mme. Gantier, lame 
 and stout, hobbling after with Mr. Bel- 
 knap ; a little old aunt with bobbing curls; 
 
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 the round-faced Gantier girl, shy and 
 rosy; an incredibly dried and smoked and 
 aged grandfather, with Voltairean eyes 
 and sly snuff-taking gestures; and his 
 own friend, the eldest of the four broth 
 ers. He saw all these modest beaming 
 people grouped about Mme. Gander s 
 coffee, and Papa Gander s best bottle of 
 "Fine"; he smelt the lime-blossoms and 
 box, he heard the bees in the lavender, 
 he looked out on the rich fields and 
 woods and the blue hills bathed in sum 
 mer light. And he read: "Not a house 
 is standing. The cure has been shot. A 
 number of old people were burnt in the 
 hospice. The mayor and five of the 
 principal inhabitants have been taken to 
 Germany as hostages." 
 
 The year before the war, he remem 
 bered, old M. Gantier was mayor! 
 
 He wrote and wrote, after that, to his 
 tutor; wrote to his depot, to his Paris 
 address, to the ruin , that had been his 
 
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 home; but had no answer. And finally, 
 amid the crowding horrors of that dread 
 August, he forgot even M. Gantier, and 
 M. Gander s family, forgot everything 
 but the spectacle of the allied armies 
 swept back from Liege, from Charleroi, 
 from Mons, from Laon, and the hosts 
 of evil surging nearer and ever nearer to 
 the heart of France. 
 
 His father, with whom he might have 
 talked, was gone; and Troy could not 
 talk to his mother. Not that Mrs. Bel- 
 knap was not kind and full of sympathy: 
 as fast as the bank at home cabled funds 
 she poured them out for war-charities. 
 But most of her time was spent in agi 
 tated conference with her compatriots, 
 and Troy could not bear to listen to their 
 endlessly reiterated tales of flight from 
 Nauheim or Baden or Brussels, their 
 difficulties in drawing money, hiring 
 motors, bribing hotel-porters, battling for 
 seats in trains, recovering lost luggage, 
 
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 cabling for funds, and their general 
 tendency to regard the war as a mere 
 background to their personal grievances. 
 
 u You were exceedingly rude to Mrs. 
 Sampson, Troy," his mother said to him, 
 surprised one day by an explosion of tem 
 per. "It is natural she should be nervous 
 at not being able to get staterooms; and 
 she had just given me five hundred dol 
 lars for the American Ambulance." 
 
 "Giving money s no use," the boy 
 growled, obscurely irritated; and when 
 Mrs. Belknap exclaimed: "Why, Troy, 
 how callous with all this suffering!" he 
 slunk out without answering, and went 
 downstairs to lie in wait for the evening 
 papers. 
 
 The misery of feeling himself a big 
 boy, long-limbed, strong-limbed, old 
 enough for evening clothes, champagne, 
 the classics, biology and views on interna 
 tional politics, and yet able to do nothing 
 but hang about marble hotels and pore 
 
 [15] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 over newspapers, while rank on rank, and 
 regiment on regiment, the youth of 
 France and England swung through the 
 dazed streets and packed the endless 
 trains the misery of this was so great to 
 Troy that he became, as the days dragged 
 on, more than ever what his mother 
 called "callous," sullen, humiliated, re 
 sentful at being associated with all the 
 rich Americans flying from France. 
 
 At last the turn of the Belknaps came 
 too ; but, as they were preparing to start, 
 news came that the German army was 
 at Lille, and civilian travel to England in 
 terrupted. 
 
 It was the fateful week, and every 
 name in the bulletins Amiens, Com- 
 piegne, Rheims, Meaux, Senlis evoked 
 in Troy Belknap s tortured imagination 
 visions of ancient beauty and stability. 
 He had done that bit of France alone 
 with M. Gantier the year before, while 
 Mrs. Belknap waited in Paris for be- 
 
 [16] 
 
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 lated clothes; and the thought of the 
 great stretch of desolation spreading and 
 spreading like a leprosy over a land so 
 full of the poetry of the past, and so rich 
 in a happy prosperous present, was 
 added to the crueller vision of the tragic 
 and magnificent armies that had failed to 
 defend it. 
 
 Troy, as soon as he was reassured 
 about his mother s health, had secretly 
 rejoiced at the accident which had kept 
 them in France. But now his joy was 
 turned to bitterness. Mrs. Belknap, in 
 her horrified surprise at seeing her plans 
 again obstructed, lost all sense of the 
 impending calamity except as it affected 
 her safety and Troy s, and joined in the 
 indignant chorus of compatriots stranded 
 in Paris, and obscurely convinced that 
 France ought to have seen them safely 
 home before turning her attention to the 
 invader. 
 
 "Of course I don t pretend to be a 
 
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THE MARNE 
 
 strategist," whimpering or wrathful 
 ladies used to declare, their jewel-boxes 
 clutched in one hand, their passports in 
 the other, "but one can t help feeling that 
 if only the French government had told 
 our Ambassador in time trains might 
 have been provided ..." 
 
 "Or why couldn t Germany have let 
 our government know? After all, 
 Germany has no grievance against 
 America . . ." 
 
 "And we ve really spent enough 
 money in Europe for some consideration 
 to be shown us . . . " the woeful chorus 
 went on. 
 
 The choristers were all good and 
 kindly persons, shaken out of the rut of 
 right feeling by the first real fright of 
 their lives. But Troy was too young to 
 understand this, and to foresee that, once 
 in safety, they would become the passion 
 ate advocates of France, all the more 
 fervent in their championship because of 
 
 [18] 
 
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 their reluctant participation in her peril. 
 ("What did I do? Why, I just simply 
 stayed in Paris. . . Not to run away 
 was the only thing one could do to show 
 one s sympathy," he heard one of the 
 passport-clutchers declare, a year later, in 
 a New York drawing-room.) 
 
 Troy, from the height of his youthful 
 indignation, regarded them all as heart 
 less egoists, and fled away into the streets 
 from the sound of their lamentations. 
 
 But in the streets was fresh food for 
 misery; for every day the once empty 
 vistas were filled with trains of farm- 
 wagons, drawn by slow country horses, 
 and heaped with furniture and household 
 utensils; and beside the carts walked 
 lines of haggard people, old men and 
 women with vacant faces, mothers hug 
 ging hungry babies, and children limping 
 after them with heavy bundles. The 
 fugitives of the Marne were pouring into 
 Paris. 
 
 [19] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 Troy dashed into the nearest shops, 
 bought them cakes and fruit, followed 
 them to the big hippodrome where they 
 were engulphed in the dusty arena, and 
 finally, in despair at his inability to do 
 more than gape and pity, tried to avoid 
 the streets they followed on their way 
 into Paris from St. Denis and Vin- 
 cennes. 
 
 Then one day, in the sunny desert of 
 the Place de la Concorde, he came on a 
 more cheering sight. A motley band of 
 civilians, young, middle-aged and even 
 gray-headed, were shambling along to 
 gether, badged and beribboned, in the 
 direction of the Invalides; and above 
 them floated the American flag. Troy 
 flew after it, and caught up with the last 
 marchers. 
 
 "Where are we going? . . . Foreign 
 Legion," an olive-faced "dago" answered 
 joyously in broken American. "All 
 
 [20] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 nited States citizens. . . Come and join 
 up, sonnie . . ." And for one mad 
 moment Troy thought of risking the 
 adventure. 
 
 But he was too visibly only a school-boy 
 still; and with tears of envy in his smart 
 ing eyes he stood, small and useless, on 
 the pavement, and watched the heteroge 
 neous band under the beloved flag disap 
 pearing in the doorway of the registration 
 office. 
 
 When he got back to his mother s 
 drawing-room the tea-table was still sur 
 rounded, and a lady was saying: "I ve 
 offered anything for a special train, but 
 they won t listen ..." and another, in 
 a stricken whisper: "If they do come, 
 what do you mean to do about your 
 pearls?" 
 
 [21] 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THEN came the Marne, and suddenly 
 the foreigners caught in Paris by the 
 German advance became heroes or 
 mostly heroines who had stayed there 
 to reassure their beloved city in her hour 
 of need. 
 
 "We all owe so much to Paris," mur 
 mured Mrs. Belknap, in lovely conva 
 lescent clothes, from her sofa-corner. 
 "I m sure we can none of us ever cease 
 to be thankful for this chance of show 
 ing it . . ." 
 
 She had sold her staterooms to a com 
 patriot who happened to be in England, 
 and was now cabling home to suggest to 
 Mr. Belknap that she should spend the 
 winter in France and take a job on a war 
 charity. She was not strong enough for 
 nursing, but she thought it would be de- 
 
 [22] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 lightful to take convalescent officers for 
 drives in the Bois in the noiseless motor. 
 "Troy would love it too," she cabled. 
 
 Mr. Belknap, however, was unmoved 
 by these arguments. "Future too doubt 
 ful," he cabled back. "Insist on your 
 sailing. Staterooms November tenth 
 paid for. Troy must return to school." 
 
 "Future too doubtful" impressed Mrs. 
 Belknap more than "Insist," though she 
 made a larger use of the latter word in 
 explaining to her friends why, after all, 
 she was obliged to give up her projected 
 war-work. Meanwhile, having quite re 
 covered, she rose from her cushions, 
 donned a nurse s garb, poured tea once 
 or twice at a fashionable hospital, and, 
 on the strength of this effort, obtained 
 permission to carry supplies (in her own 
 motor) to the devastated regions. 
 
 Troy, of course, went with her, and 
 thus had his first glimpse of war. 
 
 Fresh in his mind was a delicious July 
 
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 day at Rheims with his tutor, and the 
 memory of every detail noted on the way, 
 along the green windings of the Marne, 
 by Meaux, Montmirail and Epernay. 
 Now, traversing the same towns, he 
 seemed to be looking into murdered 
 faces, vacant and stony. Where he had 
 seen the sociable gossipping life of the 
 narrow streets, young men lounging at 
 the blacksmith s, blue-sleeved carters sit 
 ting in the wine-shops while their horses 
 shook off the flies in the hot sunshine of 
 the village square, black-pinafored chil 
 dren coming home from school, the fat 
 cure stopping to talk to little old ladies 
 under the church porch, girls with sleek 
 hair calling to each other from the door 
 ways of the shops, and women in sun 
 burnt gingham bending over the village 
 wash-trough, or leaning on their rakes 
 among the hayricks where all this had 
 been, now only a few incalculably old 
 people sat in the doorways and looked 
 
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 with bewildered eyes at strange soldiers 
 fulfilling the familiar tasks. 
 
 This was what war did! It emptied 
 towns of their inhabitants as it emptied 
 veins of their blood; it killed houses and 
 lands as well as men. Out there, a few 
 miles beyond the sunny vineyards and the 
 low hills, men were dying at that very 
 moment by hundreds, by thousands and 
 their motionless young bodies must have 
 the same unnatural look as these wan 
 ruins, these gutted houses and sterile 
 fields. . . War meant Death, Death, 
 Death Death everywhere, and to every 
 thing. 
 
 By a special favour, the staff-officer 
 who accompanied them managed to ex 
 tend their trip to the ruined chateau of 
 Mondement, the pivot on which the battle 
 had turned. He had himself been in 
 the thick of the fight, and standing be 
 fore the shattered walls of the old house 
 he explained the struggle for the spur of 
 
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 Mondement: the advance of the gray 
 masses across the plain, their capture of 
 the ridge, which was the key to the road 
 to Paris; then the impetuous rush of 
 .General Humbert s infantry, repulsed, 
 returning, repulsed again, and again at 
 tacking; the hand-to-hand fighting in 
 court and gardens; the French infantry s 
 last irresistible dash, the batteries rattling 
 up, getting into place on the ridge, and 
 flinging back the gray battalions from the 
 hillside into the marshes. 
 
 Mrs. Belknap smiled and exclaimed, 
 with vague comments and a wandering 
 eye (for the officer, carried away by his 
 subject, had forgotten her and become 
 technical) ; while Troy, his map spread on 
 the top of a shot-riddled wall, followed 
 every word and gesture with a devouring 
 gaze that absorbed at the same time all 
 the details of the immortal landscape. 
 
 The Marne this was the actual set 
 ting of the battle of the Marne! This 
 happy temperate landscape with its 
 
 [26] 
 
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 sheltering woods, its friendly fields and 
 downs flowing away to a mild sky, had 
 looked on at the most awful conflict in 
 history. Scenes of anguish and heroism 
 that ought to have had some Titanic 
 background of cliff and chasm had un 
 rolled themselves among harmless fields, 
 and along wood-roads where wild straw 
 berries grew, and children cut hazel- 
 switches to drive home their geese. A 
 name of glory and woe was attached to 
 every copse and hollow, and to each gray 
 steeple above the village roofs. 
 
 Troy listened, his heart beating higher 
 at each exploit, till he forgot the horror 
 of war, and thought only of its splen 
 dours. Oh, to have been there too ! To 
 have had even the smallest share in those 
 great hours! To be able to say, as this 
 young man could say: "Yes, I was in 
 the battle of the Marne" ; to be able to 
 break off, and step back a yard or two, 
 correcting one s self critically: "No . . . 
 it was here the General stood when I told 
 
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 him our batteries had got through ..." 
 or: "This is the very spot where the first 
 seventy-five was trained on the valley. I 
 can see the swathes it cut in the Bava 
 rians as they swarmed up at us a third 
 and fourth time . . . " 
 
 Troy suddenly remembered a bit of 
 Henry the Fifth that M. Gantier had 
 been fond of quoting: 
 
 And gentlemen in England now a-bed 
 
 Shall think themselves accursed they were not 
 
 here, 
 And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any 
 
 speaks 
 That fought with us. 
 
 Ah, yes ah, yes to have been in the 
 battle of the Marne ! 
 
 On the way back, below the crest of 
 the hill, the motor stopped at the village 
 church and the officer jumped down. 
 
 "Some of our men are buried here," 
 he said. 
 
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 Mrs. Belknap, with a murmur of sym 
 pathy, caught up the bunch of roses she 
 had gathered in the ravaged garden of 
 the chateau, and they picked their way 
 among the smashed and slanting stones 
 of the cemetery to a corner behind the 
 church where wooden crosses marked a 
 row of fresh graves. Half-faded flowers 
 in bottles were thrust into the loose 
 earth, and a few tin wreaths hung on the 
 arms of the crosses. 
 
 Some of the graves bore only the date 
 of the battle, with "Pour la France" or 
 Triez pour lui," but on others names and 
 numbers had been roughly burnt into the 
 crosses. 
 
 Suddenly Troy stopped short with a 
 cry. 
 
 "What is it?" his mother asked. 
 
 She had walked ahead of him to the 
 parapet overhanging the valley, and for 
 getting her roses she leaned against the 
 
 [29] 
 
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 low cemetery wall while the officer took 
 up his story. 
 
 Troy made no answer. Mrs. Belknap 
 stood with her back to him, and he did 
 not ask her to turn. He did not want 
 her, or anyone else, to read the name he 
 had just read; of a sudden there had 
 been revealed to him the deep secretive- 
 ness of sorrow. But he stole up to her 
 and drew the flowers from her hand 
 while she continued, with vague inat 
 tentive murmurs, to follow the officer s 
 explanations. She took no notice of 
 Troy, and he went back to the grave and 
 laid the roses on it. 
 
 On the cross he had read: "Septem 
 ber 8th, 1914. Paul Gantier, th 
 
 Chasseurs a pied." 
 
 "Oh, poor fellows . . . poor fellows. 
 Yes, that s right, Troy; put the roses on 
 their graves," Mrs. Belknap assented 
 approvingly, as she picked her way back 
 to the motor. 
 
 [30] 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE tenth of November came, and 
 they sailed. 
 
 The week in the steamer was intoler 
 able, not only because they were packed 
 like herrings, and Troy (who had never 
 known discomfort before) had to share 
 his narrow cabin with two young Ger 
 man-Americans full of open brag about 
 the Fatherland; but also because of the 
 same eternally renewed anecdotes among 
 the genuine Americans about the perils 
 and discomforts they had undergone, and 
 the general disturbance of their plans. 
 
 Most of the passengers were in ardent 
 sympathy with the allies, and hung anxi 
 ously on the meagre wirelesses; but a 
 flat-faced professor with lank hair, hav 
 ing announced that "there were two sides 
 
 Arf 
 
 to every case," immediately raised up 
 a following of unnoticed ladies who 
 
 [31] 
 
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 "couldn t believe all that was said of the 
 Germans" and hoped that America would 
 never be "drawn in"; while, even among 
 the right-minded, there subsisted a vague 
 feeling that war was an avoidable thing 
 which one had only to reprobate enough 
 to prevent its recurrence. 
 
 They found New York Mrs. Bel- 
 knap s New York buzzing with war- 
 charities, yet apparently unaware of the 
 war. That at least was Troy s impres 
 sion during the twenty-four hours before 
 he was packed off to school to catch up 
 with his interrupted studies. 
 
 At school he heard the same incessant 
 war-talk, and found the same fundamental 
 unawareness of the meaning of the war. 
 At first the boys were very keen to hear 
 his story, but he described what he had 
 seen so often and especially his haunt 
 ing impressions of the Marne that they 
 named him "Marny Belknap," and finally 
 asked him to cut it out. 
 
 [32] 
 
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 The masters were mostly frankly for 
 the allies, but the Rector had given out 
 that neutrality was the attitude approved 
 by the government, and therefore a 
 patriotic duty; and one Sunday after 
 chapel he gave a little talk to explain 
 why the President thought it right to try 
 to keep his people out of the dreadful 
 struggle. The words duty and respon 
 sibility and fortunate privilege recurred 
 often in this address, and it struck Troy 
 as odd that the lesson of the day hap 
 pened to be the story of the Good 
 Samaritan. 
 
 When he went home for the Christmas 
 holidays everybody was sending toys and 
 sugar-plums to the Belgian war-orphans, 
 with little notes from "Happy American 
 children," requesting to have their gifts 
 acknowledged. 
 
 "It makes us so happy to help," beam 
 ing young women declared with a kind 
 of ghoulish glee, doing up parcels, plan- 
 
 [33] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 ning war-tableaux and chanty dances, 
 rushing to "propaganda" lectures given 
 by handsome French officers, and keeping 
 up a kind of continuous picnic on the ruins 
 of civilization. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Belknap had inevitably 
 been affected by the surrounding atmos 
 phere. 
 
 "The tragedy of it the tragedy 
 no one can tell who hasn t seen it, and 
 been through it," Mrs. Belknap would 
 begin, looking down her long dinner table 
 between the orchids and the candelabra; 
 and the pretty women and prosperous 
 men would interrupt their talk, and listen 
 for a moment, half absently, with spurts 
 of easy indignation that faded out again 
 as they heard the story oftener. 
 
 After all, Mrs. Belknap wasn t the 
 only person who had seen a battlefield! 
 Lots and lots more were pouring home 
 all the time with fresh tales of tragedy: 
 the Marne had become in a way an 
 
 [34] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 old story. People wanted something 
 newer . . . different . . . 
 
 And then, why hadn t Joffre followed 
 up the offensive? The Germans were 
 wonderful soldiers, after all. . . Yes, 
 but such beasts . . . sheer devils. . . 
 Here was Mr. So-and-So, just back from 
 Belgium such horrible stones really 
 unrepeatable ! "Don t you want to come 
 and hear them, my dear? Dine with us 
 tomorrow: he s promised to come unless 
 he s summoned to Washington. But do 
 come anyhow : the Jim Cottages are going 
 to dance after dinner ..." 
 
 In time Mrs. Belknap, finding herself 
 hopelessly outstoried, out-adventured, 
 out-charitied, began insensibly to take a 
 calmer and more distant view of the war. 
 What was the use of trying to keep up 
 her own enthusiasm when that of her 
 audience had flagged? Wherever she 
 went she was sure to meet other ladies 
 who had arrived from France much more 
 
 [35] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 recently, and had done and seen much 
 more than she had. One after another 
 she saw them received with the same 
 eagerness. 
 
 "Of course we all know about the 
 marvellous things you ve been doing in 
 France your wonderful war-work" 
 then, like herself, they were super 
 seded by some later arrival, who had 
 been nearer the front, or had raised 
 more money, or had had an audience of 
 the Queen of the Belgians, or an auto 
 graph letter from Lord Kitchener. Nt> 
 one was listened to for long, and the 
 most eagerly sought-for were like the 
 figures in a moving-picture show, for 
 ever breathlessly whisking past to make 
 way for others. 
 
 Mr. Belknap had always been less elo 
 quent about the war than his wife; but 
 somehow Troy had fancied he felt it 
 more deeply. Gradually, however, he 
 too seemed to accept the situation as a 
 
 [36] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 matter of course, and Troy, coming 
 home for the Easter holidays, found at 
 the family table a large sonorous per 
 sonage a Senator, just back from 
 Europe who, after rolling out vague 
 praises of France and England insidi 
 ously began to hint that it was a pity 
 to see such wasted heroism, such suicidal 
 determination on the part of the allies 
 to resist all offers of peace fron\ an enemy 
 so obviously their superior. 
 
 "She wouldn t be if America came in!" 
 Troy blurted out, reddening at the sound 
 of his voice. 
 
 "America?" someone playfully inter 
 jected; and the Senator laughed, and said 
 something 1 about geographical immunity. 
 "They can t touch us. This isn t our 
 war, young man." 
 
 "It may be by the time I m grown up," 
 Troy persisted, burning redder. 
 
 "Well," returned the Senator good- 
 humouredly, "you ll have to hurry, for 
 
 [37] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 the economists all say it can t last more 
 than a year longer. Lord Reading told 
 me " 
 
 "There s been misery enough, in all 
 conscience!" sighed a lady, playing with 
 her pearls; and Mr. Belknap added 
 gravely: "By the time Troy grows up I 
 hope wars and war-talk will be over for 
 good and all." 
 
 "Oh, well at his age every fellow 
 wants to go out and kill something," re 
 marked one of his uncles sympathetically. 
 
 Troy shuddered at the well-meant 
 words. To go out and kill something! 
 They thought he regarded the war as a 
 sport, just as they regarded it as a mov 
 ing-picture show ! As if anyone who had 
 had even a glimpse of it could ever again 
 think with joy of killing ! His boy s mind 
 was sorely exercised to define the urgent 
 emotions with which it laboured. To 
 save France that was the clear duty of 
 the world, as he saw it. But none of these 
 
 [38] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 kindly careless people about him knew 
 what he meant when he said "France. 
 Bits of M. Gantier s talk came back to 
 him, embodying that meaning. 
 
 "Whatever happens, keep your mind 
 keen and clear; open as many windows 
 on the universe as you can." To Troy 
 France had been the biggest of those 
 windows. 
 
 The young tutor had never declaimed 
 about his country: he had simply told 
 her story, and embodied her ideals in his 
 own impatient, questioning and yet ardent 
 spirit. "Le monde est aux enthousiastes" 
 he had once quoted; and he had shown 
 Troy how France had always been alive 
 in every fibre, and how her inexhaustible 
 vitality had been perpetually nourished 
 on criticism, analysis and dissatisfaction. 
 
 "Self-satisfaction is death," he had 
 said; "France is the phoenix-country, 
 always rising from the ashes of her 
 recognized mistakes." 
 
 [39] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 Troy felt what a wonderful help it 
 must be to have that long rich past in 
 one s blood. Every stone that France 
 had carved, every song she had sung, 
 every new idea she had struck out, every 
 beauty she had created in her thousand 
 fruitful years, was a tie between her and 
 her children. These things were more 
 glorious than her battles, for it was be 
 cause of them that all civilization was 
 bound up in her, and that nothing that 
 concerned her could concern her only. 
 
 [40] 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 "IT seems too absurd," said Mrs. Bel- 
 knap; "but Troy will be eighteen this 
 week. And that means," she added with 
 a sigh, "that this horrible war has been 
 going on for three whole years. Do you 
 remember, dearest, your fifteenth birth 
 day was on the very day that odious 
 Archduke was assassinated? We had a 
 picnic on the Morteratsch." 
 
 "Oh, dear," cried Sophy Wicks, fling 
 ing her tennis racket into the air with a 
 swing that landed it in the middle of the 
 empty court "perhaps that s the reason 
 he s never stopped talking about the war 
 for a single minute since!" 
 
 Round the big tea-table under the 
 trees there was a faint hush of disap 
 proval. A year before, Sophy Wicks 
 airy indifference to the events that were 
 
 [41] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 agitating the world had amused some 
 people and won the frank approval of 
 others. She did not exasperate her 
 friends by professions of pacifism, she 
 simply declared that the war bored her; 
 and after three years of vain tension, of 
 effort in the void, something in the 
 baffled American heart whispered that, 
 things being as they were, she was per 
 haps right. 
 
 But now things were no longer as they 
 had been. Looking back Troy surveyed 
 the gradual development of the war-feel 
 ing as it entered into a schoolboy s range 
 of vision. He had begun to notice the 
 change before the sinking of the Lusi- 
 tania. Even in the early days, when his 
 school-fellows had laughed at him, and 
 called him "Marny," some of them had 
 listened to him and imitated him. It had 
 become the fashion to have a collection 
 of war-trophies from the battle-fields. 
 The boys sisters were "adopting war- 
 
 [42] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 orphans" at long distance, and when Troy 
 went home for the holidays he heard 
 more and more talk of war-charities, and 
 noticed that the funds collected were no 
 longer raised by dancing and fancy-balls. 
 People who used the war as an oppor 
 tunity to have fun were beginning to be 
 treated almost as coldly as the pacifists. 
 
 But the two great factors in the na 
 tional change of feeling were the Lusi- 
 tania and the training-camps. 
 
 The Lusitania showed America what 
 the Germans were, Plattsburg tried to 
 show her the only way of dealing with 
 them. 
 
 Both events called forth a great deal 
 of agitated discussion, for, if they fo- 
 cussed the popular feeling for war, they 
 also gave the opponents of war in general 
 a point of departure for their arguments. 
 For a while feeling ran high, and Troy, 
 listening to the heated talk at his parents 
 table, perceived with disgust and wonder 
 
 [43] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 that at the bottom of the anti-war senti 
 ment, whatever specious impartiality it 
 put on, there was always the odd belief 
 that life-in-itself just the mere raw fact 
 of being alive was the one thing that 
 mattered, and getting killed the one thing 
 to be avoided. 
 
 This new standard of human dignity 
 plunged Troy into the lowest depths of 
 pessimism. And it bewildered him as 
 much as it disgusted him, since it did 
 away at a stroke with all that gave any 
 interest to the fact of living. It killed 
 romance, it killed poetry and adventure, 
 it took all the meaning out of history and 
 conduct and civilization. There had 
 never been anything worth while in the 
 world that had not had to be died for, 
 and it was as clear as day that a world 
 which no one would die for could never 
 be a world worth being alive in. 
 
 Luckily most people did not require 
 to reason the matter out in order to feel 
 
 [44] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 as Troy did, and in the long run the 
 Lusitania and Plattsburg won the day. 
 America tore the gag of neutrality from 
 her lips, and with all the strength of her 
 liberated lungs claimed her right to a 
 place in the struggle. The pacifists crept 
 into their holes, and only Sophy Wicks 
 remained unconverted. 
 
 Troy Belknap, tall and shy and awk 
 ward, lay at her feet, and blushed and 
 groaned inwardly at her wrong-headed- 
 ness. All the other girls were war-mad; 
 with the rupture of diplomatic relations 
 the country had burst into flame, and with 
 the declaration of war the flame had be 
 come a conflagration. And now, having 
 at last a definite and personal concern in 
 the affair, everyone was not only happier 
 but more sensible than when a perpetually 
 thwarted indignation had had to expend 
 itself in vague philanthropy. 
 
 It was a peculiar cruelty of Fate that 
 made Troy feel Miss Wicks indifference 
 
 [45] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 more than the zeal of all the other 
 young women gathered about the Bel- 
 knap tennis-court. In spite of everything, 
 he found her more interesting, more in 
 exhaustible, more "his size" (as they said 
 at school) than any of the gay young war- 
 goddesses who sped their tennis balls 
 across the Belknap court. 
 
 It was a Long Island Sunday in June. 
 A caressing warmth was in the air, and a 
 sea-breeze stirred the tops of the lime- 
 branches. The smell of fresh hay-cocks 
 blew across the lawn, and a sparkle of 
 blue water and a dipping of white sails 
 showed through the trees beyond the hay- 
 fields. 
 
 Mrs. Belknap smiled indulgently on 
 the pleasant scene: her judgment of 
 Sophy Wicks was less severe than that of 
 the young lady s contemporaries. What 
 did it matter if a chit of eighteen, having 
 taken up a foolish attitude, was too self- 
 censcious to renounce it? 
 
 [46] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 "Sophy will feel differently when she 
 has nursed some of our own soldiers in 
 a French base-hospital," she said, ( ad 
 dressing herself to the disapproving 
 group. 
 
 The young girl raised her merry eye 
 brows. "Who ll stay and nurse Granny 
 if I go to a French base-hospital ? Troy, 
 will you?" she suggested. 
 
 The other girls about the tea-table 
 laughed. Though they were only Troy s 
 age, or younger, they did not mind his 
 being teased, for he seemed only a little 
 boy to them, now that they all had 
 friends or brothers in the training camps 
 or on the way to France. Besides, though 
 they disapproved of Sophy s tone, her 
 argument was unanswerable. They knew 
 that her precocious wisdom and self- 
 confidence had been acquired at the head 
 of her grandmother s household, and that 
 there was no one else to look after poor 
 old paralytic Mrs. Wicks and the orphan 
 
 [47] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 brothers and sisters to whom Sophy was 
 mother. and guardian. 
 
 Two or three of the young men present 
 were in uniform, and one of them, Mrs. 
 Belknap s nephew, had a captain s 
 double bar on his shoulder. What did 
 Troy Belknap and Sophy Wicks matter 
 to young women playing a last tennis 
 match with heroes on their way to 
 France ? 
 
 The game began again, with much 
 noise and cheerful wrangling. Mrs. Bel- 
 knap walked toward the house to wel 
 come a group of visitors, and Miss 
 Wicks remained beside the tea-table, 
 alone with Troy. She was leaning back 
 in a wide basket-chair, her thin ankles in 
 white open-work stockings thrust out 
 under her short skirt, her arms locked 
 behind her thrown-back head. Troy lay 
 on the ground and plucked at the tufts of 
 grass at his elbow. Why was it that, with 
 all the currents of vitality flowing be- 
 
 [48] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 tween this group of animated girls and 
 youths, he could feel no nearness but 
 hers? The feeling was not particularly 
 agreeable, but there was no shaking it 
 off; it was like a scent that has got into 
 one s clothes. He was not sure that he 
 liked her, but he wanted to watch her, 
 to listen to her, to defend her against 
 the mockery and criticism in the eyes of 
 the others. At this point his powers of 
 analysis gave out, and his somewhat ex 
 tensive vocabulary failed him. After all, 
 he had to fall back on the stupid old 
 school phrase. She was "his size" that 
 was all. 
 
 "Why do you always say the war 
 bores you?" he asked abruptly, without 
 looking up. 
 
 "Because it does, my boy; and so do 
 you, when you hold forth about it." 
 
 He was silent, and she touched his arm 
 with the tip of her swinging tennis-shoe. 
 "Don t you see, Troy, it s not our job 
 
 [49] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 not just now, anyhow. So what s the use 
 of always jawing about it?" 
 
 She jumped up, recovered her racket, 
 and ran to take her place in a new set 
 beside Troy s cousin, the captain . . . 
 
 [50] 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 IT was not "his job" that was the 
 bitter drop in all the gladness. 
 
 At last what Troy longed for had 
 come: his country was playing her part. 
 And he, who had so watched and hoped 
 and longed for the divine far-off event, 
 had talked of it early and late, to old and 
 young, had got himself laughed at, 
 scolded, snubbed, ridiculed, nicknamed, 
 commemorated in a school-magazine skit 
 in which "Marne" and u yarn" and "oh, 
 darn," formed the refrain of a lyric be 
 ginning "Oh say, have you heard Bel- 
 knap flap in the breeze?", he, who had 
 borne all the scoldings and all the ridi 
 cule, sustained by a mysterious secret 
 faith in the strength of his cause, now 
 saw that cause triumph, and all his coun 
 try waving with flags and swarming with 
 khaki, while he had to stand aside and 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 look on, because his coming birthday was 
 only his nineteenth. . . He remembered 
 the anguish of regret with which he had 
 seen M. Gantier leave St. Moritz to join 
 his regiment, and thought now with pas 
 sionate envy of his tutor s fate. u Dulce 
 et decorum est . . ." The old hack 
 neyed phrase had taken on a beauty that 
 filled his eyes with tears. 
 
 Eighteen and "nothing doing" till he 
 was twenty-one! He could have killed 
 the cousins and uncles strutting about in 
 uniform and saying: "Don t fret, old 
 man there s lots of time. The war is 
 sure to last another four years." 
 
 To say that, and laugh, how little they 
 must know of what war meant! 
 
 It was an old custom in the Belknap 
 family to ask Troy what he wanted for 
 his birthday. The custom (according to 
 tradition) had originated on his sixth an 
 niversary, when, being given a rabbit 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 with ears that wiggled, he had grown 
 very red and stammered out: "I did so 
 want a cyclopaedia . . . " 
 
 Since then, he had always been con 
 sulted on the subject with a good deal of 
 ceremony, and had spent no little time 
 and thought in making a judicious choice 
 in advance. But this year his choice took 
 no thinking over. 
 
 "I want to go to France," he said im 
 mediately. 
 
 "To France ?" 
 
 It instantly struck his keen ears that 
 there was less surprise than he had 
 feared in Mr. Belknap s voice. 
 
 "To France, my boy? The govern 
 ment doesn t encourage foreign travel 
 just now." 
 
 "I want to volunteer in the Foreign 
 Legion," said Troy, feeling as if the 
 veins of his forehead would burst. 
 
 Mrs. Belknap groaned, but Mr. Bel- 
 knap retained his composure. 
 
 [53] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 "My dear chap, I don t think you know 
 much about the Foreign Legion. It s a 
 pretty rough berth for a fellow like you. 
 And they re as likely as not," he added 
 carelessly, "to send you to Morocco or 
 the Kamerun." 
 
 Troy, knowing this to be true, hung his 
 head. 
 
 "Now," Mr. Belknap continued, tak 
 ing advantage of his silence, "my counter- 
 proposition is that you should go to 
 Brazil for three months with your uncle 
 Tom Jarvice, who is being sent down 
 there on a big engineering job. It s a 
 wonderful opportunity to see the coun 
 try see it like a prince, too, for he ll 
 have a special train at his disposal. 
 Then, when you come back," he con 
 tinued, his voice weakening a little under 
 the strain of Troy s visible inattention, 
 "we ll see ..." 
 
 "See what?" 
 
 [54] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 "Well I don t know ... a camp 
 . . . till it s time for Harvard . . . " 
 
 "I want to go to France at once, father," 
 said Troy, with the voice of a man. 
 
 "To do what?" wailed his mother. 
 
 "Oh, any old thing drive an ambu 
 lance," Troy struck out at random. 
 
 "But, dearest," she protested, "you 
 could never even learn to drive a Ford 
 car!" 
 
 "That s only because it never inter 
 ested me." 
 
 "But one of those huge ambulances 
 you ll be killed!" 
 
 "Father!" exclaimed Troy, in a tone 
 that seemed to say: "Aren t we out of the 
 nursery, at least?" 
 
 "Don t talk to him like that, Joseph 
 ine," said Mr. Belknap, visibly wishing 
 that he knew how to talk to his son him 
 self, but perceiving that his wife was on 
 the wrong tack. 
 
 "Don t you see, father, that there s no 
 
 [55] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 use talking at all? I m going to get to 
 France, anyhow." 
 
 "In defiance of our wishes?" 
 
 "Oh, you ll forget all that later," said 
 Troy. 
 
 Mrs. Belknap began to cry, and her 
 husband turned on her. 
 
 "My dear, you re really really / 
 understand Troy!" he blurted out, his 
 veins swelling too. 
 
 But, if the Red Cross is to send you 
 on that mission to Italy, why shouldn t 
 Troy wait, and go as your secretary?" 
 Mrs. Belknap said, tacking skilfully. 
 
 Mr. Belknap, who had not yet made 
 up his mind to accept the mission, made 
 it up on the instant. "Yes, Troy why 
 not? I shall be going myself in a 
 month or so." 
 
 "I want to go to France," said his son. 
 And he added, laughing with sudden 
 courage : "You see, you ve never refused 
 me a birthday present yet." 
 
 [56] 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 FRANCE again France at last! As 
 the cliffs grew green across the bay he 
 could have knelt to greet them as he 
 hurried down the gang-plank with the 
 eager jostling crowd he could have 
 kissed the sacred soil they were treading. 
 
 The very difficulties and delays of the 
 arrival thrilled and stimulated him, gave 
 him a keener sense of his being already 
 a humble participant in the conflict. 
 Passports, identification papers, sharp 
 interrogatories, examinations, the en 
 forced surrendering of keys and papers; 
 how different it all was from the old 
 tame easy landings, with the noiseless 
 motor waiting at the dock, and France 
 lying safe and open before them which 
 ever way they chose to turn! 
 
 [57] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 On the way over, many things had sur 
 prised and irritated him not least the 
 attitude of some of his fellow passengers. 
 The boat swarmed with young civilians, 
 too young for military service, or hav 
 ing, for some more or less valid reason, 
 been exempted from it. They were all 
 pledged to some form of relief-work, and 
 all overflowing with zeal. "France" 
 was as often on their lips as on Troy s. 
 But some of them seemed to be mainly 
 concerned with questions of uniform 
 and rank. The steamer seethed with 
 wrangles and rivalries between their 
 various organizations, and now and then 
 the young crusaders seemed to lose sight 
 of the object of their crusade as had 
 too frequently been the case with their 
 predecessors. 
 
 Very few of the number knew France 
 or could speak French, and most of them 
 were full of the importance of America s 
 mission. This was Liberty s chance to 
 
 [58] 
 
 
 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 Enlighten the World; and all these 
 earnest youths apparently regarded them 
 selves as her chosen torch-bearers. 
 
 "We must teach France efficiency," they 
 all said with a glowing condescension. 
 
 The women were even more sure of 
 their mission; and there were plenty of 
 them, middle-aged as well as young, in 
 uniform too, cocked-hatted, badged and 
 gaitered though most of them, appa 
 rently, were going to sit in the offices of 
 Paris war charities; and Troy had never 
 noticed that Frenchwomen had donned 
 khaki for that purpose. 
 
 "France must be purified," these 
 young Columbias proclaimed. "French 
 men must be taught to respect Women. 
 We must protect our boys from contam 
 ination . . . the dreadful theatres . . . 
 and the novels . . . and the Boule 
 vards. . . Of course, we mustn t be hard 
 on the French, . . . for theyVe never 
 known Home Life or the Family, but we 
 
 [59] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 must show them ... we must set the 
 example ..." 
 
 Troy, sickened by their blatancy, had 
 kept to himself for the greater part of 
 the trip ; but during the last days he had 
 been drawn into talk by a girl who re 
 minded him of Miss Wicks, though she 
 was in truth infinitely prettier. The 
 evenings below decks were long, and he 
 sat at her side in the saloon and listened 
 to her. 
 
 Her name was Hinda Warlick, and 
 she came from the Middle West. He 
 gathered from her easy confidences that 
 she was singing in a suburban church 
 choir while waiting for a vaudeville en 
 gagement. Her studies had probably 
 been curtailed by the need of preparing 
 a repertory, for she appeared to think 
 that Joan of Arc was a Revolutionary 
 hero, who had been guillotined with 
 Marie Antoinette for blowing up the 
 Bastille; and her notions of French his- 
 
 [60] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 tory did not extend beyond this striking 
 episode. But she was ready and eager 
 to explain France to Troy, and to the 
 group of young men who gathered about 
 her, listening to her piercing accents and 
 gazing into her deep blue eyes. 
 
 "We must carry America right into 
 the heart of France for she has got a 
 great big splendid heart, in spite of 
 everything" Miss Warlick declared. 
 "We must teach her to love children and 
 home and the outdoor life; and you 
 American boys must teach the young 
 Frenchmen to love their mothers. You 
 must set the example. . . Oh, boys, do 
 you know what my ambition is? It s to 
 organize an Old Home Week just like 
 ours, all over France, from Harver 
 right down to Marseilles. And all 
 through the devastated regions too. 
 Wouldn t it be lovely if we could get 
 General Pershing to let us keep Home 
 Week right up at the front, at Eep and 
 
 [61] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 Leal and Rams, and all those martyr 
 cities right close up in the trenches? So 
 that even the Germans would see us and 
 hear us, and perhaps learn from us too? 
 for you know we mustn t despair of 
 teaching even the Germans !" 
 
 Troy, as he crept away, heard one 
 young man, pink and shock-headed, mur 
 mur shyly to the prophetess: "Hearing 
 you say this has made it all so clear 
 to me" and an elderly gentleman, ad 
 justing his eye-glasses, added with nasal 
 emphasis: "Yes, Miss Warlick has ex 
 pressed in a very lovely way what we all 
 feel; that America s mission is to con 
 tribute the human element to this war." 
 
 "Oh, good God," Troy groaned, 
 crawling to his darkened cabin. He re 
 membered M. Gander s phrase: "Self- 
 satisfaction is death," and felt a sudden 
 yearning for Sophy Wicks ironic eyes 
 and her curt: "What s the use of jaw 
 ing?" 
 
 [62] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 He had been for six months on his job, 
 and was beginning to know something 
 about it: to know, for instance, that 
 nature had never meant him for an 
 ambulance-driver. Nevertheless he had 
 stuck to his task with such a dogged de 
 termination to succeed that after several 
 months about the Paris hospitals he was 
 beginning to be sent to exposed sectors. 
 
 His first sight of the desolated country 
 he had traversed three years earlier 
 roused old memories of the Gantier 
 family, and he wrote once more to their 
 little town, but again without result. 
 Then one day he was sent to a sector of 
 the Vosges which was held by American 
 troops. His heart was beating hard as 
 the motor rattled over the hills, through 
 villages empty of their inhabitants, like 
 those of the Marne, but swarming with 
 big fair-haired soldiers. The land lifted 
 and dipped again, and he saw ahead of 
 him the ridge once crowned by M. 
 
 [63] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 Gander s village, and the wall of the 
 terraced garden, with the horn-beam 
 arbour putting forth its early green. 
 Everything else was in ruins: pale 
 weather-bleached ruins over which the 
 rains and suns of three years had passed 
 effacingly. The church, once so firm and 
 four-square on the hill, was now a mere 
 tracery against the clouds; the hospice 
 roofless, the houses all gutted and bulg 
 ing, with black smears of smoke on their 
 inner walls. At the head of the street 
 a few old women and children were hoe 
 ing vegetables before a row of tin-roofed 
 shanties, and a Y. M. C. A. hut flew the 
 stars and stripes across the way. 
 
 Troy jumped down, and began to ask 
 questions. At first the only person who 
 recognized the name of Gantier was an 
 old woman too frightened and feeble 
 minded to answer intelligibly. Then a 
 French territorial who was hoeing with 
 
 [64] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 the women came forward. He belonged 
 to the place and knew the story. 
 
 "M. Gantier the old gentleman? 
 He was mayor, and the Germans took 
 him. He died in Germany. The young 
 girl Mile. Gantier was taken with 
 him. No, she s not dead. . . I don t 
 know. . . She s shut up somewhere in 
 Germany . . . queer in the head, they say. 
 . . . The sons ah, you knew Monsieur 
 Paul? He went first . . . What, the 
 others? . . . Yes; the three others 
 Louis at Notre Dame de Lorette; Jean 
 on a submarine; poor little Felix, the 
 youngest, of the fever at Salonika. 
 Volla. . . The old lady? Ah, she and 
 her sister went away . . . some char 
 itable people took them, I don t know 
 where. . . I ve got the address some 
 where . . ." 
 
 He fumbled, and brought out a strip 
 of paper on which was written the name 
 of a town in the centre of France. 
 
 [65] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 "There s where they were a year ago. 
 . . . Yes, you may say: there s a family 
 gone wiped out. How often I ve seen 
 them all sitting there, laughing and 
 drinking coffee under the arbour! They 
 were not rich, but they were happy, and 
 proud of each other. That s over." 
 
 He went back to his hoeing. 
 
 After that, whenever Troy Belknap 
 got back to Paris, he hunted for the sur 
 viving Gantiers. For a long time he 
 could get no trace of them; then he re 
 membered his old governess, Mme. 
 Lebuc, for whom Mrs. Belknap had 
 found employment in a refugee bureau. 
 
 He ran down Mme. Lebuc, who was 
 still at her desk in the same big room, 
 facing a row of horse-hair benches packed 
 with tired people waiting their turn for 
 a clothing-ticket or a restaurant card. 
 
 Mme. Lebuc had grown much older, 
 and her filmy eyes peered anxiously 
 
 [66] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 through large spectacles before she 
 recognized Troy. Then, after tears and 
 laptures, he set forth his errand, and 
 she began to peer again anxiously, shuf 
 fling about the bits of paper on the desk, 
 and confusing her records hopelessly. 
 
 "Why, is that you?" cried a gay young 
 voice; and there, on the other side of the 
 room, sat one of the young war-goddesses 
 of the Belknap tennis court, trim, uni 
 formed, important, with a row of bent 
 backs in shabby black before her desk. 
 
 "Ah, Miss Batchford will tell you > 
 she s so quick and clever," Mme. Lebuc 
 sighed, resigning herself to chronic be 
 wilderment. 
 
 Troy crossed to the other desk. An 
 old woman sat before it, in threadbare 
 mourning, a crape veil on her twitching 
 head. She spoke in a low voice, slowly, 
 taking a long time to explain; each one 
 of Miss Batchford s quick questions put 
 
 [67] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 her back, and she had to begin all over 
 again. 
 
 "Oh, these refugees!" cried Miss 
 Batchford, stretching a bangled arm 
 above the crape veil to clasp Troy s 
 hand. u Do sit down, Mr. Belknap. 
 Depechez-vous, s il vous plait/ she said, 
 not too unkindly, to the old woman ; and 
 added, to Troy: "There s no satisfying 
 ^them." 
 
 At the sound of Troy s name, the old 
 woman had turned her twitching head, 
 putting back her veil. Her eyes met 
 Troy s, and they looked at each other 
 doubtfully. Then "Madame Gantier!" 
 he exclaimed. 
 
 "Yes, yes," she sajd, the tears run 
 ning down her face. 
 
 Troy was not sure if she recognized 
 him, though his name had evidently called 
 up some vague association. He saw that 
 most things had grown far off to her, 
 and that for the moment her whole mind 
 
 [68] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 was centred on the painful and humili 
 ating effort of putting her case to this 
 strange young woman who snapped out 
 questions like a machine. 
 
 "Do you know her?" asked Miss 
 Batchford, surprised. 
 
 "I used to, I believe," Troy answered. 
 
 "You can t think what she wants 
 just everything! They re all alike. She 
 wants to borrow five hundred francs to 
 furnish a flat for herself and her sister." 
 
 "Well, why not?" 
 
 "Why, we don t lend money, of course. 
 It s against all our principles. We give 
 work, or relief in kind that s what I m 
 telling her." 
 
 "I see. Could I give it to her?" 
 
 "What all that money? Certainly 
 not. You don t know them!" 
 
 Troy shook hands and went out into 
 the street to wait for Mme. Gantier; and 
 when she came he told her who he was. 
 She cried and shook a great deal, and he 
 
 [69] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 called a cab and drove her home to the 
 poor lodging where she and her sister 
 lived. The sister had become weak- 
 minded, and the room was dirty and un 
 tidy because, as Mme. Gantier explained, 
 her lameness prevented her from keep 
 ing it clean, and they could not afford a 
 char-woman. The pictures of the four 
 dead sons hung on the wall, a wisp of 
 crape above each, with all their ribbons 
 and citations. But when Troy spoke of 
 old M. Gantier and the daughter Mme. 
 Gantier s face grew like a stone, and her 
 sister began to whimper like an animal. 
 
 Troy remembered the territorial s 
 phrase: u You may say: there s a family 
 wiped out." 
 
 He went away, too shy to give the five 
 hundred francs in his pocket. 
 
 One of his first cares on getting back 
 to France had been to order a head-stone 
 for Paul Gantier s grave at Mondement. 
 !A week or two after his meeting with 
 
 [70] 
 
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 Mme. Gantier his ambulance was or 
 dered to Epernay, and he managed to 
 get out to Mondement and have the stone 
 set up and the grave photographed. He 
 had brought some flowers to lay on it, 
 and he borrowed two tin wreaths from 
 the neighbouring crosses, so that Paul 
 Gander s mound should seem the most 
 fondly tended of all. He sent the photo 
 graph to Mme. Gantier, with a five hun 
 dred franc bill; but after a long time his 
 letter came back from the post-office. 
 The two old women had gone . . . 
 
 [71] 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IN February Mr. Belknap arrived in 
 Paris on a mission. Tightly buttoned 
 into his Red Cross uniform, he looked 
 to his son older and fatter, but more im 
 portant and impressive, than usual. 
 
 He was on his way to Italy, where he 
 was to remain for three months, and 
 Troy learned with dismay that he needed 
 a secretary, and had brought none with 
 him because he counted on his son to fill 
 the post. 
 
 "You ve had nearly a year of this, old 
 man, and the front s as quiet as a church. 
 As for Paris, isn t it too frivolous for 
 you? It s much farther from the war 
 than New York nowadays. I haven t 
 had a dinner like this since your 
 mother joined the Voluntary Rationing 
 League. " Mr. Belknap smiled at him 
 
 [72] 
 
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 across their little table at the Nouveau 
 Luxe. 
 
 "I m glad to hear it about New 
 York, I mean," Troy answered com 
 posedly. "It s our turn now. But Paris 
 isn t a bit too frivolous for me. Which 
 shall it be, father the Palais Royal or 
 the Capucines? They say the new revue 
 there is great fun." 
 
 Mr. Belknap was genuinely shocked. 
 He had caught the war fever late in life, 
 and late in the war, and his son s flip 
 pancy surprised and pained him. 
 
 "The theatre? We don t go to the 
 theatre. . . " He paused to light his cigar, 
 and added, embarrassed: "Really, Troy, 
 now there s so little doing here, don t you 
 think you might be more useful in 
 Italy?" 
 
 Troy was anxious, for he was not sure 
 that Mr. Belknap s influence might not 
 be sufficient to detach him from his job 
 on a temporary mission; but long ex- 
 
 [73] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 perience in dealing with parents made him 
 assume a greater air of coolness as his 
 fears increased. 
 
 "Well, you see, father, so many other 
 chaps have taken advantage of the lull 
 to go off on leave that if I asked to be 
 detached now well, it wouldn t do me 
 much good with my chief," he said cun 
 ningly, guessing that if he appeared to 
 yield his father might postpone action. 
 
 "Yes, I see," Mr. Belknap rejoined, 
 impressed by the military character of 
 the argument. He was still trying to get 
 used to the fact that he was himself 
 under orders, and nervous visions of a 
 sort of mitigated court-martial came to 
 him in the middle of pleasant dinners, or 
 jumped him out of his morning sleep like 
 an alarm-clock. 
 
 Troy saw that his point was gained; 
 but he regretted having proposed the 
 Capucines to his father. He himself was 
 
 174] 
 
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 not shocked by the seeming indifference 
 of Paris: he thought the gay theatres, 
 the crowded shops, the restaurants groan 
 ing with abundance, were all healthy 
 signs of the nation s irrepressible vital 
 ity. But he understood that America s 
 young zeal might well be chilled by the 
 first contact with this careless exuberance 
 so close to the lines where young men 
 like himself were dying day by day in 
 order that the curtain might ring up 
 punctually on low-necked revues, and fat 
 neutrals feast undisturbed on lobster and 
 champagne. Only now and then he 
 asked himself what had become of the 
 Paris of the Marne, and what would 
 
 happen if ever again But that, of 
 
 course, was nonsense . . . 
 
 Mr. Belknap left for Italy and two 
 days afterward Troy s ambulance was 
 roused from semi-inaction and hurried to 
 Beauvais. The retreat from St. Quentin 
 
 [75] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 had begun, and Paris was once again the 
 Paris of the Marne. 
 
 The same but how different! were 
 the tense days that followed. Troy Bel- 
 knap, instead of hanging miserably 
 about marble hotels and waiting with 
 restless crowds for the communiques to 
 appear in the windows of the newspaper 
 offices, was in the thick of the retreat, 
 swept back on its tragic tide, his heart 
 wrung, but his imagination hushed by the 
 fact of participating in the struggle, play 
 ing a small dumb indefatigable part, 
 relieving a little fraction of the immense 
 anguish and the dreadful disarray. 
 
 The mere fact of lifting a wounded 
 man "so that it wouldn t hurt"; of stiffen 
 ing one s lips to a smile as the ambu 
 lance pulled up in the market-place of 
 a terror-stricken village; or calling out 
 "Nous les tenons!" to whimpering 
 women and bewildered old people; of 
 giving a lift to a family of foot-sore 
 
 [76] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 refugees; of prying open a tin of con 
 densed milk for the baby, or taking down 
 the address of a sister in Paris, with the 
 promise to bring her news of the fugi 
 tives: the heat and the burden and the 
 individual effort of each minute carried 
 one along through the endless yet breath 
 less hours backward and forward, 
 backward and forward, between Paris 
 and the fluctuating front, till in Troy s 
 weary brain the ambulance took on the 
 semblance of a tireless gray shuttle hum 
 ming in the hands of Fate . . . 
 
 It was on one of these trips that, for 
 the first time, he saw a train-load of 
 American soldiers on the way to the bat 
 tle front. He had, of course, seen plenty 
 of them in Paris during the months since 
 his arrival; seen them vaguely roaming 
 the streets, or sitting in front of cafes, 
 or wooed by polyglot sirens in the ob 
 scure promiscuity of cinema-palaces. 
 
 At first he had seized every chance of 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 talking to them; but either his own shy 
 ness or theirs seemed to paralyze him. 
 He found them, as a rule, bewildered, de 
 pressed and unresponsive. They wanted 
 to kill Germans all right, they said; but 
 this hanging around Paris wasn t what 
 they d bargained for, and there was a 
 good deal more doing back home at Po- 
 dunk or Tombstone or Deposit. 
 
 It was not only the soldiers who took 
 this depreciatory view of France. Some 
 of the officers whom Troy met at his 
 friends 7 houses discouraged him more 
 than the enlisted men with whom he tried 
 to make friends in the cafes. They had 
 more definite and more unfavourable 
 opinions as to the country they had come to 
 defend. They wanted to know, in God s 
 name, where in the blasted place you 
 could get fried hominy and a real porter 
 house steak for breakfast, and when the 
 ball-game season began, and whether it 
 
 [78] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 rained every day all the year round; and 
 Troy s timid efforts to point out some of 
 the compensating advantages of Paris 
 failed to excite any lasting interest. 
 
 But now he seemed to see a different 
 race of men. The faces leaning from 
 the windows of the train glowed with 
 youthful resolution. The soldiers were 
 out on their real business at last, and as 
 Troy looked at them, so alike and so 
 innumerable, he had the sense of a force 
 inexorable and exhaustless, poured forth 
 from the reservoirs of the new world 
 to replenish the wasted veins of the old. 
 
 "Hooray!" he shouted frantically, 
 waving his cap at the passing train; but 
 as it disappeared he hung his head and 
 swore under his breath. There they 
 went, his friends and fellows, as he had 
 so often dreamed of seeing them, racing 
 in their hundreds of thousands to the 
 rescue of France; and he was still too 
 
 [79] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 young to be among them, and could only 
 yearn after them with all his aching 
 heart! 
 
 After a hard fortnight of day-and- 
 night work he was ordered a few days 
 off, and sulkily resigned himself to inac 
 tion. For the first twenty-four hours he 
 slept the leaden sleep of weary youth, and 
 for the next he moped on his bed in the 
 infirmary; but the third day he crawled 
 out to take a look at Paris. 
 
 The long-distance bombardment was 
 going on, and now and then, at irregular 
 intervals, there was a more or less remote 
 crash, followed by a long reverberation. 
 But the life of the streets was not affected. 
 People went about their business as usual, 
 and it was obvious that the strained look 
 on every face was not caused by the ran 
 dom fall of a few shells, but by the per 
 petual vision of that swaying and reced 
 ing line on which all men s thoughts 
 were fixed. It was sorrow, not fear, that 
 
 [so] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 Troy read in all those anxious eyes : sor 
 row over so much wasted effort, such high 
 hopes thwarted, so many dear-bought 
 miles of France once more under the Ger 
 man heel. 
 
 That night when he came home he 
 found a letter from his mother. At the 
 very end, in a crossed postscript, he read : 
 "Who do you suppose sailed last week? 
 Sophy Wicks. Soon there ll be nobody 
 left! Old Mrs. Wicks died in January 
 did I tell you? and Sophy has sent 
 the children to Long Island with their 
 governess and rushed over to do Red 
 Cross nursing. It seems she had taken 
 a course at the Presbyterian without any 
 one s knowing it. I ve promised to keep 
 an eye on the children. Let me know if 
 you see her." 
 
 Sophy Wicks in France! There was 
 hardly room in his troubled mind for 
 the news. What Sophy Wicks did or did 
 not do had shrunk to utter insignificance 
 
 DM] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 in the crash of falling worlds. He was 
 rather sorry to have to class her with the 
 other hysterical girls fighting for a pre 
 text to get to France; but what did it all 
 matter, anyhow? On the way home he 
 had overheard an officer in the street 
 telling a friend that the Germans were 
 at Creil . . . 
 
 Then came the day when the advance 
 was checked. General Mangin s glorious 
 counter-attack gave France new faith in 
 her armies, and Paris, irrepressibly, burst 
 at once into abounding life. It was as if 
 she were ashamed of having doubted, as 
 if she wanted, by a livelier renewal of 
 activities, to proclaim her unshakable 
 faith in her defenders. In the perpetual 
 sunshine of the most golden of springs 
 she basked and decked herself, and mir 
 rored her recovered beauty in the Seine. 
 
 And still the cloudless weeks succeeded 
 each other, days of blue warmth and 
 nights of silver lustre; and still, behind 
 
 [82] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 the impenetrable wall of the front, the 
 Beast dumbly lowered and waited. Then 
 one morning, toward the end of May, 
 Troy, waking late after an unusually 
 hard day, read: "The new German 
 offensive has begun. The Chemin des 
 Dames has been retaken by the enemy. 
 Our valiant troops are resisting heroic 
 ally ..." 
 
 Ah, now indeed they were on the road 
 to Paris ! 
 
 In a flash of horror he saw it all. The 
 bitter history of the war was re-enacting 
 itself, and the battle of the Marne was 
 to be fought again . . . 
 
 The misery of the succeeding days 
 would have been intolerable if there had 
 been time to think of it. But day and 
 night there was no respite for Troy s 
 service; and, being at this time a practised 
 hand, he had to be continually on the 
 road. 
 
 On the second day he received orders 
 
 [83] 
 
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 to evacuate wounded from an American 
 base hospital near the Marne. It was 
 actually the old battle-ground he was to 
 traverse; only, before he had traversed 
 it in the wake of the German retreat, and 
 now it was the allied troops who, slowly, 
 methodically, and selling every inch dear, 
 were falling back across the sacred soil. 
 Troy faced eastward with a heavy 
 heart . . . 
 
 [84 J 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE next morning at daylight they 
 started for the front. 
 
 Troy s breast swelled with the sense 
 of the approach to something bigger 
 than he had yet known. The air of 
 Paris, that day, was heavy with doom. 
 There was no mistaking its taste on the 
 lips. It was the air of the Marne that 
 he was breathing . . . 
 
 Here he was, once more involved in 
 one of the great convulsions of destiny, 
 and still almost as helpless a spectator as 
 when, four years before, he had strayed 
 the burning desert of Paris, and cried out 
 in his boy s heart for a share in the 
 drama. Almost as helpless, yes: in spite 
 of his four more years, his grown-up 
 responsibilities, and the blessed uniform 
 thanks to which he, even he, a poor little 
 ambulance-driver of nineteen, ranked as 
 
 [85] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 a soldier of the great untried army of 
 his country. It was something it was 
 a great deal to be even the humblest 
 part, the most infinitesimal cog, in that 
 mighty machinery of the future; but it 
 was not enough, at this turning point of 
 history, for one who had so lived it all 
 in advance, who was so aware of it now 
 that it had come, who had carried so 
 long on his lips the taste of its scarcely 
 breathable air ... 
 
 As the ambulance left the gates of 
 Paris, and hurried eastward in the gray 
 dawn, this sense of going toward some 
 thing new and overwhelming continued 
 to grow in Troy. It was probably the 
 greatest hour of the war that was about 
 to strike and he was still too young to 
 give himself to the cause he had so long 
 dreamed of serving . . . 
 
 From the moment they left the gates 
 the road was encumbered with huge 
 gray motor-trucks, limousines, motor- 
 
 [86] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 cycles, long trains of artillery, army 
 kitchens, supply waggons, all the familiar 
 elements of the procession he had so 
 often watched unrolling itself endlessly 
 east and west from the Atlantic to the 
 Alps. Nothing new in the sight but 
 something new in the faces ! A look of 
 having got beyond the accident of living, 
 and accepted what lay over the edge, in 
 the dim land of the final. He had seen 
 that look too in the days before the 
 Marne . . . 
 
 Most of the faces on the way were 
 French: as far as Epernay they met their 
 compatriots only in isolated groups. But 
 whenever one of the motor-trucks lum 
 bering by bore a big U. S. on its rear 
 panel Troy pushed his light ambulance 
 ahead and skimmed past, just for the 
 joy of seeing the fresh young heads ris 
 ing pyramid-wise above the sides of the 
 lorry, hearing the snatches of familiar 
 songs "Hail, hail, the gang s all here!" 
 
 [87] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 and "We won t come back till it s over 
 over here !" and shouting back in reply 
 to a stentorian "Hi, kid, beat it I", "Bet 
 your life I will, old man!" 
 
 Hubert Jacks, the young fellow who 
 was with him, shouted back too, as 
 lustily; but between times he was more 
 occupied with the details of their own 
 particular job to which he was newer 
 than Troy and seemed not to feel so in 
 tensely the weight of impending events. 
 
 As they neared the Montmirail monu 
 ment: "Ever been over this ground be 
 fore?" Troy asked carelessly. 
 
 And Jacks answered: "N-no." 
 
 "Ah I have. I was here just after 
 the battle of the Marne, in September, 
 fourteen." 
 
 "That so? You must have been quite 
 a kid," said Jacks with indifference, filling 
 his pipe. 
 
 "Well not quite" Troy rejoined 
 sulkily; and they said no more. 
 
 [88] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 At Epernay they stopped for lunch, 
 and found the place swarming with 
 troops. Troy s soul was bursting within 
 him: he wanted to talk and remember 
 and compare. But his companion was 
 unimaginative, and perhaps a little jeal 
 ous of his greater experience. "He 
 doesn t want to show that he s new at the 
 job," Troy decided. 
 
 They lunched together in a corner of 
 the packed restaurant, and while they 
 were taking coffee some French officers 
 came up and chatted with Troy. To all 
 of them he felt the desperate need of 
 explaining that he was driving an am 
 bulance only because he was still too 
 young to be among the combatants. 
 
 "But I sha n t be soon!" he always 
 added, in the tone of one who affirms: 
 "It s merely a matter of a few weeks 
 
 now." 
 
 "Oh, you all look like babies but you 
 all fight like devils," said a young French 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 lieutenant seasoned by four years at the 
 front; and another officer added gravely: 
 "Make haste to be old enough, cher Mon 
 sieur. We need you all every one of 
 you . . ." 
 
 "Oh, we re coming we re all com 
 ing!" Troy cried. 
 
 That evening after a hard and har 
 rowing day s work between pastes de 
 secours and a base hospital, they found 
 themselves in a darkened village, where, 
 after a summary meal under flying shells, 
 someone suggested ending up at the 
 Y. M. C. A. hut. 
 
 The shelling had ceased, and there 
 seemed nothing better to do than to 
 wander down the dark street to the un 
 derground shelter packed with American 
 soldiers. Troy was sleepy and tired, and 
 would have preferred to crawl into his 
 bed at the inn ; he felt, more keenly than 
 ever, the humiliation (the word was 
 stupid, but he could find no other) of 
 
 [90] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 being among all these young men, only 
 a year or two his seniors, and none, he 
 was sure, more passionately eager than 
 himself for the work that lay ahead, and 
 yet so hopelessly divided from him by 
 that stupid difference in age. But Hu 
 bert Jacks was seemingly unconscious of 
 this, and only desirous of ending his 
 night cheerfully. It would have looked 
 unfriendly not to accompany him, so they 
 pushed their way together through the 
 cellar door surmounted by the sociable 
 red triangle. 
 
 It was a big cellar, but brown uni 
 forms and ruddy faces crowded it from 
 wall to wall. In one corner the men 
 were sitting on packing boxes at a long 
 table made of boards laid across barrels, 
 the smoky light of little oil-lamps red 
 dening their cheeks and deepening the 
 furrows in their white foreheads as they 
 laboured over their correspondence. 
 Others were playing checkers, or looking 
 
 [91] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 at the illustrated papers, and everybody 
 was smoking and talking not in large 
 groups, but quietly, by twos or threes. 
 Young women in trig uniforms, with 
 fresh innocent faces, moved among the 
 barrels and boxes, distributing stamps or 
 books, chatting with the soldiers, and 
 being generally home-like and sisterly. 
 The men gave them back glances as 
 honest, and almost as innocent, and an 
 air of simple daylight friendliness per 
 vaded the Avernian cave. 
 
 It was the first time that Troy had 
 ever seen a large group of his com 
 patriots so close to the fighting front, and 
 in an hour of ease, and he was struck 
 by the gravity of the young faces, and 
 the low tones of their talk. Everything 
 was in a minor key. No one was laugh 
 ing or singing or larking; the note was 
 that which might have prevailed in a club 
 of quiet elderly men, or in a drawing- 
 room where the guests did not know each 
 
 [92] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 other well. Troy was all the more sur 
 prised because he remembered the jolly 
 calls of the young soldiers in the motor 
 trucks, and the songs and horse-play of 
 the gangs of trench-diggers and hut- 
 builders he had passed on the way. Was 
 it that his compatriots did not know how 
 to laugh when they were at leisure, or 
 was it rather that in the intervals of 
 work the awe of the unknown laid its 
 hand on these untried hearts? 
 
 Troy and Jacks perched on a packing 
 box, and talked a little with their neigh 
 bours; but suddenly they were inter 
 rupted by the noise of a motor stopping 
 outside. There was a stir at the mouth 
 of the cavern, and a girl said eagerly: 
 "Here she comes!" 
 
 Instantly the cellar woke up. The sol 
 diers faces grew young again, they flat 
 tened themselves laughingly against the 
 walls of the entrance, the door above 
 was cautiously opened, and a girl in a 
 
 [93] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 long blue cloak appeared at the head of 
 the stairs. 
 
 "Well, boys you see I managed 
 it!" she cried; and Troy instantly recog 
 nized the piercing accents and azure gaze 
 of Miss Hinda Warlick. 
 
 "She managed it!" the whole cellar 
 roared as one man, drowning her answer 
 in a cheer: and "Of course I did!" she 
 continued, laughing and nodding right 
 and left as she made her triumphant way 
 down the lane of khaki to what, at her 
 appearance, had somehow instantly be 
 come the stage at the farther end of a 
 packed theatre. The elderly Y. M. C. A. 
 official who accompanied her puffed out 
 his chest like a general, and blinked know 
 ingly behind his gold eye-glasses. 
 
 Troy s first movement had been one 
 of impatience. He hated all that Miss 
 Warlick personified, and hated it most 
 of all on this sacred soil, and at this fate 
 ful moment, with the iron wings of doom 
 
 [94] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 clanging so close above their heads. But 
 it would have been almost impossible to 
 fight his way out through the crowd that 
 had closed in behind her and he stayed. 
 
 The cheering subsided, she gained her 
 improvised platform a door laid on 
 some biscuit-boxes and the recitation 
 began. 
 
 She gave them all sorts of things, 
 ranging from grave to gay, and extract 
 ing from the sentimental numbers a 
 peculiarly piercing effect that hurt Troy 
 like the twinge of a dental instrument. 
 And her audience loved it all, indis 
 criminately and voraciously, with souls 
 hungry for the home-flavour and long 
 nurtured on what Troy called "cereal- 
 fiction." One had to admit that Miss 
 Warlick knew her public, and could play 
 on every cord. 
 
 It might have been funny, if it had not 
 been so infinitely touching. They were 
 all so young, so serious, so far from 
 
 [95] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 home, and bound on a quest so glorious ! 
 And there overhead, just above them, 
 brooded and clanged the black wings of 
 their doom. . . Troy s mockery was soft 
 ened to tenderness, and he felt, under the 
 hard shell of his youthful omniscience, 
 the stir of all the things to which the 
 others were unconsciously responding. 
 
 "And now, by special request, Miss 
 Warlick is going to say a few words," 
 the elderly eye-glassed officer importantly 
 announced. 
 
 Ah, what a pity! If only she had 
 ended on that last jolly chorus, so full 
 of artless laughter and tears ! Troy re 
 membered her dissertations on the 
 steamer, and winced at a fresh display 
 of such fatuity, in such a scene. 
 
 She had let the cloak slip from her 
 shoulders, and stepped to the edge of her 
 unsteady stage. Her eyes burned large 
 in a face grown suddenly grave. . . For 
 a moment she reminded him again of 
 
 [96] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 Sophy Wicks. "Only a few words, 
 really," she began, apologetically; and 
 the cellar started a cheer of protest. 
 
 "No not that kind. Something dif 
 ferent ..." 
 
 She paused long enough to let the 
 silence prepare them: sharp little artist 
 that she was ! Then she leaned forward. 
 "This is what I want to say: I ve come 
 from the French front pretty near 
 the edge. They re dying there, boys 
 dying by thousands, now, this minute. 
 . . . But that s not it. I know : you want 
 me to cut it out and I m going to. . . 
 But this is why I began that way: because 
 it was my first sight of things of that 
 sort. And I had to tell you " 
 
 She stopped, pale, her pretty mouth 
 twitching. 
 
 "What I really wanted to say is this : 
 Since I came to Europe, nearly a year 
 ago, I ve got to know the country they re 
 dying for and I understand why they 
 
 [97] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 mean to go on and on dying if they 
 have to till there isn t one of them left. 
 Boys I know France now and she s 
 worth it ! Don t you make any mistake 1 
 I have to laugh now when I remember 
 what I thought of France when I landed. 
 My! How d you suppose she got on so 
 long without us? Done a few things 
 too poor little toddler! Well it was 
 time we took her by the hand, and 
 showed her how to behave. And I 
 wasn t the only one either. I guess most 
 of us thought we d have to teach her 
 her letters. Maybe some of you boys 
 right here felt that way too?" 
 
 A guilty laugh, and loud applause. 
 
 "Thought so," said Miss Warlick 
 smiling. 
 
 "Well," she continued, "there wasn t 
 hardly anything I wasn t ready to teach 
 them. On the steamer coming out with 
 us there was a lot of those Amb lance 
 boys. My! How I gassed to them. I 
 
 [98] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 said the French had got to be taught how 
 to love their mothers I said they hadn t 
 any home-feeling and didn t love chil 
 dren the way we do. I ve been round 
 among them some since then, in the hos 
 pitals, and I ve seen fellows lying there 
 shot most to death, and their little old 
 mothers in white caps arriving from way 
 off at the other end of France. Well, 
 those fellows know how to see their 
 mothers coming even if they re blind, and 
 how to hug em even if their arms are off. 
 . . . And the children the way they go on 
 about the children! Ever seen a French 
 soldier yet that didn t have a photograph 
 of a baby stowed away somewhere in 
 his dirty uniform? / never have. I tell 
 you, they re white! And they re fighting 
 as only people can who feel that way 
 about mothers and babies. The way 
 we re going to fight; and maybe we ll 
 prove it to em sooner than any of us 
 think . . . 
 
 [99] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 "Anyhow, I wanted to get this off my 
 chest tonight; not for you, only for my 
 self. I didn t want to have a shell get me 
 before I d said Veever la France P be 
 fore all of you. 
 
 "See here, boys the MarsellazeP 
 She snatched a flag from the wall, 
 drawing herself up to heroic height; and 
 the whole cellar joined her in a roar. 
 
 [100] 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE next morning Jacks dragged 
 Troy out of bed by the feet. The room 
 was still dark, and through the square 
 of the low window glittered a bunch of 
 stars. 
 
 "Hurry call to Montmirail step 
 lively!" Jacks ordered, his voice thick 
 with sleep. 
 
 All the old names: with every turn of 
 the wheel they seemed to be drawing 
 nearer and nearer to the ravaged spot 
 of earth where Paul Gantier slept his 
 faithful sleep. Strange if, today, of all 
 days, Troy should again stand by his 
 friend s grave! 
 
 They pushed along eastward under 
 the last stars, the roll of the cannon 
 crashing through the quiet dawn. The 
 birds flew up with frightened cries from 
 
 [101] 
 
THE MAKNE 
 
 the trees along the roadside : rooks cawed 
 their warning from clump to clump, and 
 gathered in the sky in dark triangles fly 
 ing before the danger. 
 
 The east began to redden through the 
 dust-haze of the cloudless air. As they 
 advanced the road became more and 
 more crowded, and the ambulance was 
 caught in the usual dense traffic of the 
 front: artillery, field-kitchens, motor 
 trucks, horse-waggons, hay-carts packed 
 with refugees, and popping motor-cycles 
 zig-zagging through the tangle of ve 
 hicles. The movement seemed more 
 feverish and uncertain than usual, and 
 now and then the road was jammed, and 
 curses, shouts, and the crack of heavy 
 whips sounded against the incessant can 
 nonade that hung its iron curtain above 
 the hills to the north-east. The faces of 
 soldiers and officers were unshaved, sal 
 low, drawn with fatigue and anxiety. 
 Women sat sobbing on their piled-up 
 
 [102] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 baggage, and here and there, by the road 
 side, a little country cart had broken 
 down, and the occupants sat on the bank 
 watching the confusion like impassive 
 lookers-on. 
 
 Suddenly, in the thickest of the struggle, 
 a heavy lorry smashed into Troy s am- , 
 bulance, and he felt the unmistakable >* 
 wrench of the steering-gear. The carl 
 shook like a careening boat, and then 
 righted herself and stopped. 
 
 "Oh, hell!" shouted Jacks in a fury. 
 
 The two lads jumped down, and in a 
 few minutes they saw that they were 
 stranded beyond remedy. Tears of 
 anger rushed into Troy s eyes. On this 
 day of days he was not even to accom 
 plish his own humble job! 
 
 Another ambulance of their own for 
 mation overtook them, and it was agreed 
 that Jacks, who was the sharper of the 
 two, was to get a lift to the nearest town, 
 and try to bring back a spare part, or, 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 failing that, pick up some sort of car, in 
 which they could continue their work. 
 
 Troy was left by the roadside. Hour 
 after hour he sat there waiting and curs 
 ing his fate. When would Jacks be back 
 again? Not at all, most likely; it was 
 ten to one he would be caught on the 
 way and turned into some pressing job. 
 He knew, and Troy knew, that their am 
 bulance was for the time being a hope 
 less wreck, and would probably have to 
 stick ignominiously in its ditch till some 
 one could go and fetch a new axle from 
 Paris. And meanwhile, what might not 
 be happening nearer by? 
 
 The rumble and thump of the can 
 nonade grew more intense : a violent 
 engagement was evidently going on not 
 far off. Troy pulled out his map and 
 tried to calculate how far he was from 
 the front; but the front at that point 
 was a wavering and incalculable line. He 
 had an idea that the fighting was much 
 
 [104] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 nearer than he or Jacks had imagined. 
 The place at which they had broken 
 down must be about fifteen miles from 
 the Marne. But could it be possible that 
 the Germans had crossed the Marne? 
 
 Troy grew hungry, and thrust his hand 
 in his pocket to pull out a sandwich. 
 With it came a letter of his mother s, 
 carried off in haste when he left Paris 
 the previous morning. He re-read it 
 with a mournful smile. "Of course we 
 all know the Allies must win; but the 
 preparations here seem so slow and 
 blundering; and the Germans are still so 
 strong. . ." (Thump, thump, the artil 
 lery echoed : "Strong!") And just at the 
 end of the letter, again, "I do wonder if 
 you ll run across Sophy . . ." 
 
 He lit a cigarette and shut his eyes and 
 thought. The sight of Miss Warlick 
 had made Sophy Wicks presence singu 
 larly vivid to him; he had fallen asleep 
 thinking of her the night before. How 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 like her to have taken a course at the 
 Presbyterian Hospital without letting 
 anyone know ! He wondered that he 
 had not suspected, under her mocking in 
 difference, an ardour as deep as his own, 
 and he was ashamed of having judged 
 her as others had, when, for so long, the 
 thought of her had been his torment and 
 his joy. Where was she now, he won 
 dered? Probably in some hospital in the 
 south of the centre: the authorities did 
 not let beginners get near the front, 
 though of course it was what all the girls 
 were mad for. . . Well, Sophy would do 
 her work wherever it was assigned to 
 her: he did not see her intriguing for a 
 showy post 
 
 Troy began to marvel again at the 
 spell of France his France! Here was 
 a girl who had certainly not come in 
 quest of vulgar excitement, as so many 
 did: Sophy had always kept herself 
 scornfully aloof from the pretty ghouls 
 
 [106] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 who danced and picnicked on the ruins 
 of the world. He knew that her motives, 
 so jealously concealed, must have been 
 as pure and urgent as his own. France, 
 which she hardly knew, had merely 
 guessed at through the golden blur of a 
 six weeks midsummer trip, France had 
 drawn her with an irresistible pressure; 
 and the moment she had felt herself free 
 she had come. "Whither thou goest I 
 will go; ... thy people shall be my 
 people ..." Yes, France was the 
 Naomi-country that had but to beckon, 
 and her children rose and came . . . 
 
 Troy was exceedingly tired; he 
 stretched himself on the dusty bank, and 
 the noise of the road traffic began to 
 blend with the cannonade in his whirling 
 brain. Suddenly he fancied the Germans 
 were upon him. He thought he heard 
 the peppering volley of machine-guns, 
 shouts, screams, rifle-shots close at 
 hand . . . 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 He sat up and rubbed his eyes. 
 
 What he had heard was the cracking 
 of whips and the shouting of carters 
 urging tired farm-horses along. Down a 
 by-road to his left a stream of haggard 
 country people was pouring from the 
 direction of the Marne. This time only 
 a few were in carts : the greater number 
 were flying on their feet, the women car 
 rying their babies, the old people bent 
 under preposterous bundles, blankets, 
 garden utensils, cages with rabbits, an 
 agricultural prize framed and glazed, a 
 wax wedding-wreath under a broken 
 globe. Sick and infirm people were 
 dragged and shoved along by the older 
 children: a goitred idiot sat in a wheel 
 barrow pushed by a girl, and laughed 
 and pulled its tongue . . . 
 
 In among the throng Troy began to 
 see the torn blue uniform of wounded 
 soldiers limping on bandaged legs. . . 
 Others too, not wounded, elderly hag- 
 
 [108] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 gard territorials, with powder-black 
 faces, bristling beards, and the horror of 
 the shell-roar in their eyes. . . One of 
 them stopped near Troy, and in a thick 
 voice begged for a drink . . . just a drop 
 of anything, for God s sake. Others fol 
 lowed, pleading for food and drink. 
 "Gas, gas," . . a young artilleryman 
 gasped at him through distorted lips. . . 
 The Germans were over the Marne, they 
 told him, the Germans were coming. It 
 was hell back there, no one could stand 
 it ... 
 
 Troy ransacked the ambulance, found 
 water, brandy, biscuits, condensed milk, 
 and set up an impromptu canteen. But 
 the people who had clustered about him 
 were pushed forward by others, crying: 
 "Are you mad to stay here? The Ger 
 mans are coming! - and in a feeble panic 
 they pressed on. 
 
 One old man trembling with fatigue, 
 and dragging a shaking little old woman, 
 
 [109] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 had spied the stretcher beds inside the 
 ambulance, and without asking leave, 
 scrambled in and pulled his wife after 
 him. They fell like logs onto the gray 
 blankets, and a livid territorial with a 
 bandaged arm drenched in blood crawled 
 in after them and sank on the floor. The 
 rest of the crowd had surged by. 
 
 As he was helping the wounded sol 
 dier to settle himself in the ambulance, 
 Troy heard a new sound down the road. 
 It was a deep, continuous rumble, the 
 rhythmic growl of a long train of army- 
 trucks. The way must have been cleared 
 to let them by, for there was no break 
 or faltering in the ever-deepening roar 
 of their approach. 
 
 A cloud of dust rolled ahead, growing 
 in volume with the growing noise; now 
 the first trucks were in sight, huge 
 square olive-brown motor-trucks stacked 
 high with scores and scores of bronzed 
 soldiers. Troy jumped to his feet with 
 
 [no] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 a shout. It was an American regiment 
 being rushed to the front ! 
 
 The refugees and the worn-out blue 
 soldiers fell back before the triumphant 
 advance, and a weak shout went up. 
 The bronzed soldiers shouted back, but 
 their faces were grave and set. It was 
 clear that they knew where they were 
 going, and to what work they had been 
 so hurriedly summoned. 
 
 "It s hell back there!" a wounded ter 
 ritorial called out, pointing backward 
 over his bandaged shoulder, and another 
 cried: "V we VAmerique!" 
 
 "Vwe la France!" shouted the truckful 
 abreast of Troy, and the same cry burst 
 from his own lungs. A few miles off the 
 battle of the Marne was being fought 
 again, and there were his own brothers 
 rushing forward to help! He felt that 
 his greatest hour had struck. 
 
 One of the trucks had halted for a 
 
 [HI] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 minute just in front of him, marking time, 
 and the lads leaning over its side had 
 seen him, and were calling out friendly 
 college yells. 
 
 "Come along and help!" cried one, as 
 the truck got under way again. 
 
 Troy glanced at his broken-down 
 motor; then his eye lit on a rifle lying 
 close by in the dust of the road-side. He 
 supposed it belonged to the wounded ter 
 ritorial who had crawled into the ambu 
 lance. 
 
 He caught up the rifle, scrambled up 
 over the side with the soldier s help, and 
 was engulphed among his brothers. Fur 
 tively, he had pulled the ambulance badge 
 from his collar . . . but a moment later 
 he realized the uselessness of the precau 
 tion. All that mattered to anyone just 
 then was that he was one more rifle for 
 the front . , . 
 
 [112] 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 ON the way he tried to call up half- 
 remembered snatches of military lore. 
 If only he did not disgrace them by a 
 blunder ! 
 
 He had talked enough to soldiers, 
 French and American, in the last year: 
 he recalled odd bits of professional wis 
 dom, but he was too excited to piece 
 them together. He was not in the least 
 afraid of being afraid, but his heart 
 sank at the dread of doing something 
 stupid, inopportune, idiotic. His envy 
 of the youths beside him turned to ven 
 eration. They had all been in the front 
 line, and knew its vocabulary, its dangers 
 and its dodges. All he could do was to 
 watch and imitate . . . 
 
 Presently they were all tumbled out 
 of the motors and drawn up by the road- 
 
 [113] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 side. An officer bawled unintelligible 
 orders, and the men executed mysterious 
 movements in obedience. 
 
 Troy crept close to the nearest soldier 
 and copied his gestures awkwardly but 
 no one noticed. Night had fallen, and 
 he was thankful for the darkness. Per 
 haps by tomorrow morning he would 
 have picked up a few of their tricks. 
 Meanwhile, apparently, all he had to do 
 was to march, march, march, at a sort 
 of break-neck trot that the others took 
 as lightly as one skims the earth in a 
 dream. If it had not been for his pump 
 ing heart and his aching bursting feet 
 Troy at moments would have thought it 
 was a dream . . . 
 
 Rank by rank they pressed forward in 
 the night toward a sky-line torn with in 
 termittent flame. 
 
 "We re going toward a battle," Troy 
 sang to himself, "toward a battle, to 
 ward a battle . . ." But the words meant 
 
 [114] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 no more to him than the doggerel the 
 soldier was chanting at his elbow . . . 
 
 They were in a wood, slipping forward 
 cautiously, beating their way through the 
 under-growth. The night had grown 
 cloudy, but now and then the clouds 
 broke, and a knot of stars clung to a 
 branch like swarming bees. 
 
 At length a halt was called in a clear 
 ing, and then the group to which Troy 
 had attached himself was ordered for 
 ward. He did not understand the order, 
 but seeing the men moving he followed, 
 like a mascot dog trotting after its com 
 pany; and they began to beat their way 
 onward, still more cautiously, in little 
 crawling lines of three or four. It re 
 minded Troy of "playing Indian" in his 
 childhood. 
 
 "Careful . . . watch out for em I" the 
 soldier next to him whispered, clutching 
 his arm at a noise in the underbrush; and 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 Troy s heart jerked back violently, 
 though his legs were still pressing for 
 ward. 
 
 They were here, then: they might be 
 close by in the blackness, behind the next 
 tree-bole, in the next clump of bushes - 
 the destroyers of France, old M. Gan- 
 tier s murderers, the enemy to whom 
 Paul Gantier had given his life ! These 
 thoughts slipped confusedly through 
 Troy s mind, scarcely brushing it with a 
 chill wing. His main feeling was one 
 of a base physical fear, and of a newly- 
 awakened moral energy which had the 
 fear by the throat and held it down with 
 shaking hands. Which of the two would 
 conquer, how many yards farther would 
 the resolute Troy drag on the limp cow 
 ard through this murderous wood? That 
 was the one thing that mattered . . . 
 
 At length they dropped down into a 
 kind of rocky hollow, overhung with 
 bushes, and lay there, finger on trigger, 
 
 [116] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 hardly breathing. "Sleep a bit if you can 
 you look beat," whispered the friendly 
 soldier. 
 
 Sleep! 
 
 Troy s mind was whirling like a ma 
 chine in a factory blazing with lights. 
 His thoughts rushed back over the miles 
 he had travelled since he had caught up 
 the rifle by the roadside. 
 
 "My God!* he suddenly thought, 
 "What am I doing here, anyhow? I m 
 a deserter." 
 
 Yes: that was the name he would go 
 by if ever his story became known. And 
 how should it not become known? He 
 had deserted deserted not only his job, 
 and his ambulance, and Jacks, who might 
 come back at any moment it was a dead 
 certainty to him now that Jacks would 
 come back but also (incredible per 
 fidy!) the poor worn-out old couple and 
 the wounded territorial who had crawled 
 into the ambulance. He, Troy Belknap, 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 United States Army Ambulance driver, 
 and sworn servant of France, had de 
 serted three sick and helpless people who, 
 if things continued to go badly, would 
 almost certainly fall into the hands of 
 the Germans. . . It was too horrible to 
 think of and so, after a minute or two, 
 he ceased to think of it at least with 
 the surface of his mind. 
 
 "If it s a court-martial it s a court- 
 martial," he reflected; and began to 
 stretch his ears again for the sound of 
 men slipping up in the darkness through 
 the bushes . . . 
 
 But he was really horribly tired, and 
 in the midst of the tension the blaze of 
 lights in his head went out, and he fell 
 into a half-conscious doze. When he 
 started into full consciousness again the 
 men were stirring, and he became aware 
 that the sergeant was calling for volun 
 teers. 
 
 Volunteers for what? He didn t know 
 
 [118] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 and was afraid to ask. But it became 
 clear to him that the one chance to wash 
 his guilt away (was that funny old- 
 fashioned phrase a quotation, and where 
 did it come, from?) was to offer himself 
 for the job, whatever it might be. 
 
 The decision once taken, he became in 
 stantly calm, happy and alert. He ob 
 served the gesture made by the other 
 volunteers and imitated it. It was too 
 dark for the sergeant to distinguish one 
 man from another, and without com 
 ment he let Troy fall into the line of 
 men who were creeping up out of the 
 hollow. He understood now that they 
 were being sent out on a scouting expedi 
 tion. 
 
 The awful cannonade had ceased, and 
 as they crawled along single file between 
 the trees the before-dawn twitter of birds 
 rained down on them like dew, and the 
 woods smelt like the woods at home. 
 
 They came to the end of the trees, and 
 
 [119] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 guessed that the dark wavering wall 
 ahead was the edge of a wheat-field. 
 Someone whispered that the Marne was 
 just beyond the wheat-field, and that the 
 red flares they saw must be over Chateau- 
 Thierry. 
 
 The momentary stillness laid a reas 
 suring touch on Troy s nerves, and he 
 slipped along adroitly at the tail of the 
 line, alert but cool. Far off the red 
 flares still flecked the darkness, but they 
 did not frighten him. He said to him 
 self: "People are always afraid in their 
 first battle. I m not the least afraid, so 
 I suppose this is not a battle . . ." and 
 at the same moment there was a small 
 shrieking explosion, followed by a hor 
 rible rattle of projectiles that seemed to 
 spring up out of the wheat at their feet. 
 
 The men dropped on their bellies and 
 crawled away from it, and Troy crawled 
 after, sweating with fear. He had not 
 looked back, but he knew that some of 
 the men must be lying where they had 
 
 [120] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 dropped, and suddenly it occurred to him 
 that it was his business to go back and 
 see ... 
 
 Was it, though? Or would that be 
 disobeying orders again? 
 
 He did not stop to consider. The Am 
 bulance driver s instinct was uppermost, 
 and he turned and crawled back, straight 
 back to the place ^that the horrible ex 
 plosion had come from. The firing had 
 stopped, but in the thin darkness he saw 
 a body lying in front of him in the flat 
 tened wheat. He looked back, and saw 
 that the sergeant and the rest of the men 
 were disappearing at the right; then he 
 ramped forward again, forward and for 
 ward, till he touched the arm of the mo 
 tionless man and whispered: "Hi, kid, 
 it s me 
 
 He tried to rouse the wounded man, 
 to pull him forward, to tow him like a 
 barge along the beaten path in the wheat. 
 But the man groaned and resisted. He 
 was evidently in great pain, and Troy, 
 
 [121] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 whom a year s experience in ambulance 
 work had enlightened, understood that 
 he must be either carried away or left 
 where he was. 
 
 To carry him it was necessary to stand 
 up, and the night was growing trans 
 parent, and the wheat was not more than 
 waist high. 
 
 Troy raised his head an inch or two 
 and looked about him. In the east, be 
 yond the wheat, a pallor was creeping 
 upward, drowning the last stars. Any 
 one standing up would be distinctly 
 visible against that pallor. With a sense 
 of horror and reluctance and dismay he 
 lifted the wounded man and stood up. 
 As he did so he felt a small tap on his 
 back, between the shoulders, as if some 
 one had touched him from behind. He 
 half turned to see who it was, and 
 doubled up, slipping down with the 
 wounded soldier in his arms . . . 
 
 [122] 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 TROY, burning with fever, lay on a 
 hospital bed. 
 
 He was not very clear where the hos 
 pital was, or how he had got there; and 
 he did not greatly care. All that was 
 left of clearness in his brain was filled 
 with the bitter sense of his failure. He 
 had abandoned his job to plunge into 
 battle, and before he had seen a German 
 or fired a shot he found himself ig- 
 nominiously laid by the heels in a strange 
 place full of benevolent looking hypo 
 crites whose least touch hurt him a mil 
 lion times more than the German bullet. 
 
 It was all a stupid agitating muddle, 
 in the midst of which he tried in vain to 
 discover what had become of Jacks, what 
 had happened to the ambulance, and 
 whether the old people and the wounded 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 territorial had been heard of. He in 
 sisted particularly on the latter point to 
 the cruel shaved faces that were always 
 stooping over him, but they seemed un 
 able to give him a clear answer or else 
 their cruelty prompted them to withhold 
 what they knew. He groaned and tossed 
 and got no comfort, till suddenly, open 
 ing his eyes, he found Jacks sitting by 
 his bed. 
 
 He poured out his story to Jacks in 
 floods and torrents : there was no time to 
 listen to what his friend had to say. He 
 went in and out of the whole business 
 with him, explaining, arguing, and an 
 swering his own arguments. Jacks, 
 passive and bewildered, sat by the bed 
 and murmured "All right all right" at 
 intervals. Then he too disappeared, 
 giving way to other unknown faces. 
 
 The third night (someone said it was 
 the third night) the fever dropped a 
 little. Troy felt more quiet, and Jacks, 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 who had turned up again, sat beside him, 
 and told him all the things he had not 
 been able to listen to the first day all 
 the great things in which he had played 
 an unconscious part. 
 
 "Battle of the Marne ? Sure you were 
 in it in it up to the hilt, you lucky kid!" 
 
 And what a battle it had been! The 
 Americans had taken Vaux and driven 
 the Germans back across the bridge at 
 Chateau-Thierry, the French were press 
 ing hard on their left flank, the advance 
 on Paris had been checked and the poor 
 old couple and the territorial in the am 
 bulance had not fallen into enemy hands, 
 but had been discovered by Jacks where 
 Troy had left them, and hurried off to 
 places of safety the same night . . . 
 
 As Troy lay and listened, tears of 
 weakness and joy ran down his face. 
 The Germans were back across the 
 Marne, and he had really been in the 
 action that had sent them there ! The 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 road to Paris was barred and Sophy 
 Wicks was somewhere in France. . . He 
 felt as light as a feather, and if it had 
 not been for his deathly weakness he 
 would have jumped out of bed and in 
 sisted on rejoining the ambulance. But 
 as it was he could only lie flat and feebly 
 return Jacks grin . . . 
 
 There was just one thing he had not 
 told Jacks: a little thing that Jacks 
 would not have understood. Out in the 
 wheat, when he had felt that tap on the 
 shoulder, he had turned round quickly, 
 thinking a friend had touched him. At 
 the same instant he had stumbled and 
 fallen, and his eyes had grown dark; but 
 through the darkness he still felt con 
 fusedly that a friend was near, if only he 
 could lift his lids and look . . . 
 
 He did lift them at last; and there, in 
 the dawn, he saw a French soldier, hag 
 gard and battle-worn, looking down at 
 him. The soldier wore the uniform of 
 
 [126] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 the chasseurs a pied, and his face was the 
 face of Paul Gantier, bending low and 
 whispering: "Mon petit mon pauvre 
 petit gars. . . " Troy heard the words 
 distinctly, he knew the voice as well as he 
 knew his mother s. His eyes shut again, 
 but he felt Gander s arms under his body, 
 felt himself lifted, lifted, till he seemed 
 to float in the arms of his friend . . . 
 
 He said nothing of that to Jacks or 
 anyone, and now that the fever had 
 dropped he was glad he had held his 
 tongue. Someone told him that a ser 
 geant of the chasseurs a pied had found 
 him and brought him in to the nearest 
 poste de secours, where Jacks, provi 
 dentially, had run across him and carried 
 him back to the base. They told him 
 that his rescue had been wonderful, but 
 that nobody knew what the sergeant s 
 name was, or where he had gone to ... 
 
 ("If ever a man ought to have had the 
 
 [ia 7 ] 
 
THE MARNE 
 
 Croix de Guerre !" one of the nurses 
 
 interjected emotionally.) 
 
 Troy listened and shut his lips. It 
 was really none of his business to tell 
 these people where the sergeant had gone 
 to : but he smiled a little when the doctor 
 said: "Chances are a man like that hasn t 
 got much use for decorations ..." 
 
 And then the emotional nurse added: 
 "Well, you must just devote the rest of 
 your life to trying to find him." 
 
 Ah, yes, he would do that, Troy swore 
 he would do it on the battle-fields of 
 France. 
 
 (END.) 
 
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