On the fifth of August it seems that his squad had been stationed upon the bridge over the Seine at Corbeille. The orders were to prevent any pa.s.sage over the bridge and under the bridge-- particularly the latter, as the authorities suspected an attempt upon the part of enemy plotters to use the waterways in and out of Paris.
Traffic had been suspended and orders had been explicit: "Shoot any water-craft, without challenge, as it turns the bend at the Corbeille bridge."
Corbeille had been the objective of our proposed canoe journey.
There had been abundant warrant then in the very const.i.tution of things for my psychic shivers at the first broaching of that canoe- trip.
Our escape had been by a narrow margin. If that telegram, "Left Corbeille and gone to Melun," had missed us, Robert le Marchand"s first shot might have meant death, not to his enemy but to his own life and soul. On the eve of the great war he might have embraced his dearest one cold and lifeless. But instead of that somber ending, here she was, warm, radiant and laughing--doubly precious by the trials through which she had pa.s.sed and the death from which she had been delivered.
Chapter XIV
No-Man"s-Land
The movements of the 231ier Regiment d"Infanterie were publicly announced. It was scheduled to entrain on the morrow for the front between Metz and Nancy. Robert le Marchand needed not to go.
p.r.o.nounced unfit by the regimental doctor, his name had been placed upon the hospital list. Amidst the bustle of preparation for departure he spent the day in quietude, and Marie played nurse to the invalid.
Her little tale about being a Red Cross worker told at the Gare du Nord turned out to be the truth and not the fable that she had fancied. Robert"s recovery was so rapid that the doctor was astonished. He was understanding, however; also he was a very kindly doctor. He came and smiled and nodded his approval.
Then he went away, still leaving Robert on the sick list.
A long season of such delightful convalescence was now his for the taking. Golden days they promised to be to him and to Marie, but to France those early August days held portents of defeat and disaster. So one gathered from the ugly rumors from the frontier.
The great battle raging in the north had its miniature in their souls.
Theirs to choose days of ease and dalliance or the call to duty.
When the 231st regiment formed into line the afternoon of August 7th, the sergeant, radiant and happy, was with them again. But the tears in his eyes? That perplexed his comrades. Those who knew the secret let the romance lose none of its glamour in the telling until Marie became, forsooth, the heroine of the regiment.
At four o"clock the regimental band struck up the Ma.r.s.eillaise and the regiment moved down the road. The sergeant"s feet kept time with his marching men, while his eyes turned to the blue figure on a balcony, whose hand was fluttering a limp white handkerchief.
She was striving her best to wave a cheerful farewell. The repeated strains: "Ye sons of France awake to glory," came each time more faintly as the regiment moved steadily away. There is always pain in such a growing distance. But it was not all pain to the tear-stained girl upon the balcony. She had her part in that glory. Had she not, too, made her sacrifice.
It was quite as if the regiment had sailed away under sealed orders. Metz and Nancy had been broadcasted about as the objective of the 231st. But that had been just a blind for German informers. For the next communique mentioning the regiment came from far to the west, where it had been hurried to hold up the grave threat upon Paris. At Soissons the gray-green advance rolled itself up against the red and blue of the 231st.
Back and forth the battle line surged through the old streets, now lurid with the light of blazing houses. A sh.e.l.l falling on the town-hall fired this ancient land-mark. A great flame-fountain burst up from the heart of the city. "Rescue the archives!" was the cry. For this, volunteers were called. The dash of a sergeant and his men into the burning hall and back again through the bullet-spattered streets is related in the Journal Officiel. It tells of the safe return of the archives, but of few survivors. For impetuous valor in this exploit, the name of Sergeant le Marchand was changed to Lieutenant le Marchand.
That was my last tidings of Marie and Robert, until a year later a letter came to me in a shaky but familiar hand. It had the post- mark of Hornell Sanitarium, New York. It was from Marie, and one glance revealed the tragedy. Briefly it was this:
In the attempted Champagne drive of 1915 the 231st regiment was ordered to rush the barbed wire barricade and drive a wedge into the enemy"s line. At command Lieutenant le Marchand leaped from cover to lead the charge of his men. Scarcely had he uttered his cry, "En avant!" when he was dropped in his tracks, a bullet through his brain. Over his body, with revenge adding to their fury, the regiment swept like mad. The trenches, a quarry of prisoners, and the thrill of high praise from the general were theirs--a triumph with a bitter taste, for some, creeping back, had found their young lieutenant crumpled where he fell, the moonlight cold upon his blood-stained face. "In order that France might live he was willing to close his eyes upon her forever." Curiously his sword was sticking upright just as it had dropped from his hand. They buried him where he lay upon the edge of No-Man"s-Land. Tears were showered on his grave, and on that fatal bullet many bitter curses.
But this does not complete the tale of murder wrought by that slug of lead. Each plunging bullet blazes its black trail of the spirit-killed.
A month later and three thousand miles away this German missile struck the heart of an American girl with a more cruel impact than it had struck the brain of this lieutenant of France. She, too, crumpled and fell upon the thorns. His had been a speedy, painless death; one sharp electric stroke and then the closing night. A like oblivion would have been sweet to her. But she had to face it out alone. Upon her torn heart were beaten a thousand hammer-strokes, and through the endless nights she bore the anguish of a thousand deaths.
The death-lists of Europe hold 5,000,000 other names besides Lieutenant le Marchand"s. Behind each name there marches with springless steps one or more figures shrouded in black.
A year later one of these figures arose from her burial alive, a whitened shadow of her former self.
"I know that I ought not to have collapsed, just as I know that I ought not to hate the Germans," Marie wrote. "I"m pulling myself together now, and I am trying to work and to forgive. But my thoughts are always wandering out to just one spot--that is where Robert lies. When peace comes I"m going straight over there and with my own hands I shall dig through every trench until I find him."
Tragic futility indeed! One recompense for the colossal slaughter and the long war; few shall ever find their dead.
On a recent Sunday morning I stepped into a church of a Lake City of the West. The organ was filling the large structure with its sounds; gradually out of the dim light came the face of the player.
A hard road had she traveled since last I saw her, a trim little blue- clad figure waving good-by from that balcony in Melun. It was not strange that her face was white. There was nothing strange either in the pa.s.sion of that music.
These experiences of Gethsemane and Calvary had been first enacted in her own soul. The organ was but giving voice to them.
There was a plaintive touch in the minor chords, as if pleading for days that were gone. It climbed to a closing rapture, as if two who had parted here had, for the moment, hailed each other in the world of Souls.
Afterword
It seems sometimes as if the torch of civilization had been almost extinguished in this deluge of blood. This darkening of the face of the earth has cost more than the blood and treasure of the race--it has involved a terrific strain on the mind and soul of man.
The blasting of hundreds of villages, the sinking of thousands of ships, and the killing of millions of men is no small monument to the power of the human will. Deplore as we may the sanguinary ends to which this will has been bent, it has at any rate shown itself to be no weakling. We must marvel at the grim tenacity with which it has held to its goal through the long red years.
But now it is challenged by an infinitely bigger task.
The great nations sundered apart by this hideous anarchy have become hissings and by-words to each other. One group has been cast outside the Pale to become the Ishmaels of the universe. The purpose is to keep them there.
Yet try as we may we cannot live upon a totally disrupted planet without bringing a common disaster upon us all. It may be a matter of decades and generations but eventually the reconciliation must come.
To start civilization on the upward path again, to make the world into a neighborhood anew, to achieve the moral unity of humanity, is that infinitely bigger task with which the human will is challenged.
As in the last years it has relentlessly concentrated its energies upon the Great War, now through the next decades and generations it must as steadfastly hold them to the Great Reconciliation. The tragedy of it all is that humanity must go at this crippled by a hatred like acid eating into the soul.
Villages will arise again from their ruins, the plow shall turn anew the sh.e.l.l-pitted fields into green meadow-lands, a kindly nature will soon obliterate the scars upon the landscape, but not the deep searings on the soul. Europe must grapple with this work of reconstruction handicapped by this black devil poisoning the mind and vitiating every effort. The worst curse bequeathed to the coming generations is not the mountain of debt but this heritage of hate.
It does not behoove Americans to stand on inviolate sh.o.r.es and prate of the wickedness of wrath. Moreover, this evil is not to be exorcised by a pious wish for it not to be. It is. And there is every excuse under the arch of heaven for its existence.
If we had felt the eagles" claws tearing at our flesh; if, like Europe, our soil was crimsoned with the blood of our murdered; if millions of our women were breaking their hearts in anguish--we too would consider it a gratuitous bit of impertinence to be told not to cherish rancor towards those who had unleashed the h.e.l.lhounds of l.u.s.t and carnage upon us.
As it is, we are not sacrosanct. Three thousand miles have not sufficed to keep the deadly virus out of our system. The violation of Belgium kindled a fire against the invaders which the successive cruelties served to fan into a flaming resentment.
Then came our own losses--a mere grazing of the skin alongside of the bleeding white of Europe. But it has touched us deep enough to rouse even a sense of vindictiveness. This kept to ourselves will do injury to ourselves alone. But when we shout or whisper across the seas that we too despise the barbarians we help no one. We simply help to render the heartbreaking task of reconciliation well-nigh impossible by lashing to a wilder fury the people already blinded, embittered and frenzied by their own hate.
Those who, above the luxury of giving full rein to their own pa.s.sions, put the welfare of the French, English, Belgians and other broken peoples of earth, will do everything in their power to eradicate this gangrene from their souls.