At the station we found that the Germans were masters there too. I asked for a first-cla.s.s compartment to ourselves, or for a _coupe_, whatever they liked, provided we were alone.
I could not make myself understood.
I saw a man, oiling the wheels of the carriages, who looked to me like a Frenchman. I was not mistaken. He was an old man who had been kept on, partly out of charity and partly because he knew every nook and corner, and, being Alsatian, spoke German. This good man took me to the booking office, and explained my wish to have a first-cla.s.s compartment to myself. The man who had charge of the ticket office burst out laughing.
There was neither first nor second cla.s.s, he said. It was a German train, and I should have to travel like every one else. The wheel-oiler turned purple with rage, which he quickly suppressed. (He had to keep his place. His consumptive wife was nursing their son, who had just been sent home from the hospital with his leg cut off and the wound not yet healed up. There were so many in the hospital.) All this he told me as he took me to the station-master. The latter spoke French very well, but he was not at all like the other German officers I had met.
He scarcely saluted me, and when I expressed my desire he replied curtly:
"It is impossible. Two places shall be reserved for you in the officers"
carriage."
"But that is what I want to avoid," I exclaimed. "I do not want to travel with German officers."
"Well then, you shall be put with German soldiers," he growled angrily, and, putting on his hat, he went out slamming the door. I remained there, amazed and confused by the insolence of this ign.o.ble brute. I turned so pale, it appears, and the blue of my eyes became so clear, that Soubise, who was acquainted with my fits of anger, was very much alarmed.
"Do be calm, Madame, I implore!" she said. "We are two women alone in the midst of hostile people. If they liked to harm us they could, and we must accomplish the aim and object of our journey; we must see little Maurice again."
She was very clever, this charming Mlle. Soubise, and her little speech had the desired effect. To see the child again was my aim and object. I calmed down, and vowed that I would not allow myself to get angry during this journey, which promised to be fertile in incidents, and I almost kept my word. I left the station-master"s office, and found the poor Alsatian waiting at the door. I gave him a couple of louis, which he hid away quickly, and then shook my hand as though he would shake it off.
"You ought not to have that so visible, Madame," he said, pointing to the little bag I had hanging at my side, "it is very dangerous."
I thanked him, but did not pay any attention to his advice. As the train was about to start we entered the only first-cla.s.s compartment there was; in it were two young German officers. They saluted, and I took this as a good omen. The train whistled, and I thought what good luck we had, as no one else would get in! Well, the wheels had not turned round ten times when the door opened violently and five German officers leaped into our carriage.
We were nine then, and what torture it was! The station-master waved a farewell to one of the officers, and both of them burst out laughing as they looked at us. I glanced at the station-master"s friend. He was a surgeon-major, and was wearing the ambulance badge on his sleeve. His wide face was congested, and a ring of sandy bushy beard surrounded the lower part of it. Two little bright, light-coloured eyes in perpetual movement lit up this ruddy face and gave him a sly look. He was broad-shouldered and thick-set, and gave one the idea of having strength without nerves. The horrid man was still laughing when the station and its master were far away from us, but what the other one had said was evidently very droll.
I was in a corner seat, with Soubise opposite me. A young German officer sat beside me, and the other young officer was next to my friend. They were both very gentle and polite, and one of them was quite delightful in his youthful charm.
The surgeon-major took off his helmet. He was very bald, and had a very small, stubborn-looking forehead. He began to talk in a loud voice to the other officers.
Our two young bodyguards took very little part in the conversation.
Among the others was a tall, affected young man, whom they addressed as baron. He was slender, very elegant, and very strong. When he saw that we did not understand German he spoke to us in English. But Soubise was too timid to answer, and I speak English very badly. He therefore resigned himself regretfully to talking French.
He was agreeable, too agreeable; he certainly had not bad manners, but he was deficient in tact. I made him understand this by turning my face towards the scenery we were pa.s.sing.
We were very much absorbed in our thoughts, and had been travelling for a long time, when I suddenly felt suffocated by smoke which was filling the carriage. I looked round, and saw that the surgeon-major had lighted his pipe, and, with his eyes half closed, was sending up puffs of smoke to the ceiling.
My eyes were smarting, and I was choking with indignation, so much so that I was seized with a fit of coughing, which I exaggerated in order to attract the attention of the impolite man. The baron, however, slapped him on the knee and endeavoured to make him comprehend that the smoke inconvenienced me. He answered by an insult which I did not understand, shrugged his shoulders, and continued to smoke. Exasperated by this, I lowered the window on my side. The intense cold made itself felt in the carriage, but I preferred that to the nauseous smoke of the pipe. Suddenly the surgeon-major got up, putting his hand to his ear, which I then saw was filled with cotton-wool. He swore like an ox-driver, and, pushing past every one and stepping on my feet and on Soubise"s, he shut the window violently, cursing and swearing all the time quite uselessly, for I did not understand him. He went back to his seat, continued his pipe, and sent out enormous clouds of smoke in the most insolent way. The baron and the two young Germans who had been the first in the carriage appeared to ask him something and then to remonstrate with him, but he evidently told them to mind their own business and began to abuse them. Very much calmer myself on seeing the increasing anger of the disagreeable man, and very much amused by his earache, I again opened the window. He got up again, furious, showed me his ear and his swollen cheek, and I caught the word "periost.i.tis" in the explanation he gave me on shutting the window again and threatening me. I then made him understand that I had a weak chest, and that the smoke made me cough.
The baron acted as my interpreter, and explained this to him; but it was easy to see that he did not care a bit about that, and he once more took up his favourite att.i.tude and his pipe. I left him in peace for five minutes, during which time he was able to imagine himself triumphant, and then with a sudden jerk of my elbow I broke the pane of gla.s.s.
Stupefaction was depicted on the major"s face, and he became livid. He got straight up, but the two young men rose at the same time, whilst the baron burst out laughing in the most brutal manner.
The surgeon moved a step in our direction, but he found a rampart before him; another officer had joined the two young men, and he was a strong, hardy-looking fellow, just cut out for an obstacle. I do not know what he said to the surgeon-major, but it was something clear and decisive.
The latter, not knowing how to expend his anger, turned on the baron, who was still laughing, and abused him so violently that the latter calmed down suddenly and answered in such a way that I quite understood the two men were calling each other out. That affected me but little, anyhow. They might very well kill each other, these two men, for they were equally ill-mannered.
The carriage was now quiet and icy-cold, for the wind blew in wildly through the broken pane. The sun had set. The sky was getting cloudy. It was about half-past five, and we were approaching Tergnier. The major had changed seats with his friend, in order to shelter his ear as much as possible. He kept moaning like a half-dead cow.
Suddenly the repeated whistling of a distant locomotive made us listen attentively. We then heard two, three, and four crackers bursting under our wheels. We could perfectly well feel the efforts the engine-driver was making to slacken speed, but before he could succeed we were thrown against each other by a frightful shock. There were cracks and creaks, the hiccoughs of the locomotive spitting out its smoke in irregular fits, desperate cries, shouts, oaths, sudden downfalls, a lull, then a thick smoke, broken by the flames of a fire. Our carriage was standing up, like a horse kicking up its hind legs. It was impossible to get our balance again.
Who was wounded and who was not wounded? We were nine in the compartment. For my part, I fancied that all my bones were broken. I moved one leg and then I tried the other. Then, delighted at finding them unbroken, I tried my arms in the same way. I had nothing broken, and neither had Soubise. She had bitten her tongue, and it was bleeding, and this had frightened me. She did not seem to understand anything. The tremendous shaking had made her dizzy, and she lost her memory for some days. I had a rather deep scratch between my eyes. I had not had time to stretch out my arms, and my forehead had knocked against the hilt of the sword which the officer seated by Soubise had been holding upright.
a.s.sistance arrived from all sides.
For some time the door of our compartment could not be opened.
Darkness had come on when it finally yielded, and a lantern shone feebly on our poor broken-up carriage.
I looked round for our one bag, but on finding it I let it go immediately, for my hand was red with blood. Whose blood was it?
Three men did not move, and one of them was the major. His face looked to me livid. I closed my eyes, in order not to know, and I let the man who had come to our aid pull me out of the compartment. One of the young officers got out after me. He took Soubise, who was almost in a fainting condition, from his friend. The imbecile baron then got out; his shoulder was out of joint. A doctor came forward among the rescuers. The baron held his arm out to him, telling him at the same time to pull it, which he did at once. The French doctor took off the officer"s cloak, told two of the railway-men to hold him, and then, pushing against him himself, pulled at the poor arm. The baron was very pale, and gave a low whistle. When the arm was back in its place, the doctor shook the baron"s other hand. "Cristi!" he said, "I must have hurt you very much.
You are most courageous." The German saluted, and I helped him on again with his cloak.
The doctor was then fetched away, and I saw that he was taken back to our compartment. I shuddered in spite of myself. We were now able to find out what had been the cause of our accident. A locomotive attached to two vans of coal had been shunting on to a side line in order to let us pa.s.s, when one of the vans got off the rails, and the locomotive tired its lungs with whistling the alarm, whilst men ran to meet us, scattering crackers. Everything had been in vain, and we had run against the overturned van.
What were we to do? The roads, softened by the recent wet weather, were all broken up by the cannons. We were about four miles from Tergnier, and a thin penetrating rain was making our clothes stick to our bodies.
There were four carriages, but they were for the wounded. Other carriages would come, but there were the dead to be carried away. An improvised litter was just being borne along by two workmen. The major was lying on it, so livid that I clenched my hands until my nails entered the flesh. One of the officers wanted to question the doctor who was following.
"Oh no!" I exclaimed. "Please, please do not. I do not want to know. The poor fellow!"
I stopped my ears, as though some one was about to shout out something horrible to me, and I never knew his fate.
We were obliged to resign ourselves to setting out on foot. We went about two kilometres as bravely as possible, and then I stopped, quite exhausted. The mud which clung to our shoes made these very heavy. The effort we had to make at every step to get our feet out of the mire tired us out. I sat down on a milestone, and declared that I would not go any farther.
My sweet companion wept: the two young German officers who had acted as bodyguards made a seat for me by crossing their hands, and so we went nearly another mile. My companion could not walk any farther. I offered her my place, but she refused it.
"Well then, let us wait here!" I said, and, quite at the end of our strength, we rested against a little broken tree.
It was now night, and such a cold night!
Soubise and I huddled close together, trying to keep each other warm. I began to fall asleep, seeing before my eyes the wounded men of Chatillon, who had died seated against the little shrubs. I did not want to move again, and the torpor seemed to me thoroughly delicious.
A cart pa.s.sed by, however, on its way to Tergnier. One of the young men hailed it, and when a price was agreed upon I felt myself picked up from the ground, lifted into the vehicle, and carried along by the jerky, rolling movement of two loose wheels, which climbed the hills, sank into the mire, and jumped over the heaps of stones, whilst the driver whipped up his beasts and urged them on with his voice. He had a "don"t care, let what will happen" way of driving, which was characteristic of those days.
I was aware of all this in my semi-sleep, for I was not really asleep, but I did not want to answer any questions. I gave myself up to this prostration of my whole being with a certain amount of enjoyment.
A rough jerk, however, indicated that we had arrived at Tergnier. The cart had drawn up at the hotel, and we had to get out. I pretended to be still sleeping heavily. But it was no use, for I had to wake up. The two young men helped me up to my room.
I asked Soubise to arrange about the payment of the cart before the departure of our excellent young companions, who were sorry to leave us.
I signed for each of them a voucher, on a sheet of the hotel paper, for a photograph. Only one of them ever claimed it. This was six years later, and I sent it to him.
The Tergnier hotel could only give us one room. I let Soubise go to bed, and I slept in an arm-chair, dressed as I was.
The following morning I asked about a train for Cateau, but was told that there was no train.
We had to work marvels to procure a vehicle, but finally Dr. Meunier, or Mesnier, agreed to lend us a two-wheeled conveyance. That was something, but there was no horse. The poor doctor"s horse had been requisitioned by the enemy. A wheelwright for an exorbitant price let me have a colt that had never been in the shafts, and which went wild when the harness was put on. The poor little beast calmed down after being well lashed, but his wildness then changed into stubbornness. He stood still on his four legs, which were trembling furiously, and refused to move. With his neck stretched towards the ground, his eye fixed, and his nostrils dilating, he would not budge any more than a stake in the earth. Two men then held the light carriage back; the halter was taken off the colt"s neck; he shook his head for an instant, and, thinking himself free and without any impediments, began to advance. The men were scarcely holding the vehicle. He gave two little kicks, and then began to trot. Oh, it was only a very short trot. A boy then stopped him, some carrots were given to him, his mane was stroked, and the halter was put on again. He stopped suddenly, but the boy, jumping into the gig and holding the reins lightly, spoke to him and encouraged him to move on. The colt, not feeling any resistance, began to trot along for about a quarter of an hour, and then came back to us at the door of the hotel. I had to leave a deposit of four hundred francs with the notary of the place, in case the colt should die.
Ah, what a journey that was with the boy, Soubise, and me sitting close together in that little gig, the wheels of which creaked at every jolt!
The unhappy colt was steaming like a _pot-au-feu_ when the lid is raised. We started at eleven in the morning, and when we had to stop, because the poor beast could not go any farther, it was five in the afternoon, and we had not gone five miles. Oh, that poor colt, he was certainly to be pitied! We were not very heavy, all three of us together, but we were too much for him. We were just a few yards away from a sordid-looking house. I knocked, and an old woman, enormous in size, opened the door.