The road left the forest for a time and pa.s.sed over bare gra.s.s hills beneath a windy sky. Then back into the forest again, hidden from the moon. And here her half-stayed hunger made her fanciful, and she started at the noise of a moving bough, blew her horn at nothing, and seemed to hear the overtaking hum of a car that never drew near her.
Suddenly, on the left, in a ditch, a dark form appeared, then another and another. Down there in a patch of gra.s.s below the road she caught sight of the upturned wheels of a lorry, and stopping, got down, walked to the ditch and looked over. There, in wild disorder, lay thirty or forty lorries and cars, burnt, twisted, wheelless, broken, ravaged, while on the wooden sides the German eagle, black on white, was marked.
"What--what--can have happened here!"
She climbed back into the car, but just beyond the limit of her lights came on a huge mine crater, and the road seemed to hang on its lip and die for ever. Again she got down, and found a road of planks, sh.o.r.ed up by branches of trees, leading round on the left edge of the crater to firm land on the other side. Some of the planks were missing, and moving carefully around the crater she heard others tip and groan beneath her.
"Could that have been a convoy caught by the mine? Or was it a dumping ground for the cars unable to follow in the retreat?"
The mine crater, which was big enough to hold a small villa, was overgrown now at the bottom with a little gra.s.s and moss.
On and on and on--till she fancied the moon, too, had turned as the sun had done, and started a downward course. It grew no colder, she grew no hungrier--but losing count of time, slipped on between the flying tree trunks, full of unwearied content. At last a light shone through the trees, and by a wooden bridge which led over another crater she came on a lonely house. "Cafe" was written on the door, but the shutters were tight shut, and only a line of light shone from a crack.
From within came sounds of laughter and men"s voices. She knocked, and there was an instant silence, but no one came to answer. At length the bolts were withdrawn and the head of an old woman appeared through the door, which was cautiously opened a little.
"An omelette? Coffee?"
"You don"t know what you speak of! We have no eggs."
"Then coffee?"
"No, no, nothing at all. Go on to Charleville. We have nothing."
"How far is Charleville?"
But the door shut again, the bolts were shot, and a man"s voice growled in the hidden room behind.
"Dubious hole. Yet it looks as though a big town were near----" And down the next slope she ran into Charleville. The town had been long abed, the street lamps were out, the cobbles wet and shining.
On the main boulevard one dark figure hurried along.
"Which is the "Silver Lion"?" she called, her voice echoing in the empty street.
Soon, between rugs on a bed in the "Silver Lion," between a single sheet doubled in two, she slept--propping the lockless door with her suitcase.
The Renault slept or watched below in the courtyard, the moon sank, the small hours pa.s.sed, the day broke, the first day in Charleville.
PART IV
SPRING IN CHARLEVILLE
CHAPTER XVII
THE STUFFED OWL
A stuffed bird stood upon a windless branch and through a window of blue and orange squares of gla.s.s a broken moon stared in.
A bedroom, formed from a sitting-room, a basin to wash in upon a red plush table--no gla.s.s, no jug, no lock upon the door. Instead, gilt mirrors, three bell ropes and a barometer. A bed with a mattress upon it and nothing more.
This was her kingdom.
Beyond, a town without lights, without a station, without a milkshop, without a meat shop, without sheets, without blankets, crockery, cooking pans, or locks upon the doors. A population half-fed and poor. A sky black as ink and liquid as a river.
Prisoners in the streets, moving in green-coated gangs; prisoners in the gutters, pushing long scoops to stay the everlasting tide of mud; thin, hungry, fierce and sad, green-coated prisoners like bedraggled parrots, out-numbered the population.
The candle of the world was snuffed out--and the wick smoked.
The light was gone--the blinding light of the Chantilly snows, the lights on the Precy river--moonlight, sunlight--the little boat crossing at moonrise, sunrise.
"Ah, that long journey! How I pressed on, how I fled from Amiens!"
"What, not Charleville yet?" I said. "Isn"t it Charleville soon? What hurry was there then to get there?"
The stuffed bird eyed her from his unstirring branch, and that yellow eye seemed to answer: "None, none..."
"This is his home; his country. He told me it was beautiful. But I cannot see beauty. I am empty of happiness. Where is the beauty?"
And the vile bird, winking in the candle"s light, replied: "Nowhere."
But he lied.
Perhaps she had been sent, stuffed as he was, from Paris. Perhaps he had never flown behind the town, and seen the wild mountains that began at the last house on the other bank of the river. Or the river itself, greener than any other which flowed over black rocks, in cold gulleys --the jade-green Meuse flowing to Dinant, to Namur. Perhaps from his interminable boulevard he had never seen the lovely Spanish Square of red and yellow, its steep-roofed houses standing upon arches--or the proud Duc Charles de Gonzague who strutted for ever upon his pedestal, his stone cape slipping from one shoulder, his gay Spaniard"s hat upon his head--holding back a smile from his handsome lips, lest the town which he had come over the mountains to found should see him tolerant and sin beneath his gaze.
That bird knew the rain would stop--knew it in his dusty feathers, but he would not kindle hope. He knew there was a yellow spring at hand--but he left her to mourn for the white l.u.s.tre of Chantilly.
Vile bird!... She blew out the candle that he might wink no more.
"To-morrow I will buy a padlock and a key. If among these gilt mirrors I can have no other charm, I will have solitude!" And having hung a thought, a plan, a hope before her in the future, she slept till day broke--the second day in Charleville.
She woke, a mixture of courage and philosophy.
"I can stand anything, and beyond a certain limit misfortune makes me laugh. But there"s no reason why I should stand this!" The key and padlock idea was rejected as a compromise with happiness.
"No, no, let us see if we can get something better to lock up than that bird." He looked uncommonly dead by daylight.
"I would rather lock up an empty room, and leave it pure when I must leave it!"
Dressing, she went quickly down the street to the Bureau de la Place.
The clerks and secretaries nodded and smiled at each other, and bent their heads over their typewriters when she looked at them.