Everyman's Land Part 18

What if he knew the truth about that brother and sister? Naturally I can't tell him, of all people on earth, and they take advantage of my handicap. They've used their time well, in my absence, when they had Brian to themselves. He had his doubts of Julian, but the creature has sung himself into my blind brother's heart. From what I hear, the three have spent most of their time at the piano in the private _salon_ which the Becketts invited the O'Farrells to engage.

Now, as I write, we are making our headquarters in Compiegne, sleeping there, and sightseeing by day on what they call the "Noyon Front."

After Rheims and before Noyon we stopped three days in Paris instead of one, as we'd planned, for Mother Beckett was tired. She wouldn't confess it, but "Father" thought she looked pale. Strange if she had not, after such experiences and emotions! Sometimes, when I study the delicate old face, with blue hollows under kind, sweet eyes, I ask myself: "Will she be able to get through the task she's set herself?" But she is so quietly brave, not only in fatigue, but in danger, that I answer my own question: "Yes, she will do it somehow, on the reserve force that kept her up when Jim died."

The road from Paris, past Senlis, to Compiegne, was even more thrilling than the road to Nancy and beyond, for this was the way the Germans took in September, 1914, when they thought the capital was theirs to have and hold: "_la route de l'Allemagne_" it used to be called, but never will French lips give it that name again.

Just at first, running out of the city in early morning, things looked much the same as when starting for Nancy: the unnatural quiet of streets once crammed with busy traffic for feeding gay Paris; military motors of all sorts and sizes, instead of milk wagons and cartloads of colourful fruits; women working instead of men; children on their way to school, sedately talking of "_papa au Front_," instead of playing games. But outside the suburbs the real thrills began.

There were the toy-like fortifications of which Paris was proud in the 'fifties; there was the black tangle of barbed wire, and the trace of trenches (a mere depression on the earth's surface, as if a serpent had laid its heavy length on a great, green velvet cus.h.i.+on) with which Paris had hoped to delay the German wave. Only a little way on, we shot through the sleepy-looking village of Bourget where Napoleon stopped a few hours after Waterloo, rather than enter Paris by daylight; and Brian had a story of the place. A French soldier, a friend of his (nearly everyone he meets is Brian's friend!) who was born there, told him that on each anniversary the ghost of the "Little Corporal" appears, travel-stained and worn, on the road leading to Bourget. For many years his custom was to show himself for a second to some seeing eye, then vanish like a mirage of the desert. But since 1914 his way is different.

He does not confine his visit to the hamlet of sad memories. He walks the country side, his hands behind him, his head bent as of old; or he rides a horse that is slightly lame, inspecting with thoughtful gaze the frenzied industries of war, war such as he--the war-genius--never saw in his visions of the future: the immense aerodromes, the bomb sheds, the wireless stations and observation towers, the giant "_saucisses_"

resting under green canvas, ready to rise at dawn; and all the other astounding features of the landscape so peaceful in his day.

Even now parts of it are peaceful, often the very spots marked by history, where it seems as if each tree should be decorated by a Croix de Guerre. For instance, there was the place--a junction of roads--where the Uhlans with a glitter of helmets came proudly galloping toward Paris, and to their blank amazement and rage had to turn back. As we halted to take in the scene, it was mysterious as dreamland in the morning mist. Nothing moved save two teams of cream-coloured oxen, their moon-white sides dazzling behind a silver veil. The pale road stretched before us so straight and far that it seemed to descend from the sky like a waterfall. Only the trees had a martial look, like tall, dark soldiers drawn up in line for parade.

It was not till we plunged into forest depths that I said to myself: "We must be coming near Senlis!" For the very name "Senlis" fills the mind with forest pictures. No wonder, since it lies walled away from the outer world--like the Sleeping Beauty--by woods, and woods, and woods: the forests of Hallette, Chantilly, and Ermenonville, each as full of history as it is now of aromatic scents, and used to be of wild boars for kings to kill!

I think the best of the forest pictures has Henri de Navarre for its princ.i.p.al figure. Brian and I turned over the pages of our memory for the Becketts, who listened like children to fairy tales--or as we listened when you used to embroider history for us in those evening _causeries_ in the dear old "den," Padre.

I dug up the story about Henri at twenty-one, married more than a year to beautiful, lively Marguerite de Valois, and enduring lazily the despotism of his mother-in-law. There in the old palace of the Louvre, he loitered the time away, practically a prisoner until the only friend he had with courage to speak out (Agrippa d'Aubigny) gave him a lecture.

Agrippa lashed his master with the words "coward" and "sluggard,"

letting his faithful servants work for his interests while he remained the slave of a "wicked old witch." The Bearnais had been biding his time--"crouching to spring": but that slap in the face set him on fire.

He could no longer wait for the right moment. He decided to make the _first_ moment the right one. His quick brain mapped out a plan of escape in which the sole flaw was that he must leave behind his brilliant bride. With eight or ten of his greatest, most loyal gentlemen, he arranged to hunt in the forest of Senlis; and he had shown himself so biddable, so boyish, that at first even Catherine de Medicis did not suspect him. It was only when the party had set forth that the plot burst like a bomb, in Catherine's own boudoir, where she sat with her favourite son, vile Henri III of France.

Fervacques, one of the plotters, had stopped in Paris, feigning illness.

The plan had been concocted in his rooms, and he but waited for Navarre's back to be turned to betray him. Marguerite laughed when she heard (perhaps she was in the secret), but Catherine said evil words, of which she knew a great many--especially in Italian. Orders were given for the gates of Paris to be shut (gates that in those days barred the road along which we now motored), but they were too late. Navarre and his hunters had pa.s.sed through. Agrippa d'Aubigny was not among them.

His part had been to watch the happenings of the Court, and join Navarre later in his own kingdom, but that hope was broken. Disguised as a _mignon_ of Henri III, he slipped out of Paris on a fast horse, tore after the Bearnais and his equerries, and caught the cavalcade in the forest. "Thou art betrayed!" he cried.

"But not captured!" laughed Navarre.

In haste they subst.i.tuted a new plot for the old. The young king was to pretend ignorance of the betrayal. He installed himself accordingly in the best lodgings of Senlis, talking loudly about hunting prospects, arranged to see a performance by travelling actors, and sent such a message back to Catherine and Henri that they believed Fervacques had fooled them.

By the time they'd waked to the truth, Navarre had ridden safely out of Senlis with his friends, bound for the kingdom on the Spanish border.

Even then he was a man of big ambitions; so maybe he said to himself, looking back at Senlis: "I shall travel this road again, as king of France, to enter Paris in triumph." Anyhow, he was grateful to Senlis for saving him, and stayed there often, as Henri Quatre, flirting with pretty ladies, and inviting them to become abbesses when he tired of them.

Lots of things have happened in Senlis, because it's on the road to Paris, and for centuries has been getting into someone's way. Why, if it hadn't been for Senlis, William the Conqueror might never have conquered! You see, before William's day, Count Bernard of Senlis (who boasted himself a forty-second grandson or something of Charlemagne) quarrelled with King Louis IV of France. To spite him, Bernard adopted the baby son of William Longsword, Duke of Normandy, killed in battle; for Normandy was a "thorn in the eye" of France. Thanks to Bernard's help Normandy gained in riches and importance. By the time William, son of Robert the Devil and Arlette of Falaise, appeared on the scene, the dukedom was a power in the world, and William was able to dare his great enterprise.

But that was only one incident. Senlis was already an old, old town, and as much ent.i.tled to call itself a capital of France as was Paris. Not for nothing had the Gallo-Romans given it walls twenty feet high and thirteen feet thick! They could not have builded better had they meant to attract posterity's attention, and win for their strong city the admiration of kings. Clovis was the first king who fancied it, and settled there. But not a king who followed, till after the day of Henri Quatre, failed to live in the castle which Clovis began. Henry V of England married Bonny Kate in the chateau; Charles VIII of France and Maximilian of Austria signed a treaty within its walls; Francis I finished Notre-Dame of Senlis. The Duke of Bedford fought Joan of Arc there, and she was helped by the Marechal Rais, no other than Bluebeard; so "Sister Anne" must have gazed out from some neighbouring tower for the "cloud of dust in the distance." Somewhere in the vast encircling forests the Babes in the Wood were buried by the birds, while the wicked uncle reigned in their father's place at Senlis. In 1814 Prussian, Russian, and British soldiers marched through the town on their tramp to Paris. Cossacks and Highlanders were the "strangest sight" Senlis had ever seen, though it had seen many; but a hundred years later it was to see a stranger one yet.

If ever a place looked made for peace, that place is Senlis, on its bright little river Nonette--child of the Oise--and in its lovely valley. That was what I said as we slowed down on the outskirts: but ah, how the thought of peace broke as we drove along the "kings'

highway"--the broad Rue de la Republique! In an instant the drama of September 2nd--eve of the Marne battle--sprang to our eyes and knocked at our hearts. We could smell the smoke, and see the flames, and hear the shots, the cries of grief and rage, the far-off thunder of bridges blown up by the retreating French army. Suddenly we knew how the people of Senlis had suffered that day, and--strangely, horribly--how the Germans had felt.

Senlis hadn't realized--wouldn't let itself realize--even during bombardment, what its fate might be. It had been spared, as an open town, in 1870; and since then, through long, prosperous years of peace a comfortable conviction had grown that only pleasant things could happen. Why, it was the place of pleasure, reaping a harvest of fame and money from its adventurous past! Tourists came from all the world over to put up at the Hotel du Grand Cerf, once the hunting lodge of kings.

They came to loiter in narrow old streets whose very names were echoes of history; to study the ruins of the Roman arena and the ancient walls; to hunt in the forest, as royal men and ladies had hunted when stags and wild boar had been plentiful as foxes and rabbits; or to motor from one neighbouring chateau to another. Surely even Germans could not doom such a town to destruction. To be sure, some people did fly when a rabble of refugees from Compiegne poured past, hurrying south; and others fled from the bombardment when big guns, fired from Lucien Bonaparte's old village of Chamant, struck the cathedral. But many stayed for duty's sake, or because they believed obstinately that to _their_ bit of the ile-de-France no tragedy could come.

They didn't know yet that Von Kluck and his men were drunk with victory, and that flaming towns were for the German army bonfires of triumph.

They didn't know that the Kaiser's dinner was ordered in Paris for a certain date, and that at all costs Paris must be cowed to a speedy peace, lest the dinner be delayed. "Frightfulness" was the word of command, and famous old Senlis was to serve as a lesson to Paris.

But somehow the German master of Senlis's heart weakened when the crucial moment came. He was at the Hotel du Grand Cerf, where a dinner was being prepared by scared servants for thirty German officers. The order was about to be signed when suddenly a _cure_, small and pale, but lion-brave, entered the room. How he got in no one knew! Surprise held the general tongue-tied for three seconds; and a French _cure_ is capable of much eloquence in three seconds.

He gambled--if a _cure_ may gamble!--on the chance of his man being Catholic--and he won. That is why (so they told us in the same room three years later) Senlis was struck with many sore wounds, but not exterminated; that is why only the Maire and a few citizens were murdered instead of all; that is why in some quarters of Senlis the people who have come back can still dream that nothing happened to their dear haunt of peace on September 2, 1914.

Even if Senlis had fallen utterly, before the Germans turned in their tracks, Paris would not have been "cowed." As it was, Paris and all France were roused to a redoubled fury of resistance by the fate of the Senlis "hostages." So these men did not die in vain.

The scars of Senlis are still unhealed. Whole streets are blackened heaps of ruin, and there are things that "make you see red," as Father Beckett growled. But the thing which left the clearest picture in my brain was a sight sweet as well as sad: a charming little chateau, ruined by fire, yet pathetically lovely in martyrdom; the green trellis still ornamenting its stained facade, a few autumn roses peeping with child-like curiosity into gaping window-eyes; a silent old gardener raking the one patch of lawn buried under blackened tiles and tumbled bricks. The man's figure was bent, yet I felt that there was hope as well as loyalty in his work. "They will come back home some day," was the expression of that faithful back.

In the exquisite beauty of the forest beyond Senlis there was still--for me--this note of hope. "Where beauty is, sadness cannot dwell for ever!"

As we rushed along in the big car, the delicate gray trunks of cl.u.s.tering trees seemed to whirl round and round before our eyes, as in a votive dance of young priestesses. We saw bands of German prisoners toiling gnome-like in dim glades, but they didn't make us sad again. _Au contraire!_ We found poetical justice in the thought that they, the cruel destroyers of trees, must chop wood and pile f.a.ggots from dawn to dusk.

So we came to Compiegne, where the French army has its headquarters in one of the most famous chateaux in the world.

CHAPTER XX

It took a mere glance (even if we hadn't known beforehand) to see that n.o.ble Compiegne craved no Beckett charity, no American adoption.

True, German officers lived for twelve riotous days in the palace, in 1914, selecting for home use many of its treasures, and German "non-coms." filled vans with rare antiques from the richest mansions; still, they had no time, or else no inclination, to disfigure the town.

The most sensational souvenir of those days before the Marne battle is a couple of broken bridges across the Oise and Aisne, blown up by the French in the hour of their retreat. But that strange sight didn't break on our eyes as we entered Compiegne. We seemed to have been transported by white magic from mystic forest depths to be plumped down suddenly in a city square, in front of a large, cla.s.sical palace. It's only the genie of motoring who can arrange these startling contrasts!

If we took Brian's advice, and "played" that our autos were old-fas.h.i.+oned coaches; if we looked through, instead of at, the dozen military cars lined up at the palace gates; if we changed a few details of the soldiers' uniforms, the gray chateau need not have been Army Headquarters in our fancy. For us, the Germans might cease from troubling and the war-weary be at rest, while we skipped back to any century we fancied.

Of course, Louis XV, son-in-law of our old friend Stanislas of Lorraine, built the chateau; and Napoleon the Great added a wing in honour of his second bride, Marie Louise. But why be hampered by details like that?

Charles V built a castle at this old Roman Compendium, on the very spot where all those centuries later Louis XV erected his Grecian facades; and Henri of Navarre often came there, in his day. One of Henri's best romances he owed to Compiegne; and while we were having what was meant to be a hurried luncheon, Mother Beckett made Brian tell the story. You know Brian came to Compiegne before the war and painted in the palace park, where Napoleon I and Napoleon III used to give their _fetes-champetres_; and he says that the picture is clear as ever "behind his eyes."

Once upon a time, Henri was staying in the chateau, very bored because weather had spoiled the hunting. Suddenly appeared the "handsomest young man of Prance," the Duc de Bellegarde, Henri's equerry, who had been away on an adventure of love. Somehow, he'd contrived to meet Gabrielle d'Estrees, almost a child, but of dazzling beauty. She hid him for three days, and then, alas, a treacherous maid threatened to tell Gabrielle's father. Bellegarde had to be smuggled out of the family castle--a rope and a high window. The tale amused Henri; and the girl's portrait fired him. He couldn't forget; and later, having finished some business at Senlis (part of which concerned a lady) he laid a plan to cut Bellegarde out. When the Equerry begged leave from Compiegne to visit Gabrielle again, Henri consented, on condition that he might be the duke's companion.

Bellegarde had to agree; and Henri fell in love at sight with the golden hair, blue eyes, and rose-and-white skin of "Gaby." She preferred Bellegarde to the long-nosed king; but the Bearnais was never one to take "no" for an answer. He went from Compiegne again and again to the forbidden castle, in peril of his life from Guise and the League. After a wild adventure, in disguise as a peasant with a bundle of straw on his head, his daring captured the girl's fancy. She was his; and he was hers, writing sonnets to "Charmante Gabrielle," making Marguerite furious by giving to the new love his wife's own Abbey of St. Corneille, at Compiegne. (One can still see its ruins!)

I said we meant to eat quickly and go for an afternoon of sightseeing--for early to-morrow (I'm writing late at night) we're due at Noyon. But Brian remembered so many bits about Compiegne, that by tacit consent we lingered and listened. When he was here last, he did a sketch of Henri and Gabrielle hunting in the forest; "Gaby" pearl-fair in green satin, embroidered with silver; on her head the famous hat of velvet-like red taffetas, which cost Henri two hundred crowns. Perhaps she carried in her hand one of the handkerchiefs for which she paid what other women pay for dresses; but Brian's sketches are too "impressionist" to show handkerchiefs! Anyhow, her hand was in the king's, for that was her way of riding with her gray-clad lover; though when she went alone she rode boldly astride. Poor Henri couldn't say nay to the becoming green satin and red hat, though he was hard up in those days. After paying a bill of Gaby's, he asked his valet how many s.h.i.+rts and handkerchiefs he had. "A dozen s.h.i.+rts, torn," was the answer.

"Handkerchiefs, five."

On the walls of the room where we ate hung beautiful old engravings of Napoleon I in his daily life at the Chateau of Compiegne. Napoleon receiving honoured guests in the vast Galerie des Fetes, with its polished floor and long line of immense windows; Napoleon and his bride in the Salon des Dames d'Honneur, among the ladies of Marie Louise; Napoleon listening wistfully--thinking maybe of lost Josephine--to a damsel at the harp, in the Salon de Musique; Marie Louise smirking against a background of _teinture chinoise_; Napoleon observing a tapestry battle of stags in the Salle des Cerfs; Napoleon on the magnificent _terra.s.se_ giving a garden party; Napoleon walking with his generals along the Avenue des Beaux Monts, in the park. But these pictures rather teased than pleased us, because in war days only the army enters palace or park.

Brian was luckier than the rest of us! He had been through the chateau and forgotten nothing. Best of all he had liked the bedchamber of Marie Antoinette, said to be haunted by her ghost, in hunting dress with a large hat and drooping plume. The Empress Eugenie, it seemed, had loved this room, and often entered it alone to dream of the past. Little could she have guessed then how near she would come to some such end as that fatal queen, second in beauty only to herself.

Even if Julian O'Farrell's significant glance hadn't called my attention to his sister, I should have noticed how Dierdre lost her sulky look in listening to Brian.

"He has something to say to me about those two when he gets a chance, and he wants me to know it now," I thought. But I pretended to be absorbed in stories of the Second Empire. For we sat on and on at the table, putting off our visit to the ancient timbered houses and the monument of Jeanne d'Arc, and all the other things which called us away from those hotel windows. It seemed as if the heart of Compiegne, past and present, were hidden just behind that gray facade of the palace across the square!

Of course, Jeanne was the "star" heroine of Compiegne, where she fought so bravely and was taken prisoner, and sold to the English by John of Luxembourg at a very cheap price. But, you know, she is the heroine of such lots of other places we have seen or will see, that we let her image fade for us behind the brilliant visions of Compiegne's pleasures.

As a rule, old history has the lure of romance in it, and makes modern history seem dull in contrast. But such a gorgeous novel could be written about Second Empire days of Compiegne (if only there were a Dumas to write it) that I do think this town is an exception.

Even "The Queen's Necklace" couldn't be more exciting than a story of Eugenie, with that "divinest beauty of all ages," the Castiglione, as her rival! I don't know how Dumas would begin it, but I would have the first scene at a house party of Louis Napoleon's, in the palace at Compiegne, after he had revived the old custom of the Royal Hunt: Napoleon, already falling in love, but hesitating, anxious to see how the Spanish girl would bear herself among the aristocratic charmers of the Court, whether she could hold her own as a huntress, as in a ballroom. I'd show her making a sensation by her horsemans.h.i.+p and beauty. Then I'd take her through the years, till the dazzling Florentine came to trouble her peace, the adored, yet disappointed divinity who cried, "If my mother had brought me to France instead of marrying me to Castiglione, an Italian, not a Spaniard, would have shared the throne with Napoleon, and there would have been no Franco-Prussian War!"

What a brilliant background Compiegne of those days would make for that pair, the beautiful young Empress and the more beautiful Countess!--Compiegne when the palace was crowded with the flower of Europe, when great princes and brave soldiers romped through children's games with lovely ladies, if rain spoiled the hunting; when Highland n.o.bles brought their pipers, and everyone danced the wildest reels, if there were time to spare from private theatricals and _tableaux vivants_! I think I would make my story end, though, not there, but far away; the Castiglione lying dead, with youth and beauty gone, dressed by her last request in a certain gown she had worn on a certain night at Compiegne, never to be forgotten.