title: The happy foreigner,
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' s » . • Copyriglit, 1920, by The Century Co. i . <1 ©CI,A576127 AUO 2i lu^'O ^ ... / CONTENTS PART I THE BLACK HUT AT BAR CHAPTER PAGE I The Traveler 3 PART II LORRAINE II Metz 31 III JUUEN . 50 IV Verdun 65 V Verdun . 86 VI The Lover in the Lamp 101 VII The Three “Cuents” 118 VIII Germany 131 IX The Crinoline 141 X Fanny Robbed and Rescued , , , . 156 XI The Last Night in Metz: the Journey , 173 PART HI THE FORESTS OF CHANTILLY XH Precy-Sur-Oise 195 XHI The Inn 207 XIV The River 227 XV Alues 246 XVI The Ardennes 260 PART IV SPRING IN CHARLEVILLE XVH The Stuffed Owl 271 XVHI Philippe’s House 284 XIX Philippe’s Mother 295 XX The Last Day 308 PROLOGUE THE EVE B etween the gray walls of its bath — so like its cradle and its coffin — lay one of those small and lonely creatures which inhabit the sur- face of the earth for seventy years. As on every other evening the sun was sinking and the moon, unseen, was rising. The round head of flesh and bone floated upon the deep water of the bath. ‘‘Why should I move?” rolled its thoughts, be- witched by solitude. “The earth itself is mov- ing. “Summer and winter and winter and summer I have traveled in my head, saying — ‘All secrets, all wonders, lie within the breast!’ But now that is at an end, and to-morrow I go upon a journey. “I have been accustomed to finding something in nothing — how do I know if I am equipped for a larger horizon! . . .” And suddenly the little creature chanted aloud : — “The strange things of travel. The East and the West, The hill beyond the hill, — They lie within the breast!” PART I THE BLACK HUT AT BAR / THE HAPPY FOREIGNER CHAPTER I THE TRAVELER 'HE war had stopped. Jl The King of England was in Paris, and the President of the United States was hourly ex- pected. Humbler guests poured each night from the termini into the overflowing city, and sought anx- iously for some bed, lounge-chair, or pillowed cor- ner, in which to rest until the morning. Stretched upon the table in a branch of the Y. W. C. A. lay a young woman from, England whose clothes were of brand-new khaki, and whose name was Fanny. She had arrived that night at the Gare du Nord at eight o’clock, and the following night at eight o’clock she left Paris by the Gare de I’Est. Just as she entered the station a small boy with a basket of violets for sale held a bunch to her face. “No, thank you.” 3 4 THE HAPPY FOREIGNER He pursued her and held it against her chin. “No, thank you.” “But I give it to you! I give it to you!” As she had neither slept on the boat from South- ampton nor on the table of the Y. W. C. A., tears of pleasure came into her eyes as she took them. But while she dragged her heavy kit-bag and her suit-case across the platform another boy of a dif- ferent spirit ran beside her. “Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle! Wait a min- ute » . .” he panted. “Well?” “Haven’t you heard . . . haven’t you heard! The war is over!” She continued to drag the weighty sack behind her over the platform. “She did n’t know!” howled the wicked boy. “No one had told her!” And in the train which carried her towards the dead of night the taunt and the violets accompanied her. At half -past two in the morning she reached the station of Bar-le-Duc. The rain rattled down through the broken roof as she crossed the lines to the platform on the further side, where, vaguely expecting to be met, she questioned civilians and military police. But the pall of death that hung over Bar stretched even to the station, where no- THE TRAVELER 5 body knew anything, expected anything, cared any- thing, except to hurry out and away into the rain. She, too, followed at last, leaving her bag and box in the corner of a deserted office, and cross- ing the station yard tramped out in the thick mud on to a bridge. The rain was falling in torrents, and crouching for a minute in a doorway she made her bundles faster and buttoned up her coat. Roofs jutted above her, pavements sounded under her feet, the clock struck three near by. If there was an hotel anywhere there was no one to give information about it. The last train had emptied itself, the travelers had hurried off into the night, and not a foot rang upon the pavements. The rain ran in a stream down her cap and on to her face; down her sleeves and on to her hands. A light further up the street attracted her atten- tion, and walking towards it she found that it came from an open doorway above which she could make out the letters “Y. M. C. A.” She did not know with what complicated feel- ings she would come to regard these letters — ^with what gratitude mixed with irritation, self-reproach with greed. Climbing the steps she looked inside. The hall of the building was paved with stone, and on a couple of dozen summer chairs of cane sat as many 6 THE HAPPY FOREIGNER American officers, dozing in painful attitudes of unrest. By each ran a stream of water that tric- kled from his clothes, and the streams, joining each other, formed aimless rivers upon the floor. The eye of a captain opened. “Come in, ma’am,” he said without moving. She wondered whether she could. The eye of a lieutenant opened. “Come in, ma’am,” he said, and rose. “Take my chair.” “Could you tell me if there is any hotel?” “There is some sort of a shanty down the street. I ’ll take you.” Further up the street a faint light shone under a slit between two boards. There was no door near it, no keyhole or shutter. The American thundered at the boards with a tin of jam which he took out of his pocket. The noise was mon- strous in the blackness, but the town had heard noises more monstrous than that, and it lay in a barred and blind, unanswering stupor. “God!” said the American, quickly angered, and kicked the board till the slit grew larger. The light went out. “Some one is coming round to the door,” said Fanny, in time to prevent the destruction of the board. THE TRAVELER 7 Higher up the street bolts were being withdrawn and a light fell upon the pavement. “Who ’s there?” creaked a voice. The American moved towards the light. “The hotel is shut to Americans,” said the voice. “The devil it is,” shouted the American. “And why, then?” “Man killed here last night,” said the voice briefly. Fanny moved towards the light and saw an old man with a shawl upon his shoulders, who held a candle fixed in the neck of a bottle. “I am English,” she said to the old man. “I am alone. I want a room alone.” “I ’ve a room ... If you’re not American!” “I don’t know what kind of a hole this is,” said the American wrathfully. “I think you ’d better come right back to the ‘Y.’ Say, here, what kind of a row was this last night you got a man killed in?” “Kind of row your countrymen make,” mut- tered the old man, and added “Bandits!” Soothing, on the one hand, entreating on the other, the girl got rid of her new friend, and ef- fected an entrance into the hotel. (“If hotel it is!” she thought, in the brief passage of a panic while the old man stooped to the bolts of the door.) 8 THE HAPPY FOREIGNER “I’ve got rooms enough,” he said, “rooms enough. Now they ’ve gone. Follow me.” She followed his candle flame and he threw open a door upon the ground floor. “I ’ve no light to give you.” “Yet I must have a light.” Grumbling, he produced half an inch of wax candle. “Hurry into bed and that wiU last you. It’s all I have.” The bed wore a colored rug, bare and thin, an eiderdown, damp and musty. Spreading her wet mackintosh on the top she rolled herself up as well as she could, and developing a sort of warmth towards morning, slept an hour or two. The daylight showed her nothing to wash in, no jug, no basin, no bell to pull. As no one would come to her, as there was noth- ing to be gained by waiting, she got up, and going into the hall, entered a dark coffee-room in which breakfast was served at its lowest ebb, black coffee, feugarless, and two pieces of dry bread. Yet, having eaten, fehe was able to think: “I am a soldier of five sous. I am here to drive for the French Army.” And her thoughts pleased her ;so well that, at the moment when her circumstances were in their gtate of least perfection, she ex- THE TRAVELER 9 claimed: “How right I was to come!” and set off down the street to find her companions. A mile out of the town upon the banks of a tributary of the Meuse stood a deserted glass fac- tory which had been converted by the French into a garage for a fleet of thirty cars. Above the garage was a large attic used as a dormitory for the mechanics, soldier-cooks, drivers and clerks. In a smaller room at the end slept the non-commis- sioned officers — the brigadier and the two mare- chals des logis. A hundred yards from the factory, built upon the brink of the stream which was now in flood, and reached from the road by a narrow wooden bridge, stood a tarred hut of wood and tarpaulin. It was built upon simple lines. A narrow corri- dor ran down the center of it, and on either hand were four square cells divided one from the other by gray paper stretched upon laths of wood — mak- ing eight in all. At one end was a small hall filled with mackintoshes. At the other a sitting-room. This was the home of the women drivers at- tached to the garage. In one of these paper cells, henceforward to be her own, Fanny set up her in- timate life. t • t Outside the black hut the jet-black night poured 10 THE HAPPY FOREIGNER water down. Inside, the eight cubicles held each a woman, a bed, and a hurricane lantern. Fanny, in her paper box, listened to the scratching of a pen next door, then turned her eyes as a new and nearer scratching caught her ear. A bright-eyed rat stared at her through the hole it had made in the wall. “Food is in!” Out of the boxes came the eight women to eat pieces of dark meat from a tin set on the top of the sitting-room stove — then cheese and bread. The watery night turned into sleet and rattled like tin-foil on the panes. “Where is Stewart?” “She is not back yet.” Soon the eight crept back to their boxes and sat again by the lamps to read or dam or write. They lived so close to each other that even the most genial had learnt to care for solitude, and the sit- ting-room remained mournfully empty. The noise of Stewart’s feet sounded in the cor- ridor. She swung a lantern in her hand ; her face was shining, her hair streaming. “Is there any food?” “It ’s on the stove.” “Is it eatable?” “No.” THE TRAVELER 11 Silence for a while, and then one by one they crept out into the black mud beyond the hut to fill their cans with hot water from the cook-house — and so to bed, on stretchers slung on trestles, where those who did not sleep listened through the long night to those who slept too well. “Are you awake?” came with the daylight. “Ah, you are washing! You are doing your hair!” There was no privacy. “How cold, how cold the water is! . . .” sighed Fanny. And a voice through the paper wall, catching the shivering whisper, exclaimed: “Use your hot-water bottle!” “What for?” “Empty it into your basin. If you have kept it in your bed all night you wiU find the water has the chill off.” Those who had to be out early had left before the daylight, still with their lanterns swinging in their hands; had battled with the cold cars in the unlighted garage, and were moving alone across the long desert of the battlefields. On the first morning she was tested on an old ambulance, and passed the test. On the second morning she got her first run upon a Charron car that had been assigned to her. Driving into Bar-le-Duc in the early morning 12 THE HAPPY FOREIGNER under a gray flood of rain she asked of a passer-by, “Which is the Rue Thierry?” She got no answer. The French, too poor and wet, did not trouble to reply; the Americans did not know. As she drove along at the Side of the road there came a roar out of the distance, and a stream of American lorries thundered down the street. Men, women and chil- dren ran for their lives to gain the pavements, and as the lorries passed, a mud-spout covered Fanny’s face and hands, and dripped from her wind-screen. “Why do they drive like that?” she wondered, hunting blindly for her handkerchief, and mop- ping at her face. She thought there must be some desperate need calling for the lorries, and looked after them with respect. When she had found her street, and fetched her “client,” she drove at his order to Souilly, upon the great road to Verdun. And all day, calling at little villages upon the way, where he had busi- ness, she drove with the caution of the newcomer. It seemed to her that she had need for caution. She saw a Ford roll over, leave the road, and drop into the ditch. The wild American who had driven it to its death, pulled himself up upon the road, and limping, hailed a passing lorry, and went upon his way. THE TRAVELER 13 She saw a horse gallop out of a camp with a terrified Annamite upon its back. Horse and An- namite shot past her on the road, the yellow man’s eyes popping from his head, his body slipping, falling, falling. When she would have slowed the car to watch the end of the flight her client cried to her: ‘^Why do you wait?” Enormous American guns, trailed behind lorries driven by pink-faced boys, swayed from side to side on the greasy road, and threatened to crush her like an egg-shell. Everywhere she saw a wild disregard for life, everywhere she winced before the menace of speed, of weight, of thundering metal. In the late afternoon, returning home in the half- light, she overtook a convoy of lorries driven by Annamites. Hooting with her horn she crept past three lorries and drew abreast of the fourth; then, misjudging, she let the tip of her low mudguard touch the front wheel of the foremost lorry. The touch was so light that she had passed on, but at a cry she drew up and looked back. The lorry which she had touched was overhanging the edge of the road, and its radiator, striking a tree, had dropped down into the valley below. Climbing from her car she ran back and was instantly surrounded by a crowd 14 THE HAPPY FOREIGNER of Annamites who chirped and twittered at her, and wrung their little hands. “What can I do? . . she said to them aloud, in distress. But they understood nothing, and seemed to echo in their strange bird language, “What can we do . . . what can we do? . . “And I . . .” she thought in consternation, “am responsible for this!” But the last lorry had drawn alongside, and a French sergeant descended from it and joined the Annamites. He walked to the edge of the road, saw the radiator below upon a rock, and shrugged his shoulders. Catching sight of Fanny’s face of horror he laughed. “Ne vous era fattes pas, mademoiselle! These poor devils sleep as they drive. Yes, even with their eyes open. We started nine this morning. We were four when we met you — and now we are three!” On the third morning the rain stopped for an hour or two. Fanny had no run tiU the after- noon, and going into the garage in the morning she set to work on her car. “Where can I get water?” she asked a man. “The pump is broken,” he replied. “I backed my car against it last night. But there is a tap by that broken wall on the piece of waste ground.” THE TRAVELER 15 She crossed to the wall with her bucket. Standing upon the waste ground was an old, closed limousine whose engine had long been in- jured past repair. One of the glass windows was broken, but she was as roomy and comfortable as a first-class railway carriage, and the men often sat in her in a spare moment. The yard cleared suddenly for the eleven o’clock meal. As Fanny passed the limousine a man ap- peared at the broken window and beckoned to her. His face was white, and he wore his shirt, trousers, and braces. She stopped short with the bucket in her hand. “On est delivre de cette bande!” he said, point- ing to the yard, and she went a little nearer. “Wait till I get my coat on,” he said softly to her, and struggled into his coat. He put both his hands on the window ledge, leant towards her, and said clearly: “Je suis le president Wilson.” “You are the President Wilson,” she echoed, hunting for the joke, and willing to smile. He passed her out his water-bottle and a tin box. “You must fill these for me,” he said. “Fill the bottle with wine, and get me bread and meat. Be quick. You know I must be off. The King ex- pects me.” 16 THE HAPPY FOREIGNER “Where have you come from?” “I slept here last night. I have come far. But I must be quick now, for it ’s late, and ... I be- lieve in Freedom!” he finished emphatically. “Well, will you wait till I make you up a parcel of food?” “Only be quick.” “Will you wait in the car? Promise to wait!” “Yes. Be quick. Look sharp.” She put down her bucket and stretched up her hand for the bottle and the box. He held them above her a second, hesitating, then put them into her hand. She turned fr«m him and went back into the yard. As she approached the door of the room where the men sat eating she looked round and Saw that he was watching her intently. She waved once, soothingly, then slipped into the long room filled with the hum of voices and the smell of gravy. “There is' a poor madman in the yard,” she whispered to the man nearest her. The others looked up. “They ’ve lost a man from the asylum, I heard in the town this morning,” said one. “We must keep him here till we telephone. Have you told the brigadier, mademoiselle?” THE TRAVELER 17 “You tell him. I’ll go back and talk to the man. Ask the brigadier to telephone.” “I ’ll come with you, mademoiselle,” said an- other. “Where is he?” “In the old limousine by the water tap. He is quiet. Don’t frighten him by coming all to- gether.” Chairs and benches were pushed back, and the men stood up in groups. “We will go round by the gate in case he makes a run for it. Better not use force if one can help it .. Fanny and her companion went out to the car. “Where is my food and wine?” called the man. “It ’s coming,” answered Fanny, “they are doing it up in the kitchen.” “Well, I can’t wait. I must go without it. I can’t keep the King waiting.” And he opened the door of the limousine. As he stood on the step he held a bundle of rusty weapons. “What ’s that you ’ve got?” “Bosche daggers,” he said. “See!” He held one towards her, without letting it go from his hand. “Where did you find those?” “On the battlefields.” He climbed down the steps. 18 THE HAPPY FOREIGNER “Stay a moment,” said Fanny. I ’m in a diffi- culty. Will you help me?” “What ’s that? But I Ve no time . . .” “Do you know about cars?” “I was in the trade,” he nodded his head. “I have trouble ... I cannot tell what to do. Will you come and see?” “If it ’s a matter of a moment. But I must be away.” “If you leave all those things in the car you could fetch them as you go,” suggested Fanny, eying the daggers. The man whistled and screwed up one eye. “When one believes in Freedom one must go armed,” he said. “Show me the car.” Going with her to the car-shed he looked at the spark-plugs of the car, at her suggestion unscrew- ing three from their seatings. At the fourth he grew tired, and said fretfully: “Now I must be off. You know I must. The King expects me.” He walked to the gate of the yard, and she saw the men behind the gate about to close on him. “You ’re not wearing your decorations!” she called after him. He stopped, looked down, looked a little troubled. \ She took the gilt safety pin from her tie, the safety pin that held her collar to her blouse at the THE TRAVELER 19 back, and another from the back of her skirt, and pinned them along his poor coat. An ambulance drove quickly into the yard, and three men, de- scending from it, hurried towards them. At sight of them the poor madman grew frantic, and turn- ing upon Fanny he cried: ‘‘You are against me!” then ran across the yard. She shut her eyes that she might not see them hunt the lover of freedom, and only opened them when a man cried in tri- umph: “IFe 7/ take you to the King!” “Pauvre malheureux!” muttered the drivers in the yard. Day followed day and there was plenty of work. Officers had to be driven upon rounds of two hun- dred kilometers a day — interviewing mayors of ruined villages, listening to claims, assessing dam- age caused by French troops in billets. Others in- spected distant motor parks. Others made offers to purchase old iron among the villages in order to prove thefts from the battlefields. The early start at dawn, the flying miles, the winter dusk, the long hours of travel by the faint light of the acetylene lamps filled day after day; the unsavory meal eaten alone by the stove, the book read alone in the cubicle, the fitful sleep upon the stretcher, filled night after night. A loneliness beyond anything she had ever 20 THE HAPPY FOREIGNER known settled upon Fanny. She found comfort in a look, a cry, a whistle. The smiles of strange men upon the road whom she would never see again became her social intercourse. The lost smiles of kind Americans, the lost, mocking whistles of Frenchmen, the scream of a nigger, the twittering Surprise of a Chinese scavenger. Yet she was glad to have come, for half the world was here. There could have been nothing like it since the Tower of Babel. The country around her was a vast tract of men sick with long- ing for the four corners of the earth. “Have you got to be here?” asked an Ameri- can. “No, I wanted to come.” The eye of the American said “Fool!” “Are you paid to come here?” asked a French- man. “No. In a sense, I pay to come.” The eye of the Frenchman said, “Englishwoman!” Each day she drove in a wash of rain. Each night she returned long after dark, and putting her car in the garage, felt her way up the inky road by the rushing of the river at its edge, crossed the wooden bridge, and entered the ceU which she tried to make her personal haven. But if personal, it was the personality of a dog. THE TRAVELER 21 it had the character of a kennel. She had brought no furnishings with her from England; she could buy nothing in the town. The wooden floor was swamped by the rain which blew through the win- dow; the paper on the walls was torn by rats; tarry drops from the roof had fallen upon her unmade bed. The sight of this bed caused her a nightly dis- may. “Oh, if I could but make it in the morn- ing how different this room would look!” There would be no one in the sitting-room, but a tin would stand on the stove with one, two, or three pieces of meat in it. By this she knew whether the cubicles were full or if one or two were empty. Sometimes the coffee jug would rise too lightly from the floor as she lifted it, and in an angry voice she would call through the hut: “There is no coffee!” Silence, silence; till a voice, goaded by the silence, cried: “Ask Madeleine!” And Madeleine, the little maid, had long since gone over to laugh with the men in the garage. Then came the owners of the second and third piece of meat, stumbling across the bridge and up the corridor, lantern in hand. And Fanny, per- haps remembering a treasure left in her car, would rise, leave them to eat, feel her way to the garage, and back again to the safety of her room with a 22 THE HAPPY FOREIGNER tin of sweetened eondensed milk under her arm. So low in comfort had she sunk it needed but this to make her happy. She had never known so sharp, so sweet a sense of luxury, as that with which she prepared the delicacy she had seized by her own cunning. It had not taken her long to learn the possibilities of the American Y. M. C. A., the branch in Bar, or any other which she might pass in her travels. Shameless she was as she leaned upon the counter in some distant village, cajoling, persuading, spin- ning some tale of want and necessity more pic- turesque, though no less actual, than her own. Se- cret, too, lest one of her companions, over-eager, should spoil her hunting ground. Sitting with her leather coat over her shoulders, happy in her solitude, she would drink the cup of Benger’s Food which she had made from the milk, and when it was finished, slide lower among the rugs, put out the lights, and listen to the rustle of the rats in the wall. “Mary Bell is getting married,” said a clear voice in the hut. “To the Wykely boy?” answered a second voice, and in a sudden need of sound the two voices talked on, while the six listeners upon their stretchers saw in the dark the life and happiness of Mary THE TRAVELER 23 Bell blossom before them, unknown and bright. The alarm clock went off with a scream at five. “Why, I ’ve hardly been asleep!” sighed Fanny, bewildered, and, getting up, she lit the lamp and made her coffee. Again there was not time to make the bed. Though fresh to the work she be- lieved that she had been there forever, yet the women with whom she shared her life had driven the roads of the Meuse district for months before she came to them, and their eyes were dim with peering into the dark nights, and they were tired past any sense of adventure, past any wish or power to better their condition. On and on and on rolled the days, and though one might add them together and make them seven, they never made Sunday. For there is no Sun- day in the French Army, there is no bell at which tools are laid aside, and not even the night is sacred. On and on rolled the weeks, and the weeks made months, till all November was gone, and all De- cember, and the New Year broke in fresh torrents of rain. Fanny made friends all day and lost them again forever as she passed on upon the roads. Some- times it was a sentry beside whom her “clients” left her for an hour while they inspected a bar- 24 THE HAPPY FOREIGNER racks; sometimes it was an old woman who called from a doorway that she might come and warm her hands at the fire ; sometimes an American who helped her to change a tire. There were times, further up towards Verdun, where there were no old women, or young women, or villages, when she thought her friends were mad, deranged, eccentric in their loneliness. “My sister has a grand piano . . .” said one American to her — opening thus his conversation. But he mused upon it and spoke no further. “Yes?” she encouraged. “Yes?” He did not open his mind until she was leaving when he said simply to her: “I wish I was back home.” And between the two sentences all the pictures of his home were flowing in this thoughts. An old woman offered her shelter in a village while her clients were busy with the mayor. In the kitchen there was a tiny fire of twigs. American boys stamped in and out of the house, laughing, begging the daughter to sew on a button, sell them an egg, boys of nineteen and twenty, fair, tall, and good-looking. “We shall be glad when they are gone,” said the old woman, looking at their gay faces. “They are children,” she added, “with the faults of chil- dren.” THE TRAVELER 25 “They seemed well-mannered.” “They are beautiful boys,” said the peasant woman, “and good-mannered. But I ’m tired of them. Children are all very well, but to have your house full of them, your village, your family life! They play all day in the street, chasing the dogs, throwing balls. When our children come out of school there ’s no holding them, they must be off playing with the Americans. The war is over. Why don’t they take them home?” “Good-day, ma’am,” said a tall boy, coming up to Fanny. “You ’re sure cold. We brought you this.” And he offered her a cup of coffee he had fetched from his canteen. “Yes, they ’re good boys,” said the old woman, “but one doesn’t want other people’s children al- ways in one’s life.” “Is this a park?” Fanny asked a soldier in the next village, a village whose four streets were filled with rows of lorries, touring cars and ambulances. On every car the iron was frail with rust, the bon- nets of some were tom off, a wheel, two wheels, were missing, the side ripped open, disclosing the msting bones. “Pardon, madame?” “What are you doing here?” “We are left behind from the Fourth Army 26 THE HAPPY FOREIGNER which has gone up to Germany. I have no tools or I would make one car out of four. But my men are discouraged and no one works. The war is over.” “Then this is a park?” “No, madame, it is a cemetery.” Months went by, and there came a night, as wet and sad as any other, when no premonitory star showed in the sky, and all that was bright in Fan- ny’s spirit toned itself to match the monotonous, shadowless pallor about her. She was upon her homeward journey. At the entrance to the hut she paused; for such a light was burning in the sitting-room that it traveled even the dark corridor, and wandered out upon the step. By it she could see the beaded moisture of the rain-mist upon the long hair escaped from her cap. A group of women stood within, their faces turned towards the door as she entered< “Fanny . . .” “What is it?” “We are going to Metz. We are ordered to Metz.” Stewart waved a letter. Was poverty and solitude at an end? They did not know it. In leaving the Meuse district did they leave, too, the boundless rain, the swollen THE TRAVELLER 27 rivers, the shining swamps, the mud which ebbed and flowed upon the land like a tide? Was hunger at an end, discomfort, and poor living? They had no inkling. Fanny, indifferent to any change, hoping for nothing better, turned first to the meat tin, for she was hungry. “Metz is a town,” she hazarded. “Of course!” “There will be things to eat there?” “No, very little. It was fed from Germany; now that it is suddenly fed from Paris the service is disorganized. One train crosses the devastated land in the day. I hear all this from the brigadier — who has, for that matter, never been there.” “Then we are going for certain?” “We are sent for. Yes, we are going. We are to be attached to the Headquarters Staff. Petain is there. It might even be gay.” Fanny laughed. “Gay!” “Why not?” “I was thinking of my one pair of silk stock- ings.” “You have silk stockings with you!” “Yes, I ... I came equipped for anything.” There came a morning, as wet and sad as any 28 THE HAPPY FOREIGNER other when Stewart and Fanny, seated in the back of an ambulance, their feet overhanging the edge, watched the black hut dwindle upon the road, and wondered how any one had lived there so long. PART II LORRAINE CHAPTER II METZ W ITH its back to the woods and hills of Lux- embourg, with its face to the desolation of Northern France, the city of Metz stood at the entry of Lorraine like the gate to a new world. The traveler, arriving after long hours of jour- ney through the battlefields, might sigh with relief, gape with pleasure, then hurry away down be- flagged streets, beneath houses roped with green- leafed garlands, to eat divinely at Moitrier’s res- taurant, and join the dancing in the hall below. Not a night passed in Metz without the beat of music upon the frosty air. It burst into the nar- row streets from estaminets where the soldiers danced, from halls, from drawing-rooms of con- fiscated German houses where officers of the “Grand Quartier General” danced a triumph. Or it might be supposed to be a triumph by the Ger- mans who stayed in their homes after dark. They might suppose that the French officers danced for happiness, that they danced because they were 31 32 THE HAPPY FOREIGNER French, because they were victorious, because they were young, because they must. It was not, surely, the wild dancing of the host whose party drags a little, who callg for more champagne, more fiddles? In the center of the city of Metz sat the Marechal Petain, and kept his eye upon Lorraine. He was not a man who cared for gaiety, but should the Lorraines be insufficiently amused he gave them balls — insufficiently fed, he sent for flour and sugar; all the flour and sugar that France could spare; more, much more, than Paris had, and at his bidding the cake-shops flowered with eclairs, millefeuilles, brioches, choux a la creme, and cakes more marvelous with German names. France, poor and himgry, flung all she had into Alsace and Lorraine, that she might make her entry with the assuring dazzle of the benefactress. The Lorraines, like children, were fed with sugar while the meat shops were empty — were kept dancing in national costume that they might forget to ask for leather boots, to wonder where wool and silk were hiding. Fetes were organized, colors were paraded in the square, torchlight processions were started on Sat- urday nights, when the boys of the town went cry- ing and whooping behind the march of the flares. METZ 33 Artists were sent for from Paris, took train to Nancy, and were driven laboriously through hours of snow, over miles of shell-pitted roads, that they might sing and play in the theater or in the house of the Governor. To the dances, to the dinners, to the plays came the Lorraine women, wearing white cotton stockings to set off their thick ankles, and dancing in figures and set dances unknown to the officers from Paris. The Commandant Dormans, head of all motor transport under the Grand Quartier General, hav- ing prepared his German drawing-room as a hall- room, having danced all the evening with ladies from the surrounding hills, found himself fatigued and exasperated by the side of the head of Foreign Units attached to the Automobile Service. “I thought you had Englishwomen at Bar-le- Duc,” he said to the latter. “I have — eight.” “What are they doing at Bar-le-Duc? Get them here.” “Is there work, sir?” “Work! They shall work from dawn to sunset so long as they will dance all night! English- women do dance, don’t they?” “I have never been to England.” “Get them here. Send for them.” 34 THE HAPPY FOREIGNER So through his whim it happened that six days later a little caravan of women crossed the old front lines beyond Pont-a-Mousson as dusk was falling, and as dark was falling entered the gates of Metz. They leaned from the ambulance excitedly as the lights of the streets flashed past them, saw windows piled with pale bricks of butter, bars of chocolate, tins of preserved strawberries, and jams. “Can you see the price on the butter?” “Twenty-four . . .” “What?” “I can’t see. Yes. . . . Twenty-four francs a pound.” “Good heavens!” “Ah, is it possible, eclairs?” “Eclairs!” And with exclamations of awe they saw the cake shops in the Serpenoise. German boys cried “American girls! American girls!” and threw paper balls in the back of the ambulance. “I heard, I heard . . .” “What is it?” “I heard German spoken.” “Did you think, then, they were all dead?” “No,” but Fanny felt like some old scholar who METZ 35 hears a dead language spoken in a vanished town. They drove on past the Cathedral into the open square of the Place du Theatre. Half the old French theater had been set aside as offices for the Automobile Service, and now the officers of the service, who had waited for them with curiosity, greeted them on the steps. “You must be tired, you must be hungry! Leave the ambulance where it is and come now, as you are, to dine with us!” In the uncertain light from the lamp on the the- ater steps the French tried to see the English faces, the women glanced at the men, and they walked to- gether to the oak-paneled Mess Room in a house on the other side of the empty square. A long table was spread with a white cloth, with silver, with flowers, as though they were expected. Sol- diers waited behind the chairs. “Vauclin! That foie gras you brought back from Paris yesterday . . . where is it, out with it? What, you only brought two jars! Arrelles, there ’s a jar left from yours.” “Mademoiselle, sit here by Captain Vauclin. He will amuse you. And you, mademoiselle, by me. You all talk French?” “And fancy, I never met an Englishwoman be- fore. Never! Your responsibility is terrible. 36 THE HAPPY FOREIGNER How tired you must be! . . . What a journey! For to-night we have found you billets. We billet you on Germans. It is more comfortable; they do more for you. What, you have met no Ger- mans yet? They exist, yes, they exist.” “Arrelles, you are not talking French! You should talk English. You can’t? Nor I either “But these ladies talk French marvelously .. Some one in another house was playing an an- cient instrument. Its music stole across the open square. Soldiers passed singing in the street. A hundred miles ... a hundred years away . . . lay Bar-le-Duc, liquid in mud, soaked in eternal rain. “What was I?” thought Fanny in amazement. “To what had I come, in that black hut!” And she thought that she had run down to the bottom of living, lain on that hard floor where the poor lie, known what it was to live as the poor live, in a hole, without generosity, beauty, or pri- vacy — in a hole, dirty and cold, plain and coarse. She glanced at her neighbor with wonder and appreciation, delight and envy. There was a light, clean scent upon his hair. She saw his hands, his nails. And her own. A young Jew opposite her had his hair curled, and a faint powdery bloom about his face. METZ 37 (“But never mind! That is civilization. There are people who turn from that and cry for nature, but I, since I ’ve lived as a dog, when I see artifice, feel gay!”) “You don’t know with what interest you have been awaited.” “We?” “Ah, yes! And were you pleased to come?” “We did not know to what we were coming!” “And now? . . .” She looked round the table peacefully, listened to the light voices talking a French she had never heard at Bar. “And now? <. “I could not make you understand how different” . . . (No, she would not tell him how they had lived at Bar. She was ashamed.) But as she was answering the servant gave him a message and he was called away. When he returned he said: “The Commandant Dormant is ghowing himself very anxious.” The Jew laughed and said: “He wants to see these ladies this evening?” “No, he spares them that, knowing of their jour- ney. He sends a message by the Capitaine Chatel to tell us that the D. S. A. give a dance to-morrow night. The personal invitation will be sent by 38 THE HAPPY FOREIGNER messenger in the morning. You dance, mademoi- selle?” “There is a dance, and we are invited? Yes, yes, I dance! You asked if I was happy now that I am here. To us this might be Babylon, after the desert!” “Babylon, the wicked city?” “The gay, the light, beribboned city! What is the ‘D. S. A.’?” “A mighty power which governs our actions. 