Over There | Page 4

kilometres!"
"Thirty kilometres, almost thirty, my friend," the husband corrected.
"Ten kilometres. I am sure it was not more than ten kilometres, my
friend."
"But see, my little one. It was at Meaux. Forty kilometres to Meaux.
We are at thirteen. That makes twenty-seven, at least."
"It sounded like ten."
"That is true."
"It sounded like ten, my dear Arnold. All day, and all night. We could
not go to bed. Had one any desire to go to bed? It was anguish. The
mere souvenir is anguish."
She kissed her youngest boy, who had long hair.
"Come, come!" the soldier calmed her.

Lastly: an interior dans le monde; a home illustrious in Paris for the
richness of its collections--bric-a-brac, fans, porcelain, furniture,
modern pictures; the walls frescoed by Pierre Bonnard and his
compeers; a black marble balcony with an incomparable view in the
very middle of the city. Here several worlds encountered each other:
authors, painters, musicians, dilettanti, administrators. The hostess had
good-naturedly invited a high official of the Foreign Office, whom I
had not seen for many years; she did not say so, but her aim therein was
to expedite the arrangements for my pilgrimages in the war-zone.
Sundry of my old friends were present. It was wonderful how many had
escaped active service, either because they were necessary to central
administration, or because they were neutrals, or because they were too
old, or because they had been declined on account of physical unfitness,
reformes. One or two who might have come failed to do so because
they had perished.
Amid the abounding, dazzling confusion of objects which it was a duty
to admire, people talked cautiously of the war. With tranquillity and
exactness and finality the high official, clad in pale alpaca and yellow
boots, explained the secret significance of Yellow Books, White Books,
Orange Books, Blue Books. The ultimate issues were never touched.
New, yet unprinted, music was played; Schumann, though German
enough, was played. Then literature came to the top. A novelist wanted
to know what I thought of a book called "The Way of All Flesh," which
he had just read. It is singular how that ruthless book makes its way
across all frontiers. He also wanted to know about Gissing, a name new
to him. And then a voice from the obscurity of the balcony came
startlingly to me in the music-room:
"Tell me! Sincerely--do they hate the Germans in England? Do they
hate them, veritably? Tell me. I doubt it. I doubt strongly."
I laughed, rather awkwardly, as any Englishman would.
The transient episode was very detrimental to literary talk.
Negotiations for a private visit to the front languished. The thing was
arranged right enough, but it seemed impossible to fix a day actually

starting. So I went to Meaux. Meaux had stuck in my ears. Meaux was
in history and in romances; it is in Dumas. It was burnt by the Normans
in the tenth century, and terrific massacres occurred outside its walls in
the fourteenth century, massacres in which the English aristocracy took
their full share of the killing. Also, in the seventeenth century, Bossuet
was Bishop of Meaux. Finally, in the twentieth century, the Germans
just got to Meaux, and they got no further. It was, so far as I can make
out, the nearest point to Paris which they soiled.
I could not go even to Meaux without formalities, but the formalities
were simple. The dilatory train took seventy minutes, dawdling along
the banks of the notorious Marne. In an automobile one could have
done the journey in half the time. An automobile, however, would have
seriously complicated the formalities. Meaux contains about fourteen
thousand inhabitants. Yet it seems, when you are in it, to' consist
chiefly of cathedral. When you are at a little distance away from it, it
seems to consist of nothing but cathedral. In this it resembles Chartres,
and many another city in France.
We obtained a respectable carriage, with a melancholy, resigned old
driver, who said:
"For fifteen francs, plus always the pourboire, I will take you to Barcy,
which was bombarded and burnt. I will show you all the battlefield."
With those few words he thrilled me.
The road rose slowly from the canal of the Ourcq; it was lined with the
most beautiful acacia trees, and through the screen of the acacias one
had glimpses of the town, diminishing, and of the cathedral, growing
larger and larger. The driver talked to us in faint murmurs over his
shoulder, indicating the positions of various villages such as Penchard,
Poincy, Crecy, Monthyon, Chambry, Varreddes, all of which will be
found, in the future detailed histories of the great locust-advance.
"Did you yourself see any Germans?"
"Yes."

"Where?"
"At Meaux."
"How many?"
He smiled. "About a dozen." He