The Happy Foreigner | Page 9

into the open square of the Place du
Theâtre. Half the old French theatre 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 theatre steps the French
tried to see the English faces, the women glanced at the men, and they
walked together to the oak-panelled 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. Soldiers
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 before. Never! Your
responsibility is terrible. 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
Germans 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 marvellously...."
Some one in another house was playing an ancient 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 privacy--in a hole, dirty and cold, plain
and coarse.
She glanced at her neighbour 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.
("But never mind! That is civilisation. 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 Dormans is showing
himself very anxious."
The Jew laughed and said: "He wants to see these ladies this evening?"
"No, he spares them that, knowing of their journey. He sends a message
by the Capitaine Châtel to tell us that the D.S.A. gives a dance
to-morrow night. The personal invitation will be sent by messenger in
the morning. You dance, mademoiselle?"
"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 power which governs our actions. We are but the C.R.A.... the
regulating control. But they are the Direction. 'Direction Service
Automobile.' They draw up all traffic rules for the Army, dispose of
cars, withdraw them. On them you depend and I depend. But they are
well-disposed towards you."
"And the Commandant Dormans is the head?"
"The head of all transport. He is a great man. Very peculiar."
"The Capitaine Châtel?"
"His aide, his right hand, the nearest to his ear."
Dinner over, the young Jew, Reherrey, having sent for two cars from
the garage, drove the tired Englishwomen to their billets. As the cars

passed down the cobbled streets and over a great bridge, Fanny saw
water gleam in the gulf below.
"What river is that?"
"The Moselle."
A sentry challenged them on the far side of the bridge. "Now we are in
the outer town, the German quarter."
In a narrow street whose houses overhung