In the Claws of the German Eagle Part 16

I pointed out the facts that only military trains were running to Melun; that we weren't soldiers; that the river was out of the question; that we had no aeroplane and that we couldn't go overland in a canoe.

"But we can with our wits," Marie added.

I explained how lame my wits were in French, and that two consecutive sentences would bring on trial for high treason to the language.

"Oh, but you don't furnish the wits," Marie retorted. "You just furnish the body."

In her plan of campaign I gathered that I was to act as a kind of convoy, from which she was to dart forth, torpedoing all obstacles.

I was quite confident of her torpedoing ability but not of my fitness to play a star part as a dour and fear-inspiring background. She packed her bag and presently we were making our way to the station through a blighted city.

At the Gare du Nord a cordon of soldiers had been thrown about the station; crowds surged up against the gates, a few frantically pleading and even crying to get through. The guards, to every plea and threat returned a harsh "C'est impossible." Undaunted by the despair of others, she looked straight into the eyes of the somber gate-keeper and, with every art, told the story of Robert le Marchand, brave young officer of France; of his American girl and his deep longing for her. When she had stirred this lethargic functionary into a show of interest in this girl, with a revealing gesture she said: "And here she is; please, Monsieur, let me go."

"Ah, Mademoiselle, I would like to," he replied, "but are not all the soldiers of France longing for wives and sweethearts! Mon Dieu! if they all rode there would be no room for the militaire. The Boches would take us in the midst of our farewells. There is never any end to leave-takings."

"But, Monsieur, I did not have one good-by."

"No, Mademoiselle. C'est impossible."

The guardian of the second gate took her plea in a way that did more credit to his heart than to his knowledge of geography. He thought (and we made no effort to disillusionize him) that she had come all the way from America since the outbreak of war. It nearly moved him to tears. Was he surrendering? Almost. But recovering his official negative head-shake and trusting not to words, he fell back upon the formula: "No, Madame, c'est impossible."

The truth had failed and so had the half-truth. To the next forbidding guard Marie came as a Red Cross nurse, hurrying to her station.

"Your uniform, Madame," he interposed.

"No time to get a uniform; no time to get a permission," she explained.

"Take time, Madame," was his brusque dismissal.

Each time rebuffed, she tried again, but against the full battery of her blandishments the line was adamant.

"It's no use," I said. "We may as well go home."

"No retreat until we've tried our last reserves," she responded, clinking some coins together in her hand. "We'll try a change of tactics."

We reconnoitered and decided that an opening might be made through guardian number two. He had almost surrendered in the first engagement. This time, along with the smile, she flashed a coin. Perchance he had already repented of his first refusal.

Anyhow, if an officer of France could be made happy with his sweetheart and at the same time a brave gendarme could be made richer by a five-franc piece, would not La Belle France fight so much the better? The logic was incontestable. "This way, Mademoiselle, Monsieur, and be quick, please."

We had pa.s.sed through the lines into a riot of red and blue uniforms. Soldiers were everywhere sprawled over the platforms, knotted up in sleep, yawning, stretching their limbs, eating, smoking and swearing. No one knew anything about tickets, trains or aught else.

Swirled about in an eddying tide of entraining troops, we were flung up against a stationary being garbed as a railway dispatcher.

He bluffed and bl.u.s.tered a bit. Our story, however, supplemented by some hard cash, procured calm and presently we found ourselves in a compartment with two tickets marked Melun, a few rations and sundry admonitions not to converse with fellow- pa.s.sengers until the train started.

It is hard to explain why any one should want to communicate in German to an American girl in a French railway compartment in wartime. But explain why some people want to play with trip- hammers and loaded guns. We know they do. And so, though aware that there were spy-hunting listeners all around, a mad desire to utter the forbidden tongue obsessed me. Wry faces from Marie, emphasized by repeated pinches at each threatened outbreak, brought me back to my senses and to Anglo-Saxon.

Not only one who spoke, but even one who understood the hated tongue was a suspect. For the least knowledge of the enemy's language was to some the hall-mark of a spy. The game played throughout France and Belgium was to fling a sudden command at the suspect, catching the unwary fellow off-guard, and thus trap him into self-betrayal.

An official would say sharply: "Nehmen Sie ihre Hutte ab" (Take off your hat). Or there would come a sudden challenge on the street, "Wohin gehen Sie?" (Where are you going?) If instinctively one obeyed or replied in German, he was there caught with the goods.

Our major domo under the influence of the coin, or what he had procured at the vintner's in exchange therefor, grew a bit playful.

He suddenly flung open the door and cried, "Steigen Sie auf." If I had comprehended his meaning involuntarily I would have obeyed, but luckily my brain has a slow s.h.i.+fting language gear. By the time it began dawning upon me that we had been told to vacate the car Marie had fixed me with her eyes and gripped me like a vise with her hand so that I knew that I was to stay put. One man involuntarily started and then checked himself. He was so patently a Frenchman though that everybody laughed. The major domo chuckled and marched away, much pleased with his playful humor.

At last, with much jolting, we started on our crawling journey.

Sometimes the snail-pace would be accelerated; our hopes would then expand, only to collapse again with a bang. Again we would be sidetracked to let coal-cars, cattle cars and flat cars with guns go by. Civilians were ciphers in the new order, and if it served any military purpose to dump us into the river, in we would have gone with no questions asked. We sat about, a wilted and dispirited lot.

Occasionally some one would thrust his head out the window to observe progress. He was generally rewarded by a view of the Eiffel Tower from a new angle, for it seemed that we were simply being shunted in and about and all around the city.

The most icy reserve must find itself cracked and thawing in the intimacies which a jerking railway car precipitates. There is no dignity which is proof against a sound b.u.mp upon the head. Thus our irritations and suspicions gave way to laughter, and laughter brings all the barriers down. The compartment became a confessional.

The anxious looking man opposite was hoping to get to his estate and to bury a few of his most treasured things before the Germans came. The two young fellows with scraggly beards were brothers, given five days' leave to see a dying father; three days had been spent in a vain effort to get started there. Another man had a half telegram which read, "Accident at home you------" Not another word had he been able to get through. The silent young man in the corner smiled pleasantly when his turn came but volunteered no information.

I likewise pa.s.sed.

Marie, wis.h.i.+ng to fortify herself with all possible help in her venture, told her tale in full. An immediate proffer came from the hitherto taciturn young man in the corner. "Why, this is romance in earnest.

I do wish that I might be of some help," he said with genuine interest.

Our new friend we found had for a grandfather no less a dignitary than Alexander Dumas. His name he told us was Louis Dumas, an artist, not yet called to the colors, and bound now for Villeneuve, "and before we can really get acquainted, here we are," he said as the train came to a stop.

As he stepped to the door it was flung open by an officer who shouted, "Everybody out! This car is for the military." We protested. We displayed our tickets. The officer laughed and, seizing one reluctant pa.s.senger, dragged him out. A quickly ejected and much dejected band, we found ourselves upon the street of a little outlying village nine miles from Paris. It had taken half as many hours to get there.

We fell upon the one village gendarme with a volley of questions.

By pitching her voice above the hubbub, Marie got in her inquiry about the distance to Melun.

"Thirty kilometers by the main road," he answered.

This, then, was the issue of that tense day of strategy and daring: to be stranded in this suburb from which it was impossible to go forward to Melun and almost as difficult to return to Paris. Marie crumpled under the blow and then I realized how much it had cost her to maintain that calm outward demeanor.

By sheer will-power she had kept the tears from her eyes and the tremor from her limbs. Long held in leash, they now leaped out to possess her.

Dumas ran hither and thither, hunting conveyance but in vain.

Three of his friends had automobiles. He called them by telephone. All cars had been commandeered. He stood with head drooping in real dejection.

"Ah, I have it!" he exclaimed, "my friend Veilleau, he has an aeroplane and he will do it."

This was quite too much even for Marie's soaring spirit; but she scarcely had time to picture herself ranging the sky when Dumas was back again, sorrowfully confessing failure. Aeroplanes likewise had heard the tocsin; they had sterner business than wafting lovers through the sky; they were carrying explosives and messages in the service of France. Dumas looked almost as disappointed as the wilted little figure he was trying to help.

When the villagers understood her plight, they were full of sympathy, full of condolences, but also full of tales of arrest for those traveling on the main road.

"Where was this road, anyhow?"

"Out there," they replied.

Turning a corner, we looked down the long row of poplars that lined the main road to Melun.

Chapter XIII

America In The Arms Op France