FullReads

The sense of loneliness and remoteness that the absence of the civil population produces everywhere in eastern France is increased by the fact that all the names and distances on the mile-stones have been scratched out and the sign-posts at the cross-roads thrown down. It was done, presumably, to throw the enemy off the track in September: and the signs have never been put back. The result is that one is forever losing one’s way, for the soldiers quartered in the district know only the names of their particular villages, and those on the march can tell you nothing about the places they are passing through. We had got badly off our road several times during the trip, but on the last day’s run Rechamp was in his own country, and knew every yard of the way–or thought he did. We had turned off the main road, and were running along between rather featureless fields and woods, crossed by a good many wood-roads with nothing to distinguish them; but he continued to push ahead, saying:

“We don’t turn till we get to a manor-house on a stream, with a big paper-mill across the road.” He went on to tell me that the mill-owners lived in the manor, and were old friends of his people: good old local stock, who had lived there for generations and done a lot for the neighbourhood.

“It’s queer I don’t see their village-steeple from this rise. The village is just beyond the house. How the devil could I have missed the turn?” We ran on a little farther, and suddenly he stopped the motor with a jerk. We were at a cross-road, with a stream running under the bank on our right. The place looked like an abandoned stoneyard. I never saw completer ruin. To the left, a fortified gate gaped on emptiness; to the right, a mill-wheel hung in the stream. Everything else was as flat as your dinner-table.

“Was this what you were trying to see from that rise?” I asked; and I saw a tear or two running down his face.

“They were the kindest people: their only son got himself shot the first month in Champagne–“

He had jumped out of the car and was standing staring at the level waste. “The house was there–there was a splendid lime in the court. I used to sit under it and have a glass of vin cris de Lorraine with the old people…. Over there, where that cinder-heap is, all their children are buried.” He walked across to the grave-yard under a blackened wall–a bit of the apse of the vanished church–and sat down on a grave-stone. “If the devils have done this here–so close to us,” he burst out, and covered his face.

An old woman walked toward us down the road. Rechamp jumped up and ran to meet her. “Why, Marie Jeanne, what are you doing in these ruins?” The old woman looked at him with unastonished eyes. She seemed incapable of any surprise. “They left my house standing. I’m glad to see Monsieur,” she simply said. We followed her to the one house left in the waste of stones. It was a two-roomed cottage, propped against a cow-stable, but fairly decent, with a curtain in the window and a cat on the sill. Rechamp caught me by the arm and pointed to the door-panel. “Oberst von Scharlach” was scrawled on it. He turned as white as your table-cloth, and hung on to me a minute; then he spoke to the old woman. “The officers were quartered here: that was the reason they spared your house?”

She nodded. “Yes: I was lucky. But the gentlemen must come in and have a mouthful.”

Rechamp’s finger was on the name. “And this one–this was their commanding officer?”

“I suppose so. Is it somebody’s name?” She had evidently never speculated on the meaning of the scrawl that had saved her.

“You remember him–their captain? Was his name Scharlach?” Rechamp persisted.