by W. F. Morris
PREFACE
BY
DICK BARON
THIS is a record of a holiday spent in the Vosges in the early autumn of 1930 by Charles Pagan and myself. It is, however, more than a mere record of continental sightseeing; indeed Pagan maintains that the series of coincidences of that holiday were too remarkable to be attributed to mere chance. And it may well be that he is right.
Certainly he is not a superstitious man, nor is he a religious one in the church-going sense. It is true that the letters C. of E. were engraved between his name and regiment on the identity disc he wore round his wrist during those far off war days when first we met, but were he pressed to make a confession of faith, the resulting rudimentary creed would, I fancy, defy classification into any of the recognized forms of dogmatic religion. A vague but none the less sincere belief that “what is to be is to be”—that one cannot escape what is coming to one—is probably the principal article of that creed; and that again is a legacy of the fatalism of the now almost forgotten war days and of this dramatic holiday in particular.
However that may be, he will have none of it that chance was the determining factor, and that but for an idle action of his he and Clare and I would never have known. “And will you maintain,” he demands, “that it was chance also that led me to take that holiday in Alsace of all places and stumble upon the one person in the whole world that it concerned?”
Put like that, it does sound convincing, and one hesitates to deny that he is right and that the apparent coincidences of that dramatic holiday were not the preordained dispositions of a higher power. Perhaps, after all, he is right, and in the words of the national poet he is fond of quoting, “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.”
CHAPTER ONE
THE hardy veteran of the Jungfrau and Monte Rosa will despise the Vosges. Tramp their eighty rugged miles from north to south, you will find no frosted canine tooth like the Matterhorn, no giant’s winter slide like the Mer de Glace. At no point do the bare round ballons rise above five thousand feet. To the south-bound traveller as he rattles down the line from Strasbourg to Basle they are but hills that make a pleasant picture, framed by the window of his comfortable dining-car, pleasant, sunny, vine-shod hills, with ancient villages nestling at their feet and mellow castle ruins crowning their low green bastions. Behind, rise higher, thickly wooded slopes, and occasionally perhaps against the sky is glimpsed the bare round purple hummock of a distant ballon. But hills they are—no more, less mysterious and menacing than the distant purple switchback line of the Schwartzwald, framed in the windows on the other side of the train.
But higher up those pleasant valleys, beyond the vines and cosy villages, blinding snowstorms rage in winter, and the wind howls among the bare white domes like the ghosts of lost projectiles. And in summer, too, when dark clouds hide the sun, and rain lashes the grassy slopes, those cols and scarps above the forest line are bleak and desolate as many a knapsacked holiday tramper can testify.
Two such trampers found them so one evening in early autumn. They were trudging wearily up a steepish slope in single file, their feet slipping on the sodden grass, their faces wet and ruddy from the driving rain. They were barely three thousand feet above the sea, but they might have reached the summit of the world, so close above them like a ceiling hung the great grey clouds. The grassy slopes on either hand ran up and disappeared in wreaths of drifting vapour, and through the drifting murk behind them appeared and disappeared, like pictures on a screen, patches of a dark wooded hillside that lay far below, beyond an unsuspected abyss.
Dusk was falling. The grey watery light died slowly in the low hung clouds. The colour faded from the wet grass underfoot. There was no sound except the lashing of the rain and a metallic clinking from the haversack of one of the travellers.
The leading figure, Charles Pagan, tilted his head so that a miniature waterspout cascaded from his hat down the front of his already sodden mackintosh. “Are you wearing spurs or what?” he demanded.
Baron trudging stolidly in the rear, gave a hitch to his rucksack and produced a clink louder than any of its predecessors. “It’s that confounded enamel mug rattling against the handle of my tooth brush,” he said.
“You sound like a ruddy knight in armour,” declared Pagan.
Baron moved his neck uncomfortably within the clammy upturned collar of his mackintosh. “I feel like a ruddy damp night in a ditch,” he growled. “And I shall not be sorry when we reach this pub—that is assuming that it still exists and you haven’t made an utter box up of the map reading.”
Pagan’s snort of disgust blew a shower of drops from his dripping face. “That was the most unkindest cut of all,” he quoted in tones of injured virtue. “Didn’t you and I go to war together God knows how many years ago? And didn’t I lead my trusting fellows all over France with the unerring skill of a born leader of men? And you suggest that in my old age I can’t read a map! It’s enough to make poor old Melford turn in his grave.”
“All right; Kamerad! There’s no need to stop and argue about it,” retorted Baron, whose bent head had come into contact with the other’s wet shoulder. “But Heaven help you, Charles, if that pub does not materialise pretty soon.”
Pagan stepped out again. “Barring fire, tempest, earthquake or other act of God,” he answered cheerfully, “we shall see it in a minute or two when we are over this col.”
Baron made no reply at the moment. “The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” he growled sceptically, at last.
“You put it pithily and with great originality,” retorted Pagan. “But likewise it’s a hell of a high mountain that has no public-house.”
They trudged on in silence. The ground grew almost level for a short distance and then sloped gently downwards. A rough track ran through the sodden grass and rocky outcrops. On either hand the enclosing slopes loomed darkly through the gloom. The wind was rising. The rain came in sudden, driving gusts that buffeted the faces of the travellers and beat a muffled tattoo upon their sodden hats and mackintoshes. Darkness enshrouded them.
Low down to the left a light appeared suddenly. It was but a dull yellow blob in the darkness, and it was impossible to say whether it came from close at hand or lay on the far side of an invisible valley, but Pagan pointed to it confidently. “Voilà! The local Pig and Whistle.” The sound of his voice swept by on a rainy gust. Baron grunted a non-committal reply, but quickened his pace hopefully. The blob of yellow light glowed more brightly with each step. A long, dim, grey line wavered uncertainly below it. The gable end of a building took shape dimly against the dark sky, and quite suddenly they found themselves looking across whitewashed wooden palings at a curtained window in the darkened wall of a house.
No gate was visible. Pagan moved off to the left to look for one, but stopped abruptly when he found the ground descending steeply beneath his feet. The foot of the palings had risen nearly to the level of his face. To his right was the dark, almost perpendicular earth bank on which they stood; ahead was darkness and the indefinable sense of nothingness that had pulled him up short.
“Anything down there?” called Baron.
“Nothing except a large pile of air with mountains round it,” remarked Pagan as his head rose again above the level of the palings. “Scout off to the right, old thing, and see what happens.”
They stumbled off along the palings past the lighted window. The flat front of the house came dimly into view behind the gable end and lengthened slowly. The palings took an abrupt turn to the left; the wind died suddenly in the lee of the dark length of the building. Baron found a gate, and they splashed across an enclosure on which the water stood an inch deep to a shadowed doorway. There were windows, on either side of it, but the shutters were closed and only from that
on the left did a faint gleam of light escape.
Pagan fumbled for a bell, and finding none, rapped upon the panels of the door with his stick. Then he shook himself like a dog, scattering water around him like a garden spray, and banged his sodden hat upon his knee. “A little more moisture inside and a little less out, that’s the programme,” he murmured. “And then sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care.”
“And fodder, Charles,” added Baron. “Don’t forget fodder. Food that fills up the rumbling voids that were.”
“Crude but true,” conceded Pagan.
The grating sound of bolts being withdrawn brought his face round again to the door. A perpendicular beam of light slit the darkness, and a shadowed face appeared behind the narrow opening.
“Wer ist dort?” It was a woman’s voice and the question was repeated in French. “Qui est là?”
“Wise men from the East,” answered Pagan cheerfully.
The owner of the voice had opened the door no more than five or six inches, and Baron, dubious of the effect that this announcement in a foreign language might have upon her, hastened to explain in his halting French. “Deux voyageurs, madame. Voyageurs Anglais—très humides et très fatigués. Nous désirons seulement quelque chose à manger.”
“Yes, that’s the idea,” chimed in Pagan boisterously. “Beaucoup abendgessen, bitte. Swei zimmer and twa wee bocks.”
“Easy, Charles,” warned Baron. “Don’t frighten the woman with your fearsome jargon.”
“It has done the trick, anyway,” retorted Pagan as the door swung slowly open.
“It has. She probably takes us for a couple of delegates from the League of Nations,” remarked Baron dryly as he stepped across the threshold.
The door was closed behind them and they found themselves standing in a long, brick-floored room lighted by a single lamp that hung from a low beam. Three or four bare deal tables and chairs occupied the greater part of the floor space, and in one corner was a rough wooden counter or bar, semi-circular in shape with a few shelves containing bottles fitted to the angle walls behind it. Here, where they stood, the ceiling was low, the black uncased beams being but a foot or two above their heads, but the other half of the room was nearly twice as lofty, the ceiling level there being the same as that of the rooms above. At the far end an open staircase in the room itself led up to a kind of indoor balcony protected by a wooden balustrade that ran along one wall on the level of the ceiling of the other half of the room. Two doors, leading presumedly to bedrooms, opened on to this balcony. The room evidently stretched the entire length of the building, for there were two shuttered windows on either side of the door by which they had entered, and one in each of the end walls. The other wall was blank except for a door near the bar and a large fireplace under the balcony in which a wood fire was burning.
Baron slipped off his pack and dumped it on the floor. “Well, it’s a poor heart that never rejoices, Charles,” he said, rubbing his hands. He crossed towards the fire, leaving behind him on the brick floor a pool of water from his sodden mackintosh.
The woman who had opened the door to them picked up the pack. In the light she was revealed as a young girl of eighteen years or thereabouts, solidly built, with a broad, unbeautiful face, that had nevertheless a pleasant expression.
Pagan slipped off his own pack and dripping mackintosh. Keeping now exclusively to the workaday French that had served its purpose in the far off war days further north, he asked if they could have a meal and two beds for the night.
Although the expression of the girl’s face was amiable enough, there was a slight hesitancy in her manner and a hint of uneasiness in her honest eyes that was in strange contrast to her general air of rustic frankness.
During his conversation with her the door near the bar opened and a broad, well-built man dressed in working clothes came into the room. He bore a strong resemblance to the girl, but though his face, like hers, was honest, he glanced somewhat suspiciously at the two travellers as he murmured “Guten abend.” The girl turned to him at once and spoke rapidly in German, of which Pagan understood nothing except the one word Englander, and as she pronounced it the man’s eyes sought his, he thought, none too graciously. The look perhaps was more speculative than hostile, as though its owner were embarrassed by the presence of his visitors and were trying to make up his mind whether they were genuine travellers or not.
However, the result of the conversation was satisfactory, for the girl picked up Pagan’s pack, which he immediately relieved her of, and bidding them follow her, led the way down the room and up the staircase at the far end. She threw open the first door on the balcony and told them to wait while she got a light. A moment later a match flared up within the room, and she called in English, “Come ’en, Messieurs.”
“Oh, ho, you speak English, M’selle!” cried Pagan striding in. “French, German, English—that’s pretty good!”
“A leetle,” she answered with a slight flush; and added in French, “But M’sieu also speaks all three languages.” And then for the first time she smiled.
Baron guffawed. “By Jove, Charles,” he cried. “I believe she is pulling your leg.”
Her smile faded as quickly as it had come, and with an expressive gesture towards their wet garments and the packs, she asked if they had a change of clothes. On hearing that they had she ordered them to change at once and to put their wet things outside the door. She would have them dried. Then she passed through an inner door connecting to another room, lighted a lamp and returned. Some food would be ready, she said, as soon as they had changed. She left them, but was back again in a minute with two cans of hot water; then she went out and shut the door behind her.
Pagan took off his damp coat. “If ever I marry, Baron, which God forbid, it will be a little Alsatian wench like that. She would not get a place in a beauty competition, but she would keep the house as clean as a new pin, and she would have a first rate meal ready for me in five minutes at any hour of the day or night. If ever I came home canned, she would carry me upstairs and put me to bed; she wouldn’t blue my hard earned pay on cocktails and erotic smelling cigarettes, and if I made love to her she would stand stolidly like a cow till I had finished and then would go on with the dusting.”
Baron kicked off his wet shoes. “What you are thinking of, Charles, is an electric dumb waiter; not a wife. Personally I should prefer somebody with a little more sex appeal.”
“A good leg isn’t everything, my bold, bad Baron.”
“Perhaps not, but it’s well on the way to it. Which billet are you going to have anyway?”
Pagan stood up and with his braces looped down over his hips like an ostler, looked about him.
It was a fair-sized room. The dark weathered joists and floor-boards of the garret above formed its ceiling, and the floor was composed of thick narrow planks, scoured and polished to the colour of an autumn leaf. It was uncovered except for two small mats. The walls were of plain white plaster, a little yellow with age, and undecorated except for one crude coloured print of Heidelburg Castle in a worn red plush frame. A large maplewood bed stood against the wall on the left behind the door. It had solid wooden panels at head and foot and a wooden valance reaching to within an inch or two of the floor. It was covered with a fat red quilt. A large wooden press stood against the wall at its foot. In the wall facing the door was the window. It was hung with heavy curtains of dark red. Before it was a plain wood table dark with age, supporting a cheap swing mirror. In the corner was an enamel washstand with a receiver beneath it. In the middle of the room was a small table covered with a knitted woollen cloth of various bright colours on which stood the oil lamp. Against the fourth wall stood a rough wooden chair, and near it was the other door leading to the inner room.
Pagan passed through the door to inspect the other room. It was an exact counterpart of the first. Each room had the one connecting door in common and one door opening to the indoor balcony. In the second room, however, the bed an
d press were of necessity on the right of the door, and the place of the enamel washstand was taken by a low, marble-topped chest of drawers bearing a basin and jug of an old and very ugly pattern.
“I had better have this one,” said Pagan. “I am accustomed to marble and art crockery.”
“No, you jolly well don’t,” retorted Baron. “We will toss for it. How the deuce could I wash in that tin gadget in the other room?” He produced a coin and spun it.
“Heads!” called Pagan. Heads it was. “Well, that’s all right, since you don’t wash, anyway,” he remarked as he coolly picked up the coin and pocketed it. “And now, my dear Baron, perhaps you would have the goodness to retire to your own apartment.”
They changed into dry clothes and slippers and came out upon the balcony. Another lamp had been lighted in the long room below them and one of the tables had been covered with a cloth and laid for two. An appetizing smell of cooking food drifted up to them. Pagan leant his arms upon the balustrade.
“Stalls rather empty to-night,” he remarked, surveying the vacant tables and chairs below him. He twisted his neck and glanced at the two doors behind him. “But what a setting for the Birth of the Heir,” he grinned. “Picture it—all the local bigwigs assembled down there—mayor, town band, and village postman, all registering tense emotion and watching these two doors. Doctors with black bags trot up the stairs; nurses tiptoe importantly along this balcony. At last the door opens and a triumphant nurse displays bawling triplets to the enthusiastic crowd. Then everybody has free drinks while they drown the carbon copies in a bucket.”
“Or better still a French farce,” suggested Baron. “Bearded husbands and naughty wives popping in and out of doors.”
Pagan turned upon him a look of withering contempt. “Popping in and out of doors!” he exclaimed in disgust. “Sounds like a public lavatory.”
The girl appeared below carrying a tray. She looked up at the sound of their voices and announced that the meal was ready.