Part 27 (1/2)

There were other noises rising from the streets of Paris. Whistles were blowing, very faintly, in far places. Firemen's bells were ringing, persistently.

”L'alerte!” said the man. ”The Zeppelins are coming!”

The lamp at the street corner was suddenly extinguished, leaving absolute darkness.

”Fermez vos rideaux!” shouted a hoa.r.s.e voice.

Footsteps went hurriedly down the pavement and then were silent.

”It is nothing!” said the woman; ”a false alarm!” ”Listen!”

Paris was very quiet now. The bugle-notes were as faint as far-off bells against the wind. But there was no wind, and the air was still. It was still except for a peculiar vibration, a low humming note, like a great bee booming over clover fields. It became louder and the vibration quickened, and the note was like the deep stop of an organ.

Tremendously sustained was the voice of a great engine up in the sky, invisible. Lights were searching for it now. Great rays, like immense white arms, stretched across the sky, trying to catch that flying thing. They crossed each other, flying backwards and forwards, travelled softly and cautiously across the dark vault as though groping through every inch of it for that invisible danger. The sound of guns shocked into the silence, with dull reports. From somewhere in Paris a flame shot up, revealing in a quick flash groups of shadow figures at open windows and on flat roofs.

”Look!” said the man who had a view across the Boulevard St.

Germain.

The woman drew a deep breath.

”Yes, there is one of them! ... And another! ... How fast they travel!”

There was a black smudge in the sky, blacker than the darkness. It moved at a great rate, and the loud vibrations followed it. For a moment or two, touched by one of the long rays of light it was revealed--a death-s.h.i.+p, white from stem to stern and crossing the sky like a streak of lightning. It went into the darkness again and its pa.s.sage could only be seen now by some little flames which seemed to fall from it. They went out like French matches, sputtering before they died.

In all parts of Paris there were thousands of people watching the apparition in the sky. On the heights of the Sacre C?ur inhabitants of Montmartre gathered and thrilled to the flas.h.i.+ng of the searchlights and the bursting of shrapnel.

The bugle-calls bidding everybody stay indoors had brought Paris out of bed and out of doors. The most bad-tempered people in the city were those who had slept through the alerte, and in the morning received the news with an incredulous ”Quoi? Non, ce n'est pas possible! Les Zeppelins sont venus? Je n'ai pas entendu le moindre bruit!”

Some houses were smashed in the outer suburbs. A few people had been wounded in their beds. Unexploded bombs were found in gardens and rubbish heaps. After all, the Zeppelin raid had been a grotesque failure in the fine art of murder, and the casualty list was so light that Paris jeered at the death-s.h.i.+ps which had come in the night.

Count Zeppelin was still the same old blagueur. His precious airs.h.i.+ps were ridiculous.

A note of criticism crept into the newspapers and escaped the censor. Where were the French aviators who had sworn to guard Paris from such a raid? There were unpleasant rumours that these adventurous young gentlemen had taken the night off with the ladies of their hearts. It was stated that the telephone operator who ought to have sent the warning to them was also making la bombe, or sleeping away from his post. It was beyond a doubt that certain well- known aviators had been seen in Paris restaurants until closing time... Criticism was killed by an official denial from General Galieni, who defended those young gentlemen under his orders, and affirmed that each man was at the post of duty. It was a denial which caused the scandalmongers to smile as inscrutably as Mona Lisa.

13

The shadow of war crept through every keyhole in Paris, and no man or woman shut up in a high attic with some idea or pa.s.sion could keep out the evil genii which dominated the intellect and the imagination, and put its cold touch upon the senses, through that winter of agony when the best blood in France slopped into the waterlogged trenches from Flanders to the Argonne. Yet there were coteries in Paris which thrust the Thing away from them as much as possible, and tried to pretend that art was still alive, and that philosophy was untouched by these brutalities. In the Restaurant des Beaux-Arts and other boites where men of ideas pander to the baser appet.i.tes for 1 franc 50 (vin compris), old artists, old actors, sculptors whose beards seemed powdered with the dust of their ateliers, and litterateurs who will write you a sonnet or an epitaph, a wedding speech, or a political manifesto in the finest style of French poesy and prose (a little archaic in expression) a.s.sembled nightly just as in the days of peace. Some of the youngest faces who used to be grouped about the tables had gone, and now and then there was silence for a second as one of the habitues would raise his gla.s.s to the memory of a soldier of France (called to the colours on that fatal day in August) who had fallen on the Field of Honour. The ghost of war stalked even into the Restaurant des Beaux-Arts, but his presence was ignored as much as might be by these long-haired Bohemians with grease- stained clothes and unwashed hands who discussed the spirit of Greek beauty, the essential viciousness of women, the vulgarity of the bourgeoisie, the prose of Anatole France, the humour of Rabelais and his successors, and other eternal controversies with a pretext of their old fire. If the theme of war slipped in it was discussed with an intellectual contempt, and loose-lipped old men found a frightful mirth in the cut-throat exploits of Moroccans and Senegalese, in the b.e.s.t.i.a.l orgies of drunken Boches, and in the most revolting horrors of bayonet charges and the corps-a-corps. It was as though they wanted to reveal the savagery of war to the last indescribable madness of its l.u.s.t. ”Pah!” said an old cabotin, after one of these word-pictures. ”This war is the last spasm of the world's barbarity.

Human nature will finish with it this time. . . . Let us talk of the women we have loved. I knew a splendid creature once--she had golden hair, I remember--”

One of these shabby old gentlemen touched me on the arm.

”Would Monsieur care to have a little music? It is quite close here, and very beautiful. It helps one to forget the war, and all its misery.”

I accepted the invitation. I was more thirsty for music than for vin ordinaire or cordiale Medoc. Yet I did not expect very much round the corner of a restaurant frequented by shabby intellectuals... That was my English stupidity.

A little group of us went through a dark courtyard lit by a high dim lantern, touching a sculptured figure in a far recess.

”Pas de bruit,” whispered a voice through the gloom.