"
Meanwhile the road was a dream-road. It had the unnatural quietness of
dreams. In days of peace it would have been choked with country carts
bringing food to fill the wide-open mouth of Paris. Now, the way to the
capital was silent and empty, save for gray military motors and
lumbering army _camions_. The cheap bowling alleys and jerry-built
restaurants of the suburbs seemed under a spell of sleep. There were no
men anywhere, except the very old, and boys of the "class" of next year.
Women swept out the gloomy shops: women drove omnibuses: women hawked
the morning papers. Outside Paris we were stopped by soldiers, appearing
from sentry-boxes: our papers were scanned; almost reluctantly we were
allowed to pass on, to the Secret Region of Crucifix Corner, which
spying eyes must not see--the region of aeroplane hangars, endless
hangars, lost among trees, and melting dimly into a dim horizon, their
low, rounded roofs "camouflaged" in a confusion of splodged colours.
There was so much to see--so much which was abnormal, and belonged to
war--that we might have passed without glancing at a line of blue water,
parallel with our road at a little distance, had not Brian said, "Have
we come in sight of the Ourcq? We ought to be near it now. Don't you
know, the men of the Marne say the men of the Ourcq did more than they
to save Paris?"
The Becketts had hardly heard of the Ourcq. As for me, I'd forgotten
that part in the drama of September, 1914.
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