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THE MARNE
A TALE OF THE WAR
BY EDITH WHARTON
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1918
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA · MADRAS
MELBOURNE
COPYRIGHT
THE MARNE
I
Ever since the age of six Troy Belknap of New York had embarked forEurope every June on the fastest steamer of one or another of the mostexpensive lines.
With his family he had descended at the dock from a large noiselessmotor, had kissed his father good-bye, turned back to shake hands withthe chauffeur (a particular friend), and trotted up the gang-plankbehind his mother's maid, while one welcoming steward captured Mrs.Belknap's bag, and another led away her miniature French bull-dog—alsoa particular friend of Troy's.
From that hour all had been delight. For six golden days Troy had rangedthe decks, splashed in the blue salt water brimming his huge porcelaintub, lunched and dined with the grown-ups in the Ritz restaurant, andswaggered about in front of the children who had never crossed before,and didn't know the stewards, or the purser, or the captain's cat, or onwhich deck you might exercise your dog, or how to induce the officer onthe watch to let you scramble up for a minute to the bridge. Then, whenthese joys began to pall, he had lost himself in others deeper anddearer. Another of his cronies, the library steward, had unlocked thebook-case doors for him, and, buried for hours in the depths of a hugelibrary armchair (there weren't any to compare with it on land), he hadranged through the length and breadth of several literatures.
These six days of bliss would have been too soon over if they had notbeen the mere prelude to intenser sensations. On the seventhmorning—generally at Cherbourg—Troy Belknap followed his mother, andhis mother's maid, and the French bull, up the gang-plank and intoanother large noiseless motor, with another chauffeur (French, this one)to whom he was also deeply attached, and who sat grinning andcap-touching at the wheel. And then—in a few minutes, so swiftly andsmilingly was the way of Mrs. Belknap smoothed—the noiseless motor wasoff, and they were rushing eastward through the orchards of Normandy.
The little boy's happiness would have been complete if there had beenmore time to give to the beautiful things that flew past them: thatchedvillages with square-towered churches in hollows of the deep greencountry, or grey shining towns above rivers on which cathedrals seemedto be moored like ships; miles and miles of field and hedge and parkfalling away from high terraced houses, and little embroidered stonemanors reflected in reed-grown moats under ancient trees.
Unfortu