Little did I think, Padre, to write you from Soissons! When last I spoke to you about it, we were gazing through field-glasses at the single tower of the cathedral, pointing out of purple shadows toward the evening star of hope. Then we lost ourselves in the Ravin de Bitry, and arrived thankfully at Compiègne two hours later than we had planned. We expected to have part of a day at Soissons, but--I told you of the dreadful flies in that ravine of death, and how Mother Beckett was stung on the throat. The next day she had a headache, but took aspirin, and pronounced herself well enough for the trip to Soissons. Father Beckett let her go, because he's in the habit of letting her do whatever she wants to do, fancying (and she fancies it, too) that he is master. You see, we thought it was only a fatigue-headache. Foolishly, we didn't connect it with the sting, for Julian O'Farrell was bitten, too, and didn't complain at all.
Well, we set out for Soissons yesterday morning (I write again at night) leaving all our luggage at the hotel in Compiègne. It was quite a safe and uneventful run, for the Germans stopped shelling Soissons temporarily some time ago, when they were obliged to devote their whole attention to other places. The road was good, and the day a dream of Indian summer, when war seemed more than ever out of place in such a world. If Mother Beckett looked ill, we didn't notice, because she wore her dust-veil. The same officer was with us who'd been our guide last time, and we felt like friends, as he explained, with those vivid gestures Frenchmen have, just how the Germans in September, 1914, marched from Laon upon Soissons--marched fast, singing, yelling, wild to take a city so important that the world would be impressed. Why, it would be--they thought--as if the whole Île-de-France were in their grasp! The next step would be to Paris, goal of all Germanic invasions since Attila.
It's an engaging habit of Mother Beckett's to punctuate exciting stories like this with little soft sighs of sympathy: but the graphic war descriptions given by our lieutenant left her cold. Even when we came into the town, and began to go round it in the car, she was heavily silent, not an exclamation! And we ought to have realized that this was strange, because Soissons nowadays is a sight to strike the heart a hammer-blow.