The fighting officers,
English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, jeered at them, laughed hugely at the
latest story of mirthful horror, arranged rendezvous at the Godebert
restaurant, where they would see the beautiful Marguerite (until she
transferred to la cathedrale in the same street) and our checks which
Charlie cashed at a discount, with a noble faith in British honesty,
not often, as he told me, being hurt by a "stumor." Charlie's bar was
wrecked by shell-fire afterward, and he went to Abbeville and set up a
more important establishment, which was wrecked, too, in a fierce air
raid, before the paint was dry on the walls.
The cathedral was a shrine to which many men and women went all
through the war, called into its white halls by the spirit of beauty
which dwelt there, and by its silence and peace. The great west door
was screened from bomb-splinters by sand-bags piled high, and inside
there were other walls of sand-bags closing in the sanctuary and some
of the windows. But these signs of war did not spoil the majesty of
the tall columns and high roof, nor the loveliness of the sculptured
flowers below the clerestory arches, nor the spiritual mystery of
those great, dim aisles, where light flickered and shadows lurked, and
the ghosts of history came out of their tombs to pace these stones
again where five, six, seven centuries before they had walked to
worship God, in joy or in despair, or to show their beauty of young
womanhood--peasant girl or princess--to lovers gazing by the pillars,
or to plight their troth as royal brides, or get a crown for their
heads, or mercy for their dead bodies in velvet-draped coffins.
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