A returning flush upon the plain. Streaks of color across a mangled landscape: the gentle concealment of shell hole and trench. This is what one saw, even in the summer of 1919. For the sap was running, and a new invasion was occurring. Legions of tender blades pushed over the haggard No Man’s Land, while reckless poppies scattered through the ranks of green, to be followed by the shyer starry sisters in blue and white. Irrepressibly these floral throngs advanced over the shell torn spaces, crowding, mingling and bending together in a rainbow riot beneath the winds that blew them. They were the vanguard.

In the midst of the reviving fields lay Noyon: Noyon, that gem of the Oise, whose delicate outline of spires and soft tinted roofs had graced the wide valley for centuries. Today the little city lay blanched and shapeless between the hills, as all towns were left that stood in the path of the armies. The cathedral alone reared its battered bulk in the midst; a resisting pile, its two grim and blunted towers frowning into the sky. Nobly Gothic through all the shattering, the great church rose out of the wreckage, with flying buttresses still outspread like brooding wings to the dead houses that had sunk about her.

But Noyon was not dead. We of the Red Cross knew that. We knew that in cellars and nooks of this labyrinth of ruin already hundreds of hearts were beating. On this calm September morning the newly cleared streets resounded with the healthful music of hammer and saw, and cartwheels rattled over the cobblestones, while workmen called to each other in resonant voices. Pregnant sounds, these, the significance of which we could estimate. For we had seen Noyon in the early months of the armistice: tangled and monstrous in her attitude of falling, and silent with the bleeding silence of desertion. Then, one memorable day, the stillness had been broken by the first clatter of sabots that wooden noise, measured, unmistakable, approaching. Two pairs of sabots and a long road. Two broad backs bent under bulging loads; an infant’s wail; a knock at the Red Cross Door but that was nearly eight months before.

The Poste de Secours was closed for the first time since Madame de Vigny and her three young infirmieres had come to Noyon. Two women stood without, one plump and bareheaded, the other aged and bent, with a calico handkerchief tied over her hair. They stared at the printed card tacked upon the entrance of the large patched-up house that served as Headquarters for the French Red Cross.

“Tiens! c’est ferme,” exclaimed Madame Talon, shaking the rough board door with all her meagre weight, “and I have walked eight kilometers to get a jupon, and with rheumatism, too.”

“Haven’t you heard the news?” asked her companion with city-bred scorn.

“Ah? What news?” The crisp old face crinkled with anticipation.

“Why, Mademoiselle Gaston is to be married today.”

“Tiens, tiens! est-ce possible? What happiness for that good girl!” and Madame Talon, forgetful of the loss of her jupon, smiled a wrinkled smile till her nose nearly touched her chin, and her eyes receding into well worn little puckers, became two snapping black points.

“Is it really so? And the bridegroom who is he?”

There followed that vivacious exchange of questions and answers and speculations which accompanies the announcement of a marriage the world over.

Mademoiselle Gaston was the daughter of an ancient family of Noyon. But now, her ancestral home was a heap of debris, a tomb for men of many nations, which she did not like to visit. She took me there once, and we walked through the old tennis court where a little summer house remained untouched, its jaunty frailty seeming to mock at the desolation of all that is solid.

“Ah, I have had good times here,” she said in the expressionless voice of one who has endured too much.

For now she was alone. Tennis tournaments for her were separated from the present by a curtain of deaths, by the incomparable space of those four years.

Mademoiselle Gaston had played her part in it all. When the Germans were advancing upon Noyon, she had stuck to her post and remained in the hospital where she nursed her compatriots under enemy rule during the first occupation of the city. Something about her had made them treat her with respect, although I have been told that the Prussian officers were always vaguely uncomfortable in her presence. There was, perhaps, not enough humility in her clear eyes, and they worked her to the breaking point. Yet so impeccable and businesslike was her conduct that they could never convict her of any infringement of rules. Little did these pompous invaders suspect how this slender capable girl with the hazel eyes was spicing the hours behind their backs, and drawing with nimble and irreverent pencil portraits of her captors, daring caricatures which she exhibited in secret to the terrified delight of her patients. Luckily for her this harmless vengeance had not been discovered, for doubtless she would have paid dearly for her Gallic audacity.

She was small of stature and very thin. Not even the nurse’s flowing garb could conceal the angularity of her figure. One wondered how so fragile a frame could have survived the crashings and shakings of war. What secret of yielding and resisting was hers? The tension, nevertheless, had left its mark upon her young face; had drawn the skin over the aquiline profile, and compressed the sensitive mouth in a line too rigid for her years. This severity of feature she aggravated by pinning her coiffe low over a forehead as uncompromising as a nun’s. Not a relenting suggestion of hair would she permit. Yet whatever of tenderness or hope she strove thus to hood, nothing could suppress the beauty of her luminous eyes; caressing eyes that belied her austere manner. No sight of blood nor weariness, no insult had hardened them. Even when their greenish depths went dark and wide with reminiscence, a light lurked at the bottom the reflection of something dancing. Yes, everybody loved Mademoiselle Gaston.

For weeks we had seen it coming. She had told us of her engagement at breakfast one Monday morning after a week-end visit to her married sister in Paris. It had seemed a good business proposition. She announced it as such, calmly, with a frankness that astonished my American soul. We were pleased. She would have a chateau and money, and a de before her name. Best of all she would have peace and companionship after her lonely struggles. On the whole we were very much pleased. Madame de Vigny and her gentle niece were entirely delighted. Noyon was vociferous in its approval and congratulations. I could have wished but at least I did not thrust any transatlantic notions into the general contentment.

And I soon saw no one could fail to see the change that day by day came over our reserved companion. The stern line of her lips relaxed. In amazement one day we heard her laugh. Then her laughter began to break forth on all occasions; and we listened to her singing above in her room, and we smiled at each other. That tightness of her brow dissolved in a carefree radiance. At work, she mixed up her faultless card catalogues and laughed at her mistakes. Once, during our busy hours of distribution, we caught her blithely granting the request of fat Mere Copillet for a cook stove and thereupon absently presenting that jovial dame with a pair of sabots, much too small for her portly foot, to the amusement of all the good wives gathered in the Red Cross office. They laughed loudly in a sympathetic crowd, and Mademoiselle Gaston laughed also, and they loved her more than ever. When they learned that she had chosen to be married in the ruined cathedral of her native town, their affection turned to adoration. Not a peasant in the region but took this to be an honor to his city and to himself. Gratitude and a nameless hope filled the hearts of the people of Noyon.

The day was at hand. The poste was closed, for within there was a feast to prepare and a bride to adorn. In the early morning the sun-browned peasant women brought flowers, masses of goldenrod and asters. These we arranged in brass shells, empty husks of death, till the bleak spaciousness of our shattered house was gay. The rooms, still elegant in proportion, lent themselves naturally to adornment; and I found myself wondering what former festivities they had sheltered, what other brides had passed down this stately corridor before the bombs let in the wind and the rain and the thieves; and what remote luxuries had been reflected in the great mirror of which only the carved gilt frame was left? Today, goldenrod and asters bloomed against the mouldy walls and one little tri-colored bouquet. Flowers of France, in truth, sprung on the battle field and offered by earth-stained fingers to her who had served.

From the kitchen came noises of snapping wood, and a sizzling which tempted me to the door. It was a fine old kitchen, though now the tiles were mostly gone from the floor, and the cracked walls were smeared with uncouth paintings, the work of some childish soul some German mess sergeant, perhaps, who had been installed there, but today Jeanne reigned again, bending her philosophic face over the smoking stove, and evoking with infallible arts aromatic and genial vapors from her casseroles. At her side, Therese, pink and cream in the abundance of her eighteen years, fanned the fire, her eyes wide open with the novel excitement of the occasion.

“La guerre est finie, Mademoiselle Miss!” cried Jeanne with spoon dripping in mid air. “Today I have butter to cook with. Now you shall taste a French dinner comme il faut!”

In the garage, Michel, all seriousness, polished the Ford that was to carry away the bridal pair. Recently demobilized, he wore the bizarre combination of military and civilian clothes that all over France symbolized the transition from war to peace black coat encroaching upon stained blue trousers, khaki puttees, evidence of international intimacy and most brilliant emblem of freedom a black and white checked cap, put on backwards. His the ultimate responsibility at our wedding ceremony and he looked to his tires and sparkplugs with passion.

The married sister, beautiful and charming in her Paris gown, was superintending the toilette; and when all was ready, we were called up to examine and admire. The bride was sweet and calm, smiling dreamily at us in the foggy fragment of mirror. Below, somewhat portly and constrained in his black coat and high collar, the bridegroom marched with agitation back and forth in the corridor, clasping and unclasping his hands in their gray suede gloves. The Paris train was due. Relatives and friends began to arrive; and little nieces and nephews, all in their best clothes. Noyon had not seen anything so gay in years. There was bustle and business and running up and down stairs. The poste, usually clamorous with the hoarse dialect of northern France, hummed and rippled with polite conversation and courtly greetings. The bride appeared. The bridegroom’s face lost its perturbed expression in his unaffected happiness at seeing her. Photographs were taken; she, gracious and bending in a cloud of tulle; he, stiffly upright but smiling resolutely. They were off in a string of carriages sagging old carriages resurrected from the dust while a few of us hastened to the cathedral by a short cut to take more pictures as they entered.

The vast nave engulfed us in its desolation. The mutilated apse seemed to be far, far away, and one looked at it fearfully. High above through the broken vaulting shone the indestructible blue, and through the hollow windows the breath of Heaven wandered free. The little bride stepped bravely between the piles of refuse, daintily gathering her dress about her. A dirty sheet on the wall flapped without warning, and we had a glimpse of a gaunt and pallid crucifix, instantly shrouded again in a spasm of wind. Passing under an arch we entered a less demolished chapel. Here all Noyon was waiting.

Thin and quavering through the expectant hush came the chords of a harmonium. Rustlings and whisperings among the closely packed people as the misty white figure advanced slowly into sight. At the altar the silver-haired bishop turned his scholarly face upon her, full of tenderness; and when he spoke, his voice seemed an assurance of peace and purity. The service was long. In France one listens to a sermon when one is married, and the pretty bridesmaids came round for three collections. The bishop talked of her father, his friend, who had died under cruel circumstances. Shoulders heaved in the congregation, and in a dark corner a sob was stifled.

“You have suffered, my children. There has been a mighty mowing and a winter of death, and our mother the earth has lain barren. But today stand up, O children, and listen and feel. We are united in these ruins by more than sorrow. What are these pulsations that beat this day upon our soul?”

The words flowed on following the ancient grooves of sermons, but the loving voice thrilled us. It floated through the dim atmosphere into our consciousness, holding us as in a dream, dovelike and soothing.

My eyes trailed to the delicate bride kneeling beside a great cracked column, and I thought of the tiny blossom again by the road, and of those stretches without the town, no longer gray, but brushed with new color. I saw the daisies and the grasses waving out on No Man’s Land: like heralding banners of the triumph march they waved, leading out of sight beyond the horizon. And as the priest talked, my heart throbbed its own silent canticle:

“Joy in the new dawned day, and in peace-awakened fields. Hope of the flower that blooms again. Faith in the unfolding of petals, gently, forever, and in season.”

“Soyez loue, Seigneur!” the voice deepened and concluded.

Decisively, now, burst forth the reedlike chords of music. A wave of movement throughout the crowd. And the bowed form trembled a moment within its sheathing veil, against the cold stone pillar.