“Since all that I can ever do for theeIs to do nothing, may'st thou never see,Never divine, the all that nothing costeth me!”
It is for kings to declare war, for nations to fight and pay. Napoleon III declared war against Russia, and France fought side by side with England in the Crimea, not because the gayest and most tragic of nations had aught to gain, but to ensure an upstart emperor a place among the monarchs of Europe. And that strange alliance was merely one move in a long game played by a consummate intriguer—a game which began disastrously at Boulogne and ended disastrously at Sedan, and yet was the most daring and brilliant feat of European statesmanship that has been carried out since the adventurer's great uncle went to St. Helena.
But no one knows why in July, 1870, Napoleon III declared war against Germany. The secret of the greatest war of modern times lies buried in the Imperial mausoleum at Frognal.
There is a sort of surprise which is caused by the sudden arrival of the long expected, and Germany experienced it in that hot midsummer, for there seemed to be no reason why war should break out at the moment. Shortly before, the Spanish Government had offered the crown to the hereditary Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern, and France, ever ready to see a grievance, found herself suited. But the hereditary prince declined that throne, and the incident seemed about to close. Then quite suddenly France made a demand, with reference to any possible recurrence of the same question, which Germany could not be expected to grant. It was an odd demand to make, and in a flash of thought the great German chancellor saw that this meant war. Perhaps he had been waiting for it. At all events, he was prepared for it, as were the silent soldier, von Roon, and the gentle tactician, von Moltke. These gentlemen were away for a holiday, but they returned, and, as history tells, had merely to fill in a few dates on already prepared documents.
If France was not ready she thought herself so, and was at all events willing. Nay, she was so eager that she shouted when she should have held her tongue. And who shall say what the schemer of the Tuileries thought of it all behind that pleasant smile, those dull and sphinx-like eyes? He had always believed in his star, had always known that he was destined to be great; and now perhaps he knew that his star was waning—that the greatness was past. He made his preparations quietly. He was never a flustered man, this nephew of the greatest genius the world has seen. Did he not sit three months later in front of a cottage at Donchery and impassively smoke cigarette after cigarette while waiting for Otto von Bismarck? He was a fatalist.
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on.”
And it must be remembered to his credit that he asked no man's pity—a request as foolish to make for a fallen emperor as for the ordinary man who has, for instance, married in haste, and is given the leisure of a whole lifetime in which to repent. For the human heart is incapable of bestowing unadulterated pity: there must be some contempt in it. If the fall of Napoleon III was great, let it be remembered that few place themselves by their own exertions in a position to fall at all.
The declaration of war was, on the whole, acclaimed in France; for Frenchmen are, above all men, soldiers. Does not the whole world use French terms in the technicalities of warfare? The majority received the news as Lory de Vasselot received it. For a time he could only think that this was a great and glorious moment in his life. He hurried in to tell his father, but the count failed to rise to the occasion.
“War!” he said. “Yes; there have been many in my time. They have not affected me—or my carnations.”
“And I go to it to-night,” announced Lory, watching his father with eyes suddenly grave and anxious.
“Ah!” said the count, and made no farther comment.
Then, without pausing to consider his own motives, Lory hurried up to the Casa Perucca to tell the ladies there his great news. He must, it seemed, tell somebody, and he knew no one else within reach, except perhaps the Abbé Susini, who did not pretend to be a Frenchman.
“Is it peace?” asked Mademoiselle Brun, who, having seen him climbing the steep slope in the glaring sunshine, was waiting for him by the open side-door when he arrived there.
He took her withered hand, and bowed over it as gallantly as if it had been soft and young.
“What do you mean?” he asked, looking at her curiously.
“Well, it seems that the Casa Perucca and the Château de Vasselot are not on visiting terms. We only call on each other with a gun.”
“It is odd that you should have asked me that,” said Lory, “for it is not peace, but war.”
And as he looked at her, her face hardened, her steady eyes wavered for once.
“Ah!” she said, her hands dropping sharply against her dingy black dress in a gesture of despair. “Again!”
“Yes, mademoiselle,” answered Lory, gently; for he had a quick intuition, and knew at a glance that war must have hurt this woman at one time of her life.
She stood for a moment tapping the ground with her foot, looking reflectively across the valley.
“Assuredly,” she said, “Frenchwomen must be the bravest women in the world, or else there would never be a light heart in the whole country. Come, let us go in and tell Denise. It is Germany, I suppose?”
“Yes, mademoiselle. They have long wanted it, and we are obliging them at last. You look grave. It is not bad news I bring you, but good.”
“Women like soldiers, but they hate war,” said mademoiselle, and walked on slowly in silence.
After a pause, she turned and looked at him as if she were going to ask him a question, but checked herself.
“I almost did a foolish thing,” she explained, seeing his glance of surprise. “I was going to ask you if you were going?”
“Ah, yes, I am going,” he answered, with a laugh and a keen glance of excitement. “War is a necessary evil, mademoiselle, and assists promotion. Why should you hate it?”
“Because we cannot interfere in it,” replied Mademoiselle Brun, with a snap of the lips. “We shall find Denise in the garden to the north of the house, picking green beans, Monsieur le Comte,” continued Mademoiselle Brun, with a glance in his direction.
“Then I shall have time to help with the beans before I go to the war,” answered Lory; and they walked on in silence.
The garden was but half cultivated—a luxuriant thicket of fruit and weed, of trailing vine and wild clematis. The air of it was heavy with a hundred scents, and, in the shade, was cool, and of a mossy odour rarely found in Southern seas.
They did not see Denise at first, and then suddenly she emerged at the other end of the weed-grown path where they stood. Lory hurried forward, hat in hand, and perceived that Denise made a movement, as if to go back into the shadow, which was immediately restrained.
Mademoiselle Brun did not follow Lory, but turned back towards the house.
“If they must quarrel,” she said to herself, “they may do it without my assistance.”
And Denise seemed, indeed, ready to fall out with her neighbour, for she came towards him with heightened colour and a flash of annoyance in her eyes.
“I am sorry they put you to the trouble of coming out here,” she said.
“Why, mademoiselle? Because I find you picking green beans?”
“No; not that. But one has one's pride. This is my garden. I keep it! Look at it!” And she waved her hand with a gesture of contempt.
De Vasselot looked gravely round him. Then, after a pause, he made a movement of the deepest despair.
“Yes, mademoiselle,” he said, with a great sigh, “it is a wilderness.”
“And now you are laughing at me.”
“I, mademoiselle?” And he faced her tragic eyes.
“You think I am a woman.”
De Vasselot spread out his hands in deprecation, as if, this time, she had hit the mark.
“Yes,” he said slowly.
“I mean you think we are only capable of wearing pretty clothes and listening to pretty speeches, and that anything else is beyond our grasp altogether.”
“Nothing in the world, mademoiselle, is beyond your grasp, except”—he paused, and looked round him—“except a spade, perhaps, and that is what this garden wants.”
They were very grave about it, and sat down on a rough seat built by Mattei Perucca, who had come there in the hot weather.
“Then what is to be done?” said Denise, simply.
For the French—the most intellectually subtle people of the world—have a certain odd simplicity which seems to have survived all the changes and chances of monarchy, republic, and empire.
“I do not quite know. Have you not a man?”
“I have nobody, except a decrepit old man, who is half an imbecile,” said Denise, with a short laugh. “I get my provisions surreptitiously by the hand of Madame Andrei. No one else comes near the Casa. We are in a state of siege. I dare not go into Olmeta; but I am holding on because you advised me not to sell.”
“I, mademoiselle?”
“Yes; in Paris. Have you forgotten?”
“No,” answered Lory, slowly—“no; I have not forgotten. But no one takes my advice—indeed, no one asks it—except about a horse. They think I know about a horse.” And Lory smiled to himself at the thought of his proud position.
“But you surely meant what you said?” asked Denise.
“Oh yes. But you honour me too much by taking my opinion thus seriously without question, mademoiselle.”
Denise was looking at him with her clear, searching eyes, rather veiled by a suggestion of disappointment.
“I thought—I thought you seemed so decided, so sure of your own opinion,” she said doubtfully.
De Vasselot was silent for a moment, then he turned to her quickly, impulsively, confidentially.
“Listen,” he said. “I will tell you the truth. I said 'Don't sell.' I say 'Don't sell' still. And I have not a shred of reason for doing so. There!”
Denise was not a person who was easily led. She laughed at the stern, strong Mademoiselle Brun to her face, and treated her opinion with a gay contempt. She had never yet been led.
“No,” she said, and seemed ready to dispense with reasons. “You will not sell, yourself?” she said, after a pause.
“No; I cannot sell,” he said quickly; and she remembered his answer long afterwards.
After a pause he explained farther.
“I tell you frankly,” he said earnestly, for he was always either very earnest or very gay—“I tell you frankly, when we both received an offer to buy, I thought there must be some reason why the places are worth buying, but I have found none.”
He paused, and, looking round, remembered that this also was his, and did not belong to Denise at all, who claimed it, and held it with such a high hand.
“As Corsica at present stands, Perucca and Vasselot are valueless, mademoiselle, I claim the honour of being in the same boat with you. And if the empire falls—bonjour la paix!”
And he sketched a grand upheaval with a wave of his two hands in the air.
“But why should the empire fall?” asked Denise, sharply.
“Ah, but I have the head of a sparrow!” cried Lory, and he smote himself grievously on the forehead. “I forgot to tell you the very thing that I came to tell you. Which is odd, for until I came into this garden I could think of nothing else. I was ready to shout it to the trees. War has been declared, mademoiselle.”
“War!” said Denise; and she drew in one whistling breath through her teeth, as one may who has been burnt by contact with heated metal, and sat looking straight in front of her. “When do you go, Monsieur le Comte?” she asked, in a steady voice, after a moment.
“To-night.”
He rose, and stood before her, looking at the tangled garden with a frown.
“Ah!” he said, with a sudden laugh, “if the emperor had only consulted me, he would not have done it just yet. I want to go, of course, for I am a soldier. But I do not want to go now. I should have liked to see things more settled, here in Olmeta. If the empire falls, mademoiselle, you must return to France; remember that. I should have liked to have offered you my poor assistance; but I cannot—I must go. There are others, however. There is Mademoiselle Brun, with a man's heart in that little body. And there is the Abbé Susini. Yes; you can trust him as you can trust a little English fighting terrier. Tell him——No; I will tell him. He is a Vasselot, mademoiselle, but I shall make him a Perucca.”
He held out his hand gaily to say good-bye.
“And—stay! Will you write to me if you want me, mademoiselle? I may be able to get to you.”
Denise did not answer for a moment. Then she looked him straight in the eyes, as was her wont with men and women alike.
“Yes,” she said.
A few minutes later, Mademoiselle Brun came into the garden. She looked round but saw no one. Approaching the spot where she had left Denise, she found the basket with a few beans in it, and Denise's gloves lying there. She knew that Lory had gone, but still she could see Denise nowhere. There were a hundred places in the garden where any who did not wish to be discovered could find concealment.
Mademoiselle Brun took up the basket and continued to pick the French beans.
“My poor child! my poor child!” she muttered twice, with a hard face.
“Cupid is a casuist,A mystic, and a cabalist.Can your lurking thought surprise,And interpret your device?”
That which has been taken by the sword must be held by the sword. In Corsica the blade is sheathed, but it has never yet been laid aside. The quick events of July thrust this sheathed weapon into the hand of Colonel Gilbert, who, as he himself had predicted, was left behind in the general exodus.
“If you are placed in command at Bastia, how many, or how few men will suffice?” asked the civil authority, who was laid on the shelf by the outbreak of war.
And Colonel Gilbert named what appeared to be an absurd minimum.
“We must think of every event; things may go badly, the fortune of war may turn against us.”
“Still I can do it,” answered the colonel.
“The empire may fall, and then Corsica will blaze up like tow.”
“Still I can do it,” repeated the colonel.
It is the natural instinct of man to strike while his blood is up, and the national spirit on either side of the Rhine was all for immediate action. The leaders themselves were anxious to begin, so that they might finish before the winter. So the preparations were pushed forward in Germany with a methodical haste, a sane and deliberate foresight. In France it was more a question of sentiment—the invincibility of French arms, the heroism of French soldiers, the Napoleonic legend. But while these abstract aids to warfare may make a good individual soldier of that untidy little man in the red trousers, who has, in his time, overrun all Europe, it will not move great armies or organize a successful campaign. For the French soldier must have some one to fight for—some one towering man in whom he trusts, who can turn to good account some of the best fighting material the human race has yet produced. And Napoleon III was not such a man.
It is almost certain that he counted on receiving assistance from Austria or Italy, and when this was withheld, the disease-stricken, suffering man must assuredly have realized that his star was sinking. He had made the mistake of putting off this great war too long. He should have fought it years earlier, before the Prussians had made sure of those steady, grumbling Bavarians, who bore the brunt of all the fighting, before his own hand was faltering at the helm, and the face of God was turned away from the Napoleonic dynasty.
The emperor was no tactician, but he knew the human heart. He knew that at any cost France must lead off with a victory, not only for the sake of the little man in the red trousers, but to impress watching Europe, and perhaps snatch an ally from among the hesitating powers. And the result was Saarbrück. The news of it filtered through to Colonel Gilbert, who was now quartered in the grey, picturesque Watrin barracks at Bastia, which jut out between the old harbour and the plain of Biguglia. The colonel did not believe half of it. It is always safe to subtract from good news. But he sat down at once and wrote to Denise Lange. He had not seen her, had not communicated with her, since he had asked her to marry him, and she had refused. He was old enough to be her father. He had asked her to marry him because she would not sell Perucca, and he wanted that estate; which was not the right motive, but it is the usual one with men who are past the foolishness of youth—that foolishness which is better than all the wisdom of the ages.
From having had nothing to do, Colonel Gilbert found himself thrown into a whirl of work, or what would have been a whirl with a man less calm and placid. Very much at ease, in white linen clothes, he sat in his room in the bastion, and transacted the affairs of his command with a leisurely good nature which showed his complete grasp of the situation.
With regard to Denise, this middle-aged, cynical Frenchman grasped the situation also. He was slowly and surely falling in love with her. And she herself had given him the first push down that facile descent when she had refused to be his wife.
“Mademoiselle,” he wrote, “to quarrel is, I suppose, in the air of Corsica, and when we parted at your gate some time ago, I am afraid I left you harbouring a feeling of resentment against me. At this time, and in the adverse days that I foresee must inevitably be in store for France, none can afford to part with friends who by any means can preserve them. In our respective positions, you and I must rise above small differences of opinion; and I place myself unreservedly at your service. I write to tell you that I have this morning good news from France. We have won a small victory at Saarbrück. So far, so good. But, in case of a reverse, there is only too much reason to fear that internal disturbances will arise in France, and consequently in this unfortunate island. It is, therefore, my duty to urge upon you the necessity of quitting Perucca without delay. If you will not consent to leave the island, come at all events into Bastia, where, at a few minutes' notice, I shall be able to place you in a position of safety. I trust I am not one who is given to exaggerating danger. Ask Mademoiselle Brun, who has known me since, as a young man, I had the privilege of serving under your father, a general who had the gift of drawing out from those about him such few soldierly qualities as they might possess.”
Denise received this letter by post the next morning, and, after reading it twice, handed it to Mademoiselle Brun, who was much too wise a woman to ask for an explanation of those parts of it which she did not comprehend. Indeed, she was manlike enough to pass on with an unimpaired understanding to the second part of the letter, whereas most women would have been so consumed by curiosity as to be unable to give more than half their mind to the colonel's further news.
“And—?” inquired mademoiselle—a Frenchwoman's way of asking a thousand questions in one. Mademoiselle Brun knew all the conversational tricks that serve to economize words.
“It is all based upon supposition,” said the erstwhile mathematical instructress of the school in the Rue du Cherche-Midi. “It will be time enough to arrive at a decision when the reverse comes. The Count de Vasselot or the Abbé Susini will, no doubt, warn us in time.”
“Ah!” said Mademoiselle Brun.
“But, if you like, I will write to the Count de Vasselot,” said Denise, in the voice of one making a concession.
Mademoiselle Brun thought deeply before replying. It is so easy to take a wrong turning at the cross-roads of life, and assuredly Denise stood at acarrefournow.
“Yes,” said mademoiselle at length; “it would be well to do that.”
And Denise went away to write the letter that Lory had asked for in case she wanted him. She did not show it to Mademoiselle Brun, but went out and posted it herself in the little square box, painted white, affixed to the white wall on the high-road, and just within sight of Olmeta. When she returned she went into the garden again, where she spent so great a part of these hot days that her face was burnt to a healthy brown, which was in keeping with her fearless eyes and carriage. Mademoiselle Brun, on the other hand, spent most of her days indoors, divining perhaps that Denise had of late fallen into an unconscious love of solitude.
Denise returned to the house at luncheon-time, entered by the window, and caught Mademoiselle Brun hastily shutting an atlas.
“I was wondering,” she said, “where Saarbrück might be, and whether any one we know had time to get there before the battle.”
“Yes.”
“But Colonel Gilbert will tell us.”
“Colonel Gilbert?” inquired Denise, turning rather sharply.
“Yes. I think he will come to-day or to-morrow.”
And Mademoiselle Brun was right. In the full heat of the afternoon the great bell at the gate gave forth a single summons; for the colonel was always gentle in his ways.
“I made an opportunity,” he said, “to escape from the barracks this hot day.”
But he looked cool enough, and greeted Denise with his usual leisurely, friendly bow. His manner conveyed, better than any words, that she need feel no uneasiness on his account, and could treat him literally at his word, as a friend.
“In order to tell you, with all reserve, the good news,” he continued.
“With all reserve!” echoed Mademoiselle Brun.
“Good news in a French newspaper, Mademoiselle—” And he finished with a gesture eloquent of the deepest distrust.
“I was wondering,” said Mademoiselle Brun, speaking slowly, and in a manner that demanded for the time the colonel's undivided attention, “whether our friend the Count de Vasselot could have been at Saarbrück.”
“The Count de Vasselot,” said Colonel Gilbert, with an air of friendly surprise. “Has he quitted his beloved château? He is so attached to that old house, you know.”
“He has joined his regiment,” replied Mademoiselle Brun, upon whom the burden of the conversation fell; for Denise had gone to the open window, and was closing the shutters against the sun.
“Ah! Then I can tell you that he was not at Saarbrück. The count's regiment is not in that part of the country. I was forgetting that he was a soldier. He is, by the way, your nearest neighbour.”
The colonel rose as he spoke, and went to the window—not to that where Denise was standing, but to the other, of which the sun-blinds were only half closed.
“You can, of course, see the château from here?” he said musingly.
“Yes,” answered Mademoiselle Brun, with an uneasy glance.
What was Colonel Gilbert going to say?
He stood for a moment looking down into the valley, while Denise and Mademoiselle Brun waited.
“And you have perceived nothing that would seem to confirm the gossip current regarding your—enemy?” he asked, with a good-natured, deprecatory laugh.
“What gossip?” asked mademoiselle, bluntly.
The colonel shrugged his shoulders without looking round.
“Oh,” he answered, “one does not believe all one hears. Besides, there are many who think that in such a remote spot as Corsica, it is not necessary to observe the ordinary—what shall I say?—etiquette of society.”
He laughed uneasily, and spread out his hands as if, for his part, he would rather dismiss the subject. But Mademoiselle Brun could be frankly feminine at times.
“What is the gossip to which you refer?” she asked again.
“Oh, I do not believe a word of it—though I, myself, have seen. Well, mademoiselle—you will excuse my frankness?—they say there is some one in the château—some one whom the count wishes to conceal, you understand.”
“Ah!” said mademoiselle, indifferently.
Denise said nothing. She was looking out of the window with a face as hard as the face of Mademoiselle Brun. She looked at her watch, seemed to make a quick mental calculation, and then turned and spoke to Colonel Gilbert with steady, smiling eyes.
“You have not told us your war news yet,” she said.
So he told them what he knew, which, as a matter of fact, did not amount to much. Then he took his leave, and rode home in the cool of the evening—a solitary, brooding man, who had missed his way somehow early on the road of life, and lacked perhaps the strength of mind to go back and try again.
Denise said good-bye to him in the same friendly spirit which he had inaugurated. She was standing with her back to the window from which she had looked down on to the château of Vasselot while Colonel Gilbert related his idle gossip respecting that house. And Mademoiselle Brun, who remembered such trifles, noted that she never looked out of that window again, but avoided it as one would avoid a cupboard where there is a skeleton.
Denise, who consulted her watch again so soon as the colonel had left, wrote another letter, which she addressed in an open envelope to the postmaster at Marseilles, and enclosed a number of stamps. She went out on to the high-road, and waited there in the shade of the trees for the diligence, which would pass at four o'clock on its way to Bastia.
The driver of the diligence, like many who are on the road and have but a passing glimpse of many men and many things, was a good-natured man, and willingly charged himself with Denise's commission. For that which she had enclosed was not a letter, but a telegram to be despatched from Marseilles on the arrival of the mail steamer there. It was addressed to Lory de Vasselot at the Cercle Militaire in Paris, and contained the words—
“Please return unopened the letter posted to-day.”
“When half-gods go,The gods arrive.”
“Then,” said the Baroness de Mélide, “I shall go down to St. Germain en Pré, and say my prayers.” And she rang the bell for her carriage.
On all great occasions in life, the Baroness de Mélide had taken her overburdened heart in a carriage and pair to St. Germain en Pré. For she had always had a carriage and pair for the mere ringing of a bell ever since her girlhood, when the Baron de Mélide had, with much assistance from her, laid his name and fortune at her feet. When she had helped him to ask her to be his wife, she had ordered the carriage thus, as she was ordering it now in the month of August, 1870, on being told by her husband that the battle of Wörth had been fought and lost, and that Lory de Vasselot was safe.
“The Madeleine is nearer,” suggested the baron, a large man, with a vacant face which concealed a very mine of common sense, “and you could give me a lift as far as the club.”
“The Madeleine is all very well for a wedding or a funeral or a great public festivity of any sort,” said the baroness, with a harmless, light manner of talking of grave subjects which is a closed book to the ordinary stolid British mind; “but when one has a prayer, there is nowhere like St. Germain en Pré, which is old and simple and dirty, so that one feels like a poor woman. I shall put on an old dress.”
She looked at her husband with a capable nod, as if to convey the comforting assurance that he could leave this matter entirely to her.
“Yes,” said the baron; “do as you will.”
Which permission the world was pleased to consider superfluous in the present marital case.
“It is,” he said, “the occasion for a prayer; and say a word for France. And Lory is safe—one of very, very few survivors. Remember that in your prayers, ma mie, and remember me.”
“I will see about it,” answered the baroness. “If I have time, I will perhaps put in a word for one who is assuredly a great stupid—no name mentioned, you understand.”
So the Baroness de Mélide went to the gloomy old church of her choice, and sent up an incoherent prayer, such as were arising from all over France at this time. On returning by the Boulevard St. Germain, she met a friend, a woman whose husband had fallen at Weissembourg, who gave her more news from the front. The streets were crowded and yet idle. The men stood apart in groups, talking in a low voice: the women stood apart and watched them—for it is only in times of peace that the women manage France.
The baroness went home, nervous, ill at ease. She hardly noticed that the door was held open by a maid-servant. The men had all gone out for news—some to enroll themselves in the National Guard. She went up to the drawing-room, and there, seated at her writing-table with his back turned towards her, was Lory de Vasselot. All the brightness had gone from his uniform. He turned as she entered the room.
“Mon Dieu!” she said, “what is it?”
“What is what?” he answered gravely.
“Why, your face,” said the baroness. “Look—look at it!” She took him by the arm, and turned him towards a mirror, half hidden in hot-house flowers. “Look!” she cried again. “Mon Dieu! it is a tragedy, your face. What is it?”
Lory shrugged his shoulders.
“I was at Wörth,” he explained, “two days ago. I suppose Wörth will be written for life in the face of every Frenchman who was there. They were three to one. They are three to one wherever we turn.”
He sat down again at the writing-table, and the baroness stood behind him.
“And this is war,” she said, tapping slowly on the carpet with her foot.
She laid her hand on his shoulder, and, noting a quick movement of withdrawal, glanced down.
“Ach!” she exclaimed, in a whisper, as she drew back.
The shoulder and sleeve of his tunic were stained a deep brown. The gold lace was green in places and sticky. In an odd silence she unbuttoned her glove, and laid it quietly aside.
“It seems, mon ami, that we have only been playing at life up to now,” she said, after a pause.
And Lory did not answer her. He had several letters lying before him, and had taken up his pen again.
“What brings you to Paris?” asked the baroness, suddenly.
“The emperor,” he answered. “It is a queer story, and I can tell you part of it. After Wörth, I was given a staff appointment—and why? Because my occupation was gone; I had no men left.” With a quick gesture he described the utter annihilation of his troop. “And I was sent into Metz with despatches. While I was still there—judge of my surprise!—the emperor sent for me. You know him. He was sitting at a table, and looked a big man. Afterwards, when he stood up, I saw he was small. He bowed as I entered the room—for he is polite even to the meanest private of a line regiment—and as he bowed he winced. Even that movement gave him pain. And then he smiled, with an effort. 'Monsieur de Vasselot,' he said; and I bowed. 'A Corsican,' he went on. 'Yes, sire.' Then he took up a pen, and examined it. He wanted something to look at, though he might safely have looked at me. He could look any man in the face at any time, for his eyes tell no tales. They are dull and veiled; you know them, for you have spoken to him often.”
“Yes; and I have seen the great snake at the Jardin d'Acclimatation,” answered the Baroness de Mélide, quietly.
“Then,” continued Lory, “still looking at the pen, he spoke slowly as if he had thought it all out before I entered the room. 'When my uncle fell upon evil times he naturally turned to his fellow-countrymen.' 'Yes, sire.' 'I do not know you, Monsieur de Vasselot, but I know your name. I am going to trust you entirely. I want you to go to Paris for me.'”
“And that is all you are going to tell me?” said the baroness.
“That is all I can tell you. Whatever he may be, he is more than a brave man—he is a stoic. I arrived an hour ago, and went to the club for my letters, but I did not dare to go in, because it is evident that I am from the front. Look at my clothes. That is why I come here and present myself before you as I am. I must beg your hospitality for a few hours and the run of your writing-table.”
The baroness nodded her head repeatedly as she looked at him. It was not only from his gold-laced uniform that the brightness had gone, but from himself. His manner was abrupt. He was almost stern. This, again, was war.
“You know that now, as always, our house is yours,” she said quietly; for it is not all light hearts that have nothing in them.
Then, being a practical Frenchwoman—and there is no more practical being in the world—she rang for luncheon.
“One sees,” she said, “that you are hungry. One must eat though empires fall.”
“Ah!” said Lory, turning sharply to look at her. “You talk like that in Paris, do you?”
“In the streets, my cousin, they speak plainer language than that. But Henri will tell you what they are saying on the pavement. I have sent for him to the club to come home to luncheon. He forgives me much, that poor man, but he would never forgive me if I did not tell him that you were in Paris.”
“Thank you,” answered Lory. “I shall be glad to see him. There are things which he ought to know, which I cannot tell you.”
“You think I am not discreet,” said the baroness, slowly drawing the pins from her smart hat.
Lory looked up at her with a laugh, which was perhaps what she wanted, for there is no cunning like the cunning of a woman who seeks to charm a man from one humour to another. And when the baroness had first seen Lory, she thought that his heart was broken—by Wörth.
“You are beautiful, but not discreet,” he answered.
“That is the worst of men,” she said reflectively, as she laid her hat aside—“they always want an impossible combination.”
She looked back at him over her shoulder and laughed, for she saw that she was gaining her point. The quiet of this luxurious house, her own personality, the subtle domesticity of her action in taking off her hat in his presence—all these were soothing a mind rasped and torn by battle and defeat. But there was something yet which she had not grasped, and she knew it. She glanced at the letters on the table before him. As if the thought were transmitted across the room to him, Lory took up an open telegram, and read it with a puzzled face. He half turned towards her as if about to speak, but closed his lips again.
“Yes,” said the baroness, lightly. “What is it?”
“It is,” he explained, after a pause, “that I have had so little to do with women.”
“Except me, mon cousin,” said the baroness, coming nearer to the writing-table.
“Except you, ma cousine,” he answered, turning in his chair and taking her hand.
He glanced up at her with eyes that would appear to the ordinary British mind to express a passionate devotion, eminently French and thrilling and terrible, but which really reflected only a very honest and brotherly affection. For a Frenchman never hates or loves as much as he thinks he does.
“Well,” said the baroness, practically, “what is it?”
“At the club,” explained Lory, “I found a letter and a telegram from Corsica.”
“Both from Denise?” asked the baroness, rather bluntly.
“Both from Mademoiselle Lange. See how things hinge upon a trifling chance—how much, we cannot tell! I happened to open the telegram first, and it told me to return the letter unopened.”
As he spoke he handed her the grey sheet upon which were pasted the narrow blue paper ribbons bearing the text. The baroness read the message slowly and carefully. She glanced over the paper, down at his head, with a little wise smile full of contempt for his limited male understanding.
“And the letter?” she inquired.
He showed her a sealed envelope addressed by himself to Denise at Perucca. She took it up and turned it over slowly. It was stamped and ready for the post. She then threw it down with a short laugh.
“I was thinking,” she explained, “of the difference between men and women. A woman would have filled a cup with boiling water and laid that letter upon it. It is quite easy. Why, we were taught it at the convent school! You could have opened the letter and read it, and then closed it again and returned it. By that simple subterfuge you would have known the contents, and would still have had the credit for doing as you were told. And I think three women out of five would have done it, and the whole five would have wanted to do it. Ah! you may laugh. You do not know what wretches we are compared to men—compared especially to some few of them; to a Baron Henri de Mélide or a Count de Vasselot—who are honourable men, my cousin.”
She touched him lightly on the shoulder with one finger, and then turned away to look with thoughtful eyes out of the window.
“I wonder what is in that letter,” said Lory, returning to his pen.
The baroness turned on her heel and looked at him with her contemptuous smile again.
“Oh,” she said carelessly, “she was probably in a difficulty, which solved itself after the letter was posted. Or she was afraid of something, and found that her fears were unnecessary. That is all, no doubt.”
There is, it appears, anesprit de sexewhich prevents women from giving each other away.
“So you merely placed the letter in an envelope and are returning it, thus, without comment?” inquired the baroness.
“Yes,” answered Lory, who was writing a letter now.
And his cousin stood looking at him with an amused and yet tender smile in her gay eyes. She remained silent until he had finished.
“There,” he said, taking an envelope and addressing it hurriedly, “that is done. It is to the Abbé Susini at Olmeta; and it contains some of those things, my cousin, that I cannot tell you.”
“Do you think I care,” said the baroness, “for your stupid politics? Do you think any woman cares for politics who has found some stupid man to care for her? There ismystupid in the street—on his new horse.”
In a moment Lory was at the window.
“A new horse,” he said earnestly. “I did not know that. Why did you not tell me?”
“We were talking of empires,” replied the baroness. “By the way,” she added, in after-thought, “is our good friend Colonel Gilbert in Corsica?”
“Yes—he is at Bastia.”
“Ah,” said the baroness, looking reflectively at Denise's telegram, which she still held in her hand, “I thought he was.”
Then that placid man, the Baron Henri de Mélide, came into the room, and shook hands in the then novel English fashion, looking at his lifelong friend with a dull and apathetic eye.
“From the frontier?” he inquired.
Lory laughed curtly. He had returned from that Last Frontier, where each one of us shall inevitably be asked “Si monsieur a quelque chose à déclarer?”
“I shall give you ten minutes for your secrets, and then luncheon will be ready,” said the baroness, quitting the room.
And Lory told his friend those things which were not for a woman's hearing.
At luncheon both men were suspiciously cheerful; and, doubtless, their companion read them like open books. Immediately after coffee Lory took his leave.
“I leave Paris to-night,” he said, with his old cheerfulness. “This war is not over yet. We have not the shadow of a chance of winning, but we shall perhaps be able to show the world that France can still fight.”
Which prophecy assuredly came true.