AT two o’clock in the house in the Rue Raynouard, Ellen came in to sit on the edge of her cousin’s bed and discuss the happenings of the day.
“I guess,” she observed, “Willie will be able to tell them a good story when he gets back to the Town. His mouth fairly hung open all the time when he was here.”
Lily smiled. “I don’t know,” she replied, braiding her heavy bronze hair. “From what he tells me, he’s in the backwater now. There are a lot of people there who have never heard of us. I suppose Willie and you and I are just back numbers so far as the Town is concerned.”
After Ellen had gone to her own room, Lily settled herself on the chaise longue and, wrapped in a peignoir of pale blue chiffon all frothy with old lace the color of ivory, she took from her desk the enameled box, opened it and read the worn clippings. The pile had grown mightily. There were a score of new clippings. The headlines had increased in size and the editorials were an inch or two longer. The man was progressing. He was denounced with a steadily increasing hatred and bitterness. It was clear that he had become a national figure, that he was a leader in the battle against the roaring furnaces.
For a long time she lay with her eyes closed ... thinking. And at last, hours after the rest of the house had grown still and dark, she sighed, replaced the clippings in the box and locked them once more into her desk. Then she settled herself to writing a letter over which she spent a long time, biting the end of the silver penholder from time to time with her firm white teeth. When at last the effort satisfied her, she placed it in an envelope and addressed it to Sister Monica in the Carmelite Convent at Lisieux. It was the hundredth letter she had written, letters in which she abased herself and begged forgiveness, letters to which there was never any reply save anunforgiving and relentless silence. It was like dropping the pale gray envelopes into a bottomless crevasse.
In the following May, Ellen went to Munich. It was the first step in a grand tour of the German cities. She would visit Salzburg, Cologne, Vienna, Leipsic. She would call upon Schönberg, Busoni, Richard Strauss, Pfitzner, von Schilling.... If the spirit moved her, she might even penetrate Russia. And certainly she would go to the festival at Weimar. All this was included in the plan she set forth to Lily. There was no schedule. She would simply progress from one place to another as her fancy dictated. She knew no German but she would learn it, as she had learned French, by living among the people. She went alone. Therefore she would have to learn the language.
The expedition was singularly characteristic of all her life. When she found that the Town was unendurable she had reversed the plan of her pioneer ancestors and turned east instead of west, to seek a new world which to her was far more strange than the rolling prairies of the west had been to her great-grandfather. When the traveling salesman, whom she used as a stepping stone, fell by the wayside and departed this life she was free to go unhindered on her own roving way, fortified by the experience of a few years of married life. She owned no fixed home. On the contrary, she moved about restlessly ... exploring, conquering, exhausting now this city, now that one. She was, it seemed, possessed of a veritable demon of restlessness, of energy, of a sharp inquiring intelligence. It was this quality, stimulated constantly by an overpowering curiosity, which sent her pioneering into the world of new music which Lily disliked so intensely. She explored those regions which musicians of a more contemplative and less restless nature dared not enter. It was as if she were possessed by a Gargantuan desire to devour all the world within a single lifetime.
Once in Paris she said to Lily, “You know, I am obsessed by a terrible sense of the shortness of life. It is impossible to know and experience all that I wish to know.”
But this was as near as she came to a contemplative philosophy. She had no time for reflection. The hours she spent with the indolent Lily inevitably fired her with a fierce andresentful unrest. It was then that she grew impatient, bad-tempered, unendurable. It was the descent of one of these black moods which drove her from the peaceful solitude of the house at Germigny upon a new voyage of exploration.
And so it happened that Lily and Madame Gigon were alone on the peaceful summer evening when Eustache, the red-cheeked farmer’s boy, returning on his bicycle through the rain from Meaux, brought the final edition of the Figaro containing a short paragraph of the most enormous importance to all the world.
Madame Gigon had been installed days before on the first floor of the lodge, because she was no longer able to leave her bed and insisted upon being placed where her ears would serve her to the greatest advantage. The door of her room opened outward upon the terrace above the Marne and here, just inside the door, sat Lily when Eustache arrived.
She opened the Figaro and spread it across her knees.
Madame Gigon, hearing the rustle of the paper, stirred and said peevishly, “What is new to-day?”
“Not much of importance,” said Lily, and after a pause. “The archduke of Austria has been assassinated. Shall I read you that?”
“Certainly,” replied the old woman with a fierce impatience. “Certainly!”
It was only part of a daily game ... this asking Madame Gigon what she would have read to her; because in the end the entire journal was read aloud by Lily—the daily progress of the celebrated case of Madame Caillaux, the signed articles by this or that politician, the news of the watering places ... Deauville, Vichy, Aix, Biarritz, the accounts of the summer charity fêtes, the annual ball at the Opéra, the military news ... everything was read to the old woman. For Madame Gigon found a keen delight in the recognition of a name among those who had been present at this fête or were stopping at that watering-place. After her own fashion, the blind old woman reduced all France to the proportions of a village. To her, the Caillaux trial became simply an old wives’ tale, a village scandal.
So Lily read of the Archduke’s assassination and MadameGigon listened, thoughtfully, interrupting her occasionally with a clucking sound to indicate how terrible the affair really was. She understood these things, being a Bonapartist. It was as if the Prince himself had been shot down. It was the natural result of the Republican movement, of Socialism, which was, after all, the same thing. Just another example of what these wild ideas might lead to.
“These are sad times,” remarked Madame Gigon when Lily had finished reading. “There is no such thing as law and order ... no such thing as respect and regard for rank. A wild confusion (une melée sauvage) to see who can gain the most wealth and make the greatest display. Money!” the old woman muttered. “That’s it. Money! If you make a fortune out of chocolate or soap, that is enough to put you into the government. Good God! What times are ahead!”
To this harangue, Lily listened absently. It was all monotonously familiar to her. Madame Gigon had said it a thousand times. Every evil she attributed to “these dirty times.” She concluded by saying, “Crazy Madame Blaise is right after all. There will be a war.... She was right.... There will be.”
While she was speaking, Lily tore open the only interesting letter among the dozen. Quietly she read it to herself. When she had finished she interrupted Madame Gigon.
“I have a letter from M. de Cyon,” she said, “about some furniture I was selling. He writes that Madame is ill again with indigestion ... quite seriously this time.”
Madame Gigon made a little grunting noise. “Nadine eats too much.... I have told her so a dozen times but she will not listen. A woman as fat as that....”
And from the superior pinnacle of her great age, Madame allowed the sentence to trail off into unspeakable vistas of Madame de Cyon’s folly. At the end of a long time during which they both sat silently in the dripping quiet of the summer evening Madame Gigon said explosively, “She will go off suddenly one of these days ... like that,” and she snapped her finger weakly.
At the sound Criquette and Michou got up lazily, stretched themselves, and waddled close to her chair. For a momentshe scratched their heads with groping fingers and then turning to Lily said, “It is time for their milk.... And see to it, my child, that they have a little cream in it.”
Lily rose and called the dogs inside the lodge. Across the river in the tiny church, the old curé, M. Dupont, rang the vesper bell. Behind the cropped willows along the Marne the last glow faded above the rolling fields of wheat. Inside the house Lily was singing softly, “O, le coeur de ma mie est petit, tous p’tit, p’tit.” There was no other sound.
Presently, Madame Gigon leaned back in her bed and called to Lily. “To-morrow,” she said, “you might ask M. Dupont to call on me. It has been two days since he was here.”
UPON Germigny l’Evec, removed from the highroad and the railway, the war descended at first slowly, with the unreality of a vague dream, and then with a gathering, ponderous ferocity of an appalling nightmare. In the beginning even the farmer and his men, familiar with the army and with military service, could not believe it. Still there was the memory of 1870, said the pessimists. It was not impossible.
“Ah, but war is unthinkable,” said Lily to Madame Gigon. “The days of war are over. It could not happen. They would not dare to permit it.”
But Madame Gigon, again from the pinnacle of her superior age, replied, “My child. You have never seen a war. You know nothing of it. It is not at all impossible. You see, I can remember well 1870.”
All the talk, it seemed, turned back at once to 1870. Sooner or later every one returned to it—M. Dupont, the curé, who had served at Metz with MacMahon, the farmer and his wife, even Eustache. 1870 was no longer a half-century away. It became only yesterday, an event which was just finished the evening before at sunset. And slowly it became clear that war was not at all an impossibility. The order for mobilization made it a reality so hideous, so monstrous, as to be utterly lacking in reality. In the château and at the farm, there were no longer any barriers. The cook and the farmer’s wife, came and sat on the terrace, red-faced and weeping. In the quiet of the evening there drifted across the wheatfields the ominous whistling of trains which followed no schedule, and from the distant high-road the faint sound of an unceasing procession of taxicabs and omnibuses rushing east and north through Pantin, through Meaux, on to La Ferté-sous-Jouarre.
From Paris came three letters, two by messenger, an orderlyof the Baron, the other by post. One was from the Baron himself and one was from M. de Cyon.
“It is all more grave than any of us suspect,” wrote the Baron. “Unhappily, Dear Lily, it is impossible for me to see you. I cannot leave my regiment. You cannot come to Vincennes. We must try to endure all this in the fashion of philosophers. It is not, you understand, as if it had been unexpected. It has been slow—more slow than any one hoped—in arriving.
“As for what may come of it, to me or to Jean. What is there to do? We are all helpless as if caught in a web. May God be with us all! Jean will be with me. Your heart can be assured that I shall do all it is possible to do for him. The rest remains with the good God. I would give ... What would I give? Ten years or more of my life to have seen you before going away. But that, it seems, is impossible. So we must wait until it is possible.
“We are leaving to-night. I have sent old Pierre to see to it that you and Madame Gigon are brought safely back to Paris. Germigny is safe from the Germans, but there is always a chance. Who can say what will happen? Good God! The suddenness of it!
“Au revoir, dear Lily, in haste. A thousand kisses from thy Césaire.”
It was the first time that there had been in all their correspondence even the faintest note of anything more compromising than a proper friendship between the Baron and the woman who had made his old cousin, Madame Gigon, comfortable for life. It was this which somehow gave the letter a gravity more terrible than any hint of foreboding contained in its crisp white pages. It was as if the barriers of convention had suddenly been destroyed, as if they had gone down in ruin to reveal life in all the primitive directness of unfettered nature. It seemed to say, “Nothing matters any longer save those things which have to do with life, death and love.”
The letter from M. de Cyon was more calm and dignified, the proper letter of a diplomat. It was the letter of a distinguished, white-haired gentleman.
“You must leave Germigny as soon as it is possible. I writeyou this in confidence and beg you not to arouse a panic among the peasants and the citizens of Meaux. It is war, Madame, and no one can say what will happen. Your security is of the deepest concern to me. I beg you to waste no time. Go on foot, by ox-cart, by train—however it is possible, but go. A battle is no place for so beautiful a woman.”
That was all, yet it contained hints and innuendoes of things too terrible for the imagination. M. de Cyon undoubtedly knew more than he chose to reveal in his circumspect note. He was, to be sure, near to the Ministry of War.
There was a letter too from Jean, breathless and full of spirit, the letter of a young warrior eager for battle, forgetful of all else, of God, of his mother, of everything save the prospect of fighting.
“Dear Mama,” he wrote, “we are leaving to-night for the front. I shall return perhaps a captain. Think of it! Thy Jean a captain! Do not worry. Our troops are in excellent condition. I fancy the war will be over in a fortnight. I am in Césaire’s company. I think of you, of course.“Thy Jean.”
“Dear Mama,” he wrote, “we are leaving to-night for the front. I shall return perhaps a captain. Think of it! Thy Jean a captain! Do not worry. Our troops are in excellent condition. I fancy the war will be over in a fortnight. I am in Césaire’s company. I think of you, of course.
“Thy Jean.”
With the three letters in her hand Lily left Madame Gigon and set out to walk the white tow-path at the edge of the river. On the far side the farm appeared deserted as if suddenly its occupants had been overcome by a sleep of enchantment. The oxen were nowhere to be seen. The fowls were gone. The house lay shuttered and empty as a house of the dead. Above the tow-path, the château likewise stood silent and empty. In all the landscape there was no sign of life, no dogs, no chickens, no crying children. And as she walked she turned her head presently and saw, leaving the far side of the farm, a lumbering two-wheeled cart piled high with furniture,—mattresses, a sewing machine, a few chairs, and swinging underneath, little cages of osier in which were crowded the barnyard fowls. Tied to the wheels, three goats followed the gentle motion of the cart. Fat Madame Borgue, the farmer’s wife, trudged by the side guiding the slow-gaited oxen with a long wand, and high up, perched on a truss of straw, sat hermother, an immensely old and wrinkled woman, with Madame Borgue’s baby in her arms. They were deserting, driven before the straggling columns of refugees which had appeared like magic during the early morning along the high-roads from La Ferté to Meaux. There could be no doubt. The farm and the château were empty. At Germigny only Lily and Madame Gigon remained behind.
IT appeared that the discovery made no impression upon Lily, for she continued on her way along the deserted river path without stopping, without even checking the mad speed at which she walked. Her manner was that of one fleeing before a terror from which there is no escape. When she had reached a spot opposite the little island that divided the waters of the river, she halted suddenly by a clump of hazel bushes and flung herself down upon the thick grass in the shadow of the plane trees. She began to weep, soundlessly with long, racking, silent sobs which shook her whole body as if she had been stricken by some frightful pain.
Far off a train whistled distantly. The bright red kepis of the soldiers showed in rows like poppies at the windows of the coaches. On the white solid bridge at Trilport there appeared a double procession; one column hot, dusty, bedraggled, full of crying, exhausted, women and children, moved toward Paris. The other was gay and bright. The men wore bright red trousers and bright red caps. It moved briskly forward. The guns were like a field of wheat come suddenly to life, moving gallantly to throw itself upon the reaper.
After a time, Lily sat up, her hair all blown and disheveled, her dark eyes bright from weeping. She read the letters over and over absorbing the same phrases.... May God be with us all!... It is all more grave than any of us suspect.... A thousand kisses from thy Césaire.... It is war, Madame, and no one can say what will happen.... A battle is no place for a beautiful woman.... Perhaps I shall return.... Perhaps I shall return a captain.... Think of it! Thy Jean a captain!... Thy Jean!... Thy Jean.... Thy Césaire!... Thy Jean! Thy precious Jean!
Slowly she refolded the letters and thrust them into the bosom of her dress and then, as if her emotion were too strongfor silence, she said aloud.... “Me ... myself.... Why do they worry about me?... Do they think that I am afraid?” She laughed suddenly. “Afraid of what?”
Besides it was impossible to flee with a sick old woman and no means of conveyance. She laughed again and said bitterly, “What do they think ... that I am a magician?”
Lying there in the deep grass, it must have occurred to her all at once that her whole life had been pillaged and destroyed because an Austrian archduke was shot in a little hole called Serajevo. Madame Gigon dying. Césaire and Jean on their way to destruction. Who remained? What remained? De Cyon, perhaps. No one else. No one in all the world. The years of her life come to an end like this ... that everything she loved, everything she cherished, might be swept away over-night like so much rubbish into a dustbin. As if she were no more than a poor forsaken flower vender or charwoman! What was money now? What were beautiful things? What was all her life?
And she flung herself down once more, sobbing wildly as she had sobbed another time in the old house at Cypress Hill, when all at once, she had sensed the tragedy of a whole lifetime, as if she stood in a vast plain surrounded only by loneliness.
At dusk she arose slowly and, from long habit put her hair in order, smoothed her dress, and set out upon her homeward journey, walking slowly, with feet from which all youth had gone. When she arrived at the lodge, the traces of her weeping had disappeared and she entered proudly and in silence. For a moment there came into her pale lovely face a fleeting likeness to her mother, a certain determination that was inseparable from the rugged countenance of the stoic Julia Shane.
The house was still because old Madame Gigon had slipped out of her bed and was lying asleep on the floor. When Lily attempted to rouse the old woman, she discovered that she was not sleeping at all but unconscious, and suddenly Lily too slipped to the floor, buried her face in her hands and wept noisily and without restraint. The sound of her sobbing penetrated the breathless garden and the distant empty rooms of the château, but there was no one to answer it. The only sound was the triumphant, ironic whistle of a steel locomotive,its belly hot with red flames, its nostrils breathing fire and smoke.
At last she lifted Madame Gigon into the bed by the window and, lying by the side of the unconscious old woman, she fell into a profound sleep.
IT was dark when she awoke and rose wearily to light a lamp. The first flame of the match illuminated the room. It revealed all the familiar furniture ... the chintz covered chairs, the bright curtains oftoile de Juouy, the bowl of ghostly white phloxes by the window. Everything was the same save that Madame Gigon ... old Tante Louise ... lay unconscious upon the bed, and the house was so still that the silence was suffocating.
She went into the kitchen and prepared a mixture of egg, milk and brandy which she fed the old woman through a tube. She understood the care of Madame Gigon. The old woman had been like this before. Lily, herself, ate nothing, but took from the cupboard by the window a bottle of port and drank a brimming glass. And after a time she went outside to listen to the silence.
With her black cloak wrapped about her she sat there for a long time. The farm, the tiny inn, the houses of the village were black and silent. There hung in the atmosphere the ghostly feeling of a house suddenly deserted by its inhabitants, standing empty and alone. The mournfulness was overwhelming. After a time she lighted a cigarette and smoked it, holding the ember away from her and regarding it at a little distance as if the faint light in some way dissipated the loneliness.
For a time she regarded the distant horizon and the queer flashes of color like heat lightning which appeared at intervals. Sometimes the rising night wind bore toward her a faint sound like that of distant thunder. And then all at once, there appeared in the house by the village church a bright light. It was a lamp placed close to the open window so that the rays piercing the darkness traversed the river, penetrated the low branches of the plane trees and enveloped Lily herself in a faint glow.
She watched it for a time with a breathless curiosity. Thecigarette, untouched, burned low and dropped from her fingers, and then behind the light appeared the figure of the curé in his rusty black clothes. He had stayed behind to guard his church. He was there, moving about his little house, as if nothing had happened. Presently he took down from a shelf above the table a heavy book, laid it before him, took out his steel rimmed spectacles, and began to read.
After an hour of silence during which she lay motionless in her chair, Lily rose and went inside to look at Madame Gigon. The old woman lay on her back, snoring peacefully. She felt her pulse. It was weak and irregular. Then she brought more brandy and milk, fed it to Madame Gigon, and wrapping the black cloak about herself, set off down the terrace to the iron bridge that led across the Marne to the house of the curé.
Away to the north the flashes in the sky became more frequent and the distant thunder less broken and more distinct. On the way to the bridge the alder branches stirring softly in the breeze, whispered together in a vague, ghostly fashion. She walked slowly in the same tired fashion until she reached the little white house by the church.
INSIDE, the old priest at the sound of her knock looked up from his reading and took off his spectacles.
“Come in,” he said, and Lily stepped uncertainly through the door, her eyes blinded by the bright flame of the petrol light. M. Dupont, regarding her with an expression of amazement, rose from his chair.
“It is I, Madame Shane,” said Lily. “The friend of Madame Gigon.”
“Ah, yes, I remember you well.”
Before this night there had passed between them occasional greetings when he came to the lodge to play piquet with Madame Gigon, when he passed Lily riding through the wood in the early morning.
“Won’t you sit down?” and then, “Why are you here? You know the Germans may come any time now. Surely before morning.”
“As soon as that?” asked Lily indifferently. She had not thought of the Germans. Perhaps they would come. It did not matter greatly.
The old man bent his head over the table and began to turn the pages of the book. “Our soldiers are brave, Madame,” he said. “But there is too much against them. They were not ready. In the end we will win.... For the present....” He finished with a gesture implying that the matter lay in the hands of the good God. He was a simple man, a peasant trained for the priesthood by devout and adoring parents.
“It would be better if you would go away,” he said after a sudden pause. “I imagine it will not be pleasant.”
Lily laughed softly. For a moment something of her old gay indifference appeared to return, even a shade of the spirit with which she had met another adventure years before in the park at Cypress Hill.
“There is Madame Gigon,” she said. M. Dupont again bent over the table silently. It was a gesture of assent, of resignation, of agreement.
“Besides,” continued Lily, “I am not afraid. I think I may even enjoy the experience.... I should like to know what war is like.” And then, as if she feared that he did not understand her, she added, “Not, of course, because I like war. Oh! not at all! But you understand what it means for the men.... I have men in it.” She shivered a little and drew the black cape more closely about her. “I think it might be easier for the women if they could go into battle as well. It would be easier than waiting ... at home ... alone.”
The man closed his book. “Madame is a beautiful woman,” he said, softly.
Again Lily smiled faintly. “Oh, I understand what you mean ... perfectly.” A thoughtful expression entered her dark eyes. She seemed suddenly to be listening to the faint and distant thunder. “Yes,” she said with a sigh, “I understand. Fortunately I have no temptation to run away. I could not go if I chose. Madame Gigon, you understand, has given up her life to me.... It would be impossible to desert her now.”
She sat now with her back to the whitewashed wall of the little room; her black cape and her red hair carried the quality of a beautiful painting. All the color was gone from her face and beneath her eyes hung dark circles which somehow increased the brilliance of her eyes and the whiteness of her skin. She looked old but it was the oldness of beauty, possessing a clear refinement and delicacy.
“She is a good woman ... Madame Gigon,” said the priest.
M. Dupont spoke in a low voice, respectful, scarcely audible, but the words exerted upon his visitor an extraordinary effect. All at once she leaned forward resting her elbows on the table. The cloak slipped to the floor. She began to talk passionately with a kind of fierce melancholy in her voice.
“Ah, sheisa good woman,” she said. “She has given her life to me. She has lived with me for twenty years. She hasbeen everything to me. You understand ... a friend ... a companion ... even a mother.”
And then, without warning, she poured out the whole story of her life, incident by incident, chapter by chapter, reserving nothing, disguising nothing. Before the eyes of the astonished old priest she recreated the house at Cypress Hill, the Mills, the Town, the figures of her bizarre father, her cynical mother, the hysterical Irene, all the kaleidoscopic picture of a wandering, aimless life. She told him of Jean. She even related bit by bit the long tale of her love for the Baron. She told him that in her heart she had even sinned for the sake of a common laborer ... Krylenko.
“And yet,” she said, “he was not exactly that. He was a great deal more. He was, you understand, something of a martyr. He gave up everything for his people. He would have given his life had it been necessary.... It hurts me, even now, to think of him. He was a powerful man ... a good man ... a noble man.”
It was of him that she talked for a long time, wildly, passionately invoking him in her enthusiasm before the stricken eyes of the old priest. He stood there for a long time in the bare, whitewashed room, powerful, austere, suffering, as he had been on the night of the slaughter in the park at Cypress Hill.
“He was a good man.... He still is,” she said. She talked breathlessly with a bright exalted light in her eyes. “I have never told this to any one.... There was no sin between us ... nothing unless to love deeply is a sin.”
As if turned to stone, M. Dupont sat listening quietly. Only once did he speak and that was when she mentioned the Baron. Then he stirred uneasily and peered at her closely as if he suspected her of lying.
“Incredible!” he murmured to himself. “Incredible!” And after a little pause. “Only God can know what lies in the darkness of men’s hearts. Only God.... It is impossible to know.... It is impossible to know!”
But Lily swept past the interruption. The torrent of her revelations flowed on. She talked eagerly, with a kind of wild delight; yet what she said lacked the quality of a confession. She seemed to have no profound consciousness of sin. She was even unrepentant. She told the story breathlessly with a kind of wonder at herself, at the tragedy of her own soul, that sheloved so easily. Instead of confessing, she appeared to be pouring out to the trembling old man secrets, too long confined, which she found herself driven to reveal.
At last she drew to a conclusion. “You understand now,” she said, “why to me the war is inexpressibly tragic. You understand what Madame Gigon has been to me.”
She picked up the fallen cloak and, shivering, wrapped it about her and sank back in the stiff little chair with a weary air of finality and resignation. “You see, it is not only the war.... Madame Gigon is dying. The war has taken everything. You understand I shall be alone ... completely alone.”
M. Dupont made no reply. He kept his head bowed. He was repeating a prayer as Irene had done in the old days. They prayed for Lily, who had not been inside a church in more than seven years.
“I came to fetch you to her,” continued Lily, “She is dying now.... I am certain she cannot live much longer.”
When the priest at last raised his head, it was to say, “Come. If she is dying we must waste no time,” in so gentle a voice that the tears welled in Lily’s eyes. She took out her handkerchief, already wet.
“I thought,” she said, “that I was through with weeping. I must have a great many tears.” (Lily who never wept.)
MDUPONT, after collecting those things which are necessary in the administration of the last rites, put on his shovel hat and took up a lantern.
“Come,” he said, “we must hurry.” And together they set out along the white road, between the whispering alders and over the iron bridge. The lantern swung feebly in his grasp. They walked in complete silence until they reached the terrace when Lily, looking up suddenly, saw that the sky behind the lodge was filled with a cloudy whiteness as if gray smoke were drifting across the sky.
“There is a fire somewhere,” she said placing a hand on the arm of her companion.
M. Dupont halted and regarded the sky for a moment, holding his lantern high so that the rays might penetrate the darkness beyond the vine covered lodge.
“It is not smoke,” he said suddenly. “It is dust. The cavalry is passing along the road.”
And then for the first time the small revealing noises reached Lily’s ear ... the clanking of spurs, the creaking of girths, the muffled sound of hoofs striking the white road, and then the solitary whicker of a horse.
INSIDE the lodge, Lily left Madame Gigon to the curé. He assured her that she was right. It was impossible for the old woman to live much longer. It would have been useless to have secured a physician even if one had been available.
“She has been dying a long while,” said the old man. “I fancy she would prefer not to be hindered in her going.”
As Lily closed the door upon the two old friends, she saw M. Dupont kneel down in the lamplight and begin to pray.
Wearily she climbed the narrow winding stairway which led to the upper floor and, finding herself unable to sleep, she went to the window above the gateway and sat down to watch the column of cavalry on its way into battle. The men had been riding for hours and now they rode silently, white with dust, the black plumes of horsehair swaying as the horses moved. It was impossible to distinguish one from another. They were simply black figures, units of a body, mysterious and without personality. There was not even the sound of a voice, nothing but the faint rattle of sabers and the ghostly breathing of the horses. Jean might have been among them ... even Césaire himself. It was impossible to say. They were each like the other, no longer individuals, now only units, cogs in a vast machine. No one of them counted any longer for anything.
Presently the column came to an end and a battery of artillery, caissons rattling, men upright upon the cartridge boxes, followed in its place. And at last it too passed, swallowed up by the questioning darkness. The silence became unreal, terrifying. From below stairs arose the droning sound of M. Dupont’s voice conducting the service that would lead Madame Gigon safely into the world beyond ... the world beyond. To-night in all the lonely breathless quiet, the world beyond was very near. One might almost enter it simply by closing one’s eyes, by stepping through a doorway into the night.
Lily sat motionless and upright, watching. A second column passed and then a third; and at last, a man riding a black horse whose chest was white with froth turned in at the gateway. He was a man like the others ... a unit, a being without individuality save that he rode alone a little in the rear of the other horsemen. Under the archway he dismounted from his horse, and in the next moment he performed an act which at once restored to him his identity. He walked directly to the iron ring which hung concealed among the ivy leaves and there fastened the black horse. Thus he betrayed himself. Only one person could have known the exact place where the ring lay hidden among the leaves. There could be no longer any doubt.
When he had fastened the black horse, he stepped out alittle way from the house and called softly, “Lily ... Lily.”
THERE was no answer, but before he called again a tall figure in a black cloak ran from the doorway and hurried toward him.
“Césaire!... Césaire!” were the only words she spoke. She clung against him, the metal of his bright cuirass pressing her lovely, soft body. For a time Césaire kissed her passionately and at length, without a word, she led him away from the house to the pleached walk that led from the château garden down to the river. They walked sadly with arms encircling each other’s waists.
“I have but a moment,” said the Baron. “At most, ten minutes. I have no right even to that.”
She told him that Madame Gigon was dying. She explained that old Pierre had not appeared to help them to escape and that he would have been of no use since it was impossible to move her companion. And when she had wasted three precious minutes in these explanations, she said, “You need not worry for me.... I shall be quite safe.... If only I could be as certain of you.”
At this he laughed softly, reassuring her and pulling his fierce mustachios in warlike fashion.
“You need not fear for me,” he said. “I have had such great luck ... always.” And he looked at her closely with shining eyes.
Then they sat for a time in silence, clinging closely to each other. Presently he took off his helmet and rested it in her lap allowing her to twist her fingers in and out among the long black hair of the plume.
“And Jean,” she said, after a time. “He is with you?”
“He is with me. He passed with the others beneath your window. He sent you his love. He would have come too, but he knew it was unsoldierly to break the ranks.... He is a goodsoldier,” he added softly. “A valiant fellow. With me it is different. I am an old fellow. I have learned that there are times when one must break the ranks. There are times when even breaking ranks does not matter.”
In the darkness Lily’s eyes closed as if she felt a sharp, sudden pain. “Ellen advised me,” she said, “never to be too fond of my child.”
Her lover kissed her and answered, “Come, you must not think of it like that. You must understand he is a boy ... an ardent boy.”
And then he fell again to talking of her danger. He urged her not to remain.
“I have the curé here ... M. Dupont,” she said.
“Leave him with Madame Gigon.”
“No. That I will not do.... Besides the Germans may never arrive here after all.”
“No,” he said, gravely. “Perhaps not. We shall try to prevent them.”
Then they walked back again to the gateway. The house was silent now and the voice of M. Dupont no longer to be heard. The Baron replaced his helmet, untied his horse and swung himself on the back of the animal. Leaning down, he kissed her again and then turned through the gateway into the road. She listened to the sound of the black horse’s hoofs as he galloped past the moving columns, and at last when the echo was no longer audible she reentered the house and flung herself down upon the bed. Throughout the brief visit, she had restrained herself. Now she wept quietly, almost in peace, as if she were enveloped already by a great resignation.
MADAME GIGON lived through the night, sleeping peacefully in her high bed near the door that opened upon the terrace. But Lily did not sleep at all. She kept watch, sometimes sitting at the bedside, sometimes lying wrapped in her cloak in the long chair beneath the plane trees. She watched the flashes on the horizon beyond the wood, until the dawn rising slowly absorbed them and rendered them invisible in a faint glow which grew and grew until it enveloped all the dome of the sky and transformed, suddenly and without warning, the dark wood from a low black wall extending across the sky into a grove of slender trunks silhouetted against the rising light.
At dawn the troops no longer passed the house. The dusty white road lay deserted between the rows of chestnut trees. But in the dust were the prints of a thousand hoofs and the tracks of the wide wheeled caissons. The little procession on the distant bridge at Trilport had vanished. There were no soldiers going forward; and coming back, there was now only an occasional, straggling cart or the figure of a shopkeeper pushing before him in a wooden wheelbarrow all that he had salvaged of his little shop.
At noon there appeared out of the wood a rolling kitchen drawn by tired horses and driven by weary soldiers all white with dust. It came nearer and nearer until it arrived at the farm where, in the shadow of the big gray barns, it halted and the men ate. A little while later soldiers began to appear among the trees, tiny figures in red trousers and red caps, no longer bright like the poppies, but all stained and dust covered. The red marked them against the wall of greenery as if it had been planned that they should serve as targets.
Singly and in little groups of two or three the soldiers straggled across the fields toward the kitchen set up against thegray wall of the barn. The sun shone brilliantly, and in the clear white light the red tiles, the white walls, and the green of the trees appeared gay and bright. Some of the men carried arms suspended in slings. One or two wore about their close-cropped heads bandages that were stained with spots of red as if the color had come loose from their tragic little caps and stained their skins. There was one dandified young officer, with fine waxed mustaches, who dragged a shattered leg and still wore the bedraggled remnants of the spotless white gloves he had carried into the battle.
When they had eaten and drunk, the soldiers made their way across the iron bridge and turning along the tow path at the foot of the garden kept on their way, moving in a thin, trickling stream in the direction of Paris.
At length Lily, rousing herself, went to the foot of the garden, opened the gate and stood on the path. She carried wine which she gave them to drink as they passed.
“And how does it go?” she asked now and then.
The respectful answer was always the same. “Badly, Madame.... Badly. It would be better if you did not remain.”
Or a shrug and “What can we do, Madame? They have better guns ... better shells. One cannot see them. They are dressed so that they look like the trees themselves. And we ... we.” A gesture indicating the fatal red trousers and kepi.
Early in the afternoon the sound of the guns became audible again, not distant this time and indistinct like thunder, but sharp and clear ... the barking “ping” of the seventy-fives.
When the wine was all gone, Lily returned again to the terrace to wait. She had not been sitting there long when there arose all at once the sound of a terrific explosion. Turning her head she saw above the river at Trilport a great cloud of white dust and black smoke. They had destroyed the solid white bridge. It was the French themselves who had destroyed it. The Germans must be very near.
Madame Gigon slept peacefully just inside the doorway, all undisturbed by the explosion.
As for Lily, lying in the low chair, the explosion appeared tohave worked a miracle. The color had begun to return to her white face. It showed itself in bright spots as if she had been seized by a fever. And presently she arose and began to walk about, up and down the garden, going at last into the château itself from which she returned in a little while carrying a pair of the Baron’s binoculars. With these she climbed to the little turret which rose above the vine covered dove-cote. There she settled herself to watching.
In a little while the men about the kitchen gathered themselves into a group, put the horses once more into the harness and drove away, carrying with them a boy of the last class whose strength had given out. M. Dupont followed them until he reached the edge of the iron bridge where he halted and stood looking after them, his hands shading his old eyes against the long rays of the setting sun, until they disappeared around a turn of the river. Then he went quietly indoors.
A little while later a battery of guns appeared among the trees, halted on the edge of the wood, and began firing in the direction of La Ferté where a cloud of smoke from the burning houses hung low upon the horizon. It was a pretty picture. The men worked the guns rapidly. The cannon spat forth little curls of white smoke followed by sudden angry barks, not in the least deafening. In the clear evening light it was all like one of Meissonier’s battle pictures, rather clear and pretty and bright-colored.
But in a little while the battery stopped firing, the horses leaned forward once more into the harness and the guns drew away down the lane, past the white farm and across the iron bridge. The planks reverberated with a thunderous sound under the hoofs of the galloping horses. The little cavalcade turned along the tow-path and vanished. Out of the wood there appeared suddenly three gray-green figures on horseback who halted and surveyed the landscape. They were the first of the Uhlans.
WITH the falling of night, the Germans were in possession of the château and the gardens. In bands of twenty or thirty they pushed beyond across the field and through the copses in the direction of Meaux. A few remained behind, and these occupied the château, using the best linen of the Baroness, taking down from the wall of the kitchen the cook’s great battery of spotless copper kettles in which to cook their beans and soup.
Lily, sitting quietly inside the darkened lodge by the side of Madame Gigon, heard their shouts and the stamping of their horses in the stables. Dark figures moved above among the trees of the garden, the figures of her enemies, the men who would kill if it were possible Césaire and Jean. In the excitement, no one ventured as far from the château as the lodge, and for a time she remained safe and in peace.
The cannon were no longer to be heard. For a little while there arose the distant crackling of rifles like the sound of brush fires made by the foresters in August; but this too died away after a time.
She bathed her head, fed Madame Gigon once more and sat down again to wait, and at last, overcome by exhaustion she sank quietly into sleep.
In the château the weary Germans slept and in the stables the horses ceased their stamping. A deep unbroken stillness settled again over the garden and the wheatfields beyond, so peaceful that the firing and the shouting of a little while before might have been wholly an illusion, a nightmare which had nothing to do with reality.
Thus passed three hours.
It was the sound of knocking which aroused Lily, a violent imperious sort of knocking which wakened her sharply and brought her quickly to her feet. As if by force of habit, sheopened the door and said in French, “Gently ... please.... Gently. It is not necessary to break down the door. There is a sick woman here.”
As it swung open she was enveloped by the sudden bright glare of an electric torch. At the same moment a voice speaking the most excellent French said, “I am sorry, Madame. I ask your pardon. I did not know the lodge was occupied.”
The voice was not gruff. It was rather cold and smooth and carried a hint of weariness. “I found the door locked. I always knock upon locked doors,” continued the voice. “May I come in?”
All this time Lily, blinded by the sudden light, stood leaning against the door, emerging slowly from the effects of her deep slumber. For a moment she was silent.
“I prefer to come outside,” she replied. “There is a sick woman here.... If you will turn your light inside, you will see that I am not lying. She is there.”
The light flashed across the high bed of Madame Gigon. “I believe you, Madame.”
Lily closed the door and stood leaning against it. From the one of the lower windows of the château streamed a path of light which illuminated faintly the terrace, the front of the lodge and the Uhlan officer. He was not tall and was not in the least savage in appearance. On the contrary his face was smooth shaven and narrow, rather the face of a scholar than a soldier. Yet he carried himself very erect. There was something about him that was cold, stiff, almost brittle.
“What do you want of me?” asked Lily in a voice expressionless and free of all emotion.
For a moment her companion hesitated. He switched off the electric torch which until now he had kept turned full upon her. “Were you sleeping?” he asked.
“Yes.” Again in the same dead tone.
“Extraordinary. You must be a woman of great nerve.”
“No ... not at all. I had not slept in thirty-six hours.”
Again he hesitated. “I ... I have been riding for that length of time ... and still I cannot sleep. I have tried.... My nerves are too much on edge.”
She waited silently.
“Tell me ... why did you remain behind?” he began presently.
She made a gesture indicating the window behind which lay Madame Gigon. “You have seen the reason,” she said. “It was impossible to go away.”
The man whistled softly. “Aren’t you in the least afraid?”
For a time there was no sound except a deep sigh. “There was nothing to be done,” she answered presently in the same dead voice. “When there is nothing to be done, it is foolish to fret. It is best to make the most of it. What would you have me do?” For a moment a trace of life, almost of humor entered her voice. “Would you have me lie down and scream?” Again she sighed. “What good would it do? What would come of it? I do not believe in scenes.”
The Uhlan laughed. “Unlike most women,” he said. “But you are right. Afterwards, scenes are ridiculous. Nothing really matters much.... I’ve learned that in two days,” he added with a sort of pride.
To this she made no reply but her very silence carried its own gesture of assent. She did not deny his statement.
“I suppose you hate me,” he began, “like a good Frenchwoman.”
For the first time she raised her head and looked squarely at the stranger. “What do you want?” she asked. “Why are you talking in this fashion? You understand I am helpless. I must talk with you if you choose.” In the darkness she frowned. “I suppose that is war.” And then, “Besides, I am not a Frenchwoman at all. I am an American.”
At this the stranger gave a sudden start, in the darkness more audible than visible by the sudden click of metal on some part of his uniform.
“Then you must hate me even more.... I have lived in Paris. The Americans there are more French than the French.”
This remark, it appeared, angered her for she answered quickly. “I know no Americans in Paris. I know nothing about them.”
The Uhlan laughed. “Madame, I have no intention of injuring you ... in any way.”
To this she replied, “I suppose you do not mind if I sit down. I am a little weary.”
The stranger’s manner changed abruptly. He became courteous, almost courtly.
“I am sorry. I did not know there were chairs. You see I am a stranger here. Sit down if you prefer it, by all means.... I am not one to work hardships for a woman.” She moved toward the long chair under the lindens and lay down, wrapping the cloak about her and closing her eyes.
“Perhaps,” said the stranger, “you would prefer to sleep.”
“No,” she replied quietly, “I could not sleep now.” And as if the idea amused her she added, “I might as well talk with you ... since you too suffer from insomnia.”
“As you will ... if you do not hate me too much.”
He sat in the chair by her side and slipped from his waist the belt in which hung his black lugar pistol. Thus they remained for some time, silently and peacefully, as if they were old friends between whom there was no necessity for speech. The German sat with his elbows resting on his knees, his head buried in his hands. There was a smoothness and angularity about his thin figure so trimly clad in a uniform that now carried the stains of battle.
At last he took out a cigarette and said, “I suppose you smoke, Madame?”
To which Lily replied without opening her eyes, “No.”
He was so polite, so scrupulously polite. And presently he sighed, “Ah, this civilization ... this world of monkeys. (Monde de singes.)” And once more the night stillness descended, for Lily made no effort at speech now. She lay motionless, so still that she might have been dead. Her silence appeared to reproach him for he turned suddenly and said, “Do you fancy I like this ... this living like a burglar in a château ... your château?”
“It is not mine,” Lily murmured.
“Do you fancy I like this war.... I am not pleased with killing men. Why should I? I do not hate them. How is it possible? How can you even hate me?”
She stirred impatiently. “No. It is impossible to hate genuinely ... without a reason one can put one’s finger on. All the same you are my enemy,” she added stubbornly.
The Uhlan laughed. “Who has made me so, Madame? Not myself, surely.” And then after a little pause, he added with a kind of desperation, “No, I am like all the others. I have nothing to do with it. We are all caught, Madame, ... hopelessly caught in one great web spun by a monster. Ah, what a monster!”
In the distant stable arose suddenly the sound of two horses quarreling. There was a violent kicking ... a squealing that was savage and implacable.
“We are not even like that,” he said. “It is not even that we bite and kick.... We shoot each other at a distance. You, Madame, perhaps have friends among the men I am fighting. I kill them and they me only because the first who shoots is the safest. You know the artillerymen kill men they never even see.” He spat suddenly. “Bah! It is mechanics ... all mechanics ... machinery, you understand, which they make in great roaring factories. They kill men in factories in order to kill more men on the battlefield. What is there in that?”
Again she made no answer to his question. The quarreling horses had been separated and their squealing silenced. There was only the overpowering stillness once more, a stillness unearthly in quality which lifted all that it enveloped upon a new plane, determined by new values. Life, death, reality, dreams—all these things were confused and yet amazingly clear, as if the whole had been pierced by a single beam of cold white light.
IT must have occurred to Lily that the man was talking in an hysterical fashion with all the frenzy of a neurasthenic. “Madame, you should see one of our towns where there are great furnaces ... Essen, Madame, or Saarbrucken.. black, incredibly vile, a wallow of roaring fire and white hot steel ... I know them, Madame, I have lived in them.”
Then for the first time Lily stirred. She even laughed, faintly yet with unmistakable bitterness. “Know them? I know them. We have them in America.”
The stranger paid no heed to her interruption. “Look, Madame,” he commanded, pointing to the north where the horizon was lighted by the glow of a burning town. “Look, Madame. You see that fire in the sky. The ladles have overflowed. The white hot steel has spread across Europe. There is gold in it too ... red hot gold.... Melted Gods ... idols which we worship to-day.”
His voice rose until he was shouting. When he finished, he leaned back in his chair, the fine uniform suddenly crumpled and limp. And after a time he began to speak again, softly as if the torrent of emotion had exhausted him.
“And where have we to go? If we sought to escape where have we to go? There is no place. Because the monkeys ... the fools have civilized all the world, so that they might sell their cheap cotton and tin trays. They have created a monster which is destroying them. There is no longer any peace ... any solitude. They have even wrenched the peasant from his plow ... the shepherd from his hillside.” Again he pointed toward the burning horizon. “They have driven them out upon the plains where the cauldrons have overflowed across all Europe. It is the monsters, Madame, who are at the bottom of all this. Ah, commerce, industry, wealth, power.” He tossed away his cigarette and lighted another. “When this is over,who do you think will have gained? Not the peasant, Madame. Not the shepherd, not the poet. Ah, no! They will be shoveled under the earth ... whole bodies and pieces of bodies because they are no longer of any use. Not the worker, Madame, whom the monster devours. Ah, no.” His voice rose suddenly. “It is the monster who will have gained ... the monster and the men whose pockets he fills with gold ... the monster of material, of industry. He will destroy us. He will devour us. What can we do? You see, I know. I have lived in France. I have lived in England.... My grandmother, you understand, was English. I would prefer to live in England. But No! I was in England three weeks ago. And suddenly I must go home to join my regiment, to set out upon the expedition that has brought me here into this trampled garden. What for? Who can say? Why? Who knows? Not surely because it gives me pleasure. Not surely because I care a fig whether the German empire lives or dies. That is merely an excuse to drag us into battle.” His head dropped wearily again. “You see, this is why I have not been able to sleep. I have been thinking of these things. They are not the sort that lull a man to sleep. There is blood on my hands. I killed to-day ... by shooting and stabbing. I assure you it gave me no pleasure. I should doubtless have loved the men I killed. I am helpless. I cannot fight against it. No, there is only one thing to be done. I must kill as many men as possible. I must destroy all that it is possible to destroy because if we destroy enough the monster will have nothing to feed upon. He, too, will die ... and with him this civilization ... banal, ugly, materialistic, unchristian ... this greed-ridden world.”
The Uhlan fell forward upon the table, burying his face in his arms. At the sight Lily raised herself gently and watched her strange companion in a wondering silence. At last she said softly, “Why do you tell me this? Is it because you are afraid?”
The man made a chuckling, confused, sound and sat up once more. “Ah, no! Madame. You fancy I am hysterical. Well, so I am. I don’t deny it. You see it is not easy for me to be a warrior. I am a little mad. No, I talk like this because....” For a moment he hesitated as if groping for someexplanation of an emotional crisis which in a soldier was not logical at all. His manner seemed to imply that he should have accepted the affair without question. “Because.... Well, there is a time when fear does not matter, when terror does not exist, when one is enveloped by a despair so great that what happens to one’s body is of no concern. You understand that. You have answered it yourself a little time before, when you said there came a time when it was useless to be afraid.” He leaned back and made a little gesture of negation. “It does not matter,” he concluded. In the faint light from the lower windows of the château it was plain that he was smiling in a bitter, despairing fashion. “No, I shall go on killing until I am killed. It will not be a long affair. It is absurd to hope that I shall live many more days.” He whistled softly. “I might even be killed to-night ... after I have left you. I shall kill as many men as possible. I can only submit. There is nothing I can do. I am not a boy full of playing soldier.”
At this Lily winced suddenly as if he had struck her. Then she raised herself slowly. The black cloak fell from her shoulders.
“I have in the war a son and a lover,” she said. “If you met them, you would kill them. Is it not so?”
The Uhlan bowed his head in silent assent.
“And yet you do not believe in it?”
“No, Madame.”
“Then that is wrong. It is sinful.”
The stranger leaned toward her. “It is not I who would kill them. I am only a chance, a little dagger in the hand of fate ... one of a billion chances that have to do with their deaths. I myself would not be killing them.... It would be a strange ... even an impossible accident, if I killed one of them with my own hands. You understand, we are talking facts now ... hard facts. There is no room for sentimentality at a time like this....” He smiled ironically. “I can understand that it is difficult for a woman to talk facts. It is simply a matter of chances ... like roulette shall we say?”
For a time Lily remained thoughtful and silent. At last she said, “They are in the cavalry like yourself. You would kill them. You are one of the chances.” The calmness of hermanner stood in terrible contrast to the hysterical outburst of the soldier.
“I can see you are a philosopher ... afemme savant,” mocked the stranger.
“You might choose a better time to jeer.”
The man coughed. “Forgive me.... I am sorry.... I was wrong. If you were afemme savant, I would not be talking to you like this.... You are a woman ... a beautiful woman. One cannot help talking to you.”
“I am only a woman living by what she believes. That is simple enough.”
“It requires courage, Madame ... and indifference, far more of both than I have.” He coughed again, nervously. “Perhaps I am too rational.... Perhaps I do not think resistance worth the trouble ... especially now, at a time when the mob ... the politicians rule absolutely.”
“You are one of the chances,” Lily repeated stubbornly.