NEW LIFE
When Marguerite was able to return to the studio in the rue de la Pompe,
Julio, who had been living in a perpetual bad humor, seeing everything
in the blackest colors, suddenly felt a return of his old optimism.
The war was not going to be so cruel as they all had at first imagined.
The days had passed by, and the movements of the troops were beginning
to be less noticeable. As the number of men diminished in the streets,
the feminine population seemed to have increased. Although there was
great scarcity of money, the banks still remaining closed, the necessity
for it was increasingly great, in order to secure provisions. Memories
of the famine of the siege of ‘70 tormented the imagination. Since war
had broken out with the same enemy, it seemed but logical to everybody
to expect a repetition of the same happenings. The storehouses were
besieged by women who were securing stale food at exorbitant prices
in order to store it in their homes. Future hunger was producing more
terror than immediate dangers.
For young Desnoyers these were about all the transformations that war
was creating around him. People would finally become accustomed to the
new existence. Humanity has a certain reserve force of adaptation which
enables it to mould itself to circumstances and continue existing. He
was hoping to continue his life as though nothing had happened. It was
enough for him that Marguerite should continue faithful to their
past. Together they would see events slipping by them with the cruel
luxuriousness of those who, from an inaccessible height, contemplate a
flood without the slightest risk to themselves.
This selfish attitude had also become habitual to Argensola.
“Let us be neutral,” the Bohemian would say. “Neutrality does not
necessarily mean indifference. Let us enjoy the great spectacle, since
nothing like it will ever happen again in our lifetime.”
It was unfortunate that war should happen to come when they had so
little money. Argensola was hating the banks even more than the Central
Powers, distinguishing with special antipathy the trust company which
was delaying payment of Julio’s check. How lovely it would have been
with this sum available, to have forestalled events by laying in every
class of commodity! In order to supplement the domestic scrimping,
he again had to solicit the aid of Dona Luisa. War had lessened Don
Marcelo’s precautions, and the family was now living in generous
unconcern. The mother, like other house mistresses, had stored up
provisions for months and months to come, buying whatever eatables she
was able to lay hands on. Argensola took advantage of this abundance,
repeating his visits to the home in the avenue Victor Hugo, descending
its service stairway with great packages which were swelling the
supplies in the studio.
He felt all the joys of a good housekeeper in surveying the treasures
piled up in the kitchen--great tins of canned meat, pyramids of butter
crocks, and bags of dried vegetables. He had accumulated enough there to
maintain a large family. The war had now offered a new pretext for him
to visit Don Marcelo’s wine-vaults.
“Let them come!” he would say with a heroic gesture as he took stock
of his treasure trove. “Let them come when they will! We are ready for
them!”
The care and increase of his provisions, and the investigation of news
were the two functions of his existence. It seemed necessary to procure
ten, twelve, fifteen papers a day; some because they were reactionary,
and the novelty of seeing all the French united filled him with
enthusiasm; others because they were radical and must be better informed
of the news received from the government. They generally appeared at
midday, at three, at four and at five in the afternoon. An half hour’s
delay in the publication of the sheet raised great hopes in the public,
on the qui vive for stupendous news. All the last supplements were
snatched up; everybody had his pockets stuffed with papers, waiting
anxiously the issue of extras in order to buy them, too. Yet all the
sheets were saying approximately the same thing.
Argensola was developing a credulous, enthusiastic soul, capable of
admitting many improbable things. He presumed that this same spirit
was probably animating everybody around him. At times, his old critical
attitude would threaten to rebel, but doubt was repulsed as something
dishonorable. He was living in a new world, and it was but natural that
extraordinary things should occur that could be neither measured nor
explained by the old processes of reasoning. So he commented with
infantile joy on the marvellous accounts in the daily papers--of combats
between a single Belgian platoon and entire regiments of enemies,
putting them to disorderly flight; of the German fear of the bayonet
that made them run like hares the instant that the charge sounded; of
the inefficiency of the German artillery whose projectiles always missed
fire.
It was logical and natural that little Belgium should conquer gigantic
Germany--a repetition of David and Goliath--with all the metaphors and
images that this unequal contest had inspired across so many centuries.
Like the greater part of the nation, he had the mentality of a reader
of tales of chivalry who feels himself defrauded if the hero,
single-handed, fails to cleave a thousand enemies with one fell stroke.
He purposely chose the most sensational papers, those which published
many stories of single encounters, of individual deeds about which
nobody could know with any degree of certainty.
The intervention of England on the seas made him imagine a frightful
famine, coming providentially like a thunder-clap to torture the enemy.
He honestly believed that ten days of this maritime blockade would
convert Germany into a group of shipwrecked sailors floating on a raft.
This vision made him repeat his visits to the kitchen to gloat over his
packages of provisions.
“Ah, what they would give in Berlin for my treasures!” . . .
Never had Argensola eaten with greater avidity. Consideration of the
great privations suffered by the adversary was sharpening his appetite
to a monstrous capacity. White bread, golden brown and crusty, was
stimulating him to an almost religious ecstasy.
“If friend William could only get his claws on this!” he would chuckle
to his companion.
So he chewed and swallowed with increasing relish; solids and liquids on
passing through his mouth seemed to be acquiring a new flavor, rare
and divine. Distant hunger for him was a stimulant, a sauce of endless
delight.
While France was inspiring his enthusiasm, he was conceding greater
credit to Russia. “Ah, those Cossacks!” . . . He was accustomed to speak
of them as intimate friends. He loved to describe the unbridled gallop
of the wild horsemen, impalpable as phantoms, and so terrible in their
wrath that the enemy could not look them in the face. The concierge and
the stay-at-homes used to listen to him with all the respect due to a
foreign gentleman, knowing much of the great outside world with which
they were not familiar.
“The Cossacks will adjust the accounts of these bandits!” he would
conclude with absolute assurance. “Within a month they will have entered
Berlin.”
And his public composed of women--wives and mothers of those who had
gone to war--would modestly agree with him, with that irresistible
desire which we all feel of placing our hopes on something distant and
mysterious. The French would defend the country, reconquering, besides
the lost territories, but the Cossacks--of whom so many were speaking
but so few had seen--were going to give the death blow. The only
person who knew them at first hand was Tchernoff, and to Argensola’s
astonishment, he listened to his words without showing any enthusiasm.
The Cossacks were for him simply one body of the Russian army--good
enough soldiers, but incapable of working the miracles that everybody
was expecting from them.
“That Tchernoff!” exclaimed Argensola. “Since he hates the Czar, he
thinks the entire country mad. He is a revolutionary fanatic. . . . And
I am opposed to all fanaticisms.”
Julio was listening absent-mindedly to the news brought by his
companion, the vibrating statements recited in declamatory tones, the
plans of the campaign traced out on an enormous map fastened to the wall
of the studio and bristling with tiny flags that marked the camps of the
belligerent armies. Every issue of the papers obliged the Spaniard to
arrange a new dance of the pins on the map, followed by his comments of
bomb-proof optimism.
“We have entered into Alsace; very good! . . . It appears now that we
abandon Alsace. Splendid! I suspect the cause. It is in order to enter
again in a better place, getting at the enemy from behind. . . . They
say that Liege has fallen. What a lie! . . . And if it does fall, it
doesn’t matter. Just an incident, nothing more! The others remain . . .
the others! . . . that are advancing on the Eastern side, and are going
to enter Berlin.”
The news from the Russian front was his favorite, but obliged him to
remain in suspense every time that he tried to find on the map the
obscure names of the places where the admired Cossacks were exhibiting
their wonderful exploits.
Meanwhile Julio was continuing the course of his own reflections.
Marguerite! . . . She had come back at last, and yet each time seemed to
be drifting further away from him. . . .
In the first days of the mobilization, he had haunted her neighborhood,
trying to appease his longing by this illusory proximity. Marguerite
had written to him, urging patience. How fortunate it was that he was a
foreigner and would not have to endure the hardship of war! Her brother,
an officer in the artillery Reserves, was going at almost any minute.
Her mother, who made her home with this bachelor son, had kept an
astonishing serenity up to the last minute, although she had wept much
while the war was still but a possibility. She herself had prepared the
soldier’s outfit so that the small valise might contain all that was
indispensable for campaign life. But Marguerite had divined her poor
mother’s secret struggles not to reveal her despair, in moist eyes and
trembling hands. It was impossible to leave her alone at such a time.
. . . Then had come the farewell. “God be with you, my son! Do your duty,
but be prudent.” Not a tear nor a sign of weakness. All her family had
advised her not to accompany her son to the railway station, so his
sister had gone with him. And upon returning home, Marguerite had found
her mother rigid in her arm chair, with a set face, avoiding all mention
of her son, speaking of the friends who also had sent their boys to the
war, as if they only could comprehend her torture. “Poor Mama! I ought
to be with her now more than ever. . . . To-morrow, if I can, I shall
come to see you.”
When at last she returned to the rue de la Pompe, her first care was to
explain to Julio the conservatism of her tailored suit, the absence of
jewels in the adornment of her person. “The war, my dear! Now it is the
chic thing to adapt oneself to the depressing conditions, to be frugal
and inconspicuous like soldiers. Who knows what we may expect!” Her
infatuation with dress still accompanied her in every moment of her
life.
Julio noticed a persistent absent-mindedness about her. It seemed
as though her spirit, abandoning her body, was wandering to far-away
places. Her eyes were looking at him, but she seldom saw him. She would
speak very slowly, as though wishing to weigh every word, fearful of
betraying some secret. This spiritual alienation did not, however,
prevent her slipping bodily along the smooth path of custom, although
afterwards she would seem to feel a vague remorse. “I wonder if it is
right to do this! . . . Is it not wrong to live like this when so many
sorrows are falling on the world?” Julio hushed her scruples with:
“But if we are going to marry as soon as possible! . . . If we are
already the same as husband and wife!”
She replied with a gesture of strangeness and dismay. To marry! . . .
Ten days ago she had had no other wish. Now the possibility of marriage
was recurring less and less in her thoughts. Why think about such remote
and uncertain events? More immediate things were occupying her mind.
The farewell to her brother in the station was a scene which had fixed
itself ineradicably in her memory. Upon going to the studio she had
planned not to speak about it, foreseeing that she might annoy her lover
with this account; but alas, she had only to vow not to mention a thing,
to feel an irresistible impulse to talk about it.
She had never suspected that she could love her brother so dearly. Her
former affection for him had been mingled with a silent sentiment of
jealousy because her mother had preferred the older child. Besides,
he was the one who had introduced Laurier to his home; the two held
diplomas as industrial engineers and had been close friends from their
school days. . . . But upon seeing the boy ready to depart, Marguerite
suddenly discovered that this brother, who had always been of
secondary interest to her, was now occupying a pre-eminent place in her
affections.
“He was so handsome, so interesting in his lieutenant’s uniform! . . .
He looked like another person. I will admit to you that I was very proud
to walk beside him, leaning on his arm. People thought that we were
married. Seeing me weep, some poor women tried to console me saying,
‘Courage, Madame. . . . Your man will come back.’ He just laughed at
hearing these mistakes. The only thing that was really saddening him was
thinking about our mother.”
They had separated at the door of the station. The sentries would not
let her go any further, so she had handed over his sword that she had
wished to carry till the last moment.
“It is lovely to be a man!” she exclaimed enthusiastically. “I would
love to wear a uniform, to go to war, to be of some real use!”
She tried not to say more about it, as though she suddenly realized
the inopportuneness of her last words. Perhaps she noticed the scowl on
Julio’s face.
She was, however, so wrought up by the memory of that farewell that,
after a long pause, she was unable to resist the temptation of again
putting her thought into words.
At the station entrance, while she was kissing her brother for the last
time, she had an encounter, a great surprise. “He” had approached, also
clad as an artillery officer, but alone, having to entrust his valise to
a good-natured man from the crowd.
Julio shot her a questioning look. Who was “he”? He suspected, but
feigned ignorance, as though fearing to learn the truth.
“Laurier,” she replied laconically, “my former husband.”
The lover displayed a cruel irony. It was a cowardly thing to ridicule
this man who had responded to the call of duty. He recognized his
vileness, but a malign and irresistible instinct made him keep on with
his sneers in order to discredit the man before Marguerite. Laurier a
soldier!--He must cut a pretty figure dressed in uniform!
“Laurier, the warrior!” he continued in a voice so sarcastic and strange
that it seemed to be coming from somebody else. . . . “Poor creature!”
She hesitated in her response, not wishing to exasperate Desnoyers any
further. But the truth was uppermost in her mind, and she said simply:
“No . . . no, he didn’t look so bad. Quite the contrary. Perhaps it was
the uniform, perhaps it was his sadness at going away alone, completely
alone, without a single hand to clasp his. I didn’t recognize him at
first. Seeing my brother, he started toward us; but then when he saw me,
he went his own way . . . Poor man! I feel sorry for him!”
Her feminine instinct must have told her that she was talking too much,
and she cut her chatter suddenly short. The same instinct warned her
that Julio’s countenance was growing more and more saturnine, and his
mouth taking a very bitter curve. She wanted to console him and added:
“What luck that you are a foreigner and will not have to go to the war!
How horrible it would be for me to lose you!” . . .
She said it sincerely. . . . A few moments before she had been envying
men, admiring the gallantry with which they were exposing their lives,
and now she was trembling before the idea that her lover might have been
one of these.
This did not please his amorous egoism--to be placed apart from the
rest as a delicate and fragile being only fit for feminine adoration. He
preferred to inspire the envy that she had felt on beholding her brother
decked out in his warlike accoutrement. It seemed to him that something
was coming between him and Marguerite that would never disappear, that
would go on expanding, repelling them in contrary directions . . . far
. . . very far, even to the point of not recognizing each other when
their glances met.
He continued to be conscious of this impalpable obstacle in their
following interviews. Marguerite was extremely affectionate in her
speech, and would look at him with moist and loving eyes. But her
caressing hands appeared more like those of a mother than a lover, and
her tenderness was accompanied with a certain disinterestedness and
extraordinary modesty. She seemed to prefer remaining obstinately in the
studio, declining to go into the other rooms.
“We are so comfortable here. . . . I would rather not. . . . It is not
worth while. I should feel remorse afterwards. . . . Why think of such
things in these anxious times!”
The world around her seemed saturated with love, but it was a new
love--a love for the man who is suffering, desire for abnegation, for
sacrifice. This love called forth visions of white caps, of tremulous
hands healing shell-riddled and bleeding flesh.
Every advance on Julio’s part but aroused in Marguerite a vehement and
modest protest as though they were meeting for the first time.
“It is impossible,” she protested. “I keep thinking of my brother, and
of so many that I know that may be dying at this very minute.”
News of battles were beginning to arrive, and blood was beginning to
flow in great quantities.
“No, no, I cannot,” she kept repeating.
And when Julio finally triumphed, he found that her thoughts were still
following independently the same line of mental stress.
One afternoon, Marguerite announced that henceforth she would see him
less frequently. She was attending classes now, and had only two free
days.
Desnoyers listened, dumbfounded. Classes? . . . What were her
studies? . . .
She seemed a little irritated at his mocking expression. . . . Yes, she
was studying; for the past week she had been attending classes. Now the
lessons were going to be more regular; the course of instruction had
been fully organized, and there were many more instructors.
“I wish to be a trained nurse. I am distressed over my uselessness.
. . . Of what good have I ever been till now?” . . .
She was silent for a few moments as though reviewing her past.
“At times I almost think,” she mused, “that war, with all its horrors,
still has some good in it. It helps to make us useful to our fellowmen.
We look at life more seriously; trouble makes us realize that we have
come into the world for some purpose. . . . I believe that we must not
love life only for the pleasures that it brings us. We ought to find
satisfaction in sacrifice, in dedicating ourselves to others, and this
satisfaction--I don’t know just why, perhaps because it is new--appears
to me superior to all other things.”
Julio looked at her in surprise, trying to imagine what was going on in
that idolized and frivolous head. What ideas were forming back of that
thoughtful forehead which until then had merely reflected the slightest
shadow of thoughts as swift and flitting as birds? . . .
But the former Marguerite was still alive. He saw her constantly
reappearing in a funny way among the sombre preoccupations with which
war was overshadowing all lives.
“We have to study very hard in order to earn our diplomas as nurses.
Have you noticed our uniform? . . . It is most distinctive, and the
white is so becoming both to blondes and brunettes. Then the cap which
allows little curls over the ears--the fashionable coiffure--and the
blue cape over the white suit, make a splendid contrast. With this
outfit, a woman well shod, and with few jewels, may present a truly
chic appearance. It is a mixture of nun and great lady which is vastly
becoming.”
She was going to study with a regular fury in order to become really
useful . . . and sooner to wear the admired uniform.
Poor Desnoyers! . . . The longing to see her, and the lack of occupation
in these interminable afternoons which hitherto had been employed so
delightfully, compelled him to haunt the neighborhood of the unoccupied
palace where the government had just established the training school for
nurses. Stationing himself at the corner, watching the fluttering skirts
and quick steps of the feminine feet on the sidewalk, he imagined that
the course of time must have turned backward, and that he was still but
eighteen--the same as when he used to hang around the establishments of
some celebrated modiste. The groups of women that at certain hours
came out of the palace suggested these former days. They were dressed
extremely quietly, the aspect of many of them as humble as that of the
seamstresses. But they were ladies of the well-to-do class, some even
coming in automobiles driven by chauffeurs in military uniform, because
they were ministerial vehicles.
These long waits often brought him unexpected encounters with the
elegant students who were going and coming.
“Desnoyers!” some feminine voices would exclaim behind him. “Isn’t it
Desnoyers?”
And he would find himself obliged to relieve their doubts, saluting
the ladies who were looking at him as though he were a ghost. They were
friends of a remote epoch, of six months ago--ladies who had admired
and pursued him, trusting sweetly to his masterly wisdom to guide them
through the seven circles of the science of the tango. They were now
scrutinizing him as if between their last encounter and the present
moment had occurred a great cataclysm, transforming all the laws of
existence--as if he were the sole survivor of a vanished race.
Eventually they all asked the same questions--“Are you not going to the
war? . . . How is it that you are not wearing a uniform?”
He would attempt to explain, but at his first words, they would
interrupt him:
“That’s so. . . . You are a foreigner.”
They would say it with a certain envy, doubtless thinking of their loved
ones now suffering the privations and dangers of war. . . . But the fact
that he was a foreigner would instantly create a vague atmosphere of
spiritual aloofness, an alienation that Julio had not known in the good
old days when people sought each other without considering nationality,
without feeling that disavowal of danger which isolates and concentrates
human groups.
The ladies generally bade him adieu with malicious suspicion. What was
he doing hanging around there? In search of his usual lucky adventure?
. . . And their smiles were rather grave, the smiles of older folk who
know the true significance of life and commiserate the deluded ones
still seeking diversion in frivolities.
This attitude was as annoying to Julio as though it were a manifestation
of pity. They were supposing him still exercising the only function of
which he was capable; he wasn’t good for anything else. On the
other hand, these empty heads, still keeping something of their
old appearance, now appeared animated by the grand sentiment of
maternity--an abstract maternity which seemed to be extending to all the
men of the nation--a desire for self-sacrifice, of knowing first-hand
the privations of the lowly, and aiding all the ills that flesh is heir
to.
This same yearning was inspiring Marguerite when she came away from
her lessons. She was advancing from one overpowering dread to another,
accepting the first rudiments of surgery as the greatest of scientific
marvels. At the same time, she was astonished at the avidity with which
she was assimilating these hitherto unsuspected mysteries. Sometimes
with a funny assumption of assurance, she would even believe she had
mistaken her vocation.
“Who knows but what I was born to be a famous doctor?” she would
exclaim.
Her great fear was that she might lose her self-control when the time
came to put her newly acquired knowledge into practice. To see herself
before the foul odors of decomposing flesh, to contemplate the flow
of blood--a horrible thing for her who had always felt an invincible
repugnance toward all the unpleasant conditions of ordinary life! But
these hesitations were short, and she was suddenly animated by a dashing
energy. These were times of sacrifice. Were not the men snatched every
day from the comforts of sensuous existence to endure the rude life of
a soldier? . . . She would be, a soldier in petticoats, facing pain,
battling with it, plunging her hands into putrefaction, flashing like
a ray of sunlight into the places where soldiers were expecting the
approach of death.
She proudly narrated to Desnoyers all the progress that she was making
in the training school, the complicated bandages that she was learning
to adjust, sometimes over a mannikin, at others over the flesh of an
employee, trying to play the part of a sorely wounded patient. She, so
dainty, so incapable in her own home of the slightest physical effort,
was learning the most skilful ways of lifting a human body from the
ground and carrying it on her back. Who knew but that she might render
this very service some day on the battlefield! She was ready for the
greatest risks, with the ignorant audacity of women impelled by flashes
of heroism. All her admiration was for the English army nurses, slender
women of nervous vigor whose photographs were appearing in the papers,
wearing pantaloons, riding boots and white helmets.
Julio listened to her with astonishment. Was this woman really
Marguerite? . . . War was obliterating all her winning vanities. She was
no longer fluttering about in bird-like fashion. Her feet were treading
the earth with resolute firmness, calm and secure in the new strength
which was developing within. When one of his caresses would remind her
that she was a woman, she would always say the same thing,
“What luck that you are a foreigner! . . . What happiness to know that
you do not have to go to war!”
In her anxiety for sacrifice, she wanted to go to the battlefields, and
yet at the same time, she was rejoicing to see her lover exempt from
military duty. This preposterous lack of logic was not gratefully
received by Julio but irritated him as an unconscious offense.
“One might suppose that she was protecting me!” he thought. “She is
the man and rejoices that I, the weak comrade, should be protected from
danger. . . . What a grotesque situation!” . . .
Fortunately, at times when Marguerite presented herself at the studio,
she was again her old self, making him temporarily forget his annoyance.
She would arrive with the same joy in a vacation that the college
student or the employee feels on a holiday. Responsibility was teaching
her to know the value of time.
“No classes to-day!” she would call out on entering; and tossing her
hat on a divan, she would begin a dance-step, retreating with infantile
coquetry from the arms of her lover.
But in a few minutes she would recover her customary gravity, the
serious look that had become habitual with her since the outbreak of
hostilities. She spoke often of her mother, always sad, but striving to
hide her grief and keeping herself up in the hope of a letter from her
son; she spoke, too, of the war, commenting on the latest events with
the rhetorical optimism of the official dispatches. She could describe
the first flag taken from the enemy as minutely as though it were
a garment of unparalleled elegance. From a window, she had seen the
Minister of War. She was very much affected when repeating the story of
some fugitive Belgians recently arrived at the hospital. They were the
only patients that she had been able to assist until now. Paris was not
receiving the soldiers wounded in battle; by order of the Government,
they were being sent from the front to the hospitals in the South.
She no longer evinced toward Julio the resistance of the first few days.
Her training as a nurse was giving her a certain passivity. She seemed
to be ignoring material attractions, stripping them of the spiritual
importance which she had hitherto attributed to them. She wanted to make
Julio happy, although her mind was concentrated on other matters.
One afternoon, she felt the necessity of communicating certain news
which had been filling her mind since the day before. Springing up from
the couch, she hunted for her handbag which contained a letter. She
wanted to read it again to tell its contents to somebody with that
irresistible impulse which forestalls confession.
It was a letter which her brother had sent her from the Vosges. In it
he spoke of Laurier more than of himself. They belonged to different
batteries, but were in the same division and had taken part in the
same combats. The officer was filled with admiration for his former
brother-in-law. Who could have guessed that a future hero was hidden
within that silent and tranquil engineer! . . . But he was a genuine
hero, just the same! All the officials had agreed with Marguerite’s
brother on seeing how calmly he fulfilled his duty, facing death with
the same coolness as though he were in his factory near Paris.
He had asked for the dangerous post of lookout, slipping as near as
possible to the enemy’s lines in order to verify the exactitude of the
artillery discharge, rectifying it by telephone. A German shell had
demolished the house on the roof of which he was concealed, and Laurier,
on crawling out unhurt from the ruins, had readjusted his telephone and
gone tranquilly on, continuing the same work in the shelter of a nearby
grove. His battery, picked out by the enemy’s aeroplanes, had received
the concentrated fire of the artillery opposite. In a few minutes all
the force were rolling on the ground--the captain and many soldiers
dead, officers wounded and almost all the gunners. There only remained
as chief, Laurier, the Impassive (as his comrades nicknamed him), and
aided by the few artillerymen still on their feet, he continued
firing under a rain of iron and fire, so as to cover the retreat of a
battalion.
“He has been mentioned twice in dispatches,” Marguerite continued
reading. “I do not believe that it will be long before they give him the
cross. He is valiant in every way. Who would have supposed all this a
few weeks ago?” . . .
She did not share the general astonishment. Living with Laurier had
many times shown her the intrepidity of his character, the fearlessness
concealed under that placid exterior. On that account, her instincts had
warned her against rousing her husband’s wrath in the first days of
her infidelity. She still remembered the way he looked the night he
surprised her leaving Julio’s home. His was the passion that kills, and,
nevertheless, he had not attempted the least violence with her. . . .
The memory of his consideration was awakening in Marguerite a sentiment
of gratitude. Perhaps he had loved her as no other man had.
Her eyes, with an irresistible desire for comparison, sought Julio’s,
admiring his youthful grace and distinction. The image of Laurier, heavy
and ordinary, came into her mind as a consolation. Certainly the officer
whom she had seen at the station when saying good-bye to her brother,
did not seem to her like her old husband. But Marguerite wished to
forget the pallid lieutenant with the sad countenance who had passed
before her eyes, preferring to remember him only as the manufacturer
preoccupied with profits and incapable of comprehending what she was
accustomed to call “the delicate refinements of a chic woman.” Decidedly
Julio was the more fascinating. She did not repent of her past. She did
not wish to repent of it.
And her loving selfishness made her repeat once more the same old
exclamation--“How fortunate that you are a foreigner! . . . What a
relief to know that you are safe from the dangers of war!”
Julio felt the usual exasperation at hearing this. He came very near to
closing his beloved’s mouth with his hand. Was she trying to make fun of
him? . . . It was fairly insulting to place him apart from other men.
Meanwhile, with blind irrelevance, she persisted in talking about
Laurier, commenting upon his achievements.
“I do not love him, I never have loved him. Do not look so cross! How
could the poor man ever be compared with you? You must admit, though,
that his new existence is rather interesting. I rejoice in his brave
deeds as though an old friend had done them, a family visitor whom I had
not seen for a long time. . . . The poor man deserved a better fate. He
ought to have married some other woman, some companion more on a level
with his ideals. . . . I tell you that I really pity him!”
And this pity was so intense that her eyes filled with tears, awakening
the tortures of jealousy in her lover. After these interviews, Desnoyers
was more ill-tempered and despondent than ever.
“I am beginning to realize that we are in a false position,” he said one
morning to Argensola. “Life is going to become increasingly painful. It
is difficult to remain tranquil, continuing the same old existence in
the midst of a people at war.”
His companion had about come to the same conclusion. He, too, was
beginning to feel that the life of a young foreigner in Paris was
insufferable, now that it was so upset by war.
“One has to keep showing passports all the time in order that the police
may be sure that they have not discovered a deserter. In the street
car, the other afternoon, I had to explain that I was a Spaniard to some
girls who were wondering why I was not at the front. . . . One of them,
as soon as she learned my nationality, asked me with great simplicity
why I did not offer myself as a volunteer. . . . Now they have invented
a word for the stay-at-homes, calling them Les Embusques, the hidden
ones. . . . I am sick and tired of the ironical looks shot at me
wherever I go; it makes me wild to be taken for an Embusque.”
A flash of heroism was galvanizing the impressionable Bohemian. Now that
everybody was going to the war, he was wishing to do the same thing. He
was not afraid of death; the only thing that was disturbing him was the
military service, the uniform, the mechanical obedience to bugle-call,
the blind subservience to the chiefs. Fighting was not offering any
difficulties for him but his nature capriciously resented everything
in the form of discipline. The foreign groups in Paris were trying to
organize each its own legion of volunteers and he, too, was planning
his--a battalion of Spaniards and South Americans, reserving naturally
the presidency of the organizing committee for himself, and later the
command of the body.
He had inserted notices in the papers, making the studio in the rue
de la Pompe the recruiting office. In ten days, two volunteers had
presented themselves; a clerk, shivering in midsummer, who stipulated
that he should be an officer because he was wearing a suitable jacket,
and a Spanish tavern-keeper who at the very outset had wished to rob
Argensola of his command on the futile pretext that he was a soldier
in his youth while the Bohemian was only an artist. Twenty Spanish
battalions were attempted with the same result in different parts of
Paris. Each enthusiast wished to be commander of the others, with the
individual haughtiness and aversion to discipline so characteristic of
the race. Finally the future generalissimos, decided to enlist as simple
volunteers . . . but in a French regiment.
“I am waiting to see what the Garibaldis do,” said Argensola modestly.
“Perhaps I may go with them.”
This glorious name made military service conceivable to him. But then
he vacillated; he would certainly have to obey somebody in this body of
volunteers, and he did not believe in an obedience that was not preceded
by long discussions. . . . What next!
“Life has changed in a fortnight,” he continued. “It seems as if we were
living in another planet; our former achievements are not appreciated.
Others, most obscure and poor, those who formerly had the least
consideration, are now promoted to the first ranks. The refined man of
complex spirituality has disappeared for who knows how many years!
. . . Now the simple-minded man climbs triumphantly to the top, because,
though his ideas are limited, they are sure and he knows how to obey. We
are no longer the style.”
Desnoyers assented. It was so; they were no longer fashionable. None
knew that better than he, for he who was once the sensation of the day,
was now passing as a stranger among the very people who a few months
before had raved over him.
“Your reign is over,” laughed Argensola. “The fact that you are a
handsome fellow doesn’t help you one bit nowadays. In a uniform and with
a cross on my breast, I could soon get the best of you in a rival
love affair. In times of peace, the officers only set the girls of the
provinces to dreaming; but now that we are at war, there has awakened in
every woman the ancestral enthusiasm that her remote grandmothers used
to feel for the strong and aggressive beast. . . . The high-born dames
who a few months ago were complicating their desires with psychological
subtleties, are now admiring the military man with the same simplicity
that the maid has for the common soldier. Before a uniform, they feel
the humble and servile enthusiasm of the female of the lower animals
before the crests, foretops and gay plumes of the fighting males. Look
out, master! . . . We shall have to follow the new course of events or
resign ourselves to everlasting obscurity. The tango is dead.”
And Desnoyers agreed that truly they were two beings on the other side
of the river of life which at one bound had changed its course. There
was no longer any place in the new existence for that poor painter of
souls, nor for that hero of a frivolous life who, from five to seven
every afternoon, had attained the triumphs most envied by mankind.