cylinders extracted from subterranean storehouses called shelters. These
storage places were deep burrows, oblique wells reinforced with sacks of
stones and wood. They served as a refuge to those off duty, and kept
the munitions away from the enemy’s shell. An artilleryman exhibited two
pouches of white cloth, joined together and very full. They looked like
a double sausage and were the charge for one of the large cannons. The
open packet showed some rose-colored leaves, and the senator greatly
admired this dainty paste which looked like an article for the dressing
table instead of one of the most terrible explosives of modern warfare.
“I am sure,” said Lacour, “that if I had found one of these delicate
packets on the street, I should have thought that it had been dropped
from some lady’s vanity bag, or by some careless clerk from a perfumery
shop . . . anything but an explosive! And with this trifle that looks as
if it were made for the lips, it is possible to blow up an
edifice!” . . .
As they continued their visit of investigation, they came upon a
partially destroyed round tower in the highest part of the mountain.
This was the most dangerous post. From it, an officer was examining
the enemy’s line in order to gauge the correctness of the aim of the
gunners. While his comrades were under the ground or hidden by the
branches, he was fulfilling his mission from this visible point.
A short distance from the tower a subterranean passageway opened before
their eyes. They descended through its murky recesses until they found
the various rooms excavated in the ground. One side of the mountain cut
in points formed its exterior facade. Narrow little windows, cut in the
stone, gave light and air to these quarters.
An old commandant in charge of the section came out to meet them.
Desnoyers thought that he must be the floorwalker of some big department
store in Paris. His manners were so exquisite and his voice so suave
that he seemed to be imploring pardon at every word, or addressing a
group of ladies, offering them goods of the latest novelty. But this
impression only lasted a moment. This soldier with gray hair and
near-sighted glasses who, in the midst of war, was retaining his
customary manner of a building director receiving his clients, showed
on moving his arms, some bandages and surgical dressings within his
sleeves, He was wounded in both wrists by the explosion of a shell, but
he was, nevertheless, sticking to his post.
“A devil of a honey-tongued, syrupy gentleman!” mused Don Marcelo. “Yet
he is undoubtedly an exceptional person!”
By this time, they had entered into the main office, a vast room which
received its light through a horizontal window about ten feet wide and
only a palm and a half high, reminding one of the open space between the
slats of a Venetian blind. Below it was a pine table filled with papers
and surrounded by stools. When occupying one of these seats, one’s eyes
could sweep the entire plain. On the walls were electric apparatus,
acoustic tubes and telephones--many telephones.
The Commandant sorted and piled up the papers, offering the stools with
drawing-room punctilio.
“Here, Senator Lacour.”
Desnoyers, humble attendant, took a seat at his side. The Commandant
now appeared to be the manager of a theatre, preparing to exhibit an
extraordinary show. He spread upon the table an enormous paper which
reproduced all the features of the plain extended before them--roads,
towns, fields, heights and valleys. Upon this map was a triangular group
of red lines in the form of an open fan; the vertex represented the
place where they were, and the broad part of the triangle was the limit
of the horizon which they were sweeping with their eyes.
“We are going to fire at that grove,” said the artilleryman, pointing
to one end of the map. “There it is,” he continued, designating a little
dark line. “Take your glasses.”
But before they could adjust the binoculars, the Commandant placed a new
paper on top of the map. It was an enormous and somewhat hazy photograph
upon whose plan appeared a fan of red lines like the other one.
“Our aviators,” explained the gunner courteously, “have taken this
morning some views of the enemy’s positions. This is an enlargement from
our photographic laboratory. . . . According to this information, there
are two German regiments encamped in that wood.”
Don Marcelo saw on the print the spot of woods, and within it white
lines which represented roads, and groups of little squares which were
blocks of houses in a village. He believed he must be in an aeroplane
contemplating the earth from a height of three thousand feet. Then he
raised the glasses to his eyes, following the direction of one of the
red lines, and saw enlarged in the circle of the glass a black bar,
somewhat like a heavy line of ink--the grove, the refuge of the foe.
“Whenever you say, Senator Lacour, we will begin,” said the Commandant,
reaching the topmost notch of his courtesy. “Are you ready?”
Desnoyers smiled slightly. For what was his illustrious friend to
make himself ready? What difference could it possibly make to a mere
spectator, much interested in the novelty of the show? . . .
There sounded behind them numberless bells, gongs that called and gongs
that answered. The acoustic tubes seemed to swell out with the gallop
of words. The electric wire filled the silence of the room with the
palpitations of its mysterious life. The bland Chief was no longer
occupied with his guests. They conjectured that he was behind them, his
mouth at the telephone, conversing with various officials some distance
off. Yet the urbane and well-spoken hero was not abandoning for one
moment his candied courtesy.
“Will you be kind enough to tell me when you are ready to begin?” they
heard him saying to a distant officer. “I shall be much pleased to
transmit the order.”
Don Marcelo felt a slight nervous tremor near one of his legs; it was
Lecour, on the qui vive over the approaching novelty. They were going
to begin firing; something was going to happen that he had never seen
before. The cannons were above their heads; the roughly vaulted roof
was going to tremble like the deck of a ship when they shot over it. The
room with its acoustic tubes and its vibrations from the telephones was
like the bridge of a vessel at the moment of clearing for action. The
noise that it was going to make! . . . A few seconds flitted by that
to them seemed unusually long . . . and then suddenly a sound like
a distant peal of thunder which appeared to come from the clouds.
Desnoyers no longer felt the nervous twitter against his knee. The
senator seemed surprised; his expression seemed to say, “And is that
all?” . . . The heaps of earth above them had deadened the report, so
that the discharge of the great machine seemed no more than the blow
of a club upon a mattress. Far more impressive was the scream of the
projectile sounding at a great height but displacing the air with such
violence that its waves reached even to the window.
It went flying . . . flying, its roar lessening. Some time passed before
they noticed its effects, and the two friends began to believe that
it must have been lost in space. “It will not strike . . . it will not
strike,” they were thinking. Suddenly there surged up on the horizon,
exactly in the spot indicated over the blur of the woods, a tremendous
column of smoke, a whirling tower of black vapor followed by a volcanic
explosion.
“How dreadful it must be to be there!” said the senator.
He and Desnoyers were experiencing a sensation of animal joy, a selfish
hilarity in seeing themselves in such a safe place several yards
underground.
“The Germans are going to reply at any moment,” said Don Marcelo to his
friend.
The senator was of the same opinion. Undoubtedly they would retaliate,
carrying on an artillery duel.
All of the French batteries had opened fire. The mountain was
thundering, the shell whining, the horizon, still tranquil, was
bristling with black, spiral columns. The two realized more and more how
snug they were in this retreat, like a box at the theatre.
Someone touched Lacour on the shoulder. It was one of the captains who
was conducting them through the front.
“We are going above,” he said simply. “You must see close by how our
cannons are working. The sight will be well worth the trouble.”
Above? . . . The illustrious man was as perplexed, as astonished as
though he had suggested an interplanetary trip. Above, when the enemy
was going to reply from one minute to another? . . .
The captain explained that sub-Lieutenant Lacour was perhaps awaiting
his father. By telephone they had advised his battery stationed a little
further on; it would be necessary to go now in order to see him. So
they again climbed up to the light through the mouth of the tunnel. The
senator then drew himself up, majestically erect.
“They are going to fire at us,” said a voice in his interior, “The foe
is going to reply.”
But he adjusted his coat like a tragic mantle and advanced at a
circumspect and solemn pace. If those military men, adversaries of
parliamentarism, fancied that they were going to laugh up their sleeve
at the timidity of a civilian, he would show them their mistake!
Desnoyers could not but admire the resolution with which the great man
made his exit from the shelter, exactly as if he were going to march
against the foe.
At a little distance, the atmosphere was rent into tumultuous waves,
making their legs tremble, their ears hum, and their necks feel as
though they had just been struck. They both thought that the Germans
had begun to return the fire, but it was the French who were shooting.
A feathery stream of vapor came up out of the woods a dozen yards away,
dissolving instantly. One of the largest pieces, hidden in the nearby
thicket, had just been discharged. The captains continued their
explanations without stopping their journey. It was necessary to pass
directly in front of the spitting monster, in spite of the violence of
its reports, so as not to venture out into the open woods near the watch
tower. They were expecting from one second to another now, the response
from their neighbors across the way. The guide accompanying Don Marcelo
congratulated him on the fearlessness with which he was enduring the
cannonading.
“My friend is well acquainted with it,” remarked the senator proudly.
“He was in the battle of the Marne.”
The two soldiers evidently thought this very strange, considering
Desnoyers’ advanced age. To what section had he belonged? In what
capacity had he served? . . .
“Merely as a victim,” was the modest reply.
An officer came running toward them from the tower side, across the
cleared space. He waved his kepi several times that they might see him
better. Lacour trembled for him. The enemy might descry him; he was
simply making a target of himself by cutting across that open space in
order to reach them the sooner. . . . And he trembled still more as he
came nearer. . . . It was Rene!
His hands returned with some astonishment the strong, muscular grasp.
He noticed that the outlines of his son’s face were more pronounced, and
darkened with the tan of camp life. An air of resolution, of confidence
in his own powers, appeared to emanate from his person. Six months of
intense life had transformed him. He was the same but broader-chested
and more stalwart. The gentle and sweet features of his mother were lost
under the virile mask. . . . Lacour recognized with pride that he now
resembled himself.
After greetings had been exchanged, Rene paid more attention to Don
Marcelo than to his father, because he reminded him of Chichi. He
inquired after her, wishing to know all the details of her life, in
spite of their ardent and constant correspondence.
The senator, meanwhile, still under the influence of his recent emotion,
had adopted a somewhat oratorical air toward his son. He forthwith
improvised a fragment of discourse in honor of that soldier of the
Republic bearing the glorious name of Lacour, deeming this an opportune
time to make known to these professional soldiers the lofty lineage of
his family.
“Do your duty, my son. The Lacours inherit warrior traditions. Remember
our ancestor, the Deputy of the Convention who covered himself with
glory in the defense of Mayence!”
While he was discoursing, they had started forward, doubling a point of
the greenwood in order to get behind the cannons.
Here the racket was less violent. The great engines, after each
discharge, were letting escape through the rear chambers little clouds
of smoke like those from a pipe. The sergeants were dictating numbers,
communicated in a low voice by another gunner who had a telephone
receiver at his ear. The workmen around the cannon were obeying
silently. They would touch a little wheel and the monster would raise
its grey snout, moving it from side to side with the intelligent
expression and agility of an elephant’s trunk. At the foot of the
nearest piece, stood the operator, rod in hand, and with impassive
face. He must be deaf, yet his facial inertia was stamped with a
certain authority. For him, life was no more than a series of shots and
detonations. He knew his importance. He was the servant of the tempest,
the guardian of the thunderbolt.
“Fire!” shouted the sergeant.
And the thunder broke forth in fury. Everything appeared to be
trembling, but the two visitors were by this time so accustomed to the
din that the present uproar seemed but a secondary affair.
Lacour was about to take up the thread of his discourse about his
glorious forefather in the convention when something interfered.
“They are firing,” said the man at the telephone simply.
The two officers repeated to the senator this news from the watch tower.
Had he not said that the enemy was going to fire? . . . Obeying a sane
instinct of preservation, and pushed at the same time by his son, he
found himself in the refuge of the battery. He certainly did not wish
to hide himself in this cave, so he remained near the entrance, with a
curiosity which got the best of his disquietude.
He felt the approach of the invisible projectile, in spite of the
roar of the neighboring cannon. He perceived with rare sensibility
its passage through the air, above the other closer and more powerful
sounds. It was a squealing howl that was swelling in intensity, that was
opening out as it advanced, filling all space. Soon it ceased to be a
shriek, becoming a rude roar formed by divers collisions and frictions,
like the descent of an electric tram through a hillside road, or the
course of a train which passes through a station without stopping.
He saw it approach in the form of a cloud, bulging as though it were
going to explode over the battery. Without knowing just how it happened,
the senator suddenly found himself in the bottom of the shelter, his
hands in cold contact with a heap of steel cylinders lined up like
bottles. They were projectiles.
“If a German shell,” he thought, “should explode above this burrow . . .
what a frightful blowing up!” . . .
But he calmed himself by reflecting on the solidity of the arched vault
with its beams and sacks of earth several yards thick. Suddenly he
was in absolute darkness. Another had sought refuge in the shelter,
obstructing the light with his body; perhaps his friend Desnoyers.
A year passed by while his watch was registering a single second, then
a century at the same rate . . . and finally the awaited thunder burst
forth, making the refuge vibrate, but with a kind of dull elasticity,
as though it were made of rubber. In spite of its thud, the explosion
wrought horrible damage. Other minor explosions, playful and whistling,
followed behind the first. In his imagination, Lacour saw the
cataclysm--a writhing serpent, vomiting sparks and smoke, a species of
Wagnerian monster that upon striking the ground was disgorging thousands
of fiery little snakes, that were covering the earth with their deadly
contortions. . . . The shell must have burst nearby, perhaps in the very
square occupied by this battery.
He came out of the shelter, expecting to encounter a sickening display
of dismembered bodies, and he saw his son smiling, smoking a cigar and
talking with Desnoyers. . . . That was a mere nothing! The gunners were
tranquilly finishing the charging of a huge piece. They had raised their
eyes for a moment as the enemy’s shell went screaming by, and then had
continued their work.
“It must have fallen about three hundred yards away,” said Rene
cheerfully.
The senator, impressionable soul, felt suddenly filled with heroic
confidence. It was not worth while to bother about his personal safety
when other men--just like him, only differently dressed--were not paying
the slightest attention to the danger.
And as the other projectiles soared over his head to lose themselves
in the woods with the explosions of a volcano, he remained by his son’s
side, with no other sign of tension than a slight trembling of
the knees. It seemed to him now that it was only the French
missiles--because they were on his side--that were hitting the bull’s
eye. The others must be going up in the air and losing themselves in
useless noise. Of just such illusions is valor often compounded! . . .
“And is that all?” his eyes seemed to be asking.
He now recalled rather shamefacedly his retreat to the shelter; he was
beginning to feel that he could live in the open, the same as Rene.
The German missiles were getting considerably more frequent. They were
no longer lost in the wood, and their detonations were sounding nearer
and nearer. The two officials exchanged glances. They were responsible
for the safety of their distinguished charge.
“Now they are warming up,” said one of them.
Rene, as though reading their thoughts, prepared to go. “Good-bye,
father!” They were needing him in his battery. The senator tried to
resist; he wished to prolong the interview, but found that he was
hitting against something hard and inflexible that repelled all his
influence. A senator amounted to very little with people accustomed to
discipline. “Farewell, my boy! . . . All success to you! . . . Remember
who you are!”
The father wept as he embraced his son, lamenting the brevity of the
interview, and thinking of the dangers awaiting him.
When Rene had disappeared, the captains again recommended their
departure. It was getting late; they ought to reach a certain cantonment
before nightfall. So they went down the hill in the shelter of a cut in
the mountain, seeing the enemy’s shells flying high above them.
In a hollow, they came upon several groups of the famed seventy-fives
spread about through the woods, hidden by piles of underbrush, like
snapping dogs, howling and sticking up their gray muzzles. The great
cannon were roaring only at intervals, while the steel pack of hounds
were yelping incessantly without the slightest break in their noisy
wrath--like the endless tearing of a piece of cloth. The pieces were
many, the volleys dizzying, and the shots uniting in one prolonged
shriek, as a series of dots unite to form a single line.
The chiefs, stimulated by the din, were giving their orders in yells,
and waving their arms from behind the pieces. The cannon were sliding
over the motionless gun carriages, advancing and receding like automatic
pistols. Each charge dropped an empty shell, and introduced a fresh one
into the smoking chamber.
Behind the battery, the air was racking in furious waves. With every
shot, Lacour and his companion received a blow on the breast, the
violent contact with an invisible hand, pushing them backward and
forward. They had to adjust their breathing to the rhythm of the
concussions. During the hundredth part of a second, between the passing
of one aerial wave and the advance of the next, their chests felt the
agony of vacuum. Desnoyers admired the baying of those gray dogs. He
knew well their bite, extending across many kilometres. Now they were
fresh and at home in their own kennels.
To Lacour it seemed as though the rows of cannon were chanting a
measure, monotonous and fiercely impassioned that must be the martial
hymn of the humanity of prehistoric times. This music of dry, deafening,
delirious notes was awakening in the two what is sleeping in the depths
of every soul--the savagery of a remote ancestry. The air was hot with
acrid odors, pungent and brutishly intoxicating. The perfumes from the
explosions were penetrating to the brain through the mouth, the eyes and
the ears.
They began to be infected with the same ardor as the directors, shouting
and swinging their arms in the midst of the thundering. The empty
capsules were mounting up in thick layers behind the cannon. Fire! . . .
always, fire!
“We must sprinkle them well,” yelled the chiefs. “We must give a good
soaking to the groves where the Boches are hidden.”
So the mouths of ‘75 rained without interruption, inundating the remote
thickets with their shells.
Inflamed by this deadly activity, frenzied by the destructive celerity,
dominated by the dizzying sway of the ruby leaves, Lacour and Desnoyers
found themselves waving their hats, leaping from one side to another as
though they were dancing the sacred dance of death, and shouting with
mouths dry from the acrid vapor of the powder. . . . “Hurrah! . . .
Hurrah!”
The automobile rode all the afternoon long, stopping only when it met
long files of convoys. It traversed uncultivated fields with skeletons
of dwellings, and ran through burned towns which were no more than a
succession of blackened facades.
“Now it is your turn,” said the senator to Desnoyers. “We are going to
see your son.”
At nightfall, they ran across groups of infantry, soldiers with long
beards and blue uniforms discolored by the inclemency of the weather.
They were returning from the intrenchments, carrying over the hump of
their knapsacks, spades, picks and other implements for removing the
ground, that had acquired the importance of arms of combat. They were
covered with mud from head to foot. All looked old in full youth. Their
joy at returning to the cantonment after a week in the trenches, made
them fill the silence of the plain with songs in time to the tramp
of their nailed boots. Through the violet twilight drifted the winged
strophes of the Marseillaise, or the heroic affirmations of the Chant du
Depart.
“They are the soldiers of the Revolution,” exclaimed Lacour with
enthusiasm. “France has returned to 1792.”
The two captains established their charges for the night in a
half-ruined town where one of their divisions had its headquarters, and
then took their leave. Others would act as their escort the following
morning.
The two friends were lodging in the Hotel de la Siren, an old inn with
its front gnawed by shell-fire. The proprietor showed them with pride
a window broken in the form of a crater. This window had made the
old tavern sign--a woman of iron with the tail of a fish--sink into
insignificance. As Desnoyers was occupying the room next to the one that
had received the mark of the shell, the inn-keeper was anxious to point
it out to them before they went to bed.
Everything was broken--walls, floor, roof. The furniture, a pile of
splinters in the corner; the flowered wall paper, a fringe of tatters
hanging from the walls. Through an enormous hole they could see the
stars and feel the chill of the night. The owner stated that this
destruction was not the work of the Germans, but was caused by a
projectile from one of the seventy-fives when repelling the invaders
from the village. And he beamed on the ruin with patriotic pride,
repeating:
“There’s a sample of French marksmanship for you! How do you like the
workings of the seventy-fives? . . . What do you think of that
now? . . .”
In spite of the fatigue of the journey, Don Marcelo slept badly, excited
by the thought that his son was not far away.
An hour before daybreak, they left the village, in an automobile, guided
by another official. On both sides of the road, they saw camps and
camps. They left behind the parks of munitions, passed the third line
of troops, and then the second. Thousands and thousands of men were
bivouacking there in the open, improvising as best they could their
habitations. These human ant-hills seemed vaguely to recall, with the
variety of uniforms and races, some of the mighty invasions of history;
but it was not a nation en marche. The exodus of people takes with it
the women and children. Here there were nothing but men, men everywhere.
All kinds of housing ever used by humanity were here utilized, these
military assemblages beginning with the cave. Caverns and quarries were
serving as barracks. Some low huts recalled the American ranch; others,
high and conical, were facsimiles of the gurbi of Africa. Many of the
soldiers had come from the colonies; some had been living as business
men in the new world, and upon having to provide a house more stable
than the canvas tent, had recalled the architecture of the tribes with
which they had had dealings. In this conglomerate of combatants, there
were also Moors, blacks and Asiatics who were accustomed to live outside
the cities and had acquired in the open a physical superiority which
made them more masterful than the civilized peoples.
Near the river beds was flapping white clothing hung out to dry. Rows of
men with bared breasts were out in the morning freshness, leaning
over the streams, washing themselves with noisy ablutions followed by
vigorous rubbings. . . . On a bridge was a soldier writing, utilizing
a parapet as a table. . . . The cooks were moving around their savory
kettles, and a warm exhalation of morning soup was mixed with the
resinous perfume of the trees and the smell of the damp earth.
Long, low barracks of wood and zinc served the cavalry and artillery for
their animals and stores. In the open air, the soldiers were currying
and shoeing the glossy, plump horses which the trench-war was
maintaining in placid obesity.
“If they had only been like that at the battle of the Marne!” sighed
Desnoyers to his friend.
Now the cavalry was leading an existence of interminable rest. The
troopers were fighting on foot, and finding it necessary to exercise
their steeds to keep them from getting sick with their full mangers.
There were spread over the fields several aeroplanes, like great, gray
dragon flies, poised for the flight. Many of the men were grouped around
them. The farmers, transformed into soldiers, were watching with great
admiration their comrade charged with the management of these machines.
They looked upon him as one of the wizards so venerated and feared in
all the countryside.
Don Marcelo was struck by the general transformation in the French
uniforms. All were now clad in gray-blue, from head to foot. The
trousers of bright scarlet cloth, the red kepis which he had hailed with
such joy in the expedition of the Marne, no longer existed. All the
men passing along the roads were soldiers. All the vehicles, even the
ox-carts, were guided by military men.
Suddenly the automobile stopped before some ruined houses blackened by
fire.
“Here we are,” announced the official. “Now we shall have to walk a
little.”
The senator and his friend started along the highway.
“Not that way, no!” the guide turned to say grimly. “That road is bad
for the health. We must keep out of the currents of air.”
He further explained that the Germans had their cannon and intrenchments
at the end of this highroad which sloped suddenly and again appeared as
a white ribbon on the horizon line between two rows of trees and burned
houses. The pale morning light with its hazy mist was sheltering them
from the enemy’s fire. On a sunny day, the arrival of their automobile
would have been saluted with a shell. “That is war,” he concluded. “One
is always near to death without seeing it.”
The two recalled the warning of the general with whom they had dined the
day before: “Be very careful! The war of the trenches is treacherous.”
In the sweep of plains unrolled before them, not a man was visible. It
seemed like a country Sunday, when the farmers are in their homes, and
the land scene lying in silent meditation. Some shapeless objects could
be seen in the fields, like agricultural implements deserted for a day
of rest. Perhaps they were broken automobiles, or artillery carriages
destroyed by the force of their volleys.
“This way,” said the officer who had added four soldiers to the party to
carry the various bags and packages which Desnoyers had brought out on
the roof of the automobile.
They proceeded in a single file the length of a wall of blackened
bricks, down a steep hill. After a few steps the surface of the ground
was about to their knees; further on, up to their waists, and thus they
disappeared within the earth, seeing above their heads, only a narrow
strip of sky. They were now under the open field, having left behind
them the mass of ruins that hid the entrance of the road. They were
advancing in an absurd way, as though they scorned direct lines--in
zig-zags, in curves, in angles. Other pathways, no less complicated,
branched off from this ditch which was the central avenue of an immense
subterranean cavity. They walked . . . and walked . . . and walked.
A quarter of an hour went by, a half, an entire hour. Lacour and his
friend thought longingly of the roadways flanked with trees, of their
tramp in the open air where they could see the sky and meadows. They
were not going twenty steps in the same direction. The official marching
ahead was every moment vanishing around a new bend. Those who were
coming behind were panting and talking unseen, having to quicken their
steps in order not to lose sight of the party. Every now and then they
had to halt in order to unite and count the little band, to make sure
that no one had been lost in a transverse gallery. The ground was
exceedingly slippery, in some places almost liquid mud, white and
caustic like the drip from the scaffolding of a house in the course of
construction.
The thump of their footsteps, and the friction of their shoulders,
brought down chunks of earth and smooth stones from the sides. Little by
little they climbed through the main artery of this underground body and
the veins connected with it. Again they were near the surface where it
required but little effort to see the blue above the earth-works. But
here the fields were uncultivated, surrounded with wire fences, yet with
the same appearance of Sabbath calm. Knowing by sad experience, what
curiosity oftentimes cost, the official would not permit them to linger
here. “Keep right ahead! Forward march!”
For an hour and a half the party kept doggedly on until the senior
members became greatly bewildered and fatigued by their serpentine
meanderings. They could no longer tell whether they were advancing or
receding, the sudden steeps and the continual turning bringing on an
attack of vertigo.
“Have we much further to go?” asked the senator.
“There!” responded the guide pointing to some heaps of earth above them.
“There” was a bell tower surrounded by a few charred houses that could
be seen a long ways off--the remains of a hamlet which had been taken
and retaken by both sides.
By going in a direct line on the surface they would have compassed
this distance in half an hour. To the angles of the underground road,
arranged to impede the advance of an enemy, there had been added the
obstacles of campaign fortification, tunnels cut with wire lattice work,
large hanging cages of wire which, on falling, could block the passage
and enable the defenders to open fire across their gratings.
They began to meet soldiers with packs and pails of water who were soon
lost in the tortuous cross roads. Some, seated on piles of wood, were
smiling as they read a little periodical published in the trenches.
The soldiers stepped aside to make way for the visiting procession,
bearded and curious faces peeping out of the alleyways. Afar off sounded
a crackling of short snaps as though at the end of the winding lanes
were a shooting lodge where a group of sportsmen were killing pigeons.
The morning was still cloudy and cold. In spite of the humid atmosphere,
a buzzing like that of a horsefly, hummed several times above the two
visitors.
“Bullets!” said their conductor laconically.
Desnoyers meanwhile had lowered his head a little, he knew perfectly
well that insectivorous sound. The senator walked on more briskly,
temporarily forgetting his weariness.
They came to a halt before a lieutenant-colonel who received them like
an engineer exhibiting his workshops, like a naval officer showing off
the batteries and turrets of his battleships. He was the Chief of the
battalion occupying this section of the trenches. Don Marcelo studied
him with special interest, knowing that his son was under his orders.
To the two friends, these subterranean fortifications bore a certain
resemblance to the lower parts of a vessel. They passed from trench
to trench of the last line, the oldest--dark galleries into which
penetrated streaks of light across the loopholes and broad, low windows
of the mitrailleuse. The long line of defense formed a tunnel cut by
short, open spaces. They had to go stumbling from light to darkness, and
from darkness to light with a visual suddenness very fatiguing to
the eyes. The ground was higher in the open spaces. There were wooden
benches placed against the sides so that the observers could put out the
head or examine the landscape by means of the periscope. The enclosed
space answered both for batteries and sleeping quarters.
As the enemy had been repelled and more ground had been gained, the
combatants who had been living all winter in these first quarters, had
tried to make themselves more comfortable. Over the trenches in the open
air, they had laid beams from the ruined houses; over the beams, planks,
doors and windows, and on top of the wood, layers of sacks of earth.
These sacks were covered by a top of fertile soil from which sprouted
grass and herbs, giving the roofs of the trenches, an appearance of
pastoral placidity. The temporary arches could thus resist the shock
of the abuses which went ploughing into the earth without causing any
special damage. When an explosion was pounding too noisily and weakening
the structure, the troglodytes would swarm out in the night like
watchful ants, and skilfully readjust the roof of their primitive
dwellings.
Everything appeared clean with that simple and rather clumsy cleanliness
exercised by men living far from women and thrown upon their own
resources. The galleries were something like the cloisters of a
monastery, the corridors of a prison, and the middle sections of a ship.
Their floors were a half yard lower than that of the open spaces which
joined the trenches together. In order that the officers might avoid
so many ups and downs, some planks had been laid, forming a sort of
scaffolding from doorway to doorway.
Upon the approach of their Chief, the soldiers formed themselves in
line, their heads being on a level with the waist of those passing over
the planks. Desnoyers ran his eye hungrily over the file of men. Where
could Julio be? . . .
He noticed the individual contour of the different redoubts. They
all seemed to have been constructed in about the same way, but their
occupants had modified them with their special personal decorations.
The exteriors were always cut with loopholes in which there were
guns pointed toward the enemy, and windows for the mitrailleuses. The
watchers near these openings were looking over the lonely landscape
like quartermasters surveying the sea from the bridge. Within were the
armories and the sleeping rooms--three rows of berths made with planks
like the beds of seamen. The desire for artistic ornamentation which
even the simplest souls always feel, had led to the embellishment of
the underground dwellings. Each soldier had a private museum made with
prints from the papers and colored postcards. Photographs of soubrettes
and dancers with their painted mouths smiled from the shiny cardboard,
enlivening the chaste aspect of the redoubt.
Don Marcelo was growing more and more impatient at seeing so many
hundreds of men, but no Julio. The senator, complying with his imploring
glance, spoke a few words to the chief preceding him with an aspect of
great deference. The official had at first to think very hard to
recall Julio to mind, but he soon remembered the exploits of Sergeant
Desnoyers. “An excellent soldier,” he said. “He will be sent for
immediately, Senator Lacour. . . . He is on duty now with his section in
the first line trenches.”
The father, in his anxiety to see him, proposed that they betake
themselves to that advanced site, but his petition made the Chief and
the others smile. Those open trenches within a hundred or fifty yards
from the enemy, with no other defence but barbed wire and sacks of
earth, were not for the visits of civilians. They were always filled
with mud; the visitors would have to crawl around exposed to bullets and
under the dropping chunks of earth loosened by the shells. None but the
combatants could get around in these outposts.
“It is always dangerous there,” said the Chief. “There is always random
shooting. . . . Just listen to the firing!”
Desnoyers indeed perceived a distant crackling that he had not noted
before, and he felt an added anguish at the thought that his son must be
in the thick of it. Realization of the dangers to which he must be daily
exposed, now stood forth in high relief. What if he should die in the
intervening moments, before he could see him? . . .
Time dragged by with desperate sluggishness for Don Marcelo. It seemed
to him that the messenger who had been despatched for him would never
arrive. He paid scarcely any attention to the affairs which the Chief
was so courteously showing them--the caverns which served the soldiers
as toilet rooms and bathrooms of most primitive arrangement, the cave
with the sign, “Cafe de la Victoire,” another in fanciful lettering,
“Theatre.” . . . Lacour was taking a lively interest in all this,
lauding the French gaiety which laughs and sings in the presence of
danger, while his friend continued brooding about Julio. When would he
ever see him?
They stopped near one of the embrasures of a machine-gun position
stationing themselves at the recommendations of the soldiers, on both
sides of the horizontal opening, keeping their bodies well back, but
putting their heads far enough forward to look out with one eye. They
saw a very deep excavation and the opposite edge of ground. A short
distance away were several rows of X’s of wood united by barbed wire,
forming a compact fence. About three hundred feet further on, was a
second wire fence. There reigned a profound silence here, a silence of
absolute loneliness as though the world was asleep.
“There are the trenches of the Boches,” said the Commandant, in a low
tone.
“Where?” asked the senator, making an effort to see.
The Chief pointed to the second wire fence which Lacour and his friend
had supposed belonged to the French. It was the German intrenchment
line.
“We are only a hundred yards away from them,” he continued, “but for
some time they have not been attacking from this side.”
The visitors were greatly moved at learning that the foe was such a
short distance off, hidden in the ground in a mysterious invisibility
which made it all the more terrible. What if they should pop out now
with their saw-edged bayonets, fire-breathing liquids and asphyxiating
bombs to assault this stronghold! . . .
From this window they could observe more clearly the intensity of the
firing on the outer line. The shots appeared to be coming nearer. The
Commandant brusquely ordered them to leave their observatory, fearing
that the fire might become general. The soldiers, with their customary
promptitude, without receiving any orders, approached their guns which
were in horizontal position, pointing through the loopholes.
Again the visitors walked in single file, going down into cavernous
spaces that had been the old wine-cellars of former houses. The officers
had taken up their abode in these dens, utilizing all the residue of
the ruins. A street door on two wooden horses served as a table;
the ceilings and walls were covered with cretonnes from the Paris
warehouses; photographs of women and children adorned the side wall
between the nickeled glitter of telegraphic and telephonic instruments.
Desnoyers saw above one door an ivory crucifix, yellowed with years,
probably with centuries, transmitted from generation to generation, that
must have witnessed many agonies of soul. In another den he noticed in
a conspicuous place, a horseshoe with seven holes. Religious creeds
were spreading their wings very widely in this atmosphere of danger and
death, and yet at the same time, the most grotesque superstitions were
acquiring new values without any one laughing at them.
Upon leaving one of the cells, in the middle of an open space, the
yearning father met his son. He knew that it must be Julio by the
Chief’s gesture and because the smiling soldier was coming toward him,
holding out his hands; but this time his paternal instinct which he had
heretofore considered an infallible thing, had given him no warning. How
could he recognize Julio in that sergeant whose feet were two cakes of
moist earth, whose faded cloak was a mass of tatters covered with mud,
even up to the shoulders, smelling of damp wool and leather? . . . After
the first embrace, he drew back his head in order to get a good look at
him without letting go of him. His olive pallor had turned to a bronze
tone. He was growing a beard, a beard black and curly, which reminded
Don Marcelo of his father-in-law. The centaur, Madariaga, had certainly
come to life in this warrior hardened by camping in the open air. At
first, the father grieved over his dirty and tired aspect, but a second
glance made him sure that he was now far more handsome and interesting
than in his days of society glory.
“What do you need? . . . What do you want?”
His voice was trembling with tenderness. He was speaking to the tanned
and robust combatant in the same tone that he was wont to use twenty
years ago when, holding the child by the hand, he had halted before the
preserve cupboards of Buenos Aires.
“Would you like money? . . .”
He had brought a large sum with him to give to his son, but the soldier
gave a shrug of indifference as though he had offered him a plaything.
He had never been so rich as at this moment; he had a lot of money in
Paris and he didn’t know what to do with it--he didn’t need anything.
“Send me some cigars . . . for me and my comrades.”
He was constantly receiving from his mother great baskets full of choice
goodies, tobacco and clothing. But he never kept anything; all was
passed on to his fellow-warriors, sons of poor families or alone in the
world. His munificence had spread from his intimates to the company,
and from that to the entire battalion. Don Marcelo divined his great
popularity in the glances and smiles of the soldiers passing near them.
He was the generous son of a millionaire, and this popularity seemed to
include even him when the news went around that the father of Sergeant
Desnoyers had arrived--a potentate who possessed fabulous wealth on the
other side of the sea.
“I guessed that you would want cigars,” chuckled the old man.
And his gaze sought the bags brought from the automobile through the
windings of the underground road.
All of the son’s valorous deeds, extolled and magnified by Argensola,
now came trooping into his mind. He had the original hero before his
very eyes.
“Are you content, satisfied? . . . You do not repent of your decision?”
“Yes, I am content, father . . . very content.”
Julio spoke without boasting, modestly. His life was very hard, but just
like that of millions of other men. In his section of a few dozens
of soldiers there were many superior to him in intelligence, in
studiousness, in character; but they were all courageously undergoing
the test, experiencing the satisfaction of duty fulfilled. The common
danger was helping to develop the noblest virtues of these men. Never,
in times of peace, had he known such comradeship. What magnificent
sacrifices he had witnessed!
“When all this is over, men will be better . . . more generous. Those
who survive will do great things.”
Yes, of course, he was content. For the first time in his life he was
tasting the delights of knowing that he was a useful being, that he
was good for something, that his passing through the world would not be
fruitless. He recalled with pity that Desnoyers who had not known how to
occupy his empty life, and had filled it with every kind of frivolity.
Now he had obligations that were taxing all his powers; he was
collaborating in the formation of a future. He was a man at last!
“I am content,” he repeated with conviction.
His father believed him, yet he fancied that, in a corner of that
frank glance, he detected something sorrowful, a memory of a past which
perhaps often forced its way among his present emotions. There flitted
through his mind the lovely figure of Madame Laurier. Her charm was,
doubtless, still haunting his son. And to think that he could not bring
her here! . . . The austere father of the preceding year contemplated
himself with astonishment as he caught himself formulating this immoral
regret.
They passed a quarter of an hour without loosening hands, looking
into each other’s eyes. Julio asked after his mother and Chichi. He
frequently received letters from them, but that was not enough for his
curiosity. He laughed heartily at hearing of Argensola’s amplified and
abundant life. These interesting bits of news came from a world not much
more than sixty miles distant in a direct line . . . but so far, so very
far away!
Suddenly the father noticed that his boy was listening with less
attention. His senses, sharpened by a life of alarms and ambushed
attacks, appeared to be withdrawing itself from the company, attracted
by the firing. Those were no longer scattered shots; they had combined
into a continual crackling.
The senator, who had left father and son together that they might talk
more freely, now reappeared.
“We are dismissed from here, my friend,” he announced. “We have no luck
in our visits.”
Soldiers were no longer passing to and fro. All had hastened to their
posts, like the crew of a ship which clears for action. While Julio was
taking up the rifle which he had left against the wall, a bit of dust
whirled above his father’s head and a little hole appeared in the
ground.
“Quick, get out of here!” he said pushing Don Marcelo.
Then, in the shelter of a covered trench, came the nervous, very brief
farewell. “Good-bye, father,” a kiss, and he was gone. He had to return
as quickly as possible to the side of his men.
The firing had become general all along the line. The soldiers were
shooting serenely, as though fulfilling an ordinary function. It was a
combat that took place every day without anybody’s knowing exactly who
started it--in consequence of the two armies being installed face to
face, and such a short distance apart. . . . The Chief of the battalion
was also obliged to desert his guests, fearing a counter-attack.
Again the officer charged with their safe conduct put himself at the
head of the file, and they began to retrace their steps through
the slippery maze. Desnoyers was tramping sullenly on, angry at the
intervention of the enemy which had cut short his happiness.
Before his inward gaze fluttered the vision of Julio with his black,
curly beard which to him was the greatest novelty of the trip. He heard
again his grave voice, that of a man who has taken up life from a new
viewpoint.
“I am content, father . . . I am content.”
The firing, growing constantly more distant, gave the father great
uneasiness. Then he felt an instinctive faith, absurd, very firm. He
saw his son beautiful and immortal as a god. He had a conviction that he
would come out safe and sound from all dangers. That others should die
was but natural, but Julio! . . .
As they got further and further away from the soldier boy, Hope appeared
to be singing in his ears; and as an echo of his pleasing musings, the
father kept repeating mentally:
“No one will kill him. My heart which never deceives me, tells me so.
. . . No one will kill him!”
CHAPTER IV
“NO ONE WILL KILL HIM”
Four months later, Don Marcelo’s confidence received a rude shock. Julio
was wounded. But at the same time that Lacour bought him this news,
lamentably delayed, he tranquilized him with the result of his
investigations in the war ministry. Sergeant Desnoyers was now
a sub-lieutenant, his wound was almost healed and, thanks to the
wire-pulling of the senator, he was coming to pass a fortnight with his
family while convalescing.
“An exceptionally brave fellow,” concluded the influential man. “I
have read what his chiefs say about him. At the head of his platoon, he
attacked a German company; he killed the captain with his own hand; he
did I don’t know how many more brave things besides. . . . They have
presented him with the military medal and have made him an officer.
. . . A regular hero!”
And the rapidly aging father, weeping with emotion, but with increasing
enthusiasm, shook his head and trembled. He repented now of his
momentary lack of faith when the first news of his wounded boy reached
him. How absurd! . . . No one would kill Julio; his heart told him so.
Soon after, he saw him coming home amid the cries and delighted
exclamations of the women. Poor Dona Luisa wept as she embraced him,
hanging on his neck with sobs of emotion. Chichi contemplated him with
grave reflection, putting half of her mind on the recent arrival while
the rest flew far away in search of the other warrior. The dusky,
South American maids fought each other for the opening in the curtains,
peering through the crack with the gaze of an antelope.
The father admired the little scrap of gold on the sleeve of the gray
cloak, with the skirts buttoning behind, examining afterwards the dark
blue cap with its low brim, adopted by the French for the war in the
trenches. The traditional kepi had disappeared. A suitable visor, like
that of the men in the Spanish infantry, now shadowed Julio’s face. Don
Marcelo noted, too, the short and well-cared-for beard, very different
from the one he had seen in the trenches. The boy was coming home,
groomed and polished from his recent stay in the hospital.
“Isn’t it true that he looks like me?” queried the old man proudly.
Dona Luisa responded with the inconsequence that mothers always show in
matters of resemblance.
“He has always been the living image of you!”
Having made sure that he was well and happy, the entire family suddenly
felt a certain disquietude. They wished to examine his wound so as to
convince themselves that he was completely out of danger.
“Oh, it’s nothing at all,” protested the sub-lieutenant. “A bullet wound
in the shoulder. The doctor feared at first that I might lose my left
arm, but it has healed well and it isn’t worth while to think any more
about it.”
Chichi’s appraising glance swept Julio from head to foot; taking in all
the details of his military elegance. His cloak was worn thin and dirty;
the leggings were spatter-dashed with mud; he smelled of leather, sweaty
cloth and strong tobacco; but on one wrist he was wearing a watch, and
on the other, his identity medal fastened with a gold chain. She had
always admired her brother for his natural good taste, so she stowed
away all these little details in her memory in order to pass them on to
Rene. Then she surprised her mother with a demand for a loan that she
might send a little gift to her artilleryman.
Don Marcelo gloated over the fifteen days of satisfaction ahead of him.
Sub-lieutenant Desnoyers found it impossible to go out alone, for his
father was always pacing up and down the reception hall before the
military cap which was shedding modest splendor and glory upon the hat
rack. Scarcely had Julio put it on his head before his sire appeared,
also with hat and cane, ready to sally forth.
“Will you permit me to accompany you? . . . I will not bother you.”
This would be said so humbly, with such an evident desire to have his
request granted, that his son had not the heart to refuse him. In order
to take a walk with Argensola, he had to scurry down the back stairs, or
resort to other schoolboy tricks.
Never had the elder Desnoyers promenaded the streets of Paris with
such solid satisfaction as by the side of this muscular youth in
his gloriously worn cloak, on whose breast were glistening his two
decorations--the cross of war and the military medal. He was a hero,
and this hero was his son. He accepted as homage to them both the
sympathetic glances of the public in the street cars and subways. The
interest with which the women regarded the fine-looking youth tickled
him immensely. All the other military men that they met, no matter how
many bands and crosses they displayed, appeared to the doting father
mere embusques, unworthy of comparison with his Julio. . . . The
wounded men who got out of the coaches by the aid of staffs and crutches
inspired him with the greatest pity. Poor fellows! . . . They did not
bear the charmed life of his son. Nobody could kill him; and when, by
chance, he had received a wound, the scars had immediately disappeared
without detriment to his handsome person.
Sometimes, especially at night, Desnoyers senior would show an
unexpected magnanimity, letting Julio fare forth alone. Since before the
war, his son had led a life filled with triumphant love-affairs, what
might he not achieve now with the added prestige of a distinguished
officer! . . .
Passing through his room on his way to bed, the father imagined the hero
in the charming company of some aristocratic lady. None but a feminine
celebrity was worthy of him; his paternal pride could accept nothing
less. . . . And it never occurred to him that Julio might be with
Argensola in a music-hall or in a moving-picture show, enjoying the
simple and monotonous diversions of a Paris sobered by war, with the
homely tastes of a sub-lieutenant whose amorous conquests were no more
than the renewal of some old friendships.
One evening as Don Marcelo was accompanying his son down the Champs
Elysees, he started at recognizing a lady approaching from the opposite
direction. It was Madame Laurier. . . . Would she recognize Julio? He
noted that the youth turned pale and began looking at the other people
with feigned interest. She continued straight ahead, erect, unseeing.
The old gentleman was almost irritated at such coldness. To pass by his
son without feeling his presence instinctively! Ah, these women! . . .
He turned his head involuntarily to look after her, but had to avert his
inquisitive glance immediately. He had surprised Marguerite motionless
behind them, pallid with surprise, and fixing her gaze earnestly on the
soldier who was separating himself from her. Don Marcelo read in her
eyes admiration, love, all of the past that was suddenly surging up in
her memory. Poor woman! . . . He felt for her a paternal affection as
though she were the wife of Julio. His friend Lacour had again spoken
to him about the Lauriers. He knew that Marguerite was going to become a
mother, and the old man, without taking into account the reconciliation
nor the passage of time, felt as much moved at the thought of this
approaching maternity as though the child were going to be Julio’s.
Meanwhile Julio was marching right on, without turning his head, without
being conscious of the burning gaze fixed upon him, colorless, but
humming a tune to hide his emotion. He always believed that Marguerite
had passed near him without recognizing him, since his father did not
betray her.
One of Don Marcelo’s pet occupations was to make his son tell about the
encounter in which he had been hurt. No visitor ever came to see the
sub-lieutenant but the father always made the same petition.
“Tell us how you were wounded. . . . Explain how you killed that German
captain.”
Julio tried to excuse himself with visible annoyance. He was already
surfeited with his own history. To please his father, he had related the
facts to the senator, to Argensola and to Tchernoff in his studio, and
to other family friends. . . . He simply could not do it again.
So the father began the narration on his own account, giving the relief
and details of the deed as though seen with his own eyes. . . .
He had to take possession of the ruins of a sugar refinery in front
of the trench. The Germans had been expelled by the French cannon.
A reconnoitring survey under the charge of a trusty man was then
necessary. And the heads, as usual, had selected Sergeant Desnoyers.
At daybreak, the platoon had advanced stealthily without encountering
any difficulty. The soldiers scattered among the ruins. Julio then went
on alone, examining the positions of the enemy; on turning around a
corner of the wall, he had the most unexpected of encounters. A German
captain was standing in front of him. They had almost bumped into each
other. They looked into each other’s eyes with more suspense than hate,
yet at the same time, they were trying instinctively to kill each other,
each one trying to get the advantage by his swiftness. The captain
had dropped the map that he was carrying. His right hand sought his
revolver, trying to draw it from its case without once taking his eyes
off his enemy. Then he had to give this up as useless--it was too late.
With his eyes distended by the proximity of death, he kept his gaze
fixed upon the Frenchman who had raised his gun to his face. A shot,
from a barrel almost touching him . . . and the German fell dead.
Not till then did the victor notice the captain’s orderly who was but a
few steps behind. He shot Desnoyers, wounding him in the shoulder. The
French hurried to the spot, killing the corporal. Then there was a sharp
cross-fire with the enemy’s company which had halted a little ways off
while their commander was exploring the ground. Julio, in spite of
his wound, continued at the head of his section, defending the factory
against superior forces until supports arrived, and the land remained
definitely in the power of the French.
“Wasn’t that about the way of it?” Don Marcelo would always wind up.
The son assented, desirous that his annoyance with the persistent story
should come to an end as soon as possible. Yes, that was the way of it.
But what the father didn’t know, what Julio would never tell, was the
discovery that he had made after killing the captain.
The two men, during the interminable second in which they had confronted
each other, had showed in their eyes something more than the surprise
of an encounter, and the wish to overcome the other. Desnoyers knew that
man. The captain knew him, too. He guessed it from his expression. . . .
But self-preservation was more insistent than recollection and prevented
them both from co-ordinating their thoughts.
Desnoyers had fired with the certainty that he was killing someone that
he knew. Afterwards, while directing the defense of the position and
guarding against the approach of reinforcements, he had a suspicion that
the enemy whose corpse was lying a few feet away might possibly be a
member of the von Hartrott family. No, he looked much older than his
cousins, yet younger than his Uncle Karl who at his age, would be no
mere captain of infantry.
When, weakened by the loss of blood, they were about to carry him to
the trenches, the sergeant expressed a wish to see again the body of
his victim. His doubt continued before the face blanched by death. The
wide-open eyes still seemed to retain their startled expression. The man
had undoubtedly recognized him. His face was familiar. Who was he? . . .
Suddenly in his mind’s eye, Julio saw the heaving ocean, a great
steamer, a tall, blonde woman looking at him with half-closed eyes of
invitation, a corpulent, moustached man making speeches in the style of
the Kaiser. “Rest in peace, Captain Erckmann!” . . . Thus culminated in
a corner of France the discussions started at table in mid-ocean.
He excused himself mentally as though he were in the presence of the
sweet Bertha. He had had to kill, in order not to be killed. Such is
war. He tried to console himself by thinking that Erckmann, perhaps,
had failed to identify him, without realizing that his slayer was the
shipmate of the summer. . . . And he kept carefully hidden in the depths
of his memory this encounter arranged by Fate. He did not even tell
Argensola who knew of the incidents of the trans-atlantic passage.
When he least expected it, Don Marcelo found himself at the end of that
delightful and proud existence which his son’s presence had brought him.
The fortnight had flown by so swiftly! The sub-lieutenant had returned
to his post, and all the family, after this period of reality, had
had to fall back on the fond illusions of hope, watching again for the
arrival of his letters, making conjectures about the silence of the
absent one, sending him packet after packet of everything that the
market was offering for the soldiery--for the most part, useless and
absurd things.
The mother became very despondent. Julio’s visit home but made her feel
his absence with greater intensity. Seeing him, hearing those tales of
death that her husband was so fond of repeating, made her realize all
the more clearly the dangers constantly surrounding her son. Fatality
appeared to be warning her with funereal presentiments.
“They are going to kill him,” she kept saying to Desnoyers. “That wound
was a forewarning from heaven.”
When passing through the streets, she trembled with emotion at sight of
the invalid soldiers. The convalescents of energetic appearance, filled
her with the greatest pity. They made her think of a certain trip with
her husband to San Sebastian where a bull fight had made her cry out
with indignation and compassion, pitying the fate of the poor, gored
horses. With entrails hanging, they were taken to the corrals, and
submitted to a hurried adjustment in order that they might return to the
arena stimulated by a false energy. Again and again they were reduced to
this makeshift cobbling until finally a fatal goring finished them.
. . . These recently cured men continually brought to her mind those poor
beasts. Some had been wounded three times since the beginning of the
war, and were returning surgically patched together and re-galvanized to
take another chance in the lottery of Fate, always in the expectation of
the supreme blow. . . . Ay, her son!
Desnoyers waxed very indignant over his wife’s low spirits, retorting:
“But I tell you that Nobody will kill Julio! . . . He is my son. In my
youth I, too, passed through great dangers. They wounded me, too, in the
wars in the other world, and nevertheless, here I am at a ripe old age.”
Events seemed to reinforce his blind faith. Calamities were raining
around the family and saddening his relatives, yet not one grazed the
intrepid sub-lieutenant who was persisting in his daring deeds with the
heroic nerve of a musketeer.
Dona Luisa received a letter from Germany. Her sister wrote from Berlin,
transmitting her letters through the kindness of a South American in
Switzerland. This time, the good lady wept for some one besides her son;
she wept for Elena and the enemies. In Germany there were mothers, too,
and she put the sentiment of maternity above all patriotic differences.
Poor Frau von Hartrott! Her letter written a month before, had contained
nothing but death notices and words of despair. Captain Otto was dead.
Dead, too, was one of his younger brothers. The fact that the latter
had fallen in a territory dominated by their nation, at least gave the
mother the sad comfort of being able to weep near his grave. But the
Captain was buried on French soil, nobody knew where, and she would
never be able to find his remains, mingled with hundreds of others.
A third son was wounded in Poland. Her two daughters had lost their
promised lovers, and the sight of their silent grief, was intensifying
the mother’s suffering. Von Hartrott continued presiding over patriotic
societies and making plans of expansion after the near victory, but he
had aged greatly in the last few months. The “sage” was the only one
still holding his own. The family afflictions were aggravating the
ferocity of Professor Julius von Hartrott. He was calculating, in a book
he was writing, the hundreds of thousands of millions that Germany must
exact after her triumph, and the various nations that she would have to
annex to the Fatherland.
Dona Luisa imagined that in the avenue Victor Hugo, she could hear the
mother’s tears falling in her home in Berlin. “You will understand,
Luisa, my despair. . . . We were all so happy! May God punish those
who have brought such sorrow on the world! The Emperor is innocent. His
adversaries are to blame for it all . . .”
Don Marcelo was silent about the letter in his wife’s presence. He
pitied Elena for her losses, so he overlooked her political connections.
He was touched, too, at Dona Luisa’s distress about Otto. She had been
his godmother and Desnoyers his godfather. That was so--Don Marcelo had
forgotten all about it; and the fact recalled to his mental vision the
placid life of the ranch, and the play of the blonde children that he
had petted behind their grandfather’s back, before Julio was born. For
many years, he had lavished great affection on these youngsters, when
dismayed at Julio’s delayed arrival. He was really affected at thinking
of what must be Karl’s despair.
But then, as soon as he was alone, a selfish coldness would blot out
this compassion. War was war, and the Germans had sought it. France had
to defend herself, and the more enemies fell the better. . . . The only
soldier who interested him now was Julio. And his faith in the destiny
of his son made him feel a brutal joy, a paternal satisfaction almost
amounting to ferocity.
“No one will kill HIM! . . . My heart tells me so.”
A nearer trouble shook his peace of mind. When he returned to his home
one evening, he found Dona Luisa with a terrified aspect holding her
hands to her head.
“The daughter, Marcelo . . . our daughter!”
Chichi was stretched out on a sofa in the salon, pale, with an olive
tinge, looking fixedly ahead of her as if she could see somebody in the
empty air. She was not crying, but a slight palpitation was making her
swollen eyes tremble spasmodically.
“I want to see him,” she was saying hoarsely. “I must see him!”
The father conjectured that something terrible must have happened to
Lacour’s son. That was the only thing that could make Chichi show such
desperation. His wife was telling him the sad news. Rene was wounded,
very seriously wounded. A shell had exploded over his battery, killing
many of his comrades. The young officer had been dragged out from a
mountain of dead, one hand was gone, he had injuries in the legs, chest
and head.
“I’ve got to see him!” reiterated Chichi.
And Don Marcelo had to concentrate all his efforts in making his
daughter give up this dolorous insistence which made her exact an
immediate journey to the front, trampling down all obstacles, in order
to reach her wounded lover. The senator finally convinced her of the
uselessness of it all. She would simply have to wait; he, the father,
had to be patient. He was negotiating for Rene to be transferred to a
hospital in Paris.
The great man moved Desnoyers to pity. He was making such heroic efforts
to preserve the stoic serenity of ancient days by recalling his glorious
ancestors and all the illustrious figures of the Roman Republic. But
these oratorical illusions had suddenly fallen flat, and his old friend
surprised him weeping more than once. An only child, and he might
have to lose him! . . . Chichi’s dumb woe made him feel even greater
commiseration. Her grief was without tears or faintings. Her sallow
face, the feverish brilliancy of her eyes, and the rigidity that made
her move like an automaton were the only signs of her emotion. She was
living with her thoughts far away, with no knowledge of what was going
on around her.
When the patient arrived in Paris, his father and fiancee were
transfigured. They were going to see him, and that was enough to make
them imagine that he was already recuperated.
Chichi hastened to the hospital with her mother and the senator. Then
she went alone and insisted on remaining there, on living at the wounded
man’s side, waging war on all regulations and clashing with Sisters
of Charity, trained nurses, and all who roused in her the hatred of
rivalry. Soon realizing that all her violence accomplished nothing, she
humiliated herself and became suddenly very submissive, trying with her
wiles, to win the women over one by one. Finally, she was permitted to
spend the greater part of the day with Rene.
When Desnoyers first saw the wounded artilleryman in bed, he had to make
a great effort to keep the tears back. . . . Ay, his son, too, might be
brought to this sad pass! . . . The man looked to him like an Egyptian
mummy, because of his complete envelopment in tight bandage wrappings.
The sharp hulls of the shell had fairly riddled him. There could only
be seen a pair of sweet eyes and a blond bit of moustache sticking up
between white bands. The poor fellow was trying to smile at Chichi, who
was hovering around him with a certain authority as though she were in
her own home.
Two months rolled by. Rene was better, almost well. His betrothed had
never doubted his recovery from the moment that they permitted her to
remain with him.
“No one that I love, ever dies,” she asserted with a ring of her
father’s self-confidence. “As if I would ever permit the Boches to leave
me without a husband!”
She had her little sugar soldier back again, but, oh, in what
a lamentable state! . . . Never had Don Marcelo realized the
de-personalizing horrors of war as when he saw entering his home this
convalescent whom he had known months before--elegant and slender, with
a delicate and somewhat feminine beauty. His face was now furrowed by
a network of scars that had transformed it into a purplish arabesque.
Within his body were hidden many such. His left hand had disappeared
with a part of the forearm, the empty sleeve hanging over the remainder.
The other hand was supported on a cane, a necessary aid in order to be
able to move a leg that would never recover its elasticity.
But Chichi was content. She surveyed her dear little soldier with more
enthusiasm than ever--a little deformed, perhaps, but very interesting.
With her mother, she accompanied the convalescent in his constitutionals
through the Bois de Boulogne. When, in crossing a street, automobilists
or coachmen failed to stop their vehicles in order to give the invalid
the right of way, her eyes shot lightning shafts, as she thundered,
“Shameless embusques!” . . . She was now feeling the same fiery
resentment as those women of former days who used to insult her Rene
when he was well and happy. She trembled with satisfaction and pride
when returning the greetings of her friends. Her eloquent eyes seemed
to be saying, “Yes, he is my betrothed . . . a hero!” She was constantly
arranging the war cross on his blouse of “horizon blue,” taking pains
to place it as conspicuously as possible. She also spent much time in
prolonging the life of his shabby uniform--always the same one, the
old one which he was wearing when wounded. A new one would give him the
officery look of the soldiers who never left Paris.
As he grew stronger, Rene vainly tried to emancipate himself from her
dominant supervision. It was simply useless to try to walk with more
celerity or freedom.
“Lean on me!”
And he had to take his fiancee’s arm. All her plans for the future were
based on the devotion with which she was going to protect her husband,
on the solicitude that she was going to dedicate to his crippled
condition.
“My poor, dear invalid,” she would murmur lovingly. “So ugly and so
helpless those blackguards have left you! . . . But luckily you have
me, and I adore you! . . . It makes no difference to me that one of your
hands is gone. I will care for you; you shall be my little son. You will
just see, after we are married, how elegant and stylish I am going to
keep you. But don’t you dare to look at any of the other women! The very
first moment that you do, my precious little invalid, I’ll leave you
alone in your helplessness!”
Desnoyers and the senator were also concerned about their future, but in
a very definite way. They must be married as soon as possible. What was
the use of waiting? . . . The war was no longer an obstacle. They would
be married as quietly as possible. This was no time for wedding pomp.
So Rene Lacour remained permanently in the house on the avenida Victor
Hugo, after the nuptial ceremony witnessed by a dozen people.
Don Marcelo had had dreams of other things for his daughter--a grand
wedding to which the daily papers would devote much space, a son-in-law
with a brilliant future . . . but ay, this war! Everybody was having his
fondest hopes dashed to pieces every few hours.
He took what comfort he could out of the situation. What more did they
want? Chichi was happy--with a rollicking and selfish happiness which
took no interest in anything but her own love-affairs. The Desnoyers
business returns could not be improved upon;--after the first crisis
had passed, the necessities of the belligerents had begun utilizing
the output of his ranches, and never before had meat brought such high
prices. Money was flowing in with greater volume than formerly, while
the expenses were diminishing. . . . Julio was in daily danger of death,
but the old ranchman was buoyed up by his conviction that his son led
a charmed life--no harm could touch him. His chief preoccupation,
therefore, was to keep himself tranquil, avoiding all emotional storms.
He had been reading with considerable alarm of the frequency with which
well-known persons, politicians, artists and writers, were dying in
Paris. War was not doing all its killing at the front; its shocks were
falling like arrows over the land, causing the fall of the weak, the
crushed and the exhausted who, in normal times, would probably have
lived to a far greater age.
“Attention, Marcelo!” he said to himself with grim humor. “Keep cool
now! . . . You must avoid Friend Tchernoff’s four horsemen, you know!”
He spent an afternoon in the studio going over the war news in the
papers. The French had begun an offensive in Champagne with great
advances and many prisoners.
Desnoyers could not but think of the loss of life that this must
represent. Julio’s fate, however, gave him no uneasiness, for his son
was not in that part of the front. But yesterday he had received a
letter from him, dated the week before; they all took about that
length of time to reach him. Sub-lieutenant Desnoyers was as blithe and
reckless as ever. They were going to promote him again--he was among
those proposed for the Legion d’Honneur. These facts intensified Don
Marcelo’s vision of himself as the father of a general as young as those
of the revolution; and as he contemplated the daubs and sketches around
him, he marvelled at the extraordinary way in which the war had twisted
his son’s career.
On his way home, he passed Marguerite Laurier dressed in mourning.
The senator had told him a few days before that her brother, the
artilleryman, had just been killed at Verdun.
“How many are falling!” he said mournfully to himself. “How hard it will
be for his poor mother!”
But he smiled immediately after at the thought of those to be born.
Never before had the people been so occupied in accelerating their
reproduction. Even Madame Laurier now showed with pride the very visible
curves of her approaching maternity, and Desnoyers noted sympathetically
the vital volume apparent beneath her long mourning veil. Again he
thought of Julio, without taking into account the flight of time. He
felt as interested in the little newcomer as though he were in some way
related to it, and he promised himself to aid generously the Laurier
baby if he ever had the opportunity.
On entering his house, he was met in the hall by Dona Luisa, who told
him that Lacour was waiting for him.
“Very good!” he responded gaily. “Let us see what our illustrious
father-in-law has to say.”
His good wife was uneasy. She had felt alarmed without knowing exactly
why at the senator’s solemn appearance; with that feminine instinct
which perforates all masculine precautions, she surmised some hidden
mission. She had noticed, too, that Rene and his father were talking
together in a low tone, with repressed emotion.
Moved by an irresistible impulse, she hovered near the closed door,
hoping to hear something definite. Her wait was not long.
Suddenly a cry . . . a groan . . . the groan that can come only from a
body from which all vitality is escaping.
And Dona Luisa rushed in just in time to support her husband as he was
falling to the floor.
The senator was excusing himself confusedly to the walls, the furniture,
and turning his back in his agitation on the dismayed Rene, the only one
who could have listened to him.
“He did not let me finish. . . . He guessed from the very first
word. . . .”
Hearing the outcry, Chichi hastened in in time to see her father
slipping from his wife’s arms to the sofa, and from there to the floor,
with glassy, staring eyes, and foaming at the mouth.
From the luxurious rooms came forth the world-old cry, always the same
from the humblest home to the highest and loneliest:--
“Oh, Julio! . . . Oh, my son, my son! . . .”
CHAPTER V
THE BURIAL FIELDS
The automobile was going slowly forward under the colorless sky of a
winter morning.
In the distance, the earth’s surface seemed trembling with white,
fluttering things resembling a band of butterflies poised on the
furrows. On one of the fields the swarm was of great size, on others, it
was broken into small groups.
As the machine approached these white butterflies, they seemed to
be taking on other colors. One wing was turning blue, another
flesh-colored. . . . They were little flags, by the hundreds, by the
thousands which palpitated night and day, in the mild, sunny, morning
breeze, in the damp drip of the dull mornings, in the biting cold of the
interminable nights. The rains had washed and re-washed them, stealing
away the most of their color. Some of the borders of the restless little
strips were mildewed by the dampness while others were scorched by the
sun, like insects which have just grazed the flames.
In the midst of the fluttering flags could be seen the black crosses
of wood. On these were hanging dark kepis, red caps, and helmets topped
with tufts of horsehair, slowly disintegrating and weeping atmospheric
tears at every point.
“How many are dead!” sighed Don Marcelo’s voice from the automobile.
And Rene, who was seated in front of him, sadly nodded his head. Dona
Luisa was looking at the mournful plain while her lips trembled slightly
in constant prayer. Chichi turned her great eyes in astonishment from
one side to the other. She appeared larger, more capable in spite of the
pallor which blanched her olive skin.
The two ladies were dressed in deepest mourning. The father, too, was
in mourning, huddled down in the seat in a crushed attitude, his legs
carefully covered with the great fur rugs. Rene was wearing his campaign
uniform under his storm coat. In spite of his injuries, he had not
wished to retire from the army. He had been transferred to a technical
office till the termination of the war.
The Desnoyers family were on the way to carry out their long-cherished
hope.
Upon recovering consciousness after the fatal news, the father had
concentrated all his will power in one petition.
“I must see him. . . . Oh, my son! . . . My son!”
Vain were the senator’s efforts to show him the impossibility of such
a journey. The fighting was still going on in the zone where Julio had
fallen. Later on, perhaps, it might be possible to visit it. “I want to
see it!” persisted the broken-hearted old man. It was necessary for
him to see his son’s grave before dying himself, and Lacour had to
requisition all his powers, for four long months formulating requests
and overcoming much opposition, in order that Don Marcelo might be
permitted to make the trip.
Finally a military automobile came one morning for the entire Desnoyers
family. The senator could not accompany them. Rumors of an approaching
change in the cabinet were floating about, and he felt obliged to show
himself in the senate in case the Republic should again wish to avail
itself of his unappreciated services.
They passed the night in a provincial city where there was a military
post, and Rene collected considerable information from officers who had
witnessed the great combat. With his map before him, he followed the
explanations until he thought he could recognize the very plot of ground
which Julio’s regiment had occupied.
The following morning they renewed their expedition. A soldier who
had taken part in the battle acted as their guide, seated beside the
chauffeur. From time to time, Rene consulted the map spread out on his
knees, and asked questions of the soldier whose regiment had fought
very close to that of Desnoyers’, but he could not remember exactly the
ground which they had gone over so many months before. The landscape
had undergone many transformations and had presented a very different
appearance when covered with men. Its deserted aspect bewildered him
. . . and the motor had to go very slowly, veering to the north of the
line of graves, following the central highway, level and white, entering
crossroads and winding through ditches muddied with deep pools through
which they splashed with great bounds and jar on the springs. At times,
they drove across fields from one plot of crosses to another, their
pneumatic tires crushing flat from the furrows opened by the plowman.
Tombs . . . tombs on all sides! The white locusts of death were swarming
over the entire countryside. There was no corner free from their
quivering wings. The recently plowed earth, the yellowing roads, the
dark woodland, everything was pulsating in weariless undulation. The
soil seemed to be clamoring, and its words were the vibrations of the
restless little flags. And the thousands of cries, endlessly repeated
across the days and nights, were intoning in rhythmic chant the terrible
onslaught which this earth had witnessed and from which it still felt
tragic shudderings.
“Dead . . . dead,” murmured Chichi, following the rows of crosses
incessantly slipping past the sides of the automobile.
“O Lord, for them! . . . for their mothers,” moaned Dona Luisa, renewing
her prayers.
Here had taken place the fiercest part of the battle--the fight in the
old way, man to man outside of the trenches, with bayonets, with guns,
with fists, with teeth.
The guide who was beginning to get his bearings was pointing out
the various points on the desolate horizon. There were the African
sharpshooters; further on, the chasseurs. The very large groups of
graves were where the light infantry had charged with their bayonets on
the sides of the road.
The automobile came to a stop. Rene climbed out after the soldier in
order to examine the inscriptions on a few of the crosses. Perhaps
these might have belonged to the regiment they were seeking. Chichi
also alighted mechanically with the irresistible desire of aiding her
husband.
Each grave contained several men. The number of bodies within could be
told by the mouldering kepis or rusting helmets hanging on the arms of
the cross; the number of the regiments could still be deciphered
between the rows of ants crawling over the caps. The wreaths with which
affection had adorned some of the sepulchres were blackened and stripped
of their leaves. On some of the crucifixes, the names of the dead were
still clear, but others were beginning to fade out and soon would be
entirely illegible.
“What a horrible death! . . . What glory!” thought Chichi sadly.
Not even the names of the greater part of these vigorous men cut down in
the strength of their youth were going to survive! Nothing would
remain but the memory which would from time to time overwhelm some old
countrywoman driving her cow along the French highway, murmuring between
her sobs. “My little one! . . . I wonder where they buried my little
one!” Or, perhaps, it would live in the heart of the village woman clad
in mourning who did not know how to solve the problem of existence; or
in the minds of the children going to school in black blouses and saying
with ferocious energy--“When I grow up I am going to kill the Boches to
avenge my father’s death!”
And Dona Luisa, motionless in her seat, followed with her eyes
Chichi’s course among the graves, while returning to her interrupted
prayer--“Lord, for the mothers without sons . . . for the little ones
without fathers! . . . May thy wrath not be turned against us, and may
thy smile shine upon us once more!”
Her husband, shrunken in his seat, was also looking over the funereal
fields, but his eyes were fixed most tenaciously on some mounds without
wreaths or flags, simple crosses with a little board bearing the
briefest inscription. These were the German bodies which seemed to have
a page to themselves in the Book of Death. On one side, the
innumerable French tombs with inscriptions as small as possible, simple
numbers--one, two, three dead. On the other, in each of the spacious,
unadorned sepulchres, great quantities of soldiers, with a number
of terrifying terseness. Fences of wooden strips, narrow and wide,
surrounded these latter ditches filled to the top with bodies. The earth
was as bleached as though covered with snow or saltpetre. This was the
lime returning to mix with the land. The crosses raised above these huge
mounds bore each an inscription stating that it contained Germans, and
then a number--200 . . . 300 . . . 400.
Such appalling figures obliged Desnoyers to exert his imagination.
It was not easy to evoke with exactitude the vision of three hundred
carcasses in helmets, boots and cloaks, in all the revolting aspects of
death, piled in rows as though they were bricks, locked forever in the
depths of a great trench. . . . And this funereal alignment was repeated
at intervals all over the great immensity of the plain!
The mere sight of them filled Don Marcelo with a kind of savage joy, as
his mourning fatherhood tasted the fleeting consolation of vengeance.
Julio had died, and he was going to die, too, not having strength to
survive his bitter woe; but how many hundreds of the enemy wasting in
these awful trenches were also leaving in the world loved beings who
would remember them as he was remembering his son! . . .
He imagined them as they must have been before the death call sounded,
as he had seen them in the advance around his castle.
Some of them, the most prominent and terrifying, probably still showed
on their faces the theatrical cicatrices of their university duels. They
were the soldiers who carried books in their knapsacks, and after the
fusillade of a lot of country folk, or the sacking and burning of a
hamlet, devoted themselves to reading the poets and philosophers by
the glare of the blaze which they had kindled. They were bloated with
science as with the puffiness of a toad, proud of their pedantic and
all-sufficient intellectuality. Sons of sophistry and grandsons of
cant, they had considered themselves capable of proving the greatest
absurdities by the mental capers to which they had accustomed their
acrobatic intellects.
They had employed the favorite method of the thesis, antithesis and
synthesis in order to demonstrate that Germany ought to be the Mistress
of the World; that Belgium was guilty of her own ruin because she had
defended herself; that true happiness consisted in having all humanity
dominated by Prussia; that the supreme idea of existence consisted in
a clean stable and a full manger; that Liberty and Justice were nothing
more than illusions of the romanticism of the French; that every deed
accomplished became virtuous from the moment it triumphed, and that
Right was simply a derivative of Might. These metaphysical athletes with
guns and sabres were accustomed to consider themselves the paladins of
a crusade of civilization. They wished the blond type to triumph
definitely over the brunette; they wished to enslave the worthless man
of the South, consigning him forever to a world regulated by “the salt
of the earth,” “the aristocracy of humanity.” Everything on the page of
history that had amounted to anything was German. The ancient Greeks had
been of Germanic origin; German, too, the great artists of the Italian
Renaissance. The men of the Mediterranean countries, with the inherent
badness of their extraction, had falsified history. . . .
“That’s the best place for you. . . You are better where you are buried,
you pitiless pedants!” thought Desnoyers, recalling his conversations
with his friend, the Russian.
What a shame that there were not here, too, all the Herr Professors of
the German universities--those wise men so unquestionably skilful
in altering the trademarks of intellectual products and changing the
terminology of things! Those men with flowing beards and gold-rimmed
spectacles, pacific rabbits of the laboratory and the professor’s
chair that had been preparing the ground for the present war with their
sophistries and their unblushing effrontery! Their guilt was far greater
than that of the Herr Lieutenant of the tight corset and the gleaming
monocle, who in his thirst for strife and slaughter was simply and
logically working out the professional charts.
While the German soldier of the lower classes was plundering what he
could and drunkenly shooting whatever crossed his path, the warrior
student was reading by the camp glow, Hegel and Nietzsche. He was too
enlightened to execute with his own hands these acts of “historical
justice,” but he, with the professors, was rousing all the bad
instincts of the Teutonic beast and giving them a varnish of scientific
justification.
“Lie there, in your sepulchre, you intellectual scourge!” continued
Desnoyers mentally.
The fierce Moors, the negroes of infantile intelligence, the sullen
Hindus, appeared to him more deserving of respect than all the
ermine-bordered togas parading haughtily and aggressively through the
cloisters of the German universities. What peacefulness for the world
if their wearers should disappear forever! He preferred the simple
and primitive barbarity of the savage to the refined, deliberate and
merciless barbarity of the greedy sage;--it did less harm and was not so
hypocritical.
For this reason, the only ones in the enemy’s ranks who awakened his
commiseration were the lowly and unlettered dead interred beneath the
sod. They had been peasants, factory hands, business clerks, German
gluttons of measureless (intestinal) capacity, who had seen in the war
an opportunity for satisfying their appetites, for beating somebody and
ordering them about after having passed their lives in their country,
obeying and receiving kicks.
The history of their country was nothing more than a series of
raids--like the Indian forays, in order to plunder the property of those
who lived in the mild Mediterranean climes. The Herr Professors
had proved to their countrymen that such sacking incursions were
indispensable to the highest civilization, and that the German was
marching onward with the enthusiasm of a good father sacrificing himself
in order to secure bread for his family.
Hundreds of thousands of letters, written by their relatives with
tremulous hands, were following the great Germanic horde across the
invaded countries. Desnoyers had overheard the reading of some of these,
at nightfall before his ruined castle. These were some of the messages
found in the pockets of the imprisoned or dead:--“Don’t show any pity
for the red pantaloons. Kill WHOMEVER YOU CAN, and show no mercy even to
the little ones.” . . . “We would thank you for the shoes, but the girl
cannot get them on. Those French have such ridiculously small feet!”
. . . “Try to get hold of a piano.”. . . “I would very much like a good
watch.” . . . “Our neighbor, the Captain, has sent his wife a necklace
of pearls. . . . And you send only such insignificant things!”
The virtuous German had been advancing heroically with the double desire
of enlarging his country and of making valuable gifts to his offspring.
“Deutschland uber alles!” But their most cherished illusions had fallen
into the burial ditch in company with thousands of comrades-at-arms fed
on the same dreams.
Desnoyers could imagine the impatience on the other side of the Rhine,
the pitiful women who were waiting and waiting. The lists of the dead
had, perhaps, overlooked the missing ones; and the letters kept coming
and coming to the German lines, many of them never reaching their
destination. “Why don’t you answer! Perhaps you are not writing so as to
give us a great surprise. Don’t forget the necklace! Send us a piano.
A carved china cabinet for the dining room would please us greatly. The
French have so many beautiful things!” . . .
The bare cross rose stark and motionless above the lime-blanched land.
Near it the little flags were fluttering their wings, moving from side
to side like a head shaking out a smiling, ironical protest--No! . . .
No!
The automobile continued on its painful way. The guide was now pointing
to a distant group of graves. That was undoubtedly the place where the
regiment had been fighting. So the vehicle left the main road, sinking
its wheels in the soft earth, having to make wide detours in order to
avoid the mounds scattered about so capriciously by the casualties of
the combat.
Almost all of the fields were ploughed. The work of the farmer extended
from tomb to tomb, making them more prominent as the morning sun forced
its way through the enshrouding mists.
Nature, blind, unfeeling and silent, ignoring individual existence and
taking to her bosom with equal indifference, a poor little animal or a
million corpses, was beginning to smile under the late winter suns.
The fountains were still crusted with their beards of ice; the earth
snapped as the feet weighed down its hidden crystals; the trees, black
and sleeping, were still retaining the coat of metallic green in which
the winter had clothed them; from the depths of the earth still issued
an acute, deadly chill, like that of burned-out planets. . . . But
Spring had already girded herself with flowers in her palace in the
tropics, and was saddling with green her trusty steed, neighing with
impatience. Soon they would race through the fields, driving before them
in disordered flight the black goblins of winter, and leaving in their
wake green growing things and tender, subtle perfumes. The wayside
greenery, robing itself in tiny buds, was already heralding their
arrival. The birds were venturing forth from their retreats in order
to wing their way among the crows croaking wrathfully above the closed
tombs. The landscape was beginning to smile in the sunlight with the
artless, deceptive smile of a child who looks candidly around while his
pockets are stuffed with stolen goodies.
The husbandmen had ploughed the fields and filled the furrows with seed.
Men might go on killing each other as much as they liked; the soil had
no concern with their hatreds, and on that account, did not propose to
alter its course. As every year, the metal cutter had opened its
usual lines, obliterating with its ridges the traces of man and beast,
undismayed and with stubborn diligence filling up the tunnels which the
bombs had made.
Sometimes the ploughshare had struck against an obstacle underground
. . . an unknown, unburied man; but the cultivator had continued on its
way without pity. Every now and then, it was stopped by less yielding
obstructions, projectiles which had sunk into the ground intact. The
rustic had dug up these instruments of death which occasionally had
exploded their delayed charge in his hands.
But the man of the soil knows no fear when in search of sustenance, and
so was doggedly continuing his rectilinear advance, swerving only before
the visible tombs; there the furrows had curved mercifully, making
little islands of the mounds surmounted by crosses and flags. The seeds
of future bread were preparing to extend their tentacles like devil
fish among those who, but a short time before, were animated by such
monstrous ambition. Life was about to renew itself once more.
The automobile came to a standstill. The guide was running about among
the crosses, stooping over in order to examine their weather-stained
inscriptions.
“Here we are!”
He had found above one grave the number of the regiment.
Chichi and her husband promptly dismounted again. Then Dona Luisa, with
sad resolution, biting her lips to keep the tears back. Then the three
devoted themselves to assisting the father who had thrown off his fur
lap-robe. Poor Desnoyers! On touching the ground, he swayed back and
forth, moving forward with the greatest effort, lifting his feet with
difficulty, and sinking his staff in the hollows.
“Lean on me, my poor dear,” said the old wife, offering her arm.
The masterful head of the family could no longer take a single step
without their aid.
Then began their slow, painful pilgrimage among the graves.
The guide was still exploring the spot bristling with crosses, spelling
out the names, and hesitating before the faded lettering. Rene was doing
the same on the other side of the road. Chichi went on alone, the wind
whirling her black veil around her, and making the little curls escape
from under her mourning hat every time she leaned over to decipher a
name. Her daintily shod feet sunk deep into the ruts, and she had to
gather her skirts about her in order to move more comfortably--revealing
thus at every step evidences of the joy of living, of hidden beauty,
of consummated love following her course through this land of death and
desolation.
In the distance sounded feebly her father’s voice:
“Not yet?”
The two elders were growing impatient, anxious to find their son’s
resting place as soon as possible.
A half hour thus dragged by without any result--always unfamiliar names,
anonymous crosses or the numbers of other regiments. Don Marcelo was
no longer able to stand. Their passage across the irregularities of the
soft earth had been torment for him. He was beginning to despair. . . .
Ay, they would never find Julio’s remains! The parents, too, had been
scrutinizing the plots nearest them, bending sadly before cross after
cross. They stopped before a long, narrow hillock, and read the name.
. . . No, he was not there, either; and they continued desperately along
the painful path of alternate hopes and disappointments.
It was Chichi who notified them with a cry, “Here. . . . Here it is!”
The old folks tried to run, almost falling at every step. All the family
were soon grouped around a heap of earth in the vague outline of a bier,
and beginning to be covered with herbage. At the head was a cross with
letters cut in deep with the point of a knife, the kind deed of some of
his comrades-at-arms--“DESNOYERS.” . . . Then in military abbreviations,
the rank, regiment and company.
A long silence. Dona Luisa had knelt instantly, with her eyes fixed on
the cross--those great, bloodshot eyes that could no longer weep. Till
then, tears had been constantly in her eyes, but now they deserted her
as though overcome by the immensity of a grief incapable of expressing
itself in the usual ways.
The father was staring at the rustic grave in dumb amazement. His son
was there, there forever! . . . and he would never see him again! He
imagined him sleeping unshrouded below, in direct contact with the
earth, just as Death had surprised him in his miserable and heroic old
uniform. He recalled the exquisite care which the lad had always given
his body--the long bath, the massage, the invigorating exercise of
boxing and fencing, the cold shower, the elegant and subtle perfume
. . . all that he might come to this! . . . that he might be interred
just where he had fallen in his tracks, like a wornout beast of burden!
The bereaved father wished to transfer his son immediately from the
official burial fields, but he could not do it yet. As soon as possible
it should be done, and he would erect for him a mausoleum fit for a
king. . . . And what good would that do? He would merely be changing the
location of a mass of bones, but his body, his physical semblance--all
that had contributed to the charm of his personality would be mixed
with the earth. The son of the rich Desnoyers would have become an
inseparable part of a poor field in Champagne. Ah, the pity of it
all! And for this, had he worked so hard and so long to accumulate his
millions? . . .
He could never know how Julio’s death had happened. Nobody could tell
him his last words. He was ignorant as to whether his end had been
instantaneous, overwhelming--his idol going out of the world with his
usual gay smile on his lips, or whether he had endured long hours of
agony abandoned in the field, writhing like a reptile or passing through
phases of hellish torment before collapsing in merciful oblivion. He was
also ignorant of just how much was beneath this mound--whether an
entire body discreetly touched by the hand of Death, or an assemblage of
shapeless remnants from the devastating hurricane of steel! . . . And
he would never see him again! And that Julio who had been filling his
thoughts would become simply a memory, a name that would live while
his parents lived, fading away, little by little, after they had
disappeared! . . .
He was startled to hear a moan, a sob. . . . Then he recognized dully
that they were his own, that he had been accompanying his reflections
with groans of grief.
His wife was still at his feet, kneeling, alone with her heartbreak,
fixing her dry eyes on the cross with a gaze of hypnotic tenacity.
. . . There was her son near her knees, lying stretched out as she had
so often watched him when sleeping in his cradle! . . . The father’s
sobs were wringing her heart, too, but with an unbearable depression,
without his wrathful exasperation. And she would never see him again!
. . . Could it be possible! . . .
Chichi’s presence interrupted the despairing thoughts of her parents.
She had run to the automobile, and was returning with an armful of
flowers. She hung a wreath on the cross and placed a great spray of
blossoms at the foot. Then she scattered a shower of petals over the
entire surface of the grave, sadly, intensely, as though performing
a religious rite, accompanying the offering with her outspoken
thoughts--“For you who so loved life for its beauties and pleasures!
. . . for you who knew so well how to make yourself beloved!” . . . And
as her tears fell, her affectionate memories were as full of admiration
as of grief. Had she not been his sister, she would have liked to have
been his beloved.
And having exhausted the rain of flower-petals, she wandered away so as
not to disturb the lamentations of her parents.
Before the uselessness of his bitter plaints, Don Marcelo’s former
dominant character had come to life, raging against destiny.
He looked at the horizon where so often he had imagined the adversary
to be, and clenched his fists in a paroxysm of fury. His disordered mind
believed that it saw the Beast, the Nemesis of humanity. And how much
longer would the evil be allowed to go unpunished? . . .
There was no justice; the world was ruled by blind chance;--all lies,
mere words of consolation in order that mankind might exist unterrified
by the hopeless abandon in which it lived!
It appeared to him that from afar was echoing the gallop of the four
Apocalyptic horsemen, riding rough-shod over all his fellow-creatures.
He saw the strong and brutal giant with the sword of War, the archer
with his repulsive smile, shooting his pestilential arrows, the
bald-headed miser with the scales of Famine, the hard-riding spectre
with the scythe of Death. He recognized them as only divinities,
familiar and terrible-which had made their presence felt by mankind. All
the rest was a dream. The four horsemen were the reality. . . .
Suddenly, by the mysterious process of telepathy, he seemed to read the
thoughts of the one grieving at his feet.
The mother, impelled by her own sorrow, was thinking of that of others.
She, too, was looking toward the distant horizon. There she seemed to
see a procession of the enemy, grieving in the same way as were her
family. She saw Elena with her daughters going in and out among the
burial grounds, seeking a loved one, falling on their knees before a
cross. Ay, this mournful satisfaction, she could never know completely!
It would be forever impossible for her to pass to the opposite side in
search of the other grave, for, even after some time had passed by, she
could never find it. The beloved body of Otto would have disappeared
forever in one of the nameless pits which they had just passed.
“O Lord, why did we ever come to these lands? Why did we not continue
living in the land where we were born?” . . .
Desnoyers, too, uniting his thoughts with hers, was seeing again the
pampas, the immense green plains of the ranch where he had become
acquainted with his wife. Again he could hear the tread of the herds. He
recalled Madariaga on tranquil nights proclaiming, under the splendor of
the stars, the joys of peace, the sacred brotherhood of these people
of most diverse extraction, united by labor, abundance and the lack of
political ambition.
And as his thoughts swung back to the lost son he, too, exclaimed with
his wife, “Oh, why did we ever come? . . .” He, too, with the solidarity
of grief, began to sympathize with those on the other side of the battle
front. They were suffering just as he was; they had lost their sons.
Human grief is the same everywhere.
But then he revolted against his commiseration. Karl had been an
advocate of this war. He was among those who had looked upon war as the
perfect state for mankind, who had prepared it with their provocations.
It was just that War should devour his sons; he ought not to bewail
their loss. . . . But he who had always loved Peace! He who had only one
son, only one! . . . and now he was losing him forever! . . .
He was going to die; he was sure that he was going to die. . . . Only a
few months of life were left in him. And his pitiful, devoted companion
kneeling at his feet, she, too, would soon pass away. She could not long
survive the blow which they had just received. There was nothing further
for them to do; nobody needed them any longer.
Their daughter was thinking only of herself, of founding a separate
home interest--with the hard instinct of independence which separates
children from their parents in order that humanity may continue its work
of renovation.
Julio was the only one who would have prolonged the family, passing
on the name. The Desnoyers had died; his daughter’s children would be
Lacour. . . . All was ended.
Don Marcelo even felt a certain satisfaction in thinking of his
approaching death. More than anything else, he wished to pass out of the
world. He no longer had any curiosity as to the end of this war in which
he had been so interested. Whatever the end might be, it would be sure
to turn out badly. Although the Beast might be mutilated, it would again
come forth years afterward, as the eternal curse of mankind. . . . For
him the only important thing now was that the war had robbed him of his
son. All was gloomy, all was black. The world was going to its ruin.
. . . He was going to rest.
Chichi had clambered up on the hillock which contained, perhaps, more
than their dead. With furrowed brow, she was contemplating the plain.
Graves . . . graves everywhere! The recollection of Julio had already
passed to second place in her mind. She could not bring him back, no
matter how much she might weep.
This vision of the fields of death made her think all the more of the
living. As her eyes roved from side to side, she tried, with her hands,
to keep down the whirling of her wind-tossed skirts. Rene was standing
at the foot of the knoll, and several times after a sweeping glance at
the numberless mounds around them, she looked thoughtfully at him, as
though trying to establish a relationship between her husband and those
below. And he had exposed his life in combats just as these men had
done! . . .
“And you, my poor darling,” she continued aloud. “At this very moment
you, too, might be lying here under a heap of earth with a wooden cross
at your head, just like these poor unfortunates!”
The sub-lieutenant smiled sadly. Yes, it was so.
“Come here; climb up here!” said Chichi impetuously. “I want to give you
something!”
As soon as he approached her, she flung her arms around his neck,
pressed him against the warm softness of her breast, exhaling a perfume
of life and love, and kissed him passionately without a thought of her
brother, without seeing her aged parents grieving below them and longing
to die. . . . And her skirts, freed by the breeze, molded her figure in
the superb sweep of the curves of a Grecian vase.