The General Court-Martial of Inquiry into the conduct of the junior
Staff-officer left in command of the half-battalion of infantry
detailed to guard the Ministry of Foreign Affairs upon a day to be
marked with red upon the calendar, was held at the Barracks of the
999th in the Rue de l’Assyrie, between the official hours of Eight in
the morning and Four in the afternoon.
One may suppose the pomp and solemnity of the affair, the portals
guarded by sentries, Monsieur the Judge-Advocate and his subordinates
in official robes, Monsieur the President and other stately
cock-hated, plumed, bewigged personages of the General Staff, with
the various officers convened as witnesses, solemnly filing in behind
the Provost-Marshal and his guard--taking their seats, right and
left according to rank, at the =T=-shaped arrangement of tables,
covered with the significant Green Cloth; everyone arrayed in full
Review-uniform, making the whitewashed mess-hall brilliant as a garden
of flaunting summer flowers.
They took the votes according to the time-honored custom, beginning
with the youngest person present. The Provost-Marshal and his merry men
brought the Prisoner in.
Dunoisse, without sword or sash, went calmly to the place of dread at
the bottom of the leg of the =T= of tables. Reporters for the Press
were accommodated with a bench behind a board on trestles under the
high window at the bottom of the hall. The Orders and Warrants were
read, with clearing of throats and official hawking. And at each pause,
from a balcony high up upon the plain bare wall behind the President’s
table, came the silken frou-frou of ladies’ dresses and the rustling of
ribbons and bonnet-plumes. And one heart among all those that throbbed
there, under its covering of silken velvet and sable-fur, was sick with
hidden apprehension and cold with secret dread.
There was no challenge on the part of the accused officer when the
President-General asked the question: “Do you object to be tried by
me or any of these officers whose names you have heard?” He bowed and
replied, “No!”.... He had no suspicion of prejudice or malice lurking
under any uniform present. And then, erect, in a rigid attitude of
respect and attentive deference, the Prisoner listened to the reading
of the Charge.
This occupied time, the process of Courts-Martial very successfully
emulating the pompous prolixity of tribunals of the Civil kind. And
while the python-periods dragged their tortuous length from sheet to
sheet of official paper, Dunoisse found himself mentally traveling
back to those early days at the Royal School of Technical Military
Instruction, when de Moulny was Redskin’s hero and faithful Achates,
Mentor and Admirable Crichton all rolled into one. And butt on
occasions, it is to be added. For sometimes it is sweet to laugh at one
you most sincerely love.
Thinking thus, he began to realize how in his loneliness he had clung
to the memory of the old affection. How always,--always he had been
hoping that the barriers of estrangement and silence might be broken
down one day. That Alain might yet come to him with outstretched, eager
hand, saying:
“I have withheld my friendship all these years, that I might be able
to give you my esteem and my admiration. You have been tried by me as
no friend was ever yet tried, tested to the utmost, and proved as none
has ever been proved before you.... Was it not worth while to bear
something to earn such praise from me?”
And now Dunoisse saw the god of his old boyish, innocent idolatry
stripped of the false jewels and tawdry robes that had adorned him,
his nimbus of gilt plaster knocked away. He began to understand how
he, Hector Dunoisse, had been his whole life long the slave, and tool,
and puppet, and victim of this cold, arrogant, dominating nature;
and resentment glowed in him, scorching up the last green blade of
lingering kindness; and hatred leaped up in a little flickering tongue
of greenish flame, soon to become a raging prairie-fire of vengeance,
traveling with the speed of the wind that urged it on.
He clenched his hands and set his teeth, remembering his long arrears
of injuries. He saw himself economizing uniforms, doing without
necessaries and comforts, slaving in spare hours to earn the money to
buy books and instruments--bound and fettered always by that egregious
vow.... Then a conviction started through him like the discharge from
an electric battery. Malice was the missing key-word of the cipher that
had been so difficult to read.
Revenge for the spoiled career had prompted everything. No pleasure
foregone, luxury denied, but had paid off some item of the old score
that had been carved with the end of the broken fencing-foil. That the
false step had been deliberately planned, de Moulny must have always
believed. He had told the story everywhere. And the taint of that
supposed treachery had always clung about Dunoisse’s footsteps. It had
followed him through life.
Now he lifted up those glittering black eyes of his to the balcony
where bonnet-plumes were nodding as their wearers whispered of him....
And he met the eyes of Henriette de Roux.
Those beautiful eyes!... Their owner had seemed to him upon that first
night of their meeting a star and a goddess--something to dream of and
worship from a long way off.
But before gray dawn had peeped in between the window-curtains upon
the whirling crowd of weary, hot-eyed dancers, he had learned to know
her better. The star was no celestial sphere, but an earthly planet,
glowing with fierce volcanic fires; the dazzling robe of the divinity,
now that she had descended from her pedestal, was seen to be stained
with frailties of the human kind. But brought within reach, she was not
less desirable. He thrilled at the recollection of that night in the
gray boudoir.
Ah! those sweet lips that mingled Truth and Falsehood in such maddening
philters! Ah! those bewitching eyes, how they promised, and coaxed, and
cajoled! A shudder went through the man. For he saw again, more clearly
by their light, the pleasant pathway that went winding downwards
between banks of gorgeous, poison-breathing flowers. And a soft,
insinuating voice seemed whispering, prompting; telling him that with
a tithe of the great sum of money that had lain growing for so many
years at Rothschild’s, could be purchased the sweet, heady vengeance
that is wreaked in the satisfaction of desire.
And then ... he became aware that the labyrinthine verbosities of the
Charge had reached a final period, and that Monsieur the Judge-Advocate
had a question to ask.
“Are you, Lieutenant Hector-Marie-Aymon von Widinitz-Dunoisse,
Certificated of the General Staff, and Attached as Assistant-Adjutant
to the 999th Regiment of the Line, Guilty or Not Guilty of the Charge
brought against you, and which I have now read in the hearing of this
Court?”
The reply left little excuse for prolonged investigations. The
arraigned officer simply said:
“Monsieur, I gave the order to fire. I believed it necessary. I have
no excuse to offer--no plea to make. I submit myself absolutely to the
jurisdiction of the Court.”
Which Court, at the end of this First Assembly, declined to continue
the proceedings, the prisoner having acted with a certain degree
of rashness, yet with the very best intentions, in the face of an
emergency of the gravest kind. And, furthermore, having been severely
reprimanded in orders by his Colonel; and placed in and kept under
close arrest by the said commander, the said Court did ultimately find
Further Proceedings under the circumstances would be Unjustifiable, and
recommended that the said Prisoner be immediately Released, the charge
against him Not Having Been Proved.
And the grave farce was ended--the solemn jest played out, amidst
the rustling of draperies, and the nodding of bonnet-plumes, and the
clapping of little kid-covered hands up in the gallery where the Band
played on guest-nights, and where at least one heart beat with infinite
relief.
Amidst a universal rising, saluting, putting on of plumed cocked hats
and white gloves, after official congratulations and some bowings and
hand-shakings, the Assistant-Adjutant, _plus_ his sash and sword, was
free to go about his business, without that haunting sense of being a
marked man, under ban of the Second Republic of France. And Dunoisse
put on his shako and went out into the sanded barrack-yard, walking
with the step of the free. And an orderly of the Colonel’s presently
brought him a little lilac note, addressed in violet ink, in the small,
clear character, exhaling a perfume that had haunted him, of late,
persistently. And the little lilac note said:
“_Come!_”