THE WAR
Père Grandin very soon became a favorite, and not the least devoted of
his friends was Père Antoine, our village priest. The temper of the
two men was most congenial, and the fervor of their love of goodness,
their common age, a certain sweet complacency in the joyousness of life
and in the complete mercy of God, wedded them to each other, and so
into our intimate circle of friends Père Antoine, through the mediation
of Père Grandin was joined, and both father and mother thus grew more
sympathetic and permissive with Gabrielle and myself, and the days
flowed smoothly, and the years followed each other joyously.
I became more and more interested in the work I had undertaken, and,
under the pressure of its laborious needs, with frequent visits to
Paris, found my time admirably occupied, while I was not too busy to
omit the recreations of the home life with our friends. Above all
caressed by my dear sister, whose companionship I now more and more
delighted in, I was growing, perhaps by a premature decline of animal
spirits, into a bachelor, whose inmost heart still kept unimpaired
the image and hope of his first love. That indeed dwelt with me
perpetually, and by the platonic resuscitation of its enjoyment
administered literally to my physical contentment.
There was in my library an English book written by an American
authoress in which I came upon this sentence (the book was sent to me
by a Texan acquaintance after I had left America): "there were hours
when she felt that any bitter personal past--that the recollection
of a single despairing kiss or a blighted love would have filled her
days with happiness. What she craved was the conscious dignity of a
broken heart--some lofty memory that she might rest upon in her hour of
weakness."
The philosophy and the psychology of the paragraph are profoundly true.
That relationship which sex seems inexorably to claim is satisfied
naturally by union, but its omission finds exoneration at least in the
remembrance of disappointment. I grew with each succeeding year more
and more sedately complacent, and a gravity of thought, deepened by a
pleasant melancholy, mingled with the real consolations of religion and
the inseparable charm of my sister and kept me composed and evenly--at
times almost jubilantly--happy. My work was attracting some attention,
and it promised for me continued and congenial employment.
We had many garden parties with Privat Deschat and Capitaine
Bleu-Pistache--growing more feeble now, more silent, with often
unbidden tears springing to his eyes--and Quintado and Père Grandin and
Père Antoine--though he was not so often with us--and the sweet-voiced
and sparkling little orphan girl the captain had adopted--Dora Destin,
a vivacious creature with delicate ways and a keen appetite for tarts
and pastry, and a peculiar shyness that came and went so oddly, that
one instant she might be hiding, as if afraid, and the next leaping
amongst us like a bird. Mother and father had become in the later
years even graver, and a calmness--I dreaded to believe that it meant
some interior failing--descended upon them, that made their ways a
little embarrassing at times. We all noted it. It was a presage, a
shadow. They were silent in company, and once or twice, I thought--this
was just a year before the War--father seemed unconscious of his
surroundings; his mind wandered and he kept saying "_Alfred_, _Alfred_"
to me, as if dazed or grieved. The stealthy hand of Paralysis thus
crept slowly forward towards its unescapable conclusion.
Of course Gabrielle was in our parties, and she had become to me the
concentrated bliss of my living. Her growth into a healthier condition
of mind and body had accompanied an increasing adaptability to company,
and while the reserved manner remained, bestowing upon her a fine
dignity, she was truly sociable and friendly. Gabrielle never quite
outgrew the secretive habit of her thoughtfulness, and her deportment
had been criticized and found fault with, as cold and austere. The
inference would have been cruelly unjust, for never breathed a kinder
and more devotedly good heart than my sister possessed. Her abstracted
way often arose from the custom of religious meditation, and I suppose
too was influenced by that singular supernatural--to call it so--power
that she always felt, but now, so far as I knew, seldom exercised. It
was that power that made of her the MEDIATRIX of the nations.
It was hardly fifteen years after my return that the Grown Prince of
Austria was shot in Sarajevo in Serbia, and that was on the day of
the _Grand Prix de Paris_. I read the news to Gabrielle, and Père
Grandin was there. He had taken dinner with us. How well I remember his
terror-stricken face. He pushed his spectacles up over his high white
forehead, and his bright eyes glowed strangely with a growing fear. His
expressive lips twitched almost as if he were in pain, and he lifted up
his hands in protestation.
"God forbid. The blow has fallen then. The bolt shot. Alfred, this is
the torch that starts the conflagration. The material--all inflammable,
all explosive--has been heaped up between the nations, and, like a
fierce _feu-de-joie_ it will kindle into a wall of fire--_un rideau de
feu_--between the countries. God save France!"
I was incredulous as were at the time most people. I laughed at
the good man's warning, and because he felt half grieved at my
carelessness, half stifled with apprehension as if almost--so he put
it--his ears were filling already with the rumble of cannon, he begged
our pardon for his distress. He put on his crumpled Panama hat and
stood at the doorway, almost irresolute in his trepidation and sadness.
He looked at me quite long.
I recall the moon riding high in white drifting vapors that came in
from Calais--and in the changing light and shade he seemed almost
preternaturally pale and sombre.
"_Mon patrie_," he sighed, "again the ravage, the desolation, the
orphaned, the widowed, the crippled, the sick, the breaking hearts--Ah,
Ah--" and seizing my hands as if in support in his agitation, he wept.
"But Père Grandin" I said, now thoroughly alarmed over his evident
agony, "surely you are too quick, too hasty. Europe is at peace. Its
people are reasonably happy. They will not permit war, and--"
I got no further. The old man was choking with emotion--it was half
wrath, half despair.
"Permit it? Can they stop it? Do they govern? Is it not kings and
princes and royal houses and titled ministers, the tyrants of opinion,
the caprice or the pride or the selfishness of aristocrats, that
control everything?
"See, they prance by us, unseeing, unthoughtful, just living for
themselves, and then when the crash comes--the crash they have prepared
with their silly talk of national honor, national enlargement, national
continuity, racial union, destiny, putting over it all a gorgeous
light of promised glory--just as the heroes in a stage play walk and
stand in the glare of the electric lantern from the gallery, uttering
bombast--when the crash comes, they summon the troops, they dragoon
the people, they empty the banks, they crack the whip of urgency, and,
pointing to the flag, drive us in hecatombs to death.
"No, no, Alfred--the war will come. I have long felt its growing
tremors. We cultivate revenge in our hearts, the Germans cultivate
hate, the Cossacks conquest, the Austrians dynasty, the Englishmen
trade-money, their assumed preeminence, and there have been cabals
and understandings, and a jolt snaps the artifice of our pretended
brotherhood and, with hoof and claw, we fly at each other's throats.
Bah--_vous verrez_."
His rage had restored his strength, and he stumbled away muttering and
gesticulating. I watched him going across the roadway in the light
that danced with the swinging lanterns when the night wind from the
distant shores blew more strongly. The disks and outlines of shadows
imparted to him a peculiar effect of unsteadiness. I half thought he
staggered.
I went back to the library. There I found Gabrielle leaning over the
paper I had flung down at the old man's outburst, and reading of the
assassination. She looked up as I returned, and her face was white, and
in her eyes too I saw an awful consternation. I was impatient with this
foolishness, and expostulated loudly.
"What, Gabrielle, are you too imbecile? Père Grandin is in a panic.
Why? He sees us fighting already--just because the heir to a crown is
shot. It's absurd--_pas vraisemblable_."
"Alfred, I think we should not be too sure. It all looks bad to me,
and--if it comes. What?"
Her eyes dilated with terror.
"Why, Gabrielle, have we not prepared ourselves for just this! Besides
we have allies now--it is not as it was in 1870. There is England,
there is Russia. _Sacre nom_, it will be as when Greek meets Greek--not
_comme les vautours et les pigeons_."
"Ah, Alfred, think of the suffering. O! I have seen suffering in the
hospitals, but a whole nation to be made into one huge hospital. _Mon
Dieu, c'est incroyable!_"
"Wait, Gabrielle. Don't borrow trouble. The world cannot afford war
now. _La Guerre est un peu passée aujourd'hui. Eh?_"
"Alfred, the devil is never sick, and never tired, and never asleep."
That night the news was confirmed. Then came Austria's demands; and
then a chasing hither and thither of couriers; the wires hot with
messages; lights in the embassies all night; rage, dismay; in the
cities the people silent or cheering in the streets; houses closed or
hidden in flags; in the ministries forebodings; feverish despatches;
and almost always hopelessness. Peace was impossible; everywhere the
"mailed fist"--_poing armée_--of the Kaiser. Then came Austria's
declaration of war against Servia on July 29th. The detonation was at
hand which would burst Europe asunder.
Capitaine Bleu-Pistache asked me to go to Paris at once, so did
Père Grandin, so did Privat Deschat, and although father and mother
seemed listless about it I, thoroughly awake now to the disaster, was
impatient to visit the capital, and see how things were going. But
Gabrielle did not wish me to go.
"Alfred, is it not best to hear the news here? You cannot enlist.
Alfred you know that is impossible." She suddenly checked herself. I
knew her thought, and my cheeks grew crimson--my weakness and physical
deficiency now cut me off from service--"No, Alfred it was not that,
not that," her embarrassment brought tears to her eyes. "No not that,
but I am afraid of some danger. Now it is everywhere, an explosion, a
chance shot, a street quarrel. Alfred let me go too."
"Gabrielle I shall be quite safe. I shall be O! so very timid."
She smiled.
"Not so timid alone Alfred, as if I were there too."
"Nonsense Gabrielle, is it not written, _la femme fait le coeur
intrépide_. But really it would be very foolish for you to come. Watch
here. I will be so careful."
She seemed inconsolable, so I promised to write daily.
Père Grandin wished all the papers sent to him, and the captain, the
pictures, illustrations, prints, anything that would _speak_ rather
than _tell_--so he put it. And Privat Deschat whispered, "Alfred Lupin,
you remember my prophecy of more than twenty years ago. I have said
nothing about it--_rien_. But Lupin, if by a chance you can kill a
Dutchman or even come by a dead one bring me his two ears."
"Privat," I almost shouted, "by all means--but Why?"
"Alfred," Deschat tossed his big head this side and that as a mastif
might, coming out of the water, "I would dry them hard, tan them, and
wear them as tassels on my smoking cap, _mon chapeau de fumée_."
Père Antoine was the last man I saw in St. Choiseul. I left for Briois
in the cabriolet in the evening, and with all of my adieus at home
over I had settled back in my seat, in a gloomy meditation upon the
frightful turn in events, and with some compunctions too over my own
indiscreet skepticism as to its possibility. My face was buried in the
nosegay Gabrielle had pressed into my hands--I see her now standing in
the doorway where the light from the hall flung around her the aureole
of its pale illumination--and my thoughts grew each moment more sombre,
when the carriage was abruptly stopped, and I heard the voice of Père
Antoine speaking to the driver.
I recognized the father at once, and delightedly welcomed the
interruption; my own sombreness threatened a positive _malaise_.
"Father, you here? Step into the carriage. I am on my way to Briois,
and then by train to Paris. My friends--yours too--wanted me to go and
I am impatient to watch things nearer the focus."
"Ah, my child" answered the benignant man, now seated beside me, "what
new horrors does it all mean? I tremble for religion. I know the
sneers that will be flung at FAITH. Where, where, they will cry, is
this merciful GOD?--and as the misery rises, their cry will seem to
have its justification. But surely God is in the storm as well as in
the quiet dawn? If the war really breaks out then it leads to larger
things--all in the scheme and providence of the Almighty."
"Father we must hope and pray that the worst cannot happen."
"Yes my son, but we must be also submissive. We must not fix in our
prayers the stubbornness of expectation. What comes we must accept as
the work of God. There can be no reservations in our acknowledgment of
the immediate and uninterrupted immanence of the divine POWER. Let us
simply trust."
I murmured disheartedly:
_Ici tout meurt, la fleur, l'été,
La jeunesse et la vie._
The good man pressed my hands, and as we drew near to the lights in the
station I saw his pained and overflowing eyes.
* * * * *
I came into Paris at the Gare d'Orsay on August first. Mobilization
began the next day and when I reached the Place de l'Opéra crowds of
young men were marching in the streets, crying, almost shrieking,
"_Vive la France_." Girls along the balconies and from the windows
showered flowers on them. In other streets groups of young men were
singing the Marseillaise, and waving the flags of France and Russia
and England. It was fiercely exciting, and when at last my eagerness
broke all restraint I joined some of them--my limp was no hindrance
there--and almost forgot my destination, drinking in the elixir of
patriotism for a few delirious moments.
It was the next day (August third) that I hurried to my
publisher's--Avenue de l'Alma--and found him with his family about him,
disordered in dress, and dismally grave. It was M. Albert Yvette. He
welcomed me with effusion, and resolved to take me to the Chamber of
Deputies where the premier M. Viviani would speak on the situation.
That would be the next day, and for the moment we would go over some
copy as a temporary distraction from the mind-blighting crisis which
had overcome the country. M. Yvette had four sons, two of whom had
already joined the colors, and three exquisite daughters, two young
girls, and the third a married woman, who in this extremity had
united her family with her father's, and added to his own overflowing
_famille_ three boys--_joufflus et bruants_--so that there was no lack
of excitement; conversation and predictions too.
On August first Jaures the socialist leader had been assassinated, and
yet this monstrous assault failed to arouse national dissension. Yvette
said it was significant. France was as one man and an undivided nation
would frustrate the enemy.
We all agreed, but the coming test promised to be a severe one. The
news that came in from the advancing Germans was not welcome, and
showed the organization of a powerful attack. Yvette was confident
that even the "spray," as he termed it, of the Teutonic wave would not
reach us. I did not think so. Paris was in danger. Madame Yvette became
tremulous and the daughters were in tears. Then came the news, flashed
through the streets as if by a magnetic sympathy, answering the popular
suspense, that England had declared war upon Germany. This was most
cheering, and the days before France seemed less threatening.
We attended the session of the Chamber of Deputies. It was inspiring.
The English and Russian ambassadors sat together, and the Chamber
awaited the proceedings in complete silence. A tribute to the dead
socialist Jaures was delivered by M. Paul Deschanel. It was eloquent,
and the resounding shout that greeted the declaration that with France
"there are no more adversaries; there are only Frenchmen," thrilled
everyone present by its vociferous unanimity. Then followed the speech
of the Premier M. Viviani, who read his address, punctuated by repeated
cries of "_Vive la France_," and when he concluded with the phrase,
uttered in a tone of metallic defiance, "We are without reproach. We
shall be without fear," the Chamber went mad, and the walls sent back
the billows of sound, as the air above the heads of the deputies became
white with waving handkerchiefs and papers.
Yvette was overcome with his feelings, and I led him from the room
trembling with emotion.
The next day Yvette appeared greatly refreshed, and suggested almost
jocosely that we should together "_parcourir la ville_." I gladly
assented. I craved this intimacy with the dramatic incidents of the
moment, and was only too anxious to record some vivid impression of the
city under this terrifying menace. That was August sixth, and we walked
or rode all of the day. At night Paris was silent and dark, the streets
almost deserted, and the soldiery watchful.
The dressmakers and milliners on the Rue de la Paix--the irony of the
name grimly diverted us--were almost all shut up, and the street was a
long dull succession of iron shutters. We saw women on the street cars
(tramways). Along the Boulevard des Capucines our eyes were astonished
by a drove of a hundred cows being driven through that avenue; the
papers were sold in immense numbers, and the lively trade in them
brought boys, girls, women, and old men from the suburbs to share in
the momentary activity. Everywhere we saw the momentous enthusiasm and
determination of the people, and any appearance of troops entrained for
the frontier started the wildest applause.
Paris has been for an instant stunned by the spell of a terrible
apprehension, that quickly succumbed to a returning wave of excited,
indignant, overwhelming patriotism. I felt that the actual danger as a
fear vanished in the tremendous reaction of rage and resolution. Its
industries are crippled, its hilarity suppressed, and the many hued
veil of joy and enjoyment that enveloped it like a cloud, has been torn
aside, only to reveal the underlying hardihood and substance of manhood
and devotion.
It looked finely, but I could not now shake off the terror of my
mind over the Germanic rush onward. I intuitively felt that their
devastating passage southward from Belgium would stretch far into
France, and if arrested at all must be parried or flung back by
the concentrated energy of the French and English armies, before
its irresistible massiveness assumed such proportions as to become
immovable and impregnable. I began to fear for St. Choiseul, and
was anxious to return. M. Yvette pressed me to remain a few days
longer, and as I had despatched all of my commissions--papers to
Privat Deschat, and pictures to the captain, and letters every day to
Gabrielle and Père Antoine--I assented.
Each succeeding day manifested the overturn in the domestic and routine
days of the great city. The morning breakfast rolls had gone because
the bakers are with the army, and families are supplied only with
_boulot_ and _demi-fendu_, but the supply is irregular, and the girls
go after both the bread and the milk. In a hundred ways the national
emergency is felt in the family, apart from the departure of sons,
and the even retinue of service has been disarranged, with amusing
consequences. Lines were formed before the provision shops in the
mornings.
On August eighth good news was received, and the quickly revived
spirits of the city became apparent in the crowded streets, with a
noticeable resumption of gayety. I went to church, leaving the Yvettes
home. The church was filled to repletion, and there was a large
proportion of men. The service was well rendered, and the preacher
touched upon the one thing uppermost in all minds, and admonished
faith, courage, and prayer. As the congregation emerged from the
portals of the church, the Marseillaise was heard from a near-by
street, and, like a spark conveyed to combustibles, the surging mass
broke out with song. It was a convulsion of fervor that made one almost
quail before its immense intensity.
I took my leave of the Yvettes, who had been charmingly pleasant to
me in their great home, and where the enormous sadness was sensibly
softened by their amiability and courage. That was August fifteenth.
The morning was dark with heavy thunderstorms, and the rain fell
continuously. In the large dining room of the Yvettes, we gathered at
a late breakfast--_une affaire de semi-cuisine à midi_--and, as the
chandeliers were lighted and candles graced the side-board, and the
mantel, and the high square _étagères_, it took on the expression of an
"occasion." M. Yvette said it was my valedictory. I hardly knew what he
meant, but this I know, that that was the last time I saw Yvette, or
any of his splendid family. Yvette died at Bordeaux after the official
evacuation of Paris; his two boys were killed at the battle of the
Marne, and then the widow and the unmarried daughters left the mansion
in the Avenue de l'Alma and lived with Madame Aubray, the married
daughter. I have never seen any of them since.
We all tried to be cheerful, but the incessant marching of troops in
the city during the last three days occurred to some of us as ominous
of the encroaching and steadily moving Teuton. The conversation was
most disingenuous, touching upon almost anything but the immediate
preoccupations of our minds, and the apparent social _abandon_ masked
the uneasy sense of danger. The only remark that related to the war
was one by myself, to the purpose that the superbly furnished table
offered no suggestions of the possibility of Paris being starved--which
perhaps under the circumstances was a little _maladroit_--and the story
that Madame Aubray repeated, that a Prussian officer speaking French
perfectly, among a group of prisoners at Versailles, met some French
reservists, who passed the convoy singing the Marseillaise, and he
turned to his guard and quickly remarked, "_What a disillusion awaits
us!_"
M. Yvette accompanied me to the train at the Gare du Nord, and as I
bade him "Farewell," he referred to the familiar and deep impression
made upon everyone of the profound unity of the people, telling me that
the Catholic Abbé Marcadé whose services at Le Bourget had attracted so
much praise, had dined with the officers of the regiment and with the
socialist mayor of the commune. He added, "I tell you, M. Lupin, the
cementation of France is extraordinary. National cohesion has made us
incompressible."
"Ah," I answered as I stepped into the almost empty train, "remember,
M. Yvette, there is also such a calamity as pulverization."
My spirits had undergone a complete change since my talk with Père
Grandin, and a gnawing feeling of hopelessness tormented me.
But how inexpressibly sweet it all was at St. Choiseul, and in the
lovely and beloved country about it, as I walked along the familiar
road from Briois, with the scent of the meadows, slowly ripening and
withering at the summer's close; caught the long glimpses of the white
road--lit now only by the light of the stars--indistinctly heaped,
under the straight poplars, with the falling leaves, and then after the
little stone bridge was passed with the liquid eyes of the stars gazing
up to me as if from depthless nether worlds in the deep pools, I saw
the massed houses of our village with hospitable lights shining from
their windows. The urgent smell of flowers breathed from its walled
gardens, and I prayed aloud that the hand of the destroyer or the cruel
fury of bomb and shell and shrapnel might not invade the entrancing
spot. The fresh odors--roses, heliotrope, verbena--enriched with an
added effluence from the wet ground, bestowed upon the place a sort of
consecration of beauty, peace, and sweetness.
I passed Privat Deschat's, and there was no light in the upper story
window where he often read late into the night. I instantly caught
sight of our home, where the windows of the library sent out so bright
a light, that as I stood before the gate I could distinguish its
occupants. Lights in other rooms shone out more timidly. The old home
had doubtless gathered our group of friends, and it was an auspicious
moment for me to enter. I raised the knocker and let it fall with a
rub-a-dub-dub that I invariably used. I heard the running footsteps
within, and the door flew open and I fell into the arms of Gabrielle.
"Alfred, Alfred. How good. O! We are glad to see you. And our friends
are here, and we are all wild with anxiety to know what is being done;
what is happening. Come, come," and the impatient creature pulled me
into the now filled doorway of the library, where one by the other
stood father and mother, Père Antoine, Père Grandin, the captain, and
Privat Deschat, with Dora Destin, the little circle of our intimates,
all peering with wide-open eyes at me as the bearer of new tidings, new
hopes perhaps.
An embrace of mother and father and of the _Capitaine_, a hearty
hand-shake of Père Grandin and Père Antoine, of good Privat Deschat,
and an unreluctant kiss from the pretty Dora brought me well into the
room.
"Where," I said, "is Quintado?"
"O! Monsieur Lupin," it was the half wailing voice of Dora, "He has
gone to the regiment and is on his way to the front."
I looked intently at the half weeping child, and discovered a budding
romance there.
"Come, come, Alfred," said the captain. "Tell us everything. Are there
troops enough? Where are the robbers? We hear they are advancing along
by Maubeuge in a broad front."
"And Alfred," it was the voice of Père Antoine, "the hospitals and the
aids to the injured. Are they in good hands?"
"Monsieur Lupin," now it was Père Grandin, "is the Ministry together?
Are we in safe hands under Viviani and Delcassé? Is Paris well guarded,
and how goes the English alliance? Belgium is wiped out. Do the
Russians make headway?"
I expected to hear next the shrill insistent voice of Privat Deschat,
but as I turned towards him with a smile of interrogation, I saw he had
withdrawn, and was moodily studying the ceiling.
"Alfred, will our credit be maintained? It is clear that the expense of
the support of the armies, the purchase of stores, of munitions, the
care of the wounded, will be almost ruinous. Does anyone predict how
long the war will last? What are _rentes_ selling at?" It was my father
who put this practical aspect of the case before me.
"But Alfred, what can we do? Everyone must help. Could I nurse? I would
go gladly." I knew that sweet voice and I felt how the devoted heart
which gave it utterance would sacrifice herself to the last atom of her
body in the cause. It was Gabrielle.
"Alfred, you are hungry and tired. Hortense and Julie have put up
for you a good dinner--the things you like, _un ragout de viande
de saucisse avec les pommes de terres et les girofles_, all _bien
melée_." Ah, that was the mother's voice, and there behind her at the
library entrance shone the honest face of Hortense, brimming full of
admiration, and the little curious _petite visage_ of Julie at her
side, also admiring.
"Come, let us all go together with him in the dining room and sit
around and hear him," said the disconsolate Dora.
Mother objected to that proposal and so I was whisked off under
apologies, and with the strictest promise that I would be back in as
short a time as possible, and then we would use up the night in talk
and confidences, with mother's red wine and _les gateaux aux amandes_
to loosen our tongues.
In our old dining room under the stiff surveillance of our over-painted
ancestors, with mother opposite to me, and Hortense bustling in every
minute, with new contributions of _les bonnes bouches_, I sat enjoying
to the uttermost the good dinner, while I told mother of the Yvettes,
and of Paris, of the soldiers, the anticipated invasion of the Germans,
and how the high and low, the rich and the poor, the learned and the
ignorant, were standing shoulder to shoulder in the immense effort to
preserve _la patrie_!
Ah! that was a famous night! How we all talked, and how I rehearsed
all I had seen, all I had heard, all that I thought and, all that
Yvette heard, and saw, and thought too. How defiant was the captain,
how grieving the Père Antoine--who half thought that the threatened
death of the Pope might stop the war!--how impatient Père Grandin,
how attentive and silent was Gabrielle--waiting for them all to go to
besiege me with questions and offers--and how we all became silent,
stifled with a fearful dread, when the invasion of the Huns was thought
of, as reaching St. Choiseul. I argued against that likelihood. The
wish was indeed then the father to the thought.
"The tide of approach will be more to the north and east, and if the
worst happens before our men can check the deluge, the enemy's hordes
will sweep into the Paris environs directly from the east and north.
Our position north-west of Paris must protect us for some time, but--of
course there are possibilities."
"It can't be done," the old captain strode into the centre of the
room and swung round to us as he made his point clear. "It can't be
done--_c'est impossible_. Why? Because with each retreat our armies are
rolled up into thicker lines, and the Germans must broaden their wings
to save themselves from being out-flanked and to protect their lines
of retreat and supply. It can't be done--_c'est impossible. Je vous le
dit._"
Perhaps we were not persuaded--so many things might happen--but we all
felt better by making up our minds that St. Choiseul was rather out of
the path of danger. Then we went over plans to help, and the suggestion
was made by Père Antoine that I speak at the church house, and all of
St. Choiseul and Briois and the country-side around be assembled there,
and a committee be formed, and work started to gather and make material
for the hospitals, the Red Cross missions, and to send gifts and warm
underwear to the camps.
Now it was surprising, and it gave me an almost unpleasant shock
of disillusionment, that throughout the night Privat Deschat
had said nothing--_absolument_. Glances fell upon him from the
company, as if his voice in the talk would be welcomed, and yet,
listening with an absorbed earnestness, he "never opened his mouth"
(_Americain_)--_jamais il ouvrait son bouche_--and it produced the
disagreeable effect of alienation, of indifference. It could not be
believed. Ah--God be blessed--that cloud of doubt was quite dissolved.
About, as the morning sent its streaks of red over the east, and a
fresher scent invaded us from the windows, Privat Deschat stood up
at the corner of the group, where he had been sitting in his, to us,
unfathomable taciturnity, and in a low voice, his big face moving with
unconcealed emotion said these words. It closed our council:
"You wonder that I have kept silent. It seems to you a treachery. It
is not. I can say but little. I know nothing. My heart beats with
yours, with that of France, but neither your hearts nor the noble
heart of France will force conclusions in this matter. Fate," he cast
a momentary amused glance at Père Antoine, "is not concerned with the
wishes of nations, any more than with the wishes of men and women. But
after all Fate can be COERCED," he spoke the word with a simulated cry
of anguish--it made me start. "Force and Strength and Devotion can
put Fate to flight. You may not believe it, because Fate, or the way
things go, is to you," he paused, as weighing the possibility of his
inclusion, "_all_--the will of God. It may be in the meanings of Fate
to destroy France, but our _FAITH in France_--and that means _Force_
and _Strength_ and _Devotion_ will put that _Fate to flight_."