WAR.
“Since all that I can ever do for thee
Is to do nothing, may'st thou never see,
Never divine, the all that nothing costeth me!”
It is for kings to declare war, for nations to fight and pay. Napoleon
III declared war against Russia, and France fought side by side with
England in the Crimea, not because the gayest and most tragic of nations
had aught to gain, but to ensure an upstart emperor a place among the
monarchs of Europe. And that strange alliance was merely one move in a
long game played by a consummate intriguer--a game which began
disastrously at Boulogne and ended disastrously at Sedan, and yet was the
most daring and brilliant feat of European statesmanship that has been
carried out since the adventurer's great uncle went to St. Helena.
But no one knows why in July, 1870, Napoleon III declared war against
Germany. The secret of the greatest war of modern times lies buried in
the Imperial mausoleum at Frognal.
There is a sort of surprise which is caused by the sudden arrival of the
long expected, and Germany experienced it in that hot midsummer, for
there seemed to be no reason why war should break out at the moment.
Shortly before, the Spanish Government had offered the crown to the
hereditary Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern, and France, ever ready to see
a grievance, found herself suited. But the hereditary prince declined
that throne, and the incident seemed about to close. Then quite suddenly
France made a demand, with reference to any possible recurrence of the
same question, which Germany could not be expected to grant. It was an
odd demand to make, and in a flash of thought the great German chancellor
saw that this meant war. Perhaps he had been waiting for it. At all
events, he was prepared for it, as were the silent soldier, von Roon, and
the gentle tactician, von Moltke. These gentlemen were away for a
holiday, but they returned, and, as history tells, had merely to fill in
a few dates on already prepared documents.
If France was not ready she thought herself so, and was at all events
willing. Nay, she was so eager that she shouted when she should have held
her tongue. And who shall say what the schemer of the Tuileries thought
of it all behind that pleasant smile, those dull and sphinx-like eyes? He
had always believed in his star, had always known that he was destined to
be great; and now perhaps he knew that his star was waning--that the
greatness was past. He made his preparations quietly. He was never a
flustered man, this nephew of the greatest genius the world has seen. Did
he not sit three months later in front of a cottage at Donchery and
impassively smoke cigarette after cigarette while waiting for Otto von
Bismarck? He was a fatalist.
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on.”
And it must be remembered to his credit that he asked no man's pity--a
request as foolish to make for a fallen emperor as for the ordinary man
who has, for instance, married in haste, and is given the leisure of a
whole lifetime in which to repent. For the human heart is incapable of
bestowing unadulterated pity: there must be some contempt in it. If the
fall of Napoleon III was great, let it be remembered that few place
themselves by their own exertions in a position to fall at all.
The declaration of war was, on the whole, acclaimed in France; for
Frenchmen are, above all men, soldiers. Does not the whole world use
French terms in the technicalities of warfare? The majority received the
news as Lory de Vasselot received it. For a time he could only think that
this was a great and glorious moment in his life. He hurried in to tell
his father, but the count failed to rise to the occasion.
“War!” he said. “Yes; there have been many in my time. They have not
affected me--or my carnations.”
“And I go to it to-night,” announced Lory, watching his father with eyes
suddenly grave and anxious.
“Ah!” said the count, and made no farther comment.
Then, without pausing to consider his own motives, Lory hurried up to the
Casa Perucca to tell the ladies there his great news. He must, it seemed,
tell somebody, and he knew no one else within reach, except perhaps the
Abbé Susini, who did not pretend to be a Frenchman.
“Is it peace?” asked Mademoiselle Brun, who, having seen him climbing the
steep slope in the glaring sunshine, was waiting for him by the open
side-door when he arrived there.
He took her withered hand, and bowed over it as gallantly as if it had
been soft and young.
“What do you mean?” he asked, looking at her curiously.
“Well, it seems that the Casa Perucca and the Château de Vasselot are not
on visiting terms. We only call on each other with a gun.”
“It is odd that you should have asked me that,” said Lory, “for it is not
peace, but war.”
And as he looked at her, her face hardened, her steady eyes wavered for
once.
“Ah!” she said, her hands dropping sharply against her dingy black dress
in a gesture of despair. “Again!”
“Yes, mademoiselle,” answered Lory, gently; for he had a quick intuition,
and knew at a glance that war must have hurt this woman at one time of
her life.
She stood for a moment tapping the ground with her foot, looking
reflectively across the valley.
“Assuredly,” she said, “Frenchwomen must be the bravest women in the
world, or else there would never be a light heart in the whole country.
Come, let us go in and tell Denise. It is Germany, I suppose?”
“Yes, mademoiselle. They have long wanted it, and we are obliging them at
last. You look grave. It is not bad news I bring you, but good.”
“Women like soldiers, but they hate war,” said mademoiselle, and walked
on slowly in silence.
After a pause, she turned and looked at him as if she were going to ask
him a question, but checked herself.
“I almost did a foolish thing,” she explained, seeing his glance of
surprise. “I was going to ask you if you were going?”
“Ah, yes, I am going,” he answered, with a laugh and a keen glance of
excitement. “War is a necessary evil, mademoiselle, and assists
promotion. Why should you hate it?”
“Because we cannot interfere in it,” replied Mademoiselle Brun, with a
snap of the lips. “We shall find Denise in the garden to the north of the
house, picking green beans, Monsieur le Comte,” continued Mademoiselle
Brun, with a glance in his direction.
“Then I shall have time to help with the beans before I go to the war,”
answered Lory; and they walked on in silence.
The garden was but half cultivated--a luxuriant thicket of fruit and
weed, of trailing vine and wild clematis. The air of it was heavy with a
hundred scents, and, in the shade, was cool, and of a mossy odour rarely
found in Southern seas.
They did not see Denise at first, and then suddenly she emerged at the
other end of the weed-grown path where they stood. Lory hurried forward,
hat in hand, and perceived that Denise made a movement, as if to go back
into the shadow, which was immediately restrained.
Mademoiselle Brun did not follow Lory, but turned back towards the house.
“If they must quarrel,” she said to herself, “they may do it without my
assistance.”
And Denise seemed, indeed, ready to fall out with her neighbour, for she
came towards him with heightened colour and a flash of annoyance in her
eyes.
“I am sorry they put you to the trouble of coming out here,” she said.
“Why, mademoiselle? Because I find you picking green beans?”
“No; not that. But one has one's pride. This is my garden. I keep it!
Look at it!” And she waved her hand with a gesture of contempt.
De Vasselot looked gravely round him. Then, after a pause, he made a
movement of the deepest despair.
“Yes, mademoiselle,” he said, with a great sigh, “it is a wilderness.”
“And now you are laughing at me.”
“I, mademoiselle?” And he faced her tragic eyes.
“You think I am a woman.”
De Vasselot spread out his hands in deprecation, as if, this time, she
had hit the mark.
“Yes,” he said slowly.
“I mean you think we are only capable of wearing pretty clothes and
listening to pretty speeches, and that anything else is beyond our grasp
altogether.”
“Nothing in the world, mademoiselle, is beyond your grasp, except”--he
paused, and looked round him--“except a spade, perhaps, and that is what
this garden wants.”
They were very grave about it, and sat down on a rough seat built by
Mattei Perucca, who had come there in the hot weather.
“Then what is to be done?” said Denise, simply.
For the French--the most intellectually subtle people of the world--have
a certain odd simplicity which seems to have survived all the changes and
chances of monarchy, republic, and empire.
“I do not quite know. Have you not a man?”
“I have nobody, except a decrepit old man, who is half an imbecile,” said
Denise, with a short laugh. “I get my provisions surreptitiously by the
hand of Madame Andrei. No one else comes near the Casa. We are in a state
of siege. I dare not go into Olmeta; but I am holding on because you
advised me not to sell.”
“I, mademoiselle?”
“Yes; in Paris. Have you forgotten?”
“No,” answered Lory, slowly--“no; I have not forgotten. But no one takes
my advice--indeed, no one asks it--except about a horse. They think I
know about a horse.” And Lory smiled to himself at the thought of his
proud position.
“But you surely meant what you said?” asked Denise.
“Oh yes. But you honour me too much by taking my opinion thus seriously
without question, mademoiselle.”
Denise was looking at him with her clear, searching eyes, rather veiled
by a suggestion of disappointment.
“I thought--I thought you seemed so decided, so sure of your own
opinion,” she said doubtfully.
De Vasselot was silent for a moment, then he turned to her quickly,
impulsively, confidentially.
“Listen,” he said. “I will tell you the truth. I said 'Don't sell.' I say
'Don't sell' still. And I have not a shred of reason for doing so.
There!”
Denise was not a person who was easily led. She laughed at the stern,
strong Mademoiselle Brun to her face, and treated her opinion with a gay
contempt. She had never yet been led.
“No,” she said, and seemed ready to dispense with reasons. “You will not
sell, yourself?” she said, after a pause.
“No; I cannot sell,” he said quickly; and she remembered his answer long
afterwards.
After a pause he explained farther.
“I tell you frankly,” he said earnestly, for he was always either very
earnest or very gay--“I tell you frankly, when we both received an offer
to buy, I thought there must be some reason why the places are worth
buying, but I have found none.”
He paused, and, looking round, remembered that this also was his, and did
not belong to Denise at all, who claimed it, and held it with such a high
hand.
“As Corsica at present stands, Perucca and Vasselot are valueless,
mademoiselle, I claim the honour of being in the same boat with you. And
if the empire falls--_bonjour la paix!_”
And he sketched a grand upheaval with a wave of his two hands in the air.
“But why should the empire fall?” asked Denise, sharply.
“Ah, but I have the head of a sparrow!” cried Lory, and he smote himself
grievously on the forehead. “I forgot to tell you the very thing that I
came to tell you. Which is odd, for until I came into this garden I could
think of nothing else. I was ready to shout it to the trees. War has been
declared, mademoiselle.”
“War!” said Denise; and she drew in one whistling breath through her
teeth, as one may who has been burnt by contact with heated metal, and
sat looking straight in front of her. “When do you go, Monsieur le
Comte?” she asked, in a steady voice, after a moment.
“To-night.”
He rose, and stood before her, looking at the tangled garden with a
frown.
“Ah!” he said, with a sudden laugh, “if the emperor had only consulted
me, he would not have done it just yet. I want to go, of course, for I am
a soldier. But I do not want to go now. I should have liked to see things
more settled, here in Olmeta. If the empire falls, mademoiselle, you must
return to France; remember that. I should have liked to have offered you
my poor assistance; but I cannot--I must go. There are others, however.
There is Mademoiselle Brun, with a man's heart in that little body. And
there is the Abbé Susini. Yes; you can trust him as you can trust a
little English fighting terrier. Tell him----No; I will tell him. He is a
Vasselot, mademoiselle, but I shall make him a Perucca.”
He held out his hand gaily to say good-bye.
“And--stay! Will you write to me if you want me, mademoiselle? I may be
able to get to you.”
Denise did not answer for a moment. Then she looked him straight in the
eyes, as was her wont with men and women alike.
“Yes,” she said.
A few minutes later, Mademoiselle Brun came into the garden. She looked
round but saw no one. Approaching the spot where she had left Denise, she
found the basket with a few beans in it, and Denise's gloves lying there.
She knew that Lory had gone, but still she could see Denise nowhere.
There were a hundred places in the garden where any who did not wish to
be discovered could find concealment.
Mademoiselle Brun took up the basket and continued to pick the French
beans.
“My poor child! my poor child!” she muttered twice, with a hard face.