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THE DRUMS OF WAR
by
H. DE VERE STACPOOLE
Author of "The Blue Lagoon," "Garryowen,"
"The Pools of Silence," etc.
[Illustration: Logo]
New York
Duffield & Company
1910
Copyright, 1910, by
Duffield & Company
The Premier Press
New York
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE ROAD TO FRANKFORT 1
II. VON LICHTENBERG 6
III. "I HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE" 14
IV. ELOISE 18
V. I SEE MYSELF, NOT KNOWING 24
VI. LITTLE CARL 31
VII. THE MAN IN ARMOUR 37
VIII. THE HUNTING-SONG 41
IX. THE FAIRY TALE 46
X. THE DEATH OF VOGEL 57
XI. THE DUEL IN THE WOODS 60
XII. WE RETURN HOME 69
XIII. I FALL INTO DISGRACE 73
XIV. THE RUINED ONES 82
XV. THE PAVILION OF SALUCE 89
XVI. THE VICOMTE 96
PART II
XVII. A DÉJEÛNER AT THE CAFÉ DE PARIS 103
XVIII. MY FIRST NIGHT IN PARIS 113
XIX. MY FIRST NIGHT IN PARIS (_Continued_) 121
XX. WHEN IT IS MAY 133
XXI. "O YOUTH, WHAT A STAR THOU ART!" 138
XXII. A POLITICAL RECEPTION 144
XXIII. FÊTE CHAMPÊTRE 154
XXIV. LA PEROUSE 159
XXV. FRANZIUS MEETS ELOISE 165
XXVI. THE TURRET ROOM 173
XXVII. REMORSE 179
XXVIII. THE OLD COAT 185
XXIX. IN THE SUNK GARDEN 192
XXX. THE MARRIAGE OF ELOISE 197
PART III
XXXI. THE BALL 203
XXXII. TRYING TO ESCAPE FROM FATE 212
XXXIII. THE OVERTURE TO "UNDINE" 222
XXXIV. PREPARING FOR THE DUEL 231
XXXV. A LESSON WITH THE FOILS 238
XXXVI. THE DUEL 253
XXXVII. MARGARET 261
XXXVIII. THE DRUMS OF WAR 273
XXXIX. NIGHT 287
XL. THE SPIRIT OF EARTH 293
XLI. ENVOI 297
The Drums of War
CHAPTER I
THE ROAD TO FRANKFORT
We had been travelling since morning, three of us--my father, General
Count Mahon, myself, and Joubert--to say nothing of Marengo the
boarhound which followed our carriage. The great old family
travelling-carriage, packed with luggage, wine, and cigars, and drawn by
two stout horses, had been making the dust of Germany fly over the
hedgeless German fields since dawn. It was noon now, and hot. I remember
still the exact feel and smell of the blazing blue cushions as I pressed
my childish cheek against them and felt how hot they were, and the
unfailing pleasure and wonder with which the apple and plum trees
bordering the road filled my soul. Apple trees and plum trees bordering
the road, laden with fruit and unprotected, the snub-nosed German
children we passed on the wayside, seemed to my mind happier than the
inhabitants of Golconda, living in a country like that.
It was the first of September, 1860. I was only nine then, but I did not
complain of the heat or the dust, or the cramp that inhabited, like a
crab, the old-time travelling-carriage, seizing you now in the back, now
in the leg, now in the spirit. For one thing, I was to be a soldier,
like my father, and wear white moustaches and smoke cigars, and carry a
sword; for another thing, we had been travelling a month, and I was
inured to the business, and, for another thing, I was a Mahon.
The man beside me, buttoned in a blue frock-coat, adorned with the
ribbon of the Legion of Honour, stout, rubicund of face, opulent, and
magnificent-looking, was, with the exception of my small self, the last
representative of the Mahons of Tullaghmore.
Napoleon had drawn the Mahons from Ireland to France just as a magnet
attracts steel-filings. My grandfather had seen the burning of Moscow,
and had ridden in the charge of Millhaud's cuirassiers on that fatal
Sunday men call Waterloo Day; and my father, the man beside me in the
blue frock-coat, had adorned the French army with the help of his
splendid personality, his sword, and a few francs a day, till his
marriage with Marie Marquise de Saluce, a woman of marvellous beauty,
great wealth, and the inheritor of the Château de Saluce, which is near
Etiolles, but a few miles from Paris.
It was a love-match pure and simple--one of those fairyland marriages
arranged by love--and she died when I was born.
My father would have shot himself only for Joubert--Joubert, corporal in
the 121st of the Line, a personage with an angry, withered, sunburnt
face, eyes and moustache like the eyes and moustache of a wrathful cat,
the heart of a child, and the figure and perfume of a ramrod.
The sense of smell plays a large part in the lives of children, and
conjures up visions with a tremendous potency, lost as the child
deteriorates into a man.
Joubert smelt of gunpowder. Probably it was only the Caporal which he
smoked, but to my mind it was the true smell of the Grand Army.
Sitting on Joubert's knee and listening to tales of battle, and sniffing
him at the same time, I could see the Mamelukes charging, backgrounded
by the Pyramids; I could hear the thunder of Marengo, the roar of the
cannons, and the drums of war leading the Grand Army over the highways
of Europe.
Echoes from the time before I was born.
What a splendid nurse for a child an old soldier makes if he is of the
right sort! Joubert was my nurse and my picture-book.
A drummer of fifteen, he had beaten the charge for the "Growlers" at
Waterloo, when the 121st of the Line, shoal upon shoal of bayonets, had
stormed La Haye Sainte. He had received a bullet in the shoulder during
that same charge; he had killed an Englishman; but all that seemed
little compared with the fact that--HE HAD SEEN NAPOLEON!
Joubert was driving us.
We were bound for the Schloss Lichtenberg, not far from Homburg, on a
visit to Baron Carl Lichtenberg, a relation of my mother. Of course, we
could have travelled by more rapid means of transport, but it suited the
humour of my father to travel just as he did in his own carriage, driven
by his own man, with all his luggage about him, after the fashion of a
nobleman of the year 1810.
We had stopped at Carlsruhe, we had stopped at Mayence, we had stopped
here and there. How that journey lies like a living and lovely picture
in my mind! Time has blown away the dust. I do not feel the fatigue now.
The vast blue sky of a continental summer, the poplar trees, the fields,
the storks' nests, the old-time inns, Carlsruhe and its military bands,
Mayence and its drums and marching soldiers, the vivid blue of the
Rhine, and the courtyards and pleasaunces of the lordly houses we
stopped at, lie before me, a picture made poetical by distance, a
picture which stands as the beginning of my life and the beginning of
this story of war and love.
Joubert was driving us.
"Joubert," cried my father, "we are near Frankfort now. Remember, the
Hôtel des Hollandaise."
Joubert, who had been speechless for miles, flung up his elbows just as
a duck flings up her wings, he gave the horses a cut with the whip, and
then he burst out:
"Frankfort. Ah, yes! Frankfort. Do you think I can't smell it? I can
smell a German town a league away, just as I can see a German woman a
league away, by the size of her feet. Ah, mon Dieu! Come up, Cæsare;
come up, Polastron. My God! Frankfort!"
At a hotel, before strangers, in any public place, it was always "Oui,
mon Général," "Oui, monsieur"; but alone, with no one to listen, Joubert
talked to the General just as the General talked to Joubert. An
extraordinary and solid friendship cemented the relationship of master
and man ever since that terrible day in the library of the Château de
Saluce, when Joubert had torn the pistol from the hand of his master,
flung it through the glass of the great window, and, turning from a paid
servant into a man tremendous and heroic, had wrestled with him as the
angel wrestled with Jacob.
We passed through the suburbs of the town, and then through the Ghetto.
You never can imagine how much colour is in dirt till you see the Jews'
quarter of Frankfort--how much poetry, and also, how much perfume!
Joubert, who could not speak a word of the Hogs' language--as he was
pleased to style the language of Germany--drove on, piercing the narrow
streets to the heart of the town, and in the Kaisserstrasse he drew up.
The General inquired the way of a policeman, and in five minutes or less
we were before the doors of the Hôtel des Hollandaise.