Chapter 20

A vast shudder swept over the figure of Louis, a hoarse gasp broke through his lips. The commander leaned forward, fixing him with compelling eyes.

"For France!" cried François again, and once more Louis lifted his head to quaver:

"For France!"

"Take them away," said the commander. "But stay! How old are you?" He addressed François.

"I am nineteen."

"And you?"

Louis's lips moved but no sound issued.

"My brother is twenty-one," said François, staring hard at Louis.

"He has a sweetheart who will grieve bitterly if he does not return for her caresses, eh? I thought so. Oh, you French! But she will soon recover. She will find another,--like that! So!" He snapped his fingers. "She will not wait long, my good Louis. Take them away!"

Louis's face was livid. His chin trembled, his lips fell apart slackly; he lowered his eyes after an instant's contact with the staunch gaze of his brother.

"You have until sunrise to change your minds," said the Prussian, turning on his heel.

"Sunrise," muttered Louis, his head twitching.

They were led from the walled-in garden and across the cobblestones of the little street that terminated in a cul de sac just above. Over the way stood the shattered remnants of a building that once had been pointed to with pride by the simple villagers as the finest shop in town. The day was hot. Worn-out German troopers sprawled in the shade of the walls, sound asleep, their mouths ajar,--beardless boys, most of them.

"Poor devils," said François, as he passed among them. He too was very young.

They were shoved through the wrecked doorway into the mortar-strewn ruin, and, stumbling over masses of débris, came to the stone steps that led to the cellar below. Louis drew back with a groan. He had spent centuries in that foul pit.

"Not there--again!" he moaned. He was whimpering feebly as he picked himself up at the bottom of the steps a moment later.

"Dogs!" cried François, glaring upward and shaking his fist at the heads projecting into the turquoise aperture above. Far on high, where the roof had been, gleamed the brilliant sky. "Our general will make you pay one of these days,--our GREAT general!"

Then he threw his arms about his brother's shoulders and--cried a little too,--no in fear but in sympathy.

The trap door dropped into place, a heavy object fell upon it with a thud, and they were in inky darkness. There was no sound save the sobs of the two boys, and later the steady tread of a man who paced the floor overhead,--a man who carried a gun.

They had not seen, but they knew that a dead man lay over in the corner near a window chocked by a hundred tons of brick and mortar. He had died some time during the second century of their joint occupance of the black and must hole. On the 28th he had come in with them, wounded. It was now the 31st, and he was dead, having lived to the age of nine score years and ten! When they spoke to their guards at the beginning of the third century, saying that their companion was dead and should be carried away, the Germans replied:

"There is time enough for that," and laughed,--for the Germans could count the time by hours out there in the sunshine. But that is not why they laughed.

A hidden French battery in the wooded, rocky hills off to the west had for days kept up a deadly, unerring fire upon the German positions. Shift as he would, the commander could not escape the shells from those unseen, undiscovered guns. They followed him with uncanny precision. His own batteries had searched in vain, with thousands of shrieking shells, for the gadfly gunners. They could find him, but he could not find them. For every shell he wasted, they returned one that counted.

Three French scouts fell into his hands on the night of the 28th. Two of them were still alive. He had them up before him at once.

"On one condition will I spare your lives," said he. And that condition had been pounded into their ears with unceasing violence, day and night, by officers high and low, since the hour of their capture. It was a very simple condition, declared the Germans. Only a stubborn fool would fail to take advantage of the opportunity offered. The exact position of that mysterious battery,--that was all the general demanded in return for his goodness in sparing their lives. He asked no more of them than a few, truthful words.

They had steadfastly refused to betray their countrymen.

François could not see his brother, but now and then he put out a timid hand to touch the shaking figure. He could not understand. Why was it not the other way about? Who was he to offer consolation to the big and strong?

"Courage," he would say, and then stare hard ahead into the blackness. "You are great and strong," he would add. "It is I who am weak and little, Louis. I am the little brother."

"You have not so much to live for as I," Louis would mutter, over and over again.

Their hour drew near. "Eat this," persuaded François, pressing upon Louis the hunk of bread their captors had tossed down to them.

"Eat? God! How can I eat?"

"Then drink. It is not cold, but--"

"Let me alone! Keep away from me! God in heaven, why do they leave that Jean Picard down here with us--"

"You have seen hundreds of dead men, Louis. All of them were heroes. All of them were brave. It was glorious to die as they died. Why should we be afraid of death?"

"But they died like men, not like rats. They died smiling. They had no time to think."

And then he fell to moaning. His teeth rattled. He turned upon his face and for many minutes beat upon the stone steps with his clenched hands, choking out appeals to his Maker.

François stood. His hot, unblinking eyes tried to pierce the darkness. Tears of shame and pity for this big brother burnt their way out and ran down his cheeks. He was wondering. He was striving to put away the horrid doubt that was searing his soul: the doubt of Louis!

The dreary age wore on. Louis slept! The little brother sat with his chin in his hands, his heart cold, his eyes closed. He prayed.

Then came the sound of the heavy object being dragged away from the door at the top of the steps. They both sprang to their feet. An oblong patch of drab, gray light appeared overhead. Sunrise!

"Come! It is time," called down a hoarse voice. Three guns hung over the edge of the opening. They were taking no chances.

"Louis!" cried François sharply.

Louis straightened his gaunt figure. The light from above fell upon his face. It was white,--deathly white,--but transfigured. A great light flamed in his eyes.

"Have no fear, little brother," he said gently, caressingly. He clasped his brother's hand. "We die together. I have dreamed. A vision came to me,--came down from heaven. My dream was of our mother. She came to me and spoke. So! I shall die without fear. Come! Courage, little François. We are her soldier boys. She gave us to France. She spoke to me. I am not afraid."

Glorified, rejoicing, almost unbelieving, François followed his brother up the steps, there was comfort in the grip of Louis's hand.

"This general of yours," began Louis, facing the guard, a sneer on his colorless lips, his teeth showing, "he is a dog! I shall say as much to him when the guns are pointed at my breast."

The Germans stared.

"What has come over this one?" growled one of them. "Last night he was breaking."

"There is still a way to break him," said another, grinning. "Hell will be a relief to him after this hour."

"Canailès!" snarled Louis, and François laughed aloud in sheer joy!

"My good,--my strong brother!" he cried out.

"This Papa Joffre of yours," said the burliest German,--"he is worse than a dog. He is a toad." He shoved the captives through the opening in the wall. "Get on!"

"The smallest sergeant in Germany is greater than your Papa Joffre," said another. "What is it you have said, baby Frenchman? One frog-eater is worth five Germans? Ho-ho! You shall see."

"I--I myself," cried François hotly,--"I am nobler, braver, greater than this beast you call master."

"Hold your tongue," said a third German, in a kindlier tone than the others had employed. "It can do you no good to talk like this. Give in, my brave lads. Tell everything. I know what is before you if you refuse to-day,--and I tremble. He will surely break you to-day."

They were crossing the narrow road.

"He is your master,--not ours," said François calmly.

Louis walked ahead, erect, his jaw set. The blood leaped in François' veins. Ah, what a brave, strong fellow his brother was!

"He is the greatest commander in all the German armies," boasted the burly sergeant. "And, young frog-eater, he commands the finest troops in the world. Do you know that there are ten thousand iron crosses in this God-appointed corps! Have a care how you speak of our general. He is the Emperor's right hand. He is the chosen man of the Emperor."

"And of God," added another.

"Bah!" cried François, snapping his fingers scornfully. "His is worth no more than that to me!"

François was going to his death. His chest swelled.

"You fool. He is to the Emperor worth more than an entire army corps,--yes, two of them. The Emperor would sooner lose a hundred thousand men than this single general."

"A hundred thousand men?" cried François, incredulously. "That is a great many men,--even Germans."

"Pigs," said Louis, between his teeth.

They now entered the little garden. The Prussian commander was eating his breakfast in the shelter of a tent. The day was young, yet the sun was hot. Papers and maps were strewn over the top of the long table at which he sat, gorging himself. The guard and the two prisoners halted a few paces away. The general's breakfast was not to be interrupted by anything so trivial as the affairs of Louis and François.

"And that ugly glutton is worth more than a hundred thousand men," mused François, eyeing him in wonder. "God, how cheap these boches must be."

Staff officers stood outside the tent, awaiting and receiving gruff orders from their superior. Between gulps he gave out almost unintelligible sounds, and one by one these officers, interpreting them as commands, saluted and withdrew.

François gazed as one fascinated. He WAS a great general, after all. Only a very great and powerful general could enjoy such respect, such servile obedience as he was receiving from these hulking brutes of men.

Directions were punctuated,--or rather indicated,--by the huge carving-knife with which the general slashed his meat. He pointed suddenly with the knife, and, as he did so, the officer at whom it was leveled, sprang into action, to do as he was bidden, as if the shining blade had touched his quivering flesh.

Suddenly the great general pushed his bench back from the table, slammed the knife and fork down among the platters, and barked:

"Well!"

His eyes were fastened upon the prisoners. The guards shoved them forward.

"Have you decided? What is it to be,--life or death?"

He was in an evil humor. That battery in the hills had found its mark again when the sun was on the rise.

"Vive la France!" shouted Louis, raising his eye to heaven.

"vive la France!" almost screamed François.

"So be it!" roared the commander. His gaze was fixed on Louis. There was the one who would weaken. Not that little devil of a boy beside him. He uttered a short, sharp command to an aide.

The torturing of Louis began....

"End it!" commanded the Prussian general after a while. "The fool will not speak!"

And the little of life that was left to the shuddering, sightless Louis went out with a sigh--slipped out with the bayonet as it was withdrawn from his loyal breast.

Turning to François, who had been forced to witness the mutilation of his brother,--whose arms had been held and whose eyelids were drawn up by the cruel fingers of a soldier who stood behind him,--he said:

"Now YOU! You have seen what happened to him! It is your turn now. I was mistaken. I thought that he was the coward. Are you prepared to go through even more than--Ah! Good! I thought so! The little fire-eater weakens!"

François, shaken and near to dying of the horror he had witnessed, sagged to his knees. They dragged him forward,--and one of them kicked him.

"I will tell! I will tell!" he screamed. "Let me alone! Keep your hands off of me! I will tell, God help me, general!"

He staggered, white-faced and pitiful, to the edge of the table, which he grasped with trembling, straining hands.

"Be quick about it," snarled the general, leaning forward eagerly.

Like a cat, François sprang. He had gauged the distance well. He had figured it all out as he stood by and watched his brother die.

His fingers clutched the knife.

"I will!" he cried out in an ecstasy of joy.

To the hasp sank the long blade into the heart of the Prussian commander.

Whirling, the French boy threw his arms on high and screamed into the faces of the stupefied soldiers:

"Vive la France! One hundred thousand men! There they lie! Ha-ha! I--I, François Dupré,--I have sent them all to hell! Wait for me, Louis! I am coming!"

The first words of the "Marseillaise" were bursting from his lips when his uplifted face was blasted--

He crumpled up and fell.

[signed] George Barr McCutcheon

Sonnet

Thou art not lovelier than lilacs,--no, Nor honeysuckle,--thou art not more fair Than small white single poppies,--I can bear Thy beauty; though I bend before thee, though From left to right, not knowing where to go, I turn my troubled eyes, nor here nor there Find any refuge from thee, yet I swear So has it been with mist,--with moonlight so.

Like him who day by day unto his draught Of delicate poison adds him one drop more Till he may drink unharmed the death of ten, Even so, inured to beauty, who have quaffed Each hour more deeply than the hour before, I drink,--and live--what has destroyed some men.

[signed] Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Idiot

I

The change was not affected without whispering. The spirit both of the troops who were going back of the lines to rest and of those who had zigzagged up through two miles of communication trenches to take their places was excellent.

"What is the name of this country?" asked one of the new comers.

"If it had a name, that is all that remains. We are somewhere in Picardy. The English are off there not very far. Their cannon have different voices from ours. Good Luck!"

His gray, faded uniform seemed to melt into the night. The New Comer stepped on to the firing platform and poked his head over the parapet. A comrade pulled at his trousers leg.

"Come down, Idiot," he said, "Fritz is only twelve yards away."

The Idiot came down, sniffing the night air luxuriously.

"We are somewhere in Picardy," he said. "I know without being told. It is like going home."

A sergeant approached, his body twisted sideways because the trench was too narrow for his shoulders.

"Have you a watch?"

The Idiot had.

Under his coat, so that the enemy should not perceive the glow, the sergeant flashed his electric torch and compared the watches.

"Yours leads by a minute," he said. "The advance will be at four o'clock. there will be hot coffee at three. Good luck."

He passed on, and the comrades drew a little closer together. The sergeant's words had made the Idiot very happy.

"In less than two hours!" he said.

"I thought there was something in the wind," said Paul Guitry.

"If we advanced only three kilometers," said the Idiot, "the village in which I was born would be French again. But there will be great changes."

"You were born at Champ-de-Fer?"

"It is directly opposite us."

"You cannot know that."

"I feel it," said the Idiot. "Wherever I have been stationed I have felt it. Sometimes I have asked an officer to look for Champ-de-Fer on his field map, and when he has done so, I have pointed, and said 'Is it in that direction?' and always I have been right."

"Did your family remain in the village?"

"I don't know. But I think so, for from the hour of the mobilization until now, I have not heard from them."

"Since the hour of the mobilization," said Paul Guitry, "much water has flowed under the bridges. I had just been married. My wife is in Paris. I have a little son now. I saw them when I had my eight days' leave. And it seems that again I am to be a father. It is very wonderful."

"I was going to be married," said the Idiot simply.

There was a short silence.

"If I had known," said Paul Guitry, "I would not have boasted of my own happiness."

"I am not the only French soldier who has not heard from his sweetheart since the mobilization," said the Idiot. "It has been hard," he said, "but by thinking of all the others, I have been able to endure."

"She remained there at Champ-de-Fer?"

"She must have, or else she would have written to me."

Paul Guitry could not find anything to say.

"Soon," said the Idiot, "we shall be in Champ-de-Fer, and they will tell me what has become of her."

"She will tell you herself," said Paul Guitry with a heartiness which he did not feel. The Idiot shrugged his shoulders.

"We have loved each other," he said, "even since we were little children. Do you know why I am called the Idiot? It is because I do not go with women, when I have the chance. But I don't mind. They cannot say that I am not a real man, for I have the military medal and I have been mentioned twice in the orders of the day."

To Paul Guitry, a confirmed sinner as opportunity offered, the Idiot's statement contained much psychic meat.

"It must be," he said, "that purity tempts some men, just as impurity tempts others."

"It is even simpler," said the Idiot; but he did not explain. And there was a long silence.

Now and then Paul Guitry glanced at his companion's profile, for the night was no longer inky black. It was a simple direct young face, not handsome, but full of dignity and kindness; the line of the jaw had a certain sternness, and the wide and delicately molded nostril indicated courage and daring.

Paul Guitry thought of his wife and of his little son, of his eight days' leave, and of its consequences. He tried to imagine how he would feel, if for two years his wife had been in the hands of the Germans. Without meaning to, he spoke his thought aloud:

"Long since," he said, "I should have gone mad."

The Idiot nodded.

"They say," he said, "that in fifty years all this will be forgotten; and that we French will feel friendly toward the Germans."

He laughed softly, a laugh so cold, that Paul Guitry felt as if ice water had suddenly been spilled on his spine.

"Hell," he went on, "has no tortures which French men, and women, and little children have not suffered. You say that if you had been in my boots you must long since have gone mad? well, it is because I have been able to think of all the others who are in my boots that I have kept my sanity. It has not been easy. It is not as if my imagination alone had been tortured. Just as I have the sense that my village is there--" he pointed with his sensitive hand, "so I have the sense of what has happened there. I KNOW that she is alive," he concluded, "and that she would rather be dead."

There was another silence. The Idiot's nostrils dilated and he sniffed once or twice.

"The coffee is coming," he said. "Listen. If I am killed in the advance, find her, will you--Jeanne Bergère? And say what you can to comfort her. It doesn't matter what has happened, her love for me is like the North Star--fixed. When she knows that I am dead she will wish to kill herself. You must prevent that. You must show her how she can help France. Aha!--The cannon!"

From several miles in the rear there rose suddenly a thudding percussive cataract of sound. The earth trembled like some frightened animal that has been driven into a corner.

The Idiot leaped to his feet, his eyes joyously alight.

"It is the voice of God," he cried.

If indeed it was the voice of God, that other great voice which is of Hell, made no answer. The German guns were unaccountably silent.

On the stroke of four, the earth still trembling with the incessant concussions of the guns, the French scrambled out of their trenches and went forward. But no sudden blast of lead and iron challenged their temerity. A few shells, but all from field pieces, fired perfunctorily as it were, fell near them and occasionally among them. It looked as if Fritz wasn't going to fight.

The wire guarding the first line of German trenches had been so torn and disrupted by the French cannon, that only here and there an ugly strand remained to be cut. The trench was empty.

"The Boche," said Paul Guitry, "has left nothing but his smell."

Rumor spread swiftly through the lines. "We are not to be opposed. Fritz has been withdrawn in the night. His lines are too long. He is straightening out his salients. It is the beginning of the end."

There was good humor and elation. There was also a feeling of admiration for the way in which Fritz had managed to retreat without being detected.

The country over which the troops advanced was a rolling desert, blasted, twisted, swept clear of all vegetation. What the Germans could not destroy they had carried away with them. There remained only frazzled stumps of trees, dead bodies and ruined engines of war.

Paul Guitry and the Idiot came at last to the summit of a little hill. Beyond and below at the end of a long sweep of tortured and ruined fields could be seen picturesquely grouped a few walls of houses and one bold arch of an ancient bridge.

The Idiot blinked stupidly. Then he laughed a short, ugly laugh.

"I had counted on seeing the church steeple. But of course they would have destroyed that."

"Is it Champ-de-Fer?" asked Guitry.

At that moment a dark and sudden smoke, as from ignited chemicals began to pour upward from the ruined village.

"It was," said the Idiot, and once more the word was passed to go forward.

II

They did not know what was going on in the world. They had been ordered into the cellars of the village, and told to remain there for twenty-four hours. They had no thought but to obey.

Into the same cellar with Jeanne Bergère had been herded four old women, two old men, and a little boy whom a German surgeon (the day the champagne had been discovered buried in the Notary's garden) had strapped to a board and--vivisected.

Twenty-three of the twenty-four hours had passed (one of the old men had a Waterbury watch) but only the little boy complained of hunger and thirst. He wanted to drink from the well in the corner of the cellar; but they would not let him. The well had supplied good drinking water since the days of Julius Caesar, but shortly after entering the cellar one of the old women had drunk from it, and shortly afterward had died in great torment. The little boy kept saying:

"But maybe it wasn't the water which killed Madame Pigeon. Only let me try it and then we shall know for sure."

But they would not let him drink.

"It is not agreeable to live," said one of the old men, "but it is necessary. We are of those who will be called upon to testify. The terms of peace will be written by soft-hearted statesmen; we who have suffered must be on hand. We must be on hand to see that the Boche gets his deserts."

Jeanne Bergère spoke in a low unimpassioned voice:

"What would you do to them, father," she asked, "if you were God?"

"I do not know," said the old man. "For I have experience only of those things which give them pleasure. Those who delight in peculiar pleasures are perhaps immune to ordinary pains...."

"Surely," interrupted the little boy, "it was not the water that killed Madame Pigeon."

"How peaceful she looks," said the old man. "You would say the stone face of a saint from the façade of a cathedral."