Part 23

Madame Gigon lived through the night, sleeping peacefully in her high bed near the door that opened upon the terrace. But Lily did not sleep at all. She kept watch, sometimes sitting at the bedside, sometimes lying wrapped in her cloak in the long chair beneath the plane trees. She watched the flashes on the horizon beyond the wood, until the dawn rising slowly absorbed them and rendered them invisible in a faint glow which grew and grew until it enveloped all the dome of the sky and transformed, suddenly and without warning, the dark wood from a low black wall extending across the sky into a grove of slender trunks silhouetted against the rising light.

At dawn the troops no longer passed the house. The dusty white road lay deserted between the rows of chestnut trees. But in the dust were the prints of a thousand hoofs and the tracks of the wide wheeled caissons. The little procession on the distant bridge at Trilport had vanished. There were no soldiers going forward; and coming back, there was now only an occasional, straggling cart or the figure of a shopkeeper pushing before him in a wooden wheelbarrow all that he had salvaged of his little shop.

At noon there appeared out of the wood a rolling kitchen drawn by tired horses and driven by weary soldiers all white with dust. It came nearer and nearer until it arrived at the farm where, in the shadow of the big gray barns, it halted and the men ate. A little while later soldiers began to appear among the trees, tiny figures in red trousers and red caps, no longer bright like the poppies, but all stained and dust covered. The red marked them against the wall of greenery as if it had been planned that they should serve as targets.

Singly and in little groups of two or three the soldiers straggled across the fields toward the kitchen set up against the gray wall of the barn. The sun shone brilliantly, and in the clear white light the red tiles, the white walls, and the green of the trees appeared gay and bright. Some of the men carried arms suspended in slings. One or two wore about their close-cropped heads bandages that were stained with spots of red as if the color had come loose from their tragic little caps and stained their skins. There was one dandified young officer, with fine waxed mustaches, who dragged a shattered leg and still wore the bedraggled remnants of the spotless white gloves he had carried into the battle.

When they had eaten and drunk, the soldiers made their way across the iron bridge and turning along the tow path at the foot of the garden kept on their way, moving in a thin, trickling stream in the direction of Paris.

At length Lily, rousing herself, went to the foot of the garden, opened the gate and stood on the path. She carried wine which she gave them to drink as they passed.

“And how does it go?” she asked now and then.

The respectful answer was always the same. “Badly, Madame.... Badly. It would be better if you did not remain.”

Or a shrug and “What can we do, Madame? They have better guns ... better shells. One cannot see them. They are dressed so that they look like the trees themselves. And we ... we.” A gesture indicating the fatal red trousers and kepi.

Early in the afternoon the sound of the guns became audible again, not distant this time and indistinct like thunder, but sharp and clear ... the barking “ping” of the seventy-fives.

When the wine was all gone, Lily returned again to the terrace to wait. She had not been sitting there long when there arose all at once the sound of a terrific explosion. Turning her head she saw above the river at Trilport a great cloud of white dust and black smoke. They had destroyed the solid white bridge. It was the French themselves who had destroyed it. The Germans must be very near.

Madame Gigon slept peacefully just inside the doorway, all undisturbed by the explosion.

As for Lily, lying in the low chair, the explosion appeared to have worked a miracle. The color had begun to return to her white face. It showed itself in bright spots as if she had been seized by a fever. And presently she arose and began to walk about, up and down the garden, going at last into the château itself from which she returned in a little while carrying a pair of the Baron’s binoculars. With these she climbed to the little turret which rose above the vine covered dove-cote. There she settled herself to watching.

In a little while the men about the kitchen gathered themselves into a group, put the horses once more into the harness and drove away, carrying with them a boy of the last class whose strength had given out. M. Dupont followed them until he reached the edge of the iron bridge where he halted and stood looking after them, his hands shading his old eyes against the long rays of the setting sun, until they disappeared around a turn of the river. Then he went quietly indoors.

A little while later a battery of guns appeared among the trees, halted on the edge of the wood, and began firing in the direction of La Ferté where a cloud of smoke from the burning houses hung low upon the horizon. It was a pretty picture. The men worked the guns rapidly. The cannon spat forth little curls of white smoke followed by sudden angry barks, not in the least deafening. In the clear evening light it was all like one of Meissonier’s battle pictures, rather clear and pretty and bright-colored.

But in a little while the battery stopped firing, the horses leaned forward once more into the harness and the guns drew away down the lane, past the white farm and across the iron bridge. The planks reverberated with a thunderous sound under the hoofs of the galloping horses. The little cavalcade turned along the tow-path and vanished. Out of the wood there appeared suddenly three gray-green figures on horseback who halted and surveyed the landscape. They were the first of the Uhlans.

LXXIX

With the falling of night, the Germans were in possession of the château and the gardens. In bands of twenty or thirty they pushed beyond across the field and through the copses in the direction of Meaux. A few remained behind, and these occupied the château, using the best linen of the Baroness, taking down from the wall of the kitchen the cook’s great battery of spotless copper kettles in which to cook their beans and soup.

Lily, sitting quietly inside the darkened lodge by the side of Madame Gigon, heard their shouts and the stamping of their horses in the stables. Dark figures moved above among the trees of the garden, the figures of her enemies, the men who would kill if it were possible Césaire and Jean. In the excitement, no one ventured as far from the château as the lodge, and for a time she remained safe and in peace.

The cannon were no longer to be heard. For a little while there arose the distant crackling of rifles like the sound of brush fires made by the foresters in August; but this too died away after a time.

She bathed her head, fed Madame Gigon once more and sat down again to wait, and at last, overcome by exhaustion she sank quietly into sleep.

In the château the weary Germans slept and in the stables the horses ceased their stamping. A deep unbroken stillness settled again over the garden and the wheatfields beyond, so peaceful that the firing and the shouting of a little while before might have been wholly an illusion, a nightmare which had nothing to do with reality.

Thus passed three hours.

It was the sound of knocking which aroused Lily, a violent imperious sort of knocking which wakened her sharply and brought her quickly to her feet. As if by force of habit, she opened the door and said in French, “Gently ... please.... Gently. It is not necessary to break down the door. There is a sick woman here.”

As it swung open she was enveloped by the sudden bright glare of an electric torch. At the same moment a voice speaking the most excellent French said, “I am sorry, Madame. I ask your pardon. I did not know the lodge was occupied.”

The voice was not gruff. It was rather cold and smooth and carried a hint of weariness. “I found the door locked. I always knock upon locked doors,” continued the voice. “May I come in?”

All this time Lily, blinded by the sudden light, stood leaning against the door, emerging slowly from the effects of her deep slumber. For a moment she was silent.

“I prefer to come outside,” she replied. “There is a sick woman here.... If you will turn your light inside, you will see that I am not lying. She is there.”

The light flashed across the high bed of Madame Gigon. “I believe you, Madame.”

Lily closed the door and stood leaning against it. From the one of the lower windows of the château streamed a path of light which illuminated faintly the terrace, the front of the lodge and the Uhlan officer. He was not tall and was not in the least savage in appearance. On the contrary his face was smooth shaven and narrow, rather the face of a scholar than a soldier. Yet he carried himself very erect. There was something about him that was cold, stiff, almost brittle.

“What do you want of me?” asked Lily in a voice expressionless and free of all emotion.

For a moment her companion hesitated. He switched off the electric torch which until now he had kept turned full upon her. “Were you sleeping?” he asked.

“Yes.” Again in the same dead tone.

“Extraordinary. You must be a woman of great nerve.”

“No ... not at all. I had not slept in thirty-six hours.”

Again he hesitated. “I ... I have been riding for that length of time ... and still I cannot sleep. I have tried.... My nerves are too much on edge.”

She waited silently.

“Tell me ... why did you remain behind?” he began presently.

She made a gesture indicating the window behind which lay Madame Gigon. “You have seen the reason,” she said. “It was impossible to go away.”

The man whistled softly. “Aren’t you in the least afraid?”

For a time there was no sound except a deep sigh. “There was nothing to be done,” she answered presently in the same dead voice. “When there is nothing to be done, it is foolish to fret. It is best to make the most of it. What would you have me do?” For a moment a trace of life, almost of humor entered her voice. “Would you have me lie down and scream?” Again she sighed. “What good would it do? What would come of it? I do not believe in scenes.”

The Uhlan laughed. “Unlike most women,” he said. “But you are right. Afterwards, scenes are ridiculous. Nothing really matters much.... I’ve learned that in two days,” he added with a sort of pride.

To this she made no reply but her very silence carried its own gesture of assent. She did not deny his statement.

“I suppose you hate me,” he began, “like a good Frenchwoman.”

For the first time she raised her head and looked squarely at the stranger. “What do you want?” she asked. “Why are you talking in this fashion? You understand I am helpless. I must talk with you if you choose.” In the darkness she frowned. “I suppose that is war.” And then, “Besides, I am not a Frenchwoman at all. I am an American.”

At this the stranger gave a sudden start, in the darkness more audible than visible by the sudden click of metal on some part of his uniform.

“Then you must hate me even more.... I have lived in Paris. The Americans there are more French than the French.”

This remark, it appeared, angered her for she answered quickly. “I know no Americans in Paris. I know nothing about them.”

The Uhlan laughed. “Madame, I have no intention of injuring you ... in any way.”

To this she replied, “I suppose you do not mind if I sit down. I am a little weary.”

The stranger’s manner changed abruptly. He became courteous, almost courtly.

“I am sorry. I did not know there were chairs. You see I am a stranger here. Sit down if you prefer it, by all means.... I am not one to work hardships for a woman.” She moved toward the long chair under the lindens and lay down, wrapping the cloak about her and closing her eyes.

“Perhaps,” said the stranger, “you would prefer to sleep.”

“No,” she replied quietly, “I could not sleep now.” And as if the idea amused her she added, “I might as well talk with you ... since you too suffer from insomnia.”

“As you will ... if you do not hate me too much.”

He sat in the chair by her side and slipped from his waist the belt in which hung his black lugar pistol. Thus they remained for some time, silently and peacefully, as if they were old friends between whom there was no necessity for speech. The German sat with his elbows resting on his knees, his head buried in his hands. There was a smoothness and angularity about his thin figure so trimly clad in a uniform that now carried the stains of battle.

At last he took out a cigarette and said, “I suppose you smoke, Madame?”

To which Lily replied without opening her eyes, “No.”

He was so polite, so scrupulously polite. And presently he sighed, “Ah, this civilization ... this world of monkeys. (_Monde de singes._)” And once more the night stillness descended, for Lily made no effort at speech now. She lay motionless, so still that she might have been dead. Her silence appeared to reproach him for he turned suddenly and said, “Do you fancy I like this ... this living like a burglar in a château ... your château?”

“It is not mine,” Lily murmured.

“Do you fancy I like this war.... I am not pleased with killing men. Why should I? I do not hate them. How is it possible? How can you even hate me?”

She stirred impatiently. “No. It is impossible to hate genuinely ... without a reason one can put one’s finger on. All the same you are my enemy,” she added stubbornly.

The Uhlan laughed. “Who has made me so, Madame? Not myself, surely.” And then after a little pause, he added with a kind of desperation, “No, I am like all the others. I have nothing to do with it. We are all caught, Madame, ... hopelessly caught in one great web spun by a monster. Ah, what a monster!”

In the distant stable arose suddenly the sound of two horses quarreling. There was a violent kicking ... a squealing that was savage and implacable.

“We are not even like that,” he said. “It is not even that we bite and kick.... We shoot each other at a distance. You, Madame, perhaps have friends among the men I am fighting. I kill them and they me only because the first who shoots is the safest. You know the artillerymen kill men they never even see.” He spat suddenly. “Bah! It is mechanics ... all mechanics ... machinery, you understand, which they make in great roaring factories. They kill men in factories in order to kill more men on the battlefield. What is there in that?”

Again she made no answer to his question. The quarreling horses had been separated and their squealing silenced. There was only the overpowering stillness once more, a stillness unearthly in quality which lifted all that it enveloped upon a new plane, determined by new values. Life, death, reality, dreams--all these things were confused and yet amazingly clear, as if the whole had been pierced by a single beam of cold white light.

LXXX

It must have occurred to Lily that the man was talking in an hysterical fashion with all the frenzy of a neurasthenic. “Madame, you should see one of our towns where there are great furnaces ... Essen, Madame, or Saarbrucken.. black, incredibly vile, a wallow of roaring fire and white hot steel ... I know them, Madame, I have lived in them.”

Then for the first time Lily stirred. She even laughed, faintly yet with unmistakable bitterness. “Know them? I know them. We have them in America.”

The stranger paid no heed to her interruption. “Look, Madame,” he commanded, pointing to the north where the horizon was lighted by the glow of a burning town. “Look, Madame. You see that fire in the sky. The ladles have overflowed. The white hot steel has spread across Europe. There is gold in it too ... red hot gold.... Melted Gods ... idols which we worship to-day.”

His voice rose until he was shouting. When he finished, he leaned back in his chair, the fine uniform suddenly crumpled and limp. And after a time he began to speak again, softly as if the torrent of emotion had exhausted him.

“And where have we to go? If we sought to escape where have we to go? There is no place. Because the monkeys ... the fools have civilized all the world, so that they might sell their cheap cotton and tin trays. They have created a monster which is destroying them. There is no longer any peace ... any solitude. They have even wrenched the peasant from his plow ... the shepherd from his hillside.” Again he pointed toward the burning horizon. “They have driven them out upon the plains where the cauldrons have overflowed across all Europe. It is the monsters, Madame, who are at the bottom of all this. Ah, commerce, industry, wealth, power.” He tossed away his cigarette and lighted another. “When this is over, who do you think will have gained? Not the peasant, Madame. Not the shepherd, not the poet. Ah, no! They will be shoveled under the earth ... whole bodies and pieces of bodies because they are no longer of any use. Not the worker, Madame, whom the monster devours. Ah, no.” His voice rose suddenly. “It is the monster who will have gained ... the monster and the men whose pockets he fills with gold ... the monster of material, of industry. He will destroy us. He will devour us. What can we do? You see, I know. I have lived in France. I have lived in England.... My grandmother, you understand, was English. I would prefer to live in England. But No! I was in England three weeks ago. And suddenly I must go home to join my regiment, to set out upon the expedition that has brought me here into this trampled garden. What for? Who can say? Why? Who knows? Not surely because it gives me pleasure. Not surely because I care a fig whether the German empire lives or dies. That is merely an excuse to drag us into battle.” His head dropped wearily again. “You see, this is why I have not been able to sleep. I have been thinking of these things. They are not the sort that lull a man to sleep. There is blood on my hands. I killed to-day ... by shooting and stabbing. I assure you it gave me no pleasure. I should doubtless have loved the men I killed. I am helpless. I cannot fight against it. No, there is only one thing to be done. I must kill as many men as possible. I must destroy all that it is possible to destroy because if we destroy enough the monster will have nothing to feed upon. He, too, will die ... and with him this civilization ... banal, ugly, materialistic, unchristian ... this greed-ridden world.”

The Uhlan fell forward upon the table, burying his face in his arms. At the sight Lily raised herself gently and watched her strange companion in a wondering silence. At last she said softly, “Why do you tell me this? Is it because you are afraid?”

The man made a chuckling, confused, sound and sat up once more. “Ah, no! Madame. You fancy I am hysterical. Well, so I am. I don’t deny it. You see it is not easy for me to be a warrior. I am a little mad. No, I talk like this because....” For a moment he hesitated as if groping for some explanation of an emotional crisis which in a soldier was not logical at all. His manner seemed to imply that he should have accepted the affair without question. “Because.... Well, there is a time when fear does not matter, when terror does not exist, when one is enveloped by a despair so great that what happens to one’s body is of no concern. You understand that. You have answered it yourself a little time before, when you said there came a time when it was useless to be afraid.” He leaned back and made a little gesture of negation. “It does not matter,” he concluded. In the faint light from the lower windows of the château it was plain that he was smiling in a bitter, despairing fashion. “No, I shall go on killing until I am killed. It will not be a long affair. It is absurd to hope that I shall live many more days.” He whistled softly. “I might even be killed to-night ... after I have left you. I shall kill as many men as possible. I can only submit. There is nothing I can do. I am not a boy full of playing soldier.”

At this Lily winced suddenly as if he had struck her. Then she raised herself slowly. The black cloak fell from her shoulders.

“I have in the war a son and a lover,” she said. “If you met them, you would kill them. Is it not so?”

The Uhlan bowed his head in silent assent.

“And yet you do not believe in it?”

“No, Madame.”

“Then that is wrong. It is sinful.”

The stranger leaned toward her. “It is not I who would kill them. I am only a chance, a little dagger in the hand of fate ... one of a billion chances that have to do with their deaths. I myself would not be killing them.... It would be a strange ... even an impossible accident, if I killed one of them with my own hands. You understand, we are talking facts now ... hard facts. There is no room for sentimentality at a time like this....” He smiled ironically. “I can understand that it is difficult for a woman to talk facts. It is simply a matter of chances ... like roulette shall we say?”

For a time Lily remained thoughtful and silent. At last she said, “They are in the cavalry like yourself. You would kill them. You are one of the chances.” The calmness of her manner stood in terrible contrast to the hysterical outburst of the soldier.

“I can see you are a philosopher ... a _femme savant_,” mocked the stranger.

“You might choose a better time to jeer.”

The man coughed. “Forgive me.... I am sorry.... I was wrong. If you were a _femme savant_, I would not be talking to you like this.... You are a woman ... a beautiful woman. One cannot help talking to you.”

“I am only a woman living by what she believes. That is simple enough.”

“It requires courage, Madame ... and indifference, far more of both than I have.” He coughed again, nervously. “Perhaps I am too rational.... Perhaps I do not think resistance worth the trouble ... especially now, at a time when the mob ... the politicians rule absolutely.”

“You are one of the chances,” Lily repeated stubbornly.

LXXXI

The German laughed softly. “You are a primitive woman, Madame. It refreshes me to find a woman so charmingly direct, so completely feminine. There are not many left. It is a quality which should always accompany beauty. If a woman is not beautiful, it does not matter.” He paused waiting for her to speak and when she said nothing, he continued. “I envy your lover. He is a fortunate man.”

At this Lily stirred once more. It was a faint movement, yet it carried a warning of anger.

“Of course, you may say and do what you please,” she said. “I am completely helpless.”