The Enemies of Women Part 45

When he raises his eyes he sees Toledo approaching, but alone, with a certain embarra.s.sment, fearing in advance the anger of the Prince. The latter, who feels kindly and tolerant since the scene of violence on the stairway, guesses what he is going to say to him. He has not found Castro and he absolves him with a benevolent smile.

The Colonel speaks:

"Marquis: Don Atilio refuses."

"What!" And at the questioning glance of Lubimoff, who cannot understand, and who does not want to understand what he hears, Toledo repeats, growing more and more embarra.s.sed.

"He refuses to be your representative. He told me to find some one else.

He has some ideas of his own that...."

And he hesitates to express these ideas. He stops, in order not to say anything which the Prince ought not to hear from his lips: and he accepts as a blessing the silence of amazement which comes between them; he is afraid to let the Prince recover from the astonishment with which this news has overwhelmed him.

As he starts to go away, he proposes something which seems to him a way out.

"Does your Highness want me to call Don Atilio? He will surely come.

Perhaps the two of you talking together...."

And he goes away in search of Castro, while Michael Fedor once more becomes motionless in his seat, quite unable to comprehend the situation.

The Prince saw Castro standing by the little table close to his chair, with a certain appearance of haste in his look and bearing, like a man who is facing a difficult situation, and anxious to get out of it as soon as possible.

The Prince invited him to take the nearest seat, but Castro consented only to sit down lightly on the arm of the chair, to indicate his desire that the interview be brief. Besides, he spoke first, bluntly expressing his thoughts, without any preamble.

"The Colonel has doubtless told you my reply. I can't. You know very well that I am your friend: you even do me the honor of recognizing me as a relative; I owe you a great deal; but what you ask me now ... no!

It is a piece of foolishness, madness. It all had to end like this!

There was no other way out of it. I had a presentiment of it some time ago. Perhaps you were right when you talked about women as you did, and about the necessity of being their enemies--if such a thing is possible.

But it doesn't do any good to bring up the past: You are no longer the Lubimoff who said those incoherent things. As for me I am mad, I'll grant you that: but you are even more so than I: and for that reason I can't be with you."

Michael looked at him fixedly, without abandoning his silent immobility, waiting for him to go on.

"A duel right in war time! Is there any common sense to that? You are the gentleman who remains quietly in his home, with all the comforts that the present time can allow, without running any risk whatsoever, while half of humanity is weeping, starving, bleeding, or dying. And just because one fine day you happen to be in an ill-humor--perhaps you know why--you want to fight a poor boy who has survived almost by a miracle, and who is sick and weak from having done what you and I are not capable of doing. You ask me to represent you in such a piece of business?"

"He insulted me--he tried to strike me. I caught his hand close to my face," said the Prince in a low but rancorous voice from the depths of his chair.

This caused Castro to hesitate for a moment, as he had no idea of the importance of the clash between the two men. But his hesitation was brief.

"There is something that I don't understand and that you are keeping silent. The very seriousness of the insult indicates that there was something extraordinary on your part. For that poor, respectful, and timid boy to dare to strike, and strike a man like you!... What did you do to rouse him to such a pitch?"

Lubimoff did not deign to reply. Without abandoning his frowning reserve he asked briefly:

"Well, are you going to, or are you not?"

Castro, irritated by this att.i.tude, replied without hesitating:

"It's all nonsense, and I refuse."

Lubimoff still remained motionless at this refusal, but Atilio was sure he guessed the Prince's thoughts in the hostile look fixed on him. He was accusing him of ingrat.i.tude. At the same time he was holding the "General" responsible: believing that the latter must have influenced his decision. That Lieutenant was so greatly admired by Dona Clorinda!

As though replying to these unexpressed ideas, Atilio went on:

"Do you think I am interested in that boy you are bent on fighting? He is quite indifferent to me; I even dislike him, because of the great extremes to which certain women go in their admiration of his heroism.

That is always annoying to those who are not heroes. I think how insignificant he must have been only four years ago. If I had met him then, I would have found him, I dare say, a book-keeper in some hotel, or a clerk in my haberdasher's in Paris. Imagine what a friend! But the war has swept over us, turning everything upside down, making some emerge, and burying others in the deepest depths, without any certainty of rising again. This boy happens to be somebody now. He is of more consequence than you or I. He has been of some use; and for me he is sacred, in spite of the fact that he inspires envy in me rather than admiration."

The Prince finally made a gesture of protest. Then he shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, and sank once more into motionless silence. That little adventurer worth more than he, because they had punctured his skin in a fight or two!

"We would never come to an understanding, even if we talked all the afternoon," continued Castro. "I have changed considerably, and you are the same man you have always been. I believe that yesterday I came to my 'road to Damascus.' I feel to-day that I am a different man."

And, through a certain need of expressing his great inner turmoil, he went on talking, without paying any attention to whether or not the Prince was listening to him.

He had come to his "road of Damascus" near the Monte Carlo railway station, beside the tracks. He was with two ladies, in one of whom he was greatly interested. (Michael thought once more of Dona Clorinda.) A trainload of soldiers was returning from Italy; a somber train, without flags and without any branches of trees adorning the doors and windows.

They were Frenchmen. They had been sent to Italy as reenforcements, after the disaster of Caporetto, and now they were being hurriedly recalled, to defend their own soil, which was again in danger.

"No songs and no wild merriment; they were all silent, tired and dirty, with an epic dirtiness. The cars were more like wild beasts' cages, with their pungent odors of the animal ring. The soldiers were young men but they looked old, with their bristling beards, spotted uniforms, and faces parched by the sun, hardened by the cold, and cracked and chapped by the wind. The heat had caused them to remove their blouses, and they were in flannel s.h.i.+rts of an undefinable color, drenched with the sweat of so many fatigues and so many emotions.

"One could guess that they were the battalion always predestined to arrive in time to sustain the hardest shocks; the one that punctually appeared in the places of greatest danger, with the heroic resignation of the strong, who allow themselves to be exploited, and who not only do their own work, but help out all the others who work less. Where had these men not fought? On their own soil, and on that of the Allies, and perhaps in the Orient, and now, they were returning again to the land of their first combats. Just when they were thinking they had accomplished everything, they had discovered they had as yet done nothing. In the weaving and unweaving of the web of war, it was necessary to begin all over again. Four years before, they imagined they had triumphed decisively on the banks of the Marne, and now they were returning once more to the Marne. Every winter, sunk in the mud, buried in the trenches, under the rain, they said to one another: 'This will be the last.' And another winter came, and another, and still another on the heels of the last, without any noticeable change. This was the reason for their fatalistic and resigned demeanor, the look of men who adapt themselves to everything and finally come to believe that their misery will be eternal, that human times of peace will never return."

Castro stopped talking a moment and paid no attention to the face of his friend, which seemed to be asking what all that story had to do with him. "We were standing on the edge of an embankment, leaning on the barriers, and our heads were on a level with the men huddled in the carriages. The long train, the head of which had already reached the station, was slowly advancing. The two ladies were waving their handkerchiefs, smiling at the soldiers, and calling words of greeting to them. Many of the latter remained unmoved, looking at them with eyes of sleepy wild beasts. They had been greeted with ovations for four years.

They knew realities, the terrible realities that lie beyond ovations!

Others, young or more ardent, aroused themselves at the sight of these two elegant women. Electrified by their smiles, they stood erect, pa.s.sing a hand over their wrinkled flannels, and threw kisses, trying to recover their gentleness of the days when they were not soldiers.

Suddenly, one of those who were pa.s.sing, forgot the women and noticed me, also waving my hat to them, and shouting hurrah. He was a sort of red-haired, bitter devil."

Castro could still see him, as though his head were peering through one of the bar-room windows; perhaps he would be able to see, as long as he lived, the whitish parchment of the man's face, drawn across his prominent cheek-bones; his red beard hanging from his jaws, as though it were a piece of make-up, and above all, his insolent, sarcastic eyes, a muddy green color, like that of oysters. He was the soldier who criticizes, grumbles, and talks against the officers, while carrying out their orders. In civil life he must have been the disagreeable rebel who never approves of anything. As his eyes met those of Castro, the latter had a feeling of repulsion. He divined the man with whom one always clashes in the street, in the cars, and in the theater. And nevertheless, he would never forget his momentary meeting with that soldier who was pa.s.sing and was disappearing in the distance, with only just enough time to say six words.

He gave the two women a scornful, ironic smile--then another at Castro, who was still waving his hat, and pointed to the end of the carriage, shouting to him:

"There's still room for one more!"

And that was all he said.

"He said enough, Michael. Since then I keep hearing his harsh voice: I shall always hear it, in my happiest moments, if I remain here. And the look in his eyes? I understood all the mute insults, the rapid comparisons that he made between his misery and my strong, well-groomed appearance. For him I was a coward gallivanting with women, when men are with men, giving their lives for something of importance."

"Bah! You are a foreigner," interrupted the Prince, who seemed wearied by his friend's words.

"I live here; and the land where I live cannot be foreign to me. This war is for something more than questions of land; it concerns all men.

Look at the Americans, whom we all considered very practical and incapable of idealism; they know that they are not going to gain anything positive; and nevertheless they are entering the struggle with all their might. Besides, there is the spirit of the women. Would you imagine that the two that were with me laughed at the red-headed fellow's insult, considering it very apropos? And don't tell me that women are always attracted by the warrior, on every occasion. Perhaps by the warrior in peace times, s.h.i.+ny and beplumed. But these fellows now look so miserable! No; there is something very lofty in everything that surrounds us, something that you and I have not been able to see, because of our selfishness."

His listener once more shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of indifference.

"And when I think of my meeting yesterday, as I constantly am doing, and see the place that that d.a.m.ned redhead offered me jokingly, as though I were a woman, and as though I would never have the courage to take it, you propose that I arrange for a deadly combat with another of these men who consider themselves, not without reason, superior to us! No; now you know my answer: I won't accept."

He had left the arm of the chair and was standing, facing the Prince.

The latter made a gesture of weariness. He was bored by Atilio's words, by that childlike story about the train, the red-haired soldier and his insolent invitation. That might move Dona Clorinda, but n.o.body else; he had more important things to think about just then. And since he refused to do him the favor, he could leave him alone.

"Good-by, Michael!" said Castro, with the conviction that this farewell was going to be something more than a momentary parting.

"Good-by," replied the Prince, without stirring.