The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Part 35

And with the mania of the University man, whose hobby is to see everything reasoned out and logically explained, he added in that supreme moment, with the tenacity of those who die talking:

"Sad war, sir... . Many premises are lacking in order to decide who is the culpable party... . When the war is ended they will have to ...

will have to ..." And he closed his eyes overcome by the effort.

Desnoyers left the dead man, thinking to himself. Poor fellow! He was placing the hour of justice at the termination of the war, and meanwhile hundreds like him were dying, disappearing with all their scruples of ponderous and disciplined reasoning.

That night there was no sleep on the place. The walls of the lodge were creaking, the gla.s.s cras.h.i.+ng and breaking, the two women in the adjoining room crying out nervously. The noise of the German fire was beginning to mingle with that of other explosives close at hand. He surmised that this was the smas.h.i.+ng of the French projectiles which were coming in search of the enemy's artillery above the Marne.

For a few minutes his hopes revived as the possibility of victory flashed into his mind, but he was so depressed by his forlorn situation that such a hope evaporated as quickly as it had come. His own troops were advancing, but this advance did not, perhaps, represent more than a local gain. The line of battle was so extensive! ... It was going to be as in 1870; the French would achieve partial victories, modified at the last moment by the strategy of the enemies until they were turned into complete defeat.

After midnight the cannonading ceased, but silence was by no means re-established. Automobiles were rolling around the lodge midst hoa.r.s.e shouts of command. It must be the hospital convoy that was evacuating the castle. Then near daybreak the thudding of horses' hoofs and the wheels of chugging machines thundered through the gates, making the ground tremble. Half an hour afterwards sounded the tramp of mult.i.tudes moving at a quick pace, dying away in the depths of the park.

At dawn the old gentleman leaped from his bed, and the first thing he spied from the cottage window was the flag of the Red Cross still floating from the top of the castle. There were no more cots under the trees. On the bridge he met one of the doctors and several a.s.sistants.

The hospital force had gone with all its transportable patients. There only remained in the castle, under the care of a company, those most gravely wounded. The Valkyries of the health department had also disappeared.

The red-bearded Shylock was among those left behind, and on seeing Don Marcelo afar off, he smiled and immediately vanished. A few minutes after he returned with full hands. Never before had he been so generous.

Foreseeing pressing necessity, the hungry man put his hands in his pockets as usual, but was astonished to learn from the orderly's emphatic gestures that he did not wish any money.

"Nein... . Nein!"

What generosity was this! ... The German persisted in his negatives.

His enormous mouth expanded in an ingratiating grin as he laid his heavy paws on Marcelo's shoulders. He appeared like a good dog, a meek dog, fawning and licking the hands of the pa.s.ser-by, coaxing to be taken along with him. "Franzosen... . Franzosen." He did not know how to say any more, but the Frenchman read in his words the desire to make him understand that he had always been in great sympathy with the French.

Something very important was evidently transpiring--the ill-humored air of those left behind in the castle, and the sudden servility of this plowman in uniform, made it very apparent... .

Some distance beyond the castle he saw soldiers, many soldiers. A battalion of infantry had spread itself along the walls with trucks, draught horses and swift mounts. With their pikes the soldiers were making small openings in the mud walls, shaping them into a border of little pinnacles. Others were kneeling or sitting near the apertures, taking off their knapsacks in order that they might be less hampered.

Afar off the cannon were booming, and in the intervals between their detonations could be heard the bursting of shrapnel, the bubbling of frying oil, the grinding of a coffee-mill, and the incessant crackling of rifle-fire. Fleecy clouds were floating over the fields, giving to near objects the indefinite lines of unreality. The sun was a faint spot seen between curtains of mist. The trees were weeping fog moisture from all the cracks in their bark.

A thunderclap rent the air so forcibly that it seemed very near the castle. Desnoyers trembled, believing that he had received a blow in the chest. The other men remained impa.s.sive with their customary indifference. A cannon had just been discharged but a few feet away from him, and not till then did he realize that two batteries had been installed in the park. The pieces of artillery were hidden under mounds of branches, the gunners having felled trees in order to mask their monsters more perfectly. He saw them arranging the last; with shovels, they were forming a border of earth, a foot in width, around each piece. This border guarded the feet of the operators whose bodies were protected by steel s.h.i.+elds on both sides of them. Then they raised a breastwork of trunks and boughs, leaving only the mouth of the cylindrical mortar visible.

By degrees Don Marcelo became accustomed to the firing which seemed to be creating a vacuum within his cranium. He ground his teeth and clenched his fists at every detonation, but stood stock-still with no desire to leave, dominated by the violence of the explosions, admiring the serenity of these men who were giving orders, erect and coolly, or moving like humble menials around their roaring metal beasts.

All his ideas seemed to have been s.n.a.t.c.hed away by that first discharge of cannon. His brain was living in the present moment only. He turned his eyes insistently toward the white and red banner which was waving from the mansion.

"That is treachery," he thought, "a breach of faith."

Far away, on the other side of the Marne, the French artillery were belching forth their deadly fire. He could imagine their handiwork from the little yellowish clouds that were floating in the air, and the columns of smoke which were spouting forth at various points of the landscape where the German troops were hidden, forming a line which appeared to lose itself in infinity. An atmosphere of protection and respect seemed to be enveloping the castle.

The morning mists had dissolved; the sun was finally showing its bright and limpid light, lengthening the shadows of men and trees to fantastic dimensions. Hills and woods came forth from the haze, fresh and dripping after their morning bath. The entire valley was now completely exposed, and Desnoyers was surprised to see the river from the spot to which he had been rooted--the cannon having opened great windows in the woods that had hid it from view. What most astonished him in looking over this landscape, smiling and lovely in the morning light, was that n.o.body was to be seen--absolutely n.o.body. Mountain tops and forests were bellowing without anyone's being in evidence. There must be more than a hundred thousand men in the s.p.a.ce swept by his piercing gaze, and yet not a human being was visible. The deadly boom of arms was causing the air to vibrate without leaving any optical trace. There was no other smoke but that of the explosions, the black spirals that were flinging their great sh.e.l.ls to burst on the ground. These were rising on all sides, encircling the castle like a ring of giant tops, but not one of that orderly circle ventured to touch the edifice. Don Marcelo again stared at the Red Cross flag. "It is treachery!" he kept repeating; yet at the same time he was selfishly rejoicing in the base expedient, since it served to defend his property.

The battalion was at last completely installed the entire length of the wall, opposite the river. The soldiers, kneeling, were supporting their guns on the newly made turrets and grooves, and seemed satisfied with this rest after a night of battling retreat. They all appeared sleeping with their eyes open. Little by little they were letting themselves drop back on their heels, or seeking the support of their knapsacks. Snores were heard in the brief s.p.a.ces between the artillery fire. The officials standing behind them were examining the country with their field gla.s.ses, or talking in knots. Some appeared disheartened, others furious at the backward flight that had been going on since the day before.

The majority appeared calm, with the pa.s.sivity of obedience. The battle front was immense; who could foresee the outcome? ... There they were in full retreat, but in other places, perhaps, their comrades might be advancing with decided gains. Until the very last moment, no soldier knows certainly the fate of the struggle. What was most grieving this detachment was the fact that it was all the time getting further away from Paris.

Don Marcelo's eye was caught by a sparkling circle of gla.s.s, a monocle fixed upon him with aggressive insistence. A lank lieutenant with the corseted waist of the officers that he had seen in Berlin, a genuine Junker, was a few feet away, sword in hand behind his men, like a wrathful and glowering shepherd.

"What are you doing here?" he said gruffly.

Desnoyers explained that he was the owner of the castle. "French?"

continued the lieutenant. "Yes, French." ... The official scowled in hostile meditation, feeling the necessity of saying something against the enemy. The shouts and antics of his companions-at-arms put a summary end to his reflections. They were all staring upward, and the old man followed their gaze.

For an hour past, there had been streaking through the air frightful roarings enveloped in yellowish vapors, strips of cloud which seemed to contain wheels revolving with frenzied rotation. They were the projectiles of the heavy German artillery which, fired from various distances, threw their great sh.e.l.ls over the castle. Certainly that could not be what was interesting the officials!

He half shut his eyes in order to see better, and finally near the edge of a cloud, he distinguished a species of mosquito flas.h.i.+ng in the sunlight. Between brief intervals of silence, could be heard the distant, faint buzz announcing its presence. The officers nodded their heads. "Franzosen!" Desnoyers thought so, too. He could not believe that the enemy's two black crosses were between those wings. Instead he saw with his mind's eye, two tricolored rings like the circular spots which color the fluttering wings of b.u.t.terflies.

This explained the agitation of the Germans. The French air-bird remained motionless for a few seconds over the castle, regardless of the white bubbles exploding underneath and around it. In vain the cannon nearest hurled their deadly fire. It wheeled rapidly, and returned to the place from which it came.

"It must have taken in the whole situation," thought the old Frenchman.

"It has found them out; it knows what is going on here."

He guessed rightly that this information would swiftly change the course of events. Everything which had been happening in the early morning hours was going to sink into insignificance compared with what was coming now. He shuddered with fear, the irresistible fear of the unknown, and yet at the same time, he was filled with curiosity, impatience and nervous dread before a danger that threatened and would not stay its relentless course.

Outside the park, but a short distance from the mud wall, sounded a strident explosion like a stupendous blow from a gigantic axe--an axe as big as his castle. There began flying through the air entire treetops, trunks split in two, great chunks of earth with the vegetation still clinging, a rain of dirt that obscured the heavens. Some stones fell down from the wall. The Germans crouched but with no visible emotion.

They knew what it meant; they had been expecting it as something inevitable after seeing the French aeroplane. The Red Cross flag could no longer deceive the enemy's artillery.

Don Marcelo had not time to recover from his surprise before there came a second explosion nearer the mud wall ... a third inside the park.

It seemed to him that he had been suddenly flung into another world from which he was seeing men and things across a fantastic atmosphere which roared and rocked and destroyed with the violence of its reverberations.

He was stunned with the awfulness of it all, and yet he was not afraid.

Until then, he had imagined fear in a very different form. He felt an agonizing vacuum in his stomach. He staggered violently all the time, as though some force were pus.h.i.+ng him about, giving him first a blow on the chest, and then another on the back to straighten him up.

A strong smell of acids penetrated the atmosphere, making respiration very difficult, and filling his eyes with smarting tears. On the other hand, the uproar no longer disturbed him, it did not exist for him. He supposed it was still going on from the trembling air, the shaking of things around him, in the whirlwind which was bending men double but was not reacting within his body. He had lost the faculty of hearing; all the strength of his senses had concentrated themselves in looking. His eyes appeared to have acquired multiple facets like those of certain insects. He saw what was happening before, beside, behind him, simultaneously witnessing extraordinary things as though all the laws of life had been capriciously overthrown.

An official a few feet away suddenly took an inexplicable flight. He began to rise without losing his military rigidity, still helmeted, with furrowed brow, moustache blond and short, mustard-colored chest, and gloved hands still holding field-gla.s.ses and map--but there his individuality stopped. The lower extremities, in their grayish leggings remained on the ground, inanimate as reddening, empty moulds. The trunk, in its violent ascent, spread its contents abroad like a bursting rocket. Further on, some gunners, standing upright, were suddenly stretched full length, converted into a motionless row, bathed in blood.

The line of infantry was lying close to the ground. The men had huddled themselves together near the loopholes through which they aimed their guns, trying to make themselves less visible. Many had placed their knapsacks over their heads or at their backs to defend themselves from the flying bits of sh.e.l.l. If they moved at all, it was only to worm their way further into the earth, trying to hollow it out with their stomachs. Many of them had changed position with mysterious rapidity, now lying stretched on their backs as though asleep. One had his uniform torn open across the abdomen, showing between the rents of the cloth, slabs of flesh, blue and red that protruded and swelled up with a bubbling expansion. Another had his legs shot away, and was looking around with surprised eyes and a black mouth rounded into an effort to howl, but from which no sound ever came.

Desnoyers had lost all notion of time. He could not tell whether he had been rooted to that spot for many hours or for a single moment. The only thing that caused him anxiety was the persistent trembling of his legs which were refusing to sustain him... .

Something fell behind him. It was raining ruin. Turning his head, he saw his castle completely transformed. Half of the tower had just been carried off. The pieces of slate were scattered everywhere in tiny chips; the walls were crumbling; loose window frames were balancing on edge like fragments of stage scenery, and the old wood of the tower hood was beginning to burn like a torch.

The spectacle of this instantaneous change in his property impressed him more than the ravages of death, making him realize the Cyclopean power of the blind, avenging forces raging around him. The vital force that had been concentrated in his eyes, now spread to his feet ... and he started to run without knowing whither, feeling the same necessity to hide himself as had those men enchained by discipline who were trying to flatten themselves into the earth in imitation of the reptile's pliant invisibility.

His instinct was pus.h.i.+ng him toward the lodge, but half way up the avenue, he was stopped by another lot of astounding transformations. An unseen hand had just s.n.a.t.c.hed away half of the cottage roof. The entire side wall doubled over, forming a cascade of bricks and dust. The interior rooms were now exposed to view like a theatrical setting--the kitchen where he had eaten, the upper floor with the room in which he descried his still unmade bed. The poor women! ...

He turned around, running now toward the castle, trying to make the sub-cellar in which he had been fastened for the night; and when he finally found himself under those dusty cobwebs, he felt as though he were in the most luxurious salon, and he devoutly blessed the good workmans.h.i.+p of the castle builders.

The subterranean silence began gradually to bring back his sense of hearing. The cannonading of the Germans and the bursting of the French sh.e.l.ls sounded from his retreat like a distant tempest. There came into his mind the eulogies which he had been accustomed to lavish upon the cannon of '75 without knowing anything about it except by hearsay. Now he had witnessed its effects. "It shoots TOO well!" he muttered. In a short time it would finish destroying his castle--he was finding such perfection excessive.

But he soon repented of these selfish lamentations. An idea, tenacious as remorse, had fastened itself in his brain. It now seemed to him that all he was pa.s.sing through was an expiation for the great mistake of his youth. He had evaded the service of his country, and now he was enveloped in all the horrors of war, with the humiliation of a pa.s.sive and defenseless being, without any of the soldier's satisfaction of being able to return the blows. He was going to die--he was sure of that--but a shameful death, unknown and inglorious. The ruins of his mansion were going to become his sepulchre... . And the certainty of dying there in the darkness, like a rat that sees the openings of his hole being closed up, made this refuge intolerable.

Above him the tornado was still raging. A peal like thunder boomed above his head, and then came the crash of a landslide. Another projectile must have fallen upon the building. He heard shrieks of agony, yells and precipitous steps on the floor above him. Perhaps the sh.e.l.l, in its blind fury, had blown to pieces many of the dying in the salons.

Fearing to remain buried in his retreat, he bounded up the cellar stairs two steps at a time. As he scudded across the first floor, he saw the sky through the shattered roofs. Along the edges were hanging sections of wood, fragments of swinging tile and furniture stopped halfway in its flight. Crossing the hall, he had to clamber over much rubbish. He stumbled over broken and twisted iron, parts of beds rained from the upper rooms into the mountain of debris in which he saw convulsed limbs and heard anguished voices that he could not understand.

He leaped as he ran, feeling the same longing for light and free air as those who rush from the hold to the deck of a s.h.i.+pwreck. While sheltered in the darkness more time had elapsed than he had supposed. The sun was now very high. He saw in the garden more corpses in tragic and grotesque postures. The wounded were doubled over with pain or lying on the ground or propping themselves against the trees in painful silence. Some had opened their knapsacks and drawn out their sanitary kits and were trying to care for their cuts. The infantry was now firing incessantly. The number of riflemen had increased. New bands of soldiers were entering the park--some with a sergeant at their head, others followed by an officer carrying a revolver at his breast as though guiding his men with it. This must be the infantry expelled from their position near the river which had come to reinforce the second line of defense. The mitrailleuses were adding their tac-tac to the cracks of the fusileers.

The hum of the invisible swarms was buzzing incessantly. Thousands of sticky horse-flies were droning around Desnoyers without his even seeing them. The bark of the trees was being stripped by unseen hands; the leaves were falling in torrents; the boughs were shaken by opposing forces, the stones on the ground were being crushed by a mysterious foot. All inanimate objects seemed to have acquired a fantastic life.

The zinc spoons of the soldiers, the metallic parts of their outfit, the pails of the artillery were all clanking as though in an imperceptible hailstorm. He saw a cannon lying on its side with the wheels broken and turned over among many men who appeared asleep; he saw soldiers who stretched themselves out without a contraction, without a sound, as though overcome by sudden drowsiness. Others were howling and dragging themselves forward in a sitting position.

The old man felt an extreme sensation of heat. The pungent perfume of explosive drugs brought the tears to his eyes and clawed at his throat.

At the same time he was chilly and felt his forehead freezing in a glacial sweat.