Oh, the meekness of the bluff Senor Desnoyers after these reflections!
... His family felt alarmed at seeing the humility and gentleness with which he moved around the house. The two men-servants had gone to join their regiments, and to them the most surprising result of the declaration of war was the sudden kindness of their master, the lavishness of his farewell gifts, the paternal care with which he supervised their preparations for departure. The terrible Don Marcelo embraced them with moist eyes, and the two had to exert themselves to prevent his accompanying them to the station.
Outside of his home he was slipping about humbly as though mutely asking pardon of the many people around him. To him they all appeared his superiors. It was a period of economic crisis; for the time being, the rich also were experiencing what it was to be poor and worried; the banks had suspended operations and were paying only a small part of their deposits. For some weeks the millionaire was deprived of his wealth, and felt restless before the uncertain future. How long would it be before they could send him money from South America? Was war going to take away fortunes as well as lives? ... And yet Desnoyers had never appreciated money less, nor disposed of it with greater generosity.
Numberless mobilized men of the lower cla.s.ses who were going alone toward the station met a gentleman who would timidly stop them, put his hand in his pocket and leave in their right hand a bill of twenty francs, fleeing immediately before their astonished eyes. The working-women who were returning weeping from saying good-bye to their husbands saw this same gentleman smiling at the children who were with them, patting their cheeks and hastening away, leaving a five-franc piece in their hands.
Don Marcelo, who had never smoked, was now frequenting the tobacco shops, coming out with hands and pockets filled in order that he might, with lavish generosity, press the packages upon the first soldier he met. At times the recipient, smiling courteously, would thank him with a few words, revealing his superior breeding--afterwards pa.s.sing the gift on to others clad in cloaks as coa.r.s.e and badly cut as his own. The mobilization, universally obligatory, often caused him to make these mistakes.
The rough hands pressing his with a grateful clasp, left him satisfied for a few moments. Ah, if he could only do more! ... The Government in mobilizing its vehicles had appropriated three of his monumental automobiles, and Desnoyers felt very sorry that they were not also taking the fourth mastodon. Of what use were they to him? The shepherds of this monstrous herd, the chauffeur and his a.s.sistants, were now in the army. Everybody was marching away. Finally he and his son would be the only ones left--two useless creatures.
He roared with wrath on learning of the enemy"s entrance into Belgium, considering this the most unheard-of treason in history. He suffered agonies of shame at remembering that at first he had held the exalted patriots of his country responsible for the war... . What perfidy, methodically carried out after long years of preparation! The accounts of the sackings, fires and butcheries made him turn pale and gnash his teeth. To him, to Marcelo Desnoyers, might happen the very same thing that Belgium was enduring, if the barbarians should invade France. He had a home in the city, a castle in the country, and a family. Through a.s.sociation of ideas, the women a.s.saulted by the soldiery, made him think of Chichi and the dear Dona Luisa. The mansions in flames called to his mind the rare and costly furnishings acc.u.mulated in his expensive dwellings--the armorial bearings of his social elevation. The old folk that were shot, the women foully mutilated, the children with their hands cut off, all the horrors of a war of terror, aroused the violence of his character.
And such things could happen with impunity in this day and generation! ...
In order to convince himself that punishment was near, that vengeance was overtaking the guilty ones, he felt the necessity of mingling daily with the people crowding around the Gare de l"Est.
Although the greater part of the troops were operating on the frontiers, that was not diminishing the activity in Paris. Entire battalions were no longer going off, but day and night soldiers were coming to the station singly or in groups. These were Reserves without uniform on their way to enroll themselves with their companies, officials who until then had been busy with the work of the mobilization, platoons in arms destined to fill the great gaps opened by death.
The mult.i.tude, pressed against the railing, was greeting those who were going off, following them with their eyes while they were crossing the large square. The latest editions of the daily papers were announced with hoa.r.s.e yells, and instantly the dark throng would be spotted with white, all reading with avidity the printed sheets. Good news: "Vive la France!" A doubtful despatch, foreshadowing calamity: "No matter! We must press on at all costs! The Russians will close in behind them!" And while these dialogues, inspired by the latest news were taking place, many young girls were going among the groups offering little flags and tricolored c.o.c.kades--and pa.s.sing through the patio, men and still more men were disappearing behind the gla.s.s doors, on their way to the war.
A sub-lieutenant of the Reserves, with his bag on his shoulder, was accompanied by his father toward the file of policemen keeping the crowds back. Desnoyers saw in the young officer a certain resemblance to his son. The father was wearing in his lapel the black and green ribbon of 1870--a decoration which always filled Desnoyers with remorse. He was tall and gaunt, but was still trying to hold himself erect, with a heavy frown. He wanted to show himself fierce, inhuman, in order to hide his emotion.
"Good-bye, my boy! Do your best."
"Good-bye, father."
They did not clasp hands, and each was avoiding looking at the other.
The official was smiling like an automaton. The father turned his back brusquely, and threading his way through the throng, entered a cafe, where for some time he needed the most retired seat in the darkest earner to hide his emotion.
AND DON MARCELO ENVIED HIS GRIEF.
Some of the Reservists came along singing, preceded by a flag. They were joking and jostling each other, betraying in excited actions, long halts at all the taverns along the way. One of them, without interrupting his song, was pressing the hand of an old woman marching beside him, cheerful and dry-eyed. The mother was concentrating all her strength in order, with feigned happiness, to accompany this strapping lad to the last minute.
Others were coming along singly, separated from their companies, but not on that account alone. The gun was hanging from the shoulder, the back overlaid by the hump of the knapsack, the red legs shooting in and out of the turned-back folds of the blue cloak, and the smoke of a pipe under the visor of the kepis. In front of one of these men, four children were walking along, lined up according to size. They kept turning their heads to admire their father, suddenly glorified by his military trappings. At his side was marching his wife, affable and resigned, feeling in her simple soul a revival of love, an ephemeral Spring, born of the contact with danger. The man, a laborer of Paris, who a few months before was singing La Internacional, demanding the abolishment of armies and the brotherhood of all mankind, was now going in quest of death. His wife, choking back her sobs, was admiring him greatly. Affection and commiseration made her insist upon giving him a few last counsels. In his knapsack she had put his best handkerchiefs, the few provisions in the house and all the money. Her man was not to be uneasy about her and the children; they would get along all right. The government and kind neighbors would look after them.
The soldier in reply was jesting over the somewhat misshapen figure of his wife, saluting the coming citizen, and prophesying that he would be born in a time of great victory. A kiss to the wife, an affectionate hair-pull for his offspring, and then he had joined his comrades... .
No tears. Courage! ... Vive la France!
The final injunctions of the departing were now heard. n.o.body was crying. But as the last red pantaloons disappeared, many hands grasped the iron railing convulsively, many handkerchiefs were bitten with gnashing teeth, many faces were hidden in the arms with sobs of anguish.
AND DON MARCELO ENVIED THESE TEARS.
The old woman, on losing the warm contact of her son"s hand from her withered one, turned in the direction which she believed to be that of the hostile country, waving her arms with threatening fury.
"Ah, the a.s.sa.s.sin! ... the bandit!"
In her wrathful imagination she was again seeing the countenance so often displayed in the ill.u.s.trated pages of the periodicals--moustaches insolently aggressive, a mouth with the jaw and teeth of a wolf, that laughed ... and laughed as men must have laughed in the time of the cave-men.
AND DON MARCELO ENVIED THIS WRATH!
CHAPTER II
NEW LIFE
When Marguerite was able to return to the studio in the rue de la Pompe, Julio, who had been living in a perpetual bad humor, seeing everything in the blackest colors, suddenly felt a return of his old optimism.
The war was not going to be so cruel as they all had at first imagined.
The days had pa.s.sed by, and the movements of the troops were beginning to be less noticeable. As the number of men diminished in the streets, the feminine population seemed to have increased. Although there was great scarcity of money, the banks still remaining closed, the necessity for it was increasingly great, in order to secure provisions. Memories of the famine of the siege of "70 tormented the imagination. Since war had broken out with the same enemy, it seemed but logical to everybody to expect a repet.i.tion of the same happenings. The storehouses were besieged by women who were securing stale food at exorbitant prices in order to store it in their homes. Future hunger was producing more terror than immediate dangers.
For young Desnoyers these were about all the transformations that war was creating around him. People would finally become accustomed to the new existence. Humanity has a certain reserve force of adaptation which enables it to mould itself to circ.u.mstances and continue existing. He was hoping to continue his life as though nothing had happened. It was enough for him that Marguerite should continue faithful to their past. Together they would see events slipping by them with the cruel luxuriousness of those who, from an inaccessible height, contemplate a flood without the slightest risk to themselves.
This selfish att.i.tude had also become habitual to Argensola.
"Let us be neutral," the Bohemian would say. "Neutrality does not necessarily mean indifference. Let us enjoy the great spectacle, since nothing like it will ever happen again in our lifetime."
It was unfortunate that war should happen to come when they had so little money. Argensola was hating the banks even more than the Central Powers, distinguishing with special antipathy the trust company which was delaying payment of Julio"s check. How lovely it would have been with this sum available, to have forestalled events by laying in every cla.s.s of commodity! In order to supplement the domestic scrimping, he again had to solicit the aid of Dona Luisa. War had lessened Don Marcelo"s precautions, and the family was now living in generous unconcern. The mother, like other house mistresses, had stored up provisions for months and months to come, buying whatever eatables she was able to lay hands on. Argensola took advantage of this abundance, repeating his visits to the home in the avenue Victor Hugo, descending its service stairway with great packages which were swelling the supplies in the studio.
He felt all the joys of a good housekeeper in surveying the treasures piled up in the kitchen--great tins of canned meat, pyramids of b.u.t.ter crocks, and bags of dried vegetables. He had acc.u.mulated enough there to maintain a large family. The war had now offered a new pretext for him to visit Don Marcelo"s wine-vaults.
"Let them come!" he would say with a heroic gesture as he took stock of his treasure trove. "Let them come when they will! We are ready for them!"
The care and increase of his provisions, and the investigation of news were the two functions of his existence. It seemed necessary to procure ten, twelve, fifteen papers a day; some because they were reactionary, and the novelty of seeing all the French united filled him with enthusiasm; others because they were radical and must be better informed of the news received from the government. They generally appeared at midday, at three, at four and at five in the afternoon. An half hour"s delay in the publication of the sheet raised great hopes in the public, on the qui vive for stupendous news. All the last supplements were s.n.a.t.c.hed up; everybody had his pockets stuffed with papers, waiting anxiously the issue of extras in order to buy them, too. Yet all the sheets were saying approximately the same thing.
Argensola was developing a credulous, enthusiastic soul, capable of admitting many improbable things. He presumed that this same spirit was probably animating everybody around him. At times, his old critical att.i.tude would threaten to rebel, but doubt was repulsed as something dishonorable. He was living in a new world, and it was but natural that extraordinary things should occur that could be neither measured nor explained by the old processes of reasoning. So he commented with infantile joy on the marvellous accounts in the daily papers--of combats between a single Belgian platoon and entire regiments of enemies, putting them to disorderly flight; of the German fear of the bayonet that made them run like hares the instant that the charge sounded; of the inefficiency of the German artillery whose projectiles always missed fire.
It was logical and natural that little Belgium should conquer gigantic Germany--a repet.i.tion of David and Goliath--with all the metaphors and images that this unequal contest had inspired across so many centuries.
Like the greater part of the nation, he had the mentality of a reader of tales of chivalry who feels himself defrauded if the hero, single-handed, fails to cleave a thousand enemies with one fell stroke.
He purposely chose the most sensational papers, those which published many stories of single encounters, of individual deeds about which n.o.body could know with any degree of certainty.
The intervention of England on the seas made him imagine a frightful famine, coming providentially like a thunder-clap to torture the enemy.
He honestly believed that ten days of this maritime blockade would convert Germany into a group of shipwrecked sailors floating on a raft.
This vision made him repeat his visits to the kitchen to gloat over his packages of provisions.
"Ah, what they would give in Berlin for my treasures!" ...
Never had Argensola eaten with greater avidity. Consideration of the great privations suffered by the adversary was sharpening his appet.i.te to a monstrous capacity. White bread, golden brown and crusty, was stimulating him to an almost religious ecstasy.
"If friend William could only get his claws on this!" he would chuckle to his companion.
So he chewed and swallowed with increasing relish; solids and liquids on pa.s.sing through his mouth seemed to be acquiring a new flavor, rare and divine. Distant hunger for him was a stimulant, a sauce of endless delight.
While France was inspiring his enthusiasm, he was conceding greater credit to Russia. "Ah, those Cossacks!" ... He was accustomed to speak of them as intimate friends. He loved to describe the unbridled gallop of the wild hors.e.m.e.n, impalpable as phantoms, and so terrible in their wrath that the enemy could not look them in the face. The concierge and the stay-at-homes used to listen to him with all the respect due to a foreign gentleman, knowing much of the great outside world with which they were not familiar.
"The Cossacks will adjust the accounts of these bandits!" he would conclude with absolute a.s.surance. "Within a month they will have entered Berlin."
And his public composed of women--wives and mothers of those who had gone to war--would modestly agree with him, with that irresistible desire which we all feel of placing our hopes on something distant and mysterious. The French would defend the country, reconquering, besides the lost territories, but the Cossacks--of whom so many were speaking but so few had seen--were going to give the death blow. The only person who knew them at first hand was Tchernoff, and to Argensola"s astonishment, he listened to his words without showing any enthusiasm.