Defenders of Democracy Part 43

"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.

"h.e.l.l," 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 Bergere? 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 G.o.d," he cried.

If indeed it was the voice of G.o.d, that other great voice which is of h.e.l.l, 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 sh.e.l.ls, 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 pa.s.sed 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 Bergere 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 pa.s.sed (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 Bergere spoke in a low unimpa.s.sioned voice:

"What would you do to them, father," she asked, "if you were G.o.d?"

"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."