Anna (15 page)

He did not put the album away at once. He sat brooding over what he had just done. It seemed to him now more than ever that it was a life that he had destroyed. Marie was dead; and Anna had gone the way of her. There wasn't even Berthe now. He had packed her off to an aunt in Hanover because he had been frightened of the influence that the house might have had on her; had sent her away so that she might be able to forget her sister. There was no one else in the house now but the servants.

Even the Baron was absent: he had rejoined his regiment and was nursing his broken heart somewhere on French soil at this very moment. He had declared before going that he hoped a French bullet would pierce his breast in the first encounter and so end the misery that he was suffering: Herr Karlin envied him his opportunity.

The clock in the hall struck, and the other clocks in the house began chiming as well. Herr Karlin roused himself. Gathering up the jumble of fragments from the floor, he threw them by handfuls into the fire. They smouldered for a moment and then blazed. Herr Karlin stood stupidly staring at them.

Twenty years of his life, and everything that had made him happy in it, had gone up in that whirl of flame.

Charles shifted from one foot to the other—both feet were aching— and went on listening.

The General who addressed them had been as eloquent as a politician. He told them that their country was in deadly peril, that Rome was again facing the barbarians, and that only their steel now stood between the women of France and ravishment. He was an old man, the General, but the thought of ravishment still appeared to rouse him. His colour mounted and his last few words were declaimed at the top of his voice.

The ceremony would have been longer—the General still had two pages of notes left—but for the sound of heavy gunfire across the valley. The reverberations of the first volley cut everything short. The General relinquished the men to their colonel, and rode hurriedly off with his staff. He was the only man on the field who knew that all the French artillery had been moved farther away to the south to avoid capture, and that it must be German guns that they were hearing.

The men themselves were apprehensive. They had already witnessed one extraordinary episode which had shaken their confidence in their commander and in their own ability to make a stand anywhere in this campaign of forced retreats. They had actually seen the Imperial Army, which the Emperor had now entrusted body and soul to MacMahon, in full retreat through Metz.

This glorious body of men, which was the pride of France, had passed through the winding streets of Metz and become an immovable mass on the narrow bridges. A pair of travelling circuses meeting at a cross-roads could not have caused greater confusion. The bridges were the scene of rival columns fighting for their places, and all men were enemies. Colonels challenged the precedence of advantageously placed Majors. Captains ordered back soldiers of other regiments. And Generals sulked. And all the time the rest of the army was piling up behind. Guns, field-kitchens, pontoon bridges, ammunition limbers, hospital wagons, and brass bands were all brought crushing into the city, each contributing its quota to the chaos. And so great had been the panic to reach Metz, and leave it behind again, that there had been no time to blow up the bridges over the Moselle behind them.

Everything, in fact, that panic and folly could do to assist the advance of the Germans had been faithfully contributed.

And in the mind of every man who had taken part in that inglorious steeplechase was one question: “Why is it that we never know where the Germans are while they know every move as soon as it is made?” This question, indeed, puzzled every one from Marshal le Boeuf downwards. It perplexed the officers in charge of reconnaissance, whose scouts brought back no information. And it perplexed the scouts themselves, who all the time were out-scouted. The unpleasant suspicion began to crystallise in the minds of all but the stupid that perhaps the Prussian military training had been better than the French. The one consolation that remained was to be found in the immemorial truth that in warfare the only people who do not know the progress of a campaign are the soldiers who are taking part in it.

But, even so, retreat is something that cannot be disguised. The distinctive odour of defeat attaches to every army that is retiring. And, for Charles's part, he had now come to accept the condition of retreat as inevitable.

“We shall never win,” he repeated to himself hopelessly. “They are too strong for us.”

And what he was saying inside himself was not merely an isolated cry of despair in the mind of one man not born for war. It was the inarticulate expression of the whole spirit of the evacuating army.

“Why did we ever begin this war?” he asked himself, for the thousandth time. “Why was the question of a new King of Spain more important to us than our lives and our homes? If the Prussians wanted a German King in Spain, wouldn't the sensible thing have been to let them have him, and then re-arm and re-arm and re-arm so that we should have been found ready and not like this? Why should we have begun the war when we weren't properly prepared?”

And every time this question formed itself inside Charles Latourette's brain, France's hope of victory grew that much the slighter.

The pain in his right foot, and the conviction that the Emperor had somehow muddled things, had become Charles's two most pressing miseries. The mere sensation of marching, even of marching with the overwhelming equipment of an infantryman, had grown natural to him. He was tired always; he woke tired, lived tired, slept tired. And still he marched.

But his foot now moved in a bath of blood and watery pus. The sole of his boot had abruptly collapsed, and the whole of this sub-contractor's contraption of cardboard and cheap rubbish was turning its nails upwards into his instep. The flesh was already sodden and swollen, and every time he lifted his foot the sole came away from the inside of the boot with the sound of a smacking, sticky kiss.

The march was not broken until they reached Rezonville. When the order came to halt, the whole army, like a winded animal, collapsed. It was evening now and they had been marching through the long August day. The smell of sweat, which had been mercifully dissipated while they were moving, now filled the air. They stank under each other's nostrils. And while the sergeants were striding hither and thither marking-off sites for the latrines, the men, unable any longer to resist the urge that came from sudden relaxation, were at their business along the entire length of the road. The drains all ran into the little stream that watered the encampment, and soon there was not a pint of safe drinking-water in Rezonville.

And hunger—the awful sickening hunger of men whose last morsel of food has been shaken out of their stomachs by marching— began to assail them. They had eaten in Metz, going into shops and coming away with whatever they could carry. Charles himself had feasted on two stale Madeleines and a bunch of grapes. But food, real food, was what was now craved for. The men looked about in vain for the field-kitchens that were lost somewhere in the distant rear.

The order had gone round the camp against showing any naked lights. But this did not prevent two troopers who had trodden on a baby rabbit as it was crouching in the grass, from lighting a fire of sticks in the entrance to a disused drain and roasting it. When the glow of their oven was seen, and an irate officer came over to investigate, they smothered the flame with earth before his arrival and ate their prize greedily and bloodily. The rabbit was still half-raw.

And there were sights, too, that came up suddenly out of hell to occupy idle eyes. Three wagon-loads of wounded were brought in, their drivers searching fruitlessly for a base hospital that was supposed to be somewhere in the neighbourhood. No one knew where it was, and the drivers got down and stretched themselves, begging for a drink or a cigarette. All the time they were talking, the groans of the wounded inside could be heard. Finally, the curtains of one of the wagons were pulled aside, and a blood-stained
turban looked out. Then the turban turned, and a face the colour of a dirty shirt confronted them. But the face lacked its lower jaw. The bandages had slipped down into a scarlet ruff, and below the eyes there was a gaping pocket of flesh with the remains of a tongue still hanging there.…

It was this face that Charles remembered when their officer addressed them in the morning in the name of the Emperor, and told them that at last they would have the opportunity of adding one more glory to the annals of France.

It was a bright, pearly morning, with the trees rising out of the mist like pagodas. The larks and ortolans were singing, and nature for a moment seemed to have relapsed from summer into spring. The noise of bugles sounding a reveille seemed an intrusion from a coarser world. Every man woke with the consciousness of the hour upon him.

As he was rebuckling his belt, Charles found himself praying. The words of the Hail Mary came to him from nowhere, and he repeated them. He had a premonition, that he kept telling himself was only the effect of a disordered stomach, that before nightfall he would be in the arms of his Creator.

And almost immediately a singular and ominous event occurred. No sooner was the army upon the road than a body of cavalry cantered up, and the officer with the flat of his sabre proceeded to clear a passage through the massed files of men. It was rumoured that guns of the heaviest calibre were being brought up. And, for a moment, every one envied these artillerymen, who could destroy infantry formations as though they were lines of sheep. But instead of artillery, through the gap which the cavalry had cleared there appeared a coach. It was drawn by four horses and closely protected by outriders. As it swept into view the crest on the side could be seen. It was the Imperial crest. And inside the coach, leaning back against the cushions, sat the Emperor. Invisible for most of the time, he was nevertheless flung so far forward every time the coach passed over a rut of more than usual depth that his subjects could see him. He was still wearing the uniform of a General of the Imperial Army, but his face was pale, and he did not acknowledge the salutes of the soldiers whom he was passing. When at last it was seen that it was the Etain road that he was taking, the truth broke suddenly and unpleasantly upon the waiting men. The Emperor
was deserting. His command surrendered to Bazaine, he was now making off. The men remained stunned and a little shocked by this vision of departing royalty.

But the business of the day was steadily drawing nearer. The army lay stretched out in a great arc facing the oncoming Germans. The arc, however, was not yet completed; somewhere on the right flank was a dangerous-looking gap which reserve forces were hurriedly being called upon to fill.

The fact that the battle had begun was announced with startling suddenness. At one moment the cavalry camp at Vionville was a peaceful military depot. The endless work of brushing down and adjusting girths was in progress. And the officers were joking together with the slightly forced jocularity of men who are talking to keep their minds off immediately impending events. Then, with no warning, except for the scream of the shell, a sergeant and three horses that he was inspecting, disappeared in the scarlet blast of an explosion. The camp was under fire.

The morning mist had still not entirely cleared away and, from the sight of the gun flashes on the opposing hill, it seemed as though the very heavens themselves had opened fire on them. Riderless horses cantered madly off in all directions. And those men who were already in the saddle sought desperately to keep some kind of control over their mounts. Meanwhile, the German battery, satisfied that the sighting shell was on its mark, now opened fire with every piece that was unlimbered. The shell bursts mingled and converged. And the camp ceased to exist.

When the cavalry finally came to rest, and re-formed themselves in what they judged to be safety, they were behind the infantry lines at Rezonville. The head of the army had suddenly turned tail.

The infantry meanwhile had continued to spread out its arms ready to embrace the invader. The Gorze ravine up which the Germans already were attempting to press was to be held at all costs. The whole strategy of the day demanded it.

All that Charles could see of this strategic position was a narrow strip of stony ground between two pine trees behind which he was crouching. The ground in front of him dropped away sharply. And far below, partly obscured by bushes, lay the road. The ground at his feet was soft with pine-needles and fragrant; and through the trees a pleasant breeze was blowing. It seemed that all that a man had to do was to lie comfortably on his stomach, protected on all sides by the trees, and pick off any of the enemy who were foolhardy enough to attempt to use the road.

The officer who was with them rubbed his hands with satisfaction at their position. The road, he said, was as perfectly enfiladed as in a text-book. And the officer's confidence was infectious. The men realised that this time they had nothing to fear, that their company was a rock against which any attack would break itself. Some of them even lay flat on their backs gazing up into the branches overhead, or threw fir cones at squirrels. But a burst of heavy gunfire from the west summoned every one abruptly to the alert. And above the rumble of guns could be heard the reports of rifle shots. As each shot echoed and re-echoed across the ravine the sound which reached their ears was multiplied and exaggerated. But, on any showing, it was unpleasantly near. Over a bluff in the ravine pale puffs of grey smoke could be seen rising.

To satisfy himself that his position was as perfect as it had seemed to be, the officer now ordered two of the crack sharpshooters of the regiment to leave the cover of the wood and install themselves among the rocks, right on the cliff edge of the ravine. The men wormed themselves forward on their bellies as cautiously as though they were actually under fire already, and then hid among the boulders. Once out of sight, they were entirely forgotten as the rifle fire above the bluff came in increasing bursts. Moreover, the noise of the heavy guns sounded nearer. It was as though new batteries close at hand were now opening up.