Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17)

by Maurice Leblanc

  “You must defend your country,” said Marthe, seeking to gain time, in the hope that something would come to her assistance.

  “I must defend my ideas!” declared Philippe. “If my country chooses to commit an act of folly, that is no reason why I should follow her. What nonsense it is, these two great nations, the most civilized in the world, going to war because they can’t agree about the arrest of a petty official, or because one of them wants to eat up Morocco and the other is incensed at not being invited to the banquet! And, for that, they are going to fly at each other’s throats, like wild beasts! To scatter mourning and misery on every side! No, I refuse to take part in it! These hands, Marthe, these hands shall not kill! I have brothers in Germany as well as France. I have no enmity against them. I will not kill them.”

  She pretended to listen to his arguments with attention, knowing that, in this way, she would detain him a little longer. And she said:

  “Ah, your German brothers, whether they feel enmity or not, you may be sure that they will march against France! Is not your love for her the greater?”

  “Yes, yes, I love her, but just for the very reason that she is the most generous and noble of countries, that in her alone the idea of revolt against the law of blood and war can take root and sprout and blossom.”

  “You will be treated as a coward.”

  “To-day, perhaps ... but, in ten years, in twenty years, we shall be treated as heroes. Our names will be quoted as the names of the benefactors of humanity. And it will be France again that shall have had that honour ... through us! Through me!”

  “But your name will be reviled during your lifetime.”

  “Reviled by those whom I despise, by those who have the cast of mind of that captain — though he’s one of the best of them — who laughs and jokes when he is sent to certain death, he and his company.”

  Marthe answered indignantly:

  “It’s the laughter of a Frenchman, Philippe, of a Frenchman hiding his anguish under a little light chaff. A glorious laughter, which forms the pride of our race!”

  “One does not laugh in the presence of the death of others.”

  “Yes, Philippe, when it is to hide the danger from them and to keep all the horror and all the terror for one’s self alone.... Listen, Philippe!...”

  The sound of firing came from the distance, on the other side of the house. For some seconds, there was an uninterrupted crackle of musketry; then it came at rarer intervals; and, presently, there was no sound at all.

  Marthe whispered:

  “The first shot fired in the war, Philippe.... They are fighting on the frontier.... It’s your country they are defending.... France is in danger.... Oh, doesn’t your heart quiver like the heart of a son? Don’t you feel the wounds they are giving her ... the wounds they intend to give her?...”

  He wore his attitude of suffering, keeping his arms crossed stiffly over his chest and half-closing his eyes. He answered, sorrowfully:

  “Yes, yes, I feel those wounds.... But why is she fighting? For what mad love of glory? Is she not intoxicated with successes and conquests? Remember our journey through Europe.... Wherever we went, we found traces of her passage: cemeteries and charnel-houses to bear witness that she was the great victress. Isn’t that enough of conquests and triumphs?”

  “But, fool that you are,” cried Marthe, “she is not trying to conquer! She is defending herself! Picture this vision, for a moment: France invaded once more ... France dismembered ... France wiped from the face of the earth....”

  “But no, no,” he said, with a gesture of protest, “there is no question of that!”

  “Yes, there is, there is a question of that: it’s a question of life or death to her.... And you, you are deserting!”

  Philippe did not stir. Marthe felt that he was, if not shaken, at least anxious, uneasy. But, suddenly, he uncrossed his arms and, striking the table with his fist:

  “I must! I must! I promised to!... And I was right to promise! And I will keep my oath! What you call deserting is fighting, but fighting the real fight! I too am going to wage war, but it will be the war of independence and brains; and my comrades in heroism are waiting for me. There, Marthe, I won’t listen to you any longer!”

  She glued her back to the door, with her arms outstretched:

  “And the children! The children whom you are abandoning!”

  “You will send them to me later.”

  She raised her hand:

  “Never, I swear it on their heads, never shall you set eyes on them again! The sons of a deserter!... They will disown you!”

  “They will love me, if they understand.”

  “I will teach them not to understand you.”

  “If they do not understand me, it is I who will disown them. So much the worse for them!”

  He took her by the shoulders and tried to push her away. And, when Marthe resisted, he jostled her, exasperated by the fear of the unforeseen obstacle that might spring up, the arrival of his mother, perhaps the apparition of old Morestal himself.

  Marthe weakened. He at once seized her wrist and pulled at the door. But, with one last effort, she thrust back her husband and, panting, in despair:

  “One word! One word more!” she implored. “Listen, Philippe, don’t do this thing.... And, if you do not do it, well, I think I could.... Oh, it is horrible to coerce me like this!... Still, I won’t have you go.... Listen, Philippe. You know my pride, the bitterness of my feelings and all that I have suffered, all that I am suffering because of Suzanne. Well, I will forget everything. I offer not only to forgive, but to forget. Never a single word shall remind you of the past ... never an allusion ... I swear it! But don’t desert, Philippe, I entreat you, don’t do that!”

  She hung on to his clothes and pressed herself against him, stammering:

  “No, don’t do that.... Do not inflict that disgrace upon your children! The sons of a deserter!... Oh, I entreat you, Philippe, stay! We will go away together ... and we will begin life again as it was before....”

  She dragged herself at his feet, humble and supplicating, and she received the terrible impression that her words were of no avail. She was encountering a rival idea, against which all her strength was shattered. Philippe did not hear her. No feeling of pity even turned him towards her.

  Calmly, with an irresistible movement, he clasped Marthe’s wrists, gathered them in one of his hands, opened the door with the other and, flinging his wife from him, fled.

  Marthe was seized with a feeling akin to despair. However, the bag was still there and she believed that he would come back to fetch it. Then, realizing her mistake, she suddenly rose and started to run:

  “Philippe! Philippe!” she cried.

  Like him, she was thinking of some outside interference, of old Morestal, whom the outcries might attract and whom Philippe would find on his path.

  “Philippe! Philippe!”

  She became scared, not knowing where to look for him. There was nobody in the garden. She returned to the drawing-room, for she seemed to hear a sound of voices. And in fact she saw a sergeant and a private soldier hurriedly crossing the terrace, with the gardener’s son leading the way.

  “Follow me!” the brat commanded. “We’ll go up to the roof.... You can see the whole valley from there.... Ah, the telescope!...”

  He caught up the instrument as he passed.

  Marthe rushed at them:

  “What’s happening?”

  “Impossible to hold out over there,” said the sergeant. “There are too many of them.... We’re falling back....”

  “But, in that case, they will be coming?”

  “Yes, yes, they’re coming, right enough!...”

  Marthe went out on the terrace. A swarm of soldiers came running up the staircase.

  She saw Philippe in a corner. He was speaking to the men:

  “Are they coming?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have they crossed the frontier?”

&nbs
p; “No, not yet.”

  He turned to his wife and said to her, as a piece of good news:

  “They have not crossed the frontier yet.”

  And he went to meet another group of soldiers.

  Then Marthe believed that fate had sent her the aid for which she was praying. She could now do nothing more but trust to events.

  CHAPTER IV

  THE SACRED SOIL

  “BUGLER!... SOUND THE rally ... at the double ... and quietly.”

  It was Captain Daspry who now arrived, with a brisk gait, but with the grave and resolute face of a leader who is commanding at a solemn moment.

  He said to Philippe:

  “Is M. Morestal still unwell?”

  Mme. Morestal ran out from the house:

  “My husband is asleep.... He is very tired.... The morphia.... But, if there is anything you want, I can take his place. I know his intentions, his preparations.”

  “We shall attempt the impossible,” said the officer. And, addressing his lieutenant, he added, “It would have been madness to stay over there, wouldn’t it, Fabrègues? It’s not a question of demolishing a few Uhlans, as we did, but of standing our ground against a whole brigade who were climbing the other slope.... Oh, it was all planned long ago!... And M. Morestal is a jolly clever man!...”

  The bugle sounded a low call and the Alpine Rifles emerged from every side, through the terrace, the garden and the back entrances.

  “That will do!” said the officer to the bugler. “They have heard ... and I don’t want the enemy to hear as well.”

  He took out his watch:

  “Twelve o’clock.... Two hours more, at least.... Oh, if I only had twenty-five minutes or half an hour in which to prepare my resistance.... But nothing will stop them.... The passage is free....”

  He called:

  “Fabrègues!”

  “Yes, captain.”

  “All the men in front of the coach-house, on the left of the garden. At the back of the coach-house is a hay-loft. Break down the door....”

  “Victor, show the gentleman the way,” said Mme. Morestal to the servant. “Here is the key.”

  “In the loft,” continued the captain, “you will find two hundred bags of plaster.... Use them to block up the parapet of this terrace.... Quick as you can!... Every minute is worth an hour.”

  He himself went to the parapet, measured it and counted the balusters. In the distance, within rifle-range, the Col du Diable formed a deep gash between the great rocks. Saboureux’s Farm guarded the entrance. As yet, not a single figure of the enemy showed.

  “Ah, twenty minutes!... If I only had twenty minutes!” repeated the officer. “The position of the Old Mill is hard to beat. One would stand a chance or two ...”

  An adjutant and a couple more soldiers appeared at the top of the staircase.

  “Well?” asked Captain Daspry. “Are they coming?”

  “The vanguard was turning the corner of the factory, at five hundred yards from the pass,” replied the adjutant.

  “Are there any more of our men behind you?”

  “Yes, captain, there’s Duvauchel. He’s wounded. They’ve laid him on a stretcher....”

  “Duvauchel!” cried the officer, anxiously. “It’s not a serious wound, I hope?”

  “Upon my word ... I shouldn’t like to say.”

  “Dash it all! But then one saw nothing but that devil in the front line.... There was no holding him....”

  “Yes,” chuckled the adjutant, “he has a way of his own of deserting in the face of the enemy!... He charges straight at them, the beggar!”

  But Mme. Morestal grew frightened:

  “A man wounded! I will go and prepare some bandages, get out the medicine-chest.... We have all that’s wanted.... Will you come, Marthe?”

  “Yes, mother,” replied Marthe, without budging.

  She did not remove her eyes from her husband and tried to read on Philippe’s face the feelings that stirred him. She had first of all seen him go back to the drawing-room and cross the entrance-hall, as though he were thinking of the way out through the garden, which was still free. The sudden arrival of the riflemen pushed him back; and he talked to several of them in a low voice and gave them some bread and a flask of brandy. Then he returned to the terrace. His inaction, in the midst of the constant traffic to and fro, was obviously irksome to him. Twice he consulted the drawing-room clock; and Marthe guessed that he was thinking of the hour of the train and the time which he would need to reach Langoux Station. But she did not alarm herself. Every second was weaving bonds around him that tied him down without his knowing it; and it seemed to Marthe as though events had no other object than to make her husband’s departure impossible.

  The resistance, meanwhile, was being organized. Swiftly, the riflemen brought the bags of plaster, which the captain at once ordered to be placed between every pair of balusters. Each of the bags was of the height and width corresponding with the dimensions of the intervals and left an empty space, a loop-hole, on either side. And old Morestal had even had the forethought to match the colour of the sacking with that of the parapet, so that it might not be suspected in the distance that there was a defence behind which sharpshooters lay hidden.

  On either side of the terrace, the wall surrounding the garden was the object of similar cares. The captain ordered the soldiers to set out bags at the foot of the wall so as to make the top accessible from the inside.

  But a sound of shouting recalled the captain to the drawing-room. The gardener’s son came tumbling down from his observatory, yelling:

  “Saboureux’s Farm is on fire! You can see the smoke! You can see the flames!”

  The captain leapt out on the terrace.

  The smoke was whirling above the barn. Gleams kindled, faint as yet and hesitating. And, suddenly, as though set free, the flames shot up in angry spirals. The wind at once beat them down again. The roof of the house took fire. And, in a few minutes, it was a violent flare, accompanied by the quick blaze of the rotten beams, the dry thatch, the trusses of hay and straw heaped up by the hundred in the barn and in the sheds.

  “To work!” shouted the captain, gleefully. “The Col du Diable is blocked by the flames.... They’ll last for quite fifteen or twenty minutes ... and the enemy have no other road....”

  His excitement communicated itself to the men. Not one of them broke down beneath the weight of the bags, heavy though these were. The captain posted the non-commissioned officers at regular intervals, so that his orders could be passed on from the terrace to every end of the property.

  Lieutenant Fabrègues came up. The materials were beginning to fall short and the lofty wall remained inaccessible to the marksmen in several places.

  Mme. Morestal behaved like a heroine:

  “Take the furniture, captain, the chairs, the tables. Break them up, if necessary.... Burn them even.... Do just as if my husband were here.”

  “M. Morestal said something about a stock of cartridges,” asked the captain.

  “In the boxes in the harness-room. Here are the keys.”

  The men redoubled their activity. The Old Mill was ransacked; and the soldiers passed laden with mattresses, sofas, old oak chests, hangings also and carpets, with which they stopped up the holes and the windows.

  “The flames are spreading,” said the captain, going to the top of the staircase. “There’s nothing left of Farmer Saboureux’s buildings.... But by what miracle ...? Who set the place on fire?...”

  “I did.”

  A peasant stood at the top of the steps, in a scorched blouse, with his face all blackened.

  “You, Saboureux?”

  “Yes, I,” growled Saboureux, fiercely. “I had to.... I heard you over there: ‘If we could only stop them,’ says you. ‘If I had half an hour to spare!’... Well, there’s your half an hour for you.... I set fire to the shanty.”

  “And very nearly roasted me inside it,” grinned Old Poussière, who was with the farmer. “I was a
sleep in the straw....”

  The captain nodded his head:

  “By Jove, Farmer Saboureux, but that’s a damned sportsmanlike thing you’ve done! I formed a wrong opinion of you. I apologize. May I shake you by the hand?”

  The peasant put out his hand and then walked away, with his back bent in two. He sat down in a corner of the drawing-room. Poussière also huddled into a chair, took a piece of bread from his pocket, broke it and gave half to Saboureux, as though he thought it only natural to share what he had with the man who had nothing left.

  “Here’s Duvauchel, sir!” announced a rifleman. “Here’s Duvauchel!”

  The staircase was too narrow and they had to bring the stretcher round by the garden. The captain ran to meet the wounded man, who made an effort to stand on his legs:

  “What’s up, Duvauchel? Are you hit?”

  “Not I, sir, not I,” said the man, whose face was livid and his eyes burning with fever. “A cherry-stone tickled my shoulder, by way of a lark. It’s nothing....”

  “But the blood’s flowing....”

  “It’s nothing, I tell you, sir.... I know all about it.... Saw plenty of it as a greaser!... It won’t show in five minutes ... and then I’m off....”

  “Oh, of course, I forgot, you’re deserting!...”

  “Rather! The comrades are waiting for me....”

  “Then begin by getting your wound dressed....”

  “My wound dressed? Oh, that’s a good one! I tell you, sir, it’s nothing ... less than nothing ... a kiss ... a puff of wind....”

  He stood up for an instant, but his eyelids flickered, his hands sought for support and he fell back upon the litter.

  Mme. Morestal and Marthe hastened to his side:

  “Let me, mamma, please,” said Marthe, “I’m used to it.... But you’ve forgotten the absorbent wool ... and the peroxide of hydrogen.... Quick, mamma ... and more bandages, lots of bandages....”

  Mme. Morestal went out. Marthe bent over the wounded man and felt his pulse without delay: