The Green Bay Tree (Bromfield, Frederick A. Stokes Company, printing 11)/Chapter 80
IT must have occurred to Lily that the man was talking in an hysterical fashion with all the frenzy of a neurasthenic. "Madame, you should see one of our towns where there are great furnaces . . . Essen, Madame, or Saarbrucken . . . black, incredibly vile, a wallow of roaring fire and white hot steel . . . I know them, Madame, I have lived in them."
Then for the first time Lily stirred. She even laughed, faintly yet with unmistakable bitterness. "Know them? I know them. We have them in America."
The stranger paid no heed to her interruption. "Look, Madame," he commanded, pointing to the north where the horizon was lighted by the glow of a burning town. "Look, Madame. You see that fire in the sky. The ladles have overflowed. The white hot steel has spread across Europe. There is gold in it too . . . red hot gold. . . . Melted Gods . . . idols which we worship to-day."
His voice rose until he was shouting. When he finished, he leaned back in his chair, the fine uniform suddenly crumpled and limp. And after a time he began to speak again, softly as if the torrent of emotion had exhausted him.
"And where have we to go? If we sought to escape where have we to go? There is no place. Because the monkeys . . . the fools have civilized all the world, so that they might sell their cheap cotton and tin trays. They have created a monster which is destroying them. There is no longer any peace . . . any solitude. They have even wrenched the peasant from his plow . . . the shepherd from his hillside." Again he pointed toward the burning horizon. "They have driven them out upon the plains where the cauldrons have overflowed across all Europe. It is the monsters, Madame, who are at the bottom of all this. Ah, commerce, industry, wealth, power." He tossed away his cigarette and lighted another. "When this is over, who do you think will have gained? Not the peasant, Madame. Not the shepherd, not the poet. Ah, no! They will be shoveled under the earth . . . whole bodies and pieces of bodies because they are no longer of any use. Not the worker, Madame, whom the monster devours. Ah, no." His voice rose suddenly. "It is the monster who will have gained . . . the monster and the men whose pockets he fills with gold . . . the monster of material, of industry. He will destroy us. He will devour us. What can we do? You see, I know. I have lived in France. I have lived in England. . . . My grandmother, you understand, was English. I would prefer to live in England. But No! I was in England three weeks ago. And suddenly I must go home to join my regiment, to set out upon the expedition that has brought me here into this trampled garden. What for? Who can say? Why? Who knows? Not surely because it gives me pleasure. Not surely because I care a fig whether the German empire lives or dies. That is merely an excuse to drag us into battle." His head dropped wearily again. "You see, this is why I have not been able to sleep. I have been thinking of these things. They are not the sort that lull a man to sleep. There is blood on my hands. I killed to-day . . . by shooting and stabbing. I assure you it gave me no pleasure. I should doubtless have loved the men I killed. I am helpless. I cannot fight against it. No, there is only one thing to be done. I must kill as many men as possible. I must destroy all that it is possible to destroy because if we destroy enough the monster will have nothing to feed upon. He, too, will die . . . and with him this civilization . . . banal, ugly, materialistic, unchristian . . . this greed-ridden world."
The Uhlan fell forward upon the table, burying his face in his arms. At the sight Lily raised herself gently and watched her strange companion in a wondering silence. At last she said softly, "Why do you tell me this? Is it because you are afraid?"
The man made a chuckling, confused, sound and sat up once more. "Ah, no! Madame. You fancy I am hysterical. Well, so I am. I don't deny it. You see it is not easy for me to be a warrior. I am a little mad. No, I talk like this because . . ." For a moment he hesitated as if groping for some explanation of an emotional crisis which in a soldier was not logical at all. His manner seemed to imply that he should have accepted the affair without question. "Because . . . Well, there is a time when fear does not matter, when terror does not exist, when one is enveloped by a despair so great that what happens to one's body is of no concern. You understand that. You have answered it yourself a little time before, when you said there came a time when it was useless to be afraid." He leaned back and made a little gesture of negation. "It does not matter," he concluded. In the faint light from the lower windows of the château it was plain that he was smiling in a bitter, despairing fashion. "No, I shall go on killing until I am killed. It will not be a long affair. It is absurd to hope that I shall live many more days." He whistled softly. "I might even be killed to-night . . . after I have left you. I shall kill as many men as possible. I can only submit. There is nothing I can do. I am not a boy full of playing soldier."
At this Lily winced suddenly as if he had struck her. Then she raised herself slowly. The black cloak fell from her shoulders.
"I have in the war a son and a lover," she said. "If you met them, you would kill them. Is it not so?"
The Uhlan bowed his head in silent assent.
"And yet you do not believe in it?"
"No, Madame."
"Then that is wrong. It is sinful."
The stranger leaned toward her. "It is not I who would kill them. I am only a chance, a little dagger in the hand of fate one of a billion chances that have to do with their deaths. I myself would not be killing them. . . . It would be a strange . . . even an impossible accident, if I killed one of them with my own hands. You understand, we are talking facts now . . . hard facts. There is no room for sentimentality at a time like this. . . ." He smiled ironically. "I can understand that it is difficult for a woman to talk facts. It is simply a matter of chances . . . like roulette shall we say?"
For a time Lily remained thoughtful and silent. At last she said, "They are in the cavalry like yourself. You would kill them. You are one of the chances." The calmness of her manner stood in terrible contrast to the hysterical outburst of the soldier.
"I can see you are a philosopher . . . a femme savant," mocked the stranger.
"You might choose a better time to jeer."
The man coughed. "Forgive me. . . . I am sorry. . . . I was wrong. If you were a femme savant, I would not be talking to you like this. . . . You are a woman . . . a beautiful woman. One cannot help talking to you."
"I am only'a woman living by what she believes. That is simple enough."
"It requires courage, Madame . . . and indifference, far more of both than I have." He coughed again, nervously. "Perhaps I am too rational. . . . Perhaps I do not think resistance worth the trouble . . . especially now, at a time when the mob . . . the politicians rule absolutely."
"You are one of the chances," Lily repeated stubbornly.