The End: How the Great War Was Stopped. A Novelistic Vagary

by L. P. Gratacap

and Sebastien Quintado had hugged me a dozen times and smacked me robustly as many times on each cheek—why, there was no time to be lost for me to pack up my few belongings, and get away to Marseilles as fast as ever I could—and then had not Gabrielle said not to come to bid her Adieu; that she could not stand it? Certainement. And so it was, that when I stood on the quay at Marseilles, trembling, nervous, and half regretful, everyone had been seen, everyone embraced, and everyone's orders taken, and—she, the wounded, dear sister of my flesh and blood, was forgotten—O! No, not forgotten—not that, but missed as it were in the furious haste, and wonderment, and expectation, and dread.

It was a big ship, a frigate, loaded with wines and cheeses and spices, and many jim-cracks of all sorts, that was to take me to the New World, and when I stood on her glistening deck, beneath the blazing sun, and France slowly sank away from my eyes and just at last the white spot of Marseilles, like a disk on the horizon, went out, like a light snuffed out in a candle, I went to my room and cabin, and laid down and held my hands before my face and cried pretty hard.

And somehow then, the very presence of Gabrielle surged before me like some embodiment of rebuke, and the physical pressure of a hand on my shoulder startled me to my feet with a cry of anguish. But it was nothing, only the reaction of my body to the urgency of my grief over Gabrielle's neglect. For days the thought of my sister obscured my happiness, although the newness of everything—ministered deliciously to my amour-propre. Good resolutions helped to comfort me, and the first thing for me to do when America was gained would be to write a long, careful, loving letter to Gabrielle.

My project of going to America can be briefly explained, as it may appear almost quixotic and unreasonable otherwise, especially my destination in Texas. But some years before acquaintances, made in Paris, where I was studying law, led to this departure. They had interests in cattle and farm lands, in the great state, and had frequently made me offers to go out, and watch their rights, and report the prospects and conditions, with inducements so advantageous to myself that, conjoined with the long cherished project formed in my own mind to try the chances in the Republic, resulted in this. I accepted their invitations against my parents' wishes, who at first resolutely denied their permission. This was overcome by my own increasing obstinacy, that had begun to approach the earnestness of disobedience.

Blanchette and I had, with the ludicrous solemnity of young lovers, exchanged the pledges of fidelity, and I, in an exuberance of hopefulness, promised to return in five years, which by some fancied finality seemed to both of us the limit of our possible endurance. With forceful vows I had engaged to live most simply and the frugality of my expectations in living—measured the quickness and value of my savings, and indeed, as it happened, I made my way fast.

At San Antonio I became at last established, with the various interests, I was to watch, quite fully comprehended and diligently tended. I do not know that I ever fell in love with San Antonio, but I certainly got to like it very well, and in later years I have recalled it with feelings of tenderness, that came pretty near to affection. I have every reason to be grateful to it, for I was most successful. I had prospered, greatly prospered. When I found at last that the term of my exile came ideally near to the period when I might consider myself well enough off to go back and claim Blanchette, I think that my respect for San Antonio rose to the apex of unaffected enthusiasm.

Because the purpose and body of this history is connected with the utterly unparalleled circumstances of the ending of the monstrous war of this century, I pass over the irrelevant details of my life in America, except only to point out the financial luck that enabled me to return to France, at a critical moment. In five years I was almost rich—in my own modest estimation. At any rate I had enough, and a luxurious indolence, which was part of my nature, fascinated me with its temptations of rest and culture, while the thought of the waiting Blanchette—whose letters were so true-hearted and devoted—kept sensitized my eagerness to return almost to the point of madness. And there was Gabrielle.

I had been most dutiful to Gabrielle. I fulfilled all of the many brotherly resolves I made on the voyage to America, which had been the index of my self-reproach at leaving her so carelessly, and sweetly and reassuringly had she answered. Alas! I only learned much later how devotedly she had hidden her sufferings from me, that I might not be distressed in my new home. Now when I realized that my little fortune—part of it the result of a speculative incident so frequent in the wonderful land of Hope—would not only unite me with Blanchette but enable me to give comfort and happiness to Gabrielle, I was wild with impatience to get away. It was my last month in San Antonio; the leave for my return had been received by me, from my employers, and the successor to my position would be at any moment in my office ready to take charge.

It was my last day; a sultry wilting day towards the end of August, and I had exerted every energy in arranging the directions for my successor, and incidentally clearing off a large amount of that surreptitiously invading refuse of unfinished odds and ends, that accumulate, in one way and another, in any business, which cannot be completed by daily installments of work. A large amount of mail had been disposed of. The office force, tired out, and half angry at the unexpected pace I had demanded, had left, and I was alone in a large shop fronting upon —— Street, the principal street of San Antonio. Gray frowning clouds had formed somewhere in the upper air. I could detect their presence even without seeing them, by the deepening obscurement of the opposite houses, and a chill brought in their enveloping bosoms as they crowded down upon the city, conveyed a well understood notice of some sudden meteorological caprice that would relieve the tension of the heat, with possibly damaging accompaniments of disaster.