The philosophy and the psychology of the paragraph are profoundly true. That relationship which sex seems inexorably to claim is satisfied naturally by union, but its omission finds exoneration at least in the remembrance of disappointment. I grew with each succeeding year more and more sedately complacent, and a gravity of thought, deepened by a pleasant melancholy, mingled with the real consolations of religion and the inseparable charm of my sister and kept me composed and evenly—at times almost jubilantly—happy. My work was attracting some attention, and it promised for me continued and congenial employment.
We had many garden parties with Privat Deschat and Capitaine Bleu-Pistache—growing more feeble now, more silent, with often unbidden tears springing to his eyes—and Quintado and Père Grandin and Père Antoine—though he was not so often with us—and the sweet-voiced and sparkling little orphan girl the captain had adopted—Dora Destin, a vivacious creature with delicate ways and a keen appetite for tarts and pastry, and a peculiar shyness that came and went so oddly, that one instant she might be hiding, as if afraid, and the next leaping amongst us like a bird. Mother and father had become in the later years even graver, and a calmness—I dreaded to believe that it meant some interior failing—descended upon them, that made their ways a little embarrassing at times. We all noted it. It was a presage, a shadow. They were silent in company, and once or twice, I thought—this was just a year before the War—father seemed unconscious of his surroundings; his mind wandered and he kept saying "Alfred, Alfred" to me, as if dazed or grieved. The stealthy hand of Paralysis thus crept slowly forward towards its unescapable conclusion.
Of course Gabrielle was in our parties, and she had become to me the concentrated bliss of my living. Her growth into a healthier condition of mind and body had accompanied an increasing adaptability to company, and while the reserved manner remained, bestowing upon her a fine dignity, she was truly sociable and friendly. Gabrielle never quite outgrew the secretive habit of her thoughtfulness, and her deportment had been criticized and found fault with, as cold and austere. The inference would have been cruelly unjust, for never breathed a kinder and more devotedly good heart than my sister possessed. Her abstracted way often arose from the custom of religious meditation, and I suppose too was influenced by that singular supernatural—to call it so—power that she always felt, but now, so far as I knew, seldom exercised. It was that power that made of her the MEDIATRIX of the nations.
It was hardly fifteen years after my return that the Grown Prince of Austria was shot in Sarajevo in Serbia, and that was on the day of the Grand Prix de Paris. I read the news to Gabrielle, and Père Grandin was there. He had taken dinner with us. How well I remember his terror-stricken face. He pushed his spectacles up over his high white forehead, and his bright eyes glowed strangely with a growing fear. His expressive lips twitched almost as if he were in pain, and he lifted up his hands in protestation.
"God forbid. The blow has fallen then. The bolt shot. Alfred, this is the torch that starts the conflagration. The material—all inflammable, all explosive—has been heaped up between the nations, and, like a fierce feu-de-joie it will kindle into a wall of fire—un rideau de feu—between the countries. God save France!"
I was incredulous as were at the time most people. I laughed at the good man's warning, and because he felt half grieved at my carelessness, half stifled with apprehension as if almost—so he put it—his ears were filling already with the rumble of cannon, he begged our pardon for his distress. He put on his crumpled Panama hat and stood at the doorway, almost irresolute in his trepidation and sadness. He looked at me quite long.
I recall the moon riding high in white drifting vapors that came in from Calais—and in the changing light and shade he seemed almost preternaturally pale and sombre.
"Mon patrie," he sighed, "again the ravage, the desolation, the orphaned, the widowed, the crippled, the sick, the breaking hearts—Ah, Ah—" and seizing my hands as if in support in his agitation, he wept.
"But Père Grandin" I said, now thoroughly alarmed over his evident agony, "surely you are too quick, too hasty. Europe is at peace. Its people are reasonably happy. They will not permit war, and—"