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

by L. P. Gratacap

However I was all the time intensely practical and I had formed exactly my plans for our installation at the chateau. Almost immediately after the storming Privat Deschat had left us, we started. An automobile, already engaged from the hospital, carried us to Briois, and there, almost on the instant of our arrival, we took a train for the village of Peltry, which is not far from the chateau. From the village we made our way across the fields to the chateau. We were quite alone, but not knowing what circumstances might arise, and eagerly insistent upon the demands of nature, I provided us with a plentifully supplied basket of provisions, which momentarily may strike the reader as an anticlimax to our exalted states of mind. It was really nothing of the sort. Physical weakness could only have interfered with our mediation. It was not satiety or even satisfaction I was thinking of, but just physical endurance under some unforeseen and incomputable exigency.

All the way we had been made aware of the vast concentration of troops, and of the nation, towards the frontiers of the country, where the confronting armies were to try out the dread decision. Marching regiments, the vans, the clouds of aeroplanes, and the multitudes of people traveling in all manner of ways, and mostly afoot, landing from trains from Paris, from the west, from the south, and converging in one colossal mass upon the selected battlefield, convinced us that the utterly suicidal madness was to subserve the purposes of God. The spectacle was to be grandiose and universal. The testimony to its power should not be lacking in emphasis.

Streams of men and women, mostly old men now, and children, swept past us. The land was inundated with the migrating crowds. These spectators invaded the fields, waded the little streams, overran the farmyards, pressing on to that strange goal, the duel of the nations. Surely the poison of an insane prepossession had turned reason and wisdom and experience and prudence into foolishness. So we thought. Thus the mysterious messages revealed to us seemed to be visibly corroborated.

But the hilltop of La Ferté was not sought. The drifting crowds, pushing stubbornly on, almost without sound of voice, in a dreadful silence, like creatures driven to their doom, divided there their compact masses, and it remained like some obstacle in a river's rush and freshet, and only around it poured the human tides, animated by some fear perhaps—No, rather directed by the mystical forces of the intelligences that ruled the hour, and ruling the hour ruled also the inclinations of the hearts that, in their blind animal herding, obeyed them.

We had hurried along with the scattered throngs, veering constantly towards the untouched wilderness of bushes, swards, jungles, and woods, around the ancient ruin, until upon its verge we stepped out of the vast struggle, and moved upward on the slopes towards its towers. There were wondering comments, and a few for a moment were inclined to follow our example. But the murmur of disapproval rose like the breaking of waves upon a beach, half articulate, half inarticulate, but wholly in remonstrance. Some words were intelligible. They sufficed.

"Non, non—pas là. Retournez; c'est un pays maudit. Ne restons là. C'est une place méchante. Voila. Back, back; the devil owns it. Je vous le dit. Aucun qui reste là se flétrie."

We were watched a little while with consternation and astonishment, and then the bovine muteness returned, and the headlong plunge went on uninterrupted. We were left alone. The edge of the preserve which we crossed was a grassy slope, terminated at a little height by a thicket of hawthorns. Through this latter, along a devious pathway, we made our way, bending beneath the heavily draped branches. Then came an open space, and a large ragged chestnut of huge girth was encountered. Its wide flung branches struck against the very walls of the western tower, which here, crumbling and falling apart, had crushed the front wall of the enclosure, and left its inner courtyards exposed, seen over blackened masonry, and piles of bricks, and rudely cut limestone blocks. Scrambling over this obstacle we found ourselves at length in the chateau's courtyard, and in the darkest shadows, almost impenetrable in daylight. Beyond us rose the better preserved eastern tower, which it was my intention to ascend. Shy lizards shot hither and thither along the walls, and the air seemed almost irrespirable with the odors of decay, from rotting timbers, and the multitudinous growth of fungi, and ivy, and a red confervae coating the pavement in the little undried pools. I knew exactly where I was. I led the way further to a descent of a few steps, that brought us within the rounded walls of the tower, where a fairly well preserved winding stairway led upward to its very summit. I had often ascended it to its very summit. Now I told Gabrielle to wait below, and I would first essay the steps, and discover their condition. I felt confident of their strength. It had been spoliation, more than weathering, that had destroyed the western tower. There had been four towers once, but the two northern ones had been almost razed to the ground by the frequent plunderings of their stones for bridges, and stables, and culverts of the surrounding country. Their stumps and foundations were thickly encumbered with all kinds of wild growths, amongst which the stunted saplings of apple trees had inserted themselves, making the enclosure in the late spring a bower of fragrance with their abundant blossoms.

I found that the stairs were unchanged; their solidity could not be questioned. The better preservation of the eastern tower with the still unbroached and massive roof at its summit, had kept the stairway in an almost pristine condition of stability, though, here and there, the inroads of the elements, the disheartened growth of mosses and pallid fungi upon the thin accumulations of earth in the corners, and along the rises of the steps, imparted a sense rather than a look of decay. At the topmost winding of the circular stairs, everywhere supported by the central newel about which they wound, I discovered, to my interested surprise, that the lightning had played some of its mischievous tricks, which were popularly ascribed to the infamous history of the ancient keep and castle, as marking it for devastation and vengeance. A splitting of the parapet wall had occurred here, and the angular line of dislocation had separated the stones of the rather high wall, and, under the stress of subsequent rains and wind storms, they had fallen out for a space of two or three feet. The accident was not inopportune. It permitted a view of the land towards the east, towards the vast panorama of the assembled armies and the gathering multitudes, who thus now, under the sway of an over-ruling Providence, flocked to this utterly amazing exploit. No conceit of theatrical device could have been more spectacular; no imaginative invention of the epic poets more sublime.