In a glass case on the wall of my library hangs an antique bit of harness which is my most precious piece of property. How its story came about I do not even try to guess. As Philippe said the action of that day took place on a very old battle-field. The shell which made the sheltering crater doubtless dug up earth untouched for hundreds of years. That it should have dug up the very object which was a tradition in the Martel family and should have laid it in the grasp of a Martel fighting for France with that tradition at the bottom of his mind seems incredible. The story [pg 261] of the apparition of the Maid is incredible to laughter, or tears. No farther light is to be got from the boy, because he believes his story. I do not try to explain, I place the episode in my mind alongside other things incredible, things lovely and spiritual, and, to our viewpoint of five years ago, things mad. Many such have risen luminous, undesirable, unexplained, out of these last horrible years, and wait human thought, it may be human development, to be classified. I accept and treasure the silver stirrup as a pledge of beautiful human gratitude. I hold it as a visible sign that French blood keeps a loyalty to France which ages and oceans may not weaken.
THE RUSSIAN
The little dinner-party of grizzled men strayed from the dining-room and across the hall into the vast library, arguing mightily.
"The great war didn't do it. World democracy was on the way. The war held it back."
It was the United States Senator, garrulous and incisive, who issued that statement. The Judge, the host, wasted not a moment in contradicting. "You're mad, Joe," he threw at him with a hand on the shoulder of the man who was still to him that promising youngster, little Joe Burden of The School. "Held back democracy! The war! Quite mad, my son."
The guest of the evening, a Russian General who had just finished five strenuous years in the Cabinet of the Slav Republic, dropped back a step to watch, with amused eyes, strolling through the doorway, the two splendid old boys, the Judge's arm around the Senator's shoulders, fighting, sputtering, [pg 266] arguing with each other as they had fought and argued forty odd years up to date.
Two minutes more and the party of six had settled into deep chairs, into a mammoth davenport, before a blazing fire of spruce and birch. Cigars, liqueurs, coffee, the things men love after dinner, were there; one had the vaguest impression of two vanishing Japanese persons who might or might not have brought trays and touched the fire and placed tiny tables at each right hand; an atmosphere of completeness was present, one did not notice how. One settled with a sigh of satisfaction into comfort, and chose a cigar. One laughed to hear the Judge pound away at the Senator.
"It's all a game." Dr. Rutherford turned to the Russian. "They're devoted old friends, not violent enemies, General. The Senator stirs up the Judge by taking impossible positions and defending them savagely. The Judge invariably falls into the trap. Then a battle. Their battles are the joy of the Century Club. The Senator doesn't believe for an instant that the war held back democracy."