“Yes, my boy, you had better. If you don’t, just think what will be the consequences. First of all, you will die sooner than there is any occasion for; then Bella will pine, mope, get into bad health, and gradually fade away. That will break down my mother, whose susceptible spirit could not withstand the shock. Of course, after that my own health would give way, and the hopes of a dear little—well, that is to say, ruination and widespread misery would be the result of your unnatural and useless obstinacy.”
“To save you all from that,” said Nicholas, “of course I must give in.”
And Nicholas did give in, and the result was not half so disastrous as he had feared.
Chapter Twenty Six.
Some More of War’s Consequences.
Let us turn once more to the Balkan Mountains. Snow covers alike the valley and the hill. It is the depth of that inhospitable season when combative men were wont, in former days, to retire into winter quarters, repose on their “laurels,” and rest a while until the benign influences of spring should enable them to recommence the “glorious” work of slaying one another.
But modern warriors, like modern weapons, are more terrible now than they used to be. They scout inglorious repose—at least the great statesmen who send them out to battle scout it for them. While these men of super-Spartan mould sit at home in comfortable conclave over mild cigar and bubbling hookah, quibbling over words, the modern warrior is ordered to prolong the conflict; and thus it comes to pass that Muscovite and Moslem pour out their blood like water, and change the colour of the Balkan snows.
In a shepherd’s hut, far up the heights, which the smoke of battle could not reach, and where the din of deadly strife came almost softly, like the muttering of distant thunder, a young woman sat on the edge of a couch gazing wistfully at the beautiful countenance of a dead girl. The watcher was so very pale, wan, and haggard, that, but for her attitude and the motion of her great dark eyes, she also might have been mistaken for one of the dead. It was Marika, who escaped with only a slight flesh-wound in the arm from the soldier who had pursued her into the woods near her burning home.