The Forest of Swords: A Story of Paris and the Marne by Joseph A. Altsheler (i like reading TXT) 📖

Pennsylvania or New York. Like many other Americans, he often felt surprise that Europe should be so much like America. The trees and the grass and the rivers were just the same. Nothing was different but the ancient buildings. He knew now that history and a long literature merely created the illusion of difference.

He wondered why the artillery fire did not die, with the wind sweeping such gusts of rain before it. Then he remembered that the sound of so many great cannon could travel a long distance, and there might be no rain at the points from which the firing came. The cottage might stand in a long narrow valley up which the clouds would travel.

Not feeling sleepy yet he decided to have another look about the house. A search revealed a small box of matches near the lamp on the shelf. Then he closed the window in order to shut in the flame, and, lighting the lamp, pursued his investigation.

He found in the kitchen a jar of honey that he had overlooked, and he resolved to use a part of it for breakfast. Europeans did not seem able to live without jam or honey in the mornings, and he would follow the custom. Not much was left in the other rooms, besides some old articles of clothing, including two or three blue blouses of the kind worn by French peasants or workmen, but on one of the walls he saw an excellent engraving of the young Napoleon, conqueror of Italy.

It showed him, horseback, on a high road looking down upon troops in battle, Castiglione or Rivoli, perhaps, his face thin and gaunt, his hair long and cut squarely across his forehead, the eyes deep, burning and unfathomable. It was so thoroughly alive that he believed it must be a reproduction of some great painting. He stood a long time, fascinated by this picture of the young republican general who rose like a meteor over Europe and who changed the world.

John, like nearly all young men, viewed the Napoleonic cycle with a certain awe and wonder. A student, he had considered Napoleon the great democratic champion and mainly in the right as far as Austerlitz. Then swollen ambition had ruined everything and, in his opinion, another swollen ambition, though for far less cause, was now bringing equal disaster upon Europe. A belief in one's infallibility might come from achievement or birth, but only the former could win any respect from thinking men.

It seemed to John presently that the deep, inscrutable eyes were gazing at him, and he felt a quivering at the roots of his hair. It was young Bonaparte, the republican general, and not Napoleon, the emperor, who was looking into his heart.

"Well," said John, in a sort of defiance, "if you had stuck to your early principles we wouldn't have all this now. First Consul you might have been, but you shouldn't have gone any further."

He turned away with a sigh of regret that so great a warrior and statesman, in the end, should have misused his energies.

He returned to the room below, blew out the lamp and opened the window again. The cool fresh air once more poured into the room, and he took long deep breaths of it. It was still raining, though lightly, and the pattering of the drops on the leaves made a pleasant sound. The thunder and the lightning had ceased, though not the far rumble of artillery. John knew that the sport of kings was still going on under the searchlights, and all his intense horror of the murderous monarchies returned. He was not sleepy yet, and he listened a long time. The sound seemed to come from both sides of him, and he felt that the abandoned cottage among the trees was merely a little oasis in the sea of war.

The rain ceased and he concluded to scout about the house to see if any one was near, or if any farm animals besides the horse had been left. But Marne was alone. There was not even a fowl of any kind. He concluded that the horse had probably wandered away before the peasant left, as so valuable an animal would not have been abandoned otherwise.

His scouting—he was learning to be very cautious—took him some distance from the house and he came to a narrow road, but smooth and hard, a road which troops were almost sure to use, while such great movements were going on. He waited behind a hedge a little while, and then he heard the hum of motors.

He had grown familiar with the throbbing, grinding sound made by many military automobiles on the march, but he waited calmly, merely loosening his automatic for the sake of precaution. He felt sure that while he stood behind a hedge he would never be seen on a dark night by men traveling in haste. The automobiles came quickly into view and in those in front he saw elderly men in uniforms of high rank. Nearly all the German generals seemed to him to be old men who for forty or fifty years had studied nothing but how to conquer, men too old and hardened to think much of the rights of others or ever to give way to generous emotions.

He also saw sitting erect in one of the motors the man for whom he had felt at first sight an invincible repulsion. Prince Karl of Auersperg. Young von Arnheim had represented the good prince to him, but here was the medieval type, the believer in divine right, and in his own superiority, decreed even before birth. John noted in the moonlight his air of ownership, his insolent eyes and his heavy, arrogant face. He hoped that the present war would sweep away all such as Auersperg.

He watched nearly an hour while the automobiles, cyclists, a column of infantry, and then several batteries of heavy guns drawn by motors, passed. He judged that the Germans were executing a change of front somewhere, and that the Franco-British forces were still pressing hard. The far thunder of the guns had not ceased for an instant, although it must be nearly midnight. He wished he knew what this movement on the part of the Germans meant, but, even if he had known, he had no way of reaching his own army, and he turned back to the cottage.

Having fastened the door securely again he spread the blankets on the bench by the window and lay down to sleep. The tension was gone from his nerves now, and he felt that he could fall asleep at once, but he did not. A shift in the wind brought the sound of the artillery more plainly. His imagination again came into vivid play. He believed that the bench beneath him, the whole cottage, in fact, was quivering before the waves of the air, set in such violent motion by so many great guns.

It annoyed him intensely. He felt a sort of personal anger against everybody. It was past midnight of the third day and it was time for the killing to stop. At least they might rest until morning, and give his nerves a chance. He moved restlessly on the bench a half hour or more, but at last he sank gradually to sleep. As his eyes closed the thunder of the cannonade was as loud and steady as ever. He slept, but the murderous sport of kings went on.

CHAPTER IX THE PUZZLING SIGNAL

When John awoke a bright sun was shining in at the window, bringing with it the distant mutter of cannon, a small fire was burning on the hearth on the opposite side of the room, a man was bending over the coals, and the pleasant odor of boiling coffee came to his nostrils. He sat up in amazement and looked at the man who, not turning around, went on placidly with his work of preparing breakfast. But he recognized the figure.

"Weber!" he exclaimed.

"None other!" said the Alsatian, facing about, and showing a cheery countenance. "I was in the boat just behind you when your own was demolished by the shell. In all the spray and foam and confusion I saw my chance, and dropping overboard from ours I floated with the stream. I had an idea that you might escape, and since you must come down the river between the two armies I also, for the same reasons, chose the same path. I came upon this cottage several hours ago, picked the fastenings of the door and to my astonishment and delight found you, my friend, unharmed, but sound asleep upon the bench there. I slept a while in the corner, then I undertook to make breakfast with provisions and utensils that I found in the forest. Ah, it was easy enough last night to find almost anything one wished. The fields and forest were full of dead men."

"I provided myself in the same way, but I'm delighted to see you. I was never before in my life so lonely. How chance seems to throw us together so often!"

"And we've both profited by it. The coffee is boiling now, Mr. Scott. I've a good German coffee pot and two cups that I took from the fallen. God rest their souls, they'll need them no more, while we do."

"The battle goes on," said John, listening a moment at the window.

"Somewhere on the hundred mile line it has continued without a break of an instant, and it may go on this way for a week or a month. Ah, it's a fearful war, Mr. Scott, and we've seen only the beginning! But drink the coffee now, while it's hot. And I've warmed too, some of the cold food from the knapsacks. German sausage is good at any time."

"And just now it's heavenly. I'm glad we have such a plentiful supply of sausage and bread, even if we did have to take it from the dead. I want to tell you again how pleasant it is to see you here."

"I feel that way too. We're like comrades united. Now if we only had your English friend Carstairs, your American friend Wharton, and Lannes we'd be quite a family group."

"I fancy that we'll see Lannes before we do Carstairs and Wharton."

"I think so too. He'll certainly be hovering today somewhere over the ground between the two armies—either to observe the Germans or more likely to carry messages between the French generals. I tell you, Mr. Scott, that Philip Lannes is perhaps the most wonderful young man in Europe. In addition to his extraordinary ability in the air he has courage, coolness, perception and quickness almost without equal. There's something Napoleonic about him."

"You know he's descended from the family of the famous Marshal, Lannes, not from Lannes himself, but from a close relative, and the blood's the same. They say that blood will tell, and don't you think that the spirit of the great Lannes may have reappeared in Philip?"

"It's altogether likely."

"I've been thinking a lot about Napoleon. There's a wonderful picture of him as a young republican general in a room here. Perhaps it's the conditions around us, but at times I am sure the heroic days of the First Republic have returned to France. The spirit that animated Hoche and Marceau and Kleber and Bonaparte, before he became spoiled, seems to have descended upon the French. And there were Murat, Lannes and Lefebvre, and Berthier and the others. Think of that wonderful crowd of boys leading the republican armies to victories over all the kings! It seems to me the most marvelous thing in the history of war, since the Greeks turned back the Persians."

Weber refilled his coffee cup, drank a portion of it, and said:

"I have thought of it, Mr. Scott, I have thought of it more than once. It may be that the Gallic fury has been aroused. It has seemed so to me since the German armies were turned back from Paris. The French have burned more gunpowder than any other nation in Europe, and they're a fighting race. It would appear now that the Terrible Year, 1870, was merely an aggregation of mistakes, and did not represent either the wisdom or natural genius of the nation."

"That is, the French were then far below normal, as we would say, but have now returned to their best, and that the two Kaisers made the mistake of thinking the French in their lowest form were the French in their usual form?"

"It may be so," said Weber, thoughtfully. "Nations reckon their strength in peace, but only war itself discloses the fact. Evidently tremendous miscalculations have been made by somebody."

"By somebody? By whom? That's why I'm against the Kaisers and all the secret business of the military monarchies. War made over night by a dozen men! a third of the