Monsieur Jonquelle (11 page)

The Marquis went to the very best hostelry and sat down in a sunny room where he could see that sight of the faërie—the great two-pointed, rose-colored sails of the stone boats descending Lake Leman.

It was early and there were but few guests—a Japanese, with a French wife; two or three English families, and a distinguished German. The German, alone, interested the Marquis Banutelli.

He was perhaps sixty-five—a commanding military figure. It was clear from every aspect that the man was a person of importance. Italy and the German Empire were now in very close relations. The Kaiser was thought to be mobilizing his armies. England and France seemed about to be forced into the field. War was in the air; one saw soldiers on every hand, and all the fierce old hatreds had risen from the fields of
Jena and Auerstädt, Metz and Sedan, as on the daybreak of a resurrection.

The Marquis inquired at the bureau, learned that the German was the Prince Ulrich Von Gratz, and presented himself. The two sat over their coffee a long time that evening in the foyer of the hotel. The talk ran upon the necessities and barbarities of war. Von Gratz was a soldier; he had gone through the Franco-German War: and his vivid and realistic experiences, the experiences of a man of action in the deadly struggle of two infuriated peoples, fascinated the Italian, who was essentially a dreamer.

The interest and appreciation of the Marquis seemed to inspire Von Gratz, and he entered into the details of that hideous barbarity by which the German armies crushed the provinces of France. The Marquis had read the La Débâcle of Zola and the tales of Maupassant, but he never until this day realized the stern implacable savagery with which the uhlan had forced the French peasant to remain a noncombatant while the German armies marched over his fields to Paris.

The acquaintance ripened into a fine intimacy.

During the day Von Gratz was not usually to be seen, and was understood to be concerned with one of those ponderous works on the science of war that engages the excess energy of the military German as a system of philosophy engages that
of the scholastic. In the evening he smoked very black cigars from Homburg and talked with the Marquis.

The conversation was in French—a language the Italian invariably used in every country but his own. The German also spoke it with fluency and something approaching a proper accent. The Marquis Banutelli remarked upon this accomplishment, and Von Gratz replied that it had served him when he had occupied the Valley of the Jura during the Franco-German War. He added that his headquarters had been at Ferney, but a few miles from Geneva; and he mentioned the further confidence that one of his objects in coming to Geneva was to go over again the scenes of his military occupancy there. But this thing he had hesitated to do. The war spirit in France had vitalized old memories. He had held the province with an iron hand. He would be remembered and not welcome.

The incidents of this district, lying so close to Geneva, interested the Italian; and, as he was accustomed to walk in the afternoon, he determined to walk there. Von Gratz envied him this privilege, and deplored the fact that the present temper of France prevented him from accompanying the Marquis; but he got maps from the concierge and marked a route which he particularly wished the Marquis to go over.

The following afternoon the Marquis took the tram out of Geneva, got down when he had crossed the hill toward Ferney, and, according to his map, set out on a little road into the country. This road, bordered part of the way by great trees, within half a mile entered France. The Marquis knew the border by the square stone, carved on the French side with a fleur-de-lis. He also knew it by the little hut of plaited twigs in which the gendarme who guards the roads out of France protects himself from the rain and the winds.

This was an unkempt country road, and such are not usually under a sharp surveillance, but to-day it was sentineled like the main road into Geneva.

The Marquis was not molested and continued on his way; but he felt that the military instincts of France were at this time particularly alert. The road continued westward toward the Jura, but the Italian turned into the long wood that lies in the low valley between Geneva and Ferney. On all sides the flowers were beginning to come out. The path the Marquis followed had once been an ancient road, but it was now overgrown and, in fact, no longer even a path. One had continually to clamber over logs and to put aside the branches of trees.

Banutelli reflected that this had doubtless been
a military road through the forest in the time of the Von Gratz occupation, and he determined to follow it. Presently it came out into a little meadow entirely inclosed by the wall of the forest.

An abandoned farmhouse stood here where the road emerged. It was a big, old house with timbered gables and a farmyard inclosed by a stone wall. The house and premises, though heavy and of sound material, were ragged with age. And this deserted house, hidden in the wood and to be reached only by an abandoned road, inspired the Italian with a sense of remote and sinister loneliness. Thus in old tales were haunted houses environed or the venue of revolting crimes.

He continued across the bit of meadow and through the fringe of forest, and found himself come almost immediately upon the main road from Ferney to Geneva. The Marquis crossed the border toward the environs of Geneva, where several gendarmes lounged on a bench in the sun before the bureau of police. And again he felt that all France was under a searching military surveillance.

That night he described the ancient road and the abandoned house to Von Gratz. He had been quite right in his conjecture. The Prince had occupied this very house when he held the province, and he had cut this road through the wood. He listened with interest to every detail. And
when the Marquis, having concluded his description, added the sinister impression he had received, Von Gratz very gravely shook his head.

Some things had happened there.… It was no gentle work to hold a hostile district. He sat for some time silent, his face stern with the memory, but he did not disclose the reminiscence. Again he expressed the desire to revisit this district, and again he regretted that the hostile attitude of France made it unsafe to do so.

He showed so keen an interest in all that the Marquis had observed that the Italian continued to take his walks in that direction. And thus, through the medium of another, Von Gratz was, in a manner, able to revisit the province which he had held under his heel.

He was interested in everything, but especially in the old road and the abandoned farmhouse, as—the Marquis sometimes thought—the criminal agent is interested in the place where he has accomplished a secret crime and would know how it has changed. It happened, for this reason, that Banutelli frequently chose this route; he remarked the trees that had failed across the ancient road, and the height and thickness of the bushes that had grown up in it.

Von Gratz was especially interested in every change that had taken place in the abandoned farmhouse. Did the great nail-studded door still
hang upon its hinges, and the like? He seemed to learn with relief that this door was closed; and one night, when the Marquis reported that it was open, he exhibited a marked concern, as though every ravage of time upon this deserted house was in some sinister manner correlated to his own destiny.

The desire now to see this place for himself became a sort of obsession. He inquired precisely at what points on the route one was likely to meet the peasants. The Marquis replied that he would meet no one in the wood, and that the only peasants he was likely to pass were two big old men, who had recently come to spade up a potato field in the corner of the meadow beyond the farmhouse toward Ferney.

The Marquis thought that Von Gratz was unduly concerned about entering this bit of French territory. He had only to go in civilian dress, follow the old road, and turn back before the farmhouse to avoid the peasants entirely. And when he went up to his rooms that night it was with a suspicion that there was something appalling and sinister lying back of the German's anxieties. This impression was strengthened on the following day when he received a note from Von Gratz, saying that he had determined to visit the scene of his former headquarters, and closing with the strange request that if he did not return
to luncheon the Marquis himself should come to search for him. The note prayed Banutelli, under no circumstances, to speak of the matter, and to come alone.

The Marquis was not very much concerned for the safety of Von Gratz, but when he did not find the German at luncheon, and learned that he had gone out of the hotel early and had not returned, he became uneasy, took the tram out of Geneva and crossed the French border.

The afternoon was perfect; the sun soft and caressing. The peasants were at work in the distant fields, and the gendarme dozed in his twig hut. The Marquis entered the wood and followed the old road. The buds were swelling; little flowers were beginning to appear; and he wondered how anything harmful could have menaced Von Gratz in the peace and serenity of this April afternoon. He began to be impressed with the folly of his errand; but when he stopped on the edge of the wood to look over the abandoned farmhouse he thought he saw something move at a gabled window.

He looked closely and presently became certain that a hand beckoned him. The Marquis crossed to the open door and entered the farmhouse. The house was much larger than the Marquis had imagined and very stoutly built. It had been long abandoned, but it remained sound and tight.

The Marquis' footsteps echoed on the stone stairs, and in spite of his courage he felt a sense of fear of what he might be going to meet. As he neared the top of the stairs he heard his name called, and glancing up he saw Von Gratz's face, as though it looked at him from the wall. The next moment he realized that the German was peering at him through a little opening cut in a door.

“Prince!” cried Banutelli. “What has happened to you? And why are you here?”

“Marquis,” replied Von Gratz, “I am a prisoner.”

“A prisoner!” echoed the Italian. “Who has made you a prisoner? I will go at once for the gendarmes.”

“No, my friend,” replied Von Gratz, “the gendarmes would only get me killed. My one hope lies in your courage and devotion. Please to look through the window behind you and see if the two old peasants are at work in their potato field.”

The Marquis turned to the little high window behind him on the stairs, and by standing on tiptoe was able to see out. On the edge of the forest beyond the little meadow the two old peasants labored with their spades, digging up the sod. The sun lay upon their stooped shoulders and their bent backs, and a vagrant wind stirred their white hair. They reminded the Marquis of the
humble figures of the Angelus. He returned to the door.

“The peasants are there,” he said. “What have these simple creatures to do with this outrage?”

“Simple creatures!” cried Von Gratz. “God in Heaven! The spirit of vengeance—tireless, patient and inexorable—has never dwelt on this earth as it dwells within the bosoms of those two peasants! Prepare yourself, Marquis, to hear the strangest thing that ever happened.

“When I entered this valley during the Franco-German War three brothers occupied this house. It was night when my advance reached the wood, and one of these brothers, coming to the door, fired a fowling-piece. When we entered he gave up the gun and explained that he had not intended to resist soldiers, but had been alarmed by a noise he did not understand. He was a fine young peasant, concealed nothing, and answered every question without evasion. It was impossible not to believe him. I would willingly have set him at liberty; but he had fired on the uhlans and an example had to be made.

“I occupied the house and imprisoned him for five days in this very room in which I now stand until his offense should be thoroughly known throughout the whole province; and at the end of that time I had him stood up before the door of this house and shot, as a warning that any non-combatant
firing on the soldiers would be thus shot against the door of his house. Each of the two older brothers came to me privately and begged me to shoot him instead of the boy; when I refused they looked at me for a long time, as one has seen an animal look at something it does not intend to forget.”

Von Gratz paused.

“Marquis,” he said, “you perhaps observed in the environs of Ferney an ancient chapel surmounted by a crucifix. When these two peasants became convinced that I would not take their lives in exchange for that of the boy, they went to this chapel in Ferney to pray.” The German's voice descended into a whisper. “And they have continued to go there every day for forty years!”

The man's voice died out and he remained for some time silent, while the Italian endeavored to realize the vast infinite faith that no period of time could weaken, and that returned day after day, in the unfailing belief that it would in the end receive what it asked.

The voice began with an abrupt and unexpected question.

“Do you believe in God, Marquis?”

The amazed and bewildered Italian shrugged his shoulders.

“I don't know,” he replied—“sometimes.”

“I never did,” continued Von Gratz. “But
listen! The war passed and I returned to my estates in Baden. I was young then. I grew old. I forgot this incident. But one night in the castle at Waldshut I dreamed that I was standing in the edge of the wood before this house, looking at the door. The door was closed. I seemed greatly relieved—and I woke.

“Time ran on and the dream returned. And always as the thing reappeared my anxiety about the door became greater, and my relief at finding it still closed increased, as though this closed door stood between me and some appalling doom. The dream never varied. I looked always at this door in a sweat of dread!” Von Gratz paused. Then he went on like a disembodied voice:

“One never escapes from the superstitions of his childhood. I had heard that if one touched a dead man on the forehead he would not dream of him, or if he went to the scene of a haunting obsession it would disappear. I could no longer endure this hideous anxiety that recurred always in a shorter cycle. I determined to come here and revisit this house in the hope that this dream would cease.… But I found all France inflamed, and I hesitated until you told me that the door was open. Then I determined to go. I dared not think what this accursed dream might become, now that the closed door was open.”