Lay Down Your Arms 52

Lay Down Your Arms 52

Oh! the blessedness of having him once more with me. How was it that I,

just I, had succeeded in emerging out of the flood of woe in which so

many had sunk, on to a safe and happy shore? Happy for those who in such

circumstances can raise their eyes with joy to heaven and send up warm

thanks to their Guide above. By this thanksgiving, which, because it is

spoken in humility, they take to be humble, and of which they have no

conception how arrogant and self-important it is in reality, they feel

themselves relieved, inasmuch as they have, according to their own

opinion, given a sufficient discharge for the benefit which has accrued

to them, and which they call grace and favour. I could not put myself in

that position. When I thought of the wretches whom I had seen in those

abodes of misery, and when I thought of the lamentable mothers and wives

whose dear ones had been hurried into torture and death by the same

destiny as had so favoured me--when I thought of this I found it

impossible to be so immodest as to take this favour as having been sent

by God, and one for which I was entitled to give thanks. It appeared to

me that just as, a little while before, Frau Walter, our housekeeper,

had swept her broom over a cupboard on which a swarm of ants who scented

sugar were collected, so fate had swept over the Bohemian battlefields.

The poor busy black things were mostly crushed, killed, scattered; but a

few remained uninjured. Now, would it have been reasonable and proper in

them if they had sent up their heartfelt thanks for this to Frau Walter?

No. I could not entirely banish the woe out of my heart by means of the

joy of meeting again, however great that were. I neither could nor did I

wish to do so. I was not able to help--to dress wounds, nurse, wait on

the sick--like those sisters of mercy and the courageous Frau Simon had

done; my strength was not sufficient for that. But the mercy which

consists in compassion, that I had offered up to my poor brother-men,

and that I could not withdraw from them again in my selfish contentment.

I could not forget.

 

But if I might not triumph and give thanks yet I well might

_love_--might clasp the beloved one to my heart with a hundredfold the

former tenderness. “Oh Frederick, Frederick!” I repeated amidst our

tears and caresses, “have I got you again?”

 

“And you wanted to seek me out and nurse me? How heroic and how foolish,

Martha!”

 

“Foolish! Yes, there I agree with you. The appealing voice which drew me

on was imagination--superstition--for you were not calling for me. But

heroic? No. If you knew how cowardly I showed myself when face to face

with misery! It was only you, if you had been lying there, that I could

have nursed. I have seen horrors, Frederick, that I can never forget.

Oh! this beautiful world of ours, how can people so spoil it, Frederick?

A world in which two beings can so love each other as you and I do, in

which there can glow such a fire of bliss as is our union, how can it be

so foolish as to rake up the flames of hate which brings death and woe

in its train?”

 

“I also have seen something horrible, Martha--something that I can never

forget. Just think of Godfrey v. Tessow rushing wildly upon me with

uplifted sword--it was in the cavalry action at Sadowa.”

 

“Aunt Rosalie’s son?”

 

“The same; he recognised me in time, and let the blade sink which he had

already raised.”

 

“He acted in that directly contrary to his duty. How? To spare an enemy

of his king and country, under the worthless pretext that he was his own

dear friend and cousin.”

 

“Poor fellow! He had scarcely let his arm fall when a sabre whistled

over his head. It was my next man, a young officer, who wanted to defend

his lieutenant-colonel, and----”

 

Frederick stopped and covered his face with both hands.

 

“Killed?” I asked shuddering. He nodded.

 

“Mamma, mamma,” resounded from the next room, and the door was burst

open. It was my sister Lilly, leading little Rudolf by the hand.

 

“Forgive me if I interrupt your _tête-à-tête_ on meeting again, but this

boy was too ardently eager to see his mamma to be denied.”

 

I hastened to the child and pressed him passionately to my heart. Ah!

poor, poor Aunt Rosalie!

 

On the very same day the surgeon who had been summoned by telegraph from

Vienna arrived at the château and undertook the treatment of Frederick’s

wound. Six weeks of the most perfect rest, and his cure would be

complete.

 

That my husband should quit the service was a point perfectly settled

between us two. Of course, this could not be carried out till the war

was at an end. The war might, however, be practically looked on as over.

After the renunciation of Venice the conflict with Italy was ended,

Napoleon’s friendship secured, and we should be in a position to

conclude peace on moderate terms with the northern conqueror. Our

emperor himself was most ardently desirous to put an end to the unlucky

campaign, and would not expose his capital to a siege also. The Prussian

victories in the rest of Germany, joined to the entry of the Prussians

into Frankfort-on-the-Main which took place on July 16, invested our

adversaries with a halo, which, like all success, extorted admiration

even from our countrymen, and awoke a sort of belief that it was an

historical mission which was thus being carried out by Prussia through

the battles she had won. The words “suspension of hostilities,” “peace,”

having been once let drop, one could count on their taking effect as

certainly as in the times when a threatening of war has once found vent

one may reckon on its breaking out sooner or later. Even my father

himself admitted that under the stress of circumstances a suspension of

hostilities was desirable; the army was debilitated, the superiority of

the needle-gun must be recognised, and an advance of the enemy’s troops

on the capital, the blockade of Vienna, and along with that the

destruction of Grumitz, these were possibilities which were not

particularly alluring to even my warlike papa. His trust in the

invincibility of the Austrian troops had then received a severe shock by

present facts, and it is, speaking generally, a predisposition of the

human mind to infer from the events passing before us that they will

recur in a series, that on one success another success will follow, on

one misfortune a fresh misfortune. So it is better to stop in the run of

bad luck--the time of satisfaction and of vengeance will come one day.

 

Vengeance! and always repeated vengeance! Every war must leave one side

defeated, and if this side can only find satisfaction in the next war, a

war which must naturally produce another defeated side craving

satisfaction, when is it to stop? How can justice be attained, when can

old injustice be atoned, if fresh injustice is always to be employed as

the means of atonement? It would never suggest itself to any reasonable

man to wash out ink spots with ink and oil stains with oil, it is only

blood which has always to be washed out with new blood! The frame of

mind prevailing at Grumitz was on the whole a gloomy one. In the village

panic reigned. “The Prussians are coming. The Prussians are coming” was

always the cry of terror which they kept uttering still, in spite of the

hopes of peace which were cherished in many quarters; and people were

packing up their treasures at home or burying them out of sight. Even in

the château Aunt Mary and Frau Walter had taken care that the family

plate had been put in a secret place of concealment. Lilly was in

constant anxiety about Conrad, of whom there had been no news for

several days; my father found himself wounded in his patriotic honour,

and we two, Frederick and I, in spite of the bliss which lay deep in our

hearts on account of our re-union, had been most painfully shaken by the

miseries of the time which we had experienced, and with which we so

warmly sympathised. And from all sides flowed in constantly fresh food

for this pain. In all the correspondence in the papers, in all our

letters from relatives and acquaintance, there was nothing but

complaints and lamentations. First there was a letter from Aunt Rosalie,

who had not yet learned her unhappiness, but who spoke in such moving

terms of the fear in which she was of having to lose her only child--a

letter over which we two shed bitter tears. And in the evening, when we

sat all together, there was no more of cheerful chatter, seasoned with

jokes, music, card-playing and interesting reading, but always, whether

spoken or read, only histories of woe and death. We read nothing but

newspapers, and these were filled with “war,” and nothing but “war,” and

our talk related chiefly to the experiences which Frederick and I had

brought back from the Bohemian battlefields. My departure thither had

been, it is true, taken very ill by them all, but for all that they

listened eagerly as I related the events there, partly from my own

observation, partly from what I had been told. Rosa was an enthusiast

for Frau Simon, and swore that, if the war was going to continue, she

would join the Saxon Samaritans. Papa, of course, protested against

this.

 

“With the exception of the sisters of charity and the sutlers no woman

has any business in a war. You must surely see how useless our Martha

showed herself to be. That was an unpardonable prank of yours, you silly

child. Your husband ought to chastise you properly for it.”

 

Frederick stroked my hand.

 

“Yes, it was a folly, but a noble one.”

 

If I spoke of the horrors which I had seen with my own eyes, or which my

travelling companions had related to me, in quite naked terms, I was

often interrupted reproachfully by my father or Aunt Mary, with: “How

can people repeat such dreadful things?” or, “Are you not ashamed, as a

woman, as a gently bred lady, to take such ugly words into your mouth?”

This exhausted my patience.

 

“Oh, away with your prudery! away with your affected decorum! Any

cruelties may be committed, but it is not permitted to name them. Gently

bred ladies are not to know anything about blood and filth, but they may

embroider the flags which are to wave over this bath of blood; maidens

may not know anything of the cause which is to render their lovers

incapable of reaping the reward of their love, but they are allowed to

promise them that reward, in order to inspire their martial ardour.

_Death_ and killing do not offer anything improper for you--well-bred

ladies as you are--but at the bare mention of the things which are the

sources of the implanted _life_, you must blush and look aside. That is

cruel ethics I would have you know--cruel and cowardly. This looking

aside--with the bodily and the spiritual eye--it is to this that is due

the persistence of so much misery and injustice. If one had but the

courage to look steadily whenever one’s fellow-creatures are pining in

pain and misery, and the courage to reflect on what one saw----”

 

“Don’t get excited,” interrupted Aunt Mary; “however much we might look,

and however much we might reflect, we should never be able to chase evil

from the earth. It is now, once for all, a vale of misery, and will ever

remain so.”

 

“It will not,” I replied; and so at least I had the last word.

 

* * * * *

 

“The danger that peace will be concluded is coming steadily nearer,”

said my brother Otto complainingly one day.

 

We were sitting at the time at the family table again, Frederick on the

sofa near us, and some one had just read out of the newspapers the

tidings that Benedetti had arrived in Bohemia, obviously entrusted with the mission of suggesting proposals for peace.