Lay Down Your Arms 58

Lay Down Your Arms 58

Aunt Mary with the two girls and with Otto and Rudolf were to depart as

quickly as possible--whither? That was not yet settled. In the first

place, to Hungary--as far away as possible. The _fiancées_ did not make

any opposition whatever, but were busy in helping to pack. To die, when

the near future promised the fulfilment of the warm desires of love,

_i.e._, a tenfold delight in living, would be to die tenfold.

 

The boxes had been brought into the dining-room, so that with the united

assistance of all the work might go on quicker. I was bringing a package

of Rudolf’s clothes under my arm.

 

“Why does not your maid do that?” asked my father.

 

“I do not know where Netty has got to. I have rung for her several

times, and she does not come, so I prefer to wait on myself.”

 

“You spoil your people,” said my father angrily, and he gave orders to a

footman to look for the girl everywhere and bring her there immediately.

 

After a time the man who had been sent returned, looking confused.

 

“Netty is lying down in her room. She is--she has--she is----”

 

“Well, can’t you speak?” thundered my father. “What is the matter with

her?”

 

“She is already--quite black.”

 

A cry burst out of all our mouths. So the horrible spectre was already

present in our own very house.

 

Now, what should we do? Could one leave the poor girl to die unaided?

But whoever went near her brought death on himself almost certainly, and

not only on himself, he spread it again more widely among the rest. Ah!

a house like that, into which the pest has penetrated, is like one

encircled by robbers, or as if it were in flames; everywhere and in

every corner and place, at every step and move, Death is grinning at

you.

 

“Fetch the doctor immediately,” was my father’s order. “And you,

children, hurry your departure.”

 

“The doctor went back to town an hour ago,” was the servant’s reply to

my father’s direction.

 

“Oh, dear! I feel so ill,” now cried Lilly, and she turned pale to her

very lips, and clutched at the arm of her chair.

 

We ran to her: “What is the matter with you?”--“Don’t be foolish”--“It

is only fear”.

 

But it was not fear, there was no doubt what it was. We had to carry the

poor thing to her room, where she was seized at once with violent

vomiting and the other symptoms. This was the second case of cholera in

the château in this same day.

 

It was horrible to see my poor sister’s sufferings. And no doctor at

hand! Frederick was the only one who could perform the duty of one, as

well as he might. He ordered what was wanted--warm fomentations, mustard

poultices to the stomach and the legs, ice in fragments, champagne.

Nothing did any good. These means, which are sufficient for slight

attacks of cholera, could not save in this case. But at least they gave

the patient and the bystanders the comfort of knowing that _something_

was being done. When the attacks had subsided, the cramps followed,

quiverings and tearings of the whole frame till the very bones cracked.

The poor thing tried to lament, but could not, for her voice failed,

the skin turned blue and cold, the breath stopped.

 

My father was running up and down, wringing his hands. Once I put myself

in his way.

 

“This is war, father,” I said. “Will not you curse it?”

 

He shook me off and gave no reply.

 

In ten hours Lilly was dead. Netty, my poor lady’s maid had died

before--alone, in her room. We were all of us busy about Lilly, and of

the servants, none had ventured to go near one who had “already turned

quite black”.

 

* * * * *

 

Meanwhile Dr. Bresser had arrived. He himself brought the medicines

which we had telegraphed for. I could have kissed his hands as he walked

into the midst of us to devote his self-sacrificing services to his old

friends. He at once took on himself the command of the establishment. He

had the two corpses carried into a remote chamber, barred up the rooms

in which the poor things had died, and made us all submit to a powerful

disinfecting process. An intense carbolic odour now penetrated all the

rooms, and to this day, whenever this smell meets me, those dreadful

days of cholera rise before my imagination.

 

The intended flight had to be postponed a second time. On the very day

of Lilly’s death, the carriage was standing ready which was to convey

away Aunt Mary, Rosa, Otto, and my little boy, when the coachman, seized

by the invisible destroyer, was forced to get off the coach-box again.

 

“Then I will drive you,” said my father, when the news was brought to

him. “Quick, is everything ready?”

 

Rosa came out. “Drive on,” she said, “but I must stop behind. I am going

Lilly’s way.”

 

And she spoke truth. The break of day dawned on this second young bride

too in the chamber of death.

 

Of course, in the horror of this new calamity, the departure of the

others was not carried out.

 

In the midst of my anguish, of my raging fear, the deepest scorn again

seized me for that gigantic folly which had voluntarily called forth so

great a calamity. My father, when Rosa’s corpse had been carried out,

had sunk on his knees, with his head against the wall.

 

I went to him, and took him by the arm. “Father,” I said, “this is war.”

No answer. “Father, do you hear? Now or never, will you now curse war?”

 

He, however, collected himself.

 

“You remind me of it--this misfortune shall be borne with a soldier’s

courage. It is not I alone, the whole country has to offer its sacrifice

of blood and tears.”

 

“What comfort then has come to the country from the sufferings of you

and your brethren? What comfort from the lost battles? What from these

two girls’ lives cut short? Father! Oh do me this kindness for the love

of me!--curse war! See here”--I drew him to a window, and just then a

black coffin was being brought on a car into the courtyard--“See here;

that is for our Lilly, and to-morrow another such for our Rosa, and the

day after perhaps a third; and why, why?”

 

“Because God has willed it so, my child.”

 

“God--always God. All that, however, is folly. All savagery, all the

arbitrary action of men, hiding itself under the shield of God’s will.”

 

“Do not blaspheme, Martha! Do not blaspheme now when God’s chastening

hand is so visibly----”

 

A footman came into the room.

 

“Your excellency, the carpenter will not carry the coffin into the

chamber where the countesses are lying, and no one will venture into

it.”

 

“Not you, either, coward?”

 

“I could not alone.”

 

“Then I will help you. I will myself see to my daughters;” and he strode

to the door.

 

“Back,” he cried to me, as I was following him; “you must not go with

me. You must not die as well as me--think of your child.”

 

What could I do? I hesitated. That is the most torturing thing in such

circumstances--not to know at all _where_ one’s duty lies. If one pays

to the sick and the dead the loving service which one’s heart yearns to

do, then one spreads the germs of the evil wider again, and brings

danger on the others who have as yet been spared. One would be willing

to sacrifice oneself; but one knows that in risking this one risks

sacrificing others also.

 

In such a dilemma there is only one helpful way--to give up life, not

one’s own merely, but also that of all one’s dear ones--to assume that

all is done with, and for each one to stand by the other in his hours of

suffering, as long as they last. Looking backward, looking forward--all

that must cease. Together! On the deck of a sinking ship, no means of

escape--“let us hold each other in our arms--close, close as possible,

to the last moment; and adieu, fair world.”

 

This resignation had come over us all. The plan of flight had been given

up; every one went to the bed of every patient, and of every one who had

died. Even Bresser no longer tried to keep us from this, the only humane

way of acting. His neighbourhood, his energetic, unresting rule gave us

a certain feeling of security. Our sinking ship was at least not without

a captain.

 

Oh that cholera week in Grumitz! Over twenty years have passed since

then, but I still feel a shudder through my bones and marrow when I

think of it. Tears, wailing, heart-rending death-scenes, the smell of

carbolic acid, the cracking of the bones of those seized with cramp, the

disgusting symptoms, the incessant tolling of the death-bell, the

interment--no, the huddling away--of the dead, for in such cases there

is no funeral pomp. All the order of life given up; no meal times--the

cook was dead. No going to sleep at nights. Here and there a morsel

snatched standing, and a doze as one sat in one’s chair in the morning

hours. Outside, as though from the irony of indifferent Nature, the

most splendid summer weather; the joyous song of the blackbird, the

luxuriant colours of the flower-beds. In the village, death without

cessation. All the Prussians who were left behind were dead.

 

“I met the man who buries the dead to-day,” said Francis, our _valet de

chambre_, “as he was coming back from the churchyard with his empty

carriage. ‘One or two more taken there?’ I asked. ‘Oh yes; six or

seven--about half-a-dozen every day, sometimes even more; and it does

happen sometimes that one or other gives a grunt or so inside the hearse

there; but that makes no matter, in he goes into the trench, the d----d Prussian.”