Tales of War, Lord Dunsany [top 50 books to read .txt] 📗
- Author: Lord Dunsany
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Why! Look at the helmet. That was lucky. A bullet hole right through the front of it. That must have gone very close to the man’s head. How ever did it get through? It must have glanced upwards as bullets sometimes do. The hole was quite low in the helmet. It would be dreadful to have bullets coming by close like that. The firelight flickered, and the lamp shone on, and the children played on the floor, and the man was smoking out of a china pipe; he was strong and able and young, one of the wealth-winners of Germany.
“Have you seen?” said the phantom.
“Yes,” said the Kaiser. It was well, he thought, that a Kaiser should see how his people lived.
At once the fire went out and the lamp faded away, the room fell sombrely into neglect and squalor, and the soldier and the children faded away with the room; all disappeared phantasmally, and nothing remained but the helmet in a kind of glow on the wall, and the woman sitting all by herself in the darkness.
“It has all gone,” said the Kaiser.
“It has never been,” said the phantom.
The Kaiser looked again. Yes, there was nothing there, it was just a vision. There were the grey walls all damp and uncared for, and that helmet standing out solid and round, like the only real thing among fancies. No, it had never been. It was just a vision.
“It might have been,” said the phantom.
Might have been? How might it have been?
“Come,” said the phantom.
They drifted away down a little lane that in summer would have had roses, and came to an Uhlan’s house; in times of peace a small farmer. Farm buildings in good repair showed even in the night, and the black shapes of haystacks; again a well-kept garden lay by the house. The phantom and the Kaiser stood in the garden; before them a window glowed in a lamplit room.
“Look,” said the phantom.
The Kaiser looked again and saw a young couple; the woman played with a baby, and all was prosperous in the merry room. Again the hard-won wealth of Germany shone out for all to see, the cosy comfortable furniture spoke of acres well cared for, spoke of victory in the struggle with the seasons on which wealth of nations depends.
“It might have been,” said the phantom. Again the fire died out and the merry scene faded away, leaving a melancholy, ill-kept room, with poverty and mourning haunting dusty corners and the woman sitting alone.
“Why do you show me this?” said the Kaiser. “Why do you show me these visions?”
“Come,” said the phantom.
“What is it?” said the Kaiser. “Where are you bringing me?”
“Come,” said the phantom.
They went from window to window, from land to land. You had seen, had you been out that night in Germany, and able to see visions, an imperious figure passing from place to place, looking on many scenes. He looked on them, and families withered away, and happy scenes faded, and the phantom said to him “Come.” He expostulated but obeyed; and so they went from window to window of hundreds of farms in Prussia, till they came to the Prussian border and went on into Saxony; and always you would have heard, could you hear spirits speak, “It might have been,” “It might have been,” repeated from window to window.
They went down through Saxony, heading for Austria. And for long the Kaiser kept that callous, imperious look. But at last he, even he, at last he nearly wept. And the phantom turned then and swept him back over Saxony, and into Prussia again and over the sentries’ heads, back to his comfortable bed where it was so hard to sleep.
And though they had seen thousands of merry homes, homes that can never be merry now, shrines of perpetual mourning; though they had seen thousands of smiling German children, who will never be born now, but were only the visions of hopes blasted by him; for all the leagues over which he had been so ruthlessly hurried, dawn was yet barely breaking.
He had looked on the first few thousand homes of which he had robbed all time, and which he must see with his eyes before he may go hence. The first night of the Kaiser’s punishment was accomplished.
The English Spirit
By the end of the South African war Sergeant Cane had got one thing very well fixed in his mind, and that was that war was an overrated amusement. He said he “was fed up with it,” partly because that misused metaphor was then new, partly because every one was saying it: he felt it right down in his bones, and he had a long memory. So when wonderful rumours came to the East Anglian village where he lived, on August 1, 1914, Sergeant Cane said: “That means war,” and decided then and there to have nothing to do with it: it was somebody else’s turn; he felt he had done enough. Then came August 4th, and England true to her destiny, and then Lord Kitchener’s appeal for men. Sergeant Cane had a family to look after and a nice little house: he had left the army ten years.
In the next week all the men went who had been in the army before, all that were young enough, and a good sprinkling of the young men too who had never been in the army. Men asked Cane if he was going, and he said straight out “No.”
By the middle of August Cane was affecting the situation. He was a little rallying point for men who did not want to go. “He knows what it’s like,” they said.
In the smoking room of the Big House sat the Squire and his son, Arthur Smith; and Sir Munion Boomer-Platt, the Member for the division. The Squire’s son had been in the last war as a boy, and like Sergeant Cane had left the army since. All the morning he had been cursing an imaginary general, seated in the War Office at an imaginary desk with Smith’s own letter before him, in full view but unopened. Why on earth didn’t he answer it, Smith thought. But he was calmer now, and the Squire and Sir Munion were talking of Sergeant Cane.
“Leave him to me,” said Sir Munion.
“Very well,” said the Squire. So Sir Munion Boomer-Platt went off and called on Sergeant Cane.
Mrs Cane knew what he had come for.
“Don’t let him talk you over, Bill,” she said.
“Not he,” said Sergeant Cane.
Sir Munion came on Sergeant Cane in his garden.
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