University of Virginia Library

A DIALOGUE IN THE SNOW.

(Before Paris, December 1870.)

DESERTER.
O, I am spent! My heart fails, and my limbs
Are palsied. Would to God I were dead!

SISTERS OF MERCY.
Stand! What art thou, who like a guilty thing
Creepest along the shadow, stooping low?

DESERTER.
A man. Now stand aside, and let me pass.

SISTERS.
Not yet. Whence fleest thou? Whither dost thou go?

DESERTER.
From Famine and Fire. From Horror.
From Frost and Death.

SISTERS.
O coward! traitor to unhappy France!
Stand forward in the moon, that it may light
The blush of shame uoon thy guilty cheek!
Lo, we are women, yet we shiver cold
To look upon so infamous a thing.

DESERTER.
Nay, look your fill, I care not—stand and see.

SISTERS.
O horror! horror! who hath done this deed?

DESERTER.
What say ye? am I fair to look upon?

SISTERS.
The dead are fairer. O unhappy one!

DESERTER.
Why do ye shudder? Am I then so foul?

SISTERS.
There is no living flesh upon thy bones.

DESERTER.
Famine hath fed upon my limbs too long.

SISTERS.
And thou art rent as by the teeth of hounds.

DESERTER.
Fire tore me, and what blood I have I bleed.

SISTERS.
Thine eyes stare like the blank eyes of a corpse.

DESERTER.
They have look'd so close on horror and so long,
I cannot shut them from it till I die.

SISTERS.
Thou crawlest like a man whose sick limbs fail.

DESERTER.
Ha! Frost is there, and numbs me like a snake.

SISTERS.
God help thee, miserable one; and yet,
Better if thou hadst perish'd in thy place
Than live inglorious, tainted with thy shame.

DESERTER.
Shame? I am long past shame. I know her not.

SISTERS.
Is there no sense of honour in thy soul?

DESERTER.
Honour? Why see, she hath me fast enough:
These are her other names, Fire, Famine, and Frost,—
Soon I shall hear her last and sweetest,— Death.

SISTERS.
Hast thou no care for France, thy martyr'd land?

DESERTER.
What hath she given me? Curses and blows.

SISTERS.
O miserable one, remember God!

DESERTER.
God? Who hath look'd on God? Where doth He dwell?
O fools, with what vain words and empty names
Ye sicken me. Honour, France, God! All these—
Hear me—I curse. Why, look you, there's the sky,
Here the white earth, there, with its bleeding heart,
The butcher'd City; here half dead stand I.
A murder'd man, grown grey before my time,
Forty years old—a husband, and a father—
An outcast flying out of Hell. Who talks
To me of ‘honour’? The first tears I wept
When standing at my wretched mother's knee,
Because her face was white, and she wore black.
That day the bells rang out for victory.
Then, look you, after that my mother sat
Weeping and weary in an empty house,
And they who look'd upon her shrunken cheeks
Fed her with ‘honour.’ 'Twas too gentle fare,—
She died. Nay, hearken! Left to seek for bread,
I like a wild thing haunted human doors
Searching the ash for food. I ate and lived.
I grew. Then, wretched as I was, I felt
Strange stirs of manhood in my flesh and bones,
Dim yearnings, fierce desires, and one pale face
Could still them as the white moon charms the sea.
Oh, but I was a low and unclean thing,
And yet she loved me, and I stretch'd these hands
To God, and blest Him for His charity.
Mark that:—I blest Him, I. Even as I stood,
Bright in new manhood, the drums beat,— a hand
Fell on my shoulder, and, ‘in France's name,’
A voice cried, ‘Follow.’ To my heart they held
Cold steel:—I followed; following saw her face
Fade to a bitter cry—hurl'd on with blows,
Curs'd, jeer'd at, scorn'd, went forth as in a dream,
And, driven into the bloody flash of war,
Struck like a blinded beast I knew not whom
Blows for I knew not what. The fierce years came
Like ulcers on my heart, and heal'd, and went.
Then I crept back, a broken sickly man,
To seek her, and I found her—dead! She had died,
Poor worm, of hunger. She had ask'd for bread,
And ‘France’ had given her stones. She had pray'd to ‘God’;
He had given her a grave. The day she died,
The bells rang for another victory.

SISTERS.
O do not weep! Yet we are weeping too.

DESERTER.
Now mark, I was too poor a worm to grieve
Too long and deeply. The years passed. My heart
Heal'd, and as wounds heal, harden'd. Once again
I join'd the wolves that up and down the earth
Rush tearing at men's lives and women's hearts.
That passed, and I was free. One morn I saw
Another woman, and I hunger'd to her,
And we were wedded. Hard days follow'd that;
And children—she was fruitful—all your worms
Are fruitful, mark—that is God's blessing too!
Well, but we throve, and farm'd a bit of land
Out yonder by the City. I learn'd to love
The mother of my little ones. Time sped;
And then I heard a cry across the fields,
The old cry, ‘Honour,’ the old cry, ‘For France!’
And like a wolf caught in his lair I shrunk
And shudder'd. It grew louder, that curst cry!
Day follow'd day, no bells rung victory,
But there were funeral faces everywhere;
And then I heard the far feet of the foe
Trampling the field of France and coming nearer
To that poor field I sow'd. I would have fled,
But that they thrust a weapon in mine hands
And bade me stand and strike ‘for France.’ I laugh'd!
But the wolves had me, and we screaming drew
Into the City. Shall I gorge your souls
With horror? Shall I croak into your ears
What I have suffer'd there, what I have seen?
I was a worm, ever a worm, and starved
While the plump coward cramm'd. Look at me, women,
Fire, Famine, and Frost have got me; yet I crawl,
And shall crawl on; for hark you, yester-night,
Standing within the City, sick at heart,
I gazed up eastward, thinking of my home
And of the woman and children desolate,
And lo! out of the darkness where I knew
Our hamlet lay there shot up flames and cast
A bloody light along the arc of heaven;
And all my heart was sicken'd unaware
With hunger such as any wild thing feels
To crawl again in secret to the place
Whence the fierce hunter drove it, and to see
If its young live; and thither indeed I fare;
And yonder flame still flareth, and I crawl,
And I shall crawl unto it though I die;
And I shall only smile if they be dead,
If I may merely see them once again,—
For come what may, my cup of life is full,
And I am broken from all use and will.

SISTERS.
Pass on, unhappy one; God help thee now!

DESERTER.
If ye have any pity, give me bread.

SISTERS.
Lean on us! Oh thou lost one, come this way.