D’Arragon turned away towards the window.
Sebastian and Mathilde were in the street below,
in the shade of the trees, talking with the eager
neighbours.
“You would have stopped it if you could,”
said Desiree; and he did not deny it.
“It was some instinct,” he said at length.
“Some passing misgiving.”
“For Charles?” she asked sharply.
And D’Arragon, looking out of the window, would
not answer. She gave a sudden laugh.
“One cannot compliment you on your politeness,”
she said. “Was it for Charles that you
had misgivings?”
At last D’Arragon turned on his heel.
“Does it matter?” he asked. “Since
I came too late.”
“That is true,” she said, after a pause.
“You came too late; so it doesn’t matter.
And the thing is done now, and I . . . , well, I
suppose I must do what others have done before me—I
must make the best of it.”
“I will help you,” said D’Arragon
slowly, almost carefully, “if I can.”
He was still avoiding her eyes, still looking out
of the window. Sebastian was coming up the steps.
Nothing is so disappointing
as failure—except success.
While the Dantzigers with grave faces discussed the
news of Borodino beneath the trees in the Frauengasse,
Charles Darragon, white with dust, rose in his stirrups
to catch the first sight of the domes and cupolas
of Moscow.
It was a sunny morning, and the gold on the churches
gleamed and glittered in the shimmering heat like
fairyland. Charles had ridden to the summit
of a hill and sat for a moment, as others had done,
in silent contemplation. Moscow at last!
All around him men were shouting: “Moscow!
Moscow!” Grave, white-haired generals waved
their shakos in the air. Those at the summit
of the hill called the others to come. Far down
in the valley, where the dust raised by thousands
of feet hung in the air like a mist, a faint sound
like the roar of falling water could be heard.
It was the word “Moscow!” sweeping back
to the rearmost ranks of these starving men who had
marched for two months beneath the glaring sun, parched
with dust, through a country that seemed to them a
Sahara. Every house they approached, they had
found deserted. Every barn was empty. The
very crops ripening to harvest had been gathered in
and burnt. Near to the miserable farmhouses,
a pile of ashes hardly cold marked where the poor
furniture had been tossed upon the fire kindled with
the year’s harvest.
Everywhere it was the same. There are, as God
created it, few countries of a sadder aspect than
that which spreads between the Moskwa and the Vistula.
But it has been decreed by the dim laws of Race that
the ugly countries shall be blessed with the greater
love of their children, while men born in a beautiful
land seem readiest to emigrate from it and make the
best settlers in a new home. There is only one
country in the world with a ring-fence round it.
If a Russian is driven from his home, he will go
to another part of Russia: there is always room.
