The hand, the closed one, flicked, jerked, so fast that the eye almost failed to register it and the object seemed to gleam once in the air before it even appeared, already tumbling across the vacant top of the desk until it sprang open as though of its own accord and came to rest — a small locket of chased worn gold, opening like a hunting-case watch upon twin medallions, miniatures painted on ivory.
‘So you actually had a mother. You really did. When I first saw the second face inside it that night, I thought it was your wife or sweetheart or mistress, and I hated you. But I know better now and I apologise for imputing to your character a capacity so weak as to have earned the human warmth of hatred.’ She looked down at him. ‘So I did wait too late to produce it, after all. No, that’s wrong too. Any moment would have been too late; any moment I might have chosen to use it as a weapon the pistol would have misfired, the knife-blade shattered at the stroke. So of course you know what my next request will be.’
‘I know it,’ the old general said.
‘And granted in advance of course, since then he can no longer threaten you. But at least it’s not too late for him to receive the locket, even though it cannot save him. At least you can tell me that. Come. Say it: At least it’s not too late for him to receive it.’
‘It’s not too late,’ the old general said.
‘So he must die.’ They looked at one another. ‘Your own son.’
‘Then will he not merely inherit from me at thirty what I had already bequeathed to him at birth?’
By its size and location, the room which the old general called his study had probably been the chamber, cell of the old marquise’s favorite lady-in-waiting or perhaps tiring-woman, though by its appearance now it might have been a library lifted bodily from an English country home and then reft of the books and furnishings. The shelves were empty now except for one wall, and those empty too save for a brief row of the text-books and manuals of the old general’s trade, stacked neatly at one end of one shelf.
Beneath this, against the wall, was a single narrow army cot pillowless beneath a neatly and immaculately drawn gray army blanket; at the foot of it sat the old general’s battered field desk. Otherwise the room contained a heavyish, Victorian-looking, almost American-looking table surrounded by four chairs in which the four generals were sitting. The table had been cleared of the remains of the German general’s meal; an orderly was just going out with the final tray of soiled dishes. Before the old general sat a coffee service and its cups and a tray of decanters and glasses. The old general filled the cups and passed them. Then he took up one of the decanters.
‘Schnaps, General, of course,’ he said to the German general.
‘Thanks,’ the German general said. The old general filled and passed the glass. The old general didn’t speak to the British general at all, he simply passed the port decanter and an empty glass to him, then a second empty glass.
‘Since General (he called the American general’s name) is already on your left.’ He said to no one directly, calling the American general’s name again: ‘ — doesn’t drink after dinner, as a rule. Though without doubt he will void it tonight.’ Then to the American: ‘Unless you will have brandy too?’
‘Port, thank you, General,’ the American said. ‘Since we are only recessing an alliance: not abrogating it.’
‘Bah,’ the German general said. He sat rigid, bright with medals, the ground glass monocle (it had neither cord nor ribbon; it was not on his face, his head like an ear, but set as though inevictable into the socket of his right eye like an eyeball itself) fixed in a rigid opaque glare at the American general. ‘Alliances. That is what is wrong each time. The mistake we — us, and you — and you — and you—’ his hard and rigid stare jerking from face to face as he spoke ‘ — have made always each time as though we will never learn. And this time, we are going to pay for it. Oh yes, we.
Dont you realise that we know as well as you do what is happening, what is going to be the end of this by another twelve months? twelve months? bah. It wont last twelve months; another winter will see it. We know better than you do—’ to the British general ‘ — because you are on the run now and do not have time to do anything else. Even if you were not running, you probably would not realise it, because you are not a martial people. But we are. Our national destiny is for glory and war; they are not mysteries to us and so we know what we are looking at.
So we will pay for that mistake. And since we will, you — and you — and you—’ the cold and lifeless glare stopping again at the American ‘ — who only think you came in late enough to gain at little risk — must pay also.’ Then he was looking at none of them; it was almost as though he had drawn one rapid quiet and calming inhalation, still rigid though and still composed. ‘But you will excuse me, please. It is too late for that now — this time. Our problem now is the immediate one.
Also, first — —’ He rose, tossing his crumpled napkin onto the table and picking up the filled brandy glass, so rapidly that his chair scraped back across the floor and would have crashed over had not the American general put out a quick hand and saved it, the German general standing rigid, the brandy glass raised, his close uniform as unwrinkleable as mail against the easy coat of the Briton like the comfortable jacket of a game-keeper, and the American’s like a tailor-made costume for a masquerade in which he would represent the soldier of fifty years ago, and the old general’s which looked like a wife had got it out of a moth-balled attic trunk and cut some of it off and stitched some braid and ribbons and buttons on what remained. ‘Hoch!’ the German general said and tossed the brandy down and with the same motion flung the empty glass over his shoulder to crash against the wall.
‘Hoch,’ the old general said courteously. He drank too but he set his empty glass back on the table. ‘You must excuse us,’ he said. ‘We are not situated as you are; we cannot afford to break French glasses.’ He took another brandy glass from the tray and began to fill it. ‘Be seated, General,’ he said. The German general didn’t move.
‘And whose fault is that?’ he said, ‘that we have been — ja, twice — compelled to destroy French property? Not yours and mine, not ours here, not the fault of any of us, all of us who have to spend the four years straining at each other from behind two wire fences. It’s the politicians, the civilian imbeciles who compel us every generation to have to rectify the blunders of their damned international horse-trading — —’
‘Be seated, General,’ the old general said.
‘As you were!’ the German general said. Then he caught himself. He made a rigid quarter-turn and clapped his heels to face the old general. ‘I forgot myself for a moment. You will please to pardon it.’ He reversed the quarter-turn, but without the heel-clap this time. His voice was milder now, quieter anyway. ‘The same blunder because it is always the same alliance: only the pieces moved and swapped about. Perhaps they have to keep on doing, making the same mistake; being civilians and politicians, perhaps they cant help themselves.
Or, being civilians and politicians, perhaps they dare not. Because they would be the first to vanish under that one which we would establish. Think of it, if you have not already: the alliance which would dominate all Europe. Europe? Bah. The world — Us, with you, France, and you, England—’ he seemed to catch himself again for a second, turning to the American general. ‘ — with you for — with your good wishes — —’
‘A minority stockholder,’ the American said.
‘Thank you,’ the German general said. ‘ — An alliance, the alliance which will conquer the whole earth — Europe, Asia, Africa, the islands; — to accomplish where Bonaparte failed, what Caesar dreamed of, what Hannibal didn’t live long enough to do — —’
‘Who will be emperor?’ the old general said. It was so courteous and mild that for a moment it didn’t seem to register. The German general looked at him.
‘Yes,’ the British general said as mildly: ‘Who?’ The German general looked at him. There was no movement of the face at all: the monocle simply descended from the eye, down the face and then the tunic, glinting once or twice as it turned in the air, into the palm lifted to receive it, the hand shutting on it then opening again, the monocle already in position between the thumb and the first finger, to be inserted again; and in fact there had been no eyeball behind
