'It was the girl of course; his revenge and vengeance on you which you feared: a whore, a Marseille whore to mother the grand-children of your high and exalted blood. He told us of her on his leave in the second year. We-I-said no of course too, but then he had that of you also; the capacity to follow his will always. Oh yes, he told us of her: a good girl, he said, leading through her own fate, necessity, compulsions (there is an old grandmother) a life which was not her life. And he was right. We saw that as soon as he brought her to us. She is a good girl, now anyway, since then anyway, maybe always a good girl as he believed or maybe only since she loved him. Anyway, who are we to challenge him and her, if what this proves is what love can do: save a woman as well as doom her? But no matter now. You will never believe, perhaps you dare not risk it, chance it, that he would never have made any claim on you: that this whore's children would bear not his father's name but my father's. You would never believe that they would never any more know whose blood they carried than he would have known except for this. But it's too late now. That's all over now; I had imagined you facing him for the first time on that last vic-torious field while you fastened a medal to his coat; instead you will see him for the first time-no, you wont even see him; you wont even be there-tied to a post, you to see him-if you were to see him, which you will not-over the shoulders and the aimed rifles of a firing-squad,'
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 Night 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. 'He will receive it,'
'So he must die,' They looked at each other. 'Your own son,'
'Then will he not merely inherit from me at thirty-three 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 ap-pearance 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 be-neath 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 gen-erals 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 were a coffee service and a tray of decanters and glasses. The old general filled the cups and passed them. Then he took up one of the decanters.
'Schnapps, 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 gen-eral 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 al-ready 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?'
Tort, 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 inevictably 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 stop-ping again at the American '-who only think you came in late enough to gain at little risk-must pay also,' Then he was looking Wednesday Night 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 unwrinklable 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 as if 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. 'Hoc,'if the German general said and tossed the brandy down and with the same motion flung the empty glass over his shoulder.
'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.