Chapter Seven.Madaleine.“I am glad you are better,” said a soft voice in liquid accents, so close to his ear that he felt the perfumed breath of the speaker wafted across his face.Fritz stared with wide-opened eyes. “I’m glad you’re better,” repeated the voice; “you are better, are you not; you feel conscious, don’t you, and in your right senses?”“Where am I?” at last said Fritz faintly.“Here,” answered the girl, “with friends, who are attending to you. Do not fear, you shall be watched over with every care until you are quite well again.”“Where is ‘here’?” whispered Fritz feebly again, smiling at his own quaint question.The girl laughed gently in response to his smile. “You are at Mézières, not far from the battlefield where you fell. I discovered you there early yesterday morning.”“You?” inquired Fritz, his eyes expressing his astonishment.“Yes, I,” said the girl kindly; “and I was only too happy to be the means of finding you, and getting you removed to a place of safety; for, I’m afraid that if you had lain there much longer on the damp ground you would have died.”“Oh!” interrupted Fritz as eagerly as his exhausted condition would allow; “I remember all now! I was wounded and lay there close to the battery; and then I saw the stars come out and thought—”“Hush!” said the girl, “you must not speak any more now. You are too weak; I only spoke to you to find out whether you had regained consciousness or not.”“But you must let me thank you. If it had not been—”“No, I won’t allow another word,” she interposed authoritatively. “You will do yourself harm, and then I shall be accused of being a bad nurse! Besides, you haven’t got to thank me at all; it was the dog who made me see you.”“What, Gelert,” whispered Fritz again, in spite of her admonition,—“dear old fellow!”He had hardly uttered these words, when the faithful dog, who must have been close beside the bed, raised himself up, putting a paw on one of Fritz’s arms which lay outside the coverings and licking his hand, whining rapturously the while, as if rejoiced to hear the voice of his master again.“‘Gelert!’” exclaimed the girl with some surprise. “Why, I know the dog perfectly, and he recognises me quite well; but he is called ‘Fritz,’ not ‘Gelert,’ as you said.”“‘Fritz!’” ejaculated he, in his turn. “Why, that is my name!”“Gracious me,” thought the girl to herself, “he is rambling again, and confusing his own name with that of the dog! I must put a stop to his speaking, or else he will get worse. Here, take this,” she said aloud, lifting to his lips a wineglass containing a composing draught which the doctor had left for her patient to take as soon as he showed any signs of recovery from his swoon, and which she really ought to have given him before; “it will do you good, and make you stronger.”Fritz swallowed the potion unhesitatingly, immediately sinking back on his pillow in a quiet sleep; when the girl, sitting down by the side of the bed, watched the long-drawn, quivering respirations that came from the white, parted lips of the wounded man.“Poor young fellow!” she said with a sigh; “I fear he will never get over it. I wonder where Armand is now, and how came this stranger to have possession of his dog! The funniest thing, too, is that ‘Fritz’ seems as much attached to this new master as he was to Armand, although he has not forgotten me. Have you, ‘Fritz,’ my beauty, eh?”The retriever, in response, gave three impressive thumps with his bushy tail on the floor, as he lay at the girl’s feet by the side of the bed. He evidently answered to this other familiar appellation quite as readily as he had done to that of “Gelert,” being apparently on perfect terms of friendship, not to say intimacy, with the young lady who had just asked him so pertinent a question.He certainly had not forgotten her. He would not have been a gallant dog if he had; nor would he have displayed that taste and wise discrimination which one would naturally have expected to find, in a well-bred dog of his particular class, for his interlocutor was a remarkably pretty girl—possessing the most lovely golden-hued hair and a pair of blue eyes that were almost turquoise in tint, albeit with a somewhat wistful, faraway look in them, especially now when she gazed down into the brown, honest orbs of the retriever, who was watching her every moment with faithful attention. She had, too, an unmistakeable air of refinement and culture, in spite of her being attired in a plainly made black stuff dress such as a servant might have worn, and having a sort of cap like those affected by nuns and sisters of charity drawn over her dainty little head, partly concealing its wealth of fair silky hair. No one would have dreamt of taking her to be anything else but a lady, no matter what costume she adopted, or how she was disguised.“Who ever thought, dear doggie,” she continued, speaking the thoughts that surged up in her mind while addressing the dumb animal, who looked as if he would like to understand her if he only could,—“who ever would have thought that things would turn out as they have when I last patted your dear old head at Bingen, ‘Fair Bingen on the Rhine,’ eh?” and she murmured to herself the refrain of that beautiful ballad.The retriever gave a long sniff here to express his thorough sympathy with her, and the girl proceeded, musingly, thinking aloud.“Yes, I mean, doggie, when Armand and I parted for the last time. Poor mamma was alive then, and we never dreamt that this terrible war would come to pass, severing us so completely! Poor Armand, he said he would be true and return to me again when he was old enough to be able to decide for himself without the consent of that stern father of his, who thought that the daughter of a poor German pastor was not good enough mate for his handsome son—although he was only a merchant, while my mother was a French countess in her own right. Still, parents have the right to settle these things, and I quite agreed with dear mamma that I would never consent to enter a family against their will, especially, too, when they despised our humble position!”The girl drew herself up proudly as she said this.“Never mind,” she went on again presently, “it is all over and done for. But, still, I believe Armand loved me. How handsome he looked that last time I saw him when he came to our little cottage to say good-bye, before he went to join his regiment in Algeria, where his father had got him ordered off on purpose to separate us. However, perhaps it was only a boy and girl affection at the best, and would never have lasted; my heart has not broken, I know, although I thought it would break then; for, alas! I have since seen sorrow enough to crush me down, even much more than parting with Armand de la Tour. Fancy, poor darling mamma gone to her grave, and I, her cherished child, forced to earn my bread as companion to this haughty old baroness, who thinks me like the dust under her feet! Ah, it is sad, is it not, doggie?”The retriever sniffed again, while the blue eyes continued to look down upon him through a haze of tears; and then, the girl was silent for a time.“Heigho, doggie,” she exclaimed, after a short pause of reflection, brushing away the tear drops from her cheeks and shaking her dainty little head as if she would fain banish all her painful imaginings with the action, “I must not repine at my lot, for the good Father above has taken care of me through all my adversity, giving me a comfortable home when I, an orphan, had none to look after me. And, the good baroness, too—she may be haughty, but then she is of a very noble family, and has been brought up like most German ladies of rank to look down upon her inferiors in position; besides, she is kind to me in her way. I am pleased that she took it into her head to come off here to seek for her son, and bring him presents from home in person. Nothing else would suit her, if you please, on his birthday, although the young baron, I think, was not over-delighted at his mother coming to hunt for him in war time, as if he were a little boy—he on the staff of the general! I fancy he got no little chaff from his brother officers in consequence. However, ‘it is an ill wind that blows nobody good,’ for the good baroness being here has been seized with a freak for looking after the wounded, because the Princess of Alten-Schlossen goes in for that sort of thing; and thus it is, doggie, that I’m now attending to this poor fellow here. Though, how on earth Armand parted with you, and you became attached to this new master, whom you seem to love with such affection, I’m sure I cannot tell!”Fritz at this moment turned in the little pallet bed on which he was lying, and in an instant the girl was up from her seat and bending over him.“Restless?” she said, smoothing the pillows and laying her cool hand on the hot brow of her patient, who gave vent to a sigh of satisfaction in his sleep. “Ah! you’ll be better bye-and-bye. Then, you will wake up refreshed and have some nourishment; and then, too, you’ll be able to tell me all about yourself and master doggie here, eh?”But, it was many days before poor Fritz was in a condition to offer any explanation about the dog—many days, when the possibility was trembling in the balance of fate as to whether he would ever speak again, or be silent for aye in this world!When he woke up, he was delirious; and the doctor, a grave German surgeon of middle age, on coming into the room to examine him, when making the rounds of the house—a villa in the suburbs of Mézières, which had been transformed into a sort of field hospital for the most dangerous cases in the vicinity—declared Fritz to be in a very critical state. His life, he said, was in serious peril, a change having taken place for the worse.He had been struck by a chassepot conical rifle bullet in the chest; and the ball, after breaking two of his ribs and slightly grazing the lungs, had lodged near the spine, where it yet remained, the wounded man being too prostrate for an operation to be performed for its extraction, although all the while it was intensifying the pain and adding to the feverish symptoms of the patient.“You’ve not been allowing him to talk, have you?” asked the surgeon, scanning the girl’s face with a stern professional glance.“No,” she replied, blushing slightly under his gaze; “that is, he wanted to, an hour ago, when he became conscious, but I gave him the sleeping draught you ordered at once.”“Donnerwetter!” exclaimed the other. “The potion then has done him harm instead of good. I thought it would have composed him and made him comfortable for the operation, as, until that bullet is taken out he can’t possibly get well. However, he must now be kept as quiet as possible. Put a bandage on his head and make it constantly cool with cold water. I will return bye-and-bye, and then we’ll see about cutting out the ball.”The surgeon then went out softly from the room, leaving the girl to attend to his directions, which she proceeded to do at once; shuddering the while at what she knew her poor patient would have to undergo, when the disciple of Aesculapius came back anon, with his myrmidons and their murderous-looking surgical knives and forceps, to hack and hew away at Fritz in their search for the bullet buried in his chest—he utterly oblivious either of his surroundings or what was in store for him, tossing in the bed under her eyes and rambling in his mind. He fancied himself still on the battlefield in the thick of the fight:— “Vorwarts, my children!” he muttered. “One more charge and the battery is won. Pouf! that shell had a narrow squeak of spoiling my new helmet. The gunner will have to take better aim next time!” Then he would shudder all over, and cry out in piteous tones, “Take it away, take it away—the blood is all over my face; and his body, oh, it is pressing me down into that yawning open grave! Will no one save me? It is terrible, terrible to be buried alive, and the pale stars twinkling down on my agony!” Presently, however, the cold applications to his head had their effect, and he sank down into a torpid sleep, only to start up again in the ravings of delirium a few moments afterwards.Fritz continued in this state for hours, with intervals of quiet, during which his nurse, by the doctor’s orders, administered beef tea and other nourishment which sustained the struggle going on in his sinking frame; until, at last, the ball was extracted, after an operation which was so prolonged that the girl, who felt almost as if she were undergoing it herself, thought it would never end.Then came the worst stage for the sufferer. Fever supervened; and, although the wound began to heal up, his physical condition grew weaker every day under the tearing strain his constitution was subjected to.Even the doctor gave him up; but the girl, who had attended to him with the most unwearying assiduity had hopes to the last.Fritz had been unconscious from the time that he first recognised the dog, on the evening after he was wounded and found himself in the villa, until the fever left him, when he was so weak that he was unable to lift a finger and seemed at the very gates of death.Now, however, his senses returned to him, and a glad look came into his eyes on seeing, like as he did before and now remembered, the face of the beautiful girl bending over him again; but he noticed that she did not look so bright as when he first beheld her.“Ah!” he exclaimed feebly, “it was not a dream! How long have I been ill?”“More than a fortnight,” said the girl promptly.“Oh, my poor mother!” ejaculated Fritz with a sob, “she will have thought me dead, and broken her heart!”“Don’t fear that,” said she kindly. “I wrote to her, telling her you were badly hurt, but that you were in good hands.”“You! Why, how did you know her name, or where she lived?”“I found the address in your pocket,” answered the girl with a laugh. “Don’t you recollect putting a slip of paper there, telling any one, in case you were wounded or killed, to write and break the news gently to your mother, ‘madame Dort, Gulden Strasse, Lubeck’? I never heard before of such a thoughtful son!”“Ah, I remember now,” said Fritz; “and you wrote, then, to her?”“Yes, last week, when we despaired of your recovery; but, I have written again since, telling her that the bullet has been removed from your wound, and that if you get over the fever you will recover all right.”“Thank you, and thank God!” exclaimed Fritz fervently, and he shut his eyes and remained quiet for a minute or two, although his lips moved as if in prayer.“And where is Gelert, my dog?” he asked presently.“‘Fritz,’ you mean,” said the girl, smiling.“No, that is my name, the dog’s is Gelert.”“That is what I want explained,” said the other.“But, please pardon my rudeness, Fraulein,” interrupted Fritz, “may I ask to whom I am indebted for watching over me, and adding to it the thoughtful kindness of relieving my mother’s misery?”“My name is Madaleine Vogelstein,” said the girl softly. “Do you like it?”“I do; it is a very pretty one,” he replied. “The surname is German, but the given name is French—Madaleine? It sounds sweeter than would be thought possible in our guttural Teuton tongue!”“My mother was a Frenchwoman, and I take the name from her,” explained the girl. “But now, before I stop you from talking any more, for the good doctor would blame me much if he came in, you must tell me how you came to possess that dog; or, rather, why he so faithfully attached himself to you, as it was entirely through him that I found you, and got you picked up by the ambulance corps and brought here. You must first take this soup, however, to strengthen you. It has been kept nice and warm on that little lamp there, and it will do you good. I won’t hear a word more until you have swallowed it!”“A soldier should always obey the orders of his commanding officer,” said Fritz with a smile, as he slowly gulped down the broth, spoonful by spoonful, as Madaleine placed it in his mouth, for he could not feed himself.“That will do,” she remarked, when he had taken what she thought sufficient. “And now you can tell me about the dog. Here he is,” she continued, as the retriever came into the room; and, going up to the side of the bed where Fritz was lying, put up his paws on the counterpane and licked his master’s face, in the wildest joy, apparently, at his recovery and notice of him. “He must have heard his name spoken, as I only just sent him out for a run with one of the men, for all the time you were so ill we could not get him to leave the room. Now, doggie, lie down like a good fellow, and let us hear all about you.”The retriever at once obeyed the girl, stretching himself on the floor at her feet, although close beside his master all the while.Fritz then narrated the sad little episode of the battle of Gravelotte, and how he had found the dead body of the French officer with the dog keeping guard over it.The girl wept silently as he went on.“It must have been poor Armand,” she said presently through her tears. “Did you find nothing about him to tell who he was?”“There was a little bag I saw round his neck,” said Fritz; “I took it off the poor fellow before we buried him, and suspended it on my own breast afterwards for security, thinking that I might restore it some day to his friends, if I ever came across them.”“Ah, that must be the little packet which got driven into your wound, and, stopping the flow of blood, saved your life, the doctor says. I have kept it carefully for you, and here it is,” cried the girl, hastily jumping up from her seat and bringing the article in question to Fritz.“Open it,” he said; “I haven’t got the strength to do it, you know.”Madaleine unfastened the silken string that confined the mouth of the bag, now stained with Fritz’s blood; and then she pulled out the little silver ring it contained.One glance was enough for her.“Yes,” she faltered through her sobs. “It is the ring I gave him; but that was months before the date engraved upon it, ‘July 18th, 1870,’ which was the day he said he would come back to Bingen, as then he would be of age.”“And he never came, then?” inquired Fritz.“No, never again,” said she mournfully.“Ah, I would come if I had been in his place,” exclaimed Fritz eagerly, with a flashing eye. “I never fail in an appointment I promise to keep; and to fail to meet a betrothed—why it is unpardonable!”He had raised his voice from the whisper in which he had previously spoken, and its indignant tone seemed quite loud.“Perhaps he couldn’t come,” said Madaleine more composedly. “Besides, we were not engaged; all was over between us.”“I’m very glad to hear that,” replied Fritz. “It would have been dastardly on his part otherwise! But, would you like to keep the dog for his sake, Fraulein Vogelstein? I have got no claim to him, you know.”“Oh dear no, I would not like to deprive you of him for the world, much as I love the poor faithful fellow. Why, he would think nobody was his proper master if he were constantly changing hands like this!”“Poor old Gelert!” said Fritz; and the dog, hearing himself talked about, here raised himself up again from his recumbent attitude by the side of the bed and thrust his black nose into the hand of his master, who tried feebly to caress him.“‘Fritz,’ you mean,” corrected Miss Madaleine, determined to have her point about his right name.“Well, if you call him so, I shall think you mean me,” said Fritz jokingly, as well as his feeble utterance would permit his voice to be expressive. He wanted, however, to imply much more than the mere words.“That would not be any great harm, would it?” she replied with a little smile, her tears of sorrow at Armand de la Tour’s untimely fate having dried up as quickly as raindrops disappear after a shower as soon as the sun shines out again; however, she apparently now thought the conversation was becoming a little too personal, for she proceeded to ply the invalid with more soup in order to stop his mouth and prevent him from replying to this last speech of hers!
“I am glad you are better,” said a soft voice in liquid accents, so close to his ear that he felt the perfumed breath of the speaker wafted across his face.
Fritz stared with wide-opened eyes. “I’m glad you’re better,” repeated the voice; “you are better, are you not; you feel conscious, don’t you, and in your right senses?”
“Where am I?” at last said Fritz faintly.
“Here,” answered the girl, “with friends, who are attending to you. Do not fear, you shall be watched over with every care until you are quite well again.”
“Where is ‘here’?” whispered Fritz feebly again, smiling at his own quaint question.
The girl laughed gently in response to his smile. “You are at Mézières, not far from the battlefield where you fell. I discovered you there early yesterday morning.”
“You?” inquired Fritz, his eyes expressing his astonishment.
“Yes, I,” said the girl kindly; “and I was only too happy to be the means of finding you, and getting you removed to a place of safety; for, I’m afraid that if you had lain there much longer on the damp ground you would have died.”
“Oh!” interrupted Fritz as eagerly as his exhausted condition would allow; “I remember all now! I was wounded and lay there close to the battery; and then I saw the stars come out and thought—”
“Hush!” said the girl, “you must not speak any more now. You are too weak; I only spoke to you to find out whether you had regained consciousness or not.”
“But you must let me thank you. If it had not been—”
“No, I won’t allow another word,” she interposed authoritatively. “You will do yourself harm, and then I shall be accused of being a bad nurse! Besides, you haven’t got to thank me at all; it was the dog who made me see you.”
“What, Gelert,” whispered Fritz again, in spite of her admonition,—“dear old fellow!”
He had hardly uttered these words, when the faithful dog, who must have been close beside the bed, raised himself up, putting a paw on one of Fritz’s arms which lay outside the coverings and licking his hand, whining rapturously the while, as if rejoiced to hear the voice of his master again.
“‘Gelert!’” exclaimed the girl with some surprise. “Why, I know the dog perfectly, and he recognises me quite well; but he is called ‘Fritz,’ not ‘Gelert,’ as you said.”
“‘Fritz!’” ejaculated he, in his turn. “Why, that is my name!”
“Gracious me,” thought the girl to herself, “he is rambling again, and confusing his own name with that of the dog! I must put a stop to his speaking, or else he will get worse. Here, take this,” she said aloud, lifting to his lips a wineglass containing a composing draught which the doctor had left for her patient to take as soon as he showed any signs of recovery from his swoon, and which she really ought to have given him before; “it will do you good, and make you stronger.”
Fritz swallowed the potion unhesitatingly, immediately sinking back on his pillow in a quiet sleep; when the girl, sitting down by the side of the bed, watched the long-drawn, quivering respirations that came from the white, parted lips of the wounded man.
“Poor young fellow!” she said with a sigh; “I fear he will never get over it. I wonder where Armand is now, and how came this stranger to have possession of his dog! The funniest thing, too, is that ‘Fritz’ seems as much attached to this new master as he was to Armand, although he has not forgotten me. Have you, ‘Fritz,’ my beauty, eh?”
The retriever, in response, gave three impressive thumps with his bushy tail on the floor, as he lay at the girl’s feet by the side of the bed. He evidently answered to this other familiar appellation quite as readily as he had done to that of “Gelert,” being apparently on perfect terms of friendship, not to say intimacy, with the young lady who had just asked him so pertinent a question.
He certainly had not forgotten her. He would not have been a gallant dog if he had; nor would he have displayed that taste and wise discrimination which one would naturally have expected to find, in a well-bred dog of his particular class, for his interlocutor was a remarkably pretty girl—possessing the most lovely golden-hued hair and a pair of blue eyes that were almost turquoise in tint, albeit with a somewhat wistful, faraway look in them, especially now when she gazed down into the brown, honest orbs of the retriever, who was watching her every moment with faithful attention. She had, too, an unmistakeable air of refinement and culture, in spite of her being attired in a plainly made black stuff dress such as a servant might have worn, and having a sort of cap like those affected by nuns and sisters of charity drawn over her dainty little head, partly concealing its wealth of fair silky hair. No one would have dreamt of taking her to be anything else but a lady, no matter what costume she adopted, or how she was disguised.
“Who ever thought, dear doggie,” she continued, speaking the thoughts that surged up in her mind while addressing the dumb animal, who looked as if he would like to understand her if he only could,—“who ever would have thought that things would turn out as they have when I last patted your dear old head at Bingen, ‘Fair Bingen on the Rhine,’ eh?” and she murmured to herself the refrain of that beautiful ballad.
The retriever gave a long sniff here to express his thorough sympathy with her, and the girl proceeded, musingly, thinking aloud.
“Yes, I mean, doggie, when Armand and I parted for the last time. Poor mamma was alive then, and we never dreamt that this terrible war would come to pass, severing us so completely! Poor Armand, he said he would be true and return to me again when he was old enough to be able to decide for himself without the consent of that stern father of his, who thought that the daughter of a poor German pastor was not good enough mate for his handsome son—although he was only a merchant, while my mother was a French countess in her own right. Still, parents have the right to settle these things, and I quite agreed with dear mamma that I would never consent to enter a family against their will, especially, too, when they despised our humble position!”
The girl drew herself up proudly as she said this.
“Never mind,” she went on again presently, “it is all over and done for. But, still, I believe Armand loved me. How handsome he looked that last time I saw him when he came to our little cottage to say good-bye, before he went to join his regiment in Algeria, where his father had got him ordered off on purpose to separate us. However, perhaps it was only a boy and girl affection at the best, and would never have lasted; my heart has not broken, I know, although I thought it would break then; for, alas! I have since seen sorrow enough to crush me down, even much more than parting with Armand de la Tour. Fancy, poor darling mamma gone to her grave, and I, her cherished child, forced to earn my bread as companion to this haughty old baroness, who thinks me like the dust under her feet! Ah, it is sad, is it not, doggie?”
The retriever sniffed again, while the blue eyes continued to look down upon him through a haze of tears; and then, the girl was silent for a time.
“Heigho, doggie,” she exclaimed, after a short pause of reflection, brushing away the tear drops from her cheeks and shaking her dainty little head as if she would fain banish all her painful imaginings with the action, “I must not repine at my lot, for the good Father above has taken care of me through all my adversity, giving me a comfortable home when I, an orphan, had none to look after me. And, the good baroness, too—she may be haughty, but then she is of a very noble family, and has been brought up like most German ladies of rank to look down upon her inferiors in position; besides, she is kind to me in her way. I am pleased that she took it into her head to come off here to seek for her son, and bring him presents from home in person. Nothing else would suit her, if you please, on his birthday, although the young baron, I think, was not over-delighted at his mother coming to hunt for him in war time, as if he were a little boy—he on the staff of the general! I fancy he got no little chaff from his brother officers in consequence. However, ‘it is an ill wind that blows nobody good,’ for the good baroness being here has been seized with a freak for looking after the wounded, because the Princess of Alten-Schlossen goes in for that sort of thing; and thus it is, doggie, that I’m now attending to this poor fellow here. Though, how on earth Armand parted with you, and you became attached to this new master, whom you seem to love with such affection, I’m sure I cannot tell!”
Fritz at this moment turned in the little pallet bed on which he was lying, and in an instant the girl was up from her seat and bending over him.
“Restless?” she said, smoothing the pillows and laying her cool hand on the hot brow of her patient, who gave vent to a sigh of satisfaction in his sleep. “Ah! you’ll be better bye-and-bye. Then, you will wake up refreshed and have some nourishment; and then, too, you’ll be able to tell me all about yourself and master doggie here, eh?”
But, it was many days before poor Fritz was in a condition to offer any explanation about the dog—many days, when the possibility was trembling in the balance of fate as to whether he would ever speak again, or be silent for aye in this world!
When he woke up, he was delirious; and the doctor, a grave German surgeon of middle age, on coming into the room to examine him, when making the rounds of the house—a villa in the suburbs of Mézières, which had been transformed into a sort of field hospital for the most dangerous cases in the vicinity—declared Fritz to be in a very critical state. His life, he said, was in serious peril, a change having taken place for the worse.
He had been struck by a chassepot conical rifle bullet in the chest; and the ball, after breaking two of his ribs and slightly grazing the lungs, had lodged near the spine, where it yet remained, the wounded man being too prostrate for an operation to be performed for its extraction, although all the while it was intensifying the pain and adding to the feverish symptoms of the patient.
“You’ve not been allowing him to talk, have you?” asked the surgeon, scanning the girl’s face with a stern professional glance.
“No,” she replied, blushing slightly under his gaze; “that is, he wanted to, an hour ago, when he became conscious, but I gave him the sleeping draught you ordered at once.”
“Donnerwetter!” exclaimed the other. “The potion then has done him harm instead of good. I thought it would have composed him and made him comfortable for the operation, as, until that bullet is taken out he can’t possibly get well. However, he must now be kept as quiet as possible. Put a bandage on his head and make it constantly cool with cold water. I will return bye-and-bye, and then we’ll see about cutting out the ball.”
The surgeon then went out softly from the room, leaving the girl to attend to his directions, which she proceeded to do at once; shuddering the while at what she knew her poor patient would have to undergo, when the disciple of Aesculapius came back anon, with his myrmidons and their murderous-looking surgical knives and forceps, to hack and hew away at Fritz in their search for the bullet buried in his chest—he utterly oblivious either of his surroundings or what was in store for him, tossing in the bed under her eyes and rambling in his mind. He fancied himself still on the battlefield in the thick of the fight:— “Vorwarts, my children!” he muttered. “One more charge and the battery is won. Pouf! that shell had a narrow squeak of spoiling my new helmet. The gunner will have to take better aim next time!” Then he would shudder all over, and cry out in piteous tones, “Take it away, take it away—the blood is all over my face; and his body, oh, it is pressing me down into that yawning open grave! Will no one save me? It is terrible, terrible to be buried alive, and the pale stars twinkling down on my agony!” Presently, however, the cold applications to his head had their effect, and he sank down into a torpid sleep, only to start up again in the ravings of delirium a few moments afterwards.
Fritz continued in this state for hours, with intervals of quiet, during which his nurse, by the doctor’s orders, administered beef tea and other nourishment which sustained the struggle going on in his sinking frame; until, at last, the ball was extracted, after an operation which was so prolonged that the girl, who felt almost as if she were undergoing it herself, thought it would never end.
Then came the worst stage for the sufferer. Fever supervened; and, although the wound began to heal up, his physical condition grew weaker every day under the tearing strain his constitution was subjected to.
Even the doctor gave him up; but the girl, who had attended to him with the most unwearying assiduity had hopes to the last.
Fritz had been unconscious from the time that he first recognised the dog, on the evening after he was wounded and found himself in the villa, until the fever left him, when he was so weak that he was unable to lift a finger and seemed at the very gates of death.
Now, however, his senses returned to him, and a glad look came into his eyes on seeing, like as he did before and now remembered, the face of the beautiful girl bending over him again; but he noticed that she did not look so bright as when he first beheld her.
“Ah!” he exclaimed feebly, “it was not a dream! How long have I been ill?”
“More than a fortnight,” said the girl promptly.
“Oh, my poor mother!” ejaculated Fritz with a sob, “she will have thought me dead, and broken her heart!”
“Don’t fear that,” said she kindly. “I wrote to her, telling her you were badly hurt, but that you were in good hands.”
“You! Why, how did you know her name, or where she lived?”
“I found the address in your pocket,” answered the girl with a laugh. “Don’t you recollect putting a slip of paper there, telling any one, in case you were wounded or killed, to write and break the news gently to your mother, ‘madame Dort, Gulden Strasse, Lubeck’? I never heard before of such a thoughtful son!”
“Ah, I remember now,” said Fritz; “and you wrote, then, to her?”
“Yes, last week, when we despaired of your recovery; but, I have written again since, telling her that the bullet has been removed from your wound, and that if you get over the fever you will recover all right.”
“Thank you, and thank God!” exclaimed Fritz fervently, and he shut his eyes and remained quiet for a minute or two, although his lips moved as if in prayer.
“And where is Gelert, my dog?” he asked presently.
“‘Fritz,’ you mean,” said the girl, smiling.
“No, that is my name, the dog’s is Gelert.”
“That is what I want explained,” said the other.
“But, please pardon my rudeness, Fraulein,” interrupted Fritz, “may I ask to whom I am indebted for watching over me, and adding to it the thoughtful kindness of relieving my mother’s misery?”
“My name is Madaleine Vogelstein,” said the girl softly. “Do you like it?”
“I do; it is a very pretty one,” he replied. “The surname is German, but the given name is French—Madaleine? It sounds sweeter than would be thought possible in our guttural Teuton tongue!”
“My mother was a Frenchwoman, and I take the name from her,” explained the girl. “But now, before I stop you from talking any more, for the good doctor would blame me much if he came in, you must tell me how you came to possess that dog; or, rather, why he so faithfully attached himself to you, as it was entirely through him that I found you, and got you picked up by the ambulance corps and brought here. You must first take this soup, however, to strengthen you. It has been kept nice and warm on that little lamp there, and it will do you good. I won’t hear a word more until you have swallowed it!”
“A soldier should always obey the orders of his commanding officer,” said Fritz with a smile, as he slowly gulped down the broth, spoonful by spoonful, as Madaleine placed it in his mouth, for he could not feed himself.
“That will do,” she remarked, when he had taken what she thought sufficient. “And now you can tell me about the dog. Here he is,” she continued, as the retriever came into the room; and, going up to the side of the bed where Fritz was lying, put up his paws on the counterpane and licked his master’s face, in the wildest joy, apparently, at his recovery and notice of him. “He must have heard his name spoken, as I only just sent him out for a run with one of the men, for all the time you were so ill we could not get him to leave the room. Now, doggie, lie down like a good fellow, and let us hear all about you.”
The retriever at once obeyed the girl, stretching himself on the floor at her feet, although close beside his master all the while.
Fritz then narrated the sad little episode of the battle of Gravelotte, and how he had found the dead body of the French officer with the dog keeping guard over it.
The girl wept silently as he went on.
“It must have been poor Armand,” she said presently through her tears. “Did you find nothing about him to tell who he was?”
“There was a little bag I saw round his neck,” said Fritz; “I took it off the poor fellow before we buried him, and suspended it on my own breast afterwards for security, thinking that I might restore it some day to his friends, if I ever came across them.”
“Ah, that must be the little packet which got driven into your wound, and, stopping the flow of blood, saved your life, the doctor says. I have kept it carefully for you, and here it is,” cried the girl, hastily jumping up from her seat and bringing the article in question to Fritz.
“Open it,” he said; “I haven’t got the strength to do it, you know.”
Madaleine unfastened the silken string that confined the mouth of the bag, now stained with Fritz’s blood; and then she pulled out the little silver ring it contained.
One glance was enough for her.
“Yes,” she faltered through her sobs. “It is the ring I gave him; but that was months before the date engraved upon it, ‘July 18th, 1870,’ which was the day he said he would come back to Bingen, as then he would be of age.”
“And he never came, then?” inquired Fritz.
“No, never again,” said she mournfully.
“Ah, I would come if I had been in his place,” exclaimed Fritz eagerly, with a flashing eye. “I never fail in an appointment I promise to keep; and to fail to meet a betrothed—why it is unpardonable!”
He had raised his voice from the whisper in which he had previously spoken, and its indignant tone seemed quite loud.
“Perhaps he couldn’t come,” said Madaleine more composedly. “Besides, we were not engaged; all was over between us.”
“I’m very glad to hear that,” replied Fritz. “It would have been dastardly on his part otherwise! But, would you like to keep the dog for his sake, Fraulein Vogelstein? I have got no claim to him, you know.”
“Oh dear no, I would not like to deprive you of him for the world, much as I love the poor faithful fellow. Why, he would think nobody was his proper master if he were constantly changing hands like this!”
“Poor old Gelert!” said Fritz; and the dog, hearing himself talked about, here raised himself up again from his recumbent attitude by the side of the bed and thrust his black nose into the hand of his master, who tried feebly to caress him.
“‘Fritz,’ you mean,” corrected Miss Madaleine, determined to have her point about his right name.
“Well, if you call him so, I shall think you mean me,” said Fritz jokingly, as well as his feeble utterance would permit his voice to be expressive. He wanted, however, to imply much more than the mere words.
“That would not be any great harm, would it?” she replied with a little smile, her tears of sorrow at Armand de la Tour’s untimely fate having dried up as quickly as raindrops disappear after a shower as soon as the sun shines out again; however, she apparently now thought the conversation was becoming a little too personal, for she proceeded to ply the invalid with more soup in order to stop his mouth and prevent him from replying to this last speech of hers!
Chapter Eight.The “Little Fat Man.”“Hullo! What fails with the well-born and most worthy lady, her to make in such pitiable plight?” inquired Burgher Jans, poking his little round face into the parlour of the house in the Gulden Strasse, just as Lorischen, bending over her mistress, was endeavouring to raise her on to the sofa, where she would be better enabled to apply restoratives in order to bring her to.The old nurse was glad of any assistance in the emergency; and, even the fat little Burgher, disliked as he was by her, as a rule, with an inveterate hatred, was better than nobody!“Madame has fainted,” she said. “Help me to lift her up, and I’ll be obliged to you, worshipful Herr.”“Yes, so, right gladly will I do it, dearest maiden,” replied Burgher Jans politely, with his usual sweeping bow, taking off his hat and depositing it on an adjacent chair, while he lent a hand to raise the poor lady and place her on the couch.This done, he espied the letter that had caused the commotion, which Madame Dort still held tightly clutched in her hand when she fell; and he tried to pull it away from her rigid fingers. “Ha, what have we here?” he said.“You just leave that alone!” snapped out Lorischen. “Pray take yourself off, with your wanting to spy into other people’s business! If I were a man I’d be ashamed of being so curious, I would. Burgher Jans, I’ll thank you to withdraw; I wish to attend to my mistress.”“I will obey your behests, dearest maiden,” blandly replied the little man, taking his hat from the chair and backing towards the door, although casting the while most covetous eyes on the mysterious letter, which he would have cheerfully given a thaler to have been allowed to peruse. “I will return anon to inquire how the gracious lady is after her indisposition, and—”“If you are not out of the room before I count five,” exclaimed the old nurse, angrily interrupting him, “I declare I’ll pitch this footstool at your little round turnip-top of a head, that I will. One—two—three—”“Why, whatever is the matter, Lorischen?” interposed Madame Dort, opening her eyes at this juncture, while the old nurse yet stood with the footstool raised in her uplifted hands facing the door, half in and half out of which peered the tortoise-shell spectacles of the little fat burgher. “Who is there?”The poor lady spoke very faintly, and did not seem to know where she was at first, her gaze wandering round the room.Lorischen quickly put down the heavy missile with which she was threatening Burgher Jans; and he, taking advantage of this suspension of hostilities, at once advanced again within the apartment, although still keeping his hand on the door so as to be ready to beat a retreat in a fresh emergency, should the old nurse attempt to renew the interrupted fray.“High, well-born, and most gracious madame,” said he obsequiously. “It is me, only me!”“Hein!” grunted Lorischen. “A nice ‘me’ it is—a little, inquisitive, meddlesome morsel of a man!”“Oh, Meinherr Burgher Jans,” said Madame Dort, rising up from the sofa. “I’m glad to see you; I wanted to ask you something. I—”Just at that moment she caught sight of the letter she held between her fingers, when she recollected all at once the news she had received, of which she had been for the time oblivious.“Ah, poor Fritz!” she exclaimed, bursting into a fit of weeping. “My son, my firstborn, I shall never see him more!”“Why, what have you heard, gracious lady?” said Burgher Jans, abandoning his refuge by the door, and coming forwards into the centre of the room. “No bad news, I trust, from the young and well-born Herr?”“Read,” said the widow, extending the letter in her hand towards him; “read for yourself and see.”His owlish eyes all expanded with delight through the tortoise-shell spectacles, the fat little man eagerly took hold of the rustling piece of paper and unfolded it, his hands trembling with nervous anxiety to know what the missive contained—and which he had been all along burning with curiosity to find out.Lorischen actually snorted with indignation.“There, just see that!” she grumbled through her set teeth, opening and clenching her fingers together convulsively, as if she would like to snatch the letter away from him—when, perhaps, she would have expressed her feelings pretty forcibly in the way of scratches on the Burgher’s beaming face: “there, I wouldn’t have let him see it if he had gone down on his bended knees for it—no, not if I had died first!”The widow continued to sob in her handkerchief; while the Burgher appeared to gloat over the delicate angular handwriting of the letter, as if he were learning it by heart and spelling out every word—he took so long over it.“Ah, it is bad, gracious lady,” he said at length; “but, still, not so bad as it might otherwise be.”Madame Dort raised her tear-stained face, looking at the little roan questioningly; while Lorischen, who in her longing to hear about Fritz had not quitted the apartment, according to her usual custom when Burgher Jans was in it, drew nearer, resting her impulsive fingers on the table, so as not to alarm that worthy unnecessarily and make him stop speaking.The Burgher felt himself a person of importance, on account of his opinion being consulted; so he drew himself up to his full height—just five feet one inch!“The letter only says, most worthy and gracious lady,—and you, dearest maiden,” he proceeded—with a special bow to Lorischen, which the latter, sad to relate, only received with a grimace from her tightly drawn spinster lips—“that the young and well-born Herr is merely grievously wounded, and not, thanks be to Providence, that he is—he is—he is—”“Why don’t you say ‘dead’ at once, and not beat about the bush in that stupid way?” interposed the old nurse, who detested the little man’s hemming and hawing over matters which she was in the habit of blurting out roughly without demur.“No, I like not the ugly word,” suavely expostulated the Burgher. “The great-to-come-for-all-of-us can be better expressed than that! But, to resume my argument, dearest maiden and most gracious lady, this document does not state that the dear son of the house has shaken off this mortal coil entirely as yet.”“I’d like to shake off yours, and you with it!” said Lorischen angrily, under her breath—“for a word-weaving, pedantic little fool!”“You mean that there is hope?” asked Madame Dort, looking a bit less tearful, her grief having nearly exhausted itself.“Most decidedly, dear lady,” said the Burgher. “Does not the letter say so in plain and very-much-nicely-written characters?”“But, all such painful communications are generally worded, if the writers have a tender heart, so as to break bad news as gently as possible,” answered the widow, wishing to have the faint sanguine suspicion of hope that was stealing over her confirmed by the other’s opinion.“Just so,” said Burgher Jans authoritatively. “You have reason in your statement; still, dear lady, by what I can gather from this letter, I should think that the Frau or Fraulein Vogelstein who signs it wishes to prepare you for the worst, but yet intimates at the same time that there is room to hope for the best.”“Ah, I’m glad you say so,” exclaimed the widow joyfully. “Now I read it over, I believe the same; but at first, I thought, in my hurried glance over it, that Fritz was slain, the writer only pretending he was still alive, in order to prepare me for his loss. He is not dead, thank God! That is everything; for, whilst there is life, there’s hope, eh?”“Most decidedly, gracious lady,” responded the little man with effusion. “If ever I under the down-pressing weight of despondency lie, so I unto myself much comfort make by that happy consolation!”Madame Dort experienced such relief from the cheering aspect in which the Burgher’s explanation had enabled her now to look upon the news of Fritz’s wound, that her natural feelings of hospitality, which had been dormant for the while, asserted themselves in favour of her timely visitor, who in spite of his curiosity had certainly done her much good in banishing all the ill effects of her fainting fit.“Will you not have a glass of lager, Herr Jans?” said she.“Mein Gott, yes,” promptly returned the little man. “Much talking makes one dry, and beer is good for the stomach.”“Lorischen, get the Burgher some lager bier,” ordered Madame Dort, on her invitation being accepted, the old nurse proceeding to execute the command with very ill grace.“The Lord only knows when he’ll leave now, once he starts guzzling beer in the parlour! That Burgher Jans is getting to be a positive nuisance to us; and I shall be glad when our poor wounded Fritz comes home, if only to stop his coming here so frequently—the gossipping little time-server, with his bowing and scraping and calling me his ‘dearest maiden,’ indeed—I’d ‘maiden’ him if I had the chance!”Lorischen was much exasperated, and so she grumbled to herself as she sallied out of the room.However, much to her relief, the “fat little man” did not make a long stay on this occasion, for he took his leave soon after swallowing the beer. He was anxious to make a round of visits amongst his acquaintances, to retail the news that Fritz was wounded and lying in a hospital at Mézières, near Metz, for he had read it himself in the letter, you know! He likewise informed his hearers, although he had not so impressed the widow, that they would probably never see the young clerk of Herr Grosschnapper again in Lubeck, as his case was so desperate that he was not expected to live! His story otherwise, probably, would have been far less interesting to scandal-mongers, as they would have thus lost the opportunity of settling all the affairs of the widow and considering whom she would marry again. Of course, they now decided, that, as she had as good as lost both her sons and had a nice little property of her own, besides being comparatively not old, so to speak, and not very plain, she would naturally seek another partner to console herself in her solitude—Burgher Jans getting much quizzed on this point, with sly allusions as to his being the widow’s best friend!Some days after Madaleine Vogelstein’s first letter, Madame Dort received a second, telling her that the ball had been extracted from her son’s wound, but fever had come on, making him very weak and prostrate; although, as his good constitution had enabled him to survive the painful operation, he would probably pull through this second ordeal.The widow again grew down-hearted at this intelligence, and it was as much as Burgher Jans could do, with all his plausibility, to make her hopeful; while Lorischen, her old superstitious fears and belief in Mouser’s prophetic miaow-wowing again revived, did all her best to negative the fat little man’s praiseworthy efforts at cheering. Ever since the Burgher had been elected a confidant of Madaleine’s original communication, he had made a point of calling every day in the Gulden Strasse, with his, to the old nurse, sickening and stereotyped inquiry—“Any news yet?” until the field post brought the next despatch, when, as he now naturally expected and wished, the letter was given him to read.“He seems bent on hanging up his hat in our lobby here!” Lorischen would say spitefully, on the widow seeking to excuse the little man’s pertinacity in visiting her. “Much he cares whether poor Master Fritz gets well or ill; he takes more interest in somebody else, I think!”“Oh, Lorischen!” Madame Dort would remonstrate. “How can you say such things?”“It is ‘Oh, mistress!’ it strikes me,” the other would retort. “I wish the young master were only here!”“And so do I heartily,” said Madame Dort, at the end of one of these daily skirmishes between the two on the same subject. “We agree on that point, at all events!” and she sighed heavily. The old servant was so privileged a person that she did not like to speak harshly to her, although she did not at all relish Lorischen’s frequent allusions as to the real object of the Burgher’s visits, and her surmises as to what the neighbours would think about them. Madame Dort put up with Lorischen’s innuendoes in silence, but still, she did not look pleased.“Ach Himmel, dear mistress!” pleaded the offender, “never mind my waspish old tongue. I am always saying what I shouldn’t; but that little fat man does irritate me with his hypocritical, oily smile and smooth way—calling me his ‘dearest maiden,’ indeed!”“Why, don’t you see, Lorischen, that it is you really whom he comes here after, although you treat him so cruelly!” said the widow, smiling.This was more than the old spinster could bear.“What, me!” she exclaimed, with withering scorn. “Himmel, if I thought that, I would soon scratch his chubby face for him—me, indeed!” and she retreated from the room in high dudgeon.Bye-and-bye, there came another letter from the now familiar correspondent, saying that Fritz was really recovering at last; and, oh what happiness! the mother’s heart was rejoiced by the sight of a few awkwardly scrawled lines at the end. It was a postscript from her son himself!The almost indecipherable words were only “Love to Mutterchen, from her own Fritz,” but they were more precious to her than the lengthiest epistle from any one else.“Any news?” asked Burgher Jans of Lorischen soon afterwards, when he came to the house to make his stereotyped inquiry.“Yes,” said the old nurse, instead of replying with her usual negative.“Indeed!” exclaimed the little man. “The noble, well-born young Herr is not worse, I hope?” and he tried to hide his abnormally bland expression with a sympathetic look of deep concern; but he failed miserably in the attempt. His full-moon face could not help beaming with a self-satisfied complacency which it was impossible to subdue; indeed, he would have been unable to disguise this appearance of smiling, even if he had been at a funeral and was, mentally, plunged in the deepest woe—if that were possible for him to be!“No, not worse,” answered Lorischen. “He is—”“Not dead, I trust?” said Burgher Jans, interrupting her before she could finish her sentence, and using in his hurry the very word to which he had objected before.“No, he is not dead,” retorted the old nurse, with a triumphant ring in her voice. “And, if you were expecting that, I only hope you are disappointed, that’s all! He is getting better, for he has written to the mistress himself; and, what is more, he’s coming home to send you to the right-about, Burgher Jans, and stop your coming here any more. Do you hear that, eh?”“My dearest maiden,” commenced to stammer out the little fat man, woefully taken aback by this outburst, “I—I—don’t know what you mean.”“Ah, but I do,” returned Lorischen, not feeling any the more amiably disposed towards him by his addressing her in that way after what Madame Dort had said about his calling especially to see her. “I know what I mean; and what I mean to say now, is, that my mistress told me to say she was engaged when you came, should you call to-day, and that she is unable to see you, there! Good-morning, Burgher Jans; good-morning, most worshipful Herr!”So saying, she slammed the door in the poor little man’s face, leaving him without, cogitating the reason for this summary dismissal of him by the widow; albeit Lorischen, in order to indulge her own feelings of dislike, had somewhat exaggerated a casual remark made by her mistress—that she did not wish to be interrupted after the receipt of the good news about Fritz, as she wanted to answer the letter at once!
“Hullo! What fails with the well-born and most worthy lady, her to make in such pitiable plight?” inquired Burgher Jans, poking his little round face into the parlour of the house in the Gulden Strasse, just as Lorischen, bending over her mistress, was endeavouring to raise her on to the sofa, where she would be better enabled to apply restoratives in order to bring her to.
The old nurse was glad of any assistance in the emergency; and, even the fat little Burgher, disliked as he was by her, as a rule, with an inveterate hatred, was better than nobody!
“Madame has fainted,” she said. “Help me to lift her up, and I’ll be obliged to you, worshipful Herr.”
“Yes, so, right gladly will I do it, dearest maiden,” replied Burgher Jans politely, with his usual sweeping bow, taking off his hat and depositing it on an adjacent chair, while he lent a hand to raise the poor lady and place her on the couch.
This done, he espied the letter that had caused the commotion, which Madame Dort still held tightly clutched in her hand when she fell; and he tried to pull it away from her rigid fingers. “Ha, what have we here?” he said.
“You just leave that alone!” snapped out Lorischen. “Pray take yourself off, with your wanting to spy into other people’s business! If I were a man I’d be ashamed of being so curious, I would. Burgher Jans, I’ll thank you to withdraw; I wish to attend to my mistress.”
“I will obey your behests, dearest maiden,” blandly replied the little man, taking his hat from the chair and backing towards the door, although casting the while most covetous eyes on the mysterious letter, which he would have cheerfully given a thaler to have been allowed to peruse. “I will return anon to inquire how the gracious lady is after her indisposition, and—”
“If you are not out of the room before I count five,” exclaimed the old nurse, angrily interrupting him, “I declare I’ll pitch this footstool at your little round turnip-top of a head, that I will. One—two—three—”
“Why, whatever is the matter, Lorischen?” interposed Madame Dort, opening her eyes at this juncture, while the old nurse yet stood with the footstool raised in her uplifted hands facing the door, half in and half out of which peered the tortoise-shell spectacles of the little fat burgher. “Who is there?”
The poor lady spoke very faintly, and did not seem to know where she was at first, her gaze wandering round the room.
Lorischen quickly put down the heavy missile with which she was threatening Burgher Jans; and he, taking advantage of this suspension of hostilities, at once advanced again within the apartment, although still keeping his hand on the door so as to be ready to beat a retreat in a fresh emergency, should the old nurse attempt to renew the interrupted fray.
“High, well-born, and most gracious madame,” said he obsequiously. “It is me, only me!”
“Hein!” grunted Lorischen. “A nice ‘me’ it is—a little, inquisitive, meddlesome morsel of a man!”
“Oh, Meinherr Burgher Jans,” said Madame Dort, rising up from the sofa. “I’m glad to see you; I wanted to ask you something. I—”
Just at that moment she caught sight of the letter she held between her fingers, when she recollected all at once the news she had received, of which she had been for the time oblivious.
“Ah, poor Fritz!” she exclaimed, bursting into a fit of weeping. “My son, my firstborn, I shall never see him more!”
“Why, what have you heard, gracious lady?” said Burgher Jans, abandoning his refuge by the door, and coming forwards into the centre of the room. “No bad news, I trust, from the young and well-born Herr?”
“Read,” said the widow, extending the letter in her hand towards him; “read for yourself and see.”
His owlish eyes all expanded with delight through the tortoise-shell spectacles, the fat little man eagerly took hold of the rustling piece of paper and unfolded it, his hands trembling with nervous anxiety to know what the missive contained—and which he had been all along burning with curiosity to find out.
Lorischen actually snorted with indignation.
“There, just see that!” she grumbled through her set teeth, opening and clenching her fingers together convulsively, as if she would like to snatch the letter away from him—when, perhaps, she would have expressed her feelings pretty forcibly in the way of scratches on the Burgher’s beaming face: “there, I wouldn’t have let him see it if he had gone down on his bended knees for it—no, not if I had died first!”
The widow continued to sob in her handkerchief; while the Burgher appeared to gloat over the delicate angular handwriting of the letter, as if he were learning it by heart and spelling out every word—he took so long over it.
“Ah, it is bad, gracious lady,” he said at length; “but, still, not so bad as it might otherwise be.”
Madame Dort raised her tear-stained face, looking at the little roan questioningly; while Lorischen, who in her longing to hear about Fritz had not quitted the apartment, according to her usual custom when Burgher Jans was in it, drew nearer, resting her impulsive fingers on the table, so as not to alarm that worthy unnecessarily and make him stop speaking.
The Burgher felt himself a person of importance, on account of his opinion being consulted; so he drew himself up to his full height—just five feet one inch!
“The letter only says, most worthy and gracious lady,—and you, dearest maiden,” he proceeded—with a special bow to Lorischen, which the latter, sad to relate, only received with a grimace from her tightly drawn spinster lips—“that the young and well-born Herr is merely grievously wounded, and not, thanks be to Providence, that he is—he is—he is—”
“Why don’t you say ‘dead’ at once, and not beat about the bush in that stupid way?” interposed the old nurse, who detested the little man’s hemming and hawing over matters which she was in the habit of blurting out roughly without demur.
“No, I like not the ugly word,” suavely expostulated the Burgher. “The great-to-come-for-all-of-us can be better expressed than that! But, to resume my argument, dearest maiden and most gracious lady, this document does not state that the dear son of the house has shaken off this mortal coil entirely as yet.”
“I’d like to shake off yours, and you with it!” said Lorischen angrily, under her breath—“for a word-weaving, pedantic little fool!”
“You mean that there is hope?” asked Madame Dort, looking a bit less tearful, her grief having nearly exhausted itself.
“Most decidedly, dear lady,” said the Burgher. “Does not the letter say so in plain and very-much-nicely-written characters?”
“But, all such painful communications are generally worded, if the writers have a tender heart, so as to break bad news as gently as possible,” answered the widow, wishing to have the faint sanguine suspicion of hope that was stealing over her confirmed by the other’s opinion.
“Just so,” said Burgher Jans authoritatively. “You have reason in your statement; still, dear lady, by what I can gather from this letter, I should think that the Frau or Fraulein Vogelstein who signs it wishes to prepare you for the worst, but yet intimates at the same time that there is room to hope for the best.”
“Ah, I’m glad you say so,” exclaimed the widow joyfully. “Now I read it over, I believe the same; but at first, I thought, in my hurried glance over it, that Fritz was slain, the writer only pretending he was still alive, in order to prepare me for his loss. He is not dead, thank God! That is everything; for, whilst there is life, there’s hope, eh?”
“Most decidedly, gracious lady,” responded the little man with effusion. “If ever I under the down-pressing weight of despondency lie, so I unto myself much comfort make by that happy consolation!”
Madame Dort experienced such relief from the cheering aspect in which the Burgher’s explanation had enabled her now to look upon the news of Fritz’s wound, that her natural feelings of hospitality, which had been dormant for the while, asserted themselves in favour of her timely visitor, who in spite of his curiosity had certainly done her much good in banishing all the ill effects of her fainting fit.
“Will you not have a glass of lager, Herr Jans?” said she.
“Mein Gott, yes,” promptly returned the little man. “Much talking makes one dry, and beer is good for the stomach.”
“Lorischen, get the Burgher some lager bier,” ordered Madame Dort, on her invitation being accepted, the old nurse proceeding to execute the command with very ill grace.
“The Lord only knows when he’ll leave now, once he starts guzzling beer in the parlour! That Burgher Jans is getting to be a positive nuisance to us; and I shall be glad when our poor wounded Fritz comes home, if only to stop his coming here so frequently—the gossipping little time-server, with his bowing and scraping and calling me his ‘dearest maiden,’ indeed—I’d ‘maiden’ him if I had the chance!”
Lorischen was much exasperated, and so she grumbled to herself as she sallied out of the room.
However, much to her relief, the “fat little man” did not make a long stay on this occasion, for he took his leave soon after swallowing the beer. He was anxious to make a round of visits amongst his acquaintances, to retail the news that Fritz was wounded and lying in a hospital at Mézières, near Metz, for he had read it himself in the letter, you know! He likewise informed his hearers, although he had not so impressed the widow, that they would probably never see the young clerk of Herr Grosschnapper again in Lubeck, as his case was so desperate that he was not expected to live! His story otherwise, probably, would have been far less interesting to scandal-mongers, as they would have thus lost the opportunity of settling all the affairs of the widow and considering whom she would marry again. Of course, they now decided, that, as she had as good as lost both her sons and had a nice little property of her own, besides being comparatively not old, so to speak, and not very plain, she would naturally seek another partner to console herself in her solitude—Burgher Jans getting much quizzed on this point, with sly allusions as to his being the widow’s best friend!
Some days after Madaleine Vogelstein’s first letter, Madame Dort received a second, telling her that the ball had been extracted from her son’s wound, but fever had come on, making him very weak and prostrate; although, as his good constitution had enabled him to survive the painful operation, he would probably pull through this second ordeal.
The widow again grew down-hearted at this intelligence, and it was as much as Burgher Jans could do, with all his plausibility, to make her hopeful; while Lorischen, her old superstitious fears and belief in Mouser’s prophetic miaow-wowing again revived, did all her best to negative the fat little man’s praiseworthy efforts at cheering. Ever since the Burgher had been elected a confidant of Madaleine’s original communication, he had made a point of calling every day in the Gulden Strasse, with his, to the old nurse, sickening and stereotyped inquiry—“Any news yet?” until the field post brought the next despatch, when, as he now naturally expected and wished, the letter was given him to read.
“He seems bent on hanging up his hat in our lobby here!” Lorischen would say spitefully, on the widow seeking to excuse the little man’s pertinacity in visiting her. “Much he cares whether poor Master Fritz gets well or ill; he takes more interest in somebody else, I think!”
“Oh, Lorischen!” Madame Dort would remonstrate. “How can you say such things?”
“It is ‘Oh, mistress!’ it strikes me,” the other would retort. “I wish the young master were only here!”
“And so do I heartily,” said Madame Dort, at the end of one of these daily skirmishes between the two on the same subject. “We agree on that point, at all events!” and she sighed heavily. The old servant was so privileged a person that she did not like to speak harshly to her, although she did not at all relish Lorischen’s frequent allusions as to the real object of the Burgher’s visits, and her surmises as to what the neighbours would think about them. Madame Dort put up with Lorischen’s innuendoes in silence, but still, she did not look pleased.
“Ach Himmel, dear mistress!” pleaded the offender, “never mind my waspish old tongue. I am always saying what I shouldn’t; but that little fat man does irritate me with his hypocritical, oily smile and smooth way—calling me his ‘dearest maiden,’ indeed!”
“Why, don’t you see, Lorischen, that it is you really whom he comes here after, although you treat him so cruelly!” said the widow, smiling.
This was more than the old spinster could bear.
“What, me!” she exclaimed, with withering scorn. “Himmel, if I thought that, I would soon scratch his chubby face for him—me, indeed!” and she retreated from the room in high dudgeon.
Bye-and-bye, there came another letter from the now familiar correspondent, saying that Fritz was really recovering at last; and, oh what happiness! the mother’s heart was rejoiced by the sight of a few awkwardly scrawled lines at the end. It was a postscript from her son himself!
The almost indecipherable words were only “Love to Mutterchen, from her own Fritz,” but they were more precious to her than the lengthiest epistle from any one else.
“Any news?” asked Burgher Jans of Lorischen soon afterwards, when he came to the house to make his stereotyped inquiry.
“Yes,” said the old nurse, instead of replying with her usual negative.
“Indeed!” exclaimed the little man. “The noble, well-born young Herr is not worse, I hope?” and he tried to hide his abnormally bland expression with a sympathetic look of deep concern; but he failed miserably in the attempt. His full-moon face could not help beaming with a self-satisfied complacency which it was impossible to subdue; indeed, he would have been unable to disguise this appearance of smiling, even if he had been at a funeral and was, mentally, plunged in the deepest woe—if that were possible for him to be!
“No, not worse,” answered Lorischen. “He is—”
“Not dead, I trust?” said Burgher Jans, interrupting her before she could finish her sentence, and using in his hurry the very word to which he had objected before.
“No, he is not dead,” retorted the old nurse, with a triumphant ring in her voice. “And, if you were expecting that, I only hope you are disappointed, that’s all! He is getting better, for he has written to the mistress himself; and, what is more, he’s coming home to send you to the right-about, Burgher Jans, and stop your coming here any more. Do you hear that, eh?”
“My dearest maiden,” commenced to stammer out the little fat man, woefully taken aback by this outburst, “I—I—don’t know what you mean.”
“Ah, but I do,” returned Lorischen, not feeling any the more amiably disposed towards him by his addressing her in that way after what Madame Dort had said about his calling especially to see her. “I know what I mean; and what I mean to say now, is, that my mistress told me to say she was engaged when you came, should you call to-day, and that she is unable to see you, there! Good-morning, Burgher Jans; good-morning, most worshipful Herr!”
So saying, she slammed the door in the poor little man’s face, leaving him without, cogitating the reason for this summary dismissal of him by the widow; albeit Lorischen, in order to indulge her own feelings of dislike, had somewhat exaggerated a casual remark made by her mistress—that she did not wish to be interrupted after the receipt of the good news about Fritz, as she wanted to answer the letter at once!
Chapter Nine.A Mutual Understanding!“Do you know what is going on to-day?” said Madaleine Vogelstein to her patient, a couple of days after she had aided him to scrawl that postscript to her letter to his mother in his own handwriting, when he had so far recovered that he might be said to be almost convalescent. “No, what—anything important?” he replied, answering her question in questionable fashion by asking another.“Guess,” said she teasingly, holding up her finger. “I’m sure I can’t.”“The capitulation of Metz!” she said slowly with some emphasis, marking the importance of the news she was telling.“Never—it can’t be!” ejaculated Fritz, making an effort to spring up in the pallet bed on which he was still lying, but falling back with a groan on finding himself too weak. “What an unlucky beggar I am!”“Lie still,” said she, putting her hand gently on his, which was outside the quilt. “You must keep quiet, or you’ll never get better, so as to be able to stand up and walk about again—no, you won’t, if you try to hurry matters now.”“That’s more than the French have done if they’ve only just given in! Is it true, though? Perhaps you’ve only heard a rumour, for there are always such false reports flying about. Why, in the camp it used to be the current cry every morning, after we began the siege, that Metz had fallen.”“It is true enough now, I can tell you,” said Madaleine. “The whole French army commanded by Bazaine has capitulated, and the Germans have marched in and taken possession of the fortress.”“I must believe you; but, is it not aggravating that this should just happen when I am invalided here, and not able to take part in the final triumph? It is rather hard lines, after serving so long in the trenches all during our wearisome environment, not to have had the satisfaction in the end of being a witness to the surrender!”“It’s the fortune of war,” said she soothingly, noticing how bitterly Fritz spoke. “Although all may fight bravely, it is not every one who reaps the laurels of victory.”“No,” he replied, smiling at some thoughts which her words suggested—so much is dry humour allied to sentiment that the mention of laurels brought to his mind a comic association which at once dispelled his chagrin. “When did you say the capitulation took place?”“Well, I heard that the formal agreement was signed by the French officers on behalf of Marshal Bazaine two days ago; but the actual surrender takes place to-day, the Marshal having already left, it is said, to join his imprisoned emperor at Cassel.”What Madaleine told Fritz was perfectly true.On the 27th of October, the seventieth day after it had been driven under the guns of Metz on the disastrous termination of the battle of Gravelotte, Bazaine’s army, in addition to the regular garrison of the fortress and an unknown number of Gardes Mobiles, was forced to surrender to the Germans—thus now allowing the latter to utilise the giant legions hitherto employed in investing the stronghold of Lorraine, in further trampling out the last evidences of organised resistance in France, and so, by coercing the country, sooner put an end to the duration of the war.Notwithstanding all the comments made—especially those by his own countrymen in their unreasoning prejudice against every one and everything connected with the late empire, from its unfortunate and much-maligned head downwards—in the matter of this capitulation, and on Marshal Bazaine’s conduct, it is absolutely certain that he held out as long as it was possible to do so. Indeed, it is a surprising fact that his provisions lasted such a length of time; and it would be a cause for sorrow to believe that the brave defender of Metz was in any way stained by the crime of “treachery” as his act was stigmatised by the demagogues of Paris. Those who assert that a clever commander ought somehow or other to have made his escape from the place, do not take into consideration the strength of the investing force, which comprised the united armies of Prince Frederick Charles and Steinmetz—more than two hundred and fifty thousand men, in addition to their reserves, all capable of being concentrated at any given point where an attack was anticipated, and protected, besides, by entrenched lines of great strength. Nor do these biassed critics consider the ruin that must have fallen on Bazaine’s army, even if it had succeeded in cutting its way through the ranks of the besiegers, as the general tried gallantly, but unsuccessfully, to do on more than one occasion, besides making numerous sorties. It is apparent to most unprejudiced minds now, at this distance of time from the momentous epoch of the struggle between the two nations, that the Marshal, in his situation, accomplished all that could have been expected in detaining for such a length of time a huge German army nearly on the frontier, thus giving the invaded country breathing time to collect its resources for just so long a period. The fact is, that when an army like that of Bazaine’s is severed from its communications and supplies, its surrender can only be a question of time; and, therefore, unparalleled as is the capitulation of Metz in modern history, the unprecedented catastrophe—can be fully accounted for on military grounds.“I’m sorry I missed the sight,” said Fritz presently, after thinking over the news. “It would have been some fair return for all that bitter night work I had in the trenches before I was wounded. Still, I’m glad it’s all ended now, for my corps will be able to march onward on Paris like the rest.”“That will not benefit you much, my poor friend,” remarked Madaleine sympathisingly. “I’m afraid it will be some time before you will be strong enough to move from this room, although you’re improving each day.”“Oh, will it?” said Fritz triumphantly; “that’s all you know about it, young lady! Why, Doctor Carl said this morning that he thought I would be able to report myself fit for duty in another week.”“I suppose you’ll rejoice to get back to your friends and comrades in the regiment? You must find it miserable and dull enough in this place!”“No, not quite that. I’ve been very happy and comfortable here the last few days; and I shall never forget all your kindness and care of me—no, never!”“Don’t speak of that, pray; it’s only what any one else would have done in my place. Besides,” she added demurely, “you know that in attending to you as a wounded soldier, I have only been carrying out the orders of the baroness, my employer.”“Hang the fussy old thing!” said Fritz impatiently trying to shrug his shoulders. He had had the honour of one interview with Madaleine’s distinguished patroness, and did not crave for another; for, she had a good deal of that old-fashioned, starched formality which the German nobility affect, mixed up with a fidgety, condescending, patronising manner which much annoyed the generous-minded young fellow. He burned with indignation all the time the visit of the old lady to him had lasted, for she ordered Madaleine to do this and corrected her for doing that, in, as he thought, the rudest manner possible. Her exquisitely dignified patronage of himself, as a species of inferior animal, who, being in pain and distress, she was bound in common charity to take some notice of, caused him no umbrage whatever; but it annoyed him to see a gentle, ladylike girl like Madaleine subjected to the whims and caprices of an old woman, who, in spite of her high birth, was naturally vulgar and inconsiderate. “Hang the fussy old thing!” he repeated, with considerable heat. “I wish you had nothing to do with her. I’m sure she would drive me mad in a day if I were constantly associated with her!”“Ah, dear friend, beggars mustn’t be choosers,” said Madaleine sadly. “You forget my position, in your kind zeal on my behalf! A poor orphan girl such as I, left friendless and penniless, ought to be glad to be under the protection of so grand a lady as the Baroness Stolzenkop. She is kind to me, too, in her way.”“But, what a way!” interposed Fritz angrily. “I wouldn’t speak to a dog in that fashion.”“You are different.”“I should hope so, indeed!”“Besides, Herr Fritz, remember, that if it hadn’t been for this old lady, of whom you speak in such disrespectful terms, I should never have come here to Mézières and been able to nurse you.”“I forgot for the moment, Fraulein. My blessing on the old catamaran for the fancy that seized her, so auspiciously, to go touring on the trail of the war and thus to bring you here. I don’t believe I would have lived, if it had not been for your care and kindness!”“Meinherr, you exaggerate. It is to your own good constitution and to Providence that your thanks are due; I have only been a simple means towards that happy end.”“Well, I shall always attribute my recovery to you, at all events; and so will my good mother, who I hope will some day be able to thank you in person for all that you’ve done for me and her.”“I should like to see her,” said Madaleine; “she must be a kind, good lady, from her letters to you.”“And the fondest mother in the world!” exclaimed Fritz with enthusiasm. “But, you will see her—some day,” he added after a pause. “I vow that you shall.”“I don’t know how that will be,” said Madaleine, half laughing in a constrained fashion, as if wishing to conceal her real feelings. “In a week or two you will be off to the wars again and forget me—like a true soldier!”“Stay,” interposed Fritz, interrupting her. “You have no right to say that! Do you think me so ungrateful? You must have a very bad opinion of me! I—”“Never mind explanations now,” interrupted the girl in her turn, speaking hurriedly in a nervous way, although trying to laugh the matter off as a joke. “If the doctor says you can soon report yourself as fit for duty, of course you’ll have to rejoin your regiment.”“Ah, I wonder where that is now?” said Fritz musingly. “Since our camp round Metz is broken up, the army will naturally march on farther into the interior. No matter, there’s no good my worrying myself about it. They’ll soon let me know where I’ve got to go to join them; for, the powers that be do not allow any shirking of duty in the ranks, from the highest to the lowest!”“I saw that here,” remarked Madaleine. “The baroness wanted to get her son to return home with her; but she was told that, if he were allowed to go he could never come back to the army, as his reputation for courage would be settled for ever.”“Yes, that would be the case, true enough. Hev would be thought to have shown the white feather! But, about your movements, Fraulein Madaleine—the baroness is not going to remain here long, is she?”“No; she spoke this morning about going away. She said that, as the siege of Metz was raised, and the greater portion of the wounded men would be removed to Germany, along with the prisoners of war, she thought she would go back home—to Darmstadt, that is.”“And there you will stop, I suppose?” asked Fritz.“Until she has a whim to go somewhere else!” replied Madaleine.“May I write to you there?”“I will be glad to hear of your welfare,” answered she discreetly, a slight colour mantling to her cheeks. “Of course, you have been my patient; and, like a good nurse, I should like to know that you were getting on well, without any relapse.”“I will write to you, then,” said Fritz in those firm, ringing tones of his that clearly intimated he had made a promise which he intended to keep. “And you, I hope, will answer my letters?”“When I can,” replied the girl; “that is, you know, if the Baroness Stolzenkop does not object.”“Bother the Baroness Stolzenkop!” said he energetically, and he stretched out his hand to her with a smile. “Promise to write to me,” he repeated.Madaleine did not say anything; but she returned his smile, and he could feel a slight pressure of her fingers on his, so with this he was perfectly contented for the while.“Ah, when the war is over!” he exclaimed presently, after a moment’s silence between the two, which expressed more than words would have done perhaps. “Ah, when the war is over!”“Eh, what?” said the doctor, coming in unexpectedly at that instant and catching the last words.“I—I—said,” explained Fritz rather confusedly, “that when the war was over, I’d be glad to get home again to my mother and those dear to me;” and he looked at Madaleine as he spoke meaningly.“Eh, what?” repeated the doctor. “But, the war isn’t over yet, my worthy young lieutenant, and I hope we’ll patch you up so as to be able to play a good part in it still for the Fatherland!”“I hope so, Herr Doctor,” answered Fritz. “I’ve no desire yet to be laid on the shelf while laurels and promotion are to be won.”“Just so, that is good; and how do you feel this afternoon, eh?”“Much better.”“Ah yes, so I see! You will go on improving, if you take plenty of food. I bet that in a week’s time I shall be able to turn you out of these nice quarters here.”So saying, the surgeon bustled out of the room, with a kind nod to his patient and a bow to Madaleine, who was shortly afterwards summoned by a servant to the baroness—the footman telling her that her ladyship requested her presence at once.She returned later on, but it was only for a very brief interval, to say good-bye. The Princess of Alten-Schlossen, she said, was about to leave Mézières immediately for Germany, and the baroness could not think of staying behind, even for the charitable consideration of nursing any more wounded, if the exalted lady, whose actions traced the pattern for her own conduct, thought fit to go away! Madaleine, therefore, had orders to pack up all the old dowager’s numerous belongings, being also given permission to make any arrangements she pleased for the poor fellows who remained in the villa, in order to have them handed over to the regular authorities, now that this amateur ambulance of the baroness was going to abandon its voluntary labours.“It’s a shame,” said Madaleine indignantly. “It is like putting one’s hand to the plough and then turning back!”“Never mind, Fraulein, do not fret yourself,” interposed Fritz. “The old lady has done some good by starting this hospital here, even if she did it in imitation of the Princess; and, although she may now give it up, it will be carried on all right by others, you see if it won’t! As I am getting well, too, and will have to go, as the doctor says; why, I shall not regret it as I should otherwise have done.”“Oh, you selfish fellow!” said she, smiling. “Now you have been attended to and nursed into convalescence, you do not care what becomes of those who may come after you!”“Not quite so bad as that,” replied Fritz; “only, as I shall be away serving with my regiment, I should prefer to think of you ensconced in the quiet security of the baroness’ castle on the Rhine, to being here amidst the excitement of the war and in the very thick of bands of stragglers to and from the front.”“Especially since I would lose your valuable protection!” laughed Madaleine.“Ah, wait till I get up and am strong!” said Fritz. “When you see me again, I promise to be able to protect you.”“Aye, when!” repeated the girl with a sigh. “However, I must say good-bye now, Herr Lieutenant I have told our man Hans, whom the baroness leaves behind, to see that you want for nothing until you shall be able to attend to yourself. I’m sorry you’ll have no female nurse now to look after you.”“I wouldn’t let another woman come near me after you go!” exclaimed Fritz impulsively. “Mind, you have promised to write to me, you know.”“Yes,” said she, “I will answer your letters; and now, good-bye! Don’t forget me quite when you get amongst the gay ladies of Paris, who will quite eclipse your little German nurse!”“Never!” he ejaculated. “Good-bye, till we meet again!” and he pressed her hand to his lips, looking up into her eyes.“Good-bye!” said she in a husky voice, turning away; when the dog, which had been lying down in his usual place by his master’s bedside, started up, “Good-bye you, too, my darling ‘Fritz’!” she added, throwing her arms round the retriever’s neck and kissing his smooth black head; “I nearly forgot you, dearest doggie, I do declare!”“Heavens!” exclaimed the other Fritz, mortally jealous of his dog for the moment, “I wish you would only say farewell to me like that!”Madaleine blushed a celestial rosy red.But “Auf wiedersehen!” was all she said, as she left the room with a speaking glance from her violet eyes; and, towards the evening, from the confused bustling about which he heard going on within the villa, and the sound of carriage wheels without driving off, Fritz knew that the Baroness Stolzenkop and her party—amongst whom, of course, was Madaleine—had quitted Mézières, on their way back to the banks of the Rhine.
“Do you know what is going on to-day?” said Madaleine Vogelstein to her patient, a couple of days after she had aided him to scrawl that postscript to her letter to his mother in his own handwriting, when he had so far recovered that he might be said to be almost convalescent. “No, what—anything important?” he replied, answering her question in questionable fashion by asking another.
“Guess,” said she teasingly, holding up her finger. “I’m sure I can’t.”
“The capitulation of Metz!” she said slowly with some emphasis, marking the importance of the news she was telling.
“Never—it can’t be!” ejaculated Fritz, making an effort to spring up in the pallet bed on which he was still lying, but falling back with a groan on finding himself too weak. “What an unlucky beggar I am!”
“Lie still,” said she, putting her hand gently on his, which was outside the quilt. “You must keep quiet, or you’ll never get better, so as to be able to stand up and walk about again—no, you won’t, if you try to hurry matters now.”
“That’s more than the French have done if they’ve only just given in! Is it true, though? Perhaps you’ve only heard a rumour, for there are always such false reports flying about. Why, in the camp it used to be the current cry every morning, after we began the siege, that Metz had fallen.”
“It is true enough now, I can tell you,” said Madaleine. “The whole French army commanded by Bazaine has capitulated, and the Germans have marched in and taken possession of the fortress.”
“I must believe you; but, is it not aggravating that this should just happen when I am invalided here, and not able to take part in the final triumph? It is rather hard lines, after serving so long in the trenches all during our wearisome environment, not to have had the satisfaction in the end of being a witness to the surrender!”
“It’s the fortune of war,” said she soothingly, noticing how bitterly Fritz spoke. “Although all may fight bravely, it is not every one who reaps the laurels of victory.”
“No,” he replied, smiling at some thoughts which her words suggested—so much is dry humour allied to sentiment that the mention of laurels brought to his mind a comic association which at once dispelled his chagrin. “When did you say the capitulation took place?”
“Well, I heard that the formal agreement was signed by the French officers on behalf of Marshal Bazaine two days ago; but the actual surrender takes place to-day, the Marshal having already left, it is said, to join his imprisoned emperor at Cassel.”
What Madaleine told Fritz was perfectly true.
On the 27th of October, the seventieth day after it had been driven under the guns of Metz on the disastrous termination of the battle of Gravelotte, Bazaine’s army, in addition to the regular garrison of the fortress and an unknown number of Gardes Mobiles, was forced to surrender to the Germans—thus now allowing the latter to utilise the giant legions hitherto employed in investing the stronghold of Lorraine, in further trampling out the last evidences of organised resistance in France, and so, by coercing the country, sooner put an end to the duration of the war.
Notwithstanding all the comments made—especially those by his own countrymen in their unreasoning prejudice against every one and everything connected with the late empire, from its unfortunate and much-maligned head downwards—in the matter of this capitulation, and on Marshal Bazaine’s conduct, it is absolutely certain that he held out as long as it was possible to do so. Indeed, it is a surprising fact that his provisions lasted such a length of time; and it would be a cause for sorrow to believe that the brave defender of Metz was in any way stained by the crime of “treachery” as his act was stigmatised by the demagogues of Paris. Those who assert that a clever commander ought somehow or other to have made his escape from the place, do not take into consideration the strength of the investing force, which comprised the united armies of Prince Frederick Charles and Steinmetz—more than two hundred and fifty thousand men, in addition to their reserves, all capable of being concentrated at any given point where an attack was anticipated, and protected, besides, by entrenched lines of great strength. Nor do these biassed critics consider the ruin that must have fallen on Bazaine’s army, even if it had succeeded in cutting its way through the ranks of the besiegers, as the general tried gallantly, but unsuccessfully, to do on more than one occasion, besides making numerous sorties. It is apparent to most unprejudiced minds now, at this distance of time from the momentous epoch of the struggle between the two nations, that the Marshal, in his situation, accomplished all that could have been expected in detaining for such a length of time a huge German army nearly on the frontier, thus giving the invaded country breathing time to collect its resources for just so long a period. The fact is, that when an army like that of Bazaine’s is severed from its communications and supplies, its surrender can only be a question of time; and, therefore, unparalleled as is the capitulation of Metz in modern history, the unprecedented catastrophe—can be fully accounted for on military grounds.
“I’m sorry I missed the sight,” said Fritz presently, after thinking over the news. “It would have been some fair return for all that bitter night work I had in the trenches before I was wounded. Still, I’m glad it’s all ended now, for my corps will be able to march onward on Paris like the rest.”
“That will not benefit you much, my poor friend,” remarked Madaleine sympathisingly. “I’m afraid it will be some time before you will be strong enough to move from this room, although you’re improving each day.”
“Oh, will it?” said Fritz triumphantly; “that’s all you know about it, young lady! Why, Doctor Carl said this morning that he thought I would be able to report myself fit for duty in another week.”
“I suppose you’ll rejoice to get back to your friends and comrades in the regiment? You must find it miserable and dull enough in this place!”
“No, not quite that. I’ve been very happy and comfortable here the last few days; and I shall never forget all your kindness and care of me—no, never!”
“Don’t speak of that, pray; it’s only what any one else would have done in my place. Besides,” she added demurely, “you know that in attending to you as a wounded soldier, I have only been carrying out the orders of the baroness, my employer.”
“Hang the fussy old thing!” said Fritz impatiently trying to shrug his shoulders. He had had the honour of one interview with Madaleine’s distinguished patroness, and did not crave for another; for, she had a good deal of that old-fashioned, starched formality which the German nobility affect, mixed up with a fidgety, condescending, patronising manner which much annoyed the generous-minded young fellow. He burned with indignation all the time the visit of the old lady to him had lasted, for she ordered Madaleine to do this and corrected her for doing that, in, as he thought, the rudest manner possible. Her exquisitely dignified patronage of himself, as a species of inferior animal, who, being in pain and distress, she was bound in common charity to take some notice of, caused him no umbrage whatever; but it annoyed him to see a gentle, ladylike girl like Madaleine subjected to the whims and caprices of an old woman, who, in spite of her high birth, was naturally vulgar and inconsiderate. “Hang the fussy old thing!” he repeated, with considerable heat. “I wish you had nothing to do with her. I’m sure she would drive me mad in a day if I were constantly associated with her!”
“Ah, dear friend, beggars mustn’t be choosers,” said Madaleine sadly. “You forget my position, in your kind zeal on my behalf! A poor orphan girl such as I, left friendless and penniless, ought to be glad to be under the protection of so grand a lady as the Baroness Stolzenkop. She is kind to me, too, in her way.”
“But, what a way!” interposed Fritz angrily. “I wouldn’t speak to a dog in that fashion.”
“You are different.”
“I should hope so, indeed!”
“Besides, Herr Fritz, remember, that if it hadn’t been for this old lady, of whom you speak in such disrespectful terms, I should never have come here to Mézières and been able to nurse you.”
“I forgot for the moment, Fraulein. My blessing on the old catamaran for the fancy that seized her, so auspiciously, to go touring on the trail of the war and thus to bring you here. I don’t believe I would have lived, if it had not been for your care and kindness!”
“Meinherr, you exaggerate. It is to your own good constitution and to Providence that your thanks are due; I have only been a simple means towards that happy end.”
“Well, I shall always attribute my recovery to you, at all events; and so will my good mother, who I hope will some day be able to thank you in person for all that you’ve done for me and her.”
“I should like to see her,” said Madaleine; “she must be a kind, good lady, from her letters to you.”
“And the fondest mother in the world!” exclaimed Fritz with enthusiasm. “But, you will see her—some day,” he added after a pause. “I vow that you shall.”
“I don’t know how that will be,” said Madaleine, half laughing in a constrained fashion, as if wishing to conceal her real feelings. “In a week or two you will be off to the wars again and forget me—like a true soldier!”
“Stay,” interposed Fritz, interrupting her. “You have no right to say that! Do you think me so ungrateful? You must have a very bad opinion of me! I—”
“Never mind explanations now,” interrupted the girl in her turn, speaking hurriedly in a nervous way, although trying to laugh the matter off as a joke. “If the doctor says you can soon report yourself as fit for duty, of course you’ll have to rejoin your regiment.”
“Ah, I wonder where that is now?” said Fritz musingly. “Since our camp round Metz is broken up, the army will naturally march on farther into the interior. No matter, there’s no good my worrying myself about it. They’ll soon let me know where I’ve got to go to join them; for, the powers that be do not allow any shirking of duty in the ranks, from the highest to the lowest!”
“I saw that here,” remarked Madaleine. “The baroness wanted to get her son to return home with her; but she was told that, if he were allowed to go he could never come back to the army, as his reputation for courage would be settled for ever.”
“Yes, that would be the case, true enough. Hev would be thought to have shown the white feather! But, about your movements, Fraulein Madaleine—the baroness is not going to remain here long, is she?”
“No; she spoke this morning about going away. She said that, as the siege of Metz was raised, and the greater portion of the wounded men would be removed to Germany, along with the prisoners of war, she thought she would go back home—to Darmstadt, that is.”
“And there you will stop, I suppose?” asked Fritz.
“Until she has a whim to go somewhere else!” replied Madaleine.
“May I write to you there?”
“I will be glad to hear of your welfare,” answered she discreetly, a slight colour mantling to her cheeks. “Of course, you have been my patient; and, like a good nurse, I should like to know that you were getting on well, without any relapse.”
“I will write to you, then,” said Fritz in those firm, ringing tones of his that clearly intimated he had made a promise which he intended to keep. “And you, I hope, will answer my letters?”
“When I can,” replied the girl; “that is, you know, if the Baroness Stolzenkop does not object.”
“Bother the Baroness Stolzenkop!” said he energetically, and he stretched out his hand to her with a smile. “Promise to write to me,” he repeated.
Madaleine did not say anything; but she returned his smile, and he could feel a slight pressure of her fingers on his, so with this he was perfectly contented for the while.
“Ah, when the war is over!” he exclaimed presently, after a moment’s silence between the two, which expressed more than words would have done perhaps. “Ah, when the war is over!”
“Eh, what?” said the doctor, coming in unexpectedly at that instant and catching the last words.
“I—I—said,” explained Fritz rather confusedly, “that when the war was over, I’d be glad to get home again to my mother and those dear to me;” and he looked at Madaleine as he spoke meaningly.
“Eh, what?” repeated the doctor. “But, the war isn’t over yet, my worthy young lieutenant, and I hope we’ll patch you up so as to be able to play a good part in it still for the Fatherland!”
“I hope so, Herr Doctor,” answered Fritz. “I’ve no desire yet to be laid on the shelf while laurels and promotion are to be won.”
“Just so, that is good; and how do you feel this afternoon, eh?”
“Much better.”
“Ah yes, so I see! You will go on improving, if you take plenty of food. I bet that in a week’s time I shall be able to turn you out of these nice quarters here.”
So saying, the surgeon bustled out of the room, with a kind nod to his patient and a bow to Madaleine, who was shortly afterwards summoned by a servant to the baroness—the footman telling her that her ladyship requested her presence at once.
She returned later on, but it was only for a very brief interval, to say good-bye. The Princess of Alten-Schlossen, she said, was about to leave Mézières immediately for Germany, and the baroness could not think of staying behind, even for the charitable consideration of nursing any more wounded, if the exalted lady, whose actions traced the pattern for her own conduct, thought fit to go away! Madaleine, therefore, had orders to pack up all the old dowager’s numerous belongings, being also given permission to make any arrangements she pleased for the poor fellows who remained in the villa, in order to have them handed over to the regular authorities, now that this amateur ambulance of the baroness was going to abandon its voluntary labours.
“It’s a shame,” said Madaleine indignantly. “It is like putting one’s hand to the plough and then turning back!”
“Never mind, Fraulein, do not fret yourself,” interposed Fritz. “The old lady has done some good by starting this hospital here, even if she did it in imitation of the Princess; and, although she may now give it up, it will be carried on all right by others, you see if it won’t! As I am getting well, too, and will have to go, as the doctor says; why, I shall not regret it as I should otherwise have done.”
“Oh, you selfish fellow!” said she, smiling. “Now you have been attended to and nursed into convalescence, you do not care what becomes of those who may come after you!”
“Not quite so bad as that,” replied Fritz; “only, as I shall be away serving with my regiment, I should prefer to think of you ensconced in the quiet security of the baroness’ castle on the Rhine, to being here amidst the excitement of the war and in the very thick of bands of stragglers to and from the front.”
“Especially since I would lose your valuable protection!” laughed Madaleine.
“Ah, wait till I get up and am strong!” said Fritz. “When you see me again, I promise to be able to protect you.”
“Aye, when!” repeated the girl with a sigh. “However, I must say good-bye now, Herr Lieutenant I have told our man Hans, whom the baroness leaves behind, to see that you want for nothing until you shall be able to attend to yourself. I’m sorry you’ll have no female nurse now to look after you.”
“I wouldn’t let another woman come near me after you go!” exclaimed Fritz impulsively. “Mind, you have promised to write to me, you know.”
“Yes,” said she, “I will answer your letters; and now, good-bye! Don’t forget me quite when you get amongst the gay ladies of Paris, who will quite eclipse your little German nurse!”
“Never!” he ejaculated. “Good-bye, till we meet again!” and he pressed her hand to his lips, looking up into her eyes.
“Good-bye!” said she in a husky voice, turning away; when the dog, which had been lying down in his usual place by his master’s bedside, started up, “Good-bye you, too, my darling ‘Fritz’!” she added, throwing her arms round the retriever’s neck and kissing his smooth black head; “I nearly forgot you, dearest doggie, I do declare!”
“Heavens!” exclaimed the other Fritz, mortally jealous of his dog for the moment, “I wish you would only say farewell to me like that!”
Madaleine blushed a celestial rosy red.
But “Auf wiedersehen!” was all she said, as she left the room with a speaking glance from her violet eyes; and, towards the evening, from the confused bustling about which he heard going on within the villa, and the sound of carriage wheels without driving off, Fritz knew that the Baroness Stolzenkop and her party—amongst whom, of course, was Madaleine—had quitted Mézières, on their way back to the banks of the Rhine.