CHAPTER IIAT THE PLACE KLEBERTherehad been a vast throng at the cathedral, but when the service was done, and the organist had played Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” as a tribute to the English bride, and the congregation streamed again through the great western doors, only the very privileged and those who claimed some kinship with Madame Hélène were invited to her great house on the Place Kleber.“It is a family wedding,” the old lady had said. “I have known Edmond so long that he is as my own son. Beatrix is more than a daughter to me. I do not want the whole world to see my tears. We will be alone my children—and I—when that ‘good-bye’ is said.”Such was her resolution, but the heart prevailing over the will, many persuaded her and claimed kinship with the house of Görsdorf; and there were others, portly canons from the minster, sleek presbyters from the Lutheran churches, officers of the garrison, the mayor of the city—even the governor, the great General Uhrich himself, with his splendid cocked hat and his dainty“imperial,” and his glory in the city of Strasburg and her wondrous past. All these came to felicitate the young people; all remembered that it was a soldier’s wedding. The people declared that an army had gone to the Place Kleber. Lancers in their light blue tunics, with a word of regret for the kurtkas they had lost last year; hussars, whose spurs clattered over the splendid parquet flooring of thesalon; cuirassiers, whose breastplates shone as silver; officers of Turcos fresh from Africa; gunners, engineers—a very deputation from that glorious army of France in which, Beatrix said, in her own pretty way, she had now a place. Henceforth, all that concerned the army of France must be dear to her. For France had given her Edmond—and she was his wife.The day had been as a day of dreams to her. Now that it was nearly done, and she stood atgrandmèreHélène’s side in the great room of the old house, she had but few memories of all its momentous happenings. She knew not why—but yesterday seemed as a day of remote years. She could recollect waking that morning and hearing the voice of old Hélène, who kissed her many times, and seemed already to be saying “good-bye.” She remembered her clumsiness when she had put on her splendid dress, and thecoiffeurhad come to weave the sprays of blossom into herrebellious hair; how her hands had trembled when she had clasped the diamond bracelet which was Edmond’s gift to her! And afterwards—what a whirl of sights and sounds and of familiar faces! “Felicitations!” All the city, surely, had come to the Place Kleber with that word on its lips.Men and women, friends and strangers, they had striven one with another to be the first in kindnesses to Strasburg’s guest, the daughter of Madame Hélène’s daughter, the wife of one of the best of their soldiers. She asked herself if this was not, in one moment, the compensation for a girlhood which had earned many compensations; for a destiny which had bequeathed to her but a fitful memory of her father’s face, and had left her motherless when first she had learned to read the book of life through her mother’s eyes. What a pride of happiness that the bells should ring and the city should feast for her sake! She was no longer alone in the world, then. Ever the words “wife, you are his wife” echoed in her ears above the buzz of talk and the noises of the street without. Some change, indefinite, exquisite, seemed wrought within her mind. She heard no other voice but this—the voice of her heart telling her that the years of girlhood were for ever passed. She saw the future as through a mist of glad tears. The figures about her were shadowy figures moving,as it were, in some room of her dreams. Friends held her hand and spoke to her of the great ceremony in the cathedral. She answered them; yet knew not what she said. They called her “Madame Lefort.” How odd it seemed! “Madame, Madame!” She was Beatrix Hamilton no more. The hour had placed a great gulf between her and the old time. She did not mourn her girlhood nor regret it.Notwithstanding Madame Hélène’s scruples, it was a brilliant gathering. All Strasburg bore witness to that. The city made the success of it an affair of its own, and sent a guard of honour to the Place Kleber, and the lancers’ band to play all the afternoon before the great house. Abbés and canons, generals and colonels raised their glasses and nodded their heads to the rhythm of the music. Sleeker Lutherans found dark corners wherein they could anticipate hunger without observation. Social leaders scanned the bride’s dress through critical glasses, and admitted that it wastrès bien.“Her father was an English artist, hein? She has ideas, and they will help her by-and-by. If she were not so tall!—how can one be anything butgauchewith a figure like that? And she wants style; certainly, she has a pretty gown, and that is something.”The old lady who spoke, a wizened dame, who had buried two husbands, raised her pince-nez and appealed for assent to a fat abbé who held a glass of sparkling wine in his hand. But the abbé answered her with a perpetual smile, and a voice which repeated again and again—“Ah, how pretty she is—how pretty!”Other men took up her cause and pleaded it with courage.Women assented grudgingly, and gathered together in shaded alcoves to remind each other of the mystery which had attended the life of her father, Sir Richard Hamilton. He had been a monster, as tradition said; yet few knew more or could add to the scant particulars which served for gossip in the salons of the city. They loved the suggestion of a scandal—as all the world loves it—these jewelled crones of Strasburg, and they feasted upon it and found it to be good, and sought therein a recompense for a beauty they could but half deny, and for a charm to which they would not submit.Beatrix herself, standing by her husband’s side, heard none of these words. When she could forget the past and the future, and remember where she was and what the day meant to her, it was a pleasure to see how many of her friendshad come to the old house on the Place Kleber. Colot, the aged abbé, who loved her as a father; the merry General de Failly, who had sworn to make a little Frenchwoman of her; pretty gossiping little Thérèse Lavencourt, who had schemed so incessantly to bring Edmond to Strasburg; Georgine, the friend of her girlhood, who thought so often of the young Englishman, Brandon North. Where was Brandon now, she asked? She saw him alone near the long windows of the balcony. Why was he not at Georgine’s side? He had been a year in Strasburg and yet had found no eyes to see how pretty Georgine was. That must be her business by-and-by when she had a house of her own, Beatrix thought. She realised her friendship for one of her own countrymen in that hour. Great as was the kindness which these people of Strasburg showed her, nevertheless she was a stranger among them. The fifteen years of her life she had spent in England had made her an Englishwoman beyond hope of change. She loved French things, yet did not love her own country the less because of them.She beckoned Brandon to her side, and he came with reluctant steps. His strange and truly English dislike of any self-assertion had followed him to Madame Hélène’s house. Silently,in a corner by the window, he had listened to the parrot-like chatter of the women and the silly persiflage which passed among the men for the wit of Paris. When Beatrix beckoned him, he set down his cup and crossed the room slowly. He was one of the few there who wore a plain black coat and had no wealth of star and ribbon to apologise for a tongue but ill-equipped. He came and stood by her, with his fair hair tumbled upon his forehead and his hands ill at ease, and a strange, almost sardonic smile about his lips.“Well,” she said, and her splendid dress rustled as she spoke, “areyouthe only one—”He held her hand a moment in his. An odour of flowers and rare scents hovered about the place. He did not look into her eyes, but knew that hers were upon him.“The only one in a black coat—yes; that’s my qualification, Madame Lefort.”“Madame Lefort.” How odd it sounded! Yesterday he would have called her Mademoiselle Beatrix as the others did. He was one of her few friends. She would not have been cross if he had said “Beatrix,” as sometimes he had done when they went picnicing to the woods above Görsdorf.“You do not congratulate me,” she said, withdrawingher hand quickly. “I don’t believe you were at the church.”He turned and plucked a blossom of white rose from a vase. The petals were crumpled in his hand and scattered upon the carpet while he answered her.“Of course I congratulate you,” he said slowly, “if the congratulations of a man in a frock coat are worth anything. There are so many important persons in colours here that you must excuse me if I have my doubts.” And then he asked suddenly, “What made you think that I was not at the church?”She nodded her head to a fierce Turco on the other side of the room, and then said, as if it were a thing of no importance—“I did not see you there.”He continued to crumple the rose leaves.“I was hidden by the splendour of Thérèse Lavencourt and of Colonel Poittevin. She spent her time saying her prayers and in begging him to stand upon a chair and tell her the names of the generals in the choir. I have learnt half the scandals of Strasburg this morning, and I shall learn the other half to-night when she dances with me. You know that she is giving a ball?”“She was just telling me so. She calls it in my honour. As I shall not be there, that is very good of her. And I am to dance in spirit—as if one could do that. But, of course, she is awfully kind.”“To herself, undoubtedly. She will dance into heaven some day and set the angels by the ears. How glorious to die to Strauss’s music with a dim suggestion of stairs and a conservatory—and, of course, a partner waiting. But these things do not interest you—now. You will be at the Niederwald while I am dressing.”She shook hands with old General Uhrich, who was going back to the citadel, before she answered him.“Oh, yes, we are going to Görsdorf, of course, but not to the castle. You remember our picnic there, when we had dinner in a vault? Some day Edmond will rebuild the house. We shall stay at thechâletfor some time, and afterwards we go on to Metz. I think that I should like that. There is always something eerie about a place which you can’t get into and can’t get out of.”“A description applying to a prison, I imagine.”She shrugged her shoulders.“When one is in France one must think as France does. I am proud of Metz already; and,of course, a soldier’s wife should interest herself in the things that interest him.”“Especially when the marching orders carry him to the Rue de la Paix.”She laughed brightly.“We are going to Paris in January,” she said. “It will be Mecca to me. Imagine it, five years in France, and only one week to try on hats at Aines. I tell Edmond that I am not civilised. He owes it to himself to start an establishment on the Boulevard St. Germain and a box at the opera. Either that or a finishing school somewhere near the Bois. We could spend our holidays together—when he comes home from the wars.”A shadow crossed the man’s face. He looked down upon her for a moment and saw an exquisite vision of lace and flowers and satin, and dark eyes full of laughter, and cheeks flushed with excitement, and a little hand upon which a circle of diamonds glittered, and another ring of plain gold. Never in his life before had he understood why men could die for women; but he thought that he understood it in that instant.“You have taken the wars into consideration, then?” he said.She turned to him with a strange look of fear and wonder.“The wars—what wars?”He passed it off with a jest.“The social wars, of course; there could be no others.”She had ceased to laugh, and was looking round the room for her husband.“As if there could be,” she said determinedly. “Ask General de Failly. He says that we have only to whisper and all Europe will obey. How could there be any wars!”It was perverse of such an old friend as Brandon—and so like him—to speak of such a thing at such a time. The argument, nevertheless, fascinated her strangely, and she would have continued it had not her husband come up while the words were still upon her lips. He was there to tell her that the train for Wörth left at half-past four.“Ah,mon vieux,” he said gaily to Brandon, “I thought that you had deserted us to-day. Were you in the church, then?”“I have just told Madame so.”“And you heard her answer the bishop? They all heard it, Beatrix. And the General has sent an escort of lancers. They are on the Place now, waiting. We must not keep them nor Guillaumette at the other end.”He spoke quickly and with unsuppressed excitement,and in his look there was that deep and unquestioning affection which marriage may wring for a day even from the worst of men. Dressed still in his brilliant blue uniform, with a shining czapska in his hand and his sword trailing upon the polished floor of wood, Beatrix thought that in all France there was no man worthy to stand by his side. Even the touch of his hand could make her tremble. She looked into his eyes and believed to read therein the whole story of his love for her. And she was his wife—his wife.“I am ready, dearest,” she said. “I will go and change now—and you?”“I shall want five minutes,” he said gaily; “after that the triumphal procession sets out.”She left the room, unobserved. The men turned to the buffet.“Shall we see you this winter here?” Lefort asked, while a sergeant filled him a glass of champagne.Brandon answered evasively.“I have no plans. I let the weather make them for me. If it is cold at Frankfort, you may hear of me in Nice. But you—you go to Paris, of course.”Lefort nodded his head.“There will be the manœuvres first, and after that the other manœuvres—at the bonnet shops. I am hoping that we shall be at Châlons next year. There are too many Germans in Strasburg, you see—and then, change is good for a bride. Beatrix is a stranger, and too much Vosges—but you do not drink. I am as thirsty as a trooper out of Baden. And to-morrow I shall wear a grey coat.Sac à papier, that will make me look like a German band.”He laughed as a boy at the idea, and pledged the other in a second glass of wine.“To your health, my friend.”Brandon, outwardly the same unimpressionable, stolid fellow that they had always known him, just touched the rim of the upraised glass with his own, but he did not say “à ta santé” in his turn. His thoughts had already left the Place Kleber. He was thinking of that old thatched farmhouse in the Vosges mountains to which the man at his side was about to take Beatrix Hamilton. What freak of destiny brought such a day? He did not realise it even then. Beatrix married! The words echoed in his ears as a peal of ribald laughter. He turned from the buffet and went to stand upon the balcony, and to look down upon the escort of lancers gathered in the square below. The brilliant blue of their uniforms, the scarlet plumes of the czapskas, the pennants of the lances,the music of bands; the glitter, the colour, the whirl of it all were truly French. Yet this bizarre display was for her sake, for the sake of little Beatrix—for the sake of her who yesterday was free. How distant the day seemed! It had become of the past, irrevocable now. He would never live yesterday again. The page was written and the book was closed.He did not enter the greatsalonagain nor add himself to the number of those who surrounded the bride at the moment of farewell. WhengrandmèreHélène took Beatrix in her arms, he heard the words she spoke, and they seemed an echo of his own thoughts.“The days will be so long, so weary, my dearest girl,” she cried again and again, while the tears of love fell fast; but to Lefort she said, “I am giving you myself—my child! God bless you, Edmond.”Brandon heard the words, yet did not move from his place upon the balcony. Others came out to stand with him, and saw that the strange, half-cynical smile was still upon his lips. In the great square the people began to cheer, the trumpets to blare again. He beheld an old family coach drawn up before the house. He watched the excited guests who remembered vague traditions of English weddings and scattered rice andflowers upon the English bride. For a long instant he saw Beatrix herself looking straight up at him. Then the carriage rolled away to the station; the lancers put their horses to a brisk trot. He heard no sound but that of weeping. The Countess was alone in the desertedsalon.But Beatrix, with her husband’s hand held fast by hers, was asking herself why Brandon North had been the only one who had not said “good-bye” to her.
CHAPTER IIAT THE PLACE KLEBERTherehad been a vast throng at the cathedral, but when the service was done, and the organist had played Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” as a tribute to the English bride, and the congregation streamed again through the great western doors, only the very privileged and those who claimed some kinship with Madame Hélène were invited to her great house on the Place Kleber.“It is a family wedding,” the old lady had said. “I have known Edmond so long that he is as my own son. Beatrix is more than a daughter to me. I do not want the whole world to see my tears. We will be alone my children—and I—when that ‘good-bye’ is said.”Such was her resolution, but the heart prevailing over the will, many persuaded her and claimed kinship with the house of Görsdorf; and there were others, portly canons from the minster, sleek presbyters from the Lutheran churches, officers of the garrison, the mayor of the city—even the governor, the great General Uhrich himself, with his splendid cocked hat and his dainty“imperial,” and his glory in the city of Strasburg and her wondrous past. All these came to felicitate the young people; all remembered that it was a soldier’s wedding. The people declared that an army had gone to the Place Kleber. Lancers in their light blue tunics, with a word of regret for the kurtkas they had lost last year; hussars, whose spurs clattered over the splendid parquet flooring of thesalon; cuirassiers, whose breastplates shone as silver; officers of Turcos fresh from Africa; gunners, engineers—a very deputation from that glorious army of France in which, Beatrix said, in her own pretty way, she had now a place. Henceforth, all that concerned the army of France must be dear to her. For France had given her Edmond—and she was his wife.The day had been as a day of dreams to her. Now that it was nearly done, and she stood atgrandmèreHélène’s side in the great room of the old house, she had but few memories of all its momentous happenings. She knew not why—but yesterday seemed as a day of remote years. She could recollect waking that morning and hearing the voice of old Hélène, who kissed her many times, and seemed already to be saying “good-bye.” She remembered her clumsiness when she had put on her splendid dress, and thecoiffeurhad come to weave the sprays of blossom into herrebellious hair; how her hands had trembled when she had clasped the diamond bracelet which was Edmond’s gift to her! And afterwards—what a whirl of sights and sounds and of familiar faces! “Felicitations!” All the city, surely, had come to the Place Kleber with that word on its lips.Men and women, friends and strangers, they had striven one with another to be the first in kindnesses to Strasburg’s guest, the daughter of Madame Hélène’s daughter, the wife of one of the best of their soldiers. She asked herself if this was not, in one moment, the compensation for a girlhood which had earned many compensations; for a destiny which had bequeathed to her but a fitful memory of her father’s face, and had left her motherless when first she had learned to read the book of life through her mother’s eyes. What a pride of happiness that the bells should ring and the city should feast for her sake! She was no longer alone in the world, then. Ever the words “wife, you are his wife” echoed in her ears above the buzz of talk and the noises of the street without. Some change, indefinite, exquisite, seemed wrought within her mind. She heard no other voice but this—the voice of her heart telling her that the years of girlhood were for ever passed. She saw the future as through a mist of glad tears. The figures about her were shadowy figures moving,as it were, in some room of her dreams. Friends held her hand and spoke to her of the great ceremony in the cathedral. She answered them; yet knew not what she said. They called her “Madame Lefort.” How odd it seemed! “Madame, Madame!” She was Beatrix Hamilton no more. The hour had placed a great gulf between her and the old time. She did not mourn her girlhood nor regret it.Notwithstanding Madame Hélène’s scruples, it was a brilliant gathering. All Strasburg bore witness to that. The city made the success of it an affair of its own, and sent a guard of honour to the Place Kleber, and the lancers’ band to play all the afternoon before the great house. Abbés and canons, generals and colonels raised their glasses and nodded their heads to the rhythm of the music. Sleeker Lutherans found dark corners wherein they could anticipate hunger without observation. Social leaders scanned the bride’s dress through critical glasses, and admitted that it wastrès bien.“Her father was an English artist, hein? She has ideas, and they will help her by-and-by. If she were not so tall!—how can one be anything butgauchewith a figure like that? And she wants style; certainly, she has a pretty gown, and that is something.”The old lady who spoke, a wizened dame, who had buried two husbands, raised her pince-nez and appealed for assent to a fat abbé who held a glass of sparkling wine in his hand. But the abbé answered her with a perpetual smile, and a voice which repeated again and again—“Ah, how pretty she is—how pretty!”Other men took up her cause and pleaded it with courage.Women assented grudgingly, and gathered together in shaded alcoves to remind each other of the mystery which had attended the life of her father, Sir Richard Hamilton. He had been a monster, as tradition said; yet few knew more or could add to the scant particulars which served for gossip in the salons of the city. They loved the suggestion of a scandal—as all the world loves it—these jewelled crones of Strasburg, and they feasted upon it and found it to be good, and sought therein a recompense for a beauty they could but half deny, and for a charm to which they would not submit.Beatrix herself, standing by her husband’s side, heard none of these words. When she could forget the past and the future, and remember where she was and what the day meant to her, it was a pleasure to see how many of her friendshad come to the old house on the Place Kleber. Colot, the aged abbé, who loved her as a father; the merry General de Failly, who had sworn to make a little Frenchwoman of her; pretty gossiping little Thérèse Lavencourt, who had schemed so incessantly to bring Edmond to Strasburg; Georgine, the friend of her girlhood, who thought so often of the young Englishman, Brandon North. Where was Brandon now, she asked? She saw him alone near the long windows of the balcony. Why was he not at Georgine’s side? He had been a year in Strasburg and yet had found no eyes to see how pretty Georgine was. That must be her business by-and-by when she had a house of her own, Beatrix thought. She realised her friendship for one of her own countrymen in that hour. Great as was the kindness which these people of Strasburg showed her, nevertheless she was a stranger among them. The fifteen years of her life she had spent in England had made her an Englishwoman beyond hope of change. She loved French things, yet did not love her own country the less because of them.She beckoned Brandon to her side, and he came with reluctant steps. His strange and truly English dislike of any self-assertion had followed him to Madame Hélène’s house. Silently,in a corner by the window, he had listened to the parrot-like chatter of the women and the silly persiflage which passed among the men for the wit of Paris. When Beatrix beckoned him, he set down his cup and crossed the room slowly. He was one of the few there who wore a plain black coat and had no wealth of star and ribbon to apologise for a tongue but ill-equipped. He came and stood by her, with his fair hair tumbled upon his forehead and his hands ill at ease, and a strange, almost sardonic smile about his lips.“Well,” she said, and her splendid dress rustled as she spoke, “areyouthe only one—”He held her hand a moment in his. An odour of flowers and rare scents hovered about the place. He did not look into her eyes, but knew that hers were upon him.“The only one in a black coat—yes; that’s my qualification, Madame Lefort.”“Madame Lefort.” How odd it sounded! Yesterday he would have called her Mademoiselle Beatrix as the others did. He was one of her few friends. She would not have been cross if he had said “Beatrix,” as sometimes he had done when they went picnicing to the woods above Görsdorf.“You do not congratulate me,” she said, withdrawingher hand quickly. “I don’t believe you were at the church.”He turned and plucked a blossom of white rose from a vase. The petals were crumpled in his hand and scattered upon the carpet while he answered her.“Of course I congratulate you,” he said slowly, “if the congratulations of a man in a frock coat are worth anything. There are so many important persons in colours here that you must excuse me if I have my doubts.” And then he asked suddenly, “What made you think that I was not at the church?”She nodded her head to a fierce Turco on the other side of the room, and then said, as if it were a thing of no importance—“I did not see you there.”He continued to crumple the rose leaves.“I was hidden by the splendour of Thérèse Lavencourt and of Colonel Poittevin. She spent her time saying her prayers and in begging him to stand upon a chair and tell her the names of the generals in the choir. I have learnt half the scandals of Strasburg this morning, and I shall learn the other half to-night when she dances with me. You know that she is giving a ball?”“She was just telling me so. She calls it in my honour. As I shall not be there, that is very good of her. And I am to dance in spirit—as if one could do that. But, of course, she is awfully kind.”“To herself, undoubtedly. She will dance into heaven some day and set the angels by the ears. How glorious to die to Strauss’s music with a dim suggestion of stairs and a conservatory—and, of course, a partner waiting. But these things do not interest you—now. You will be at the Niederwald while I am dressing.”She shook hands with old General Uhrich, who was going back to the citadel, before she answered him.“Oh, yes, we are going to Görsdorf, of course, but not to the castle. You remember our picnic there, when we had dinner in a vault? Some day Edmond will rebuild the house. We shall stay at thechâletfor some time, and afterwards we go on to Metz. I think that I should like that. There is always something eerie about a place which you can’t get into and can’t get out of.”“A description applying to a prison, I imagine.”She shrugged her shoulders.“When one is in France one must think as France does. I am proud of Metz already; and,of course, a soldier’s wife should interest herself in the things that interest him.”“Especially when the marching orders carry him to the Rue de la Paix.”She laughed brightly.“We are going to Paris in January,” she said. “It will be Mecca to me. Imagine it, five years in France, and only one week to try on hats at Aines. I tell Edmond that I am not civilised. He owes it to himself to start an establishment on the Boulevard St. Germain and a box at the opera. Either that or a finishing school somewhere near the Bois. We could spend our holidays together—when he comes home from the wars.”A shadow crossed the man’s face. He looked down upon her for a moment and saw an exquisite vision of lace and flowers and satin, and dark eyes full of laughter, and cheeks flushed with excitement, and a little hand upon which a circle of diamonds glittered, and another ring of plain gold. Never in his life before had he understood why men could die for women; but he thought that he understood it in that instant.“You have taken the wars into consideration, then?” he said.She turned to him with a strange look of fear and wonder.“The wars—what wars?”He passed it off with a jest.“The social wars, of course; there could be no others.”She had ceased to laugh, and was looking round the room for her husband.“As if there could be,” she said determinedly. “Ask General de Failly. He says that we have only to whisper and all Europe will obey. How could there be any wars!”It was perverse of such an old friend as Brandon—and so like him—to speak of such a thing at such a time. The argument, nevertheless, fascinated her strangely, and she would have continued it had not her husband come up while the words were still upon her lips. He was there to tell her that the train for Wörth left at half-past four.“Ah,mon vieux,” he said gaily to Brandon, “I thought that you had deserted us to-day. Were you in the church, then?”“I have just told Madame so.”“And you heard her answer the bishop? They all heard it, Beatrix. And the General has sent an escort of lancers. They are on the Place now, waiting. We must not keep them nor Guillaumette at the other end.”He spoke quickly and with unsuppressed excitement,and in his look there was that deep and unquestioning affection which marriage may wring for a day even from the worst of men. Dressed still in his brilliant blue uniform, with a shining czapska in his hand and his sword trailing upon the polished floor of wood, Beatrix thought that in all France there was no man worthy to stand by his side. Even the touch of his hand could make her tremble. She looked into his eyes and believed to read therein the whole story of his love for her. And she was his wife—his wife.“I am ready, dearest,” she said. “I will go and change now—and you?”“I shall want five minutes,” he said gaily; “after that the triumphal procession sets out.”She left the room, unobserved. The men turned to the buffet.“Shall we see you this winter here?” Lefort asked, while a sergeant filled him a glass of champagne.Brandon answered evasively.“I have no plans. I let the weather make them for me. If it is cold at Frankfort, you may hear of me in Nice. But you—you go to Paris, of course.”Lefort nodded his head.“There will be the manœuvres first, and after that the other manœuvres—at the bonnet shops. I am hoping that we shall be at Châlons next year. There are too many Germans in Strasburg, you see—and then, change is good for a bride. Beatrix is a stranger, and too much Vosges—but you do not drink. I am as thirsty as a trooper out of Baden. And to-morrow I shall wear a grey coat.Sac à papier, that will make me look like a German band.”He laughed as a boy at the idea, and pledged the other in a second glass of wine.“To your health, my friend.”Brandon, outwardly the same unimpressionable, stolid fellow that they had always known him, just touched the rim of the upraised glass with his own, but he did not say “à ta santé” in his turn. His thoughts had already left the Place Kleber. He was thinking of that old thatched farmhouse in the Vosges mountains to which the man at his side was about to take Beatrix Hamilton. What freak of destiny brought such a day? He did not realise it even then. Beatrix married! The words echoed in his ears as a peal of ribald laughter. He turned from the buffet and went to stand upon the balcony, and to look down upon the escort of lancers gathered in the square below. The brilliant blue of their uniforms, the scarlet plumes of the czapskas, the pennants of the lances,the music of bands; the glitter, the colour, the whirl of it all were truly French. Yet this bizarre display was for her sake, for the sake of little Beatrix—for the sake of her who yesterday was free. How distant the day seemed! It had become of the past, irrevocable now. He would never live yesterday again. The page was written and the book was closed.He did not enter the greatsalonagain nor add himself to the number of those who surrounded the bride at the moment of farewell. WhengrandmèreHélène took Beatrix in her arms, he heard the words she spoke, and they seemed an echo of his own thoughts.“The days will be so long, so weary, my dearest girl,” she cried again and again, while the tears of love fell fast; but to Lefort she said, “I am giving you myself—my child! God bless you, Edmond.”Brandon heard the words, yet did not move from his place upon the balcony. Others came out to stand with him, and saw that the strange, half-cynical smile was still upon his lips. In the great square the people began to cheer, the trumpets to blare again. He beheld an old family coach drawn up before the house. He watched the excited guests who remembered vague traditions of English weddings and scattered rice andflowers upon the English bride. For a long instant he saw Beatrix herself looking straight up at him. Then the carriage rolled away to the station; the lancers put their horses to a brisk trot. He heard no sound but that of weeping. The Countess was alone in the desertedsalon.But Beatrix, with her husband’s hand held fast by hers, was asking herself why Brandon North had been the only one who had not said “good-bye” to her.
Therehad been a vast throng at the cathedral, but when the service was done, and the organist had played Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” as a tribute to the English bride, and the congregation streamed again through the great western doors, only the very privileged and those who claimed some kinship with Madame Hélène were invited to her great house on the Place Kleber.
“It is a family wedding,” the old lady had said. “I have known Edmond so long that he is as my own son. Beatrix is more than a daughter to me. I do not want the whole world to see my tears. We will be alone my children—and I—when that ‘good-bye’ is said.”
Such was her resolution, but the heart prevailing over the will, many persuaded her and claimed kinship with the house of Görsdorf; and there were others, portly canons from the minster, sleek presbyters from the Lutheran churches, officers of the garrison, the mayor of the city—even the governor, the great General Uhrich himself, with his splendid cocked hat and his dainty“imperial,” and his glory in the city of Strasburg and her wondrous past. All these came to felicitate the young people; all remembered that it was a soldier’s wedding. The people declared that an army had gone to the Place Kleber. Lancers in their light blue tunics, with a word of regret for the kurtkas they had lost last year; hussars, whose spurs clattered over the splendid parquet flooring of thesalon; cuirassiers, whose breastplates shone as silver; officers of Turcos fresh from Africa; gunners, engineers—a very deputation from that glorious army of France in which, Beatrix said, in her own pretty way, she had now a place. Henceforth, all that concerned the army of France must be dear to her. For France had given her Edmond—and she was his wife.
The day had been as a day of dreams to her. Now that it was nearly done, and she stood atgrandmèreHélène’s side in the great room of the old house, she had but few memories of all its momentous happenings. She knew not why—but yesterday seemed as a day of remote years. She could recollect waking that morning and hearing the voice of old Hélène, who kissed her many times, and seemed already to be saying “good-bye.” She remembered her clumsiness when she had put on her splendid dress, and thecoiffeurhad come to weave the sprays of blossom into herrebellious hair; how her hands had trembled when she had clasped the diamond bracelet which was Edmond’s gift to her! And afterwards—what a whirl of sights and sounds and of familiar faces! “Felicitations!” All the city, surely, had come to the Place Kleber with that word on its lips.
Men and women, friends and strangers, they had striven one with another to be the first in kindnesses to Strasburg’s guest, the daughter of Madame Hélène’s daughter, the wife of one of the best of their soldiers. She asked herself if this was not, in one moment, the compensation for a girlhood which had earned many compensations; for a destiny which had bequeathed to her but a fitful memory of her father’s face, and had left her motherless when first she had learned to read the book of life through her mother’s eyes. What a pride of happiness that the bells should ring and the city should feast for her sake! She was no longer alone in the world, then. Ever the words “wife, you are his wife” echoed in her ears above the buzz of talk and the noises of the street without. Some change, indefinite, exquisite, seemed wrought within her mind. She heard no other voice but this—the voice of her heart telling her that the years of girlhood were for ever passed. She saw the future as through a mist of glad tears. The figures about her were shadowy figures moving,as it were, in some room of her dreams. Friends held her hand and spoke to her of the great ceremony in the cathedral. She answered them; yet knew not what she said. They called her “Madame Lefort.” How odd it seemed! “Madame, Madame!” She was Beatrix Hamilton no more. The hour had placed a great gulf between her and the old time. She did not mourn her girlhood nor regret it.
Notwithstanding Madame Hélène’s scruples, it was a brilliant gathering. All Strasburg bore witness to that. The city made the success of it an affair of its own, and sent a guard of honour to the Place Kleber, and the lancers’ band to play all the afternoon before the great house. Abbés and canons, generals and colonels raised their glasses and nodded their heads to the rhythm of the music. Sleeker Lutherans found dark corners wherein they could anticipate hunger without observation. Social leaders scanned the bride’s dress through critical glasses, and admitted that it wastrès bien.
“Her father was an English artist, hein? She has ideas, and they will help her by-and-by. If she were not so tall!—how can one be anything butgauchewith a figure like that? And she wants style; certainly, she has a pretty gown, and that is something.”
The old lady who spoke, a wizened dame, who had buried two husbands, raised her pince-nez and appealed for assent to a fat abbé who held a glass of sparkling wine in his hand. But the abbé answered her with a perpetual smile, and a voice which repeated again and again—
“Ah, how pretty she is—how pretty!”
Other men took up her cause and pleaded it with courage.
Women assented grudgingly, and gathered together in shaded alcoves to remind each other of the mystery which had attended the life of her father, Sir Richard Hamilton. He had been a monster, as tradition said; yet few knew more or could add to the scant particulars which served for gossip in the salons of the city. They loved the suggestion of a scandal—as all the world loves it—these jewelled crones of Strasburg, and they feasted upon it and found it to be good, and sought therein a recompense for a beauty they could but half deny, and for a charm to which they would not submit.
Beatrix herself, standing by her husband’s side, heard none of these words. When she could forget the past and the future, and remember where she was and what the day meant to her, it was a pleasure to see how many of her friendshad come to the old house on the Place Kleber. Colot, the aged abbé, who loved her as a father; the merry General de Failly, who had sworn to make a little Frenchwoman of her; pretty gossiping little Thérèse Lavencourt, who had schemed so incessantly to bring Edmond to Strasburg; Georgine, the friend of her girlhood, who thought so often of the young Englishman, Brandon North. Where was Brandon now, she asked? She saw him alone near the long windows of the balcony. Why was he not at Georgine’s side? He had been a year in Strasburg and yet had found no eyes to see how pretty Georgine was. That must be her business by-and-by when she had a house of her own, Beatrix thought. She realised her friendship for one of her own countrymen in that hour. Great as was the kindness which these people of Strasburg showed her, nevertheless she was a stranger among them. The fifteen years of her life she had spent in England had made her an Englishwoman beyond hope of change. She loved French things, yet did not love her own country the less because of them.
She beckoned Brandon to her side, and he came with reluctant steps. His strange and truly English dislike of any self-assertion had followed him to Madame Hélène’s house. Silently,in a corner by the window, he had listened to the parrot-like chatter of the women and the silly persiflage which passed among the men for the wit of Paris. When Beatrix beckoned him, he set down his cup and crossed the room slowly. He was one of the few there who wore a plain black coat and had no wealth of star and ribbon to apologise for a tongue but ill-equipped. He came and stood by her, with his fair hair tumbled upon his forehead and his hands ill at ease, and a strange, almost sardonic smile about his lips.
“Well,” she said, and her splendid dress rustled as she spoke, “areyouthe only one—”
He held her hand a moment in his. An odour of flowers and rare scents hovered about the place. He did not look into her eyes, but knew that hers were upon him.
“The only one in a black coat—yes; that’s my qualification, Madame Lefort.”
“Madame Lefort.” How odd it sounded! Yesterday he would have called her Mademoiselle Beatrix as the others did. He was one of her few friends. She would not have been cross if he had said “Beatrix,” as sometimes he had done when they went picnicing to the woods above Görsdorf.
“You do not congratulate me,” she said, withdrawingher hand quickly. “I don’t believe you were at the church.”
He turned and plucked a blossom of white rose from a vase. The petals were crumpled in his hand and scattered upon the carpet while he answered her.
“Of course I congratulate you,” he said slowly, “if the congratulations of a man in a frock coat are worth anything. There are so many important persons in colours here that you must excuse me if I have my doubts.” And then he asked suddenly, “What made you think that I was not at the church?”
She nodded her head to a fierce Turco on the other side of the room, and then said, as if it were a thing of no importance—
“I did not see you there.”
He continued to crumple the rose leaves.
“I was hidden by the splendour of Thérèse Lavencourt and of Colonel Poittevin. She spent her time saying her prayers and in begging him to stand upon a chair and tell her the names of the generals in the choir. I have learnt half the scandals of Strasburg this morning, and I shall learn the other half to-night when she dances with me. You know that she is giving a ball?”
“She was just telling me so. She calls it in my honour. As I shall not be there, that is very good of her. And I am to dance in spirit—as if one could do that. But, of course, she is awfully kind.”
“To herself, undoubtedly. She will dance into heaven some day and set the angels by the ears. How glorious to die to Strauss’s music with a dim suggestion of stairs and a conservatory—and, of course, a partner waiting. But these things do not interest you—now. You will be at the Niederwald while I am dressing.”
She shook hands with old General Uhrich, who was going back to the citadel, before she answered him.
“Oh, yes, we are going to Görsdorf, of course, but not to the castle. You remember our picnic there, when we had dinner in a vault? Some day Edmond will rebuild the house. We shall stay at thechâletfor some time, and afterwards we go on to Metz. I think that I should like that. There is always something eerie about a place which you can’t get into and can’t get out of.”
“A description applying to a prison, I imagine.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“When one is in France one must think as France does. I am proud of Metz already; and,of course, a soldier’s wife should interest herself in the things that interest him.”
“Especially when the marching orders carry him to the Rue de la Paix.”
She laughed brightly.
“We are going to Paris in January,” she said. “It will be Mecca to me. Imagine it, five years in France, and only one week to try on hats at Aines. I tell Edmond that I am not civilised. He owes it to himself to start an establishment on the Boulevard St. Germain and a box at the opera. Either that or a finishing school somewhere near the Bois. We could spend our holidays together—when he comes home from the wars.”
A shadow crossed the man’s face. He looked down upon her for a moment and saw an exquisite vision of lace and flowers and satin, and dark eyes full of laughter, and cheeks flushed with excitement, and a little hand upon which a circle of diamonds glittered, and another ring of plain gold. Never in his life before had he understood why men could die for women; but he thought that he understood it in that instant.
“You have taken the wars into consideration, then?” he said.
She turned to him with a strange look of fear and wonder.
“The wars—what wars?”
He passed it off with a jest.
“The social wars, of course; there could be no others.”
She had ceased to laugh, and was looking round the room for her husband.
“As if there could be,” she said determinedly. “Ask General de Failly. He says that we have only to whisper and all Europe will obey. How could there be any wars!”
It was perverse of such an old friend as Brandon—and so like him—to speak of such a thing at such a time. The argument, nevertheless, fascinated her strangely, and she would have continued it had not her husband come up while the words were still upon her lips. He was there to tell her that the train for Wörth left at half-past four.
“Ah,mon vieux,” he said gaily to Brandon, “I thought that you had deserted us to-day. Were you in the church, then?”
“I have just told Madame so.”
“And you heard her answer the bishop? They all heard it, Beatrix. And the General has sent an escort of lancers. They are on the Place now, waiting. We must not keep them nor Guillaumette at the other end.”
He spoke quickly and with unsuppressed excitement,and in his look there was that deep and unquestioning affection which marriage may wring for a day even from the worst of men. Dressed still in his brilliant blue uniform, with a shining czapska in his hand and his sword trailing upon the polished floor of wood, Beatrix thought that in all France there was no man worthy to stand by his side. Even the touch of his hand could make her tremble. She looked into his eyes and believed to read therein the whole story of his love for her. And she was his wife—his wife.
“I am ready, dearest,” she said. “I will go and change now—and you?”
“I shall want five minutes,” he said gaily; “after that the triumphal procession sets out.”
She left the room, unobserved. The men turned to the buffet.
“Shall we see you this winter here?” Lefort asked, while a sergeant filled him a glass of champagne.
Brandon answered evasively.
“I have no plans. I let the weather make them for me. If it is cold at Frankfort, you may hear of me in Nice. But you—you go to Paris, of course.”
Lefort nodded his head.
“There will be the manœuvres first, and after that the other manœuvres—at the bonnet shops. I am hoping that we shall be at Châlons next year. There are too many Germans in Strasburg, you see—and then, change is good for a bride. Beatrix is a stranger, and too much Vosges—but you do not drink. I am as thirsty as a trooper out of Baden. And to-morrow I shall wear a grey coat.Sac à papier, that will make me look like a German band.”
He laughed as a boy at the idea, and pledged the other in a second glass of wine.
“To your health, my friend.”
Brandon, outwardly the same unimpressionable, stolid fellow that they had always known him, just touched the rim of the upraised glass with his own, but he did not say “à ta santé” in his turn. His thoughts had already left the Place Kleber. He was thinking of that old thatched farmhouse in the Vosges mountains to which the man at his side was about to take Beatrix Hamilton. What freak of destiny brought such a day? He did not realise it even then. Beatrix married! The words echoed in his ears as a peal of ribald laughter. He turned from the buffet and went to stand upon the balcony, and to look down upon the escort of lancers gathered in the square below. The brilliant blue of their uniforms, the scarlet plumes of the czapskas, the pennants of the lances,the music of bands; the glitter, the colour, the whirl of it all were truly French. Yet this bizarre display was for her sake, for the sake of little Beatrix—for the sake of her who yesterday was free. How distant the day seemed! It had become of the past, irrevocable now. He would never live yesterday again. The page was written and the book was closed.
He did not enter the greatsalonagain nor add himself to the number of those who surrounded the bride at the moment of farewell. WhengrandmèreHélène took Beatrix in her arms, he heard the words she spoke, and they seemed an echo of his own thoughts.
“The days will be so long, so weary, my dearest girl,” she cried again and again, while the tears of love fell fast; but to Lefort she said, “I am giving you myself—my child! God bless you, Edmond.”
Brandon heard the words, yet did not move from his place upon the balcony. Others came out to stand with him, and saw that the strange, half-cynical smile was still upon his lips. In the great square the people began to cheer, the trumpets to blare again. He beheld an old family coach drawn up before the house. He watched the excited guests who remembered vague traditions of English weddings and scattered rice andflowers upon the English bride. For a long instant he saw Beatrix herself looking straight up at him. Then the carriage rolled away to the station; the lancers put their horses to a brisk trot. He heard no sound but that of weeping. The Countess was alone in the desertedsalon.
But Beatrix, with her husband’s hand held fast by hers, was asking herself why Brandon North had been the only one who had not said “good-bye” to her.