CHAPTER VITHE LAST DAY OF JULYThesun had hardly begun to shine upon the glades of the Niederwald on the last day of July when Beatrix opened the window of her bedroom and looked over the woods and the green vineyards to the little white town of Wörth and the glistening river in the hollow of the valley. It was her habit now to wake at dawn, for sleep had ceased to be her friend; and there was a morning hope of the sunshine as though the day would bring some news of Edmond or of his regiment. Sometimes in her dreams she would believe that the reality was but imagination, or that she would awake to hear her husband’s voice. Every step upon the road before the farmhouse quickened her heart, and sent her breathlessly to the garden gate. The ultimate hope, that all might yet be well, was the solace of many an hour. They told her in the village that peace must come before the grapes were ripe. “It will be a race,” the old curé said;“those Prussians will run to Berlin and we shall run after them. In a month Monsieur will be home again.”She listened to the old priest’s boast and loved him for it. The silence of the woodlands helped her to self-deception. What war could there be when the glades were sleeping in the sunshine, and the kingfisher hovered above the limpid pools, and the church bells sent their message to the heights, and all things were as yesterday in the homes of the simple people about her? The very word seemed an irony. Yet war had taken Edmond to Strasburg and to his regiment. War had left her alone in the first hour of happiness inexpressible!There had been rain all night, but the looming mists were scattered in the first hour of dawn on that last day of the month, and a surpassing freshness of the morning fell upon the glades and the gardens before her window. Every leaf had gathered its little gift of dew and husbanded the finest hues to give them out in a spectrum of violet and crimson, and the purest blues. Her roses shed their leaves upon the sparkling grass or lifted their heads to the dews in bursting blossoms and glossy petals. The very air seemed to rise up from a sea of the sweetest perfumes, and to fill the lungs with all the fulness of life realised. It was a scene of day glorified; a scene of Nature new-robed and awakened; of the apotheosis of solitudes. She gazed upon it,spell-bound and entranced. She could not remember yesterday in such an hour. Nevertheless, yesterday spoke to her—for there, upon the white road of the valley, the white road which the poplars fringed, was a regiment of chasseurs riding southward to Strasburg. Even at the window of her house she could hear the bugles blowing and the clatter of the waggons. The trumpet’s note thrilled her as a voice of war itself. She turned from the window and ran down to the kitchen of the house where Guillaumette was singing.“Good-day, Madame—you hear the soldiers! Oh, that is good—all day the music and at night the chasseurs. They are going to make the Prussians dance—hein? And then Monsieur will come home again. Do not doubt it at all, Madame. A month and there will be no more music. We shall all go to Strasburg and Monsieur will be a general. The curé says it, and he knows. A thousand horses in the village yesterday—and all night long the tramp, tramp, tramp! Oh, I can sleep well to the tramp, tramp, tramp—moi!I think of Gaspard, who has gone to bring me a mug from Berlin. There is nothing else in Berlin but mugs and sausages. That is why these Prussians are so fat. But they will run, run, run presently. The Emperor has gone to Metz—eh piff, pouf, boum, where is your Bismarck then!”Guillaumette was a wench of Grenoble, small of foot, relentless of tongue, with pretty hair and a young girl’s face against which the sun had warred in vain. To her, war and the rumour of war were an unbroken delight. There would be troopers in the hills all day. Why, then, should anyone be sad? She could not conceive that state of mind which brought tears to the eyes a second time for the lover who had gone to the wars. If he came home—it would be with gifts in his hand. If he did not come home—well, there were horsemen all day on the road to Strasburg. She spent her hours in the old kitchen, where the copper stove shone like a plate of gold; and when she was not singing “Allons, enfants de la patrie,” her ballad would be:—“Cent mille francsSont attrayants,Morbleu, j’en conviens sans peine,Mais ce tendronTriple escadronFait flotter mon âme incertaine.”Beatrix listened to her blithe words and took heart in spite of herself. This child of thepeople could teach her a lesson, she thought. It was a lesson of duty; a lesson which war may teach even to a woman.“Ah, Guillaumette,” she said, “if you were a prophetess—”“Chut, Madame, why should I be a prophetess to say that the Prussian louts are going to run? Look at the chasseurslà bas—the horses, the gold and silver, the splendid fellows. It is the same everywhere. Gaspard tells me so. Everywhere, everywhere, the music and the colour and the big moustaches of the cuirassiers—and not a Prussian in all the mountains. Why are we here, drinking our coffee as yesterday? It is because of the chasseurs who go to Berlin on their horses. Ah, Madame, if there were any bonnets there! If there were anything over yonder but the mugs and the beer—”She raked the fire angrily, and poured the steaming milk and coffee into the basins.“Dame,” she said triumphantly,“look at that. No wonder the Prussians come to the Rhine for coffee, Madame. You will drink it in the garden. And afterward the post. Oh, the blessed post with news of Monsieur and the army. And the sunshine: Madame will ride her pony to-day? Certainly she will. I will tell Jacob. He sleeps all day, the lazy one. The Prussians are coming, he says! Oh, the poltroon! They are thousand miles away. The curé says so. As if there could be a blue coat at Wörth! I laugh when I hear it. And the chasseurs in the village! It is splendid, this war!”She showed all her delight in her eyes—for war was a very carnival to her—a carnival which must people the hills with red breeches presently and awake the mountains to the martial music which quickened her steps and gladdened her heart. Hearing her, Beatrix could even tell herself that the supreme hour of her life had not been lived. How, if this little chatterer were right, and a month brought Edmond back to Wörth, and France were victorious, and all his joy of victory were added to her joys of love! She could dream of such a day on that morning of sunshine and of rest. For the white road was deserted again when she carried her coffee to the arbour of roses. The old white houses slept once more. The woods echoed to no music but the music of the leaves.It was at seven o’clock when the postman came and brought her two letters—a long one from Grandmère Hélène, who had left Geneva that day, and a short one from Edmond, whowas at Strasburg still, but spoke of an immediate march northward to Hagenau. “You will be able to drive over,chérie,” he said, “and I shall tell you everything. Here it is all noise and dust and trumpets all day. I cannot believe the things I see—I cannot believe that France is at war. We wait always. We go to sleep at night, and torches guide us to our beds, and students sing our lullaby. I have heard the Marseillaise a thousand times since yesterday. There is no road to the north which the waggons do not block and the troops follow. Ah,mignonne, if I could ride upon one of those roads to a little white house and take a little white figure in my arms! But the day will not be distant. The end is near. France will justify herself. I shall be at Hagenau before the month is out—and then—what a harvest time for us. And the vines will still be green. A thousand messages of love to the little wife who is waiting for me, and who has forgotten already that there is any other country but France.”She held the letter long, gazing wistfully over the woods which thrust themselves up to blot out the view of distant Hagenau. The words of love and confidence brought tears to her eyes. Yet was it true? she asked. Had she indeed forgotten those green lanes of Englandwherein her girlhood had been spent? Was she heart and soul faithful to this new country which had given her a home—and Edmond? She could not answer those questions, but crushed the letter in the bosom of her dress and told herself gladly that to-morrow might bring him to her—to-morrow he would tell her again that he loved her and that she was all to him.Old Hélène’s letter covered many pages. Beatrix skipped them, remembering what to-morrow would bring. Nevertheless, she could permit her imagination to see the beloved face, the trembling hand that wrote the wavering lines. The exhortation that she should return to Strasburg at once troubled her. She had no thought for the city, now that Edmond was to march out of it. The old farm had become a home like no other house which had ever received her. Every room seemed to whisper her lover’s name. A memory of him was written upon the most trifling ornament. The roses in her arbour were his roses. She treasured the very leaves of them. The woods retold her love in the murmur of brook and branches. She would not quit a house so dear to her, though all the armies of Germany had been at the gate of it.Thefacteurhad brought the letters at seven o’clock, but eight o’clock struck before she left the arbour and returned to tell her news to Guillaumette.“Monsieur will be at Hagenau to-morrow, Guillaumette. He may be here on Tuesday. The regiment is to march; his letter says so. And, of course, he would wish to have his friends here. We must be ready against that—he will expect it of us. It would never do to disgrace the châlet after all the things he will have told them. I am going down to Wörth now—”Guillaumette put her arms upon her hips and laughed loudly.“Vela, vela—we are going to Wörth now, and we forget that it is Sunday!”She had forgotten it, indeed, and she stood with a rosy flush upon her cheeks and the old straw bonnet swinging by its ribbons in her hand. The excitement of the week had robbed her of any memory of days. She heard the bells of the village churches, and all her English reverence for Sunday came to reproach her. Guillaumette, on her part, did not love the priests. She began to bustle about the kitchen again.“We shall not go to Wörth to-day,” she said.“We shall go to Mass to see if there are any soldiers there. That is what Sunday is for. There will be cuirassiers upon the road, and the hussars ride by to Bitche. I heard it in the village. If Monsieur comes back to-morrow and brings his friends, it will be the wine for which he will ask. It is always like that. Wine, wine, wine—and when the wine is all gone,bon jour! Oh, I know those fellows—I, Guillaumette. Do not think about them, Madame. They will drink us up—and then—to the wars!”There was no argument possible with Guillaumette when she had spoken. She was as imperious as a general of armies. Beatrix used to surrender at once, telling herself that Guillaumette was always right. And an idea came to her when she remembered that it was Sunday. She would ride her pony to that glade of the Niederbronn which had been the home of their picnic on the day that Edmond left her. She could not sit in a church, she thought. The deeper gifts of religious consolation were lost in the unrest and doubt of such an hour. The impulse to be doing something was irresistible.The sun was still shining when old Jacob brought the pony to the door, but scuds of grey and black cloud loomed above the valley, and the breeze had fallen away again until it wasscarce a whisper in the trees. She heard the bells of Wörth and of other villages, whose red roofs and white houses dotted the valley below her. But there were no soldiers upon the road, and everywhere it was as though the spirit of the God of peace had come upon the mountains.
CHAPTER VITHE LAST DAY OF JULYThesun had hardly begun to shine upon the glades of the Niederwald on the last day of July when Beatrix opened the window of her bedroom and looked over the woods and the green vineyards to the little white town of Wörth and the glistening river in the hollow of the valley. It was her habit now to wake at dawn, for sleep had ceased to be her friend; and there was a morning hope of the sunshine as though the day would bring some news of Edmond or of his regiment. Sometimes in her dreams she would believe that the reality was but imagination, or that she would awake to hear her husband’s voice. Every step upon the road before the farmhouse quickened her heart, and sent her breathlessly to the garden gate. The ultimate hope, that all might yet be well, was the solace of many an hour. They told her in the village that peace must come before the grapes were ripe. “It will be a race,” the old curé said;“those Prussians will run to Berlin and we shall run after them. In a month Monsieur will be home again.”She listened to the old priest’s boast and loved him for it. The silence of the woodlands helped her to self-deception. What war could there be when the glades were sleeping in the sunshine, and the kingfisher hovered above the limpid pools, and the church bells sent their message to the heights, and all things were as yesterday in the homes of the simple people about her? The very word seemed an irony. Yet war had taken Edmond to Strasburg and to his regiment. War had left her alone in the first hour of happiness inexpressible!There had been rain all night, but the looming mists were scattered in the first hour of dawn on that last day of the month, and a surpassing freshness of the morning fell upon the glades and the gardens before her window. Every leaf had gathered its little gift of dew and husbanded the finest hues to give them out in a spectrum of violet and crimson, and the purest blues. Her roses shed their leaves upon the sparkling grass or lifted their heads to the dews in bursting blossoms and glossy petals. The very air seemed to rise up from a sea of the sweetest perfumes, and to fill the lungs with all the fulness of life realised. It was a scene of day glorified; a scene of Nature new-robed and awakened; of the apotheosis of solitudes. She gazed upon it,spell-bound and entranced. She could not remember yesterday in such an hour. Nevertheless, yesterday spoke to her—for there, upon the white road of the valley, the white road which the poplars fringed, was a regiment of chasseurs riding southward to Strasburg. Even at the window of her house she could hear the bugles blowing and the clatter of the waggons. The trumpet’s note thrilled her as a voice of war itself. She turned from the window and ran down to the kitchen of the house where Guillaumette was singing.“Good-day, Madame—you hear the soldiers! Oh, that is good—all day the music and at night the chasseurs. They are going to make the Prussians dance—hein? And then Monsieur will come home again. Do not doubt it at all, Madame. A month and there will be no more music. We shall all go to Strasburg and Monsieur will be a general. The curé says it, and he knows. A thousand horses in the village yesterday—and all night long the tramp, tramp, tramp! Oh, I can sleep well to the tramp, tramp, tramp—moi!I think of Gaspard, who has gone to bring me a mug from Berlin. There is nothing else in Berlin but mugs and sausages. That is why these Prussians are so fat. But they will run, run, run presently. The Emperor has gone to Metz—eh piff, pouf, boum, where is your Bismarck then!”Guillaumette was a wench of Grenoble, small of foot, relentless of tongue, with pretty hair and a young girl’s face against which the sun had warred in vain. To her, war and the rumour of war were an unbroken delight. There would be troopers in the hills all day. Why, then, should anyone be sad? She could not conceive that state of mind which brought tears to the eyes a second time for the lover who had gone to the wars. If he came home—it would be with gifts in his hand. If he did not come home—well, there were horsemen all day on the road to Strasburg. She spent her hours in the old kitchen, where the copper stove shone like a plate of gold; and when she was not singing “Allons, enfants de la patrie,” her ballad would be:—“Cent mille francsSont attrayants,Morbleu, j’en conviens sans peine,Mais ce tendronTriple escadronFait flotter mon âme incertaine.”Beatrix listened to her blithe words and took heart in spite of herself. This child of thepeople could teach her a lesson, she thought. It was a lesson of duty; a lesson which war may teach even to a woman.“Ah, Guillaumette,” she said, “if you were a prophetess—”“Chut, Madame, why should I be a prophetess to say that the Prussian louts are going to run? Look at the chasseurslà bas—the horses, the gold and silver, the splendid fellows. It is the same everywhere. Gaspard tells me so. Everywhere, everywhere, the music and the colour and the big moustaches of the cuirassiers—and not a Prussian in all the mountains. Why are we here, drinking our coffee as yesterday? It is because of the chasseurs who go to Berlin on their horses. Ah, Madame, if there were any bonnets there! If there were anything over yonder but the mugs and the beer—”She raked the fire angrily, and poured the steaming milk and coffee into the basins.“Dame,” she said triumphantly,“look at that. No wonder the Prussians come to the Rhine for coffee, Madame. You will drink it in the garden. And afterward the post. Oh, the blessed post with news of Monsieur and the army. And the sunshine: Madame will ride her pony to-day? Certainly she will. I will tell Jacob. He sleeps all day, the lazy one. The Prussians are coming, he says! Oh, the poltroon! They are thousand miles away. The curé says so. As if there could be a blue coat at Wörth! I laugh when I hear it. And the chasseurs in the village! It is splendid, this war!”She showed all her delight in her eyes—for war was a very carnival to her—a carnival which must people the hills with red breeches presently and awake the mountains to the martial music which quickened her steps and gladdened her heart. Hearing her, Beatrix could even tell herself that the supreme hour of her life had not been lived. How, if this little chatterer were right, and a month brought Edmond back to Wörth, and France were victorious, and all his joy of victory were added to her joys of love! She could dream of such a day on that morning of sunshine and of rest. For the white road was deserted again when she carried her coffee to the arbour of roses. The old white houses slept once more. The woods echoed to no music but the music of the leaves.It was at seven o’clock when the postman came and brought her two letters—a long one from Grandmère Hélène, who had left Geneva that day, and a short one from Edmond, whowas at Strasburg still, but spoke of an immediate march northward to Hagenau. “You will be able to drive over,chérie,” he said, “and I shall tell you everything. Here it is all noise and dust and trumpets all day. I cannot believe the things I see—I cannot believe that France is at war. We wait always. We go to sleep at night, and torches guide us to our beds, and students sing our lullaby. I have heard the Marseillaise a thousand times since yesterday. There is no road to the north which the waggons do not block and the troops follow. Ah,mignonne, if I could ride upon one of those roads to a little white house and take a little white figure in my arms! But the day will not be distant. The end is near. France will justify herself. I shall be at Hagenau before the month is out—and then—what a harvest time for us. And the vines will still be green. A thousand messages of love to the little wife who is waiting for me, and who has forgotten already that there is any other country but France.”She held the letter long, gazing wistfully over the woods which thrust themselves up to blot out the view of distant Hagenau. The words of love and confidence brought tears to her eyes. Yet was it true? she asked. Had she indeed forgotten those green lanes of Englandwherein her girlhood had been spent? Was she heart and soul faithful to this new country which had given her a home—and Edmond? She could not answer those questions, but crushed the letter in the bosom of her dress and told herself gladly that to-morrow might bring him to her—to-morrow he would tell her again that he loved her and that she was all to him.Old Hélène’s letter covered many pages. Beatrix skipped them, remembering what to-morrow would bring. Nevertheless, she could permit her imagination to see the beloved face, the trembling hand that wrote the wavering lines. The exhortation that she should return to Strasburg at once troubled her. She had no thought for the city, now that Edmond was to march out of it. The old farm had become a home like no other house which had ever received her. Every room seemed to whisper her lover’s name. A memory of him was written upon the most trifling ornament. The roses in her arbour were his roses. She treasured the very leaves of them. The woods retold her love in the murmur of brook and branches. She would not quit a house so dear to her, though all the armies of Germany had been at the gate of it.Thefacteurhad brought the letters at seven o’clock, but eight o’clock struck before she left the arbour and returned to tell her news to Guillaumette.“Monsieur will be at Hagenau to-morrow, Guillaumette. He may be here on Tuesday. The regiment is to march; his letter says so. And, of course, he would wish to have his friends here. We must be ready against that—he will expect it of us. It would never do to disgrace the châlet after all the things he will have told them. I am going down to Wörth now—”Guillaumette put her arms upon her hips and laughed loudly.“Vela, vela—we are going to Wörth now, and we forget that it is Sunday!”She had forgotten it, indeed, and she stood with a rosy flush upon her cheeks and the old straw bonnet swinging by its ribbons in her hand. The excitement of the week had robbed her of any memory of days. She heard the bells of the village churches, and all her English reverence for Sunday came to reproach her. Guillaumette, on her part, did not love the priests. She began to bustle about the kitchen again.“We shall not go to Wörth to-day,” she said.“We shall go to Mass to see if there are any soldiers there. That is what Sunday is for. There will be cuirassiers upon the road, and the hussars ride by to Bitche. I heard it in the village. If Monsieur comes back to-morrow and brings his friends, it will be the wine for which he will ask. It is always like that. Wine, wine, wine—and when the wine is all gone,bon jour! Oh, I know those fellows—I, Guillaumette. Do not think about them, Madame. They will drink us up—and then—to the wars!”There was no argument possible with Guillaumette when she had spoken. She was as imperious as a general of armies. Beatrix used to surrender at once, telling herself that Guillaumette was always right. And an idea came to her when she remembered that it was Sunday. She would ride her pony to that glade of the Niederbronn which had been the home of their picnic on the day that Edmond left her. She could not sit in a church, she thought. The deeper gifts of religious consolation were lost in the unrest and doubt of such an hour. The impulse to be doing something was irresistible.The sun was still shining when old Jacob brought the pony to the door, but scuds of grey and black cloud loomed above the valley, and the breeze had fallen away again until it wasscarce a whisper in the trees. She heard the bells of Wörth and of other villages, whose red roofs and white houses dotted the valley below her. But there were no soldiers upon the road, and everywhere it was as though the spirit of the God of peace had come upon the mountains.
Thesun had hardly begun to shine upon the glades of the Niederwald on the last day of July when Beatrix opened the window of her bedroom and looked over the woods and the green vineyards to the little white town of Wörth and the glistening river in the hollow of the valley. It was her habit now to wake at dawn, for sleep had ceased to be her friend; and there was a morning hope of the sunshine as though the day would bring some news of Edmond or of his regiment. Sometimes in her dreams she would believe that the reality was but imagination, or that she would awake to hear her husband’s voice. Every step upon the road before the farmhouse quickened her heart, and sent her breathlessly to the garden gate. The ultimate hope, that all might yet be well, was the solace of many an hour. They told her in the village that peace must come before the grapes were ripe. “It will be a race,” the old curé said;“those Prussians will run to Berlin and we shall run after them. In a month Monsieur will be home again.”
She listened to the old priest’s boast and loved him for it. The silence of the woodlands helped her to self-deception. What war could there be when the glades were sleeping in the sunshine, and the kingfisher hovered above the limpid pools, and the church bells sent their message to the heights, and all things were as yesterday in the homes of the simple people about her? The very word seemed an irony. Yet war had taken Edmond to Strasburg and to his regiment. War had left her alone in the first hour of happiness inexpressible!
There had been rain all night, but the looming mists were scattered in the first hour of dawn on that last day of the month, and a surpassing freshness of the morning fell upon the glades and the gardens before her window. Every leaf had gathered its little gift of dew and husbanded the finest hues to give them out in a spectrum of violet and crimson, and the purest blues. Her roses shed their leaves upon the sparkling grass or lifted their heads to the dews in bursting blossoms and glossy petals. The very air seemed to rise up from a sea of the sweetest perfumes, and to fill the lungs with all the fulness of life realised. It was a scene of day glorified; a scene of Nature new-robed and awakened; of the apotheosis of solitudes. She gazed upon it,spell-bound and entranced. She could not remember yesterday in such an hour. Nevertheless, yesterday spoke to her—for there, upon the white road of the valley, the white road which the poplars fringed, was a regiment of chasseurs riding southward to Strasburg. Even at the window of her house she could hear the bugles blowing and the clatter of the waggons. The trumpet’s note thrilled her as a voice of war itself. She turned from the window and ran down to the kitchen of the house where Guillaumette was singing.
“Good-day, Madame—you hear the soldiers! Oh, that is good—all day the music and at night the chasseurs. They are going to make the Prussians dance—hein? And then Monsieur will come home again. Do not doubt it at all, Madame. A month and there will be no more music. We shall all go to Strasburg and Monsieur will be a general. The curé says it, and he knows. A thousand horses in the village yesterday—and all night long the tramp, tramp, tramp! Oh, I can sleep well to the tramp, tramp, tramp—moi!I think of Gaspard, who has gone to bring me a mug from Berlin. There is nothing else in Berlin but mugs and sausages. That is why these Prussians are so fat. But they will run, run, run presently. The Emperor has gone to Metz—eh piff, pouf, boum, where is your Bismarck then!”
Guillaumette was a wench of Grenoble, small of foot, relentless of tongue, with pretty hair and a young girl’s face against which the sun had warred in vain. To her, war and the rumour of war were an unbroken delight. There would be troopers in the hills all day. Why, then, should anyone be sad? She could not conceive that state of mind which brought tears to the eyes a second time for the lover who had gone to the wars. If he came home—it would be with gifts in his hand. If he did not come home—well, there were horsemen all day on the road to Strasburg. She spent her hours in the old kitchen, where the copper stove shone like a plate of gold; and when she was not singing “Allons, enfants de la patrie,” her ballad would be:—
“Cent mille francsSont attrayants,Morbleu, j’en conviens sans peine,Mais ce tendronTriple escadronFait flotter mon âme incertaine.”
Beatrix listened to her blithe words and took heart in spite of herself. This child of thepeople could teach her a lesson, she thought. It was a lesson of duty; a lesson which war may teach even to a woman.
“Ah, Guillaumette,” she said, “if you were a prophetess—”
“Chut, Madame, why should I be a prophetess to say that the Prussian louts are going to run? Look at the chasseurslà bas—the horses, the gold and silver, the splendid fellows. It is the same everywhere. Gaspard tells me so. Everywhere, everywhere, the music and the colour and the big moustaches of the cuirassiers—and not a Prussian in all the mountains. Why are we here, drinking our coffee as yesterday? It is because of the chasseurs who go to Berlin on their horses. Ah, Madame, if there were any bonnets there! If there were anything over yonder but the mugs and the beer—”
She raked the fire angrily, and poured the steaming milk and coffee into the basins.
“Dame,” she said triumphantly,“look at that. No wonder the Prussians come to the Rhine for coffee, Madame. You will drink it in the garden. And afterward the post. Oh, the blessed post with news of Monsieur and the army. And the sunshine: Madame will ride her pony to-day? Certainly she will. I will tell Jacob. He sleeps all day, the lazy one. The Prussians are coming, he says! Oh, the poltroon! They are thousand miles away. The curé says so. As if there could be a blue coat at Wörth! I laugh when I hear it. And the chasseurs in the village! It is splendid, this war!”
She showed all her delight in her eyes—for war was a very carnival to her—a carnival which must people the hills with red breeches presently and awake the mountains to the martial music which quickened her steps and gladdened her heart. Hearing her, Beatrix could even tell herself that the supreme hour of her life had not been lived. How, if this little chatterer were right, and a month brought Edmond back to Wörth, and France were victorious, and all his joy of victory were added to her joys of love! She could dream of such a day on that morning of sunshine and of rest. For the white road was deserted again when she carried her coffee to the arbour of roses. The old white houses slept once more. The woods echoed to no music but the music of the leaves.
It was at seven o’clock when the postman came and brought her two letters—a long one from Grandmère Hélène, who had left Geneva that day, and a short one from Edmond, whowas at Strasburg still, but spoke of an immediate march northward to Hagenau. “You will be able to drive over,chérie,” he said, “and I shall tell you everything. Here it is all noise and dust and trumpets all day. I cannot believe the things I see—I cannot believe that France is at war. We wait always. We go to sleep at night, and torches guide us to our beds, and students sing our lullaby. I have heard the Marseillaise a thousand times since yesterday. There is no road to the north which the waggons do not block and the troops follow. Ah,mignonne, if I could ride upon one of those roads to a little white house and take a little white figure in my arms! But the day will not be distant. The end is near. France will justify herself. I shall be at Hagenau before the month is out—and then—what a harvest time for us. And the vines will still be green. A thousand messages of love to the little wife who is waiting for me, and who has forgotten already that there is any other country but France.”
She held the letter long, gazing wistfully over the woods which thrust themselves up to blot out the view of distant Hagenau. The words of love and confidence brought tears to her eyes. Yet was it true? she asked. Had she indeed forgotten those green lanes of Englandwherein her girlhood had been spent? Was she heart and soul faithful to this new country which had given her a home—and Edmond? She could not answer those questions, but crushed the letter in the bosom of her dress and told herself gladly that to-morrow might bring him to her—to-morrow he would tell her again that he loved her and that she was all to him.
Old Hélène’s letter covered many pages. Beatrix skipped them, remembering what to-morrow would bring. Nevertheless, she could permit her imagination to see the beloved face, the trembling hand that wrote the wavering lines. The exhortation that she should return to Strasburg at once troubled her. She had no thought for the city, now that Edmond was to march out of it. The old farm had become a home like no other house which had ever received her. Every room seemed to whisper her lover’s name. A memory of him was written upon the most trifling ornament. The roses in her arbour were his roses. She treasured the very leaves of them. The woods retold her love in the murmur of brook and branches. She would not quit a house so dear to her, though all the armies of Germany had been at the gate of it.
Thefacteurhad brought the letters at seven o’clock, but eight o’clock struck before she left the arbour and returned to tell her news to Guillaumette.
“Monsieur will be at Hagenau to-morrow, Guillaumette. He may be here on Tuesday. The regiment is to march; his letter says so. And, of course, he would wish to have his friends here. We must be ready against that—he will expect it of us. It would never do to disgrace the châlet after all the things he will have told them. I am going down to Wörth now—”
Guillaumette put her arms upon her hips and laughed loudly.
“Vela, vela—we are going to Wörth now, and we forget that it is Sunday!”
She had forgotten it, indeed, and she stood with a rosy flush upon her cheeks and the old straw bonnet swinging by its ribbons in her hand. The excitement of the week had robbed her of any memory of days. She heard the bells of the village churches, and all her English reverence for Sunday came to reproach her. Guillaumette, on her part, did not love the priests. She began to bustle about the kitchen again.
“We shall not go to Wörth to-day,” she said.“We shall go to Mass to see if there are any soldiers there. That is what Sunday is for. There will be cuirassiers upon the road, and the hussars ride by to Bitche. I heard it in the village. If Monsieur comes back to-morrow and brings his friends, it will be the wine for which he will ask. It is always like that. Wine, wine, wine—and when the wine is all gone,bon jour! Oh, I know those fellows—I, Guillaumette. Do not think about them, Madame. They will drink us up—and then—to the wars!”
There was no argument possible with Guillaumette when she had spoken. She was as imperious as a general of armies. Beatrix used to surrender at once, telling herself that Guillaumette was always right. And an idea came to her when she remembered that it was Sunday. She would ride her pony to that glade of the Niederbronn which had been the home of their picnic on the day that Edmond left her. She could not sit in a church, she thought. The deeper gifts of religious consolation were lost in the unrest and doubt of such an hour. The impulse to be doing something was irresistible.
The sun was still shining when old Jacob brought the pony to the door, but scuds of grey and black cloud loomed above the valley, and the breeze had fallen away again until it wasscarce a whisper in the trees. She heard the bells of Wörth and of other villages, whose red roofs and white houses dotted the valley below her. But there were no soldiers upon the road, and everywhere it was as though the spirit of the God of peace had come upon the mountains.