CHAPTER XIVNIGHTNightfell upon the field of Wörth, upon the bloody scenes and the upturned faces of the dead, and all the horrid sights of woe and desolation! Through the dark places of the hills the French were flying to Saverne; or even southward to the city of Strasburg itself. In the valley, where at dawn the whole glory of the day had shone, the wounded cried for succour and for death. Burning villages, beacon-fires, the lanterns of the human vultures gave light for the hour. A mighty host crossed the mountains, cavalrymen on foot, infantry upon horses, peasants mad with fear—the pursuing Uhlans everywhere.Beatrix heard the murmur of retreat; she did not quail before it. All her friends were fleeing from the doomed city; but she remained. Down there by the river where the vanquished had fallen, she searched, lantern in hand, for the body of her lover. Never once did she doubt that he was dead. She had watched the glittering horsemen as they rode from the woods; she had seen them fall as corn before the sickle.There could be no hope that Edmond lived, they told her. Above, on the heights, the home which was dear to her sent tongues of flame to illumine the darkness of the woods wherein her love-dream had been given. The Prussians had burned it. She had seen Frenchmen dead in the rooms of her house; she had listened to the fierce shouts of anger and of despair when the Prussians came up through the woods and drove their enemies before them. The stress of battle had closed about her with a mighty roar as of some stupendous storm raging in the hills. Hidden in a dark place, the trembling Guillaumette at her side, she had waited and had watched for help and for the tidings. But old Jules Picard, who had ridden down toward Wörth at sunset, returned no more. The day had willed the death even of this bent old man, she thought.“They will not harm old Jules Picard, Madame,” he had said.“I shall go to Morsbronn and bring the news. Those fellows do not shoot there any longer. The Captain will come back with me. He is down there somewhere; be sure of it. In one hour, in two, we will return—together.Ma foi, there is little life in this old body. Why should the Prussians want what is left? There will be dead enough to count by-and-by. Run to the woods, my child, and wait for me. It will not be long.”He went away as though his were the lightest errand in the world; but he did not deceive himself, and he said that Edmond Lefort must lie with those others, the cuirassiers, who nevermore would see the sun or hear a comrade’s voice. His real mission was to go up to the great château on the hill, the home of the Count of Durckheim, and to ask if any shelter were possible there for the girl-wife Lefort had entrusted to his keeping. Well he knew what the roads to Strasburg or to Saverne would be like that night. The maddened, despair-driven, flying hosts; the rolling waggons, the plunging horses; the throngs of fugitives become as devils—what hope for any woman abroad on such a journey? Far better that she should wait in her own woods. The storm would blow over to-morrow. All report said that the Germans knew how to treat the women of France.In the shadow of the woods Beatrix watched the advancing Prussians as they drove the French from the thickets and came upward, ever upward toward her home. She saw them in the sacred rooms of her own house; she was a witness of the last fierce onslaught when the Turcos fell in heaps before the arbour she had loved and theflames burst from those very windows which had shown her the white villages and the havens of silence. Some terrible judgment of God seemed to have fallen upon her. It was as though a sea of fire surged about her, lapping her with molten ripple, tossing in upon its terrible waves the bloody victims of war and passion. Ever in her ears a voice said: “He is dead; Edmond is dead.” She did not complain; she did not move from her watching place. She thought that surely she must die in the woods; that her eyes must be for ever closed to the terror of those sights and sounds; that in death she would hear her lover’s voice again.“The Turcos fell in heaps before the arbour.”At sunset the wave of battle was broken; the thunder of the human surf beat upon the distant villages, upon the remoter passes of the Vosges. There were Prussians everywhere; but such of the soldiers of France as remained were mute and heartbroken prisoners. Lights began to shine on the slopes now; she heard strange voices singing theWacht am Rhein, or the hymn which Luther wrote. German troopers went by at the gallop; but there were Prussians no longer at the châlet. The silence helped her to recollection. She crept from her hiding place, holding Guillaumette’s hand; and the greater truth of the night began to be known to her.“Oh, my God,” she said, “where shall we find a friend to-night, Guillaumette?”Guillaumette, afraid no longer since the storm of battle had passed, began to play the better part.“Ah,” she exclaimed, “if Monsieur had sent a man to us and not a bundle of bones upon a silly horse! What is the good of an old rat like that when the Prussians come?Ma foi!it would have been different if Gaspard were here! Do not cry for the house, Madame. We shall build another when the spring comes—and Monsieur will be back again. He will come to-night. I should not wonder—ah, Madame, if there were not tears in your eyes!”She clasped her hands; her own tears fell for the house which was but ashes, for the garden where the roses had bloomed; for all that had made their home.“Oh, the animals—to destroy our roses, Madame, to burn our house! As if it were our word which made the war! But Monsieur will come back. Oh, God, send him back to us this very night!”They stood together, brave women looking for the first time upon the face of war; and all the pity of war was in their hearts. A flicker of flame still played about the ruins of their house;the odour of burning wood and cloth was intolerable. In the left wing, where her boudoir had been, Beatrix could see the pictures shrivelled in their frames; the open piano black and scarred; even burnt paper upon the writing table. Elsewhere all had fallen. The garden was a muddy swamp. The horses were gone from the stables. Old Jacob had fled to Niederbronn at the dawn of the day. They stood alone, and all the dreadful omen of the night was about them.“We shall sleep in the woods, Madame—to-morrow Monsieur will come! Ah, if he should come to-morrow, and the news should be good, and we should go to Strasburg with him! Who could harm us in Strasburg, where the great guns roar, and the great forts rise up, and the soldiers are everywhere?Sainte Vierge—what a dream to dream! No Germans, no cannon, no hunger—are you not very hungry, dear Madame?”Beatrix answered as one who speaks in sleep.“I am not hungry, Guillaumette,” she said. “Monsieur will not come to-night. He is in Wörth. We are going to meet him. You will get a lantern and come with me. None will harm us. Are you afraid, Guillaumette?”“Afraid? I—Madame? Afraid of thevilains Prusses. As if one could be afraid! But we shall not go to-night. We are hungry, and we will beg our supper somewhere. Ah, Madame, the pity of it—our beautiful house—our home!”Beatrix did not heed her. Her eyes were dry. Her lips burned as the lips of one in a fever. A fixed idea was in her mind. She would find Edmond. She would seek him down there where the dead slept in the heart of the vineyards. He might be lying wounded and waiting for her, she thought. She could imagine his upturned face, his vigil of suffering, the kisses with which she would nurse him back to life again. A woman’s deepest sympathy, the sympathy of love, quickened her resolution. She was angry in her impatience.“Why do we wait, Guillaumette? Why do we stand here when Monsieur is expecting us? We cannot save the house now. There are lanterns in the stable—oh, my God, if we should be too late!”She drew her cloak close about her head and went quickly towards the ruins of the house. Guillaumette, watching her for a moment, dried up her tears. After all, there were men down there at Wörth, and someone would give them supper.“I will find the lantern, Madame—do not dirty your beautiful shoes. There are Prussians down yonder—the animals. And you are brave, Madame—oh, so brave. If those others had been like you!”She babbled on, taking a lantern from the shelf of the tottering stables and groping for matches there. In its way, the dreadful day had been welcome to her as the changing event of an unchanging life. She had a terrible fear of the woods, and she held her mistress’s hand when they began to go down towards the village, and the darkness of the thickets closed about their path. What sights that forest cloaked! A cry escaped her lips when the lantern showed her a Bavarian trooper sitting with his back against a tree, but quite dead in spite of the ghastly laugh about his lips. The bodies were everywhere. She saw in fancy the spirits of the dead hovering above the place of battle. The moan of a wounded chasseur, who crawled upon his hands and knees towards them, was a wail as of some evil thing hidden in the brake. She had no pity for the man. She craved for light—the lights of a city, the voices of men.Beatrix passed through the woods unconscious of their secrets. She went on with eyes half closed and lips compressed. Edmond was waiting for her in the vineyards where the dead lay. She did not see the terrible figures of the brake, the dying, or those that followed, ghoul-like, the pathof the destroyer. Once, indeed, a man with bloody hands and the eyes of a hawk sprang up from the path before her and disappeared into the undergrowth, believing that men and not women came to watch him. The face of the man made her heart stand still. She stepped back as one who had seen a figure from the very pit of hell. Guillaumette had fallen upon her knees to sob an hysterical prayer.“Sainte Vierge—what sights! Oh, God help us, Madame. Did you see the man? Did you see his face? There was blood upon it. I cannot go on. You will not leave me alone here—Jesus help me—I cannot go.”Beatrix took her hand and dragged her up.“Come,” she said, “Monsieur is waiting for us in the vineyards. Who will harm two women? Do you not hear the soldiers, Guillaumette?”A strange sound, the echo of guttural voices raised in merriment, came to them from the copse below. Men were singing a weird song of victory; lights danced in the interstices of the trees—cheering was heard, and the excited exclamations of the masqueraders. It would be the Prussians rejoicing by some bivouac fire, Beatrix thought. They would respect her errand. Even the trembling Guillaumette took heart when she knew that there were soldiers there.“Thevilains Prusses, Madame—hark to them,” she cried, forgetting her tears in a moment, “they have the voices of pigs, Madame. And they will give us supper, perhaps. Ah, if there should be supper there—”She stumbled on, and at the turn of the road they beheld the bivouac and the watch-fire burning brightly. A regiment of Uhlans made merry there; and never did troopers wear a uniform so strange. For these were the hussars who had broken open the baggage of the great MacMahon himself—strange baggage for a man and for those who followed the man. Dainty corsets were there, and hose of silk, and gowns which famous costumiers had made, and little white shoes of satin and bows of many hues, and even bonnets with gay feathers in them. The Uhlans, half drunk with the excitement of victory, greeted the treasures hilariously. Some of them had put on the cap of “Madame”; some wore the rustling skirts spangled with fine embroidery; some capered in the hats which had been the glory of the Bois. Ribald shouts greeted their pantomime. Officers looked on and spoke no word of rebuke. Bottles were raised to the absent owners. A very saturnalia heralded the night of victory.Guillaumette was all for seeking help of the Germans. They were merry fellows, as theirantics showed. She had seen no such spectacle since the marionettes were at Wörth a year ago.“Oh, the fine gowns, the silver and the gold, Madame! They will not harm us. The brutes—to dance such things in the mud. Are you not going to speak to them, to ask about Monsieur? Look at the splendid fellow in the yellow silk. He would be a Würtemberger! All the Würtembergers are animals—shall I go and ask him, Madame?”Beatrix ran on appalled. This carnival of ribaldry seemed as some picture from the nether world. That men should sing and dance, with the dying and the dead for their audience, was an infamy passing belief. Henceforth she avoided the beacon fires as she would have avoided the lamps of hell itself. The forest became a place of terror. She scarcely breathed until she had left it, and stood in the fields with the lamps of Wörth twinkling below, and the heaven of stars looking down upon the faces of those who cried to heaven for sleep and death.“We shall find Monsieur now, Guillaumette,” she said simply;“he will be waiting for us. Afterwards we will come to these poor people. If one only had the power to help them—the balm which would give them sleep! Is it not strange that we can walk here at all? Yesterday, when the dead man was in our stables, we dared not pass the door. To-night the dead are everywhere! There is no pity left in the world. Even the children are forgotten.”She spoke as one uttering thoughts which no other shared; but Guillaumette admitted none of her philosophy.“The Virgin be praised that I have no children this night!” she exclaimed. “And do not think that we shall find Monsieur here. He has gone to Strasburg with the others. Ask Monsieur the Curé, and he will tell you so. There would be shelter for you in the house of the curé, Madame. They do not eat the priests, those animals—and we are hungry, oh, so hungry!”They stood above the high-road to Strasburg at the moment and could see the patrols upon it, the glistening bayonets and the unresting Uhlans. Lights were moving in all the neighbouring villages. Watch-fires flamed upon the hills; the bugles blared incessantly. Everywhere the German cordon of possession was being drawn tight. Beatrix, in spite of herself, found her awe of this mighty, invincible host rapidly becoming a subtle fascination. Pity for France was there; but it gave place to an overmastering realisation of victory unrelenting, to a surpassing sympathy with the dying who heard no word of grace, with thewounded whose wounds were still unbound—with those alone and friendless in the terrible night. The army, the glorious army of yesterday—it was a rabble now, fleeing through the mountains impotently. That which amounted almost to contempt for its impotence was among her thoughts. It had left the bones of France to the enemy—it had left those children of France dying there in the darkness of the hills. For her it was a glorious army no more. Edmond alone remained to her. She saw that she would not eat nor sleep until she held his hand again.“Guillaumette,” she said, “go to the curé and tell him that I am here. If he will help me—”“But you will be alone, Madame.”“I shall be with Monsieur.”The girl shrugged her shoulders.“Va là—we shall breakfast to-morrow, and I can wait. Let us go on, Madame.”She knew that her mistress’s hallucinations were the outcome of that dreadful day; nor did she quarrel with them. There could be nothing worse than the sights the woods cloaked. The dead around her—she would not look upon their faces. The wounded—she put her fingers to her ears that she might not hear their cries! And they were drawing near to the houses of her own people now. The physical craving dominatedher. She was hungry, and all else was secondary to that.It was nearly midnight, and those who buried the dead were still at work in the open fields by the river. Beatrix saw their lanterns as changing clusters of stars upon the hillside. The pity in her heart was ever growing. A wounded horse came up and thrust its hot nose into her hand. She laid her cheek upon its face, and her tears fell fast. Fatigue had begun to master her. She had not eaten for many hours. No real belief that she would find her husband drove her on; only a pursuing idea, the idea that she must go out into the world, wandering, until she heard his voice again. Nor could she pick her way any longer. From field to field and road to road she went with heavy steps and a great pain at her heart, and pity—that unceasing pity—always prevailing above her own grief and sorrow for herself.And so she came at last to the watch-fires of a Prussian regiment of dragoons, and men, hearing a woman’s voice, sprang up and greeted her with a ribald welcome, and strong arms dragged her to the light. But the first coherent word spoken was the word of a friend; and looking up timidly she beheld Brandon North, the Englishman.
CHAPTER XIVNIGHTNightfell upon the field of Wörth, upon the bloody scenes and the upturned faces of the dead, and all the horrid sights of woe and desolation! Through the dark places of the hills the French were flying to Saverne; or even southward to the city of Strasburg itself. In the valley, where at dawn the whole glory of the day had shone, the wounded cried for succour and for death. Burning villages, beacon-fires, the lanterns of the human vultures gave light for the hour. A mighty host crossed the mountains, cavalrymen on foot, infantry upon horses, peasants mad with fear—the pursuing Uhlans everywhere.Beatrix heard the murmur of retreat; she did not quail before it. All her friends were fleeing from the doomed city; but she remained. Down there by the river where the vanquished had fallen, she searched, lantern in hand, for the body of her lover. Never once did she doubt that he was dead. She had watched the glittering horsemen as they rode from the woods; she had seen them fall as corn before the sickle.There could be no hope that Edmond lived, they told her. Above, on the heights, the home which was dear to her sent tongues of flame to illumine the darkness of the woods wherein her love-dream had been given. The Prussians had burned it. She had seen Frenchmen dead in the rooms of her house; she had listened to the fierce shouts of anger and of despair when the Prussians came up through the woods and drove their enemies before them. The stress of battle had closed about her with a mighty roar as of some stupendous storm raging in the hills. Hidden in a dark place, the trembling Guillaumette at her side, she had waited and had watched for help and for the tidings. But old Jules Picard, who had ridden down toward Wörth at sunset, returned no more. The day had willed the death even of this bent old man, she thought.“They will not harm old Jules Picard, Madame,” he had said.“I shall go to Morsbronn and bring the news. Those fellows do not shoot there any longer. The Captain will come back with me. He is down there somewhere; be sure of it. In one hour, in two, we will return—together.Ma foi, there is little life in this old body. Why should the Prussians want what is left? There will be dead enough to count by-and-by. Run to the woods, my child, and wait for me. It will not be long.”He went away as though his were the lightest errand in the world; but he did not deceive himself, and he said that Edmond Lefort must lie with those others, the cuirassiers, who nevermore would see the sun or hear a comrade’s voice. His real mission was to go up to the great château on the hill, the home of the Count of Durckheim, and to ask if any shelter were possible there for the girl-wife Lefort had entrusted to his keeping. Well he knew what the roads to Strasburg or to Saverne would be like that night. The maddened, despair-driven, flying hosts; the rolling waggons, the plunging horses; the throngs of fugitives become as devils—what hope for any woman abroad on such a journey? Far better that she should wait in her own woods. The storm would blow over to-morrow. All report said that the Germans knew how to treat the women of France.In the shadow of the woods Beatrix watched the advancing Prussians as they drove the French from the thickets and came upward, ever upward toward her home. She saw them in the sacred rooms of her own house; she was a witness of the last fierce onslaught when the Turcos fell in heaps before the arbour she had loved and theflames burst from those very windows which had shown her the white villages and the havens of silence. Some terrible judgment of God seemed to have fallen upon her. It was as though a sea of fire surged about her, lapping her with molten ripple, tossing in upon its terrible waves the bloody victims of war and passion. Ever in her ears a voice said: “He is dead; Edmond is dead.” She did not complain; she did not move from her watching place. She thought that surely she must die in the woods; that her eyes must be for ever closed to the terror of those sights and sounds; that in death she would hear her lover’s voice again.“The Turcos fell in heaps before the arbour.”At sunset the wave of battle was broken; the thunder of the human surf beat upon the distant villages, upon the remoter passes of the Vosges. There were Prussians everywhere; but such of the soldiers of France as remained were mute and heartbroken prisoners. Lights began to shine on the slopes now; she heard strange voices singing theWacht am Rhein, or the hymn which Luther wrote. German troopers went by at the gallop; but there were Prussians no longer at the châlet. The silence helped her to recollection. She crept from her hiding place, holding Guillaumette’s hand; and the greater truth of the night began to be known to her.“Oh, my God,” she said, “where shall we find a friend to-night, Guillaumette?”Guillaumette, afraid no longer since the storm of battle had passed, began to play the better part.“Ah,” she exclaimed, “if Monsieur had sent a man to us and not a bundle of bones upon a silly horse! What is the good of an old rat like that when the Prussians come?Ma foi!it would have been different if Gaspard were here! Do not cry for the house, Madame. We shall build another when the spring comes—and Monsieur will be back again. He will come to-night. I should not wonder—ah, Madame, if there were not tears in your eyes!”She clasped her hands; her own tears fell for the house which was but ashes, for the garden where the roses had bloomed; for all that had made their home.“Oh, the animals—to destroy our roses, Madame, to burn our house! As if it were our word which made the war! But Monsieur will come back. Oh, God, send him back to us this very night!”They stood together, brave women looking for the first time upon the face of war; and all the pity of war was in their hearts. A flicker of flame still played about the ruins of their house;the odour of burning wood and cloth was intolerable. In the left wing, where her boudoir had been, Beatrix could see the pictures shrivelled in their frames; the open piano black and scarred; even burnt paper upon the writing table. Elsewhere all had fallen. The garden was a muddy swamp. The horses were gone from the stables. Old Jacob had fled to Niederbronn at the dawn of the day. They stood alone, and all the dreadful omen of the night was about them.“We shall sleep in the woods, Madame—to-morrow Monsieur will come! Ah, if he should come to-morrow, and the news should be good, and we should go to Strasburg with him! Who could harm us in Strasburg, where the great guns roar, and the great forts rise up, and the soldiers are everywhere?Sainte Vierge—what a dream to dream! No Germans, no cannon, no hunger—are you not very hungry, dear Madame?”Beatrix answered as one who speaks in sleep.“I am not hungry, Guillaumette,” she said. “Monsieur will not come to-night. He is in Wörth. We are going to meet him. You will get a lantern and come with me. None will harm us. Are you afraid, Guillaumette?”“Afraid? I—Madame? Afraid of thevilains Prusses. As if one could be afraid! But we shall not go to-night. We are hungry, and we will beg our supper somewhere. Ah, Madame, the pity of it—our beautiful house—our home!”Beatrix did not heed her. Her eyes were dry. Her lips burned as the lips of one in a fever. A fixed idea was in her mind. She would find Edmond. She would seek him down there where the dead slept in the heart of the vineyards. He might be lying wounded and waiting for her, she thought. She could imagine his upturned face, his vigil of suffering, the kisses with which she would nurse him back to life again. A woman’s deepest sympathy, the sympathy of love, quickened her resolution. She was angry in her impatience.“Why do we wait, Guillaumette? Why do we stand here when Monsieur is expecting us? We cannot save the house now. There are lanterns in the stable—oh, my God, if we should be too late!”She drew her cloak close about her head and went quickly towards the ruins of the house. Guillaumette, watching her for a moment, dried up her tears. After all, there were men down there at Wörth, and someone would give them supper.“I will find the lantern, Madame—do not dirty your beautiful shoes. There are Prussians down yonder—the animals. And you are brave, Madame—oh, so brave. If those others had been like you!”She babbled on, taking a lantern from the shelf of the tottering stables and groping for matches there. In its way, the dreadful day had been welcome to her as the changing event of an unchanging life. She had a terrible fear of the woods, and she held her mistress’s hand when they began to go down towards the village, and the darkness of the thickets closed about their path. What sights that forest cloaked! A cry escaped her lips when the lantern showed her a Bavarian trooper sitting with his back against a tree, but quite dead in spite of the ghastly laugh about his lips. The bodies were everywhere. She saw in fancy the spirits of the dead hovering above the place of battle. The moan of a wounded chasseur, who crawled upon his hands and knees towards them, was a wail as of some evil thing hidden in the brake. She had no pity for the man. She craved for light—the lights of a city, the voices of men.Beatrix passed through the woods unconscious of their secrets. She went on with eyes half closed and lips compressed. Edmond was waiting for her in the vineyards where the dead lay. She did not see the terrible figures of the brake, the dying, or those that followed, ghoul-like, the pathof the destroyer. Once, indeed, a man with bloody hands and the eyes of a hawk sprang up from the path before her and disappeared into the undergrowth, believing that men and not women came to watch him. The face of the man made her heart stand still. She stepped back as one who had seen a figure from the very pit of hell. Guillaumette had fallen upon her knees to sob an hysterical prayer.“Sainte Vierge—what sights! Oh, God help us, Madame. Did you see the man? Did you see his face? There was blood upon it. I cannot go on. You will not leave me alone here—Jesus help me—I cannot go.”Beatrix took her hand and dragged her up.“Come,” she said, “Monsieur is waiting for us in the vineyards. Who will harm two women? Do you not hear the soldiers, Guillaumette?”A strange sound, the echo of guttural voices raised in merriment, came to them from the copse below. Men were singing a weird song of victory; lights danced in the interstices of the trees—cheering was heard, and the excited exclamations of the masqueraders. It would be the Prussians rejoicing by some bivouac fire, Beatrix thought. They would respect her errand. Even the trembling Guillaumette took heart when she knew that there were soldiers there.“Thevilains Prusses, Madame—hark to them,” she cried, forgetting her tears in a moment, “they have the voices of pigs, Madame. And they will give us supper, perhaps. Ah, if there should be supper there—”She stumbled on, and at the turn of the road they beheld the bivouac and the watch-fire burning brightly. A regiment of Uhlans made merry there; and never did troopers wear a uniform so strange. For these were the hussars who had broken open the baggage of the great MacMahon himself—strange baggage for a man and for those who followed the man. Dainty corsets were there, and hose of silk, and gowns which famous costumiers had made, and little white shoes of satin and bows of many hues, and even bonnets with gay feathers in them. The Uhlans, half drunk with the excitement of victory, greeted the treasures hilariously. Some of them had put on the cap of “Madame”; some wore the rustling skirts spangled with fine embroidery; some capered in the hats which had been the glory of the Bois. Ribald shouts greeted their pantomime. Officers looked on and spoke no word of rebuke. Bottles were raised to the absent owners. A very saturnalia heralded the night of victory.Guillaumette was all for seeking help of the Germans. They were merry fellows, as theirantics showed. She had seen no such spectacle since the marionettes were at Wörth a year ago.“Oh, the fine gowns, the silver and the gold, Madame! They will not harm us. The brutes—to dance such things in the mud. Are you not going to speak to them, to ask about Monsieur? Look at the splendid fellow in the yellow silk. He would be a Würtemberger! All the Würtembergers are animals—shall I go and ask him, Madame?”Beatrix ran on appalled. This carnival of ribaldry seemed as some picture from the nether world. That men should sing and dance, with the dying and the dead for their audience, was an infamy passing belief. Henceforth she avoided the beacon fires as she would have avoided the lamps of hell itself. The forest became a place of terror. She scarcely breathed until she had left it, and stood in the fields with the lamps of Wörth twinkling below, and the heaven of stars looking down upon the faces of those who cried to heaven for sleep and death.“We shall find Monsieur now, Guillaumette,” she said simply;“he will be waiting for us. Afterwards we will come to these poor people. If one only had the power to help them—the balm which would give them sleep! Is it not strange that we can walk here at all? Yesterday, when the dead man was in our stables, we dared not pass the door. To-night the dead are everywhere! There is no pity left in the world. Even the children are forgotten.”She spoke as one uttering thoughts which no other shared; but Guillaumette admitted none of her philosophy.“The Virgin be praised that I have no children this night!” she exclaimed. “And do not think that we shall find Monsieur here. He has gone to Strasburg with the others. Ask Monsieur the Curé, and he will tell you so. There would be shelter for you in the house of the curé, Madame. They do not eat the priests, those animals—and we are hungry, oh, so hungry!”They stood above the high-road to Strasburg at the moment and could see the patrols upon it, the glistening bayonets and the unresting Uhlans. Lights were moving in all the neighbouring villages. Watch-fires flamed upon the hills; the bugles blared incessantly. Everywhere the German cordon of possession was being drawn tight. Beatrix, in spite of herself, found her awe of this mighty, invincible host rapidly becoming a subtle fascination. Pity for France was there; but it gave place to an overmastering realisation of victory unrelenting, to a surpassing sympathy with the dying who heard no word of grace, with thewounded whose wounds were still unbound—with those alone and friendless in the terrible night. The army, the glorious army of yesterday—it was a rabble now, fleeing through the mountains impotently. That which amounted almost to contempt for its impotence was among her thoughts. It had left the bones of France to the enemy—it had left those children of France dying there in the darkness of the hills. For her it was a glorious army no more. Edmond alone remained to her. She saw that she would not eat nor sleep until she held his hand again.“Guillaumette,” she said, “go to the curé and tell him that I am here. If he will help me—”“But you will be alone, Madame.”“I shall be with Monsieur.”The girl shrugged her shoulders.“Va là—we shall breakfast to-morrow, and I can wait. Let us go on, Madame.”She knew that her mistress’s hallucinations were the outcome of that dreadful day; nor did she quarrel with them. There could be nothing worse than the sights the woods cloaked. The dead around her—she would not look upon their faces. The wounded—she put her fingers to her ears that she might not hear their cries! And they were drawing near to the houses of her own people now. The physical craving dominatedher. She was hungry, and all else was secondary to that.It was nearly midnight, and those who buried the dead were still at work in the open fields by the river. Beatrix saw their lanterns as changing clusters of stars upon the hillside. The pity in her heart was ever growing. A wounded horse came up and thrust its hot nose into her hand. She laid her cheek upon its face, and her tears fell fast. Fatigue had begun to master her. She had not eaten for many hours. No real belief that she would find her husband drove her on; only a pursuing idea, the idea that she must go out into the world, wandering, until she heard his voice again. Nor could she pick her way any longer. From field to field and road to road she went with heavy steps and a great pain at her heart, and pity—that unceasing pity—always prevailing above her own grief and sorrow for herself.And so she came at last to the watch-fires of a Prussian regiment of dragoons, and men, hearing a woman’s voice, sprang up and greeted her with a ribald welcome, and strong arms dragged her to the light. But the first coherent word spoken was the word of a friend; and looking up timidly she beheld Brandon North, the Englishman.
Nightfell upon the field of Wörth, upon the bloody scenes and the upturned faces of the dead, and all the horrid sights of woe and desolation! Through the dark places of the hills the French were flying to Saverne; or even southward to the city of Strasburg itself. In the valley, where at dawn the whole glory of the day had shone, the wounded cried for succour and for death. Burning villages, beacon-fires, the lanterns of the human vultures gave light for the hour. A mighty host crossed the mountains, cavalrymen on foot, infantry upon horses, peasants mad with fear—the pursuing Uhlans everywhere.
Beatrix heard the murmur of retreat; she did not quail before it. All her friends were fleeing from the doomed city; but she remained. Down there by the river where the vanquished had fallen, she searched, lantern in hand, for the body of her lover. Never once did she doubt that he was dead. She had watched the glittering horsemen as they rode from the woods; she had seen them fall as corn before the sickle.There could be no hope that Edmond lived, they told her. Above, on the heights, the home which was dear to her sent tongues of flame to illumine the darkness of the woods wherein her love-dream had been given. The Prussians had burned it. She had seen Frenchmen dead in the rooms of her house; she had listened to the fierce shouts of anger and of despair when the Prussians came up through the woods and drove their enemies before them. The stress of battle had closed about her with a mighty roar as of some stupendous storm raging in the hills. Hidden in a dark place, the trembling Guillaumette at her side, she had waited and had watched for help and for the tidings. But old Jules Picard, who had ridden down toward Wörth at sunset, returned no more. The day had willed the death even of this bent old man, she thought.
“They will not harm old Jules Picard, Madame,” he had said.“I shall go to Morsbronn and bring the news. Those fellows do not shoot there any longer. The Captain will come back with me. He is down there somewhere; be sure of it. In one hour, in two, we will return—together.Ma foi, there is little life in this old body. Why should the Prussians want what is left? There will be dead enough to count by-and-by. Run to the woods, my child, and wait for me. It will not be long.”
He went away as though his were the lightest errand in the world; but he did not deceive himself, and he said that Edmond Lefort must lie with those others, the cuirassiers, who nevermore would see the sun or hear a comrade’s voice. His real mission was to go up to the great château on the hill, the home of the Count of Durckheim, and to ask if any shelter were possible there for the girl-wife Lefort had entrusted to his keeping. Well he knew what the roads to Strasburg or to Saverne would be like that night. The maddened, despair-driven, flying hosts; the rolling waggons, the plunging horses; the throngs of fugitives become as devils—what hope for any woman abroad on such a journey? Far better that she should wait in her own woods. The storm would blow over to-morrow. All report said that the Germans knew how to treat the women of France.
In the shadow of the woods Beatrix watched the advancing Prussians as they drove the French from the thickets and came upward, ever upward toward her home. She saw them in the sacred rooms of her own house; she was a witness of the last fierce onslaught when the Turcos fell in heaps before the arbour she had loved and theflames burst from those very windows which had shown her the white villages and the havens of silence. Some terrible judgment of God seemed to have fallen upon her. It was as though a sea of fire surged about her, lapping her with molten ripple, tossing in upon its terrible waves the bloody victims of war and passion. Ever in her ears a voice said: “He is dead; Edmond is dead.” She did not complain; she did not move from her watching place. She thought that surely she must die in the woods; that her eyes must be for ever closed to the terror of those sights and sounds; that in death she would hear her lover’s voice again.
“The Turcos fell in heaps before the arbour.”
At sunset the wave of battle was broken; the thunder of the human surf beat upon the distant villages, upon the remoter passes of the Vosges. There were Prussians everywhere; but such of the soldiers of France as remained were mute and heartbroken prisoners. Lights began to shine on the slopes now; she heard strange voices singing theWacht am Rhein, or the hymn which Luther wrote. German troopers went by at the gallop; but there were Prussians no longer at the châlet. The silence helped her to recollection. She crept from her hiding place, holding Guillaumette’s hand; and the greater truth of the night began to be known to her.
“Oh, my God,” she said, “where shall we find a friend to-night, Guillaumette?”
Guillaumette, afraid no longer since the storm of battle had passed, began to play the better part.
“Ah,” she exclaimed, “if Monsieur had sent a man to us and not a bundle of bones upon a silly horse! What is the good of an old rat like that when the Prussians come?Ma foi!it would have been different if Gaspard were here! Do not cry for the house, Madame. We shall build another when the spring comes—and Monsieur will be back again. He will come to-night. I should not wonder—ah, Madame, if there were not tears in your eyes!”
She clasped her hands; her own tears fell for the house which was but ashes, for the garden where the roses had bloomed; for all that had made their home.
“Oh, the animals—to destroy our roses, Madame, to burn our house! As if it were our word which made the war! But Monsieur will come back. Oh, God, send him back to us this very night!”
They stood together, brave women looking for the first time upon the face of war; and all the pity of war was in their hearts. A flicker of flame still played about the ruins of their house;the odour of burning wood and cloth was intolerable. In the left wing, where her boudoir had been, Beatrix could see the pictures shrivelled in their frames; the open piano black and scarred; even burnt paper upon the writing table. Elsewhere all had fallen. The garden was a muddy swamp. The horses were gone from the stables. Old Jacob had fled to Niederbronn at the dawn of the day. They stood alone, and all the dreadful omen of the night was about them.
“We shall sleep in the woods, Madame—to-morrow Monsieur will come! Ah, if he should come to-morrow, and the news should be good, and we should go to Strasburg with him! Who could harm us in Strasburg, where the great guns roar, and the great forts rise up, and the soldiers are everywhere?Sainte Vierge—what a dream to dream! No Germans, no cannon, no hunger—are you not very hungry, dear Madame?”
Beatrix answered as one who speaks in sleep.
“I am not hungry, Guillaumette,” she said. “Monsieur will not come to-night. He is in Wörth. We are going to meet him. You will get a lantern and come with me. None will harm us. Are you afraid, Guillaumette?”
“Afraid? I—Madame? Afraid of thevilains Prusses. As if one could be afraid! But we shall not go to-night. We are hungry, and we will beg our supper somewhere. Ah, Madame, the pity of it—our beautiful house—our home!”
Beatrix did not heed her. Her eyes were dry. Her lips burned as the lips of one in a fever. A fixed idea was in her mind. She would find Edmond. She would seek him down there where the dead slept in the heart of the vineyards. He might be lying wounded and waiting for her, she thought. She could imagine his upturned face, his vigil of suffering, the kisses with which she would nurse him back to life again. A woman’s deepest sympathy, the sympathy of love, quickened her resolution. She was angry in her impatience.
“Why do we wait, Guillaumette? Why do we stand here when Monsieur is expecting us? We cannot save the house now. There are lanterns in the stable—oh, my God, if we should be too late!”
She drew her cloak close about her head and went quickly towards the ruins of the house. Guillaumette, watching her for a moment, dried up her tears. After all, there were men down there at Wörth, and someone would give them supper.
“I will find the lantern, Madame—do not dirty your beautiful shoes. There are Prussians down yonder—the animals. And you are brave, Madame—oh, so brave. If those others had been like you!”
She babbled on, taking a lantern from the shelf of the tottering stables and groping for matches there. In its way, the dreadful day had been welcome to her as the changing event of an unchanging life. She had a terrible fear of the woods, and she held her mistress’s hand when they began to go down towards the village, and the darkness of the thickets closed about their path. What sights that forest cloaked! A cry escaped her lips when the lantern showed her a Bavarian trooper sitting with his back against a tree, but quite dead in spite of the ghastly laugh about his lips. The bodies were everywhere. She saw in fancy the spirits of the dead hovering above the place of battle. The moan of a wounded chasseur, who crawled upon his hands and knees towards them, was a wail as of some evil thing hidden in the brake. She had no pity for the man. She craved for light—the lights of a city, the voices of men.
Beatrix passed through the woods unconscious of their secrets. She went on with eyes half closed and lips compressed. Edmond was waiting for her in the vineyards where the dead lay. She did not see the terrible figures of the brake, the dying, or those that followed, ghoul-like, the pathof the destroyer. Once, indeed, a man with bloody hands and the eyes of a hawk sprang up from the path before her and disappeared into the undergrowth, believing that men and not women came to watch him. The face of the man made her heart stand still. She stepped back as one who had seen a figure from the very pit of hell. Guillaumette had fallen upon her knees to sob an hysterical prayer.
“Sainte Vierge—what sights! Oh, God help us, Madame. Did you see the man? Did you see his face? There was blood upon it. I cannot go on. You will not leave me alone here—Jesus help me—I cannot go.”
Beatrix took her hand and dragged her up.
“Come,” she said, “Monsieur is waiting for us in the vineyards. Who will harm two women? Do you not hear the soldiers, Guillaumette?”
A strange sound, the echo of guttural voices raised in merriment, came to them from the copse below. Men were singing a weird song of victory; lights danced in the interstices of the trees—cheering was heard, and the excited exclamations of the masqueraders. It would be the Prussians rejoicing by some bivouac fire, Beatrix thought. They would respect her errand. Even the trembling Guillaumette took heart when she knew that there were soldiers there.
“Thevilains Prusses, Madame—hark to them,” she cried, forgetting her tears in a moment, “they have the voices of pigs, Madame. And they will give us supper, perhaps. Ah, if there should be supper there—”
She stumbled on, and at the turn of the road they beheld the bivouac and the watch-fire burning brightly. A regiment of Uhlans made merry there; and never did troopers wear a uniform so strange. For these were the hussars who had broken open the baggage of the great MacMahon himself—strange baggage for a man and for those who followed the man. Dainty corsets were there, and hose of silk, and gowns which famous costumiers had made, and little white shoes of satin and bows of many hues, and even bonnets with gay feathers in them. The Uhlans, half drunk with the excitement of victory, greeted the treasures hilariously. Some of them had put on the cap of “Madame”; some wore the rustling skirts spangled with fine embroidery; some capered in the hats which had been the glory of the Bois. Ribald shouts greeted their pantomime. Officers looked on and spoke no word of rebuke. Bottles were raised to the absent owners. A very saturnalia heralded the night of victory.
Guillaumette was all for seeking help of the Germans. They were merry fellows, as theirantics showed. She had seen no such spectacle since the marionettes were at Wörth a year ago.
“Oh, the fine gowns, the silver and the gold, Madame! They will not harm us. The brutes—to dance such things in the mud. Are you not going to speak to them, to ask about Monsieur? Look at the splendid fellow in the yellow silk. He would be a Würtemberger! All the Würtembergers are animals—shall I go and ask him, Madame?”
Beatrix ran on appalled. This carnival of ribaldry seemed as some picture from the nether world. That men should sing and dance, with the dying and the dead for their audience, was an infamy passing belief. Henceforth she avoided the beacon fires as she would have avoided the lamps of hell itself. The forest became a place of terror. She scarcely breathed until she had left it, and stood in the fields with the lamps of Wörth twinkling below, and the heaven of stars looking down upon the faces of those who cried to heaven for sleep and death.
“We shall find Monsieur now, Guillaumette,” she said simply;“he will be waiting for us. Afterwards we will come to these poor people. If one only had the power to help them—the balm which would give them sleep! Is it not strange that we can walk here at all? Yesterday, when the dead man was in our stables, we dared not pass the door. To-night the dead are everywhere! There is no pity left in the world. Even the children are forgotten.”
She spoke as one uttering thoughts which no other shared; but Guillaumette admitted none of her philosophy.
“The Virgin be praised that I have no children this night!” she exclaimed. “And do not think that we shall find Monsieur here. He has gone to Strasburg with the others. Ask Monsieur the Curé, and he will tell you so. There would be shelter for you in the house of the curé, Madame. They do not eat the priests, those animals—and we are hungry, oh, so hungry!”
They stood above the high-road to Strasburg at the moment and could see the patrols upon it, the glistening bayonets and the unresting Uhlans. Lights were moving in all the neighbouring villages. Watch-fires flamed upon the hills; the bugles blared incessantly. Everywhere the German cordon of possession was being drawn tight. Beatrix, in spite of herself, found her awe of this mighty, invincible host rapidly becoming a subtle fascination. Pity for France was there; but it gave place to an overmastering realisation of victory unrelenting, to a surpassing sympathy with the dying who heard no word of grace, with thewounded whose wounds were still unbound—with those alone and friendless in the terrible night. The army, the glorious army of yesterday—it was a rabble now, fleeing through the mountains impotently. That which amounted almost to contempt for its impotence was among her thoughts. It had left the bones of France to the enemy—it had left those children of France dying there in the darkness of the hills. For her it was a glorious army no more. Edmond alone remained to her. She saw that she would not eat nor sleep until she held his hand again.
“Guillaumette,” she said, “go to the curé and tell him that I am here. If he will help me—”
“But you will be alone, Madame.”
“I shall be with Monsieur.”
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
“Va là—we shall breakfast to-morrow, and I can wait. Let us go on, Madame.”
She knew that her mistress’s hallucinations were the outcome of that dreadful day; nor did she quarrel with them. There could be nothing worse than the sights the woods cloaked. The dead around her—she would not look upon their faces. The wounded—she put her fingers to her ears that she might not hear their cries! And they were drawing near to the houses of her own people now. The physical craving dominatedher. She was hungry, and all else was secondary to that.
It was nearly midnight, and those who buried the dead were still at work in the open fields by the river. Beatrix saw their lanterns as changing clusters of stars upon the hillside. The pity in her heart was ever growing. A wounded horse came up and thrust its hot nose into her hand. She laid her cheek upon its face, and her tears fell fast. Fatigue had begun to master her. She had not eaten for many hours. No real belief that she would find her husband drove her on; only a pursuing idea, the idea that she must go out into the world, wandering, until she heard his voice again. Nor could she pick her way any longer. From field to field and road to road she went with heavy steps and a great pain at her heart, and pity—that unceasing pity—always prevailing above her own grief and sorrow for herself.
And so she came at last to the watch-fires of a Prussian regiment of dragoons, and men, hearing a woman’s voice, sprang up and greeted her with a ribald welcome, and strong arms dragged her to the light. But the first coherent word spoken was the word of a friend; and looking up timidly she beheld Brandon North, the Englishman.