VI

“A COMPANY OF TURCOS CAME UP”

“Where is the safest place for us to stay?” she asked. Her voice was perfectly steady.

“In the cellar. I beg you to go at once.”

Bang! a shell blew up in a shower of slates and knocked a chimney into a heap of bricks.

“Do you insist on staying by that loop-hole?” she asked, without a quiver in her voice.

“Yes, I do,” said I. “Will you go to the cellar?”

“No,” she said, shortly.

I saw her walk toward the rear of the room, hesitate, sink down by the edge of the bed and lay her face in the pillow.

Two shells burst with deafening reports in the street; the young Countess covered her face with both hands. Shell after shell came howling, whistling, whizzing into the village; the two hussars had disappeared, but a company of Turcos came up on a run and began to dig a trench across the street a hundred yards west of our turret.

How they made the picks and shovels fly! Shells tore through the air over them, bursting on impact with roof and chimney; the Turcos tucked up their blue sleeves, spat on their hands, and dug away like terriers, while their officers, smoking the eternal cigarette, coolly examined the distant landscape through their field-glasses.

Shells rained fast on Morsbronn; nearer and nearer bellowed the guns; the plaster ceiling above my head cracked and fell in thin flakes, filling the room with an acrid, smarting dust. Again and again metal fragments from shells rang out on the heavy walls of our turret; a roof opposite sank in; flames flickered up through clouds of dust; a heavy yellow smoke, swarming with sparks, rolled past my window.

Down the street a dull sound grew into a steady roar; the Turcos dropped pick and shovel and seized their rifles.76

“Garde! Garde à vous!” rang their startled bugles; the tumult increased to a swelling uproar, shouting, cheering, the crash of shutters and of glass, and—

“The Prussians!” bellowed the captain. “Turcos—charge!”

His voice was lost; a yelling mass of soldiery burst into view; spiked helmets and bayonets glittering through the smoke, the Turcos were whirled about like brilliant butterflies in a tornado; the fusillade swelled to a stupefying din, exploding in one terrible crash; and, wrapped in lightning, the Prussian onset passed.

From the stairs below came the sound of a voiceless struggle, the trample and panting and clicking of steel, till of a sudden a voice burst out into a dreadful screaming. A shot followed—silence—another shot—then the stairs outside shook under the rush of mounting men.

As the door burst open I felt a touch on my arm; the Countess de Vassart stood erect and pale, one slender, protecting hand resting lightly on my shoulder; a lieutenant of Prussian infantry confronted us; straight, heavy sword drawn, rigid, uncompromising, in his faultless gray-and-black uniform, with its tight, silver waist-sash.

“I do not have you thrown into the street,” he said to me, in excellent French, “because there has been no firing from the windows in this village. Otherwise—other measures. Be at ease, madame, I shall not harm your invalid.”

He glanced at me out of his near-sighted eyes, dropped the point of his sword to the stone floor, and slowly caressed his small, blond mustache.

“How many troops passed through here yesterday morning?” he asked.

I was silent.77

“There was artillery, was there not?”

I only looked at him.

“Do you hear?” he repeated, sharply. “You are a prisoner, and I am questioning you.”

“You have that useless privilege,” I observed.

“If you are insolent I will have you shot!” he retorted, staring haughtily at me.

I glanced out of the window.

There was a pause; the hand of the Countess de Vassart trembled on my shoulder.

Under the window strident Prussian bugles were blowing a harsh summons; the young officer stepped to the loop-hole and looked out, then hastily removed his helmet and thrust his blond head through the smoky aperture. “March those prisoners in below!” he shouted down.

Then he withdrew his head, put on his polished helmet of black leather, faced with the glittering Prussian eagle, and tightened the gold-scaled cheek-guard.

A moment later came a trample of feet on the landing outside, the door was flung open, and three prisoners were brutally pushed into the room.

I tried to turn and look at them; they stood in the dusk near the bed, but I could only make out that one was a Turco, his jacket in rags, his canvas breeches covered with mud.

Again the lieutenant came to the loop-hole and glanced out, then shook his head, motioning the soldiers back.

“It is too high and the arc of fire too limited,” he said, shortly. “Detail four men to hold the stairs, ten men and a sergeant in the room below, and you’d better take your prisoners down there. Bayonet that Turco tiger if he shows his teeth again. March!”

As the prisoners filed out I turned once more and thought I recognized Salah Ben-Ahmed in the78dishevelled Turco, but could not be certain, so disfigured and tattered the soldier appeared.

“Here, you hussar prisoner!” cried the lieutenant, pointing at me with his white-gloved finger, “turn your head and busy yourself with what concerns you. And you, madame,” he added, pompously, “see that you give us no trouble and stay in this room until you have permission to leave.”

“Are—are you speaking to me, monsieur?” asked the Countess, amazed. Then she rose, exasperated.

“Your insolence disgraces your uniform,” she said. “Go to your French prisoners and learn the rudiments of courtesy!”

The officer reddened to his colorless eyebrows; his little, near-sighted eyes became stupid and fixed; he smoothed the blond down on his upper lip with hesitating fingers.

Suddenly he turned and marched out, slamming the door violently behind him.

At this impudence the eyes of the Countess began to sparkle, and an angry flush mounted to her cheeks.

“Madame,” said I, “he is only a German boy, unbalanced by his own importance and his first battle. But he will never forget this lesson; let him digest it in his own manner.”

And he did, for presently there came a polite knock at the door, and the lieutenant reappeared, bowing rigidly, one hand on his sword-hilt, the other holding his helmet by the gilt spike.

“Lieutenant von Eberbach present to apologize,” he said, jerkily, red as a beet. “Begs permission to take a half-dozen of wine; men very thirsty.”

“Lieutenant von Eberbach may take the wine,” said the Countess, calmly.

“Rudeness without excuse!” muttered the boy;79“beg the graciously well-born lady not to judge my regiment or my country by it. Can Lieutenant von Eberbach make amends?”

“The Lieutenant has made them,” said the Countess. “The merciful treatment of French prisoners will prove his sincerity.”

The lad made another rigid bow and got himself out of the door with more or less dignity, and the Countess drew a chair beside my sofa-chair and sat down, eyes still bright with the cinders of a wrath I had never suspected in her.

Together we looked down into the street.

Under the window the flat, high-pitched drums began to rattle; deep voices shouted; the whole street undulated with masses of gray-and-black uniforms, moving forward through the smoke. A superb regimental band began to play; the troops broke out into heavy cheering.

“Vorwärts! Vorwärts!” came the steady commands. The band passed with a dull flash of instruments; a thousand brass helmet-spikes pricked the smoke; the tread of the Prussian infantry shook the earth.

“The invasion has begun,” I said.

Her face was expressionless, save for the brightness of her eyes.

And now another band sounded, playing “I Had a Comrade!” and the whole street began to ring with the noble marching-song of the coming regiment.

“Bavarian infantry,” I whispered, as the light-blue columns wheeled around the curve and came swinging up the street; for I could see the yellow crown on the collars of their tunics, and the heavy leather helmets, surmounted by chenille rolls.

Behind them trotted a squadron of Uhlans on their dainty horses, under a canopy of little black-and-white flags fluttering from the points of their lances.80

“Uhlans,” I murmured. I heard the faint click of her teeth closing tightly.

Hussars in crimson tunics, armed with curious weapons, half carbine, half pistol, followed the Uhlans, filling the smoky street with a flood of gorgeous color.

Suddenly a company of Saxon pioneers arrived on the double-quick, halted, fell out, and began to break down the locked doors of the houses on either side of the street. At the same time Prussian infantry came hurrying past, dragging behind them dozens of vehicles, long hay-wagons, gardeners’ carts, heavy wheelbarrows, even a dingy private carriage, with tarnished lamps, rocking crazily on rusty springs.

The soldiers wheeled these wagons into a double line, forming a complete chain across the street, where the Turcos had commenced to dig their ditch and breastworks—a barricade high enough to check a charge, and cunningly arranged, too, for the wooden abatis could not be seen from the eastern end of the street, where a charge of French infantry or cavalry must enter Morsbronn if it entered at all.

We watched the building of the barricade, fascinated. Soldiers entered the houses on either side of the street, only to reappear at the windows and thrust out helmeted heads. More soldiers came, running heavily—the road swarmed with them; some threw themselves flat under the wagons, some knelt, thrusting their needle-guns through the wheel-spokes; others remained standing, rifles resting over the rails of the long, skeleton hay-wagons.

“Something is going to happen,” I said, as a group of smartly uniformed officers appeared on the roof of the opposite house and hastily scrambled to the ridge-pole.

Something was surely going to happen; the officers81were using their field-glasses and pointing excitedly across the roof-tops; the windows of every house as far as I could see were black with helmets; a regiment in column came up on the double, halted, disintegrated, melting away behind walls, into yards, doorways, gardens.

A colonel of infantry, splendidly mounted, drew bridle under our loop-hole and looked up at the officers on the roof across the way.

“Attention, you up there!” he shouted. “Is it infantry?”

“No!” bawled an officer, hollowed hand to his cheek. “It’s their brigade of heavy cavalry coming like an earthquake!”

“The cuirassiers!” I cried, electrified. “It’s Michel’s cuirassiers, madame! And—oh, the barricade!” I groaned, twisting my fingers in helpless rage. “They’ll be caught in a trap; they’ll die like flies in that street.”

“This is horrible!” muttered the girl. “Don’t they know the street is blocked? Can’t they find out before they ride into this ravine below us? Will they all be killed here under our windows?”

She sprang to her feet, stood a moment, then stepped swiftly forward into the angle of the tower.

“Look there!” she cried, in terror.

“Push my chair—quick!” I said. She dragged it forward.

An old house across the street, which had been on fire, had collapsed into a mere mound of slate, charred beams, and plaster. Through the brown heat which quivered above the ruins I could see out into the country. And what I saw was a line of hills, crowned with smoke, a rolling stretch of meadow below, set here and there with shot-torn trees and hop-poles; and over this uneven ground two regiments of French82cuirassiers and two squadrons of lancers moving slowly forward as though on parade.

Above them, around them, clouds of smoke puffed up suddenly and floated away—the shells from Prussian batteries on the heights. Long, rippling crashes broke out, belting the fields with smoky breastworks, where a Prussian infantry regiment, knee-deep in smoke, was firing on the advancing cavalry.

The cuirassiers moved on slowly, the sun a blinding sheet of fire on their armor; now and then a horse tossed his beautiful head, now and then a steel helmet turned, flashing.

Grief-stricken, I groaned aloud: “Madame, there rides the finest cavalry in the world!—to annihilation.”

How could I know that they were coming deliberately to sacrifice themselves?—that they rode with death heavy on their souls, knowing well there was no hope, understanding that they were to die to save the fragments of a beaten army?

Yet something of this I suspected, for already I saw the long, dark Prussian lines overlapping the French flank; I heard the French mitrailleuses rattling through the cannon’s thunder, and I saw an entire French division, which I did not then know to be Lartigue’s, falling back across the hills.

And straight into the entire Prussian army rode the “grosse cavallerie” and the lancers.

“They are doomed, like their fathers,” I muttered—“sons of the cuirassiers of Waterloo. See what men can do for France!”

The young Countess started and stood up very straight.

“Look, madame!” I said, harshly—“look on the men of France! You say you do not understand the narrow love of country! Look!”83

“It is too pitiful, too horrible,” she said, hoarsely. “How the horses fall in that meadow!”

“They will fall thicker than that in this street!”

“See!” she cried; “they have begun to gallop! They are coming! Oh, I cannot look!—I—I cannot!”

Far away, a thin cry sounded above the cannon din; the doomed cuirassiers were cheering. It was the first charge they had ever made; nobody had ever seen cavalry of their arm on any battle-field of Europe since Waterloo.

Suddenly their long, straight blades shot into the air, the cuirassiers broke into a furious gallop, and that mass of steel-clad men burst straight down the first slope of the plateau, through the Prussian infantry, then wheeled and descended like a torrent on Morsbronn.

In the first ranks galloped the giants of the Eighth Cuirassiers, Colonel Guiot de la Rochere at their head; the Ninth Cuirassiers thundered behind them; then came the lancers under a torrent of red-and-white pennons. Nothing stopped them, neither hedges nor ditches nor fallen trees.

Their huge horses bounded forward, manes in the wind, tails streaming, iron hoofs battering the shaking earth; the steel-clad riders, sabres pointed to the front, leaned forward in their saddles.

Now among the thicket of hop-vines long lines of black arose; there was a flash, a belt of smoke, another flash—then the metallic rattle of bullets on steel breastplates. Entire ranks of cuirassiers went down in the smoke of the Prussian rifles, the sinister clash and crash of falling armor filled the air. Sheets of lead poured into them; the rattle of empty scabbards on stirrups, the metallic ringing of bullets on helmet and cuirass, the rifle-shots, the roar of the shells exploding swelled into a very hell of sound. And,84above the infernal fracas rose the heavy cheering of the doomed riders.

Into the deep, narrow street wheeled the horsemen, choking road and sidewalk with their galloping squadrons, a solid cataract of impetuous horses, a flashing torrent of armored men—and then! Crash! the first squadron dashed headlong against the barricade of wagons and went down.

Into them tore the squadron behind, unable to stop their maddened horses, and into these thundered squadron after squadron, unconscious of the dead wall ahead.

In the terrible tumult and confusion, screaming horses and shrieking men were piled in heaps, a human whirlpool formed at the barricade, hurling bodily from its centre horses and riders. Men galloped headlong into each other, riders struggled knee to knee, pushing, shouting, colliding.

Posted behind the upper and lower windows of the houses, the Prussians shot into them, so close that the flames from the rifles set the jackets of the cuirassiers on fire: a German captain opened the shutters of a window and fired his pistol at a cuirassier, who replied with a sabre thrust through the window, transfixing the German’s throat.

Then a horrible butchery of men and horses began; the fusillade became so violent and the scene so sickening that a Prussian lieutenant went crazy in the house opposite, and flung himself from the window into the mass of writhing horsemen. Tall cuirassiers, in impotent fury, began slashing at the walls of the houses, breaking their heavy sabres to splinters against the stones; their powerful horses, white with foam, reared, fell back, crushing their riders beneath them.

In front of the barricade a huge fellow reined in his horse and turned, white-gloved hand raised, red epaulets tossing.

“‘HALT! HALT!’ HE SHOUTED”

“Halt! Halt!” he shouted. “Stop the lancers!” And a trumpeter, disengaging himself from the frantic chaos, set his long, silver trumpet to his lips and blew the “Halt!”

A bullet rolled the trumpeter under his horse’s feet; a volley riddled the other’s horse, and the agonized animal reared and cleared the bristling abatis with a single bound, his rider dropping dead among the hay-wagons.

Then into this awful struggle galloped the two squadrons of the lancers. For a moment the street swam under their fluttering red-and-white lance-pennons, then a volley swept them—another—another—and down they went.

Herds of riderless horses tore through the street; the road undulated with crushed, quivering creatures crawling about. Against the doorway of a house opposite a noble horse in agony leaned with shaking knees, head raised, lips shrinking back over his teeth.

Bewildered, stupefied, exhausted, the cuirassiers sat in their saddles, staring up at the windows where the Prussians stood and fired. Now and then one would start as from a nightmare, turn his jaded horse, and go limping away down the street. The road was filled with horsemen, wandering helplessly about under the rain of bullets. One, a mere boy, rode up to a door, leaned from his horse and began to knock for admittance; another dismounted and sat down on a doorstep, head buried in his hands, regardless of the bullets which tore the woodwork around him.

The street was still crowded with entrapped cuirassiers, huddled in groups or riding up and down the walls mechanically seeking shelter. A few of these, dismounted, were wearily attempting to drag a heavy cart away from the barricade; the Prussians shot them, one at a time, but others came to help, and a86few lancers aided them, and at length they managed to drag a hay-wagon aside, giving a narrow passage to the open country beyond. Instantly the Prussian infantry swarmed out of the houses and into the street, shouting, “Prisoners!” pushing, striking, and dragging the exhausted cuirassiers from their saddles. But contact with the enemy, hand to hand, seemed to revive the fury of the armored riders. The débris of the regiments closed up, long, straight sabres glittered, trembling horses plunged forward, broke into a stiff gallop, and passed through the infantry, through the rent in the barricade, and staggered away across the fields, buried in the smoke of a thousand rifles.

So rode the “Cuirassiers of Morsbronn,” the flower of an empire’s chivalry, the elect of France. So rode the gentlemen of the Sixth Lancers to shiver their slender spears against stone walls—for the honor of France.

Death led them. Death rode with them knee to knee. Death alone halted them. But their shining souls galloped on into that vast Valhalla where their ancestors of Waterloo stood waiting, and the celestial trumpets pealed a last “Dismount!”

87VITHE GAME BEGINS

The room in the turret was now swimming in smoke and lime dust; I could scarcely see the gray figure of the Countess through the powder-mist which drifted in through shutters and loop-hole, dimming the fading daylight.

In the street a dense pall of pungent vapor hung over roof and pavement, motionless in the calm August air; two houses were burning slowly, smothered in smoke; through a ruddy fog I saw the dead lying in mounds, the wounded moving feebly, the Prussian soldiery tossing straw into the hay-carts that had served their deadly purpose.

But oh, the dreadful murmur that filled the heavy air, the tremulous, ceaseless plaint which comes from strong, muscular creatures, tenacious of life, who are dying and who die hard.

Helmeted figures swarmed through the smoke; wagon after wagon, loaded deep with dead cavalrymen, was drawn away by heavy teams of horses now arriving from the regimental transport train, which had come up and halted just at the entrance to the village.

And now wagon-loads of French wounded began to pass, jolting over crushed helmets, rifles, cuirasses, and the carcasses of dead horses.

A covey of Uhlans entered the shambles, picking88their way across the wreckage of the battle, a slim, wiry, fastidious company, dainty as spurred gamecocks, with their helmet-cords swinging like wattles and their schapskas tilted rakishly.

Then the sad cortège of prisoners formed in the smoke, the wounded leaning on their silent comrades, bandaged heads hanging, the others erect, defiant, supporting the crippled or standing with arms folded and helmeted heads held high.

And at last they started, between two files of mounted Uhlans—Turcos, line infantrymen, gendarmes, lancers, and, towering head and shoulders above the others, the superb cuirassiers.

A German general and his smartly uniformed staff came clattering up the slippery street and halted to watch the prisoners defile. And, as the first of the captive cuirassiers came abreast of the staff, the general stiffened in his saddle and raised his hand to his helmet, saying to his officers, loud enough for me to hear:

“Salute the brave, gentlemen!”

And the silent, calm-eyed cuirassiers passed on, heads erect, uniforms in shreds, their battered armor foul with smoke and mud, spurs broken, scabbards empty.

Troops of captured horses, conducted by Uhlans, followed the prisoners, then wagons piled high with rifles, sabres, and saddles, then a company of Uhlans cantering away with the shot-torn guidons of the cuirassiers.

Last of all came the wounded in their straw-wadded wagons, escorted by infantry; I heard them coming before I saw them, and, sickened, I closed my ears with my hands; yet even then the deep, monotonous groaning seemed to fill the room and vibrate through the falling shadows long after the last cart had creaked89out of sight and hearing into the gathering haze of evening.

The deadened booming of cannon still came steadily from the west, and it needed no messenger to tell me that the First Corps had been hurled back into Alsace, and that MacMahon’s army was in full retreat; that now the Rhine was open and the passage of the Vosges was clear, and Strasbourg must stand siege and Belfort and Toul must man their battlements for a struggle that meant victory, or an Alsace doomed and a Lorraine lost to France forever.

The room had grown very dark, the loop-hole admitting but little of the smoky evening sunset. Some soldiers in the hallway outside finally lighted torches; red reflections danced over the torn ceiling and plaster-covered floor, illuminating a corner where the Countess was sitting by the bedside, her head lying on the covers. How long she had been there I did not know, but when I spoke she raised her head and answered quietly.

In the torch-light her face was ghastly, her eyes red and dim as she came over to me and looked out into the darkness.

The woman was shaken terribly, shaken to the very soul. She had not seen all that I had seen; she had flinched before the spectacle of a butchery too awful to look upon, but she had seen enough, and she had heard enough to support or to confound theories formed through a young girl’s brief, passionless, eventless life.

Under the window soldiers began shooting the crippled horses; the heavy flash and bang of rifles set her trembling again.

Until the firing ceased she stood as though stupefied, scarcely breathing, her splendid hair glistening like molten copper in the red torches’ glare.90

A soldier came into the room and dragged the bedclothes from the bed, trailing them across the floor behind him as he departed. An officer holding a lantern peered through the door, his eye-glasses shining, his boots in his hand.

He evidently had intended to get into the bed, but when his gaze fell upon us he withdrew in his stockinged feet.

On the stairs soldiers were eating hunches of stale bread and knocking the necks from wine bottles with their bayonets. One lumpish fellow came to the door and offered me part of a sausage which he was devouring, a kindly act that touched me, and I wondered whether the other prisoners might find among their Uhlan guards the same humanity that moved this half-famished yokel to offer me the food he was gnawing.

Soldiers began to come and go in the room; some carried off chairs for officers below some took the pillows from the bed, one bore away a desk on his broad shoulders.

The Countess never moved or spoke.

The evening had grown chilly; I was cold to my knees.

A soldier offered to build me a fire in the great stone fireplace behind me, and when I assented he calmly smashed a chair to kindling-wood, wrenched off the heavy posts of the bed, and started a fire which lit up the wrecked room with its crimson glare.

The Countess rose and looked around. The soldier pushed my long chair to the blaze, tore down the canopy over the bed and flung it over me, stolidly ignoring my protests. Then he clumped out with his muddy boots and shut the door behind him.

For a long while I lay there, full in the heat of the fire, half dozing, then sleeping, then suddenly alert,91only to look about me to see the Countess with eyes closed, motionless in her arm-chair, only to hear the muffled thunder of the guns in the dark.

Once again, having slept, I roused, listening. The crackle of the flames was all I heard; the cannon were silent. A few moments later a clock in the hallway struck nine times. At the same instant a deadened cannon-shot echoed the clamor of the clock. It was the last shot of the battle. And when the dull reverberations had died away Alsace was a lost province, MacMahon’s army was in full retreat, leaving on the three battle-fields of Wörth, Reichshoffen, and Fröschweiler sixteen thousand dead, wounded, and missing soldiers of France.

All night long I heard cavalry traversing Morsbronn in an unbroken column, the steady trample of their horses never ceasing for an instant. At moments, from the outskirts of the village, the sinister sound of cheering came from the vanguard of the German Sixth Corps, just arriving to learn of the awful disaster to France. Too late to take any part in the battle, these tired soldiers stood cheering by regiments as the cavalry rode past in pursuit of the shattered army, and their cheering swelled to a terrific roar toward morning, when the Prince Royal of Prussia appeared with his staff, and the soldiers in Morsbronn rushed out into the street bellowing, “Hoch soll er leben! Er soll leben—Hoch!”

About seven o’clock that morning a gaunt, leather-faced Prussian officer, immaculate in his sombre uniform, entered the room without knocking. The young Countess turned in the depths of her chair; he bowed to her slightly, unfolded a printed sheet of paper which bore the arms of Prussia, hesitated, then said, looking directly at me:

“Morsbronn is now German territory and will92continue to be governed by military law, proclaimed under the state of siege, until the country is properly pacified.

“Honest inhabitants will not be disturbed. Citizens are invited to return to their homes and peacefully continue their legitimate avocations, subject to and under the guarantee of the Prussian military government.

“Monsieur, I have the honor to hand you a copy of regulations. I am the provost marshal; all complaints should be brought to me.”

I took the printed sheet and looked at the Prussian coat of arms.

“A list of the inhabitants of Morsbronn will be made to-day. You will have the goodness to declare yourself—and you also, madame. There being other buildings better fitted, no soldiers will be quartered in this house.”

The officer evidently mistook me for the owner of the house and not a prisoner. A blanket hid my hussar trousers and boots; he could only see my ragged shirt.

“And now, madame,” he continued, “as monsieur appears to need the services of a physician, I shall send him a French doctor, brought in this morning from the Château de la Trappe. I wish him to get well; I wish the inhabitants of my district to return to their homes and resume the interrupted régimes which have made this province of Alsace so valuable to France. I wish Morsbronn to prosper; I wish it well. This is the German policy.

“But, monsieur, let me speak plainly. I tolerate no treachery. The law is iron and will be applied with rigor. An inhabitant of my district who deceives me, or who commits an offence against the troops under my command, or who in any manner holds, or attempts to hold, communication with the enemy, will be shot without court-martial.”93

He turned his grim, inflexible face to the Countess and bowed, then he bowed to me, swung squarely on his heel, and walked to the door.

“Admit the French doctor,” he said to the soldier on guard, and marched out, his curved sabre banging behind his spurred heels.

“It must be Dr. Delmont!” I said, looking at the Countess as there came a low knock at the door.

“I am very thankful!” she said, her voice almost breaking. She rose unsteadily from her chair; somebody entered the room behind me and I turned, calling out, “Welcome, doctor!”

“Thank you,” replied the calm voice of John Buckhurst at my elbow.

The Countess shrank aside as Buckhurst coolly passed before her, turned his slim back to the embers of the fire, and fixed his eyes on me—those pale, slow eyes, passionless as death.

Here was a type of criminal I had never until recently known. Small of hand and foot—too small even for such a slender man—clean shaven, colorless in hair, skin, lips, he challenged instant attention by the very monotony of his bloodless symmetry. There was nothing of positive evil in his face, nothing of impulse, good or bad, nothing even superficially human. His spotless linen, his neat sack-coat and trousers of gray seemed part of him—like a loose outer skin. There was in his ensemble nothing to disturb the negative harmony, save perhaps an abnormal flatness of the instep and hands.

“My friend,” he observed, in English, “do you think you will know me again when you have finished your scrutiny?”

The Countess, face averted, passed behind my chair.

“Wait,” said Buckhurst; and turning directly to me, he added: “You were mistaken for a hussar at94La Trappe; you were mistaken here for a hussar as long as the squad holding this house remained in Morsbronn. A few moments ago the provost mistook you for a civilian.” He looked across at the Countess, who already stood with her hand on the door-knob.

“If you disturb me,” he said, “I have only to tell the provost the truth. Members of the Imperial Police caught without proper uniform inside German lines are shot, séance tenante.”

The Countess stood perfectly still a moment, then came straight to me.

“Is that true?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

She still leaned forward, looking down into my face. Then she turned to Buckhurst.

“Do you want money?” she asked.

“I want a chair—and your attention for the present,” he replied, and seated himself.

The printed copy of the rules handed me by the provost marshal lay on the floor. Buckhurst picked up the sheet, glanced at the Prussian eagle, and thoughtfully began rolling the paper into a grotesque shape.

“Sit down, madame,” he said, without raising his eyes from the bit of paper which he had now fashioned into a cocked hat.

After a moment’s silent hesitation the Countess drew a small gilt chair beside my sofa-chair and sat down, and again that brave, unconscious gesture of protection left her steady hand lying lightly on my arm.

Buckhurst noted the gesture. And all at once I divined that whatever plan he had come to execute had been suddenly changed. He looked down at the paper in his hands, gave it a thoughtful twist, and, drawing the ends out, produced a miniature paper boat.95

“We are all in one like that,” he observed, holding it up without apparent interest. He glanced at the young Countess; her face was expressionless.

“Madame,” said Buckhurst, in his peculiarly soft and persuasive voice, “I am not here to betray this gentleman; I am not here even to justify myself. I came here to make reparation, to ask your forgiveness, madame, for the wrong I have done you, and to deliver myself, if necessary, into the hands of the proper French authorities in expiation of my misguided zeal.”

The Countess was looking at him now; he fumbled with the paper boat, gave it an unconscious twist, and produced a tiny paper box.

“The cause,” he said, gently, “to which I have devoted my life must not suffer through the mistake of a fanatic; for in the cause of universal brotherhood I am, perhaps, a fanatic, and to aid that cause I have gravely compromised myself. I came here to expiate that folly and to throw myself upon your mercy, madame.”

“I do not exactly understand,” said I, “how you can expiate a crime here.”

“I can at least make restitution,” he said, turning the paper box over and over between his flat fingers.

“Have you brought me the diamonds which belong to the state?” I inquired, amused.

“Yes,” he said, and to my astonishment he drew a small leather pouch from his pocket and laid it on my blanket-covered knees. “How many diamonds were there?” he asked.

“One hundred and three,” I replied, incredulously, and opened the leather pouch. Inside was a bag of chamois-skin. This I stretched wide and emptied.

Scores of little balls of tissue-paper rolled out on the blanket over my knees; I opened one; it contained a96diamond; I opened another, another, and another; diamonds lay blazing on my blanket, a whole handful, glittering in undimmed splendor.

“Count them,” murmured Buckhurst, fashioning the paper box into a fly-trap with a lid.

With a quick movement I swept them into my hands, then one by one dropped the stones while I counted aloud one hundred and two diamonds. The one hundred and third jewel was, of course, safely in Paris.

When I had a second time finished the enumeration I leaned back in my chair, utterly at a loss to account for this man or for what he had done. As far as I could see there was no logic in it, nothing demonstrated, nothing proven. To me—and I am not either suspicious or obstinate by nature—Buckhurst was still an unrepentant thief and a dangerous one.

I could see in him absolutely nothing of the fanatic, of the generous, feather-headed devotee, nothing of the hasty disciple or the impulsive martyr. In my eyes he continued to be the passionless master-criminal, the cold, slow-eyed source of hidden evil, the designer of an intricate and viewless intrigue against the state.

His head remained bent over the paper toy in his hands. Was his hair gray with age or excesses, or was it only colorless like the rest of his exterior?

“Restitution is not expiation,” he said, sadly, without looking up. “I loved the cause; I love it still; I practised deception, and I am here to ask this gentle lady to forgive me for an unworthy yet unselfish use of her money and her hospitality. If she can pardon me I welcome whatever punishment may be meted out.”

The Countess dropped her elbow on the arm of my chair and rested her face in her hand.

“Swept away by my passion for the cause of universal brotherhood,” said Buckhurst, in his low, caressing97voice, “I ventured to spend this generous lady’s money to carry the propaganda into the more violent centres of socialism—into the clubs in Montmartre and Belleville. There I urged non-resistance; I pleaded moderation and patience. What I said helped a little, I think—”

He hesitated, twisting his fly-box into a paper creature with four legs.

“I was eager; people listened. I thought that if I had a little more money I might carry on this work.... I could not come to you, madame—”

“Why not?” said the Countess, looking at him quickly. “I have never refused you money!”

“No,” he said, “you never refused me. But I knew that La Trappe was mortgaged, that even this house in Morsbronn was loaded with debt. I knew, madame, that in all the world you had left but one small roof to cover you—the house in Morbihan, on Point Paradise. I knew that if I asked for money you would sell Paradise,... and I could not ask so much,... I could not bring myself to ask that sacrifice.”

“And so you stole the crucifix of Louis XI.,” I suggested, pleasantly.

He did not look at me, but the Countess did.

“Bon,” I thought, watching Buckhurst’s deft fingers; “he means to be taken back into grace. I wonder exactly why? And ... is it worth this fortune in diamonds to him to be pardoned by a penniless girl whom he and his gang have already stripped?”

“Could you forgive me, madame?” murmured Buckhurst.

“Would you explain that stick of dynamite first?” I interposed.

The Countess turned and looked directly at Buckhurst. He sat with humble head bowed, nimbly constructing a paper bird.98

“That was not dynamite; it was concentrated phosphorus,” he said, without resentment. “Naturally it burned when you lighted it, but if you had not burned it I could easily have shown Madame la Comtesse what it really was.”

“I also,” said I, “if I had thrown it at your feet, Mr. Buckhurst.”

“Do you not believe me?” he asked, meekly, looking up at the Countess.

“Mr. Buckhurst,” said the young Countess, turning to me, “has aided me for a long time in experiments. We hoped to find some cheap method of restoring nitrogen and phosphorus to the worn-out soil which our poor peasants till. Why should you doubt that he speaks the truth? At least he is guiltless of any connection with the party which advocated violence.”

I looked at Buckhurst. He was engaged in constructing a multi-pointed paper star. What else was he busy with? Perhaps I might learn if I ceased to manifest distrust.

“Does concentrated phosphorus burn like dynamite?” I asked, as if with newly aroused interest.

“Did you not know it?” he said, warily.

But was he deceived by my manner? Was that the way for me to learn anything?

There was perhaps another way. Clearly this extraordinary man depended upon his persuasive eloquence for his living, for the very shoes on his little, flat feet, as do all such chevaliers of industry. If he would only begin to argue, if I could only induce him to try his eloquence on me, and if I could convince him that I myself was but an ignorant, self-centred, bullet-headed gendarme, doing my duty only because of perspective advancement, ready perhaps to take bribes—perhaps even weakly, covetously, credulous—well, perhaps I might possibly learn why he desired to cling99to this poor young lady, whose life had evidently gone dreadfully to smash, to land her among such a coterie of thieves and lunatics.

“Mr. Buckhurst,” I said, pompously, “in bringing these diamonds to me you have certainly done all in your power to repair an injury which concerned all France.

“As I am situated, of course I cannot now ask you to accompany me to Paris, where doubtless the proper authorities would gladly admit extenuating circumstances, and credit you with a sincere repentance. But I put you on your honor to surrender at the first opportunity.”

It was as stupidly trite a speech as I could think of.

Buckhurst glanced up at me. Was he taking my measure anew, judging me from my bray?

“I could easily aid you to leave Morsbronn,” he said, stealthily.

“O-ho,” thought I, “so you’re a German agent, too, as I suspected.” But I said, aloud, simulating astonishment: “Do you mean to say, Mr. Buckhurst, that you would deliberately risk death to aid a police officer to bring you before a military tribunal in Paris?”

“I do not desire to pose as a hero or a martyr,” he said, quietly, “but I regret what I have done, and I will do what an honest man can do to make the fullest reparation—even if it means my death.”

I gazed at him in admiration—real admiration—because the gross bathos he had just uttered betrayed a weakness—vanity. Now I began to understand him; vanity must also lead him to undervalue men. True, with the faintest approach to eloquence he could no doubt hold the “Clubs” of Belleville spellbound; with self-effacing adroitness to cover stealthy persuasion, he had probably found little difficulty in dominating this inexperienced girl, who, touched to the soul with100pity for human woe, had flung herself and her fortune to the howling proletariat.

But that he should so serenely undervalue me at my first bray was more than I hoped for. So I brayed again, the good, old, sentimental bray, for which all Gallic lungs are so marvellously fashioned:

“Monsieur, such sentiments honor you. I am only a rough soldier of the Imperial Police, but I am profoundly moved to find among the leaders of the proletariat such delicate and chivalrous emotions—” I hesitated. Was I buttering the sop too thickly?

Buckhurst, eyes bent on the floor, began picking to pieces his paper toy. Presently he looked up, not at me, but at the Countess, who sat with hands clasped earnestly watching him.

“If—if the state pardons me, can ... you?” he murmured.

She looked at him with intense earnestness. I saw he was sailing on the wrong tack.

“I have nothing to pardon,” she said, gravely. “But I must tell you the truth, Mr. Buckhurst, I cannot forget what you have done. It was something—the one thing that I cannot understand—that I can never understand—something so absolutely alien to me that it—somehow—leaves me stunned. Don’t ask me to forget it.... I cannot. I do not mean to be harsh and cruel, or to condemn you. Even if you had taken the jewels from me, and had asked my forgiveness, I would have given it freely. But I could not be as I was, a comrade to you.”

There was a silence. The Countess, looking perfectly miserable, still gazed at Buckhurst. He dropped his gray, symmetrical head, yet I felt that he was listening to every minute sound in the room.

“You must not care what I say,” she said. “I am only an unhappy woman, unused to the liberty I have101given myself, not yet habituated to the charity of those blameless hearts which forgive everything! I am a novice, groping my way into a new and vast world, a limitless, generous, forgiving commune, where love alone dominates.... And if I had lived among my brothers long enough to be purged of those traditions which I have drawn from generations, I might now be noble enough and wise enough to say I do forgive and forget that you—”

“That you were once a thief,” I ended, with the genial officiousness of the hopelessly fat-minded.

In the stillness I heard Buckhurst draw in his breath—once. Some day he would try to kill me for that; in the mean time my crass stupidity was no longer a question in his mind. I had hurt the Countess, too, with what she must have believed a fool’s needless brutality. But it had to be so if I played at Jaques Bonhomme.

So I put the finishing whine to it—“Our Lord died between two thieves”—and relapsed into virtuous contemplation of my finger-tips.

“Madame,” said Buckhurst, in a low voice, “your contempt of me is part of my penalty. I must endure it. I shall not complain. But I shall try to live a life that will at least show you my deep sincerity.”

“I do not doubt it,” said the Countess, earnestly. “Don’t think that I mean to turn away from you or to push you away. There is nothing of the Pharisee in me. I would gladly trust you with what I have. I will consult you and advise with you, Mr. Buckhurst—”

“And ... despise me.”

The unhappy Countess looked at me. It goes hard with a woman when her guide and mentor falls.

“If you return to Paradise, in Morbihan,... as we had planned, may I go,” he asked, humbly, “only as102an obscure worker in the cause? I beg, madame, that you will not cast me off.”

So he wanted to go to Morbihan—to the village of Paradise? Why?

The Countess said: “I welcome all who care for the cause. You will never hear an unkind word from me if you desire to resume the work in Paradise. Dr. Delmont will be there; Monsieur Tavernier also, I hope; and they are older and wiser than I, and they have reached that lofty serenity which is far above my troubled mind. Ask them what you have asked of me; they are equipped to answer you.”

It was time for another discord from me, so I said: “Madame, you have seen a thousand men lay down their lives for France. Has it not shaken your allegiance to that ghost of patriotism which you call the ’Internationale’?”

Here was food for thought, or rather fodder for asses—the Police Oracle turned missionary under the nose of the most cunning criminal in France and the vainest. Of course Buckhurst’s contempt for me at once passed all bounds, and, secure in that contempt, he felt it scarcely worth while to use his favorite weapon—persuasion. Still, if the occasion should require it, he was quite ready, I knew, to loose his eloquence on the Countess, and on me too.

The Countess turned her troubled eyes to me.

“What I have seen, what I have thought since yesterday has distressed me dreadfully,” she said. “I have tried to include all the world in a broader pity, a broader, higher, and less selfish love than the jealous, single-minded love for one country—”

“The mother-land,” I said, and Buckhurst looked up, adding, “The world is the true mother-land.”

Whereupon I appeared profoundly impressed at such a novel and epigrammatic view.103

“There is much to be argued on both sides,” said the young Countess, “but I am utterly unfitted to struggle with this new code of ethics. If it had been different—if I had been born among the poor, in misery!—But you see I come a pilgrim among the proletariat, clothed in conservatism, cloaked with tradition, and if at heart I burn with sorrow for the miserable, and if I gladly give what I have to help, I cannot with a single gesture throw off those inherited garments, though they tortured my body like the garment of Nessus.”

I did not smile or respect her less for the stilted phrases, the pathetic poverty of metaphor. Profoundly troubled, struggling with a reserve the borders of which she strove so bravely to cross, her distress touched me the more because I knew it aroused the uneasy contempt of Buckhurst. Yet I could not spare her.

“You saw the cuirassiers die in the street below,” I repeated, with the obstinacy of a limited intellect.

“Yes—and my heart went out to them,” she replied, with an emphasis that pleased me and startled Buckhurst.

Buckhurst began to speak, but I cut him short.

“Then, madame, if your heart went out to the soldiers of France, it went out to France, too!”

“Yes—to France,” she repeated, and I saw her lip begin to quiver.

“Wherein does love for France conflict with our creed, madame?” asked Buckhurst, gently. “It is only hate that we abjure.”

She turned her gray eyes on him. “I will tell you: in that dreadful moment when the cavalry of France cheered Death in his own awful presence, I loved them and their country—mycountry!—as I had never loved in all my life.... And I hated, too! I hated the104men who butchered them—more!—I hated the country where the men came from; I hated race and country and the blows they dealt, and the evil they wrought on France—my France! That is the truth; and I realize it!”

There was a silence; Buckhurst slowly unrolled the wrinkled paper he had been fingering.

“And now?” he asked, simply.

“Now?” she repeated. “I don’t know—truly, I do not know.” She turned to me sorrowfully. “I had long since thought that my heart was clean of hate, and now I don’t know.” And, to Buckhurst, again: “Our creed teaches us that war is vile—a savage betrayal of humanity by a few dominant minds; a dishonorable ingratitude to God and country. But from that window I saw men die for honor of France with God’s name on their lips. I saw one superb cuirassier, trapped down there in the street, sit still on his horse, while they shot at him from every window, and I heard him call up to a Prussian officer who had just fired at him: ‘My friend, you waste powder; the heart of France is cuirassed by a million more like me!’” A rich flush touched her face; her gray eyes grew brighter.

“Is there a Frenchwoman alive whose blood would not stir at such a scene?” she said. “They shot him through his armor, his breastplate was riddled, he clung to his horse, always looking up at the riflemen, and I heard the bullets drumming on his helmet and his cuirass like hailstones on a tin roof, and I could not look away. And all the while he was saying, quietly: ‘It is quite useless, friends; France lives! You waste your powder!’ and I could not look away or close my eyes—”

She bent her head, shivering, and her interlocked fingers whitened.105

“I only know this,” she said: “I will give all I have—I will give my poor self to help the advent of that world-wide brotherhood which must efface national frontiers and end all war in this sad world. But if you ask me, in the presence of war, to look on with impartiality, to watch my own country battling for breath, to stop my ears when a wounded mother-land is calling, to answer the supreme cry of France with a passionless cry, ‘Repent!’ I cannot do it—I will not! I was not born to!”

Deeply moved, she had risen, confronting Buckhurst, whose stone-cold eyes were fixed on her.

“You say I hold you unworthy,” she said. “Others may hold me, too, unworthy because I have not reached that impartial equipoise whence, impassive, I can balance my native land against its sins and watch blind justice deal with it all unconcerned.

“In theory I have done it—oh, it is simple to teach one’s soul in theory! But when my eyes saw my own land blacken and shrivel like a green leaf in the fire, and when with my own eyes I saw the best, the noblest, the crown of my country’s chivalry fall rolling in the mud of Morsbronn under the feet of Prussia, every drop of blood in my body was French—hot and red and French! And it is now; and it will always be—as it has always been, though I did not understand.”

After a silence Buckhurst said: “All that may be, madame, yet not impair your creed.”

“What!” she said, “does not hatred of the stranger impair my creed?”

“It will die out and give place to reason.”

“When? When I attain the lofty, dispassionate level I have never attained? That will not be while this war endures.”

“Who knows?” said Buckhurst, gently.106

“I know!” replied the Countess, the pale flames in her cheeks deepening again.

“And yet,” observed Buckhurst, patiently, “you are going to Paradise to work for the Internationale.”

“I shall try to do my work and love France,” she said, steadily. “I cannot believe that one renders the other impossible.”

“Yet,” said I, “if you teach the nation non-resistance, what would become of the armies of France?”

“I shall not teach non-resistance until we are at peace,” she said—“until there is not a German soldier left in France. After that I shall teach acquiescence and personal liberty.”

I looked at her very seriously; logic had no dwelling-place within her tender and unhappy heart.

And what a hunting-ground was that heart for men like Buckhurst! I could begin to read that mouse-colored gentleman now, to follow, after a fashion, the intricate policy which his insolent mind was shaping—shaping in stealthy contempt for me and for this young girl. Thus far I could divine the thoughts of Mr. Buckhurst, but there were other matters to account for. Why did he choose to spare my life when a word would have sent me before the peloton of execution? Why had he brought to me the fortune in diamonds which he had stolen? Why did he eat humble-pie before a young girl from whom he and his companions had wrung the last penny? Why did he desire to go to Morbihan and be received among the elect in the Breton village of Paradise?

I said, abruptly: “So you are not going to denounce me to the Prussian provost?”

He lifted his well-shaped head and gazed at the Countess with an admirable pathos which seemed a mute appeal for protection from brutality.

“That question is a needless one,” said the Countess,107quietly. “It was a cruel one, also, Monsieur Scarlett.”

“I did not mean it as an offensive question,” said I. “I was merely reciting a fact, most creditable to Mr. Buckhurst. Mon Dieu, madame, I am an officer of Imperial Police, and I have lived to hear blunt questions and blunter answers. And if it be true that Monsieur Buckhurst desires to atone for—for what has happened, then it is perfectly proper for me, even as a prisoner myself, to speak plainly.”

I meant this time to thoroughly convince Buckhurst of my ability to gabble platitude. My desire that he should view me as a typical gendarme was intense.

So I coughed solemnly behind my hand, knit my eyebrows, and laid one finger alongside of my nose.

“Is it not my duty, as a guardian of national interests, to point out to Mr. Buckhurst his honest errors? Certainly it is, madame, and this is the proper time.”

Turning pompously to Buckhurst, I fancied I could almost detect a sneer on that inexpressive mask he wore—at least I hoped I could, and I said, heavily:

“Monsieur, for a number of years there has passed under our eyes here in France certain strange phenomena. Thousands of Frenchmen have, so to speak, separated themselves from the rest of the nation.

“All the sentiments that the nation honors itself by professing these other Frenchmen rebuke—the love of country, public spirit, accord between citizens, social repose, and respect for communal law and order—these other Frenchmen regard as the hallucinations of a nation of dupes.

“Separated by such unfortunate ideas from the nation within whose boundaries they live, they continue to abuse, even to threaten, the society and the country which gives them shelter.

“France is only a name to them; they were born there,108they live there, they derive their nourishment from her without gratitude. But France is nothing to them;their mother-land is the Internationale!”

I was certain now that the shadow of a sneer had settled in the corners of Buckhurst’s thin lips.

“I do not speak of anarchists or of terrorists,” I continued, nodding as though profoundly impressed by my own sagacity. “I speak of socialists—that dangerous society to which the cry of Karl Marx was addressed with the warning, ‘Socialists! Unite!’

“The government has reason to fear socialism, not anarchy, for it will never happen in France, where the passion for individual property is so general, that a doctrine of brutal destruction could have the slightest chance of success.

“But wait, here is the point, Monsieur Buckhurst. Formerly the name of ’terrorist’ was a shock to the entire civilized world; it evoked the spectres of a year that the world can never forget. And so our modern reformers, modestly desiring to evade the inconveniences of such memories among the people, call themselves the ’Internationale.’ Listen to them; they are adroit, they blame and rebuke violence, they condemn anarchy, they would not lay their hands on public or individual property—no, indeed!

“Ah, madame, but you should hear them in their own clubs, where the ladies and gentlemen of the gutters, the barriers, and the abattoirs discuss ‘individual property,’ ’the tyranny of capital,’ and similar subjects which no doubt they are peculiarly fitted to discuss.

“Believe me, madame, the little coterie which you represent is already the dupe and victim of this terrible Internationale. Their leaders work their will through you; a vast conspiracy against all social peace is spread through your honest works of mercy.109The time is coming when the whole world will rise to combat this Internationale; and when the mask is dragged from its benignant visage, there, grinning behind, will appear the same old ’Spectre Rouge,’ torch in one hand, gun in the other, squatting behind a barricade of paving-blocks.”

I wagged my head dolefully.

“I could not have rested had I not warned Mr. Buckhurst of this,” I said, sentimentally.

Which was fairly well done, considering that I was figuratively lamenting over the innocence of the most accomplished scoundrel that ever sat in the supreme council of the Internationale.

Buckhurst looked thoughtfully at the floor.

“If I thought,” he murmured—“if I believed for one instant—”

“Believe me, my dear sir,” I said, “that you are playing into the hands of the wickedest villains on earth!”

“Your earnestness almost converts me,” he said, lifting his stealthy eyes.

The Countess appeared weary and perplexed.

“At all events,” she said, “we must do nothing to embarrass France now; we must do nothing until this frightful war is ended.”

After a silence Buckhurst said, “But you will go to Paradise, madame?”

“Yes,” replied the Countess, listlessly.

Now, what in Heaven’s name attracted that rogue to Paradise?

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