'And yet you fight for those horrible barbarians, the Prussians?' exclaimed the young lady.
'I am a soldier of fortune, my dear child,' said Charlie, laughing, for the girl was only in her fifteenth year, apparently, and he could not but remember that Ernestine was one of those 'horrible barbarians.'
'I could have guessed as much,' said the girl.
'How, Mademoiselle?
'By a certain boldness in your bearing, and by something in your eyes that tells of——' she paused shyly and coloured at her own impetuosity.
'An expression that tells of what?' asked Charlie.
'I don't know, unless it is of—sorrow.'
'You are an acute observer, Mademoiselle,' said Charlie, bowing. 'I have indeed undergone much sorrow but lately.'
The girl had a pretty, innocent, and most lovable little face. She was, probably, half German in blood; her eyes were bright blue; her cheeks delicate and peach-like; her lips a ruddy red, though cheek and lips were ashy white with terror when Charlie first saw her, being pulled about roughly by the Bavarians, who had boisterously dragged her from one another, under the eyes of her helpless and agonized father.
She nestled up to Charlie's side, and shaking the masses of her rich brown hair—hair that in its tint reminded him of Herminia—she put a pretty hand on each of his epaulettes, and looking into his face with pure childish confidence, said—
'I shall like you. I am sure I shall. I am so happy you are not one of those barbarians, though you do wear a spike-helmet!'
'Why? How should you like me?'
'Can you ask mewhy, Monsieur, after saving our lives? In gratitude, I can love you and pray for you.'
Charlie laughed, and said—
'Ma belle, I am, indeed, thankful that we were in time to turn these marauders out of doors.'
And then he thought of his three sisters at home, and what his emotions would be if such a scene, as he had just interrupted, had taken place in his father's quiet house in Warwickshire.
'What is your name, Monsieur?' she asked, 'as I must never forget it.'
'Carl—Charles Pierrepont.'
She repeated it two or three times, and laughing, said:
'It sounds very droll!'
Charlie could not help laughing at the girl'snaïvemanner, and thought that the old Warwickshire squire, who was fond of deducing his descent from Robert, who received the manor of Hurstpierpoint, in Sussex, from the Conqueror, would have found nothing 'droll' in it.
'And what is yours, Mademoiselle?'
'Célandine—Célandine de Caillé.'
'Well, I cannot say it isdroll. I think it very pretty.'
'Your little rebuke is a just one, Monsieur,' said the smiling old gentleman, who, had Charlie been a genuine Prussian, would little have relished all this conversation between him and his daughter.
'We shall be very good friends, I doubt not, for to-night, at least, Monsieur.'
'Only for to-night?'
'To-morrow shall relieve you of our hateful presence, as we shall probably move against Metz.'
'Don't say "hateful," Monsieur, when we owe you so much, and esteem you so much,' urged Célandine.
'Ernestine will never have a rival, even here,' thought Charlie, as he begged them to excuse him, as he had to go his rounds, and, with his sergeant, post fresh sentinels.
That duty done, he undid his belt, but without undressing, threw himself on a sofa, and, utterly exhausted and worn out by the whole events of the day, oblivious of the presence of Mademoiselle de Caillé and her father in the dining-room, he slept as soundly as Hood's old woman,
'Who might have worn a percussion cap,And been knocked on the head without hearing it snap.'
The night passed over quietly, and without alarm; but with dawn of day came an officer of Uhlans, attended by a trumpeter, flying at full speed along the line of advanced posts, calling in all the out-pickets, while the King was probably already telegraphing to Berlin as usual:—
'Another new victory! Thank God for His mercy!'
Referring to the official pietism of the Prussian monarch at this crisis, a very impartial historian of the war says thus:—'How little his armies were controlled by regard for humanity—the most essential element of any religion—will appear in lurid colours. Abu Bekr, the successor of Mohammed, enjoined his soldiers not to kill old people, women, or children; to cut down no palm-trees, nor burn any fields of corn; to spare all fruit-trees; and slay no cattle but such as they could take for their own use. But the Prussians made a desert of France, burned villages and small towns, and treated old people and women with horrible barbarity. But they were prodigal of religious words, and words with many have too often a greater weight than facts.'
But with all this, it should be borne in mind, from past experience of French invading armies, how would those of the Emperor have behaved had they reached Berlin?
One of a thousand of such episodes, as were daily occurring along the frontiers of Alsace and Lorraine, would no doubt have desolated for ever the household of M. de Caillé but for the timely arrival of Pierrepont and his twenty Thuringians.
Aware of this, when the Uhlan trumpet sounded, Célandine de Caillé, like most young girls, a light sleeper, heard it before the war-worn Charlie, and pale and startled, came forth in the prettiest of morning robes to bid him farewell, and to stuff his havresack, and the havresacks of his men (though they were Prussians), with all that the Bavarians had not consumed last night.
Charlie thought how fresh and radiant the young girl looked in her white morning dress, with blue breastknots, and a ribbon of the same colour in her hair, a soft light shining in her blue eyes, and a little colour in her peach-like cheek, that reminded him of Ernestine; but, ah! who was like Ernestine?
A soldier fresh from one battle and going forth to fight another is an object of interest to all; but a handsome, frank, and free-hearted young fellow, like Charlie Pierrepont, was doubly so to an impassionable girl like Mademoiselle de Caillé; thus her blue eyes filled with tears as he kissed her tremulous little hand, which, like her taper arm, came so delicately forth from the wide-laced sleeves of her dress.
'Why are there tears in your eyes, Mademoiselle?' asked Charlie, with a kind smile.
'Because, Monsieur, I pity you.'
'Pity me!'
'Indeed I do, Monsieur. Most earnestly.'
'And why?'
'Because you are too young, and too good and kind, to be killed. Oh!' continued the girl, looking up in his face, 'I implore you to go home—home to your own England—home to your mother, if you have one, and leave these odious Prussians to fight their own battles.'
'It is too late, my pretty friend.'
'How so?'
'The die is cast that makes me—Prussian.'
'Will another horrible battle be fought to-day?' asked Monsieur de Caillé, who now made his appearance.
'I am sure of it, Monsieur,' replied Charlie.
'Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!' exclaimed Célandine, clasping her hands, and looking upwards; 'and you will be in it?'
'Undoubtedly, Mademoiselle.'
She drew very close to Charlie, and said, in a low voice,
'Pardon me,mon ami—but—but when were you last at mass or confession?'
'We don't attend to either much in the 95th,' was Charlie's evasive reply; 'besides, our Herr Pastor is a Lutheran.'
The sweet French girl eyed him wistfully.
'You are too good and humane thus to die like a heathen!' said she, 'and many more will die to-day. Promise me, Monsieur, that you will wear this.'
And from her white neck she took a little holy cross and medal, suspended by a blue ribbon, which she passed over Charlie's head.
'For your sake, then,' said Charlie gallantly.
'For your own, rather. Whether you believe in such things or not, it will do you no harm to wear it.'
'Très bon, my child!' said the old gentleman; 'but Monsieur has a cross already,' he added, patting the iron one at the breast of Charlie's blue tunic.
'And now I must go,' said he, putting on his helmet; 'there sounds the trumpet again.'
As he bade them adieu and left them, the French girl, with a quick pretty action, flicked some holy water in his face from a Dresden china font that hung inside the door of the dining-room, and the glittering drops fell on his moustache and silver gorget, which the Prussians still wear, or at least wore then; and father and daughter stood sadly in the porch, looking after their protector as he marched off at the head of his men, for Charlie, though a thorough English gentleman, was, as some say, 'the soldier all over, but the soldier adventurer—the soldier of fortune, rather than the soldier of routine.'
Charlie, we fear, and are ashamed to admit it, did not pray often. 'It wasn't much in his line; besides, what was the Herr Pastor paid for?' but as he marched back to headquarters on the Bellecroix road, at the head of his picket, he prayed in his heart that no harm—no perils, such as those of last night—might ever again menace that frank, engaging, and innocent young girl at the Chateau de Caillé.
But he had not seen the last of that old mansion.
By this time, a considerable portion of the German army had penetrated so far to the west and north-west of Metz, as to be almost already between Marshal Bazaine and Paris! The line of the invading forces was thus so greatly extended that the French generalissimo dared not make any offensive movement against them, but was compelled to retreat along the highways that led from Gravelotte to Verdun.
Charlie had barely rejoined his regiment, and exchanged a few words with Heinrich, Schönforst, and other friends, when the order came for the line to advance, as the French were in position at Vionville, covering the whole southern road to Verdun, with a front extending to the village of Gorz, eight miles south-west of Metz; and in their martial ardour to meet the enemy, many of the Thuringians, as the march forward began, struck up the fine war-song of Arndt.
In the ranks of this regiment, as in others of the Prussian army, were many well-born and gently nurtured young men, bred to professions or businesses, and who could speak several languages, and take their place in good society, but were dragged away from their avocation, hearth, and home, by the Prussian military system. There were others, again, grey, brown, and hardy men, who could digest sutler's beef and eat such ammunition bread as the Kaiser's commissariat supplied, sleep in their spike-helmets as soundly as in a velvet night-cap, feel, by a bivouac fire, as comfortable as if in the Grand Hotel at Cologne, and march to be maimed or massacred, to wound and to slay, with genuine Teutonic taciturnity and phlegm.
The battle of the day began on some wooded hills above the pretty red-tiled village of Gorz, near a pleasant stream that meanders between fields and beautiful coppices from Mars-la-Tour to the Moselle.
By sheer force of numbers, the Prussians, while giving and receiving a storm of musketry, pushed into the woods, driving the French skirmishers before them. Those who were spectators saw the little scarlet kepis of the latter dispersing in succession amid the white smoke and green foliage; then the dark-coated Prussians, with their spike-helmets and goat-skin packs, disappeared also in pursuit. What happened in this part of the battle no one knows, or ever will know, as it was entirely in the dense woods and deep valleys, and thus no general view could be obtained; yet it is to this part of the field we have to refer, for there fought the 95th regiment.
From one wooded slope to another the French fell back, fighting desperately. In the valleys, the din of war rang with a hundred reverberations. Shrieks, cries, and hoarse cheering shook the very woodlands, and the smoke curled up from the latter as if they were on fire. White puffs and red flashes seemed to burst from every bush and tree. Now and then the bayonets flashed, or a tricolour appeared amid the foliage; but on, almost without check, went the Prussians, over ground strewn with the terribledebrisof men, gun-carriages, limbers, and horses, in many instances blown literally to pieces, for the whole ground was ploughed by shot and shell, and sown with rifle bullets.
Charlie's regiment, with the 40th, 67th, and 69th, was ordered to surround and storm a cottage mid-way on the Gorze road. The reason of four battalions being sent to storm a mere cottage was that it was held by a half-battery of French mitrailleuses, which did frightful execution in their ranks as they advanced.
Forward they went at a rush, the living tumbling over the fast-falling dead, these dreadful cannon belching death and destruction from amid the foliage in front, with that horrible shrieking sound peculiar to their discharge, and Charlie felt thestreamsof shot as they passed him.
A wild cry of agony, amid many others, made him look to his right. There lay Schönforst and half his company writhing or dead in one bloody heap; and the next moment it was Charlie's turn.
He felt as if a hot sword-blade had entered his breast—there was a heavy blow, a sharp tearing of the body, an emotion of rage or anger—a loud cry escaped him, and he fell on his face, enduring terrible agony. He staggered up, just as the attacking force swept over him to assault the battery, but fell over on his side, and lay with the blood pouring from his chest.
Wounded at last—perhaps mortally! was his first reflection; for he could feel that the bullet was in his body still. Life, death—the past, the future—'the possible heaven, the impending hell'—all flashed upon him, with thoughts of his own misery in lying there dying, helpless, and so far from Ernestine!
A faintness came over him, from which he was roused by feeling some one opening his tunic.
'Where are you wounded?' asked a familiar voice, and Charlie found the doctor of the regiment—with all of whom, we have said, he was a great favourite—bending over him kindly, with the hospital attendant of his company.
'In the breast,' he gasped.
The doctor had but little time to lose, and the bullets werepingingpast him and his patient in every direction.
'The bullet is lodged near the spine,' said the doctor, 'and it must be cut out, but not here.'
'Is—is the wound dangerous?' he faltered.
'Not very; but great care will be requisite.'
Whether on the part of himself or his medical attendant Charlie did not inquire; the tone in Which the doctor said 'very' lessened his hopes.
'God's will be done,' said he; and there flashed on his memory all that little Célandine de Caillé had said to him that morning about religion; while the doctor put a pad on the wound, bandaged it, and hastened to look at Schönforst, but he was long since past all aid, and stone-dead.
Save the moans, cries, and interjections—pious, fierce, or despairing—of those around him, Charlie heard little more but the occasional boom of the heavy guns as the tide and din of the battle rolled away towards Gravelotte; and great faintness, like a kind of sleep, stole over him. From time to time the acute agony of his wound roused him, and amid his terrible thoughts, ever present were the images of Ernestine and his family.
The emotion of faintness increased as the day wore on and evening came. He saw many around him die, and thinking that his own time would soon come too, he thought once more of the French girl's words, and strove to fashion a prayer or two, but they were little else than pious invocations.
Dying, as he certainly deemed himself to be, his thoughts flashed incessantly to her he loved; her whose soft hand might too probably never be in his again; anon to his boyhood's home in Warwickshire; the voices of his father and of his dead mother came drowsily to his ear; the soft English faces of his sisters floated before him. Oh, how hard it was to lie there bleeding, and too probably dying, when they were all making merry, perhaps, in that drawing-room which he remembered so well, and many of the pettiest details of which, even to a crack in the ceiling, came strangely back to memory now, with scraps of songs and forgotten airs.
Would the Krankentrager never come to take him away? Had the doctor and hospital attendant both forgotten him, or had been killed? The latter, too probably.
So the long, long day of anxiety, thirst, and agony passed away, and sunset came on. Charlie watched it fading on the distant woods and green slopes of those lovely Lorraine valleys, till the mellowing haze of twilight blurred all the landscape into gloom, and the silvery moon and the evening star came forth in their beauty to light up the carnage of the past day.
Neither the doctor nor the hospital attendant of his company had forgotten poor Charlie; but strange to say, when they came to look for him with a party about midnight, no trace could be found of him save a pool of blood on the grass where he had lain.
So the Countess, perhaps, had her wicked wish fulfilled at last, and fate had removed 'the intruder,' as she named him, for ever from the path of Baron Grünthal!
We must now devote a short chapter to the fate of young Frankenburg.
Ignorant that his friend Pierrepont had fallen—and a knowledge thereof would have served the latter but little—Heinrich, in his present capacity of adjutant, had to keep at his post and go on with the regiment, which, like the others, carried all before it.
The French, aware of the vital importance of keeping possession of a hill on their right, as soon as their troops began to fall back before those battalions sent forward by General Steinmetz, threw up some earthen works, in rear of which their 62nd regiment of the line lay down, while several batteries of artillery fired over their heads, raining grape and shell upon the fast-advancing Prussians.
For three hours the fighting was desperate there—the slaughter on both sides woeful! Again the French fell back, and the Prussians brought up battery after battery of Krupp guns to the summit of the abandoned height, the gunners using their whips and spurs, the officers brandishing their swords and shouting, 'Vorwarts! vorwarts!' with their horses at a gallop.
In the ardour of the pursuit, or in terror of the dreadful sounds which shook the air, the horse ridden by Heinrich, having got the bit of the bridle firmly wedged between his teeth for a time, darted with his rider to the front at racing speed, and fairly carried him through the line of the retreating French!
Shot after shot was fired after him, but he escaped them all, and ere long found himself in a village, the main street of which was crowded by Francs-Tireurs, who seemed to have expended all their ammunition, as they pursued him simply with fixed bayonets, yells, and ferocious maledictions; for, as the Prussians gave no quarter to this species of volunteer force, they were not disposed to give any in return, so Heinrich began to give himself up for lost.
An alley opened on his right, and by it he hoped to gain the open country. He spurred his horse and shouted; he urged it with leg and hand and voice, and forced it to the right down the alley, followed by a shout of fierce derisive laughter, the source of which he soon discovered to be the fact that the alley had no outlet, and that he was fairly entrapped in a narrowcul-de-sac!
To take a pistol from the holsters, to leap from his horse, make a dash into the nearest house, was to Heinrich but the work of an instant; but he had barely closed and secured the door, ere the human tide of the Francs-Tireurs, intent on revenge and bloodshed, came surging wildly down the alley against it.
The house had been abandoned by its owners. He sought for the back-door, but there was none. He could only drop from an upper window into a garden; but his uniform would cause him at once to be recognised, and instant death was sure to follow. Not a moment was to be lost! He looked wildly round him. On a peg there hung a loose, coarse peasant blouse of blue cloth. He tore off his uniform, threw it and his helmet aside with his weapons, donned the blouse, and was just in the act of dropping from the window, when his exulting pursuers, who had soon forced the door, burst into the room, with cries of:
'Tué, tué!—justice, revenge!—revenge for the Francs-Tireurs!'
The garden-wall was uncommonly high, the gate securely locked; outlet there was none; and in another minute Frankenburg found himself in the hands of a score of these French volunteers, so many of whose comrades had been—no doubt, barbarously—put to death by the Prussians, simply for being found with arms in their hands, so that to look for mercy was vain. Their grasp was upon him; and in their desire to destroy him, they actually impeded each other, and for a second or two it seemed doubtful whether he was to perish by the charged bayonet or the whirled butt-end of the chassepot, as he was hustled and dragged hither and thither from hand to hand.
'Checkmated—cornered!' thought he, as the faces of Herminia and all at home came before him; 'to die thus—and at the hands of these rascally French peasantry.' Suddenly one exclaimed:
'Un espion—un mouchard! A Prussian disguised in a blouse—he was about to become a spy!'
'L'espion, l'espion!—a rope, a rope!' cried the rest, catching at the new idea with extreme fervour. 'No, no—bayonet him!' cried one.
'They hanged my brother at Borny,' said another;' so, by Baalzebub, let us hang him—hang him, Etienne!'
Heinrich's blood ran cold at this horrible suggestion.
'I did but seek to escape, messieurs, in exchanging my uniform for this dress,' said he.
'Oh, of course—of course!' they cried, with fierce mockery and cruelty flashing in their eyes.
'I did it but to save my life,' he urged. 'Diable—of course!'
'I am but one man among hundreds,' he continued.
'And so shall die—tué! tué!' cried they altogether.
'You are a band of cowards!' exclaimed Heinrich, defiantly; 'I do not fear to die. Hurrah for Germany!'
'Hah, ha! hah, ha!—à bas le Prussien!' they chorused.
One now appeared with a rope, which he had procured somewhere, and a cold perspiration burst over the brows of Heinrich.
'I am the Graf Von Frankenburg,' he urged, almost, but not quite, piteously. 'I am an officer of the Thuringians—let me die the death of a soldier, not that of a felon.'
'You are the Graf Von Frankenburg?' said one; 'be it so. The higher the rank the greater the disgrace in dying the death of a spy; so, coquin, hang you shall.'
Resistance was vain; the iron grasp of many was on each of his arms, and he was as helpless in their hands as an infant. His father, his mother, his love—the bright-haired Herminia!—what horror would the story of his fate cost them! It was too dreadful to think of; it was madness!
'Oh,' thought he, 'that I had but died on yonder field, and not thus—notthus—in the hands of wretches such as these!'
He disdained to ask for mercy, and resolved to die with dignity even the horrid death to which they had doomed him. But little time was given him for reflection, and none for prayer; yet a cry certainly escaped him, and a nervous shudder, when he found a corporal actually adjusting the hastily constructed halter about his neck. An involuntary effort he made for resistance or escape, and then stood still and passive.
'Throw the end of the rope over that apple-tree,' was the command of the corporal; and after one or two efforts it was thrown over a suitable branch, 'Stand aside, comrades,' was the next command; 'whip him up now, and make fast the rope to the branch below.'
While a mocking shout burst from the band, and many brutal and irreligious speeches were made, some crying piteously, 'Bon voyage, Monsieur le Comte—bon voyage, mon Prussien,' the noose closed and tightened round the neck of Heinrich. His eyeballs seemed to start from their sockets, dark purple overspread his face, and he was swung up to the branch, where he dangled in convulsive agony, swinging and swaying to and fro, with a hoarse, rattling, gulping sound in his throat, and with his feet about eight feet from the ground.
The other end of the fatal rope was made fast to a lower branch, and then the Francs-Tireurs rushed away, with mocking shouts, to join their comrades, and left the unhappy Heinrich—the 'Prussian spy,' as they falsely affected to call him—to his miserable fate.
And now to account for the mysterious disappearance of Charlie Pierrepont, which the Herr Doctor could only account for by supposing that in the restlessness of his agony, or desire to procure water, he had crawled away into some obscure corner to die. But such was not the case.
It was still dusky night, or lighted only by the moon, when Charlie, lying where we left him, began to surmise whether the morning sun would evermore gladden his eyes, that were staring upward at the stars, as they twinkled through the branches of those trees amid which the battle had been partly fought, and the stems of which, in places, were barked and whitened by the passing whirlwinds of shot from the mitrailleuses.
'If I die,' thought he, 'the label at my neck will tell the burial party who I am—or was.'
And as the slow hours of the night stole on, he thought of the ghastly face of the French captain who killed the young ensign Donnersberg, and the peculiar hatred and inhumanity expressed by his dying wish. The sound of wheels coming slowly along now roused him. A party of the Krankentrager, picking up the wounded, were passing near. He tried to call aloud, but his voice had failed him.
'How high the moon is to-night,' said one.
'How bright, you mean; for I don't suppose she is higher up than usual,' replied another.
'But it would be a lovely night for having another turn with the French schelms, in their long blue coats and red kepis.'
'There has been slaughter enough, for one day, Rudiger; ugh!—how thick the corpses lie here, where the horrible mitrailleuses have been playing.'
The waggon was stopped, and the soldiers looked about them.
Suddenly one said—
'There is young Herr Pierrepont, the Englander of the 95th. How in his heart he loved the crack of the zundnadelgewehr, or the click of steel on steel! So he is gone, too!'
'He is worth a dozen dead men yet!' exclaimed one of the Krankentrager, leaping off the seat of the ambulance waggon, on seeing Charlie's eyes and hand move.
Some brandy-and-water was given him as a reviver, and he was lifted into the waggon, which was already full, and was hence driven from the field; and here we may mention that the Krankentrager is one of the best-organized corps in the Prussian army, and its special duty is to carry the sick and wounded.
In this Franco-Prussian war, it is to be recorded that to their immortal honour, the Sisters of Mercy were always on every field of battlebefore the firing ceased, and they went on foot, each little company preceded by a Catholic priest or Lutheran pastor.
Luckily, as it proved in the end for Charlie, he had fallen into the hands of Landwehr men alone, for ere long, conceiving him to be dead, they took him out of the waggon and left him at the door of a mansion, which proved to be the Chateau de Caillé.
Prior to this, as the waggon was driven slowly and tortuously, to avoid mutilating the killed and wounded, who lay thickly everywhere, in literal heaps in some places, in ranks in others, the moon went down, clouds overspread the sky, and, to add to the miseries of the helpless, rain began to fall. In the action of the previous day, the canopy of the waggon in which Charlie Pierrepont lay had been destroyed by a passing shot. No other had been substituted, so there he Jay, with seven others, packed closely side by side, some dying, some actually dead, with the rain of heaven pouring into their open months and eyes.
Some there were who stirred restlessly from side to side, constantly requesting their position to be shifted, as the agonies of death came on; and when they died they were lifted from the waggon and laid by the side of the way.
To the grim corps of grave-diggers was assigned the duty of noting the neck-labels, and doing what was necessary then!
As Charlie lay very still and motionless with eyes closed, sunk indeed into a species of stupor, the unskilled men of the Landwehr concluded that he was dead, and lifting him from the waggon, laid him near the gate of the chateau, and drove off, just as grey dawn began to brighten on the wooded hills that look down, the Moselle, and the great spire of the distant cathedral of Metz.
So there he was left to be killed, perhaps outright, by the first vindictive peasant of Lorraine who might be going a-field to his work; but there was too much gunpowder in the air about Metz just then to permit other work to be done than 'the harvest of death.'
Now, before those terrible fellows in spike-helmets came into that peaceful part of pleasant Lorraine, where the old chateau lies embosomed among vineyards and apple-bowers—the Lorraine that whilom belonged to the mother of Mary Queen of Scots—it had been the wont and custom of Célandine de Caillé, at the hour of seven every morning, to go to early mass in a little chapel near the highway that leads to Metz. She dared not venture so far now; but by mere force of habit, she was saying the prayers for mass among the dew-drops in the flower-garden, when something caused her to peep out of the front gate, and then she saw—— What? Oh, it could not be!
Was this pale, ghastly, sodden, and blood-stained creature the handsome young soldier who, but yesterday morning about the same hour, after being startled by the Uhlan trumpet, had marched away so proudly at the head of his Thuringians, with his silver epaulettes glittering in the sun, and had yet in his havresack—soaked with his own gore—the food so kindly placed there by Célandine?
It seemed incredible, yet so it was!
A shriek escaped the startled girl, and she rushed indoors for her father, herbonne, and everybody else; assistance was soon procured, the sufferer carried indoors, placed in bed, his uniform hidden, for the Francs-Tireurs were hovering about, and medical aid was procured from the nearest village, in the person of a young doctor, Adolphe Guerrand, on whom, as an admirer of Célandine, they could rely for silence and secrecy.
The thunder of war was an awful event to the inmates of that little secluded chateau, to none more than to Monsieur de Caillé, whose days were usually spent in dozing about his flower-garden, plucking off a faded leaf here and there, or training vines and sprays, and whose evenings were passed over a bottle of vin ordinaire with the Curé, or listening to Célandine's performances on a—well, it wasnota grand trichord piano, because it had been her grandmother's.
Some days and nights elapsed—strange, drearily days and nights to Charlie Pierrepont, who only knew at times where, by a strange coincidence, he was. They were passed by him in a chaos or confusion of thought, in dreams of Ernestine, of the day in the Hoch Munster, and the evening in the church at Burtscheid, of battle-fields, with lines of red kepis, fierce bearded faces, and hedges of bristling bayonets looming through the smoke, of the roaring shriek of those dreadful mitrailleuses—the veritable invention of Satan; yea, even the scowl and curse of the French captain were not forgotten; but after a time Charlie's thoughts became coherent; he knew fully where he was; that a conical rifle bullet had been cut out of his back, near the spine, by the skilful hands of Adolphe Guerrand; that he had a narrow escape from death; that he was recovering, and had, as nurses, Célandine de Caillé and her kind oldbonne.
'Ah! Célandine—Mademoiselle Célandine,' said he, taking the girl's tiny hand within his own, and just touching it with his lips, 'neither your holy water, nor the consecrated medal, acted as a charm. In what a condition have I come back to you!'
'But for my medal and the holy water, perhaps a cannon-ball might have taken off your head,' retorted little Mademoiselle de Caillé.
'True,' replied Charlie, as he kissed her hand again.
Three weeks had elapsed since the battle in which Charlie had fallen wounded; two days after, as Célandine told him, Gravelotte had been fought, and then the French had been defeated after a dreadful struggle, and driven back to Metz. Strasbourg was besieged, Phalsburg bombarded, the Prussians were daily everywhere victorious.
'And, alas! monsieur,' said the little maid, clasping her pretty hands, and lifting upward eyes that were suffused with tears, 'France is lost! The glory of my France is gone! And surely now the cries of Melusine will be heard!'
'Melusine?' asked Charlie, with surprise. 'Who is she?'
'Don't you know, monsieur? Have you never heard of the "Cris de Melusine?"'
'Never.'
'It is an old legend believed in by most of our peasantry. Brantôme says she is a spirit that haunts the old castle of Lusignan, where, by loud shrieks, she announces any disasters that are to befall France.'
'She must have been shrieking pretty loud and long of late,' said Charlie, smiling at the earnestness of the girl, who, in her love of the legendary, reminded him, he thought, of Ernestine, and he liked her the better for it.
So Charlie continued to be attended daily by the young Doctor Guerrand, and nursed by Célandine in secret, as it would have been perilous for Charlie had the exasperated peasantry learned that a Prussian officer was concealed in the chateau. The heart of the young French doctor Guerrand was full of bitterness for the disgrace that was falling on his country, and, were it not that by his practice he supported an aged mother, he would have cast aside the lancet and betaken to the chassepot.
'Sacre!' said he, on one occasion, to Charlie; 'in this war the French seem to make more use of their feet than their hands; but we won't talk of politics.'
'Why, Doctor?'
'Because I always lose my temper. I am a Republican now. I have become so in the bitterness of my heart. But, thank Heaven, we shall soon be rid of our Emperor, as you will, ere long, of your Kaiser; for what are kings, emperors, and princes, but a crowned confederacy against the freedom of the world?Sacre!'
And the young Republican ground his teeth in his fierce energy.
Charlie had Ernestine's photo, done and coloured at Aix-la-Chapelle. It was one which, so far as these sun pictures go, represented her to the life, and he had seen her in that particular posé, and with that expression on her soft face, many, many times. He kept it beneath his pillow. Never did he tire of gazing on it; thus, more than once, his active little nurse caught him with the blue velvet case in his hand.
'Ah! It is monsieur's mother?' said she, trying to get a peep at it.
'It is not,' said Charlie, with a fond smile.
'A sister, then? I have seen that it is a lady!'
'No, Célandine.'
'Something as dear as both would be?'
'I cannot say.'
'How so, monsieur?'
'I scarcely ever saw my mother. And when I left home to soldier in Prussia, my sisters were mere children; but dear she is, indeed.'
'Ah,—afiancée?' said Célandine, laughing and clapping her hands.
'Yes, mademoiselle.'
'Ah, show me the likeness, monsieur,' she entreated; so Charlie gave her the case. 'How sweet, how lovely she looks! Do let me kiss her! Monsieur Pierrepont, I congratulate you. And when are you to be married?'
'Alas!' muttered Charlie, as his countenance fell.
'Surely she loves you?' asked Célandine, with her blue eyes dilated.
'Loves me?—dearly! so each of us has one secret of the heart to treasure.'
'What have I?' asked the girl, demurely.
'You have Adolphe.'
'Ah!—yes; M. Adolphe loves me, I believe, and—and perhaps I may learn to love him in time. I am not sure. I may marry some one else, and learn to love that some one. Mon père will arrange all that for me, and it will be so kind of him.'
Charlie looked puzzled; but ere long, in the case of Célandine herself, he was to see how matrimonial matters are arranged in the land of the silver lilies.
Her question, 'When are you to be married?' opened up no new train of thought to Charlie; that importantwhenhad been a source of frequent and painful surmise; but a new idea was ever before him now.
What had Ernestine heard of his fate?—that he was killed, wounded, or missing? He had no means of communicating with her now, and thus sparing her that which he would gladly have done—a single sigh, a single throb of pain.
There was no one at the chateau could tell him where the 95th were, whether in front of Metz, besieging Strasbourg, or fighting at Phalsburg. But, oh, how to relieve the grief of his betrothed! He would not, for worlds, have cost that warm, wilful, and impassioned heart one pang!
Yet there he lay on his back, with a closing wound, helpless.
Like an iron weight it bore on his heart, the remoteness and dubiety of their meeting again; and when all thought of his personal danger passed away, this reflection weighed more heavily on him than ever, while his very career as a soldier made the future more uncertain and gloomy.
He had but one fixed, yet vague, idea—that, at the risk of his life, he would see Ernestine before he returned to the regiment in which he was, as yet, unfit to serve, and assure her of his all-unaltered love. Times there were when he thought he would ask Célandine to write to her, but in turn was afraid to do so—to Herminia, or to Ernestine, over whose postal correspondence, doubtless, the Countess kept a strict vigil—or, if she did write, there was no other post than the field one between France and Prussia now, and that was with the German army.
So Charlie could but lie on his bed and writhe, though in the kindly hands of the sweetest of little nurses.
Would the Countess Adelaide, he sometimes asked himself, feel any compunction for her proud severity, any pity for her daughter's honest lover, on hearing of his probable fate? Alas! it seemed more likely that she would exult at it as a barrier, a bramble, removed from her path. The Count was an old soldier; perhaps he might relent and prove generous; and so, on and on, Charlie hoped, surmised, and pondered, till his very brain ached.
Célandine knew that Charlie was English by birth, yet Prussian by sympathy, which she deplored—they were such barbarians, those men in the spiked helmets. Thus when she played or sang to him, which she did with great taste and sweetness, with good taste she only chose neutral airs and songs, such as those from the Trovatore, etc., and in these Adolphe Guerrand frequently joined her.
As she was in her mere girlhood, it appeared that she was too young to marry, nor had ever thought of it; and more than all, as Adolphe was poor, having only his practice as a hard-working village practitioner, Monsieur de Caillé was by no means disposed to look upon him, even in the future, as an eligible suitor for his daughter, till a letter reached young Guerrand from Paris by which one morning he found himself rich by one of the most extraordinary chances in the world.
It happened that just a week before the Prussians crossed the Rhine, Adolphe Guerrand had been at Blankenberg with a patient, to whom he had prescribed sea-bathing, and, when walking on the beach there, had found a carefully sealed bottle among some sea-weed. Holding it between him and the light, he saw that it contained a written document, and conceiving naturally that it was a message from the sea—the last farewell from some sinking ship, he drew the cork, and perused the damp paper, which was properly signed and dated, from on board a French vessel, which had sprung a leak, and was going down in the middle of the Atlantic. And thus it ran on, in French:
'About to perish by drowning, I commend my soul to God, the Blessed Virgin, and all the saints. I hereby constitute my sole heir the finder of this will, which I enclose in a glass bottle. The labour of years, my fortune amounts to two hundred and twenty thousand francs, and I am without a relation in the world. I wish the house I have resided in at Paris to be converted into a chapel of St. Dominique, my patron saint. The fortune is deposited in the hands of the notary, M. Vantin, in the Rue St. Honoré.Ora pro me.
'DOMINIQUE SOURDEVAL.'
The letter was from Vantin, the notary, to the young doctor, who thus found himself suddenly rich, so all obstacles were removed to a union with Célandine, when she was a few years older, though the family of Adolphe was of humble origin and that of De Caillé ancient, and shone at the court of Louis XIII. It was of a Madame de Caillé that we are told, how when that monarch was once playing at shuttlecock with her at Versailles, it fell into her bosom, on which she desired his majesty to take it; but such was his royal delicacy that, to avoid the snare laid by the charming Lorrainer, he discreetly extricated the toy with the aid of the tongs.
Thus, on the first day of Charlie's convalescence, the formal betrothal of the daughter of the house took place; and to him it seemed a very cold-blooded affair to the wild, passionate, and solemn episode between himself and Ernestine in that lonely church at Burtscheid.
Adolphe was in his twenty-fifth year, naturally sanguine and enthusiastic; his clear-cut features and thoughtful eyes were now full of light and brightness; there was a greater springiness in his step, born of the knowledge that he was now rich and the inheritor of a fortune—the fortune of M. de Sourdeval, so mysteriously cast at his feet by the waves of the sea.
A well-bred French girl, of course, expects one day to be wedded, but chiefly looks forward to the event as an opportunity of displaying her presents and trousseau, and is supposed to have no preference in the matter. To Célandine it seemed only natural that she should accept her father's choice, just as he had done the choice ofhisparents in espousing her mother.
Yet in her heart of hearts, the girl—though very young—had grown fond of Charlie Pierrepont, her helpless charge, who was always so gentle and grateful, so sad, too, and who looked, withal, so manly and soldier-like. And with this sentiment in her heart, the girl was to contract what we must call a French marriage. So full of cross-purposes, hidden currents of thought, and secret springs of action, is this work-a-day world of ours!
She knew that it is understood and accepted in her native country that unions cannot, as in England, be contracted on the impulse of love or romantic notions, but upon principles of cold and practical utility, as mere transactions between parents; but they are sometimes equally so on this side of the Straits of Dover.
So, on the day referred to, M. de Caillé said to his daughter, with his eyebrows elevated as if he had quite made a discovery, while kissing her on the forehead, 'I have found you a husband, my love.'
'Merci, mon père—who is he?' asked Célandine, as if she had not the slightest guess on the subject.
'The time will come anon—but here he is,' and he led in Adolphe, who approached Célandine, whose eyes were fixed on Charlie, pale, wan, and propping himself on a cane of M. de Caillé's.
At such a crisis, Adolphe Guerrand had vague ideas—from what he had read in novels and seen at the theatre of the Porte St. Martin, when he was a student in Paris, at the Ecole de Medicin—that he should drop on his knees, or at least on one knee; but the floor was very slippery, and Célandine not being much in love with him, and very much inclined to laugh, he didn't attempt a melodramatic posé at this betrothal, which Charlie saw as in a dream; for his thoughts were at Burtscheid, and the heart-stirring parting words of Ernestine were lingering in his ear.
As the reader may suppose, some time elapsed ere the quiet little household at Frankfort realized—they could not for long recover from—the catastrophe recorded by the German papers; but when it was actually stated that a prisoner taken in a skirmish, a captain, was roasted alive, nothing seemed too horrible to happen now. That Heinrich might be wounded unto death, or slain outright in battle, seemed but a too probable contingency; but that he should be taken prisoner, and suffer an end of such enforced ignominy, was beyond the category of all their speculations.
The whole family were utterly prostrated by an event so inexplicable, and Ernestine felt the shock in her own peculiar way. She loved her only brother dearly, and all the more dearly that he was the friend and defender of her lover Carl—her betrothed husband, for as such she always viewed him. Now that her beloved Heinrich was gone, the links between her and Carl—the means of communication—were broken, and she could hear of him no more.
And, meanwhile, where was Carl? Alive or dead?
TheGazette, so grudging in words, so meagre in detail, had simply said that he was severely wounded. Where, and in what fashion, was he wounded? By steel or lead? Was he mutilated, disfigured for life? Perhaps he had since perished in his agony, or when undergoing some terrible operation!
So, for days and nights, the girl tormented herself till she became seriously ill with agonizing conjectures, over which she was compelled to brood in silence and tears.
At last, to the astonishment, to the wild joy of all, there came a letter from Heinrich himself—a letter dated ten days subsequent to the catastrophe recorded in theExtra Blatt!
It was dated from a village somewhere near Metz, and briefly recapitulated what has been detailed in Chapter Eighteen, and added that a humane peasant woman, who, from a hiding-place, had witnessed the terrible scene in the garden, the moment the Francs-Tireurs retired, had rushed forth and cut him down. She had quickly and adroitly released his neck from the odious cord, chafed it with her hands, given him water, and thoroughly revived him, though animation had never been quite suspended.
Moreover, she had concealed him in her house for two days, and enabled him to join the regiment before Metz; but the shock to his system was such that the military surgeons advised his return home for a time, and that, doubtless, he would spend his Christmas with them all at Frankenburg.
They had all mourned so deeply over his supposed terrible fate, that the account this letter contained—the assurance of his perfect safety and speedy return in his own handwriting—seemed like a resurrection from the tomb! All the family embraced each other and shed tears of joy, and a new and sudden happiness was diffused over the whole household, even to the grooms in the stable, for all loved the handsome young Graf.
An enormous amount of beer was consumed on the occasion, and in 'the study,' the Count and Baron Grünthal over their pipes, and certainly more than one bottle of Rhenish wine, grasped each other's hands ever and anon, and shouted, in the melodious language of the Vaterland,
'Hoch, Heinrich! Ich habe die Ehre, auf Ihre Gesundheit zu trinken!' (I have the honour of drinking your good health.)
In his letter there was no mention of Carl Pierrepont, and no enclosure forher, thought Ernestine; but then, as Heinrich wrote to the Countess, he could not make a communication concerning him; so the girl, though her joy for her brother's safety was somewhat clouded by that circumstance and the wish that Heinrich had written to Herminia; could but wait and hope—hope and pray.
'A little time, and my dear brother will tell me all,' she said to herself; 'but, oh! this suspense—this mystery concerning the fate of my Carl, is intolerable!'
And now, in the excess of their happiness, the intended marriage of her and the Baron was revived in greater force than ever. Heinrich was returning, and his presence would make the happiness of all complete. Daily, Ernestine, while scanning the papers with keen and haggard eyes for intelligence of the lost one, heard the marriage arrangement schemed out; the projected breakfast; the cake which was to come from the most celebrated confectioner in Aix; thetrousseau, which was to come from the most fashionable Putzmacherin (ormodiste) in Berlin; the feast in the hall, and who were to be invited; whether the honeymoon was to be spent at Wiesbaden, at Carlsbad, or Bruckenau, and the girl listened to them as if she had been turned to stone. But there is a writer who says, 'Age legislates and youth trespasses; but the tide of love no more recedes at abidding, than King Canute's waves.'
Only once, however, did the sympathizing Herminia think her pale cousin was about to yield, when one night she laid her head on her bosom, and said with a gasping shudder,
'Oh, how terrible it is to give one's hand to the living when one's heart has been given to the dead!'
'But your dear Carl may not be dead. Heinrich is returning.'
Other times there were when she would not believe that he was dead, yet how many brave hearts were growing cold in death then all over Northern France! How many men yet were to perish among the blushing vineyards of Champagne, and under the beleaguered walls of Paris!
The cruelBlatthad only said he had been wounded. But how had he disappeared?
'He will return—oh, yet he will return! Kind God, you would not take him from me!'
And in the fervour of such a moment she would lift her streaming eyes upward with a trustful and angelic expression.
Like Charlie, when in many a comfortless bivouac under the sky and dew of heaven, under canvas when the summer rain pattered on the tent roof within an inch of his nose, of when in his bed tossing restlessly at the Chateau de Caillé, how many wild, strange, and impracticable plans and schemes did the busy mind of Ernestine frame, to reconstruct and hopelessly destroy again! Time, possibility, and the usages of life—and especially of her position in life, she overleaped with wonderful facility, so impulsive was she, but to fall back panting, as it were, and without one ray of hope, till she became, as we have said, like a stone, yet love lived on.
Times there were when she imagined, or strove to imagine, that she had eloped with Charlie; that he had cast epaulettes, sword, and military reputation to the winds, and all for her sake; and that she was rambling with him among those lovely woods and sylvan scenes he had so often described to her, the scenes of his native home in Warwick. They did not require a huge schloss; they could be so happy in a little cottage, and she was certain that she could milk a cow, if she tried.
Charlie she must and would see again at all hazards! Were they not each other's unto death—vowed in life and death? Even nowwherehe was, she knew not, wist not; but in imagination she felt his arm pressing her hand to his side; she saw his brave and tender gaze of love into her eyes till they seemed to droop beneath the magnetism of it; she felt his kisses on their snowy lids, on her hair and on her brow, and all his soft uttered whispers come to memory again. And as she thought over all these things, the girl clasped her hot white hands in agony by day, and tossed feverishly and restlessly on her pillow by night.
At last Heinrich returned, to the increased joy of all and the thoughts of Ernestine went back to that evening when, from the terrace, she had watched Carl, driving in the britzka towards the Schloss—her Carl, then a stranger to her save by name, but who was now so dear! Heinrich looked well and strong, sun-browned and bold-eyed, and as the Count said, after kissing him on both cheeks, and giving him a kindly thwack on the back, 'not a whit the worse for his hanging!'
And now utterly regardless of what her parents might think or say, oblivious alike of their anger and their absurd pride, Ernestine, in her, usual passionate way, threw herself into her brother's arms, and cried in a piercing voice:
'Oh, Heinrich, what news ofhim, of Carl? tell me, my brother—my brother, lest I die.'
'I have no news, dear sister; the regiment has heard nothing of him since the battle of the 14th of August, before Metz,' replied Heinrich, speaking with great reluctance, being alike loath to wound his tender sister, or in that moment of their happiness to offend his parents. But now her father spoke, and calmly too.
'TheBlattstated that the Herr Lieutenant was wounded?'
'Yes, when we were storming a mitrailleuse battery.'
'Did you see him fall?'
'No, Herr Graf. The smoke was thick, and I was on the left of the line, he on the right, in Schönforst's company. Poor Schönforst—he fell there, literally torn to shreds!'
'What certainty is there that Here Pierrepont was wounded at all?' asked the Count, very desirous to learn that it was all over with poor Charlie, while Ernestine hung on her brother's words in agony.
'His company saw him struck. He was leading them bravely on after Schönforst's death. Our doctor patched up his wound in some fashion; but on returning at night, could find no trace of him.'
'Where was the wound?' asked Ernestine, with quivering lips.
'In the breast—we shall hear all about it ere long,' continued Heinrich, putting an arm kindly round his sister. 'He is doubtless in some of the many hospitals that are near the fields where we have been fighting.'
'Bah! the Herr Englander has probably tired of fighting, gone home to his own country, and will trouble Prussia no more!' said the Countess.
Heinrich thought it much more probable that he had crawled away somewhere and died unseen, or, to judge from his own experience, been murdered by the peasantry; but he kept these ideas to himself. On the first opportunity when they were alone, Ernestine had a thousand questions to ask Heinrich; but to the fate—the disappearance of Pierrepont, he could not give the faintest clue, though to feed her hopes, when he had none, he drew largely on his imagination; for he knew that unless Charlie were dead, or most severely wounded indeed, and quite helpless, which we have shown him to be, he would have put himself in communication with the nearest Prussian military authorities.
So, from the day of Heinrich's return, the health and spirits of Ernestine sank painfully and visibly.
Summer had passed away, and the tints of autumn, brown and yellow, russet and orange, stole over the woodlands around the old Schloss and the beautiful dingles of the Reichswald. In vain were daily drives in the open carriage resorted to, and in vain were doctors consulted; the cheek of Ernestine grew paler and thinner; her roundness of form was passing away, and the once lovely hand becoming all but transparent. Had sure tidings come that Charlie had been killed outright, and, was actually dead, she might have got over the shock; but the suspense of not knowing where he was, how circumstanced, how mutilated, whether in his grave or still lingering in the land of the living, proved too much for a girl so sensitively organized as Ernestine.
One fact was certain, as Heinrich's letters from the Thuringians assured her, that nothing had been heard of him by the regiment as yet. Owing to her state of health, the Countess's favourite topic and plan of the marriage was abandoned for the time, and in that matter she obtained some temporary relief.
The poor girl really was, to all appearance, in a rapid consumption; but in all her family, hale, hearty, and strong on both sides, such an ailment had never been known. The whole tenor of her ways was changed. Even her pets—and she had many—were forgotten now.
The winter would come, and with it Christmas, and to that festival Ernestine looked forward with a kind of horror now. Would it be jovial as usual in the old ancestral hall of Frankenburg? Doubtless the glittering Christmas tree—a pine from the Reichswald—would be there as of old, as it had been for generations; and there would be the venison pasty, and the brown shining boar's head to be solemnly cut and jovially eaten; speeches would be made, and toasts drunk with many a merry 'hoch!' while her heart would be with the German army before beleaguered Paris, or in the grave, where she feared her Carl lay; so she hoped as Christmas came that her place in Frankenburg would be vacant.
The girl's mind was a prey to suspense and fear, sorrow and love—love, the strongest of all human passions.
We have said that her nervous organization was delicate; hence these mental affections, together with incessant anxiety, threw her into a species of rapid consumption, which the presence and restoration of 'her Carl,' as she always called him, alone could cure or arrest. She had a dry cough, a quick small pulse, a burning heat in her hands, a loss of strength, and sinking of the eyes, and her state became such at last that the Countess begged the Baron to absent himself from the Schloss for a time, as his visits there were a source of perpetual annoyance to Ernestine, though, for some time past, she secluded herself in her own room.
Now her mother began to wring her hands, and pray that Heaven would find for her this Herr Pierrepont, if his presence, even if tolerated for a time, would restore her sinking child.
Again and again did Heinrich write and telegraph to the head-quarters of the Thuringians concerning Charlie; but nothing had been heard of him there, and all were certain that he must have been killed in the action on the 14th of the preceding August.
Poor Ernestine! Her case was soon pronounced hopeless. Her beauty remained; but it was of a strange and weird kind. On each cheek was a hectic spot; her eyes, sunken in their sockets, had an unnatural brightness; she spoke little, and laughed never.
A little time more, and she was confined to her bed, where she lay for hours with her hot hand clasped in that of Herminia's, who bathed her temples with Rimmel and eau de Cologne, and fanned and petted her, while she tossed on her pillow, and muttered 'Carl! Carl!'
It was always Carl.
Often when she spoke, her dark eyes flashed up, like the momentary flicker of a lamp about to go out for ever—on earth, at least.
'Oh, Herminia, darling!' she said on one occasion; 'life has no charms, and death has no terrors for me now.'
'Carl will return.'
'Never! Or it may be that he will cometoo late. Yet, even then,' she added, with a strange bright smile, that terrified her weeping cousin, 'even then I may see him, for it is among the possibilities of this world that the dead may return again!'
'Strange weird words! What does she—whatcanshe mean?' thought Herminia.
Some days after this she became almost speechless; yet she was quite conscious, and looked so lovely with the dishevelled masses of her dark hair floating over her laced pillow and delicate neck, as she smiled tenderly on her mother, Herminia, and all who hovered about her. Yet ever she whispered to herself, 'Carl! Carl!'
On his last visit the doctor looked very grave as he departed.
'Can nothing be done to save her?' implored the Countess, in a tremulous voice.
'Nothing in my power, Grafine. Her disease is of the mind—the mind alone. Your daughter—I deplore to say it—is dying!'
'Of what, Herr Doctor? Of what?
'To me, it seems—of a broken heart!'
'Impossible!' replied the Countess; 'people do not die of broken hearts, and grief does not kill.'
So, like Heinrich, Charlie had fallen into the 'enemy's hands;' but fortunately for him, they were the soft and gentle ones of little Célandine de Caillé.
The passage of the ball had seriously injured him internally; thus he was long in recovering, and the winter of the year was almost at hand ere he could venture to travel; but it now seemed imperative to Charlie that he should trespass on his host and hostess no longer.
'You would spoil any man with kindness, Mademoiselle de Caillé,' said he, one day; 'or any dog, too.'
'Often the most loving animal of the two,' replied the French girl, laughing.
During that protracted convalescence how often, in the waking hours of the night, had he thought of Ernestine, and strove to sleep in the hope to dream of her; of their moonlight walks in the garden of the old Schloss, when she had held his arm, with her little hands interlaced so confidingly on his sleeve, and he used to pet and caress them as she leant with all her weight upon his wrist; or of the mad gallops they were wont to have through the glades and dingles of the lovely Reichswald, when the green woods seemed to sleep under the dusky purple of the summer sky; but one night he had a dream that startled, and, like that one in the bivouac, made a deep impression upon him by its vividness and the sense of pain it left.
In imagination she bent over him sadly and caressingly; her dark eyes were tender and beautiful as of old; but the rose-leaf tint had left her cheeks, as if for ever. Her smile was full of sweetness. Then a change came suddenly over her; the soft light died out of her eyes; her cheeks became hollow, her lips pallid; her whole expression and aspect painful and ghastly; the grasp of her hands became cold and chilling, and her voice grew faint and husky, as she said,
'At Burtscheid, dearest Carl; meet me at Burtscheid, where last we met.'
Then she seemed to melt away from before him, and Charlie started and awoke, to find it was happily but a mere dream, born too probably of his nervous and enfeebled condition, yet one so vivid, we have said—so terrifically vivid and painful, that he was trembling in every limb, a cold perspiration covered his whole frame; and by some strange association of ideas, the dying curse, if curse it was, of the French captain came rushing on his memory.
And now the time came when he was to leave the Chateau de Caillé.
'And you go, you go to her,' said Célandine, making a great effort to appear calm, on the day of his departure.
'To her whose miniature I showed you, dear friend yes.'
'Oh, may you both be happy—very, very happy!'
'I thank you, dear Célandine; you will ever have her gratitude, as well as mine; but there are many things to oppose, many interests to thwart our happiness.'
'Alas!' said the French girl, sadly; 'but remember that nothing isimpossible.'
And so when Charlie Pierrepont left his kind friends and that charming part of Lorraine, he little knew that he left behind a warm girlish heart that yearned for him, and him only, and thought nothing of Monsieur Adolphe, with all his thousands of francs, her father's choice; and keenly she envied her—the unknown lady—whose miniature was in Charlie's heart.
From the surgeon of a Prussian regiment at Saarbrück, Charlie Pierrepont got a medical certificate, to the effect that he was incapable of rejoining the Thuringians, or of serving for some time. Leave was given him by the general in command, and he took the train from Saarbrück to Aix, to be near Frankenburg and her, of whom he had heard nothing for all those months, that seemed like so many ages now; for Charlie was so much of a lover, that to breathe the same atmosphere with her was a source of joy.
Yet it was a cold and frosty atmosphere now, for Christmas was close at hand, the time when Christmas trees are lighted, when arcades and toyshops, fruiterers and pastry-cooks drive a roaring trade, when circles long separated are reunited, and happy parents sit at the head of happy tables surrounded by shining faces.
The Reichswald was leafless and bare now, and a mantle of snow covered all those heights that surround Aix, which seems to lie in 'a fertile bowl surrounded by bold hills;' and ice lay in masses about the boats of the pontoon bridge of the Rhine. It was on the evening of the third Thursday before the great festival of the Christian year that Charlie found himself in the brilliant speise-saal of the Grand Monarque.
He was now within a very short distance of Frankenburg; but how was he to communicate with Ernestine? See her he must before Christmas-eve, or she could not meet him then; and the hunger, the craving of his heart, was too great to be endured long. He feared to write to Herminia, lest his handwriting might be recognised by the Countess, and to write to Ernestine would too probably be useless, as her correspondence was too probably under her mother's supervision.
What if she should now be the Baroness Grünthal? For months no one had known anything of his existence. All might have believed him to be dead, and she, perhaps yielding to the influences around her; but no, no—he thrust that thought aside, and recalled the solemnity of their vows interchanged at Burtscheid.
Had she not then, and on that eventful night in the boudoir, promised to be faithful to him in life and death? and Charlie smiled at his momentary doubt.
How many people there are in this world who treasure up and con over and over again an impossible day-dream that may never come to pass! Charlie thought of this as, from the hotel windows, he gazed moodily into the snow-covered street, with all its bustle and lamps, and shrank from the passing fear that his aspirations after Ernestine might only be an impossible and unrealizable longing; but see her again he must, even if he went to the Schloss—but no, that would never do after the treatment he had experienced there, and the epithets applied to him by the Countess.
Suddenly he observed near him, while lingering over his wine in the speise-saal, which had emptied of guests, the Baron Rhineberg and, of all men in the world, Baron Grünthal, busy with their meerschaums and tankards of beer. Both seemed very quiet and taciturn; they had been speaking very little, which perhaps was the reason that, in his abstraction, they had hitherto been unnoticed by Charlie, who now held up theStaats Anzeigerbetween them and him, as he had no wish to be recognised by either. However, they were a link between him and Frankenburg, so he could not help listening intently to whatever they said.
They were talking at slow intervals of some recent sorrow they had sustained; but so great was the slaughter of the French war, that everyone in Germany then was wearing crape or mourning for the loss of some friend.
'Ach Gott—yes,' said Rhineberg; 'it is certainly a great calamity even to the city of Aachen.'
'When I saw the black flag flying on the old Schloss,' responded Grunthal, 'and the hatchment with its sixteen quarters over the gate, I—I knew that the dreaded event had taken place at last.'
'That we had lost a dear friend?'