“What is it? Is the pain so dreadful?” she whispered.
“No — oh no. I’m only a fool, and quite hungry, madame.”
She brought the broth and bread and a glass of the most exquisite wine I ever tasted — a wine that seemed to brighten the whole room with its liquid sunshine.
“Do you know where you are?” she asked, gravely.
“Oh yes — in Morsbronn.”
“And in whose house, monsieur?”
“I don’t know—” I glanced instinctively at the tarnished coronet on the canopy above the bed. “Do you know, Madame la Comtesse?”
“I ought to,” she said, faintly amused. “I was born in this room. It was to this house that I desired to come before — my exile.”
Her eyes softened as they rested first on one familiar object, then on another.
“The house has always been in our family,” she said. “It was once one of those fortified farms in the times when every hamlet was a petty kingdom — like the King of Yvetôt’s domain. Doubtless the ancient Trécourts also wore cotton night-caps for their coronets.”
“I remember now,” said I, “a stone turret wedged in between two houses. Is this it?”
“Yes, it is all that is left of the farm. My ancestors built this crazy old row of houses for their tenants.”
After a silence I said, “I wish I could look out of the window.”
She hesitated. “I don’t suppose it could harm you?”
“It will harm me if I don’t,” said I. 72
She went to the window and folded up the varnished blinds.
“How dreadful the cannonade is growing,” she said. “Wait! don’t think of moving! I will push you close to the window, where you can see.”
The tower in which my room was built projected from the rambling row of houses, so that my narrow window commanded a view of almost the entire length of the street. This street comprised all there was of Morsbronn; it lay between a double rank of houses constructed of plaster and beams, and surmounted by high-pointed gables and slated or tiled roofs, so fantastic that they resembled steeples.
Down the street I could see the house that I had left twenty-four hours before, never dreaming what my journey to La Trappe held in store for me. One or two dismounted soldiers of the Third Hussars sat in the doorway, listening to the cannon; but, except for these listless troopers, a few nervous sparrows, and here and there a skulking peasant, slinking off with a load of household furniture on his back, the street was deserted.
Everywhere shutters had been put up, blinds closed, curtains drawn. Not a shred of smoke curled from the chimneys of these deserted houses; the heavy gables cast sinister shadows over closed doors and gates barred and locked, and it made me think of an unseaworthy ship, prepared for a storm, so bare and battened down was this long, dreary commune, lying there in the August sun.
Beside the window, close to my face, was a small, square loop-hole, doubtless once used for arquebus fire. It tired me to lean on the window, so I contented myself with lying back and turning my head, and I could see quite as well through the loop-hole as from the window. 73
Lying there, watching the slow shadows crawling out over the sidewalk, I had been for some minutes thinking of my friend Mr. Buckhurst, when I heard the young Countess stirring in the room behind me.
“You are not going to be a cripple?” she said, as I turned my head.
“Oh no, indeed!” said I.
“Nor die?” she added, seriously.
“How could a man die with an angel straight from heaven to guard him! Pardon, I am only grateful, not impertinent.” I looked at her humbly, and she looked at me without the slightest expression. Oh, it was all very well for the Countess de Vassart to tuck up her skirts and rake hay, and live with a lot of half-crazy apostles, and throw her fortune to the proletariat and her reputation to the dogs. She could do it; she was Éline Cyprienne de Trécourt, Countess de Vassart; and if her relatives didn’t like her views, that was their affair; and if the Faubourg Saint-Germain emitted moans, that concerned the noble faubourg and not James Scarlett, a policeman attached to a division of paid mercenaries.
Oh yes, it was all very well for the Countess de Vassart to play at democracy with her unbalanced friends, but it was also well for Americans to remember that she was French, and that this was France, and that in France a countess was a countess until she was buried in the family vault, whether she had chosen to live as a countess or as Doll Dairymaid.
The young girl looked at me curiously, studying me with those exquisite gray eyes of hers. Pensive, distraite, she sat there, the delicate contour of her head outlined against the sunny window, which quivered with the slow boom! boom! of the cannonade.
“Are you English, Monsieur Scarlett?” she asked, quietly. 74
“American, madame.”
“And yet you take service under an emperor.”
“I have taken harder service than that.”
“Of necessity?”
“Yes, madame.”
She was silent.
“Would it amuse you to hear what I have been?” I said, smiling.
“That is not the word,” she said, quietly. “To hear of hardship helps one to understand the world.”
The cannonade had been growing so loud again that it was with difficulty that we could make ourselves audible to each other. The jar of the discharges began to dislodge bits of glass and little triangular pieces of plaster, and the solid walls of the tower shook till even the mirror began to sway and the tarnished gilt sconces to quiver in their sockets.
“I wish you were not in Morsbronn,” I said.
“I feel safer here in my own house than I should at La Trappe,” she replied.
She was probably thinking of the dead Uhlan and of poor Bazard; perhaps of the wretched exposure of Buckhurst — the man she had trusted and who had proved to be a swindler, and a murderous one at that.
Suddenly a shell fell into the court-yard opposite, bursting immediately in a cloud of gravel which rained against our turret like hail.
Stunned for an instant, the Countess stood there motionless, her face turned towards the window. I struggled to sit upright.
She looked calmly at me; the color came back into her face, and in spite of my remonstrance she walked to the window, closed the heavy outside shutters and the blinds. As she was fastening them I heard the whizzing quaver of another shell, the racket of its explosion, the crash of plaster.
“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; fla
mes 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 the dishevelled 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; “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 officers were 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 French cuirassiers and two squadrons of lancers moving slowly forward as though on parade.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 173
