Part 41

The words, being English, were not comprehended by the Sergeant. For an instant he stared open-mouthed at the unexpected apparition. The next he had bawled out an order to his men, and P. C. Breagh found himself looking down the long brown barrels of a couple of Prussian "needlers," accurately covering the exact area of waistcoat behind which his heart hammered and bumped. There was a creaking of leather then--and with the jingle of steel on steel, the snort of a horse reluctant to be ridden into an alley without turning-space. Over the heads of the Sergeant and his party rose the pricked ears, sagacious eyes, and broad frontlet of a great, gaunt brown mare, ridden by a gigantic field officer, wearing the flat white, yellow-banded forage cap, black pewter-buttoned frock, white cords, and immense spurred jack-boots of the Coburg regiment of White Cuirassiers.

"Whom have we English here? Who called out 'Take your hands off!'"

From under the peak of the white forage-cap the rider's heavy domineering stare took in the huddled feminine figure, the disheveled young man menaced by the Service rifles, and the truculent attitude of Sergeant Schmidt. He lifted a finger, and the "needlers" became vertical. He beckoned with the authoritative digit, and P. C. Breagh drew near. And the sickening horrors of the battlefield faded suddenly from about the Englishman.... He was back in the tobacco-scented study of a house in the Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin. And the resonant tones of the man who stood for Prussia in the mind's eye of the world were saying, in Bismarck's well-phrased English:

"Even though you belong to a neutral nation, you should not presume upon the fact too rashly. Had I not been within earshot just now, you would have paid with your life for your interference. German military authority is supreme, and in the execution of its duty not to be turned aside."

P. C. Breagh retorted, tingling to the very finger-tips:

"Your Excellency, I interfered to save this lady from ill-usage."

"She is a Frenchwoman? ... Explain to her," said the resonant voice coldly and brutally, "that even to reach the side of a fallen lover, too much may be risked and lost!"

P. C. Breagh said, meeting the imperious stare with yellow-gray eyes that blazed tigerishly:

"Excellency, the dead man is her father, Colonel de Bayard, 777th Mounted Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard."

"Stand back," said the domineering voice, "and I will speak to her!"

At a touch of the spur the great brown mare moved forward, breasting a lance-shaft that barred the narrow alley, terribly squeezing the Sergeant and his men.

"Mademoiselle de Bayard!" said the authoritative voice.

"Excellency, she does not hear you! The shock has been too terrible," Carolan was beginning. He was brusquely interrupted with:

"People usually listen when I speak to them." And the curt command was issued--in French, suave and polished:

"Be good enough, Mademoiselle de Bayard, to stand up and listen to me!"

The big brown mare snorted angrily and fidgeted. He turned her head with an iron hand on the curb-bit, looking steadily at the other female thing.

"Mademoiselle de Bayard, do you hear?"

This time she lifted her sunken head, and turned her small pinched face his way. In the haggard young mask of frozen anguish two wild eyes glittered, tearless and stony-hard. Then slowly, as though his powerful will impelled her, she rose to her knees, and stood upon her feet before him. He said, in cool, incisive accents:

"Young lady, your father was a gallant soldier. I myself had the privilege of seeing how he died. I wish such a man had served a better master!..."

She answered, her white lips barely moving as they framed the sentence:

"He served the Master of Kings and Emperors, before Whom he stands now!"

His somber eyes lightened suddenly as though in irritation. He said in tones that had the clang of overbearing authority:

"I cannot enter now into a theological discussion. The battle-field is no place for debate, or for unprotected women and young girls.... In your own best interests I counsel you to return home." He added--and there was no flicker of recognition in the passing glance vouchsafed to P. C. Breagh: "Alone, if you prefer--or under the escort of this young Englishman.... I will promise you that your father's body shall be treated with respect!" His heavy eyes fell on the stiffened face of the Sergeant, standing rigidly in the attitude of salute. "Where is the officer in charge of this burial-party?" he added, grimly enough.

"Here, Excellency!" came from behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and said to the flurried under-lieutenant who had hurried up and was standing in the alleyway:

"A separate grave, distinguished by some mark that is recognizable by the daughter." He looked back at the daughter, saying curtly: "Your veil!"

She removed it in silence, and handed it to the ex-chemist, who received the frail fluttering cobweb between his finger and thumb. Then the brown mare, in obedience to the iron hand upon the bridle, backed out of the alley of silent witnesses, baring her long, vicious-looking yellow teeth and showing the whites of her savage eyes resentfully. From the florid bull-dog face of her rider, barred with the heavy mustache of iron gray, all memory of the little drama just enacted had been effaced, as the outlines of a sketch in charcoal are wiped from wood or stone.

But as the alley widened and his great beast surged round, switching her tail, putting back her ears and lashing out with her heels so as to nearly brain the officer, P. C. Breagh thought he caught the words:

"Separate grave ... marked to find easily. All respect ... answer to me!"

More he might have heard, but for Juliette's sobbing. For God had remembered her, and sent her tears at last.

She had suddenly seen, lying at her feet, a frayed and crumpled envelope bearing the Belgian postmark, and addressed in her own handwriting to M. le Colonel H. A. A. de Bayard, Headquarters of the 777th Mounted Chasseurs of the Guard Imperial with the Army of France, at Metz. And the intuition of love told her that the dead man must have carried this, the last message received from his daughter, hidden in his bosom; and have drawn it forth and kissed it--as in very truth we know he had--shortly before he died.

"See, see, my friend! Behold my own letter. His sacred blood has stained it.... His lips perhaps have pressed it!--it well may be that tears of his have fallen here also! ... Never shall it leave me until my hand is cold as this is! Adieu, dear hand!" She knelt down to fondle it, had to be raised almost by force--would have returned for a last caress--a final prayer, but that P. C. Breagh, rendered desperate by the evident impatience of the officer and the scowling looks of the Sergeant and his merry men, lifted her bodily in his arms and carried her away.

"I pray you put me down! ... Me, I am not an infant!" she protested. "See you well, Monsieur Breagh, I do not think it _convenable_ that a gentleman should carry a lady so!..."

Then her strength ebbed from her and she became in truth, an infant. As her frail body yielded to his clasp, as her head sank down upon his shoulder, she sighed, a long, quivering sigh.

What of the youth who waded through the frozen sea of Death, bearing in his arms his worshiped lady? He was footsore and aching in every bone and muscle from long marches and desperate exertion. His heart pounded so beneath her cheek that it seemed to him she must hear it and be frightened, or that he must suffocate and die outright. Terror and rapture, exquisite pain and exquisite pleasure, mingled in the draught now held to his lips by Fate, Life's cup-bearer. And as he drank, with what strange birth-pangs, his budding manhood burgeoned into flower. He might look back upon his boyhood with regret, contempt, or tenderness.... He would never be a boy again.

L

The smallest and slenderest of women can be surprisingly heavy, when carried in the arms of a lover who long has borne her in his heart.

Thus to P. C. Breagh, stumbling with his burden over roads strewn with weapons, accouterments, mess-tins, and water-bottles, boxes of biscuit and halves of sugar-loaves discarded by troops retiring in haste, the appearance of a very tall peasant leading a little white-faced donkey came as an unspeakably welcome relief. For a franc in good French money the owner of the donkey was more than willing to hire out his beast. Thus, seated on this humble animal, P. C. Breagh's Infanta returned to the cottage where she had passed the previous night.

It was one of a hamlet boasting the name of Petit Plappeville. To reach it they skirted the frightful carnage at St. Hubert, threaded the wood of Châtel St. Germain, crossed the railroad, unmolested by the Prussian patrols, and, following narrow lanes hidden between copses, came at last upon its single street.

Madame Guyot, stout, hospitable, and voluble, received Juliette with cries of welcome and open arms. Mademoiselle should have something better than dry bread on this occasion, for a neighbor had that morning killed a calf. Hence veal cutlet, fried in batter--for some of the hens, scared by yesterday's bombardment, had already begun laying--and an omelette with fine herbs. No less than young demoiselles, wounded soldiers require nourishment, and here behold, English Monsieur accompanying Mademoiselle, here upon the pallet-bed in the corner of the kitchen one of France's brave defenders in the person of my Cousin Boisset. Pardon that he cannot rise to salute you, for the Prussians have made it impossible. During the battle of St. Privat yesterday, my Cousin Boisset was twice wounded while serving with the Eighteenth Field Battery of the Sixth Army Corps....

Thus introduced, the gunner told his story, and told it with vivacity in spite of his evident pain. His bandaged head and the useless leg roughly swathed in a homespun towel of Madame Guyot's told their story no less than his nimble tongue and vivacious eyes and hands.

"We were overcome by force of numbers.... The Germans know nothing of scientific warfare.... Believe me, Mademoiselle and Monsieur, we swept them down in rows like ninepins painted black. At twelve hundred yards, and again at fourteen hundred--and the more we killed the more there were to kill. Name of a pipe!--pardon, Mademoiselle!--it was inconceivable! We were compelled at length to cease our fire because our ammunition failed us, and it was not possible to butcher any more!--Worst of all, our generals lost their heads, and issued contradictory orders!--Commissariat broke down before the ammunition-service--we had had nothing to eat for two days--then we ceased to have shrapnel with which to feed our guns.... So we stood in front of a wood in which we might have taken cover, being peppered by Prussian fire of infantry and artillery, for three whole hours!--Three solid hours, Monsieur and Mademoiselle--until we were remembered, and ordered to retire. When the order came, few officers remained, and not a single non-commissioned officer was left to us. Of the three batteries of our brigade Division, two-thirds lay dead upon the field. With my wounded leg trailing behind me, I crawled over rank after rank of bodies, pausing over many of my old comrades.... Then I lay in the wood till dusk, and made crutches of saplings I cut down with my penknife. With the day I reached my cousin's house.... You may say 'All this is War'--but what kind of War? is what I ask you.... I--a soldier when has fought and bled for France!"

It was the voice of Juliette that answered from the corner of the blackened oaken settle, where she sat huddled in the leaden stupor that is born of grief and fatigue:

"Soldier of France, I will try to answer your question.... I am young and ignorant, but I have read and thought much. And now I have experienced what never can be forgotten.... I have sat by the corpse of my father on the battlefield.... I have looked in the face of the great man who is my country's cruel enemy...."

Madame Guyot, who was frying a panful of veal cutlet, started and looked round from her sputtering, savory-smelling cookery. The wounded gunner, propped up on the pallet-bed that stood in the corner of the low-ceiled, stone-built kitchen, turned keen dark eyes and a resolute bearded face toward the quarter whence came the silvery voice:

"It is Bismarck's War," she said. "Stone by stone he has built up Prussia until her vast shadow has swallowed up all Germany. He has seen--this huge man of colossal ambitions--that the road to Power greater still leads through the gate of France. And Diplomacy could not steal the key, so War is the lever with which he opens it."

"Alas, Mademoiselle," returned the gunner sorrowfully, "it would never have opened while a French soldier was left alive--if we had not been betrayed! Have you seen the picture of Cham in last week's _Charivari_? It reached my battery through one of our officers. It is true--_mon Dieu!_--it is desperately true. There is the Little Napoleon of To-day dressed up in the old cocked hat and the tattered rags of the capote that used to be worn by the Great Napoleon. He begs at the street-corner for sous--and even the prostitute turns away from the impostor. 'The End of the Legend!' is written underneath. It is furiously chic and terribly clever--and frightfully true, Mademoiselle. For the Napoleonic legend is done with--finished, for good and all!"

She did not answer, the momentary flash of interest had died out. With her sad eyes fixed upon the ebony and silver crucifix of her rosary, she was murmuring a prayer--doubtless for her father's soul. Seeing her thus absorbed, the soldier glanced at her companion, shrugged significantly, and tapped his own forehead, as though he would have said:

"It is well that women have faith in Heaven. See!--she turns to her beads, the poor little one. She is able to pray!--that is fortunate.... Otherwise, grief would turn her brain!"

Meeting no response from P. C. Breagh, who sat upon a backless straw-bottomed chair in the chimney corner, raptly contemplating the small, sorrowful face, the gunner shrugged again, and exchanged a wink of intelligence with Madame Guyot, as she took the bubbling pan from the fire, proclaiming the cutlet cooked to a turn.

Who has loved and does not remember the first meal partaken in the company of the beloved. To one guest at Madame Guyot's board, the fried cutlet and tomatoes eaten from her coarse platters of red-flowered crockery, the home-baked loaf, the jug of thin red wine, the country cheese and the dish of purple plums that served as dessert, made a banquet worthy of the gods. To sit opposite that little drawn, white face with the lowered, swollen eyelids, and watch her brave pretense of relishing their hostess' victuals, would have been torture had it not been bliss.

When the homespun cloth had been drawn, the crumbs shaken out upon the threshold for the hungry poultry, the cat accommodated with a saucer of scraps, and the hearth swept, P. C. Breagh, glancing at the cuckoo-clock that had hiccuped twelve, and now pointed to the half-hour, got up and reluctantly tore himself away.

"You are going?... Back to _him_?... To make sure that those soldiers have obeyed the orders of M. de Bismarck? Ah! that is what I have been praying for! Our Lady has put it into your head."

She said it eagerly, with her hand quieting the flutter in her bosom. Of what else should de Bayard's daughter have been thinking, P. C. Breagh asked himself. He entreated, his troubled gray eyes wistfully questioning:

"You won't leave this place until I come back? Pray do not!... Promise me!"

The soldier, chatting in low tones with the good woman of the cottage, pricked his hairy ears at the unfamiliar accent of the English words. Juliette answered in the same tongue:

"Monsieur, I give you my _parole_ of honor. When you come back to this house, if I am alive, you will find me here, under the _manteau_ of Our Lady. May she protect and guard you. _Au revoir!_..."

P. C. Breagh echoed the final words, and held out his big hand. She considered it a moment, hesitated, then laid her own in the broad, blistered palm. As he shut his strong fingers over the fragile captive, it struggled, then lay still, throbbing like some small imprisoned bird. And a dimness came before his eyes, and he hurriedly released her, stammering:

"Take--take care of yourself, won't you? I'll--not be very long away!"

She called him back. He knew a shock of joy and hurried toward her. She slipped her Rosary into his hand with a gold coin, faltering with eyes brimful, and quivering lips:

"This ... to be buried with him!... This--for a priest to read the Office and offer Mass ... if one can be discovered!... Oh! if I might come with you!... but no!--I will not be unreasonable. Again, it must not be that you carry me, as you did to-day!"

He trembled at the poignant recollection. She went on, breathing fast and eagerly, lifting her eyes, poor rain-washed scillas, to his--laying her small hand timidly on his shabby sleeve.

"Me, I have an idea!... There is now in Heaven a great saint who was priest of a little village that lies not far from here.... Since he died, it is eleven years.... I speak of M. Jean-Baptiste Vianney, the Blessed Curé of Ars...."

P. C. Breagh nodded recognition of the shining name she mentioned. She went on, her small fingers pinching a fold of the rough brown sleeve:

"Sacrifice--mortification--the Cross--these things to the holy Curé were the Keys of Heaven. The poorest and simplest of his peasants was not poorer or simpler than he. Even before his death Our Lord gave him the grace to perform miracles, and always did Our Lady regard him with tenderness.... See you well, I will pray to the Blessed Jean Vianney to intercede for me, that God may send a holy priest to read the Office for the dead!"

Her voice broke, and the bright tears brimmed over her pure underlids. At the sight a wave of tenderness surged up in him, pure of all sensuous passion, knowing only the overwhelming desire to serve, and comfort, and protect.... He bent his head, and kissed the little hand, before he turned and went from her. When he glanced back, midway clown the wide dusty street of the hamlet of scattered cottages, Juliette was standing in the sunshine, looking earnestly after him.

LI

She could think clearly and remember again. The confusion in her overwrought brain gradually subsided. She went back to the fatal days when the news of the defeats of Wörth and Spicheren rushed shrieking through France and Belgium, and the 16th of August brought word of Bazaine's intercepted retreat from Metz. That day a young girl, sitting under the grisly wing of Madame Tessier at the _table d'hôte_ of the Hôtel de Flandre, in Brussels, had risen up as pale as death and hurried from the room.

The picture was clear-cut, definite as a photograph. She saw the tables in confusion.... French guests uprising, the men exclaiming, and the ladies in tears,--Belgians sympathizing--Teutons exchanging congratulatory eye-glances, and smiles not at all concealed. As the white girl passed the chair from which a German cavalry officer had risen, he whipped the obstacle out of her way with an ogle and a bow. And Juliette, covering her eyes as though the sight of him scorched them, had fled past him.... As she quitted the _salle à manger_, the voice of Madame Tessier had reached her, saying grimly to the dandy:

"A civility from one of your nation at such a moment is an insult, Monsieur."

And Madame, with bristling mustaches, had also risen, and gone in search of her daughter-in-law elect, to be arrested at the foot of the grand staircase by a waiter with the intelligence that Mademoiselle had gone to her room to lie down, and begged not to be disturbed.... To which apartment, it being on the third floor, Madame Tessier--having wound up the twelve-o'clock _déjeuner_ of hot meats and vegetables and salad with coffee and pastry,--did not follow her. Had she braved the ascent, this story would have ended in quite a different way.

Upon this day, that saw the battle of Mars la Tour, Juliette would not have met the elegant, self-possessed, ingratiating lady who had spoken to her so amiably on the previous afternoon. When--Madame Tessier being engaged in changing a French _billet de banque_ into Belgian money--Juliette had inquired for letters at the bureau.

"'Mademoiselle de Bayard.' ... Unhappily there is not a single letter for Mademoiselle de Bayard..." had said the curled and whiskered functionary, taking an envelope from compartment "B" of the green baize-covered letter-rack, and handing it to this lady, who stood immediately behind.

Juliette had found it impossible not to see the address upon this letter:

"To MADAME DE BATE, "HÔTEL DE FLANDRE, "BRUSSELS,"

written in rather a vulgar scrawl. It carried extra stamps, and looked bulky. And the elegantly-gloved hand that was extended to take it, recoiled from the contact as though the envelope had concealed a scorpion.

The owner of the hand had regarded Mademoiselle de Bayard with a piercing and exhaustive scrutiny, even as she slipped the letter into a gold-mounted reticule, and snapped the spring tight. She had observed in soft and well-bred accents:

"Letters from one we love are enhanced in value, when the writer must lay down the sword to use the pen...."

Through a black lace veil so thickly flowered as to suggest a mask, a pair of brilliant eyes glittered at Juliette. What dazzling teeth were revealed by the crimson lips that smiled.... The well-bred voice added, with an entrancing touch of melancholy:

"Under other circumstances, to address Mademoiselle would be held a liberty--the speaker being a stranger. Yet as the wife of a French officer of the Imperial Guard,--I may be pardoned for presuming in my young country-woman an anxiety similar to my own?..."

"Ah, Madame," Juliette had said impulsively, "who is there would not pardon you?"

And she had looked with a young girl's honest admiration at the sumptuous form in the perfectly-appointed dress. When the lady had said, with brilliant eyes fixed on her:

"Were this letter not from my husband, I could wish it had been for you," she continued: "Does Mademoiselle know M. de Baye's regiment? The 777th Mounted Chasseurs...?"

"My father commands it, Madame," Juliette had proudly answered. And an animated conversation would have sprung from this answer, but Madame Tessier turned round rather sharply, and the lady, with a slight, graceful inclination, had glided rather rapidly away.

Later, Juliette had encountered Madame de Baye upon the staircase, and had received another of her brilliant glances, and another of her entrancing smiles. And, being lonely in this strange land, and athirst for interest and companionship, the young girl had woven a little romance out of this passing acquaintanceship.

Now as she reached her room, trembling and ready to sink with excitement and agitation, a woman stopped her in the corridor, who looked like a lady's maid of the better class. Well mannered, smart and discreet, she dropped Mademoiselle de Bayard an ingratiating curtsey, handing her at the same time a little three-cornered note.