CHAPTER XVII
THE CITY OF THE GOLDEN MISTS
A burly man, with a great black beard and a sunburnt face, drove up to the place as she spoke and exchanged words with Brandon. He had obtained a little pony-cart, by some occult means of which old travellers are the master; and he sat in it, smoking contentedly, as one who found nothing remarkable either in his presence at Wörth or in the circumstances which brought him there. When he was introduced to her as “Richard Watts,” he took his china pipe from his mouth, and lifted the brim of a vast sombrero hat stuck carelessly upon the very back of his curly black hair. He would be a man of sixty years, Beatrix thought—a man of many cities, yet the servant of none.
“Is this the lady?” he asked laconically.
“This is Madame Lefort,” said Brandon; “her servant is with her, but she can go behind.”
The stranger nodded his head and put his pipe into his mouth again.
“Two, then,” he exclaimed, and asked immediately, “Anything more?”
Brandon laughed.
“Mr. Watts is not accustomed to this kind of luggage, Beatrix,” he said; “but he’ll see you into Strasburg, and he’s a safer escort than a squadron of hussars.”
She turned to him a little anxiously.
“But you ride to Hagenau?”
“Certainly—if your people do not say no.”
Guillaumette climbed into the cart laboriously.
“Va là,” she said, “here goes a fine fat goose to market. You will not eat me, Monsieur!”
She sat jauntily, her arms crossed and her eyes upon the trooper who had helped her to her seat; but the great man in the cart did not notice her. He had thrust out a huge hand to grip Beatrix by the wrist; and now he began to address her as he would have addressed a child.
“Sit there and hold the rail. The road is rough, and the pony stumbles. Have you had your breakfast?—eh, yes. Well, that’s all right. You wouldn’t get any if you hadn’t.”
She turned to Brandon.
“You are not coming with us, after all, then.”
“Indeed, and we are—there goes the bugle.”
Richard Watts shrugged his tremendous shoulders.
“The pretty soldiers,” he said; “can’t you do without them to-day, Madame?”
She looked up at him, angry at the blunt speech. There was something kind in his big eyes, but his manner was that of a boor.
“If we are a trouble to you, sir—”
“A trouble! God bless me—an Englishwoman! Geeho! Geeho!”
He lashed the pony, and they began to jog across the fields. She gazed—it might be for the last time—up at the forest land where her home had been; and she saw burning houses, and churches which were but quaking walls, and black ruins of the homesteads of yesterday. In the vineyards by the river the labourers were burying the dead. Rusted cuirasses, broken helmets, twisted swords, rags which had been uniforms, rifles in the ditches, horses stiff and stark with their feet pointing upward to the sky—these were the emblems of battle around her. But the sun shone warm upon the pastures; there were gay tunics in all the valleys; she heard the music of the drums; the romance of war put a cloak upon the reality of war. And the way lay to a city and to a home. She desired with all the intensity of which she was capable to turn from that place of death to the light and life of Strasburg. Edmond would come to her there. She thanked God that he was a prisoner, and that war could not harm him now.
They had struck the great southern road to the city; but the way was laborious, for troops followed it everywhere, and no turn of it but showed them the wavering lines of spiked helmets or the lances of the Uhlans. And here the story of the flight was to be read in all its fulness. Dead men with glassy eyes stared up at them from the fœtid ditches. Masterless horses galloped by the roadside whinnying pitifully; or stood in wondering troops, saddles still upon their backs, and even their own wounds to show. No man could have numbered the rifles cast aside by the flying hosts of yesterday. Broken caissons, gun-carriages lacking wheels, empty wagons shattered and plundered, field-glasses, even letters and pocket-books, and little tokens whereby the names of those who fled were to be learned—these things bore witness to the living as the graves upon the hillside bore witness to the dead. But they provoked Beatrix no longer to despair or pity. If, of the aftermath, she should reap her lover’s life, she would crave no other grace. And she was all fortunate. She thought of the children asking to-day for those who nevermore would stoop to lift them to their lips. How many there were in the very city to which this strange Englishman was taking her! How many women prayed in the silent churches for those who lay in the vineyards she was leaving! It was not selfishness, but gratitude, which turned her thoughts to such a channel.
Their way lay to the south; and many a hamlet was numbered before her companion spoke a word or took his pipe from his mouth. The exclamations of Guillaumette fell upon deaf ears. It was odd to be there on the road with one she had never seen before; but the kaleidoscope of her life had been turning swiftly for many hours. She accepted the present as it came to her, and found content therein.
“You are going to Strasburg, Monsieur?” she asked, for the very sake of speaking.
Richard Watts took his pipe from his mouth very slowly and answered her by another question.
“What’s that?” he exclaimed. “Monsieur! Bless you, child, I’m no ‘monsieur.’ I was born within sound of Bow Bells.”
“Oh,” she said, “one gets into the habit of it here. You are Mr. Watts, are you not?”
He nodded his head.
“Richard Watts, young lady—as much at your service as your French friends will let me be.”
“Do you think we shall have any difficulty in getting into Strasburg, then?”
“No difficulty at all—and God help us when we’re there.”
He smoked contemplatively for a little while, and then continued:
“There is nothing good in France to-day, young lady. I have been fighting all my life, and I know what I say. Your German friends will be at the gates of Strasburg in a week and then the fruit will fall. It rots on the trees already. It has been rotting since the day that knaves began to pluck it. Look at that fellow in the ditch there. Yesterday he was all gold lace and glory. To-day he is dead, and you cannot see the gold lace for mud. The glory has gone up to the hills, where the Prussians burn the farms. You have married a Frenchman, and you do not believe me, as a matter of course. Twenty years ago I thought as you did. It’s a long time, twenty years, Madame—a long time. France was the first nation in Europe twenty years ago. In twenty years hence, she may be so again. These poor fellows could not wait, you see.”
A dead chasseur lay in the ditch at the roadside. His head was pillowed upon his arm as one who slept a child’s sleep; but his splendid uniform had been washed by the mud of the fields, and the pillagers had cut off two of his fingers for the sake of the rings he wore. Beatrix closed her eyes that she might not see the dead man’s face. To what new scenes of peril and of death was that strange journey carrying her? The cities in danger! She could not believe it possible.
“I am going to Strasburg because my husband will come there when they release him. I could not go anywhere else, for I have no other friends in France. If the Germans follow, it will not matter. They are gentlemen, I am sure. Even you admit that?”
He nodded his head approvingly.
“You are quite right to go,” he said, “and they are gentlemen, as I admit. If war is like a good dinner and our gentlemen dine sometimes—that doesn’t concern you. Strasburg will suffer, but you have English friends—ah, your friends are English, Madame?”
She smiled.
“And if they are not?”
“In that case we must make the most of a bad job,” he said bluntly.
She looked up at him quickly to read a face hardened in a gravity very foreign to it. But he did not speak, and they had left the high-road now and were in the heart of the forest of Hagenau. In and out, by woodland paths, through avenues of chestnuts, past little churches which spoke of God’s peace and of all the primitive forest life, the cross-road carried them. All the hubbub and turmoil of the great highway was hushed here. Impossible to believe, as the wind stirred the trees to a murmur of song and the glades opened their golden hearts to the wayfarer, that the things of yesterday had been truths. War was an hallucination of their sleep. There had been no battle. Such contrasts were beyond the possibilities.
“Who could realise that we were at Wörth this morning?” she exclaimed, as a turn of the road opened to their view scenes of a remoter and even more sylvan beauty. “Is there anyone in these woods who would understand that a great army is all around us, and that those poor fellows lie dying in the vineyards? I don’t believe, I cannot believe—”
Richard Watts smoked on doggedly, but presently he pulled up the pony suddenly.
“Look there, young lady,” he said, as he jerked his whip in the direction of a great tree; “there is something to help your incredulity.”
Her eyes turned toward the place, and she shuddered at that which the glade had hidden from her.
They had taken a Uhlan in the forest and hanged him from a tree. The body swayed gently in the breeze, and showed gaping wounds upon the hands and throat. A group of hags, their faces dark with the ferocity of anger unsatiated, stood in the shade of the tree and greeted their own work triumphantly.
“He was taken at Berdot’s Farm, Monsieur—he rode up at daybreak and Henriette found him. Ah! she is brave, Henriette. She let the dogs loose, the droll. He will not go back to his Bismarck to-day, Monsieur. And it is our work—our work!”
They screeched together as creatures of the fables; but the man whipped up the pony and was soon in the heart of the silent forest again. For a long time now he puffed at his great pipe stoically; but it was not lost upon Beatrix that he skirted the town of Hagenau, and began to go faster as he approached the city of Strasburg.
“Is not Mr. North to meet us there?” she asked a little anxiously.
He answered her brusquely.
“After the war, young lady—we will learn patience. I cannot wait to-day. I am flying from the defenders of France—as good a Frenchman as any of them.”
“But there are no soldiers here?”
“Glory be to God for that! The fewer the better. See as few of them as you can, girl.”
She thought upon it for a little while, and then exclaimed, as though she read his thoughts—
“My husband will be very grateful to Mr. North.”
The idea amused him. She could hear him chuckling to himself.
“Will be grateful, young lady?” he asked presently—“you said grateful?”
“And why not?”
“No reason at all. We are always grateful when the man who knocks us down is the very good friend of our wife. Would not you be under the circumstances?”
Never, until that moment, had there come to her the thought that Edmond might not understand the circumstances which had compelled her to seek Brandon’s friendship. She sat debating it very silently. She would not believe that her companion’s words were aught but a jest; and yet, as the cart jogged on, a sense of unrest and foreboding displaced the content with which she had quitted Wörth. If Edmond should not think as she did! If he should hold that war had made that friendship impossible! She blamed herself that she had not thought of it before.
“Of course he will understand,” she said, rather as one uttering her thoughts aloud. “They were old friends in Strasburg. And he will know why I went to the camp. I shall tell him all about it when he comes back to Strasburg.”
“Tell him nothing, child. A tale untold is not to be criticised. There is always the off-chance. I am an old man and have the right to advise you. Go to your friends in Strasburg and keep your own secrets. Too much confidence has ruined many a man, and woman too. Your husband will know nothing unless you tell him. Why should you make him unhappy?”
“I will tell everything—he has the right to know.”
He would not agree with her; but he watched her with kindly eyes, and when, long hours afterwards, the city of Strasburg, lying in purple and golden mists of the evening light, came to their view, he said to her almost earnestly—
“If ever you want a friend yonder, young lady, remember old Richard Watts. Any Englishman in Strasburg will show you where he lives. Come and tell him all about it. He understands women and he understands men. You will find him alone; he has been alone all his life.”
She thought that he spoke with an infinite tenderness; her own heart was heavy, and the sympathy he offered her touched a plaintive chord of melancholy which the hour, and the scene, and the city of the golden mists helped to linger in her path. She had come home, indeed—the bride of yesterday—yet she knew not whether to-morrow would permit the house of her affections to stand, or would leave her one true friend in all France. The hosts of Germany were about to cross that plain, above which rose up the spires and pinnacles of Strasburg. The very silence of the night was as of some herald of storm and tempest raging in the hearts of men. But it was fear for herself that dominated her when they entered the city by the northern gate, and the pony began to trot toward the Broglie Platz. If Edmond should not understand!
“I know that you wish to be kind to me,” she said, “and I will not forget. I have many friends here, for I am Madame Hélène’s grandchild. Everyone knows the Countess of Görsdorf. She lives in the Place Kleber.”
Richard Watts pulled the pony back upon its haunches.
“Eh, what’s that?” he exclaimed. “The Countess of Görsdorf—you know her?”
“She is my grandmother.”
“Then you are the daughter of Marie Douay—impossible!”
The exclamation burst from him involuntarily. He sat quite still for some minutes, regarding her very curiously. All about them was the life of Strasburg, the music of the bands, the glare of the lamps before the cafés, the buzz of tongues, and the rumbling wheels. The man saw nothing of this life. He had eyes only for his little companion, who had just told him that she was Madame Hélène’s granddaughter. She, in her turn, sat wondering at his astonishment.
“You do not know Madame Hélène?” she asked presently, for he continued to let the pony stand.
“Know her, child—how should I know her?”
“You are a stranger to Strasburg, then?”
He laughed hardly.
“An utter stranger.”
The words seemed to please him. He repeated them as though in emphasis.
“An utter stranger, young lady—without a home anywhere.”
A great idea, one of pity for his loneliness, came to her. She could not account for her friendship, yet friendship she gave to this rugged acquaintance instinctively.
“If you would come to the Place Kleber, they would be very grateful to you,” she said. “I am sure Madame Hélène would like to thank you herself.”
Again he looked at her with a curiosity he could not cloak.
“Marie Douay’s daughter—so you are Marie Douay’s daughter!” he continued to mutter, as one who has recalled forgotten names and places. “Well, the world is small indeed. Do you know your way to the Place Kleber from here, child?”
She laughed at the doubt.
“Every inch of it.”
“Then I will say good-night.”
It was an abrupt invitation for her to leave him, and she did not misunderstand it. There was nothing odd in such a man telling her that here was the parting of the ways.
“I am sorry you will not come with me,” she repeated, when she stood at last upon the pavement. “Madame Hélène would have been so glad. Perhaps you will call to-morrow?”
He thrust his hand over the side of the cart and held hers for a moment in a clasp which almost crushed her fingers.
“God bless you, little passenger,” he said, ignoring her question. “Don’t forget old Richard Watts. And mind you keep your secrets.”
He was gone with the words, away into the shadows of the great city. She turned quickly toward her own home, for the bells of the churches were striking midnight. As the musical chimes rang out, they seemed to say, “Secrets, secrets—keep your secrets.”
Was it true, then, that some thought, born of the impotence of France and of yesterday’s defeat, had come into her own life, and that it must be hidden from Edmond? She would listen to no such suggestion of shame, but hurried on to the old home and the beloved voices, and the arms outstretched to hold the little wanderer. And through the forests and over the mountains of France, by many roads and woodland paths, the hosts of Germany marched on toward the city whose doom the finger of fate already had written.