CHAPTER I
PÈRE BONOT READS THE “COURRIER”
Old Père Bonot, sunning himself before the doors of a café by the minster, held the Courrier du Bas-Rhin in his hand, and vouchsafed to Rosenbad, the brewer, and to Hummel, the vintner, such particulars of the forthcoming wedding as he found to be good. A glass of coffee stood at Père Bonot’s elbow; his blue spectacles rested high upon a forehead where no wrinkles sat; the smoke from his cigarette hung in little white clouds about his iron-grey hair. He sat before the great cathedral of Strasburg; but the paper and its words carried him away to a little village of the mountains where, forty years ago, he had knelt at the altar with Henriette at his side, and an old priest had blessed him, and he had gone out to the sunny vineyards, hand in hand with his girl-wife to their home in a forest of the Vosges. There were tears in old Bonot’s eyes when he took up the Courrier again.
“Nevertheless, my friends,” said he, covering his retreat with a great show of folding the paper and setting his glasses, “nevertheless—her mother was a French woman! Marry the devil to a good girl—and, as the saying goes, there is no more devil. I remember Marie Douay—twenty, twenty-two years ago. I saw her at Görsdorf with Madame Hélène, a little brunette, always gay, always laughing; a bird to cage in Paris; a bird of the gardens and not of the mountains. When she married the Englishman, milord Hamilton, who had lived for two years in the Broglie here, was it for me to be surprised? Nom d’un gaillard, I was not surprised at all. The eagle to the mountains, the gold-breast to the cage. Certainly we were too sleepy for Marie Douay. She went to London with milord—et après—”
He slapped the paper as though all were settled; but Rosenbad, the fat German brewer, took his pipe from his mouth and chuckled with a deep guttural note.
“The après was Mademoiselle Beatrix—hein?” said he. “There were no more après’s, friend Bonot? That is for by-and-by—when the priest là-bas is forgotten.”
Old Hummel, the vintner, shook his head.
“These things bring the white hairs,” he exclaimed dolefully; “when you are sixty you should not go to weddings or to funerals. I have seven children, and the priests are always in my house. Next week, the Abbé Colot baptises my tenth grandchild. When I see a lad at the altar I say to myself, ‘By-and-by he will drink his beer at the Stadt Paris, and will be in no hurry to go home again.’ I do not wish to look through the window while another man dances. If I cannot dance myself, I will sit here and forget the days when I could. Ah—that it should be so many years ago!”
He struck a mournful note, a discord upon that sunny morning of July when there was a sky of azure above the minster spire of Strasburg, and some of the glory of summer hovered even in the well of her narrow streets. Old Père Bonot, called back again in thought to the village of the mountains, closed his eyes and listened to the musical bells pealing now in many a tower and steeple. By here and there, groups of well-dressed citizens crossed the open space before the western door of the vast church and passed from the sunshine to the soft lights of green, of red, of gold, of purple, which fell upon the pavements of the dim, mysterious aisles. Ever and anon, a carriage clattered over the flags, and men in gaudy uniforms, the white and silver of the cuirassiers, the green of the Empress’s dragoons, the blue of the lancers, added their gilt of colour to the swelling throngs. It was a soldier’s wedding, Strasburg said, and you must search many a city of Europe before you would find as pretty a bride as the stately English girl who went to the altar that morning, or a better lancer than Edmond Lefort, who was to take Beatrix Hamilton to the mountains presently.
The bells rang in the steeples; the people gathered in the minster square and at the great western doors of the cathedral. Many were peasants, clattering in their sabots, peasants come down from the vineyards to witness the marriage of the grandchild of one whom they and their fathers before them had held in honour—that servant of charity and of love, Hélène, Countess of Görsdorf. Flowers they carried to scatter upon the path which the mistress of their affections must tread; and those that had no flowers gave laughter and merry tongues, and it may even be a prayer, for the English girl who was Strasburg’s bride that day. And side by side with them were the louts of the hills, the vignerons, the moissonneurs, men of field and farm and orchard, red-cheeked all, with spotless blouses, and many a bon mot, and many a whisper of other marriages that might be when the harvesting was done. Such a crowd had not gathered at the church doors for twenty years, the people said. But then—it was Madame Hélène’s grandchild.
Old Père Bonot watched the people, and the smile came back to his contented face.
“It is forty years ago,” he said, “forty to a day, ma foi. The seventh of July—”
“Come, then—” interrupted Hummel, the melancholy vintner, “many things will happen to us before the seventh of July, mon vieux. The day is Tuesday, and Sunday was the third. It would be the fifth if I can add three and two.”
Old Bonot assented grudgingly.
“I married Henriette at Reichshoffen on the seventh day of July in the year 1830. To-day is the fifth then, and the year is 1870. It was on the twenty-fifth day of the month that Charles the Tenth signed the five ordinances which cost him his throne. On the next day le roi Guillaume came to the throne of England. Ah, mes enfants, the things that forty years can teach us, the joys we can forget, the griefs we can suffer. And there is always death—always, always—”
He was thinking of little Henriette and the place where she slept in the green valley of Reichshoffen; but Rosenbad, the merry brewer, was all eyes for the wedding and the great throngs then crossing the square.
“Oh! but you are gay this morning, old Bonot,” said he. “I shall go and tell them that there is a skeleton for their feast—the man in black who says that the bell can toll sometimes. Is not he a proper fellow to make their wine sour! And he has children of his own!”
The vintner took up his long glass of Munich beer, and chimed in with his old complaint.
“I will be as gay as ten grandchildren will let me—for the sake of the little English girl. Afterwards I must go home. Père Bonot shall call for some more beer and remember that we are Germans—”
He spoke jestingly, but the Frenchman was up in arms in a moment.
“Not so,” he cried fiercely. “I am the servant of my Emperor, and of no other. As for your beer, it is the drink of louts. I give it to my pigs. When the King of Prussia is crowned in the minster—I will drink your beer on that day.”
He hammered upon the table with a blow which shook the glasses and brought a waiter hurrying to the place. But while his anger was still young, a great sound of cheering broke upon their ears, and all in the café stood up to see a great family coach, drawn by a pair of staid grey horses, roll in leisured dignity across the square. Within the coach there sat an old lady with hair as white as silver, and hollowed cheeks and kindly blue eyes, and such a nobility of manner and unassumed graciousness, that all the gentlest gifts of motherhood seemed united in her.
“Wait—wait! there is the Countess herself with Mademoiselle Beatrix by her side. Sac à papier!—he is lucky, the lancer. I would even forget that I have seven—”
“She has no eyes for winter, friend Hummel. They say that the English are an ugly nation, but, ma foi, there is one to give them the lie. And the lancer—there will be no King of Prussia in Strasburg while we have men like that. Mon Dieu—what shoulders!”
A tremendous cheer greeted the three occupants of the old-world coach. Hélène, Countess of Görsdorf, leant back upon the cushions of yellow satin, and there were tears of gladness in her eyes. Mademoiselle Beatrix, as the people called the English girl, looked neither to the right nor to the left, but timidly into the eyes of the young officer of lancers who sat before her, and whose blue uniform and scarlet breeches were a feast of colour in the gloom of the cathedral square. All that the peasants said of her was admitted readily by maturer critics. A brunette, she had nevertheless the blue eyes of the Saxon. Possessed of no particular features that made for any style of beauty, yet there was a winning sweetness of face and of expression which communicated itself instantly, and was not to be resisted. And she was Madame Hélène’s grandchild! Strasburg asked no more even from the wife of one of the best of her soldiers.
The carriage rolled by; the sun shone generously upon the glittering habiliments of the lancer, and upon the childish face of his English wife. Madame Hélène’s white hairs were as threads of silver. In the morning light, the tears upon her cheek sparkled as drops of golden dew. They were going to leave her alone at last—those children of hers; alone in the great house, the home she had loved; in the city of her girlhood and the beloved sanctuary of maternity. She said that God had willed it so; and there was a prayer in her heart that the years of her loneliness might be few.
Old Père Bonot, standing at the very edge of the causeway, raised his hat as the carriage passed, and when he cried “God bless them!” it may be that Madame Hélène’s prayer was echoed unconsciously by him, and that he thought of a distant valley in the mountains, and of one who slept there, and of the precious years, so quick to pass, when the first and last words of his happy days had been spoken by the child-wife who had loved him.
“Henriette—Henriette—I remember always!”
So does Death ride upon the coach of Life—and so, in that sunny city of Strasburg, where the bells rang a merry note, and the people feasted, and the old cathedral trembled to the swelling notes of its mighty organ, were there those who thought of the aftermath of years and of the hands for ever still. And this thought they remembered at a later day, so soon to come, when the thunder of the guns made music for their ears, and the priests who had lifted their hands to bless the living went out to the homes of the dying and the dead.