CHAPTER XXVIII
“IF STRASBURG FALLS”
There followed upon her illness a week of dreams, which were the delirium of a brain overwrought, and of the burden she had carried for so many days. She knew not where she was or whose were the voices which spoke to her, but seemed to be living in a world apart—in a dreadful valley of shadows and of constant turmoil. Faces came to her fitfully in her dreams, the faces she had known in childhood—her mother’s face and the face of Edmond bending over her while she slept. To him she stretched out her arms, but could not touch his hand before the vision passed. No finality even of the dream was permitted to that burning brain. As in a whirlpool of the mind she was tossed hither and thither in thought; now battling with the flames, which gave a golden radiance to the city of doom; now living through the night of Wörth again; now at her husband’s feet imploring him, for love of her, to save the life of their friend. A thousand voices spoke to her, but she could recognize none of them. She did not know that Strasburg, minute by minute, crumbled to the dust. Sleep gave her nought but this prompting to labour unceasing of the mind, to this unending battle of the flame and smoke and faces of her visions.
Reason came back to her at last; but ten days had passed, and she was in the Place Kleber no longer. When she opened her heavy eyes and sought to raise herself upon her bed, she saw that they had carried her to a strange house and laid her in a strange room. So bare and gloomy and vault-like was that chamber that she might well have been in the tombs. Even the pillars which carried the arches of the vaulted ceiling suggested an abiding place of the dead. The candles burning at her bedside were as watch-lights to her eyes. She heard no sound of any voice, but only the thunder of the cannon rolling distantly over the city above. Her weakness was beyond expression. She could not lift a hand from the coverlet of the bed. She thought that she was dying, and the rest of death seemed to come upon her as the sweetest gift of God.
Guillaumette came into the room presently walking upon tiptoe and carrying a basin of soup in her hand. When she saw that her mistress was awake, she set down the bowl quickly, and ran from the room crying, “Monsieur, Monsieur!” The cry brought the aged Abbé Colot to the place, and he entered in haste, uttering, as he did so, a prayer of thanks that his little patient lived.
“Ah! my child; you are awake, then. Glory be to God for this hour.”
Beatrix pressed her hands to her eyes.
“Whose house is this?” she asked.
“It is my house—you have been very ill here. They brought you to me from the Place Kleber. Ah, mon enfant, there is no more Place Kleber—no more Strasburg. We live in the vaults; we do not see the sun. You are very weak, Madame.”
She sighed, and laid her pretty head upon the pillow.
“If I only could remember, Monsieur!” she said. “I have seen so many things. It is all night—night.”
“But it will be day soon, my child.”
Guillaumette chimed in with her word.
“And here is the beautiful soup, Madame. Oh! Madame, what soup it is. And nothing soon to eat but the fat geese’s livers and the horses’ bones. I do not love the geese—not at all, Madame. And you have been so ill, so ill. Every day I said, ‘She will die to-day.’ Was it not so, Monsieur? Is she not to drink the beautiful soup?”
A poor wan smile crossed the pale face as Beatrix listened to the odd confession. Her awakened mind was busy already at the point where its chord of right reason had snapped.
“Has my husband been here?” she asked them suddenly.
The abbé shook his head. He had not heard of Lefort’s return, and he set down her question to the delirium which had left her.
“He is not in Strasburg, surely, my child. He will come presently. Your friends do not forget you. Monsieur Watts is here twice a day. He was here this morning; he will come again to-night.”
She listened to him as to one who spoke of strange things. Her weakened brain sought to grapple with the threads. Why did Richard Watts come there? Why had Edmond not been to the house? Ah, she remembered. That dreadful night of farewell—the threat, almost the curse upon her.
“Has Mr. Watts left any message for me?” was her next question.
“That you are to get well, my child. That is the message of us all. We cannot lose Madame Hélène’s daughter; we are not going to lose her. And she must not talk. That is the doctor’s command. Silence, silence, until the little head is well again.”
“And the beautiful soup! Ah! Monsieur forgets the beautiful soup. We can live in the cellars, Madame, when we have the soup like that. It is I who made it—I, Guillaumette. Will you not taste it, Madame—just for Guillaumette’s sake?”
She held her mistress in her arms and began to feed her as a little child. The abbé watched approvingly. He did not know why her husband had not been to the house. The Captain’s duty as a soldier had kept him from the city, he thought. And so he spoke of Strasburg’s sufferings in a low and gentle voice soothing as a lullaby.
“Ah, we should give thanks to God that we have even the cellars of our house, my child. There are others who have not straw to cover them. But we have taught France her duty, and France will remember. The brave General, I do not know how to find words to speak of him. Day and night, day and night he refuses to listen to the cowards. We are a city of fire and dust, and yet we remain a city. We have little food to eat, yet God feeds our hearts. And we shall resist until the end, though there be not one stone upon another. Yesterday, they tell me, six hundred shells fell upon bastion eleven. Six hundred shells! Think of it! These Germans are devils—the house of God even is not sacred to them. But they are facing a brave people, my child. We know how to suffer. Even the women do not complain. Ah! God be thanked for the brave women who give us their prayers to-day.”
Beatrix seemed to listen to him, but found no interest in his words. She was glad when he left her to sleep again, but no sleep rewarded her busy brain. Line by line her own story came back to her. She was alone, then! Edmond had left her forever. She would never know his kiss again. He deemed her unfaithful to his country. The punishment of her folly seemed bitter beyond words. She felt as some outcast, lacking country, friends, and knowing not so much as one in all the world who would speak a word of love to her.
Guillaumette watched at her bedside that afternoon and told her many things in fragments of reluctant gossip. She had been very ill after “Monsieur” left the house. Few buildings remained unharmed in the Place Kleber. In the northern suburbs of the city the people lived in their cellars. This room was one of the old vaults under the presbytery of the abbé’s church in the Rue Nationale. Richard Watts had come to their house when she was ill, and had insisted upon her removal. The abbé, who slept in the sacristy of his church, and had loved “Madame” as one of his own children, could not do enough for her. There were many in Strasburg to condole with Madame Hélène’s daughter even at such a time. General Uhrich himself had called at the house. No one knew anything of the story, except that she was very ill, and that the abbé had taken her there for safety. They had done all they could to make the place comfortable—but there was no choice. Upstairs the iron death was everywhere. Children had been killed at their mothers’ breasts. The great library of Strasburg burned still, as some vast flambeau bidding the Germans to look upon the unyielding heart of the city. There was a party that wished to yield, but the General would not listen to it. Monsieur Watts said that the General was a madman who had been weaned on pâté de foie gras. The American, Dr. Forbes—ah, how clever he was! He would return at sunset, and bring Monsieur Watts with him. They came together always.
Beatrix heard the gossip greedily. Ten days had passed, then, since Edmond left her. She trembled to think what those ten days might have meant to Brandon. Richard Watts’s anxiety to see her she could construe only as some desire that she should have news of her friend. Whether it were ill or good news she dare not ask. In one way a vague sense of relief succeeded the remembrance that Edmond knew her secret. She did not believe, in her gentler moods, that his love for her could not brook so womanly a folly as that of which he found her guilty. He would come to reason when he had reflected upon all that she had told him.
Richard Watts presented himself at the house at five o’clock, and when they brought his message she asked eagerly that she might see him. It was good to look upon that burly figure; good to hear that cheery English voice congratulating her. And he had so much to tell her.
“And so the little passenger is getting well again. Bravo, bravo! I shall have rare news for old Anne Brown to-night. Eh, young lady, you will send your love to old Anne Brown?”
He had the little hand in his for a moment and pressed the burning fingers.
“You are kind to come,” she said.
“Kind, young lady—why, hark to that. Your father’s oldest friend kind to come and see that little Beatrix is getting well again. What nonsense!”
She thought upon his words.
“You knew my father, then?”
“Ay, better than them all; knew his heart, his very soul. Some day we will talk of it—not now. You must get well again first, and have done with this nonsense about Master Brandon. Oh, don’t be anxious about him. The rogue can walk again, almost as well as I can.”
A sigh of relief escaped her lips. She told him, as shortly as she might, the story of her husband’s return. He listened with grave face, which could not cloak his anxiety.
“I feared from the first that this would happen,” she said. “Edmond would not believe. He chose to misunderstand me. He has not been here all these days. He threatened Brandon. It is a relief to know that they have not met.”
Watts feigned to laugh at the idea. His assumption of a confident indifference was none the less a failure.
“Strasburg cannot hold out three days,” he said. “It was lucky I went to the Rue de l’Arc-en-Ciel when I did. We bribed their own man and got over the roofs to Dr. Forbes’s house. He has been attending you, you know—a right good fellow, though he was born in San Francisco. Brandon is in his house now—about the last place they would look for him. The American flag will protect him. When the city falls, men will be reasonable again, and all this will be forgotten. We must wish the city to open its gates, little passenger. That’s the only chance for all of us. Meanwhile, trust me to keep those two fellows apart. I’ll have no cut-throat business, if I can help it. What are they fighting about? Devil take the rogues if they know. And why is Dick Hamilton’s daughter lying here like a pretty spoiled dove in a cage? Because two fools have been playing the fool’s game together. But we shall stop that. Trust old Richard Watts and the Germans who make the music at the gates.”
Thus he sought to give her courage, and fearing to excite her, he left her with an echo of his own self-reliance in her heart. She knew that she had one friend working for her; and when she slept that night her prayer was this—that the gates of Strasburg might be opened to the enemy.