CHAPTER III
“A LOOMING BASTION”
Brandon dined in his little room above the office near the Porte des Pierres; and when dusk fell he set out to walk to the Contades and to his favourite café there. The ball which Thérèse Lavencourt was to give had no longer an interest for him. He sought to be alone and to forget the day.
It was almost dusk when he reached the park, and he remembered, in spite of himself, that Beatrix would be already in the farmhouse on the hills above the Sauer. He had not wished to think of it, and had gone to the gardens that friends might help him to forget; but when a waiter had served him with coffee and he had read the papers from Paris, it seemed to him that a greater sense of solitude possessed him than he had ever known since he left Cambridge and came, at his father’s wish, to help his father’s business in Strasburg. One day had changed his view of life. While she was in the city, he could forget the reasons that kept him to a merchant’s desk and had expatriated him. He could forget the years of public-school life in the England he had left. He could forget his own ambitions buried in those vast and dusty cellars of Frankfort wherefrom his father, William North, sent the Rhine wine to the courts of Europe. But Beatrix was in Strasburg no more. He would not have believed yesterday that there was such a lonely place in all the world.
There were many soldiers in the café—lancers and artillerymen, Turcos and zouaves. A band played, with rare intervals of silence, and its flippant music was an irritant to his ear. He heard pretty women chattering nonsense to officers of cavalry whose wit reached no higher point than assent incoherent. He beheld slipshod and rolling troopers, and remembered the hussars in Germany, and the strong hand which built there a house of steel for a nation’s safety. In such a moment as this he would almost forgive his father because he had wished to make a German of him. It was no glorious employment to sell so many bottles of wine per annum; no glorious employment, it is true, for a man who had written decent Greek prose, and had spoken of immortal things at the Union. He would have preferred a commission in a cavalry regiment at home; or, better still, that liberty which ties a man neither to city nor to country, but sends him to see and hear on the wide road of the world. But his father had other views. “The stool that I sat on should not be too high for my son,” he said; and Brandon took it, and found his consolation elsewhere.
“There were many soldiers in the cafe.”
He was the friend of Germany as much of necessity as of admiration. The French, as a people, fascinated him, yet won no allegiance from him. His own gifts of strength of will and purpose, of method, of physical capability, were just such gifts as he found wanting in all the Frenchmen he knew. The power to achieve by thought and years, that power which was the very heart of Germany, engrossed him always. He saw these men of Strasburg, and he knew that if ever the day should come when the hosts of Germany crossed the Rhine, not only a city but an empire and a kingdom would fall. There were moments even when the sordid nature of his own business made him reflect that war would not only change the current of his life in a day, but would open up for him those scenes of humanity militant which had been the study of his imagination in many a lonely hour. But war now—now that Beatrix had gone to the Görsdorf!
He laughed at himself for thinking of it, and turned again to watch the unshapely troopers who slouched before the door of the café, and stood for all the glory of the glorious army of France. What would war mean to such men as these? Scorn of their deficiencies became almost anger sometimes. He had the impulse to get up and drill them—to straighten them with the flat of a sword he must borrow.
There was no one in the café that he knew; but when he had been there a little while old Père Bonot, the cigar merchant, and with him Rosenbad, the brewer, came up to his table, and insisted, as was their wont, upon speaking of the one event which Strasburg recognised that day. He listened to them in spite of himself. A subtle fascination compelled him to join in the talk.
“I was at the Gare; I saw her go,” said the brewer, triumphantly. “She sat upon the right side; he pulled down the blind. Donnerwetter—if it had been this hand! I would have pulled down that blind myself—et vous savez—I have fifty years!”
Old Bonot stirred a glass of coffee vigorously.
“For myself,” he said, “the little church in the mountains, the village priest, and the village cart. These things are not for every eye to see. The English are different. This was the English marriage. The Englander carries his boots on the top of his carriage—I have seen them in London. You know London, Monsieur? Ah, what a city—what people—and funerals everywhere. I counted them—one, two, twenty—every day. And everyone so sad—because of the funerals. When I am in London, I stop at your, what you say, Zoho Square. It is the centre of your society. Ma foi, what a world! And no one laughs. I have never seen anyone laugh in London. It is too big. You are afraid to laugh. You must come to France for that—to France and the vineyards. We shall marry you here, and you will carry your boots on your carriage—hein?”
The old man gabbled on merrily, and took the cigar which Brandon offered him.
“You English know a cigar,” he said, “but your wines—ah, you have no wines. This very morning I had a hundred of your English cigars sent to Captain Lefort. He will smoke them on the mountains when Madame is old enough to differ from him. There is nothing like a good cigar on the day when you discover that Madame has opinions. Our friend the Captain will learn his lesson quickly. You know Madame—without doubt? I have seen her every day since she came to Strasburg five years ago. And she has opinions. I read them in her eyes. She is not what you English call the ‘maid of all work.’ There is courage, verve, the animation. She will know how to say ‘I will not!’”
Brandon surveyed him with curiosity and amusement. Rosenbad, the brewer, who was no philosopher, resented his philosophy.
“You are gay again, old Bonot,” said he. “I said that you would be a fine skeleton for their feast. You must catch the last train to Wörth and tell the Captain that he has married a wife who can say ‘I will not.’ He will be delighted to see you. As for me, she might say what she pleased if I were her husband.”
“You, mon vieux, you are too fat. And in a lancer tunic, too! Ma foi, what a spectacle!”
The brewer avoided the subject deftly.
“They have spoiled our lancers,” said he; “the new tunic is as ugly as the colour of it. There was something to make a man when they wore the kurtka. The new coat is the coat of the Prussian; do you not think so, Monsieur?”
He turned appealingly to a young sous-lieutenant of lancers, who had come up to the table and called for absinthe. But the lad scarcely heard the question.
“To the news from Paris!” he cried, raising his glass excitedly.
“There is news from Paris, then—”
“The best. They are going to make a new king of Spain, and Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen is the man they have chosen.”
He spoke with an excitement characteristic of the boy rather than the man. For a moment the significance of his words was lost both upon old Bonot and upon Rosenbad, the brewer. The latter continued to sip his beer, the former to smoke his English cigar.
“Well,” exclaimed old Bonot at last, “and if he is the man, Monsieur—”
The sous-lieutenant regarded him almost with contempt.
“Mon Dieu,” he exclaimed, “you do not understand?”
“I understand nothing.”
The lad shrugged his shoulders.
“Then I cannot teach you,” said he.
He drank his absinthe at a draught and left the café. Brandon made some good excuse and followed upon his heels.
“Forgive me,” he said, as they stood together for a moment at the gate of the gardens, “but you are sure of what you say?”
“Sure of it? Absolutely. It is news from the Chambers—and it means but one thing, Monsieur. We shall be in Berlin in a fortnight.”
“But they may withdraw—”
“I am going to church to-morrow to pray that they will not.”
He pulled his cloak about his shoulders and went swaggering away. But Brandon returned quickly to his house in the Rue des Pierres. It was as though a word had put fire into his veins.