CHAPTER IV
AT THE CHÂLET OF THE NIEDERWALD
Beatrix was in the arbour of the châlet, filling a bowl with the pink roses which were the pride of her garden, when Edmond came up the road from the village of Elsasshausen and held up his letters triumphantly. Ten days had passed since the bells of Strasburg rang for Madame Hélène’s grandchild. To Beatrix they had been as an unbroken hour of sunshine and of happiness. The hills and the valleys, the vineyards and farms of that pastoral scene were in keeping with the new sense of rest and of finality which had come upon her life. She wished for no friendship there, save the friendship which had been given her. The strange past, with its memories of strife and solitude and change unending, had been obliterated and forgotten. She had no longer the desire to return to England or to remember that she was an Englishwoman. A languorous indolence, bred of the mountains, possessed her as an ecstasy. She would have been content to hear that the châlet in the woods above the town of Wörth was to be her home until the end.
She was in the garden of the châlet, filling her bowl with roses, when Edmond returned with the letters which he had desired unceasingly. She could not understand that state of mind which hungered so greedily for all the dry bones of a soldier’s gossip. To know that old Hélène was well, to hear of her horse and her dogs—and of old Susanne, who had been her mother’s servant—that was news enough. But to be told that the sun was shining, or that Thérèse Lavencourt had gone to Dieppe, or that Lieutenant Jourda de Vaux had been seen on a new charger—what were such things to those who had the forests of the Vosges for their skyline, and in the valleys below them the trailing vines and the white houses of the villages, and the murmur of brooks, and the sleepy river warming itself in the glorious sunshine of the ripened summer? She wished to forget Strasburg. The châlet of the Niederwald, the châlet of the pines, the châlet above the old-world town of Wörth—she would remember it always as the guest house of her dreams, the rose-girt cradle of her love.
If all this childish enthusiasm of hers was very real to her, she could not complain when her husband did not attain similar altitudes of devotion to the châlet. The glitter and the movement of the cavalry life had become so much the mainspring of his thoughts and actions, that he did not always conceal his desire to fix a day when the hamlet of the Niederwald should become a memory of their holiday, and his old comrades of the “sixth” should congratulate him upon his return to them. Ready as he was to witness her childish delight in the solitude of the hills, yet he went every day to meet the facteur, who came from Wörth with the letters; and he read these letters aloud to her, and dwelt again and again upon every trivial word of gossip that had amused his brother officers.
When she ran to meet him at the garden gate on that morning of the fifteenth of July, she was glad, for his sake, to perceive that his letter hunger had been satisfied unduly. He carried a great white bundle in his hand, and he held it up triumphantly as a proud and well-earned possession. She remembered that day long afterwards—the sunshine on the woods, the white villages dotting the valley, the figure of her husband with his Tyrol hat and his knickerbocker suit. He had bought the Norfolk jacket in London as a compliment to her, and he called it a “Prince de Galles.” But it suited his fine figure to perfection; and there was laughter in his eyes and the bronze of the sun upon his cheeks, when he put his arm about her and kissed her many times as a prelude to his news.
“Again, ma chérie—again for your letter—two for my letters. Wait, the Colonel writes himself, and Laroche and Giraud—and Bocheron; you know Bocheron, he is a sous-lieutenant—and Bouillie, he is the Capitaine Trésorier—and Gaudet, he is our Porte Étendard. Sac à papier! I shall have something to read for a week.”
He gabbled on, full of the excitement of the news anticipated and of the goodwill toward him to which the letters bore witness. She would find no cause of complaint in that, but was full of proposals for their day and its delights.
“You can read them as we go,” she said, holding his hand still and leading him toward the low door of the house. “I have told Jacob to have the pony ready at ten o’clock. We shall be at the Niederbronn by twelve, and you will be hungry. But we can breakfast in the wood, and that will be jolly. If one could always breakfast in a wood—upon pâté de foie-gras and strawberries. To be Phyllis always—with the last new novel, and a husband to cut the leaves. There’s the ideal life for you.”
He nodded his head and pressed her arm affectionately. The letter which he read carried him back already in thought to Strasburg and his comrades.
“Listen,” he said; “old Tripard is furious about the new tunics. He is petitioning for the kurtka again and the old colours. They will match your eyes, Beatrix. We are to have the jonquille collars and the white cloaks with capes and sleeves. They are all right, but the people at Paris must give us back the kurtka. I do not want to look like a Prussian—moi. And the old coat was more comfortable. These tunics are for policemen. The regiment will not be the same in them. How can you remember Jena in a tunic made for a sergent de ville? They are spoiling us, and they will find it out when the day comes.”
She heard his complaint and laughed at it. Out there in the freshness of the garden, this talk of coat and cape was as some echo of a forgotten voice. She had eyes only for the green of the woods and the great red roses.
“Oh,” she said philosophically, “what does it matter, Edmond, and who wants to remember anything at the Niederwald? Here is a Gloire de Dijon which is worth all the tunics in France. We will remember things when the roses fade. There is always winter for memories. But July—and the mountains!”
She took a bud of a deep scarlet hue from her bowl and pinned it in his coat. The flush of a young girl’s health was upon the face which looked up at his own above the letter he was reading. He kissed her on the forehead, and forgave her because she did not condemn the tunic.
“Of course,” he said, “it does not matter; but then tradition is a good deal. It is tradition in the army which enables one man to kill ten; ma foi, if you do away with tradition, Beatrix—”
“The ten will live. Happy ten! And we are forgetting the sunshine to talk about them. What prodigals!”
She turned toward the châlet with the bowl in her arms. He followed her with blind steps reading his letters as he went, and communicating their intelligence generously.
“The Chevalier is still at Trouville; he says the gout is no better. I shall have to send him to England to try port wine. We are to see him in Paris when he is well enough to bear the journey. Pauvre papa! I would wager a Napoleon that he was at the Établissement last night. There is nothing like the valtz à trois temps for his complaint. You must dance with my father some day, Beatrix, and say that he is splendid. When you do that, you will forgive him for his one day in Strasburg.”
“I hope so,” she said, with a little show of dignity. “I am sure he must have been very ill.”
“Du tout,” he said, “he has never known a day’s illness in his life, though he calls himself a chronic invalid. There is not such a lazy man in France. He would not cross the street to save our country. You will never change him. But he will love you when he knows you well, as much—as much as I do!”
“As much—your father!”
He laughed and drew her toward him, crushing the letter and spilling the water from the bowl.
“Impossible,” he said. “I forget what I am saying; not one half, one quarter, one hundredth part, chérie. There can be no love like mine for little Beatrix.”
He had been annoyed that the Chevalier Lefort, his father, had declined the journey to Strasburg until the last moment, for this seemed to put some shadow of a slight upon his little wife. But the Chevalier, who did not by any means welcome an English girl to his house, was notoriously the laziest man in France. He had written his excuses regularly from the deck of his yacht Le Cygne pleading illness, the unfailing refuge of his indolence. There were other reasons on the yacht, less creditable and by no means to be presented to Beatrix. Edmond guessed those reasons, and found solace in the generous cheques which were the Chevalier’s atonement.
“You will like my father,” he said to her, “you will forgive him as I do.”
“I hope so,” she said lightly. “I could forgive anyone at the Niederwald—even you, dearest, for reading your ten letters when the pony is waiting.”
She escaped his caress, and ran up the stairs lightly to set her hair straight and to put her roses in fresh water. She did not see that he had not her pleasure in the woods of Niederbronn, but hungered still for his comrades’ letters and their news of his regiment. He had not heard a man’s voice for ten days; peasants did not interest him. He could not tell one flower from another. He had no eye for the colour of glade and thicket. When he remembered that another ten days must pass before they left the châlet, he was even tempted to wish that he had chosen a city for his holiday. But of this he spoke no word to her. A sense of self-sacrifice pleased him. Her tenderness was a thing precious to see and to possess.
He brushed the “Prince de Galles,” and was quite ready for her when she came singing down the stairs, and he helped her up to the driver’s seat. She drove so badly, and “Apollo,” surely, was the ugliest pony in the Vosges. He said that risk was a thing a soldier should face for love of it; and declared that she would lead a charge superbly. The shady road through the mountains, the delicious wooded glades, the little white farmhouses, the fresh green heaths were for him so many items from a soldier’s map. Some day the armies of France would cross the Vosges and enter Baden beyond the frontier. He talked of it always, even upon that early day of his happiness, when Beatrix drove him to the picnic in the thickets of the Niederbronn.
“What a road for light cavalry,” he said, again and again; “with Pfalzburg at your back and Strasburg for your base, what a road to Berlin! We shall ride this road some day, chérie, and I shall show my comrades the old farmhouse, and tell them why I went there. You will be in Paris then, waiting for news of the victory. Ma foi! you will not wait long.”
“But I shall be very old,” she suggested. “You will be a general, and wear feathers for me to steal. And we shall have our own home in England. That would be ideal—a little house in Kent with an orchard and a meadow.”
He nodded his head indifferently.
“There is no sun in England,” he said; “I was there once for a week, and never saw him. All the orchards are in Normandy. And your people do not like the French. They say that they do, but it is not true. Why should we go to London when there is Paris? You have forgotten already that your father was an Englishman, mignonne; why should we go there to remember it?”
He was unconscious of that self which prompted his answer, nor would she think of it on such a day.
“I shall never forget my father,” she said; “sometimes I try to think of all the men I know, and wonder which of them he must have been like. I was only five years old when he went to America. I cannot tell you why, yet I seem to remember him, though I have forgotten his face.”
“I understand that,” he exclaimed, though with no suggestion of sympathy in his voice; “there are many men that I can remember, though I could not draw them upon paper for you to save my life. Old Giraud, for instance, who writes to me from Paris this morning. I had forgotten Giraud. He writes of news that might have been good, but is very bad. There was the devil to pay in Spain. A word to the King of Prussia put an end to it. That is like those Prussians. They bark until you show the whip, and then they run to kennel. But it is our misfortune—”
She looked at him quickly.
“Your misfortune!”
He put his arm about her, and touched her ear with his lips.
“I am thinking of the army always,” he said earnestly; “it is the heart, the life of France. You will learn to think of it as I do by-and-by; it will be all in all to us. When I speak of a misfortune it is for your sake as well as for my own. Nothing can give me my chance but war. And my chance means fortune and honour for us both. But, of course, I do not wish it—yet, Beatrix.”
His mood became for the moment that mood of tenderness and of abandon to the impulse of love which had led him to make her his wife. It was a very real impulse in the instants of its recurrence; and when it betrayed him in look and voice, and she became conscious of it, the bond of the marriage vow seemed written anew, so that the twain were as one in heart and soul and affection. Strong in this assurance of devotion deep-rooted below the common interests of the daily life, Beatrix had no eyes to see those other things of self and will which might have been the omen of a new day when assurance should be less strong. She gave herself up in thought to him, yielding all to the sweet impulses of love unmeasured. She was his wife. Without him, life had no message for her.
“I know that you do not wish it, dearest,” she said earnestly, lifting her lips to his; “your honour is my honour. What fortune could I have which is not yours?”
He answered with an answer that a lover alone can give, and for some little while silence followed them up the slope of the mountain. Their way lay through woods odorous in pines, by hamlets green and red-roofed in the thickets of the heights. They found the glade of the Niederbronn, with its babbling brook and its shade of chestnut trees and its murmur of the life of summer; and it stood to them as some Eden set in the mountain’s heart to be the home of their affections. And in this glade they lunched as two children abroad upon a holiday.
Remote brakes and dark places of the forest welcomed them when lunch was done, wandering hand in hand, lovers in a garden of their solitude. The health of the mountains shone in their eyes, or gave a new gift of youth to their cheeks. They spoke of no serious things.
“You have taught me to see that the trees are green, chérie,” he said, when the sun had set and “Apollo” was in the shafts again, and the lights of home began to be a pleasant memory. “Some day, perhaps, I will turn farmer and wear a blouse, and you shall drive in the sheep. It would be good to come to Wörth when one had earned the right to rest, and could say, ‘I have done my work for France.’ But I am not one of those men who could take the holiday first and the work after. Even here, and with you at my side, I do not play at doing nothing well. To live is to achieve. The man who has achieved must have the first place at the fireside. When we build our house in the woods, we will people it with all the old friends we have left in Strasburg and in Paris, and we shall remember how we came here at the very beginning of it—before there were wars and victories.”
He did not mean to wound her. There was no thought in his mind but that of his old comrades of the barracks at Strasburg, and of the night just beginning for them. He saw them, in his imagination, in the cafés they haunted; he peeped into the great darkened stables, where the horses lay sleeping; he stood by his own charger; the vision showed him for an instant all the panoply and the glory of the service he loved. But she thought of none of these things. The smile of content left her face. The words which Brandon North had spoken in the salon of the old house were heard again in the murmur of the woods. The shadow of the night had fallen upon her pleasure.
“If the end could be as the beginning, dear,” she said, laying her hand upon his arm gently. “Of course, I know that it cannot; I knew that from the first. But when I am at Wörth, how can I help deceiving myself there? Should I love you if I did not? Why should we remember these things to-night, or even speak of them?”
He read a note of sadness in her voice, and hastened to atone.
“You shall not remember it, mignonne. I am a fool to talk so. There is home and dinner. When the day comes we shall be ready for it. But to-night—to-night I shall only tell you—ah, mon âme, what can I tell you that I have not told you a thousand times? I love you. Do you weary of my book, Beatrix? I can write nothing else but that—I love you.”
He pressed her to him, taking the reins from her hands and shielding her with his strong arm. The hour begat an exquisite tenderness. In the valley below them stars of lights shone out from many a farmhouse and many a village. Bells tinkled on the necks of the roving cattle. The breeze surged in the heights of the pines, scenting the air with sweet odours and the freshness of the night. Alone in that solitude of forest and upland they seemed as those drawn apart from the living world to the very citadels of rest and of love. Even the hamlets became towns to them. Wörth itself, when they espied its lights between the descending spurs of the mountains, was as some great hive of men where love had no part or lot. The old farmhouse, welcoming them again, stood up as a home of their childhood.
Guillaumette, the servant, was at the door of the farm, with a story of dinner ready to be served. To Beatrix she said some pretty word of welcome, but to Edmond she handed a telegram, and he stood in the aureole of light cast out from the open door to read it. Beatrix never forgot that picture of him as, with white face and quickening heart, he read the message, once, twice, thrice, and then crushed the paper quickly in his hand.
He read the message and stood with pale face and trembling hand. A woman’s instinct seemed to tell her that some great hour of her life was at hand. Their eyes met, and she read in his an intensity of love and sympathy such as she had never seen before.
“Edmond,” she said, almost in a whisper, “what is it?—why do you not tell me?”
He would have answered her, but finding no word he handed her the crumpled paper, and she opened it with maladroit fingers and spread it out and read it many times as he had read it. There were but two words, yet she had no need of any question to comprehend their meaning. The cord of her life seemed to snap in that instant. She turned from him and ran up the stairs with dry eyes.