CHAPTER VII
“THOSE OTHERS”
She struck the road to the village of Reichshofen, and followed it upward through the forest. There were few abroad upon it, and such as she met were peasants going to Mass. An old woman, red-cheeked and hale, gave her good-day, and added that her son was at Châlons. A group of harvesters played dominoes upon a knoll of grass at the roadside, but stood up awkwardly when she passed. A farmer, driving a weedy brown horse, drew rein as he approached, and asked if there were any soldiers between him and the village. To such as these news of war was little more than news of that distant Paris which interested them so little. The Emperor was going to Berlin! What mattered it to men who were watching the ripening grape or husbanding the maize and the tobacco?
It was dark in many of the thickets, and she rode impetuously, now galloping, now letting the pony go as he would. At the cross-roads, a little way from Reichshofen, she heard a clatter of hoofs behind her and turned her head to see a little old man on a great grey horse, whose outspread cloak and upturned elbows gave him the appearance of a flying mill. She recognised him as the kinsman of the Count of Durckheim, whose château lay beyond Froeschweiler, and she saw that he wished to speak to her. There was no greater gossip in the mountains. He would have the last news from Strasburg, she was sure.
“Good-day, Madame; did you think that I was a Prussian? You ride like a hussar! I have seen your pony’s heels ever since you passed the white mill. And to church, too!”
He took a gold snuff-box from his pocket and spilled the snuff upon his white breeches and his once fine vest. Exertion had brought drops of sweat to his forehead. He regarded the little English girl as some treasure of the forest sent by providence to reward him. She, in turn, was amused by his candour, and glad to hear a friendly voice.
“Good-day, Monsieur Picard—and what makes you think that I am riding to church?” she asked.
He dusted the snuff from his coat, and settled himself in the saddle, as though his way was, from that time, her way.
“There are two roads, Madame,” he said with a flourish of his arm, “to church and to Berlin. As you are not upon the latter, there can only be the former. And you are wise. All France goes the other way—”
His eccentricity always pleased her.
“And you, yourself, Monsieur, you are on the same road?”
“Impossible to take any other when Madame Lefort rides. I shall go to the church door. It will be an example to the people!”
“But if I am not going to church—”
“In that case there will be no example. We shall talk of Paris and the army.”
He was full of self-content, and the heavy clouds which cloaked the sun, and sent the birds skimming low in the open places of the thickets, were not heeded by him. There was no one else upon the road to Niederbronn now; even the glades were hushed. Nature listened for the storm which was gathering above the pass.
“Captain Lefort is at Strasburg with Duhesme’s brigade,” Beatrix said, seeing that he waited for her; “he may be at Hagenau to-morrow, and I shall ride there. He does not know where his regiment is going to—at least, he can only guess it is to be sent to the north. General MacMahon will meet the Emperor at Saarbrück. You have heard that, Monsieur?”
“I have heard it all, Madame. Everyone in France guesses to-day. We have seven bodies in command of seven armies. When we find one head we shall begin. We are waiting for that. If the Prussians would only wait, too, it will be a great war. I have come from Paris, and I know. Ah, what enthusiasm in Paris, Madame, what torches, what songs, what a brave people. Our generals are moved to the very heart. They were all in the bonnet shops when I came away. We are a nation of courtiers. We do not leave our ladies at home when we go to the wars. Why should we—since the road to Berlin is open and our horsemen will ride there by-and-by, and we have waggons for the crinolines. You are an Englishwoman and you have married a Frenchman. You understand these things. The poor people we see around us—they understand them, too. War is far away from them to-day. It will be over there, oh, such a long way off, in Berlin, where the Prussians are. If it came here, to their homes, their fields, their villages—if they saw their children carried out to the graves in the woods—ah, if they saw their children, the children who have not made the war, who do not cry À Berlin, if they saw them—it would be different, Madame. But we shall not see it; the Emperor has said so; the seven bodies have said so. The head will come to us presently—and then, en avant!”
He was a strange old man, Beatrix thought, while she watched him sitting there awkwardly upon the great horse, and lifting his hat as though commanding all the soldiers of France. The mingled earnestness and levity of his address moved her strangely. How true it was, that no one in all those villages and farms of Alsace had ever remembered that war might bring the soldiers of Germany across the Rhine even to the doors of their houses. While the sun shone, and the birds sang, and the vines ripened, how could they tell themselves that to-morrow might not be as yesterday? She, herself, was no wiser than the others. Edmond was coming to Hagenau! What else could she remember?
“Oh, Monsieur Picard,” she exclaimed a little sadly, “you do not really believe what you say?”
“I, Madame, I believe nothing. It is an easy creed which never leads you to contradictions. When I peep through the woods to the village down there and see the red roofs, and hear the Mass bells ringing, and watch the old folks going to church, I say—this is war, this is glory, here lies the road to Berlin. Why should I think otherwise? There are no Prussians here; there never will be any. Your husband is a soldier and what is he doing? He is thinking of a charming wife who is taking care of his châlet at the Niederwald. To-morrow he will see her. In a month he will cross the Rhine again and tell her how many Prussians he has killed. If the children die, they will be the children of Germany, not of France. Vive la France, then, and let us light some more torches. Paris is doing it all night. Why should we be behind-hand? Not at all—we will do as Paris does, and when we are hoarse with shouting we will go and drink the Rhine wine!”
He did not see that his irony was lost upon her, and that she had begun to be very serious again. A little pattering of rain upon the great broad leaves troubled him exceedingly; he wrapped his cloak about his throat.
“Madame,” he said suddenly, “I am old enough to be rheumatic. That is an age which moves youth either to ribaldry or to compassion. In your case it will be compassion. Let us shelter a moment and forget that there is a good déjeuner to be had in the inn at Niederbronn.”
He turned abruptly into a little glade of the woods, and she recognised it as the glade to which Edmond had taken her—how long ago it seemed—on the day of his farewell. The very straw which had lined their basket was still upon the grass. She could have repeated every word of love he had whispered to her that day. An exquisite memory of his caress made her limbs tremble. Until old Picard spoke again she forgot that Edmond had left her.
“Come,” he said, “there is a glade made to match your pretty dress, Madame. Let us shelter until the sun remembers that we have had no breakfast. As for those other fellows—!”
He did not finish his sentence, for a sound as of horses at the gallop rang out above the murmur of the woods and the patter of the rain. For a little while they listened intently as the sounds magnified in approach. Beatrix thought at the first that it might even be Edmond’s lancers who had come from Hagenau. Old Picard put his hand to his ear and a curious expression settled upon his face.
“As for those other fellows—you hear their horses, Madame?”
“There is someone on the road behind us,” she answered quickly.
“Ah,” he continued, “then I can still hear. When you are my age, you will begin to take your senses out of the cupboard and to see how many are left. I count mine every day. The eyes to see my friend Madame Lefort, the taste to admire her, the ears to hear her, the touch which tells me that her hand is the smallest in Alsace—ah, Madame, how rich I am. We shall tell those other fellows—if there are many of them—do you hear many horses, Madame?”
She listened again. Whoever rode toward Niederbronn had urgent business to help him on the way.
“It will be the chasseurs!” she said with some little excitement, born of the uncertainty. “I saw them this morning upon the road to Hagenau—”
“Madame,” he exclaimed, “they are not chasseurs—they are—”
Again his sentence was unfinished. He stopped abruptly and took his snuff-box from his pocket. When he had dusted his vest very deliberately, he continued—
“They are Prussians, Madame Lefort—Uhlans from across the Rhine. Look at them well. We shall see many in France before the year is out!”
He pointed dramatically with his finger as two horsemen rode suddenly into view; their presence was a vindication of his words. Beatrix had met few German soldiers before that day; and now when she saw these two Uhlans, who reined back their horses as much from curiosity as from prudence, she did not believe for a moment that they were not Frenchmen. Certainly their tunics of light blue, with the scarlet cuffs and shoulder-straps, and the eagles upon their helmets, were strange to her. It would be some regiment she had not met with either in Strasburg or in Paris, she thought.
The Uhlans halted before the glade, but when they saw a harmless old man with a young girl at his side sheltering from the rain, broad smiles covered their faces, and they beckoned to others behind them. There were fifteen in all, Beatrix counted, sturdy fellows, splashed from head to foot with the mud, sunburnt, bearded, yet well horsed and full of ready activity. One who seemed to be a captain, and who spoke French with a guttural accent, bowed low to her and asked the way to an inn.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “si fou foulez m’indiquer une auberge par ici.”
She knew not why it was, but a strange sense of fear and foreboding came to her when she heard the man speak. She did not realise that troopers out of Baden, for such they were, had ridden into France; but a vague consciousness of danger environing her was not to be avoided. Nevertheless, she would have answered the question if old Picard had not been before her.
“Herr Captain,” he said, “there is an inn five miles from here. You turn to the right.”
The Uhlan shrugged his shoulders.
“Which means to the left,” he said; “and then, mon ancien!”
Picard shut his snuff-box with a snap.
“And then—you can go to the devil.”
The German seemed amused.
“I am on the right road, Monsieur,” he said; “this is the way to Paris, I believe.”
He let his horse go, for one of the sergeants pointed out the red roofs of the buildings peeping up through the glade of the thicket. When he had observed them, he bowed again to Beatrix and addressed her, to her infinite surprise, in English as good as her own.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “beware of that old man. He does not tell the truth.”
He was gone with the words, and she saw him a few moments later as he rode up to the farm and began to beat loudly upon the door. Old Picard, who was nodding his head and snuffing incessantly, vouchsafed no remark. She, on her part, had viewed the event as some scene of a play. Uhlans at Niederbronn! She did not believe it even then.
“Oh, Monsieur Picard,” she said, turning her pony suddenly, “you do not mean it; they were not really Germans?”
“Madame,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders, “what I mean or do not mean is of little account.”
“But if they are Germans what are they doing upon the road to Niederbronn?”
He stroked his chin.
“They are doing what we should have done an hour ago—they are having their breakfasts, my child. Let us go home and imitate them. The sun does not shine any longer upon us. It will be a long time before the sun shines upon France again, dear Madame.”
She saw that he was very thoughtful, and the sense of unrest and of danger on the road returned to her. If there were Prussian lancers at Niederbronn, would there not be others at Wörth and Hagenau? In that instant the great truth that this war might, indeed, come to the homes of France was realised by her. Fear for Edmond, a fear she had not known before, began to possess her, and would not be quieted. She asked herself what she was doing there, so far from the châlet, when he might have need of her or even have sent a second message.
“Oh! let us go,” she said, urging her pony to the road again; “our place is at home, Monsieur Picard.”
He followed her reluctantly, and wished to allay her fears.
“Chut, Madame—I would not have missed the spectacle for a bucket full of francs. We must get used to it. There will be Germans upon this road every day before the summer is gone. They will not often be so fortunate as those fellows là-bas, who have just seen my little English friend in her pretty habit. And there will be others who will have something to say to them. My word—hark to that. The watch-dogs understand the German language, eh! Do they not speak it beautifully?”
He halted his horse again and listened to the strange sounds of mingled voices and the baying of hounds. Those troopers, then, were arguing with the people of the house! He thought that he could see the horses of some of them through the network of leaf and branch. The road itself was deserted, and the rain began to fall again in heavy drops, which glistened upon the flat leaves and gave waves to the puddles. Beatrix herself could not understand his curiosity, but she feared now to be alone upon the road.
“Oh, Monsieur Picard,” she said at last, “if I were not so cold—”
He sighed at her impatience, and was about to ride on, when the report of a rifle shot rang out above the silence of the woods and the patter of the rain. Birds went winging from the trees as the echoes rolled from hill to hill and glade to glade. A loud shouting was heard at the farm—the cries of men who found themselves face to face with death. Two Uhlans came galloping wildly up the pass, with five horsemen pressing close upon them. They went by, a flash of blue and silver; but one of those who rode after them had a sabre in his hand, and he struck at the trooper before him.
It was the vision of an instant: the vision of faces set in anger and ferocity; of eyes staring horribly at the images of death they saw; of horses foaming and accoutrements glittering and mud splashing. Yet so real was it that Beatrix cried out when the men passed her. She tried to hide the vision from her eyes, but could not. She feared to see the shining blade fall upon the neck of the Uhlan, who rode as though he raced with Death. No murder committed, there, at the roadside, could have filled her with a greater horror.
“Oh, my God, he will kill him!” she cried again and again.
She buried her face in her hands and would let her eyes follow the horsemen no more. Old Picard, on his part, did not try to help her. The spectacle was as wine to him. Blood coursed through the blue veins of his cheeks and forehead. He gripped the reins until his nails cut the flesh. He did not know that the rain fell upon his face or that the sun had ceased to shine. The story that he tried to tell her was almost incoherent.
“The hussars from Bitche—eh, Madame? Do you not see that they give them their breakfast? They were in the house then—they were at the farm. Ma foi, what a meeting, what a dish! Keep close to me, child. Do not look at them. They are the hussars from Bitche. The splendid fellows!”
He drove his horse before her and began to breathe quickly as a hunted animal. One of the Uhlans had ridden through the gates of the farm and a French hussar was at his heels. No race at Longchamps or Chantilly was like that race for life up the road of the pass. Old Picard saw that the pursued was the officer who had spoken to him at the glade. He did not bear him any grudge, yet wished to see him die. It was as though the troops of France had sounded the horn and started a fox from the thicket. The game must be killed; that was all. And the hussars would kill it. He read their ferocity in their faces. The hunted man was their prey. They were as beasts hungering for blood. All that they had learned in barracks and upon the field schooled them to this lust of blood. The very excitement of it sent them rolling in their saddles; the intoxication of it was almost delirium. “En avant, en avant!” The cry was hardly human. It was the scream of men who hasten to see another die.
“Fired wildly on the stooping figure before him.”
Twenty paces from the tree whereunder Beatrix stood, the end came. One of the Frenchmen, seeing that the Uhlan’s horse outpaced his own, drew a revolver and fired wildly at the stooping figure before him. There was no sign upon the instant that the bullet had hit its mark; but, when the doomed man had come up almost to the tree, he raised himself in his saddle and threw his arms above his head. Beatrix saw his face; a smile seemed to play upon it. For a moment the smile hovered there; then, suddenly, a white shadow crept up from chin to forehead, the eyes set to a wild stare, blood gushed from the mouth; the German fell headlong from his horse and lay dead at her feet.
“La France, la France!”
Twenty voices took up the cry in frenzied triumph. Other horses galloped by upon the road to Wörth. The Uhlan lay, face downward, in the mud. Old Picard, hat in hand, paid his tribute to the dead. Beatrix heard him speak to her, but his voice seemed an echo of a voice far off.
“My child,” he said, “the sun does not shine upon us any more. Let us go home.”
His words awakened her as from a horrid sleep. The rain fell in torrents on the open road of the pass. She shuddered to her very heart, but it was not from the cold.