For a moment I was surprised to see the stout and rubicund Slingsby in Lisbon. He was drinking a vermouth and seltzer at five o'clock in the afternoon at a café close to the big hotel. But at that time Portugal was still a neutral country and a happy hunting ground for a good many thousand Germans. Slingsby was lolling in his chair with such exceeding indolence that I could not doubt his business was pressing and serious. I accordingly passed him by as if I had never seen him in my life before. But he called out to me. So I took a seat at his table.
Of what we talked about I have not the least recollection, for my eyes were quite captivated by a strange being who sat alone fairly close to Slingsby, at one side and a little behind him. This was a man of middle age, with reddish hair, a red, square, inflamed face and a bristly moustache. He was dressed in a dirty suit of grey flannel; he wore a battered Panama pressed down upon his head; he carried pince-nez on the bridge of his nose, and he sat with a big bock of German beer In front of him. But I never saw him touch the beer. He sat in a studied attitude of ferocity, his elbow on the table, his chin propped on the palm of his hand, his head pushed aggressively forward, and he glared at Slingsby through his glasses with the fixed stare of hatred and fury which a master workman in wax might give to a figure in a Chamber of Horrors. Indeed, it seemed to me that he must have rehearsed his bearing in some such quarter, for there was nothing natural or convinced in him from the brim of his Panama to the black patent leather tips of his white canvas shoes.
I touched Slingsby on the arm.
"Who is that man, and what have you done to him?"
Slingsby looked round unconcernedly.
"Oh, that's only Peiffer," he replied. "Peiffer making frightfulness."
"Peiffer?"
The name was quite strange to me.
"Yes. Don't you know him? He's a product of 1914," and Slingsby leaned towards me a little. "Peiffer is an officer in the German Navy. You would hardly guess it, but he is. Now that their country is at war, officers in the German Navy have a marked amount of spare time which they never had before. So Peiffer went to a wonderful Government school in Hamburg, where in twenty lessons they teach the gentle art of espionage, a sort of Berlitz school. Peiffer ate his dinners and got his degrees, so to speak, and now he's at Lisbon putting obi on me."
"It seems rather infantile, and must be annoying," I said; but Slingsby would only accept half the statement. "Infantile, yes. Annoying, not at all. For so long as Peiffer is near me, being frightful, I know he's not up to mischief."
"Mischief!" I cried. "That fellow? What mischief can he do?"
Slingsby viciously crushed the stub of his cigarette in the ashtray.
"A deuce of a lot, my friend. Don't make any mistake. Peiffer's methods are infantile and barbaric, but he has a low and fertile cunning in the matter of ideas. I know. I have had some."
And Slingsby was to have more, very much more: in the shape of a great many sleepless nights, during which he wrestled with a dreadful uncertainty to get behind that square red face and those shining pince-nez, and reach the dark places of Peiffer's mind.
The first faint wisp of cloud began to show six weeks later, when Slingsby happened to be in Spain.
"Something's up," he said, scratching his head. "But I'm hanged if I can guess what it is. See what you can make of it"; and here is the story which he told.
Three Germans dressed in the black velvet corduroy, the white stockings and the rope-soled white shoes of the Spanish peasant, arrived suddenly in the town of Cartagena, and put up at an inn in a side-street near the harbour. Cartagena, for all that it is one of the chief naval ports of Spain, is a small place, and the life of it ebbs and flows in one narrow street, the Calle Mayor; so that very little can happen which is not immediately known and discussed. The arrival of the three mysterious Germans provoked, consequently, a deal of gossip and curiosity, and the curiosity was increased when the German Consul sitting in front of the Casino loudly professed complete ignorance of these very doubtful compatriots of his, and an exceeding great contempt for them. The next morning, however, brought a new development. The three Germans complained publicly to the Alcalde. They had walked through Valencia, Alicante, and Murcia in search of work, and everywhere they had been pestered and shadowed by the police.
"Our Consul will do nothing for us," they protested indignantly. "He will not receive us, nor will any German in Cartagena. We are poor people." And having protested, they disappeared in the night.
But a few days later the three had emerged again at Almeria, and at a mean café in one of the narrow, blue-washed Moorish streets of the old town. Peiffer was identified as one of the three--not the Peiffer who had practised frightfulness in Lisbon, but a new and wonderful Peiffer, who inveighed against the shamelessness of German officials on the coasts of Spain. At Almeria, in fact, Peiffer made a scene at the German Vice-Consulate, and, having been handed over to the police, was fined and threatened with imprisonment. At this point the story ended.
"What do you make of it?" asked Slingsby.
"First, that Peiffer is working south; and, secondly, that he is quarrelling with his own officials."
"Yes, but quarrelling with marked publicity," said Slingsby. "That, I think we shall find, is the point of real importance. Peiffer's methods are not merely infantile; they are elaborate. He is working down South. I think that I will go to Gibraltar. I have always wished to see it."
Whether Slingsby was speaking the truth, I had not an idea. But he went to Gibraltar, and there an astonishing thing happened to him. He received a letter, and the letter came from Peiffer. Peiffer was at Algeciras, just across the bay in Spain, and he wanted an interview. He wrote for it with the most brazen impertinence.
"I cannot, owing to this with-wisdom-so-easily-to-have-been-avoided war, come myself to Gibraltar, but I will remain at your disposition here."
"That," said Slingsby, "from the man who was making frightfulness at me a few weeks ago, is a proof of some nerve. We will go and see Peiffer. We will stay at Algeciras from Saturday to Monday, and we will hear what he has to say."
A polite note was accordingly dispatched, and on Sunday morning Peiffer, decently clothed in a suit of serge, was shown into Slingsby's private sitting-room. He plunged at once into the story of his wanderings. We listened to it without a sign that we knew anything about it.
"So?" from time to time said Slingsby, with inflections of increasing surprise, but that was all. Then Peiffer went on to his grievances.
"Perhaps you have heard how I was treated by the Consuls?" he interrupted himself to ask suddenly.
"No," Slingsby replied calmly. "Continue!"
Peiffer wiped his forehead and his glasses. We were each one, in his way, all working for our respective countries. The work was honourable. But there were limits to endurance. All his fatigue and perils went for nothing in the eyes of comfortable officials sure of their salary. He had been fined; he had been threatened with imprisonment. It was unverschämt the way he had been treated.
"So?" said Slingsby firmly. There are fine inflections by which that simple word may be made to express most of the emotions. Slingsby's "So?" expressed a passionate agreement with the downtrodden Peiffer.
"Flesh and blood can stand it no longer," cried Peiffer, "and my heart is flesh. No, I have had enough."
Throughout the whole violent tirade, in his eyes, in his voice, in his gestures, there ran an eager, wistful plea that we should take him at his face value and believe every word he said.
"So I came to you," he said at last, slapping his knee and throwing out his hand afterwards like a man who has taken a mighty resolution. "Yes. I have no money, nothing. And they will give me none. It is unverschämt. So," and he screwed up his little eyes and wagged a podgy forefinger--"so the service I had begun for my Government I will now finish for you."
Slingsby examined the carpet curiously.
"Well, there are possibly some shillings to be had if the service is good enough. I do not know. But I cannot deal in the dark. What sort of a service is it?"
"Ah!"
Peiffer hitched his chair nearer.
"It is a question of rifles--rifles for over there," and, looking out through the window, he nodded towards Gibel Musa and the coast of Morocco.
Slingsby did not so much as flinch. I almost groaned aloud. We were to be treated to the stock legend of the ports, the new edition of the Spanish prisoner story. I, the mere tourist in search of health, could have gone on with Peiffer's story myself, even to the exact number of the rifles.
"It was a great plan," Peiffer continued. "Fifty thousand rifles, no less." There always were fifty-thousand rifles. "They are buried--near the sea." They always were buried either near the sea or on the frontier of Portugal. "With ammunition. They are to be landed outside Melilla, where I have been about this very affair, and distributed amongst the Moors in the unsubdued country on the edge of the French zone."
"So?" exclaimed Slingsby with the most admirable imitation of consternation.
"Yes, but you need not fear. You shall have the rifles--when I know exactly where they are buried."
"Ah!" said Slingsby.
He had listened to the familiar rigmarole, certain that behind it there was something real and sinister which he did not know--something which he was desperately anxious to find out.
"Then you do not know where they are buried?"
"No, but I shall know if--I am allowed to go into Gibraltar. Yes, there is someone there. I must put myself into relations with him. Then I shall know, and so shall you."
So here was some part of the truth, at all events. Peiffer wanted to get into Gibraltar. His disappearance from Lisbon, his reappearance in corduroys, his quarrelsome progress down the east coast, his letter to Slingsby, and his story, were all just the items of an elaborate piece of machinery invented to open the gates of that fortress to him. Slingsby's only movement was to take his cigarette-case lazily from his pocket.
"But why in the world," he asked, "can't you get your man in Gibraltar to come out here and see you?"
Peiffer shook his head.
"He would not come. He has been told to expect me, and I shall give him certain tokens from which he can guess my trustworthiness. If I write to him, 'Come to me,' he will say 'This is a trap.'"
Slingsby raised another objection:
"But I shouldn't think that you can expect the authorities to give you a safe conduct into Gibraltar upon your story."
Peiffer swept that argument aside with a contemptuous wave of his hand.
"I have a Danish passport. See!" and he took the document from his breast pocket. It was complete, to his photograph.
"Yes, you can certainly come in on that," said Slingsby. He reflected for a moment before he added: "I have no power, of course. But I have some friends. I think you may reasonably reckon that you won't be molested."
I saw Peiffer's eyes glitter behind his glasses.
"But there's a condition," Slingsby continued sharply. "You must not leave Gibraltar without coming personally to me and giving me twenty-four hours' notice."
Peiffer was all smiles and agreement.
"But of course. We shall have matters to talk over--terms to arrange. I must see you."
"Exactly. Cross by the nine-fifty steamer tomorrow morning. Is that understood?"
"Yes, sir." And suddenly Peiffer stood up and actually saluted, as though he had now taken service under Slingsby's command.
The unexpected movement almost made me vomit. Slingsby himself moved quickly away, and his face lost for a second the mask of impassivity. He stood at the window and looked across the water to the city of Gibraltar.
Slingsby had been wounded in the early days of the war, and ever since he had been greatly troubled because he was not still in the trenches in Flanders. The casualty lists filled him with shame and discontent. So many of his friends, the men who had trained and marched with him, were laying down their gallant lives. He should have been with them. But during the last few days a new knowledge and inspiration had come to him. Gibraltar! A tedious, little, unlovely town of yellow houses and coal sheds, with an undesirable climate. Yes. But above it was the rock, the heart of a thousand memories and traditions which made it beautiful. He looked at it now with its steep wooded slopes, scarred by roads and catchments and the emplacements of guns. How much of England was recorded there! To how many British sailing on great ships from far dominions this huge buttress towering to its needle-ridge was the first outpost of the homeland! And for the moment he seemed to be its particular guardian, the ear which must listen night and day lest harm come to it. Harm the Rock, and all the Empire, built with such proud and arduous labour, would stagger under the blow, from St. Kilda to distant Lyttelton. He looked across the water and imagined Gibraltar as it looked at night, its houselights twinkling like a crowded zone of stars, and its great search-beams turning the ships in the harbour and the stone of the moles into gleaming silver, and travelling far over the dark waters. No harm must come to Gibraltar. His honour was all bound up in that. This was his service, and as he thought upon it he was filled with a cold fury against the traitor who thought it so easy to make him fail. But every hint of his anger had passed from his face as he turned back into the room.
"If you bring me good information, why, we can do business," he said; and Peiffer went away.
I was extremely irritated by the whole interview, and could hardly wait for the door to close.
"What knocks me over," I cried, "is the impertinence of the man. Does he really think that any old yarn like the fifty thousand rifles is going to deceive you?"
Slingsby lit a cigarette.
"Peiffer's true to type, that's all," he answered imperturbably. "They are vain, and vanity makes them think that you will at once believe what they want you to believe. So their deceits are a little crude." Then a smile broke over his face, and to some tune with which I was unfamiliar he sang softly: "But he's coming to Gibraltar in the morning."
"You think he will?"
"I am sure of it."
"And," I added doubtfully--it was not my business to criticise--"on conditions he can walk out again?"
Slingsby's smile became a broad grin.
"His business in Gibraltar, my friend, is not with me. He will not want to meet us any more; as soon as he has done what he came for he will go--or try to go. He thinks we are fools, you see."
And in the end it seemed almost as though Peiffer was justified of his belief. He crossed the next morning. He went to a hotel of the second class; he slept in the hotel, and next morning he vanished. Suddenly there was no more Peiffer. Peiffer was not. For six hours Peiffer was not; and then at half-past five in the afternoon the telephone bell rang in an office where Slingsby was waiting. He rushed to the instrument.
"Who is it?" he cried, and I saw a wave of relief surge into his face. Peiffer had been caught outside the gates and within a hundred yards of the neutral zone. He had strolled out in the thick of the dockyard workmen going home to Linea in Spain.
"Search him and bring him up here at once," said Slingsby, and he dropped into his chair and wiped his forehead. "Phew! Thirty seconds more and he might have snapped his fingers at us." He turned to me. "I shall want a prisoner's escort here in half an hour."
I went about that business and returned in time to see Slingsby giving an admirable imitation of a Prussian police official.
"So, Peiffer," he cried sternly, "you broke your word. Do not deny it. It will be useless."
The habit of a lifetime asserted itself in Peiffer. He quailed before authority when authority began to bully.
"I did not know I was outside the walls," he faltered. "I was taking a walk. No one stopped me."
"So!" Slingsby snorted. "And these, Peiffer--what have you to say of these?"
There were four separate passports which had been found in Peiffer's pockets. He could be a Dane of Esbjerg, a Swede of Stockholm, a Norwegian of Christiania, or a Dutchman from Amsterdam. All four nationalities were open to Peiffer to select from.
"They provide you with these, no doubt, in your school at Hamburg," and Slingsby paused to collect his best German. "You are a prisoner of war. Das ist genug," he cried, and Peiffer climbed to the internment camp.
So far so good. Slingsby had annexed Peiffer, but more important than Peiffer was Peiffer's little plot, and that he had not got. Nor did the most careful inquiry disclose what Peiffer had done and where he had been during the time when he was not. For six hours Peiffer had been loose in Gibraltar, and Slingsby began to get troubled. He tried to assume the mentality of Peiffer, and so reach his intention, but that did not help. He got out all the reports in which Peiffer's name was mentioned and read them over again.
I saw him sit back in his chair and remain looking straight in front of him.
"Yes," he said thoughtfully, and he turned over the report to me, pointing to a passage. It was written some months before, at Melilla, on the African side of the Mediterranean, and it ran like this:
"Peiffer frequents the low houses and cafés, where he spends a good deal of money and sometimes gets drunk. When drunk he gets very arrogant, and has been known to boast that he has been three times in Bordeaux since the war began, and, thanks to his passports, can travel as easily as if the world were at peace. On such occasions he expresses the utmost contempt for neutral nations. I myself have heard him burst out: 'Wait until we have settled with our enemies. Then we will deal properly with the neutral nations. They shall explain to us on their knees. Meanwhile,' and he thumped the table, making the glasses rattle, 'let them keep quiet and hold their tongues. We shall do what we like in neutral countries.'"
I read the passage.
"Do you see that last sentence? 'We shall do what we like in neutral countries.' No man ever spoke the mind of his nation better than Peiffer did that night in a squalid café in Melilla."
Slingsby looked out over the harbour to where the sun was setting on the sierras. He would have given an arm to be sure of what Peiffer had set on foot behind those hills.
"I wonder," he said uneasily, and from that day he began to sleep badly.
Then came another and a most disquieting phase of the affair. Peiffer began to write letters to Slingsby. He was not comfortable. He was not being treated as an officer should be. He had no amusements, and his food was too plain. Moreover, there were Germans and Austrians up in the camp who turned up their noses at him because their birth was better than his.
"You see what these letters mean?" said Slingsby. "Peiffer wants to be sent away from the Rock."
"You are reading your own ideas into them," I replied.
But Slingsby was right. Each letter under its simple and foolish excuses was a prayer for translation to a less dangerous place. For as the days passed and no answer was vouchsafed, the prayer became a real cry of fear.
"I claim to be sent to England without any delay. I must be sent," he wrote frankly and frantically.
Slingsby set his teeth with a grim satisfaction.
"No, my friend, you shall stay while the danger lasts. If it's a year, if you are alone in the camp, still you shall stay. The horrors you have planned you shall share with every man, woman and child in the town."
We were in this horrible and strange predicament. The whole colony was menaced, and from the Lines to Europa Point only two men knew of the peril. Of those two, one, in an office down by the harbour, ceaselessly and vainly, with a dreadful anxiety, asked "When?" The other, the prisoner, knew the very hour and minute of the catastrophe, and waited for it with the sinking fear of a criminal awaiting the fixed moment of his execution.
Thus another week passed.
Slingsby became a thing of broken nerves. If you shut the door noisily he cursed; if you came in noiselessly he cursed yet louder, and one evening he reached the stage when the sunset gun made him jump.
"That's enough," I said sternly. "To-day is Saturday. To-morrow we borrow the car"--there is only one worth talking about on the Rock--"and we drive out."
"I can't do it," he cried.
I continued:
"We will lunch somewhere by the road, and we will go on to the country house of the Claytons, who will give us tea. Then in the afternoon we will return."
Slingsby hesitated. It is curious to remember on how small a matter so much depended. I believe he would have refused, but at that moment the sunset gun went off and he jumped out of his chair.
"Yes, I am fairly rocky," he admitted. "I will take a day off."
I borrowed the car, and we set off and lunched according to our programme. It was perhaps half an hour afterwards when we were going slowly over a remarkably bad road. A powerful car, driven at a furious pace, rushed round a corner towards us, swayed, lurched, and swept past us with a couple of inches to spare, whilst a young man seated at the wheel shouted a greeting and waved his hand.
"Who the dickens was that?" I asked.
"I know," replied Slingsby. "It's Morano. He's a count, and will be a marquis and no end of a swell if he doesn't get killed motoring. Which, after all, seems likely."
I thought no more of the man until his name cropped up whilst we were sitting at tea on the Claytons' veranda.
"We passed Morano," said Slingsby. And Mrs. Clayton said with some pride--she was a pretty, kindly woman, but she rather affected the Spanish nobility:
"He lunched with us to-day. You know he is staying in Gibraltar."
"Yes, I know that," said Slingsby. "For I met him a little time ago. He wanted to know if there was a good Government launch for sale."
Mrs. Clayton raised her eyebrows in surprise.
"A launch? Surely you are wrong. He is devoting himself to aviation."
"Is he?" said Slingsby, and a curious look flickered for a moment over his face.
We left the house half an hour afterwards, and as soon as we were out of sight of it Slingsby opened his hand. He was holding a visiting card.
"I stole this off the hall table," he said. "Mrs. Clayton will never forgive me. Just look at it."
His face had become extraordinarily grave. The card was Morano's, and it was engraved after the Spanish custom. In Spain, when a woman marries she does not lose her name. She may be in appearance more subject to her husband than the women of other countries, though you will find many good judges to tell you that women rule Spain. In any case her name is not lost in that of her husband; the children will bear it as well as their father's, and will have it printed on their cards. Thus, Mr. Jones will call on you, but on the card he leaves he will be styled:
if Robinson happens to be his mother's name, and if you are scrupulous in your etiquette you will so address him.
Now, on the card which Slingsby had stolen, the Count Morano was described:
"I see," I replied. "Morano had a German mother."
I was interested. There might be nothing in it, of course. A noble of Spain might have a German mother and still not intrigue for the Germans against the owners of Gibraltar. But no sane man would take a bet about it.
"The point is," said Slingsby, "I am pretty sure that is not the card which he sent in to me when he came to ask about a launch. We will go straight to the office and make sure."
By the time we got there we were both somewhat excited, and we searched feverishly in the drawers of Slingsby's writing-table.
"I shouldn't be such an ass as to throw it away," he said, turning over his letters. "No! Here it is!" and a sharp exclamation burst from his lips.
"Look!"
He laid the card he had stolen side by side with the card which he had just found, and between the two there was a difference--to both of us a veritable world of difference. For from the second card the "y Goltz," the evidence that Morano was half-German, had disappeared.
"And it's not engraved," said Slingsby, bending down over the table. "It's just printed--printed in order to mislead us."
Slingsby sat down in his chair. A great hope was bringing the life back to his tired face, but he would not give the reins to his hope.
"Let us go slow," he said, warned by the experience of a hundred disappointments. "Let us see how it works out. Morano comes to Gibraltar and makes a prolonged stay in a hotel. Not being a fool, he is aware that I know who is in Gibraltar and who is not. Therefore he visits me with a plausible excuse for being in Gibraltar. But he takes the precaution to have this card specially printed. Why, if he is playing straight? He pretends he wants a launch, but he is really devoting himself to aviation. Is it possible that the Count Morano, not forgetting Goltz, knows exactly how the good Peiffer spent the six hours we can't account for, and what his little plan is?"
I sprang up. It did seem that Slingsby was getting at last to the heart of Peiffer's secret.
"We will now take steps," said Slingsby, and telegrams began to fly over the wires. In three days' time the answers trickled in.
An agent of Morano's had bought a German aeroplane in Lisbon. A German aviator was actually at the hotel there. Slingsby struck the table with his fist.
"What a fool I am!" he cried. "Give me a newspaper."
I handed him one of that morning's date. Slingsby turned it feverishly over, searching down the columns of the provincial news until he came to the heading "Portugal."
"Here it is!" he cried, and he read aloud. "'The great feature of the Festival week this year will be, of course, the aviation race from Villa Real to Seville. Amongst those who have entered machines is the Count Morano y Goltz.'"
He leaned back and lit a cigarette.
"We have got it! Morano's machine, driven by the German aviator, rises from the aerodrome at Villa Real in Portugal with the others, heads for Seville, drops behind, turns and makes a bee-line for the Rock, Peiffer having already arranged with Morano for signals to be made where bombs should be dropped. When is the race to be?"
I took the newspaper.
"Ten days from now."
"Good!"
Once more the telegrams began to fly. A week later Slingsby told me the result.
"Owing to unforeseen difficulties, the Festival committee at Villa Real has reorganised its arrangements, and there will be no aviation race. Oh, they'll do what they like in neutral countries, will they? But Peiffer shan't know," he added, with a grin. "Peiffer shall eat of his own frightfulness."
"No, no," said Colonel von Altrock, abruptly. "It is not always true."
The conversation died away at once, and everyone about that dinner table in the Rue St. Florentin looked at him expectantly. He played nervously with the stem of his wineglass for a few moments, as though the complete silence distressed him. Then he resumed with a more diffident air:
"War no doubt inspires noble actions and brings out great qualities in men from whom you expected nothing. But there is another side to it which becomes apparent, not at once, but after a few months of campaigning. Your nerves get over-strained, fatigue and danger tell their tale. You lose your manners, sometimes you degenerate into a brute. I happen to know. Thirty years have passed since the siege of Paris, yet even to-day there is no part of my life which I regret so much as the hours between eleven and twelve o'clock of Christmas night in the year 'Seventy. I will tell you about it if you like, although the story may make us late for the opera."
The opera to be played that evening was "Faust," which most had heard, and the rest could hear when they would. On the other hand Colonel von Altrock was habitually a silent man. The offer which he made now he was not likely to repeat. It was due, as his companions understood, to the accident that this night was the first which he had spent in Paris since the days of the great siege.
"It will not matter if we are a little late," said his hostess, the Baroness Hammerstein, and her guests agreed with her.
"It is permitted to smoke?" asked the Colonel. For a moment the flame of a match lit up and exaggerated the hollows and the lines upon his lean, rugged face. Then, drawing his chair to the table, he told his story.
I was a lieutenant of the fifth company of the second battalion of the 103rd Regiment, which belonged to the 23rd Infantry Division. It is as well to be exact. That division was part of the 12th Army Corps under the Crown Prince of Saxony, and in the month of December formed the south-eastern segment of our circle about Paris. On Christmas night I happened to be on duty at a forepost in advance of Noisy-le-Grand. The centrigrade thermometer was down to twelve degrees below zero, and our little wooden hut with the sloping roof, which served us at once as kitchen, mess-room, and dormitory, seemed to us all a comfortable shelter. Outside its door the country glimmered away into darkness, a white silent plain of snow. Inside, the camp-bedsteads were neatly ranged along the wall where the roof was lowest. A long table covered with a white cloth--for we were luxurious on Christmas night--occupied the middle of the floor. A huge fire blazed up the chimney, chairs of any style, from a Louis Quatorze fauteuil borrowed from the salon of a château to the wooden bench of a farm-house, were placed about the table, and in a corner stood a fine big barrel of Bavarian beer which had arrived that morning as a Christmas present from my mother at Leipzig. We were none of us anxious to turn out into the bitter cold, I can tell you. But we were not colonels in those days, and while the Hauptmann was proposing my mother's health the door was thrust open and an orderly muffled up to the eyes stood on the threshold at the salute.
"The Herr Oberst wishes to see the Herr Lieutenant von Altrock," said he, and before I had time even to grumble he turned on his heels and marched away.
I took down my great-coat, drew the cape over my head, and went out of the hut. There was no wind, nor was the snow falling, but the cold was terrible, and to me who had come straight from the noise of my companions the night seemed unnaturally still. I plodded away through the darkness. Behind me in the hut the Hauptmann struck up a song, and the words came to me quite clearly and very plaintively across the snow:
Ich hatte einen Kamaraden
Einen besseren findest du nicht.
I wondered whether in the morning, like that comrade, I should be a man to be mentioned in the past tense. For more than once a sentinel had been found frozen dead at his post, and I foresaw a long night's work before me. My Colonel had acquired a habit of choosing me for special services, and indeed to his kindness in this respect I owed my commission. For you must understand that I was a student at Heidelberg when the newsboys came running down the streets one evening in July with the telegram that M. Benedetti had left Ems. I joined the army as a volunteer, and I fought in the ranks at Gravelotte. However, I felt no gratitude to my Colonel that Christmas night as I tramped up the slope of Noisy-le-Grand to the château where he had his quarters.
I found him sitting at a little table drawn close to the fire in a bare, dimly-lighted room. A lamp stood on the table, and he was peering at a crumpled scrap of paper and smoothing out its creases. So engrossed was he, indeed, in his scrutiny that it was some minutes before he raised his head and saw me waiting for his commands.
"Lieutenant von Altrock," he said, "you must ride to Raincy."
Raincy was only five miles distant, as the crow flies. Yes, but the French had made a sortie on the 21st, they had pushed back our lines, and they now held Ville Evrart and Maison Blanche between Raincy and Noisy-le-Grand. I should have to make a circuit; my five miles became ten. I did not like the prospect at all. I liked it still less when the Colonel added:
"You must be careful. More than one German soldier has of late been killed upon that road. There are francs-tireurs about, and you must reach Raincy."
It was a verbal message which he gave me, and I was to deliver it in person to the commandant of the battery at Raincy. It bore its fruit upon the 27th, when the cross-fire from Raincy and Noisy-le-Grand destroyed the new French fort upon Mount Avron in a snowstorm.
"There is a horse ready for you at the stables," said the Colonel, and with a nod he turned again to his scrap of paper. I saluted and walked to the door. As my hand was on the knob he called me back.
"What do you make of it?" he asked, holding the paper out to me. "It was picked out of the Marne in a sealed wine-bottle."
I took the paper, and saw that a single sentence was written upon it in a round and laborious hand with the words mis-spelt. The meaning of the sentence seemed simple enough. It was apparently a message from a M. Bonnet to his son in the Mobiles at Paris, and it stated that the big black sow had had a litter of fifteen.
"What do you make of it?" repeated the Colonel.
"Why, that M. Bonnet's black sow has farrowed fifteen," said I.
I handed the paper back. The Colonel looked at it again, shrugged his shoulders, and laughed.
"Well, after all, perhaps it does mean no more than that," said he.
But for the Colonel's suspicions I should not have given another thought to that mis-spelt scrawl. M. Bonnet was probably some little farmer engrossed in his pigs and cows, who thought that no message could be more consoling to his son locked up in Paris than this great news about the black sow. The Colonel's anxiety, however, fixed it for awhile in my mind.
The wildest rumours were flying about our camp at that time, as I think will always happen when you have a large body of men living under a great strain of cold and privation and peril. They perplexed the seasoned officers and they were readily swallowed by the youngsters, of whom I was one. Now, this scrap of paper happened to fit in with the rumour which most of all exercised our imaginations.
It was known that in spite of all our precautions news was continually leaking into Paris which we did not think it good for the Parisians to have. What we did think good for them--information, for instance, of the defeat of the Army of the Loire--we ourselves sent in without delay. But we ascertained from our prisoners that Paris was enlightened with extraordinary rapidity upon other matters which we wished to keep to ourselves. On that very Christmas Day they already knew that General Faidherbe, at Pont Noyelles, had repulsed a portion of our first army under General Manteuffel. How did they know? We were not satisfied that pigeons and balloons completely explained the mystery. No, we believed that the news passed somewhere through our lines on the south-east of Paris. There was supposed to exist a regular system like the underground road in the Southern States of America during the slavery days. There the escaped slave was quickly and secretly passed on from appointed house to appointed house, until he reached freedom. Here it was news in cipher which was passed on and on to a house close to our lines, whence, as occasion served, it was carried into Paris.
That was the rumour. There may have been truth in it, or it may have been entirely false. But, at all events, it had just the necessary element of fancy to appeal to the imagination of a very young man, and as I walked to the stables and mounted the horse which the Colonel had lent me, I kept wondering whether this message, so simple in appearance, had travelled along that underground road and was covering its last stage between the undiscovered château and Paris in the sealed wine-bottle. I tried to make out what the black sow stood for in the cipher, and whose identity was concealed under the pseudonym of M. Bonnet. So I rode down the slope of Noisy-le-Grand.
But at the bottom of the slope these speculations passed entirely from my mind. In front, hidden away in the darkness, lay the dangers of Ville Evrart and Maison Blanche. German soldiers had ridden along this path and had not returned; the francs-tireurs were abroad. Yet I must reach Raincy. Moreover, in my own mind, I was equally convinced that I must return. I saw the little beds against the wall of the hut under the sloping roof. I rode warily, determined to sleep in one of them that night, determined to keep my life if it could be kept. I believe I should have pistolled my dearest friend without a tinge of remorse had he tried to delay me for a second. Three months of campaigning, in a word, had told their tale.
I crossed the Marne and turned off the road into a forest path. Ville Evrart with its French garrison lay now upon my left behind the screen of trees. Fortunately there was no moon that night, and a mist hung in the air. The snow, too, deadened the sound of my horse's hoofs. But I rode, nevertheless, very gently and with every sense alert. Each moment I expected the challenge of a sentinel in French. From any of the bushes which I passed I might suddenly see the spurt of flame from a franc-tireur's chassepot. If a twig snapped in the frost at my side I was very sure the foot of an enemy was treading there.
I came to the end of the wood and rode on to Chesnay. Here the country was more open, and I had passed Ville Evrart. But I did not feel any greater security. I was possessed with a sort of rage to get my business done and live--yes, at all costs live. A mile beyond Chesnay I came to cross-roads, and within the angle which the two roads made a little cabin stood upon a plot of grass. I was in doubt which road to take. The cabin was all dark, and riding up to the door I hammered upon it with the butt of my pistol. It was not immediately opened. There must indeed have been some delay, since the inmates were evidently in bed. But I was not in any mood to show consideration. I wanted to get on--to get on and live. A little window was within my reach. I dashed the butt of the pistol violently through the glass.
"Will that waken you, eh?" I cried, and almost before I had finished I heard a shuffling footstep in the passage and the door was opened. A poor old peasant-woman, crippled with rheumatism, stood in the doorway shading a lighted candle with a gnarled, trembling hand. In her haste to obey she had merely thrown a petticoat over the shoulders of her nightdress, and there she stood with bare feet, shivering in the cold, an old bent woman of eighty, and apologised.
"I am sorry, monsieur," she said, meekly. "But I cannot move as quickly as I could when I was young. How can I serve monsieur?"
Not a word of reproach about her broken window. You would think that the hardest man must have felt some remorse. I merely broke in upon her apologies with a rough demand for information.
"The road upon your right leads to Chelles, monsieur," she answered. "That upon your left to Raincy."
I rode off without another word. It is not a pretty description which I am giving to you, but it is a true one. That is my regret--it is a true one. I forgot the old peasant woman the moment I had passed the cabin. I thought only of the long avenues of trees which stretched across that flat country, and which could hide whole companies of francs-tireurs. I strained my eyes forwards. I listened for the sound of voices. But the first voice which I heard spoke in my own tongue.
It was the voice of a sentry on the outposts of Raincy, and I could have climbed down from my saddle and hugged him to my heart. Instead, I sat impassively in my saddle and gave him the countersign. I was conducted to the quarters of the commandant of artillery and I delivered my message.
"You have come quickly," he said. "What road did you take?"
"That of Chesnay and Gagny."
The commandant looked queerly at me.
"Did you?" said he. "You are lucky. You will return by Montfermeil and Chelles, Lieutenant von Altrock, and I will send an escort with you. Apparently we are better informed at Raincy than you are at Noisy-le-Grand."
"I knew there was danger, sir," I replied.
A regiment of dragoons was quartered at Raincy, and from it two privates and a corporal were given me for escort. In the company of these men I started back by the longer road in the rear of our lines. And it was a quarter to ten when I started. For I noticed the time of a clock in the commandant's quarters. I should think that it must have taken three-quarters of an hour to reach Montfermeil, for the snow was deep here and the mist very thick. Beyond Montfermeil, however, we came to higher ground; there were fewer drifts of snow, and the night began to clear, so that we made better going. We were now, of course, behind our lines, and the only risk we ran was that a few peasants armed with rifles from a battlefield or a small band of francs-tireurs might be lurking on the chance of picking off a straggler. But that risk was not very great now that there were four of us. I rode therefore with an easier mind, and the first thing which entered my thoughts was--what do you think? The old peasant-woman's cabin with the broken window? Not a bit of it. No, it was M. Bonnet's black sow. Had M. Bonnet's sow farrowed fifteen? Or was that litter of fifteen intended to inform the people in Paris by some system of multiplication of the exact number of recruits which had joined one of the French armies still in the field--say, General Faidherbe's, at Bapaume, and so to keep up their spirits and prolong the siege? I was still puzzling over this problem when in a most solitary place I came suddenly upon a château with lighted windows. This was the Château Villetaneuse. I reined in my horse and stopped. My escort halted behind me. It was after all an astonishing sight. There were many châteaux about Paris then, as there are now, but not one that I had ever come across was inhabited by more than a caretaker. The owners had long since fled. Breached walls, trampled gardens, gaping roofs, and silence and desertion--that is what we meant when we spoke of a chateâu near Paris in those days. But here was one with lighted windows on the first and second storeys staring out calmly on the snow as though never a Prussian soldier had crossed the Rhine. A thick clump of trees sheltered it behind, and it faced the eastern side of the long ridge of Mont Guichet, along the foot of which I rode--the side farthest from Paris. From the spot where I and my escort had halted an open park stretched level to the door. The house had, no doubt, a very homelike look on that cold night. It should have spoken to me, no doubt, of the well-ordered family life and the gentle occupations of women. But I was thinking of M. Bonnet's black sow. I was certain that none of our officers were quartered there and making the best of their Christmas night in France. Had that been the case, black paths and ruts would have been trampled in the snow up to the door, and before now I should have been challenged by a sentinel. No! The more I looked at the house and its lighted windows, the more I thought of M. Bonnet's sow. Was this solitary château the undiscovered last station on the underground road through which the news passed into Paris? If not, why was it still inhabited? Why did the lights blaze out upon the snow so late?
I commanded my escort to be silent. We rode across the park, and half-way to the door we came upon a wire fence and a gate. There we dismounted, and walked our horses. We tethered them to a tree about twenty yards from the house. I ordered one of my dragoons to go round the house, and watch any door which he might find at the back. I told the other two to stay where they were, and I advanced alone to the steps, but before I had reached them the front door was thrown open, and a girl with a lantern in her hand came out.
She held the lantern high above her head and peered forward, so that the light fell full upon her hair, her face, and dress. She was a tall girl and slight of figure, with big, dark eyes, and a face pretty and made for laughter. It was very pale now, however, and the brows were drawn together in a frown. She wore a white evening frock, which glistened in the lantern light, and over her bare shoulders she had flung a heavy, black, military cloak. So she stood and swung the lantern slowly from side to side as she stared into the darkness, while the lights and shadows chased each other swiftly across her white frock, her anxious face, and the waves of her fair hair.
"Whom do you expect at this hour, mademoiselle?" I asked.
I was quite close to her, but she had not seen me, for I stood at the bottom of the steps and she was looking out over my head. Yet she did not start or utter any cry. Only the lantern rattled in her hand. Then she stood quite still for a moment or two, and afterwards lowered her arm until the light shone upon me.
"You are Prussian?" she said.
"A lieutenant of foot," I answered. "You have nothing to fear."
"I am not afraid," she replied, quietly.
"Yet you tremble, mademoiselle. Your hand shakes."
"That is the cold," said she.
"Whom did you expect?"
"No one," she replied. "I thought that I heard the rattle of iron as though a horse moved and a stirrup rang. It is lonely here since our neighbours have fled. I came out to see."
"The lantern then was not a signal, mademoiselle?" I asked.
She looked at me in perplexity, and certainly the little piece of acting, I thought, was very well done. Many a man might have been taken in by it. But it was thrown away upon me, for I had noticed that heavy military cloak. How did it come to lie so conveniently to her hand in the hall?
"A signal?" she repeated. "To whom?"
"To some man hiding in the woods of Mont Guichet, a signal to him that he may come and fetch the news for Paris that has lately--very lately--been brought to the house."
She bent forward and peered down at me, drawing the cloak closer about her neck.
"You are under some strange mistake, monsieur," she said. "No news for Paris has been brought to this house by anyone."
"Indeed?" I answered. "And is that so?" Then I stretched out my hand and said triumphantly: "You will tell me perhaps that the cloak upon your shoulders is a woman's cloak?"
And she laughed! It was humiliating; it is always humiliating to a young man not to be taken seriously, isn't--especially if he is a conqueror? There was I thinking that I had fairly cross-examined her into a trap, and she laughed indulgently. Of course, a girl always claims the right to be ever so much older than a man of her own age, but she stood on the top of the steps and laughed down at me as though she had the advantage of as many years as there were steps between us. And she explained indulgently, too.
"The cloak I am wearing belongs to a wounded French officer who was taken prisoner and released upon parole. He is now in our house."
"Then I think I will make his acquaintance," I said, and over my shoulder I called to the corporal. As he advanced to my side a look of alarm came into the girl's face.
"You are not alone," she said, and suddenly her face became wistful and her voice began to plead. "You have not come for him? He has done no harm. He could not, even if he would. And he would not, for he has given his parole. Oh, you are not going to take him away?"
"That we shall see, mademoiselle."
I left one dragoon at the door. I ordered the corporal to wait in the hall, and I followed the girl up the stairs to the first floor. All her pride had gone; she led the way with a submission of manner which seemed to me only a fresh effort to quiet my suspicions. But they were not quieted. I distrusted her; I believed that I had under my fingers the proof of that rumour which flew about our camp. She stopped at a door, and as she turned the handle she said:
"This is my own parlour, monsieur. We all use it now, for it is warmer than the others, and all our servants but one have fled."
It was a pretty room, and cheery enough to a young man who came into it from the darkness and the snow. A piano stood open in a corner with a rug thrown upon it to protect the strings from the cold; books lay upon the tables, heavy curtains were drawn close over the windows, there were cushioned sofas and deep armchairs, and a good fire of logs blazed upon the hearth. These details I took in at once. Then I looked at the occupants. A youth lay stretched upon a sofa close to the fire with a wrap covering his legs. The wrap was raised by a cradle to keep off its weight. His face must have been, I think, unusually handsome when he had his health; at the moment it was so worn and pale, and the eyes were so sunk, that all its beauty had gone. The pallor was accentuated by a small black moustache he wore and his black hair. He lay with his head supported upon a pillow, and was playing a game of chess with an old lady who sat at a little table by his side. This old lady was actually making a move as I entered the room, for as she turned and stared at me she was holding a chessman in her hand. I advanced to the fire and warmed my hands at it.
"You, sir, are the wounded officer on parole?" I said in French. The officer bowed.
"And you, madame?" I asked of the old lady. The sight of my uniform seemed to have paralysed her with terror. She sat still holding the chessman in her hand, and staring at me with her mouth half-open.
"Come, come, madame," I explained, impatiently; "it is a simple question."
"Monsieur, you frighten her," said the young lady. "It is my aunt, the Baroness Granville."
"You tell me nothing of yourself," I said to her, and she looked at me in surprise.
"Since you have come with an escort to this house I imagined you must know to whom it belonged. I am Sophie de Villetaneuse."
"Exactly," I replied, as though I had known all along, and had merely asked the question to see whether she would speak the truth. "Now, mademoiselle, will you please explain to me how it is that while your neighbours have fled you remain at your château?"
"It is quite simple," she answered. "My mother is bedridden. She could not be moved. She could not be left alone."
"You will pardon me," said I, "if I test the statement."
The wounded officer raised himself upon his elbow as though to protest, but Mademoiselle de Villetaneuse put out a hand and checked him. She showed me a face flushed with anger, but she spoke quite quietly.
"I will myself take you to my mother's room."
I laughed. I said: "That is just what I expected. You will take me to your mother's room and leave your friends here to make any little preparations in the way of burning awkward letters which they may think desirable. Thank you, no! I am not so easily caught."
Mademoiselle Sophie was becoming irritated.
"There are no awkward letters!" she exclaimed.
"That statement, too, I shall put to the test."
I went to the door, and standing so that I could still keep an eye upon the room, I called the corporal.
"You will search the house thoroughly," I said, "and quickly. Bring me word how many people you find in it. You, mademoiselle, will remain in the room with us."
She shrugged her shoulders as I closed the door and came back into the room.
"You were wounded, monsieur," I said to the Frenchman. "Where?"
"In the sortie on Le Bourget."
"And you came here the moment you were released on your parole?"
The wounded officer turned with a smile to Mademoiselle Sophie.
"Yes, for here live my best friends."
He took her hand, and with a Frenchman's grace he raised it to his lips and kissed it. And I was suddenly made acquainted with the relationship in which these two, youth and maid, stood to one another. Mademoiselle Sophie had cried out on the steps against the possibility that I might have come to claim my prisoner. But though she spoke no word, she was still more explicit now. With the officer that caress was plainly no more than a pretty way of saying thanks; it had the look of a habit, it was so neatly given, and he gave it without carelessness, it is true, but without warmth. She, however, received it very differently. He did not see, because his head was bent above her hand, but I did.
I saw the look of pain in her face, the slight contraction of her shoulders and arms, as if to meet a blow. The kiss hurt her--no, not the kiss, but the finished grace with which it was given, the proof, in a word, that it was a way of saying "Thanks"--and nothing more. Here was a woman who loved and a man who did not love, and the woman knew. So much was evident to me who looked on, but when the officer raised his head there was nothing for him to see, and upon her lips only the conventional remark:
"We should have been hurt if you had not come."
I resumed my questions:
"Your doctor, monsieur, is in the house?"
"At this hour? No."
"Ah. That is a pity."
The young man lifted his head from his pillow and looked me over from head to foot with a stare of disdain.
"I do not quite understand. You doubt my word, monsieur?"
"Why not?" I asked sharply.
It was quite possible that the cradle, this rug across his legs, the pillow, were all pretences. Many a soldier in those days was pale and worn and had sunken eyes, and yet was sound of limb and could do a day's work of twenty-four hours if there were need. I had my theory and as yet I had come upon nothing to disprove it. This young officer might very well have brought in a cipher message to the Château Villetaneuse. Mademoiselle Sophie might very well have waved her lantern at the door to summon a fresh messenger.
"No; why should I not doubt your word?" I repeated.
He turned his face to the old lady. "It is your move, Baronne," he said, and she placed the piece she held upon a square of the board. Mademoiselle Sophie took her stand by the table between the players, and the game went on just as though there were no intruder in the room. It was uncomfortable for me. I shifted my feet. I tried to appear at my ease; finally I sat down in a chair. They took no notice of me whatever. But that I felt hot upon a discovery, but that I knew if I could bring back to Noisy-le-Grand proof of where the leakage through our lines occurred, I should earn approval and perhaps promotion, I should very deeply have regretted my entrance into the Château Villetaneuse. And I was extremely glad when at last the corporal opened the door. He had searched the house--he had found no one but Madame de Villetaneuse and an old servant who was watching by her bed.
"Very well," said I, and the corporal returned to the hall.
Mademoiselle Sophie moved away from the chess-table. She came and stood opposite to me, and though her face was still, her eyes were hard with anger.
"And now perhaps you will tell me to what I owe your visit?" she said.
"Certainly," I returned. I fixed my eyes on her, and I said slowly, "I have come to ask for more news of M. Bonnet's black sow."
Mademoiselle Sophie stared as if she were not sure whether I was mad or drunk, but was very sure I was one or the other. The young Frenchman started upon his couch, with the veins swelling upon his forehead and a flushed face.
"This is an insult," he cried savagely, and no less savagely I answered him.
"Hold your tongue!" I cried. "You forget too often that though you are on parole you are still a prisoner."
He fell back upon the sofa with a groan of pain, and the girl hurried to his side.
"Your leg hurts you. You should not have moved," she cried.
"It is nothing," he said, faintly.
Meanwhile I had been looking about the room for a box or a case where the cipher messages might be hid. I saw nothing of the kind. Of course they might be hidden between the pages of a book. I went from table to table, taking them by the boards and shaking the leaves. Not a scrap of paper tumbled out. There was another door in the room besides that which led on to the landing.
"Mademoiselle, what room is that?" I asked.
"My bedroom," she answered, simply, and with a gesture full of dignity she threw open the door.
I carried the mud and snow and the grime of a camp without a scruple of remorse into that neat and pretty chamber. Mademoiselle Sophie followed me as I searched wardrobe and drawer and box. At last I came to one drawer in her dressing-table which was locked. I tried the handle again to make sure. Yes, it was locked. I looked suddenly at the young lady. She was watching me out of the corners of her eyes with a peculiar intentness. I felt at once that I was hot.
"Open that drawer, mademoiselle," I said.
"It contains only some private things."
"Open that drawer or I burst it open."
"No," she cried, as I jerked the handle. "I will open it."
She fetched the key out of another drawer which was unlocked, and fitted it into the lock of the dressing-table. And all the while I saw that she was watching me. She meant to play me some trick, I was certain. So I watched too, and I did well to watch. She turned the key, opened the drawer, and then snatched out something with extraordinary rapidity and ran as hard as she could to the door--not the door through which we had entered, but a second door which gave on to the passage. She ran very fast and she ran very lightly, and she did not stumble over a chair as I did in pursuit of her. But she had to unlatch the door and pull it open. I caught her up and closed my arms about her. It was a little, carved, ebony box which she held, the very thing for which I searched.
"I thought so," I cried with a laugh. "Drop the box, mademoiselle. Drop it on the floor!"
The noise of our struggle had been heard in the next room. The Baroness rushed through the doorway.
"What has happened?" she cried. "Mon Dieu! you are killing her!"
"Drop the box, mademoiselle!"
And as I spoke she threw it away. She threw it through the doorway; she tried to throw it over the banisters of the stairs, but my arms were about hers, and it fell into the passage just beyond the door. I darted from her and picked it up. When I returned with it she was taking a gold chain from her neck. At the end of the chain hung a little golden key. This she held out to me.
"Open it here," she said in a low, eager voice.
The sudden change only increased my suspicions, or rather my conviction that I had now the proof which I needed. A minute ago she was trying as hard as she could to escape with the box, now she was imploring me to open it.
"Why, if you are so eager to show me the contents, did you try to throw it away?" I asked.
"I tried to throw it down into the hall," she answered.
"My corporal would have picked it up."
"Oh, what would that matter?" she exclaimed, impatiently. "You would have opened it in the hall. That was what I wanted. Open it here! At all events open it here!"
The very urgency of her pleading made me determined to refuse the plea.
"No, you have some other ruse, mademoiselle," said I. "Perhaps you wish to gain time for your friend in the next room. No, we will return here and open it comfortably by the fire."
I kept a tight hold upon the box. I shook it. To my delight I felt that there were papers within it. I carried it back to the fireside and sat down on a chair. Mademoiselle Sophie followed me close, and as I fixed the little gold key into the lock she laid her hand very gently upon my arm.
"I beg you not to unlock that box," she said; "if you do you will bring upon me a great humiliation and upon yourself much remorse. There is nothing there which concerns you. There are just my little secrets. A girl may have secrets, monsieur, which are sacred to her."
She was standing quite close to me, and her back was towards the French officer and her aunt. They could not see her face and they could hardly have heard more than a word here and there of what she said. For always she spoke in a low voice, and at times that low voice dropped to a whisper, so that I myself had to watch her lips. I answered her only by turning the key in the lock. She took her hand from my arm and laid it on the lid to hinder me from opening it.
"I wore the key on a chain about my neck, monsieur," she whispered. "Does that teach you nothing? Even though you are young, does it teach you nothing? I said that if you unlocked that box you would cause me great humiliation, thinking that would be enough to stop you. But I see I must tell you more. Read the letters, monsieur, question me about them, and you will make my life a very lonely one. I think so. I think you will destroy my chance of happiness. You would not wish that, monsieur? It is true that we are enemies, but some day this war will end, and you would not wish to prolong its sufferings beyond the end. Yet you will be doing that, monsieur, if you open that box. You would be sorry afterwards when you were back at home to know that a girl in France was suffering from a needless act of yours. Yes, you will be sorry if you open that box."
It seems now almost impossible to me that I could have doubted her sincerity; she spoke with so much simplicity, and so desperate an appeal looked out from her dark eyes. Ever since that Christmas night I can see her quite clearly at will, standing as she stood then--all the sincerity of her which I would not acknowledge, all the appeal which I would not hear; and I see her many times when for my peace I would rather not. Much remorse, she said very wisely, would be the consequence for me. She was pleading for her pride, and to do that the better she laid her pride aside; yet she never lost her dignity. She was pleading for her chance of happiness, foreseeing that it was likely to be destroyed, without any reason or any profit to a living being, by a stranger who would the next moment pass out of her life. Yet there was no outcry, and there were no tears. Had it been a trick--I ask the ladies--would there not have been tears?