THE GARDEN OF SWORDS
by Max Pemberton
Published by Aeterna Classics 2018
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
BOOK I Man and Wife
CHAPTER I PÈRE BONOT READS THE “COURRIER”
CHAPTER II AT THE PLACE KLEBER
CHAPTER III “A LOOMING BASTION”
CHAPTER IV AT THE CHÂLET OF THE NIEDERWALD
CHAPTER V THE HERALD OF THE STORM
CHAPTER VI THE LAST DAY OF JULY
CHAPTER VII “THOSE OTHERS”
CHAPTER VIII OVER THE HEARTS OF FRANCE
CHAPTER IX THE FUGITIVE
CHAPTER X WAITING
CHAPTER XI THE HUSSARS ARE AT GUNSTETT
BOOK II Battle
CHAPTER XII THE BLOOD-RED DAY OF WÖRTH
CHAPTER XIII THE DEATH RIDE
CHAPTER XIV NIGHT
CHAPTER XV A BIVOUAC OF DRAGOONS
CHAPTER XVI THE PROMISE
CHAPTER XVII THE CITY OF THE GOLDEN MISTS
BOOK III The Siege
CHAPTER XVIII THE FIRST DAYS
CHAPTER XIX A FACE AT THE WINDOW
CHAPTER XX THE BEGINNING OF THE TERROR
CHAPTER XXI THE RUE DE L’ARC-EN-CIEL
CHAPTER XXII “LA PAUVRE”
CHAPTER XXIII THE NIGHT OF TRUCE
CHAPTER XXIV AN ULTIMATUM
CHAPTER XXV CONFESSION
CHAPTER XXVI THE LIGHT IN THE WINDOW
CHAPTER XXVII ACCUSATION
CHAPTER XXVIII “IF STRASBURG FALLS”
CHAPTER XXIX THE LETTER
CHAPTER XXX IN THE HOUSE OF LAROCHE
CHAPTER XXXI “THERE IS NIGHT IN THE HILLS”
Old Père Bonot, sunning himself before the doors of a café by the minster, held the Courrier du Bas-Rhin in his hand, and vouchsafed to Rosenbad, the brewer, and to Hummel, the vintner, such particulars of the forthcoming wedding as he found to be good. A glass of coffee stood at Père Bonot’s elbow; his blue spectacles rested high upon a forehead where no wrinkles sat; the smoke from his cigarette hung in little white clouds about his iron-grey hair. He sat before the great cathedral of Strasburg; but the paper and its words carried him away to a little village of the mountains where, forty years ago, he had knelt at the altar with Henriette at his side, and an old priest had blessed him, and he had gone out to the sunny vineyards, hand in hand with his girl-wife to their home in a forest of the Vosges. There were tears in old Bonot’s eyes when he took up the Courrier again.
“Nevertheless, my friends,” said he, covering his retreat with a great show of folding the paper and setting his glasses, “nevertheless—her mother was a French woman! Marry the devil to a good girl—and, as the saying goes, there is no more devil. I remember Marie Douay—twenty, twenty-two years ago. I saw her at Görsdorf with Madame Hélène, a little brunette, always gay, always laughing; a bird to cage in Paris; a bird of the gardens and not of the mountains. When she married the Englishman, milord Hamilton, who had lived for two years in the Broglie here, was it for me to be surprised? Nom d’un gaillard, I was not surprised at all. The eagle to the mountains, the gold-breast to the cage. Certainly we were too sleepy for Marie Douay. She went to London with milord—et après—”
He slapped the paper as though all were settled; but Rosenbad, the fat German brewer, took his pipe from his mouth and chuckled with a deep guttural note.
“The après was Mademoiselle Beatrix—hein?” said he. “There were no more après’s, friend Bonot? That is for by-and-by—when the priest là-bas is forgotten.”
Old Hummel, the vintner, shook his head.
“These things bring the white hairs,” he exclaimed dolefully; “when you are sixty you should not go to weddings or to funerals. I have seven children, and the priests are always in my house. Next week, the Abbé Colot baptises my tenth grandchild. When I see a lad at the altar I say to myself, ‘By-and-by he will drink his beer at the Stadt Paris, and will be in no hurry to go home again.’ I do not wish to look through the window while another man dances. If I cannot dance myself, I will sit here and forget the days when I could. Ah—that it should be so many years ago!”
He struck a mournful note, a discord upon that sunny morning of July when there was a sky of azure above the minster spire of Strasburg, and some of the glory of summer hovered even in the well of her narrow streets. Old Père Bonot, called back again in thought to the village of the mountains, closed his eyes and listened to the musical bells pealing now in many a tower and steeple. By here and there, groups of well-dressed citizens crossed the open space before the western door of the vast church and passed from the sunshine to the soft lights of green, of red, of gold, of purple, which fell upon the pavements of the dim, mysterious aisles. Ever and anon, a carriage clattered over the flags, and men in gaudy uniforms, the white and silver of the cuirassiers, the green of the Empress’s dragoons, the blue of the lancers, added their gilt of colour to the swelling throngs. It was a soldier’s wedding, Strasburg said, and you must search many a city of Europe before you would find as pretty a bride as the stately English girl who went to the altar that morning, or a better lancer than Edmond Lefort, who was to take Beatrix Hamilton to the mountains presently.
The bells rang in the steeples; the people gathered in the minster square and at the great western doors of the cathedral. Many were peasants, clattering in their sabots, peasants come down from the vineyards to witness the marriage of the grandchild of one whom they and their fathers before them had held in honour—that servant of charity and of love, Hélène, Countess of Görsdorf. Flowers they carried to scatter upon the path which the mistress of their affections must tread; and those that had no flowers gave laughter and merry tongues, and it may even be a prayer, for the English girl who was Strasburg’s bride that day. And side by side with them were the louts of the hills, the vignerons, the moissonneurs, men of field and farm and orchard, red-cheeked all, with spotless blouses, and many a bon mot, and many a whisper of other marriages that might be when the harvesting was done. Such a crowd had not gathered at the church doors for twenty years, the people said. But then—it was Madame Hélène’s grandchild.
Old Père Bonot watched the people, and the smile came back to his contented face.
“It is forty years ago,” he said, “forty to a day, ma foi. The seventh of July—”
“Come, then—” interrupted Hummel, the melancholy vintner, “many things will happen to us before the seventh of July, mon vieux. The day is Tuesday, and Sunday was the third. It would be the fifth if I can add three and two.”
Old Bonot assented grudgingly.
“I married Henriette at Reichshoffen on the seventh day of July in the year 1830. To-day is the fifth then, and the year is 1870. It was on the twenty-fifth day of the month that Charles the Tenth signed the five ordinances which cost him his throne. On the next day le roi Guillaume came to the throne of England. Ah, mes enfants, the things that forty years can teach us, the joys we can forget, the griefs we can suffer. And there is always death—always, always—”
He was thinking of little Henriette and the place where she slept in the green valley of Reichshoffen; but Rosenbad, the merry brewer, was all eyes for the wedding and the great throngs then crossing the square.
“Oh! but you are gay this morning, old Bonot,” said he. “I shall go and tell them that there is a skeleton for their feast—the man in black who says that the bell can toll sometimes. Is not he a proper fellow to make their wine sour! And he has children of his own!”
The vintner took up his long glass of Munich beer, and chimed in with his old complaint.
“I will be as gay as ten grandchildren will let me—for the sake of the little English girl. Afterwards I must go home. Père Bonot shall call for some more beer and remember that we are Germans—”
He spoke jestingly, but the Frenchman was up in arms in a moment.
“Not so,” he cried fiercely. “I am the servant of my Emperor, and of no other. As for your beer, it is the drink of louts. I give it to my pigs. When the King of Prussia is crowned in the minster—I will drink your beer on that day.”
He hammered upon the table with a blow which shook the glasses and brought a waiter hurrying to the place. But while his anger was still young, a great sound of cheering broke upon their ears, and all in the café stood up to see a great family coach, drawn by a pair of staid grey horses, roll in leisured dignity across the square. Within the coach there sat an old lady with hair as white as silver, and hollowed cheeks and kindly blue eyes, and such a nobility of manner and unassumed graciousness, that all the gentlest gifts of motherhood seemed united in her.
“Wait—wait! there is the Countess herself with Mademoiselle Beatrix by her side. Sac à papier!—he is lucky, the lancer. I would even forget that I have seven—”
“She has no eyes for winter, friend Hummel. They say that the English are an ugly nation, but, ma foi, there is one to give them the lie. And the lancer—there will be no King of Prussia in Strasburg while we have men like that. Mon Dieu—what shoulders!”
A tremendous cheer greeted the three occupants of the old-world coach. Hélène, Countess of Görsdorf, leant back upon the cushions of yellow satin, and there were tears of gladness in her eyes. Mademoiselle Beatrix, as the people called the English girl, looked neither to the right nor to the left, but timidly into the eyes of the young officer of lancers who sat before her, and whose blue uniform and scarlet breeches were a feast of colour in the gloom of the cathedral square. All that the peasants said of her was admitted readily by maturer critics. A brunette, she had nevertheless the blue eyes of the Saxon. Possessed of no particular features that made for any style of beauty, yet there was a winning sweetness of face and of expression which communicated itself instantly, and was not to be resisted. And she was Madame Hélène’s grandchild! Strasburg asked no more even from the wife of one of the best of her soldiers.
The carriage rolled by; the sun shone generously upon the glittering habiliments of the lancer, and upon the childish face of his English wife. Madame Hélène’s white hairs were as threads of silver. In the morning light, the tears upon her cheek sparkled as drops of golden dew. They were going to leave her alone at last—those children of hers; alone in the great house, the home she had loved; in the city of her girlhood and the beloved sanctuary of maternity. She said that God had willed it so; and there was a prayer in her heart that the years of her loneliness might be few.
Old Père Bonot, standing at the very edge of the causeway, raised his hat as the carriage passed, and when he cried “God bless them!” it may be that Madame Hélène’s prayer was echoed unconsciously by him, and that he thought of a distant valley in the mountains, and of one who slept there, and of the precious years, so quick to pass, when the first and last words of his happy days had been spoken by the child-wife who had loved him.
“Henriette—Henriette—I remember always!”
So does Death ride upon the coach of Life—and so, in that sunny city of Strasburg, where the bells rang a merry note, and the people feasted, and the old cathedral trembled to the swelling notes of its mighty organ, were there those who thought of the aftermath of years and of the hands for ever still. And this thought they remembered at a later day, so soon to come, when the thunder of the guns made music for their ears, and the priests who had lifted their hands to bless the living went out to the homes of the dying and the dead.
There had been a vast throng at the cathedral, but when the service was done, and the organist had played Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” as a tribute to the English bride, and the congregation streamed again through the great western doors, only the very privileged and those who claimed some kinship with Madame Hélène were invited to her great house on the Place Kleber.
“It is a family wedding,” the old lady had said. “I have known Edmond so long that he is as my own son. Beatrix is more than a daughter to me. I do not want the whole world to see my tears. We will be alone my children—and I—when that ‘good-bye’ is said.”
Such was her resolution, but the heart prevailing over the will, many persuaded her and claimed kinship with the house of Görsdorf; and there were others, portly canons from the minster, sleek presbyters from the Lutheran churches, officers of the garrison, the mayor of the city—even the governor, the great General Uhrich himself, with his splendid cocked hat and his dainty “imperial,” and his glory in the city of Strasburg and her wondrous past. All these came to felicitate the young people; all remembered that it was a soldier’s wedding. The people declared that an army had gone to the Place Kleber. Lancers in their light blue tunics, with a word of regret for the kurtkas they had lost last year; hussars, whose spurs clattered over the splendid parquet flooring of the salon; cuirassiers, whose breastplates shone as silver; officers of Turcos fresh from Africa; gunners, engineers—a very deputation from that glorious army of France in which, Beatrix said, in her own pretty way, she had now a place. Henceforth, all that concerned the army of France must be dear to her. For France had given her Edmond—and she was his wife.
The day had been as a day of dreams to her. Now that it was nearly done, and she stood at grandmère Hélène’s side in the great room of the old house, she had but few memories of all its momentous happenings. She knew not why—but yesterday seemed as a day of remote years. She could recollect waking that morning and hearing the voice of old Hélène, who kissed her many times, and seemed already to be saying “good-bye.” She remembered her clumsiness when she had put on her splendid dress, and the coiffeur had come to weave the sprays of blossom into her rebellious hair; how her hands had trembled when she had clasped the diamond bracelet which was Edmond’s gift to her! And afterwards—what a whirl of sights and sounds and of familiar faces! “Felicitations!” All the city, surely, had come to the Place Kleber with that word on its lips.
Men and women, friends and strangers, they had striven one with another to be the first in kindnesses to Strasburg’s guest, the daughter of Madame Hélène’s daughter, the wife of one of the best of their soldiers. She asked herself if this was not, in one moment, the compensation for a girlhood which had earned many compensations; for a destiny which had bequeathed to her but a fitful memory of her father’s face, and had left her motherless when first she had learned to read the book of life through her mother’s eyes. What a pride of happiness that the bells should ring and the city should feast for her sake! She was no longer alone in the world, then. Ever the words “wife, you are his wife” echoed in her ears above the buzz of talk and the noises of the street without. Some change, indefinite, exquisite, seemed wrought within her mind. She heard no other voice but this—the voice of her heart telling her that the years of girlhood were for ever passed. She saw the future as through a mist of glad tears. The figures about her were shadowy figures moving, as it were, in some room of her dreams. Friends held her hand and spoke to her of the great ceremony in the cathedral. She answered them; yet knew not what she said. They called her “Madame Lefort.” How odd it seemed! “Madame, Madame!” She was Beatrix Hamilton no more. The hour had placed a great gulf between her and the old time. She did not mourn her girlhood nor regret it.
Notwithstanding Madame Hélène’s scruples, it was a brilliant gathering. All Strasburg bore witness to that. The city made the success of it an affair of its own, and sent a guard of honour to the Place Kleber, and the lancers’ band to play all the afternoon before the great house. Abbés and canons, generals and colonels raised their glasses and nodded their heads to the rhythm of the music. Sleeker Lutherans found dark corners wherein they could anticipate hunger without observation. Social leaders scanned the bride’s dress through critical glasses, and admitted that it was très bien.
“Her father was an English artist, hein? She has ideas, and they will help her by-and-by. If she were not so tall!—how can one be anything but gauche with a figure like that? And she wants style; certainly, she has a pretty gown, and that is something.”
The old lady who spoke, a wizened dame, who had buried two husbands, raised her pince-nez and appealed for assent to a fat abbé who held a glass of sparkling wine in his hand. But the abbé answered her with a perpetual smile, and a voice which repeated again and again—
“Ah, how pretty she is—how pretty!”
Other men took up her cause and pleaded it with courage.
Women assented grudgingly, and gathered together in shaded alcoves to remind each other of the mystery which had attended the life of her father, Sir Richard Hamilton. He had been a monster, as tradition said; yet few knew more or could add to the scant particulars which served for gossip in the salons of the city. They loved the suggestion of a scandal—as all the world loves it—these jewelled crones of Strasburg, and they feasted upon it and found it to be good, and sought therein a recompense for a beauty they could but half deny, and for a charm to which they would not submit.
Beatrix herself, standing by her husband’s side, heard none of these words. When she could forget the past and the future, and remember where she was and what the day meant to her, it was a pleasure to see how many of her friends had come to the old house on the Place Kleber. Colot, the aged abbé, who loved her as a father; the merry General de Failly, who had sworn to make a little Frenchwoman of her; pretty gossiping little Thérèse Lavencourt, who had schemed so incessantly to bring Edmond to Strasburg; Georgine, the friend of her girlhood, who thought so often of the young Englishman, Brandon North. Where was Brandon now, she asked? She saw him alone near the long windows of the balcony. Why was he not at Georgine’s side? He had been a year in Strasburg and yet had found no eyes to see how pretty Georgine was. That must be her business by-and-by when she had a house of her own, Beatrix thought. She realised her friendship for one of her own countrymen in that hour. Great as was the kindness which these people of Strasburg showed her, nevertheless she was a stranger among them. The fifteen years of her life she had spent in England had made her an Englishwoman beyond hope of change. She loved French things, yet did not love her own country the less because of them.
She beckoned Brandon to her side, and he came with reluctant steps. His strange and truly English dislike of any self-assertion had followed him to Madame Hélène’s house. Silently, in a corner by the window, he had listened to the parrot-like chatter of the women and the silly persiflage which passed among the men for the wit of Paris. When Beatrix beckoned him, he set down his cup and crossed the room slowly. He was one of the few there who wore a plain black coat and had no wealth of star and ribbon to apologise for a tongue but ill-equipped. He came and stood by her, with his fair hair tumbled upon his forehead and his hands ill at ease, and a strange, almost sardonic smile about his lips.
“Well,” she said, and her splendid dress rustled as she spoke, “are you the only one—”
He held her hand a moment in his. An odour of flowers and rare scents hovered about the place. He did not look into her eyes, but knew that hers were upon him.
“The only one in a black coat—yes; that’s my qualification, Madame Lefort.”
“Madame Lefort.” How odd it sounded! Yesterday he would have called her Mademoiselle Beatrix as the others did. He was one of her few friends. She would not have been cross if he had said “Beatrix,” as sometimes he had done when they went picnicing to the woods above Görsdorf.
“You do not congratulate me,” she said, withdrawing her hand quickly. “I don’t believe you were at the church.”
He turned and plucked a blossom of white rose from a vase. The petals were crumpled in his hand and scattered upon the carpet while he answered her.
“Of course I congratulate you,” he said slowly, “if the congratulations of a man in a frock coat are worth anything. There are so many important persons in colours here that you must excuse me if I have my doubts.” And then he asked suddenly, “What made you think that I was not at the church?”
She nodded her head to a fierce Turco on the other side of the room, and then said, as if it were a thing of no importance—
“I did not see you there.”
He continued to crumple the rose leaves.
“I was hidden by the splendour of Thérèse Lavencourt and of Colonel Poittevin. She spent her time saying her prayers and in begging him to stand upon a chair and tell her the names of the generals in the choir. I have learnt half the scandals of Strasburg this morning, and I shall learn the other half to-night when she dances with me. You know that she is giving a ball?”
“She was just telling me so. She calls it in my honour. As I shall not be there, that is very good of her. And I am to dance in spirit—as if one could do that. But, of course, she is awfully kind.”
“To herself, undoubtedly. She will dance into heaven some day and set the angels by the ears. How glorious to die to Strauss’s music with a dim suggestion of stairs and a conservatory—and, of course, a partner waiting. But these things do not interest you—now. You will be at the Niederwald while I am dressing.”
She shook hands with old General Uhrich, who was going back to the citadel, before she answered him.
“Oh, yes, we are going to Görsdorf, of course, but not to the castle. You remember our picnic there, when we had dinner in a vault? Some day Edmond will rebuild the house. We shall stay at the châlet for some time, and afterwards we go on to Metz. I think that I should like that. There is always something eerie about a place which you can’t get into and can’t get out of.”
“A description applying to a prison, I imagine.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“When one is in France one must think as France does. I am proud of Metz already; and, of course, a soldier’s wife should interest herself in the things that interest him.”
“Especially when the marching orders carry him to the Rue de la Paix.”
She laughed brightly.
“We are going to Paris in January,” she said. “It will be Mecca to me. Imagine it, five years in France, and only one week to try on hats at Aines. I tell Edmond that I am not civilised. He owes it to himself to start an establishment on the Boulevard St. Germain and a box at the opera. Either that or a finishing school somewhere near the Bois. We could spend our holidays together—when he comes home from the wars.”
A shadow crossed the man’s face. He looked down upon her for a moment and saw an exquisite vision of lace and flowers and satin, and dark eyes full of laughter, and cheeks flushed with excitement, and a little hand upon which a circle of diamonds glittered, and another ring of plain gold. Never in his life before had he understood why men could die for women; but he thought that he understood it in that instant.
“You have taken the wars into consideration, then?” he said.
She turned to him with a strange look of fear and wonder.
“The wars—what wars?”
He passed it off with a jest.
“The social wars, of course; there could be no others.”
She had ceased to laugh, and was looking round the room for her husband.
“As if there could be,” she said determinedly. “Ask General de Failly. He says that we have only to whisper and all Europe will obey. How could there be any wars!”
It was perverse of such an old friend as Brandon—and so like him—to speak of such a thing at such a time. The argument, nevertheless, fascinated her strangely, and she would have continued it had not her husband come up while the words were still upon her lips. He was there to tell her that the train for Wörth left at half-past four.
“Ah, mon vieux,” he said gaily to Brandon, “I thought that you had deserted us to-day. Were you in the church, then?”
“I have just told Madame so.”
“And you heard her answer the bishop? They all heard it, Beatrix. And the General has sent an escort of lancers. They are on the Place now, waiting. We must not keep them nor Guillaumette at the other end.”
He spoke quickly and with unsuppressed excitement, and in his look there was that deep and unquestioning affection which marriage may wring for a day even from the worst of men. Dressed still in his brilliant blue uniform, with a shining czapska in his hand and his sword trailing upon the polished floor of wood, Beatrix thought that in all France there was no man worthy to stand by his side. Even the touch of his hand could make her tremble. She looked into his eyes and believed to read therein the whole story of his love for her. And she was his wife—his wife.
“I am ready, dearest,” she said. “I will go and change now—and you?”
“I shall want five minutes,” he said gaily; “after that the triumphal procession sets out.”
She left the room, unobserved. The men turned to the buffet.
“Shall we see you this winter here?” Lefort asked, while a sergeant filled him a glass of champagne.
Brandon answered evasively.
“I have no plans. I let the weather make them for me. If it is cold at Frankfort, you may hear of me in Nice. But you—you go to Paris, of course.”
Lefort nodded his head.
“There will be the manœuvres first, and after that the other manœuvres—at the bonnet shops. I am hoping that we shall be at Châlons next year. There are too many Germans in Strasburg, you see—and then, change is good for a bride. Beatrix is a stranger, and too much Vosges—but you do not drink. I am as thirsty as a trooper out of Baden. And to-morrow I shall wear a grey coat. Sac à papier, that will make me look like a German band.”
He laughed as a boy at the idea, and pledged the other in a second glass of wine.
“To your health, my friend.”
Brandon, outwardly the same unimpressionable, stolid fellow that they had always known him, just touched the rim of the upraised glass with his own, but he did not say “à ta santé” in his turn. His thoughts had already left the Place Kleber. He was thinking of that old thatched farmhouse in the Vosges mountains to which the man at his side was about to take Beatrix Hamilton. What freak of destiny brought such a day? He did not realise it even then. Beatrix married! The words echoed in his ears as a peal of ribald laughter. He turned from the buffet and went to stand upon the balcony, and to look down upon the escort of lancers gathered in the square below. The brilliant blue of their uniforms, the scarlet plumes of the czapskas, the pennants of the lances, the music of bands; the glitter, the colour, the whirl of it all were truly French. Yet this bizarre display was for her sake, for the sake of little Beatrix—for the sake of her who yesterday was free. How distant the day seemed! It had become of the past, irrevocable now. He would never live yesterday again. The page was written and the book was closed.
He did not enter the great salon again nor add himself to the number of those who surrounded the bride at the moment of farewell. When grandmère Hélène took Beatrix in her arms, he heard the words she spoke, and they seemed an echo of his own thoughts.
“The days will be so long, so weary, my dearest girl,” she cried again and again, while the tears of love fell fast; but to Lefort she said, “I am giving you myself—my child! God bless you, Edmond.”
Brandon heard the words, yet did not move from his place upon the balcony. Others came out to stand with him, and saw that the strange, half-cynical smile was still upon his lips. In the great square the people began to cheer, the trumpets to blare again. He beheld an old family coach drawn up before the house. He watched the excited guests who remembered vague traditions of English weddings and scattered rice and flowers upon the English bride. For a long instant he saw Beatrix herself looking straight up at him. Then the carriage rolled away to the station; the lancers put their horses to a brisk trot. He heard no sound but that of weeping. The Countess was alone in the deserted salon.
But Beatrix, with her husband’s hand held fast by hers, was asking herself why Brandon North had been the only one who had not said “good-bye” to her.
Brandon dined in his little room above the office near the Porte des Pierres; and when dusk fell he set out to walk to the Contades and to his favourite café there. The ball which Thérèse Lavencourt was to give had no longer an interest for him. He sought to be alone and to forget the day.
It was almost dusk when he reached the park, and he remembered, in spite of himself, that Beatrix would be already in the farmhouse on the hills above the Sauer. He had not wished to think of it, and had gone to the gardens that friends might help him to forget; but when a waiter had served him with coffee and he had read the papers from Paris, it seemed to him that a greater sense of solitude possessed him than he had ever known since he left Cambridge and came, at his father’s wish, to help his father’s business in Strasburg. One day had changed his view of life. While she was in the city, he could forget the reasons that kept him to a merchant’s desk and had expatriated him. He could forget the years of public-school life in the England he had left. He could forget his own ambitions buried in those vast and dusty cellars of Frankfort wherefrom his father, William North, sent the Rhine wine to the courts of Europe. But Beatrix was in Strasburg no more. He would not have believed yesterday that there was such a lonely place in all the world.
There were many soldiers in the café—lancers and artillerymen, Turcos and zouaves. A band played, with rare intervals of silence, and its flippant music was an irritant to his ear. He heard pretty women chattering nonsense to officers of cavalry whose wit reached no higher point than assent incoherent. He beheld slipshod and rolling troopers, and remembered the hussars in Germany, and the strong hand which built there a house of steel for a nation’s safety. In such a moment as this he would almost forgive his father because he had wished to make a German of him. It was no glorious employment to sell so many bottles of wine per annum; no glorious employment, it is true, for a man who had written decent Greek prose, and had spoken of immortal things at the Union. He would have preferred a commission in a cavalry regiment at home; or, better still, that liberty which ties a man neither to city nor to country, but sends him to see and hear on the wide road of the world. But his father had other views. “The stool that I sat on should not be too high for my son,” he said; and Brandon took it, and found his consolation elsewhere.
He was the friend of Germany as much of necessity as of admiration. The French, as a people, fascinated him, yet won no allegiance from him. His own gifts of strength of will and purpose, of method, of physical capability, were just such gifts as he found wanting in all the Frenchmen he knew. The power to achieve by thought and years, that power which was the very heart of Germany, engrossed him always. He saw these men of Strasburg, and he knew that if ever the day should come when the hosts of Germany crossed the Rhine, not only a city but an empire and a kingdom would fall. There were moments even when the sordid nature of his own business made him reflect that war would not only change the current of his life in a day, but would open up for him those scenes of humanity militant which had been the study of his imagination in many a lonely hour. But war now—now that Beatrix had gone to the Görsdorf!
He laughed at himself for thinking of it, and turned again to watch the unshapely troopers who slouched before the door of the café, and stood for all the glory of the glorious army of France. What would war mean to such men as these? Scorn of their deficiencies became almost anger sometimes. He had the impulse to get up and drill them—to straighten them with the flat of a sword he must borrow.
There was no one in the café that he knew; but when he had been there a little while old Père Bonot, the cigar merchant, and with him Rosenbad, the brewer, came up to his table, and insisted, as was their wont, upon speaking of the one event which Strasburg recognised that day. He listened to them in spite of himself. A subtle fascination compelled him to join in the talk.
“I was at the Gare; I saw her go,” said the brewer, triumphantly. “She sat upon the right side; he pulled down the blind. Donnerwetter—if it had been this hand! I would have pulled down that blind myself—et vous savez—I have fifty years!”
Old Bonot stirred a glass of coffee vigorously.
“For myself,” he said, “the little church in the mountains, the village priest, and the village cart. These things are not for every eye to see. The English are different. This was the English marriage. The Englander carries his boots on the top of his carriage—I have seen them in London. You know London, Monsieur? Ah, what a city—what people—and funerals everywhere. I counted them—one, two, twenty—every day. And everyone so sad—because of the funerals. When I am in London, I stop at your, what you say, Zoho Square. It is the centre of your society. Ma foi, what a world! And no one laughs. I have never seen anyone laugh in London. It is too big. You are afraid to laugh. You must come to France for that—to France and the vineyards. We shall marry you here, and you will carry your boots on your carriage—hein?”
The old man gabbled on merrily, and took the cigar which Brandon offered him.
“You English know a cigar,” he said, “but your wines—ah, you have no wines. This very morning I had a hundred of your English cigars sent to Captain Lefort. He will smoke them on the mountains when Madame is old enough to differ from him. There is nothing like a good cigar on the day when you discover that Madame has opinions. Our friend the Captain will learn his lesson quickly. You know Madame—without doubt? I have seen her every day since she came to Strasburg five years ago. And she has opinions. I read them in her eyes. She is not what you English call the ‘maid of all work.’ There is courage, verve, the animation. She will know how to say ‘I will not!’”
Brandon surveyed him with curiosity and amusement. Rosenbad, the brewer, who was no philosopher, resented his philosophy.
“You are gay again, old Bonot,” said he. “I said that you would be a fine skeleton for their feast. You must catch the last train to Wörth and tell the Captain that he has married a wife who can say ‘I will not.’ He will be delighted to see you. As for me, she might say what she pleased if I were her husband.”
“You, mon vieux, you are too fat. And in a lancer tunic, too! Ma foi, what a spectacle!”
The brewer avoided the subject deftly.
“They have spoiled our lancers,” said he; “the new tunic is as ugly as the colour of it. There was something to make a man when they wore the kurtka. The new coat is the coat of the Prussian; do you not think so, Monsieur?”
He turned appealingly to a young sous-lieutenant of lancers, who had come up to the table and called for absinthe. But the lad scarcely heard the question.
“To the news from Paris!” he cried, raising his glass excitedly.
“There is news from Paris, then—”
“The best. They are going to make a new king of Spain, and Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen is the man they have chosen.”
He spoke with an excitement characteristic of the boy rather than the man. For a moment the significance of his words was lost both upon old Bonot and upon Rosenbad, the brewer. The latter continued to sip his beer, the former to smoke his English cigar.
“Well,” exclaimed old Bonot at last, “and if he is the man, Monsieur—”
The sous-lieutenant regarded him almost with contempt.
“Mon Dieu,” he exclaimed, “you do not understand?”
“I understand nothing.”
The lad shrugged his shoulders.
“Then I cannot teach you,” said he.
He drank his absinthe at a draught and left the café. Brandon made some good excuse and followed upon his heels.
“Forgive me,” he said, as they stood together for a moment at the gate of the gardens, “but you are sure of what you say?”
“Sure of it? Absolutely. It is news from the Chambers—and it means but one thing, Monsieur. We shall be in Berlin in a fortnight.”
“But they may withdraw—”
“I am going to church to-morrow to pray that they will not.”
He pulled his cloak about his shoulders and went swaggering away. But Brandon returned quickly to his house in the Rue des Pierres. It was as though a word had put fire into his veins.
Beatrix