The Maids of Paradise Part 14

Beside the window, close to my face, was a small, square loop-hole, doubtless once used for arquebus fire. It tired me to lean on the window, so I contented myself with lying back and turning my head, and I could see quite as well through the loop-hole as from the window.

Lying there, watching the slow shadows crawling out over the sidewalk, I had been for some minutes thinking of my friend Mr. Buckhurst, when I heard the young Countess stirring in the room behind me.

"You are not going to be a cripple?" she said, as I turned my head.

"Oh no, indeed!" said I.

"Nor die?" she added, seriously.

"How could a man die with an angel straight from heaven to guard him!

Pardon, I am only grateful, not impertinent." I looked at her humbly, and she looked at me without the slightest expression. Oh, it was all very well for the Countess de Va.s.sart to tuck up her skirts and rake hay, and live with a lot of half-crazy apostles, and throw her fortune to the proletariat and her reputation to the dogs. She could do it; she was eline Cyprienne de Trecourt, Countess de Va.s.sart; and if her relatives didn't like her views, that was their affair; and if the Faubourg Saint-Germain emitted moans, that concerned the n.o.ble faubourg and not James Scarlett, a policeman attached to a division of paid mercenaries.

Oh yes, it was all very well for the Countess de Va.s.sart to play at democracy with her unbalanced friends, but it was also well for Americans to remember that she was French, and that this was France, and that in France a countess was a countess until she was buried in the family vault, whether she had chosen to live as a countess or as Doll Dairymaid.

The young girl looked at me curiously, studying me with those exquisite gray eyes of hers. Pensive, distraite, she sat there, the delicate contour of her head outlined against the sunny window, which quivered with the slow boom! boom! of the cannonade.

"Are you English, Monsieur Scarlett?" she asked, quietly.

"American, madame."

"And yet you take service under an emperor."

"I have taken harder service than that."

"Of necessity?"

"Yes, madame."

She was silent.

"Would it amuse you to hear what I have been?" I said, smiling.

"That is not the word," she said, quietly. "To hear of hards.h.i.+p helps one to understand the world."

The cannonade had been growing so loud again that it was with difficulty that we could make ourselves audible to each other. The jar of the discharges began to dislodge bits of gla.s.s and little triangular pieces of plaster, and the solid walls of the tower shook till even the mirror began to sway and the tarnished gilt sconces to quiver in their sockets.

"I wish you were not in Morsbronn," I said.

"I feel safer here in my own house than I should at La Trappe," she replied.

She was probably thinking of the dead Uhlan and of poor Bazard; perhaps of the wretched exposure of Buckhurst--the man she had trusted and who had proved to be a swindler, and a murderous one at that.

Suddenly a sh.e.l.l fell into the court-yard opposite, bursting immediately in a cloud of gravel which rained against our turret like hail.

Stunned for an instant, the Countess stood there motionless, her face turned towards the window. I struggled to sit upright.

She looked calmly at me; the color came back into her face, and in spite of my remonstrance she walked to the window, closed the heavy outside shutters and the blinds. As she was fastening them I heard the whizzing quaver of another sh.e.l.l, the racket of its explosion, the crash of plaster.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "A COMPANY OF TURCOS CAME UP"]

"Where is the safest place for us to stay?" she asked. Her voice was perfectly steady.

"In the cellar. I beg you to go at once."

Bang! a sh.e.l.l blew up in a shower of slates and knocked a chimney into a heap of bricks.

"Do you insist on staying by that loop-hole?" she asked, without a quiver in her voice.

"Yes, I do," said I. "Will you go to the cellar?"

"No," she said, shortly.

I saw her walk toward the rear of the room, hesitate, sink down by the edge of the bed and lay her face in the pillow.

Two sh.e.l.ls burst with deafening reports in the street; the young Countess covered her face with both hands. Sh.e.l.l after sh.e.l.l came howling, whistling, whizzing into the village; the two hussars had disappeared, but a company of Turcos came up on a run and began to dig a trench across the street a hundred yards west of our turret.

How they made the picks and shovels fly! Sh.e.l.ls tore through the air over them, bursting on impact with roof and chimney; the Turcos tucked up their blue sleeves, spat on their hands, and dug away like terriers, while their officers, smoking the eternal cigarette, coolly examined the distant landscape through their field-gla.s.ses.

Sh.e.l.ls rained fast on Morsbronn; nearer and nearer bellowed the guns; the plaster ceiling above my head cracked and fell in thin flakes, filling the room with an acrid, smarting dust. Again and again metal fragments from sh.e.l.ls rang out on the heavy walls of our turret; a roof opposite sank in; flames flickered up through clouds of dust; a heavy yellow smoke, swarming with sparks, rolled past my window.

Down the street a dull sound grew into a steady roar; the Turcos dropped pick and shovel and seized their rifles.

"Garde! Garde a vous!" rang their startled bugles; the tumult increased to a swelling uproar, shouting, cheering, the crash of shutters and of gla.s.s, and--

"The Prussians!" bellowed the captain. "Turcos--charge!"

His voice was lost; a yelling ma.s.s of soldiery burst into view; spiked helmets and bayonets glittering through the smoke, the Turcos were whirled about like brilliant b.u.t.terflies in a tornado; the fusillade swelled to a stupefying din, exploding in one terrible crash; and, wrapped in lightning, the Prussian onset pa.s.sed.

From the stairs below came the sound of a voiceless struggle, the trample and panting and clicking of steel, till of a sudden a voice burst out into a dreadful screaming. A shot followed--silence--another shot--then the stairs outside shook under the rush of mounting men.

As the door burst open I felt a touch on my arm; the Countess de Va.s.sart stood erect and pale, one slender, protecting hand resting lightly on my shoulder; a lieutenant of Prussian infantry confronted us; straight, heavy sword drawn, rigid, uncompromising, in his faultless gray-and-black uniform, with its tight, silver waist-sash.

"I do not have you thrown into the street," he said to me, in excellent French, "because there has been no firing from the windows in this village. Otherwise--other measures. Be at ease, madame, I shall not harm your invalid."

He glanced at me out of his near-sighted eyes, dropped the point of his sword to the stone floor, and slowly caressed his small, blond mustache.

"How many troops pa.s.sed through here yesterday morning?" he asked.

I was silent.

"There was artillery, was there not?"

I only looked at him.

"Do you hear?" he repeated, sharply. "You are a prisoner, and I am questioning you."

"You have that useless privilege," I observed.