The Maids of Paradise Part 23

Buckhurst aided me to rise, the Countess threw my hussar jacket over my shoulders and b.u.t.toned it; I felt the touch of her cool, little fingers on my hot, unshaved throat.

"I congratulate you on your convalescence," she said, in a low voice.

"Lean on me, monsieur."

My head swam; hips and knees were without strength; she aided me down the stairway and out into the pale suns.h.i.+ne, where stood the same mud-splashed, rusty vehicle which had brought us. .h.i.ther from La Trappe.

The Countess had only a satchel and a valise; Buckhurst's luggage comprised a long, flat, steel-bound box, a satchel, and a parcel. I had nothing. My baggage, which I had left in Morsbronn, had without doubt been confiscated long since; my field-gla.s.ses, sabre, and revolver were gone; I had only what clothes I was wearing--a dirty, ragged, gray-blue flannel s.h.i.+rt, my muddy jacket, scarlet riding-breeches, and officer's boots. But in one of the hip-pockets of my breeches I carried a fortune in diamonds.

As I stood beside the carriage, wondering how I was going to get in, I felt an arm slip under my neck and another slide gently under my knees, and Buckhurst lifted me. Beneath the loose, gray coat-sleeves his bent arms were rigid as steel; his supple frame straightened; he moved a step forward and laid me on the shabby cus.h.i.+ons.

The Countess looked at me, turned and glanced up at her smoke-blackened house, where a dozen Prussian soldiers leaned from the lower windows smoking their long porcelain pipes and the provost marshal stood in the doorway, helmeted, spurred, immaculate from golden cheek-guard to the glittering tip of his silver scabbard. An Uhlan, dismounted, stood on guard below the steps, his lance at a "present," the black-and-white swallow-tailed pennon drooping from the steel point.

The Countess bent her pretty head under its small black hat; the provost's white-gloved hand flew to his helmet peak.

"Fear nothing, madame," he said, pompously. "Your house and its contents are safe until you return. This village is now German soil."

The Countess looked at him steadily, gravely.

"I thank you, monsieur, but frontiers are not changed in a day."

But she was mistaken. Alsace henceforth must be written Elsa.s.s, and the devastated province called Lothringen was never again to be written Lorraine.

The Countess stepped into the carriage and took her place beside me; Buckhurst followed, seating himself opposite us, and the Alsatian driver mounted to the box.

"Your safe-conduct carries you to the French outposts at Saverne,"

said the provost, dryly. "If there are no longer French outposts at Saverne, you may demand a vise for your pa.s.s and continue south to Strasbourg."

Buckhurst half turned towards the driver. "Allez," he said, quietly, and the two gaunt horses moved on.

There was a chill in the white suns.h.i.+ne--the first touch of autumn.

Not a trace of the summer's balm remained in the air; every tree on the mountain outlines stood out sharp-cut in the crystalline light; the swift little streams that followed the road ran clear above autumn-brown pebbles and golden sands.

Distant beachwoods were turning yellow; yellow gorse lay like patches of suns.h.i.+ne on the foot-hills; oceans of yellow grain belted the terraced vineyards. Here and there long, velvety, black strips cut the green and gold, the trail of fire which had scarred the grain belts; here and there pillars of smoke floated, dominating blue woodlands, where the flames of exploding sh.e.l.ls had set the forest afire.

Already from the plateau I could see a streak of silver reflecting the intense blue sky--the Rhine, upon whose westward cliffs France had mounted guard but yesterday.

And now the Rhine was lost, and the vast granite bastions of the Vosges looked out upon a sea of German forests. Above the Col du Pigeonnier the semaph.o.r.e still glistened, but its signals now travelled eastward, and strange flags fluttered on its invisible halliards. And every bridge was guarded by helmeted men who halted us, and every tunnel was barred by mounted Uhlans who crossed their lances to the ominous shout: "Wer da? On ne ba.s.se bas!" The Vosges were literally crawling with armed men!

Driving slowly along the base of the hills, I had glimpses of rocky defiles which pierced the mountain wall; and through every defile poured infantry and artillery in unbroken columns, and over every mountain pa.s.s streamed endless files of hors.e.m.e.n. Railroad tunnels were choked with slowly moving trains piled high with artillery; viaducts glistened with helmets all moving westward; every hillock, every crag, every height had its group of tiny dark dots or its solitary Uhlan.

Very far away I heard cannon--so far away that the hum of the cannonade was no louder than the panting of our horses on the white hill-road, and I could hear it only when the carriage stopped at intervals.

"Do we take the railroad at Saverne?" I asked at last. "Is there a railroad there?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "EVERY BRIDGE WAS GUARDED"]

Buckhurst looked up at me. "It is rather strange that a French officer should not know the railroads in his own country," he said.

I was silent. I was not the only officer whose shame was his ignorance of the country he had sworn to defend. Long before the war broke out, every German regimental officer, commissioned and non-commissioned, carried a better map of France than could be found in France itself. And the French government had issued to us a few wretched charts of Germany, badly printed, full of gross errors, one or two maps to a regiment, and a few scattered about among the corps headquarters--among officers who did not even know the general topography of their own side of the Rhine.

"Is there a railroad at Saverne?" I repeated, sullenly.

"You will take a train at Strasbourg," replied Buckhurst.

"And then?"

"And then you go to Avricourt," he said. "I suppose at least you know where that is?"

"It is on the route to Paris," said I, keeping my temper. "Are we going direct to Paris?"

"Madame de Va.s.sart desires to go there," he said, glancing at her with a sort of sneaking deference which he now a.s.sumed in her presence.

"It is true," said the Countess, turning to me. "I wish to rest for a little while before I go to Point Paradise. I am curiously tired of poverty, Monsieur Scarlett," she added, and held out her shabby gloves with a gesture of despair; "I am reduced to very little--I have scarcely anything left,... and I am weak enough to long for the scent of the winter violets on the boulevards."

With a faint smile she touched the bright hair above her brow, where the wind had flung a gleaming tendril over her black veil.

As I looked at her, I marvelled that she had found it possible to forsake all that was fair and lovely in life, to dare ignore caste, to deliberately face ridicule and insult and the scornful anger of her own kind, for the sake of the filthy sc.u.m festering in the sinkholes of the world.

There are brave priests who go among lepers, there are brave missionaries who dispute with the devil over the souls of half-apes in the Dark Continent. Under the Cross they do the duty they were bred to.

But she was bred to other things. Her lungs were never made to breathe the polluted atmosphere of the proletariat, yelping and slavering in their kennels; her strait young soul was never born for communion with the crooked souls of social pariahs, with the stunted and warped intelligence of fanatics, with the crippled but fierce minds which dominated the Internationale.

Not that such contact could ever taint her; but it might break her heart one day.

"You will think me very weak and cowardly to seek shelter and comfort at such a time," she said, raising her gray eyes to me. "But I feel as though all my strength had slipped away from me. I mean to go back to my work; I only need a few days of quiet among familiar scenes--pleasant scenes that I knew when I was young. I think that if I could only see a single care-free face--only one among all those who--who once seemed to love me--"

She turned her head quickly and stared out at the tall pines which fringed the dusty road.

Buckhurst blinked at her.

It was late in the afternoon when the last Prussian outpost hailed us.

I had been asleep for hours, but was awakened by the clatter of horses, and I opened my eyes to see a dozen Uhlans come cantering up and surround our carriage.

After a long discussion with Buckhurst and a rigid scrutiny of our permit to pa.s.s the lines, the slim officer in command vised the order.

One of the troopers tied a white handkerchief to his lance-tip, wheeled his wiry horse, and, followed by a trumpeter, trotted off ahead of us. Our carriage creaked after them, slowly moving to the summit of a hill over which the road rose.

Presently, very far away on the gray-green hill-side, I saw a bit of white move. The Uhlan flourished his lance from which the handkerchief fluttered; the trumpeter set his trumpet to his lips and blew the parley.

One minute, two, three, ten pa.s.sed. Then, distant galloping sounded along the road, nearer, nearer; three hors.e.m.e.n suddenly wheeled into view ahead--French dragoons, advancing at a solid gallop. The Uhlan with the flag spurred forward to meet them, saluted, wheeled his horse, and came back.

Paid mercenary that I was, my heart began to beat very fast at sight of those French troopers with their steel helmets bound with leopard-hide and their horsehair plumes whipping the breeze, and their sun-bronzed, alert faces and pleasant eyes. I had had enough of the supercilious, near-sighted eyes of the Teuton.

As for the young Countess, she sat there smiling, while the clumsy dragoons came rattling up, beaming at my red riding-breeches, and all saluting the Countess with a cheerful yet respectful swagger that touched me deeply as I noted the lines of hunger in their lean jaws.

And now the brief ceremony was over and our rusty vehicle moved off down the hill, while the Uhlans turned bridle and clattered off, scattering showers of muddy gravel in the rising wind.