The Maids of Paradise Part 7

"With the German armies ma.s.sing behind the forest borders yonder, it is unsafe for the government to leave you here at La Trappe, doctor.

You are _too neutral_."

"You mean that the government fears treason?" demanded the doctor, growing red.

"Yes," I said, "if you insist."

The Countess had turned to me in amazement.

"Treason!" she repeated, in an unsteady voice. "Is it treason for a small community to live quietly here in the Alsatian hills, harming n.o.body, asking nothing save freedom of thought? Is it treason for a woman of the world to renounce the world? Is it treason for her to live an unostentatious life and use her fortune to aid others to live?

Treason! Monsieur, the word has an ugly ring to me. I am a soldier's daughter!"

There was something touchingly illogical in the last words--this young apostle of peace navely displaying her credentials as though the mere word "soldier" covered everything.

"Your government insults us all," said Bazard, between his teeth.

Mademoiselle Elven leaned forward, her blue eyes s.h.i.+ning angrily.

"Because I have learned that the boundaries of nations are not the frontiers of human hearts, am I a traitor? Because I know no country but the world, no speech but the universal speech that one reads in a brother's eyes, because I know no barriers, no boundaries, no limits to human brotherhood, am I a traitor?"

She made an exquisite gesture with half-open arms; all the poetry of the Theatre Francais was in it.

"Look at me! I had all that life could give, save freedom, and that I have now--freedom in thought, in speech, in action, freedom to love as friends love, freedom to love as lovers love. Ah, more! freedom from caste, from hate and envy and all suspicion, freedom to give, freedom to receive, freedom in life and in death! Am I a traitor? What do I betray? Shame on your Emperor!"

The young Countess, too, had risen in her earnestness and had laid one slender, sun-tanned hand upon the table.

"War?" she said. "What is this war to us? The Emperor? What is he to us? We who have set a watch on the world's outer ramparts, guarding the white banner of universal brotherhood! What is this war to us!"

"Are you not a native of France?" I asked, bluntly.

"I am a native of the world, monsieur."

"Do you mean to say that you care nothing for your own birthland?" I demanded, sharply.

"I love the world--all of it--every inch--and if France is part of the world, so is this Prussia that we are teaching our poor peasants to hate."

"Madame," said I, "the women of France to-day think differently. Our Creator did not make love of country a trite virtue, but a pa.s.sion, and set it in our bodies along with our other pa.s.sions. If in you it is absent, that concerns pathology, not the police!"

I did not mean to wound her--I was intensely in earnest; I wanted her to show just a single glimmer of sympathy for her own country. It seemed as though I could not endure to look at such a woman and know that the primal pa.s.sion, born with those who had at least wept for their natal Eden, was meaningless to her.

She had turned a trifle pale; now she sank back into her chair, looking at me with those troubled gray eyes in which Heaven itself had set truth and loyalty.

I said: "I do not believe that you care nothing for France. Train and curb and crush your own heart as you will, you cannot drive out that splendid earth-born humanity which is part of us--else we had all been born in heaven!"

"Come," said Bazard, in a rage-choked voice, "let it end here, Monsieur Scarlett. If the government sends you here as a spy and an official, pray remember that you are not also sent as a missionary."

My ears began to burn. "That is true," I said, looking at the Countess, whose face had become expressionless. "I ask your pardon for what I have said and ... for what I am about to do."

There was a silence. Then, in a low voice, I placed them under formal arrest, one by one, touching each lightly on the shoulder as prescribed by the code. And when I came to the Countess, she rose, without embarra.s.sment. I moved my lips and stretched out my arm, barely touching her. I heard Bazard draw a deep breath. She was my prisoner.

"I must ask you to prepare for a journey," I said. "You have your own horses, of course?"

Without answering, Dr. Delmont walked away towards the stables; Professor Tavernier followed him, head bent.

"We shall want very little," said the Countess, calmly, to Mademoiselle Elven. "Will you pack up what we need? And you, Monsieur Bazard, will you be good enough to go to Trois-Feuilles and hire old Brauer's carriage?" Turning to me she said: "I must ask for a little delay; I have no longer a carriage of my own. We keep two horses to plough and draw grain; they can be harnessed to the farm-wagon for our effects."

Monsieur Bazard's hectic visage flushed, he gave me a crazy stare, and, for a moment, I fancied there was murder in his bright eyes.

Doubtless, however, devotion to his creed of non-resistance conquered the impulse, and he walked quickly away across the meadows, his skeleton hands clinched under his loose sleeves.

Mademoiselle Elven also departed tip-tap! up the terrace in her coquettish wooden shoes, leaving me alone with the Countess under the trees.

"Madame," said I, "before I affix the government seals to the doors of your house I must ask you to conduct me to the roof of the east wing."

She bent her head in acquiescence; I followed her up the terrace into a stone hall where the dark Flemish pictures stared back at me and my spurred heels jingled in the silence. Up, up, and still up, winding around a Gothic spiral, then through a pa.s.sage under the battlements and out across the slates, with wind and setting sun in my face and the sighing tree-tops far below.

Without glancing at me the Countess walked to the edge of the leads and looked down along the sheer declivity of the stone facade.

Slender, exquisite, she stood there, a lonely shape against the sky, and I saw the sun glowing on her burnished red-gold hair, and her sun-burned hands, half unclosed, hanging at her side.

South, north, and west the mountains towered, purple as the bloom on October grapes; the white arm of the semaph.o.r.e on the Pigeonnier was tinted with rose color; green velvet clothed the world, under a silver veil.

In the north a spark of white fire began to flicker on the crest of Mount Tonnerre. It was the mirror of a heliograph flas.h.i.+ng out across leagues of gray-green hills to the rocky pulpit of the Pigeonnier.

I unslung my gla.s.ses and levelled them. The s.h.i.+ning arm of the semaph.o.r.e fell to a horizontal position and remained rigid; down came the signal flags, up went a red globe and two cones. Another string of flags blossomed along the bellying halliards; the white star flashed twice on Mount Tonnerre and went out.

Instantly I drew a flag from my pouch, tied it to the point of my sabre, and stepped out along the projecting snout of a gargoyle.

Below, under my feet, the tree-tops rustled in the wind.

I had been flagging the Pigeonnier vigorously for ten minutes without result, when suddenly a dark dot appeared on the tower beneath the semaph.o.r.e, then another. My gla.s.ses brought out two officers, one with a flag; and, still watching them through the binoculars, I signalled slowly, using my free hand: "This is La Trappe. Telegraph to Morsbronn that the inspector of Imperial Police requires a peloton of mounted gendarmes at once."

Then I sat down on the sun-warmed slates and waited, amusing myself by watching the ever-changing display of signal flags on the distant observatory.

It may have been half a minute before I saw two officers advance to the railing of the tower and signal: "Attention, La Trappe!"

Pencil and pad on my knee, I managed to use my field-gla.s.ses and jot down the message:

"Peloton of mounted gendarmes goes to you as soon as possible.

Repeat."

I repeated, then raised my gla.s.ses. Another message came by flag: "Attention, La Trappe. Uhlans reported near the village of Trois-Feuilles; have you seen them?"

Prussian Uhlans! Here in the rear of our entire army! Nonsense! And I signalled a vigorous:

"No. Have you?"

To which came the disturbing reply: "Be on your guard. We are ordered to display the semaph.o.r.e at danger. Report is credited at headquarters. Repeat."

I repeated. Raising my gla.s.ses again, I could plainly see a young officer, an unlighted cigar between his teeth, jotting down our correspondence, while the other officer who had flagged me furled up his flags and laid them aside, yawning and stretching himself to his full height.

So distinctly did my powerful binoculars bring the station into range that I could even see the younger officer light a match, which the wind extinguished, light another, and presently blow a tiny cloud of smoke from his cigar.