"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 chateau 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 chateau 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 chateau 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 chateau with lighted windows. This was the Chateau
Villetaneuse. I reined in my horse and stopped. My escort halted
behind me. It was after all an astonishing sight. There were many
chateaux 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
chateau 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 chateau 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 chateau?"
"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."