An Uhlan laid a heavy hand on the shoulder of the listening Countess;
she tried to draw back, but he pushed her brutally into the carriage,
and she stumbled and fell into the cushions beside me.
"Uhlans, into your saddles!" cried the Rittmeister, sharply. "Two
men to the wagon!--a man on the box there! Here you, Jacques Bonhomme,
drive carefully or I'll hang you higher than the Strasbourg clock. Are
the wounded in the straw? Sepp, take the riderless horses. Peloton,
attention! Draw sabres! March! Trot!"
Fever had already begun to turn my head; the jolting of the carriage
brought me to my senses at times; at times, too, I could hear the two
wounded Uhlans groaning in the wagon behind me, the tramping of the
cavalry ahead, the dull rattle of lance butts in the leather
stirrup-boots.
If I could only have fainted, but I could not, and the agony grew so
intense that I bit my lip through to choke the scream that strained my
throat.
Once the carriage stopped; in the darkness I heard somebody whisper:
"There go the French riders!" And I fancied I heard a far echo of
hoof-strokes along the road to La Trappe. It might have been the
fancy of an intermittent delirium; it may have been my delayed
gendarmes--I never knew. And the carriage presently moved on more
smoothly, as though we were now on one of those even military
high-roads which traverse France from Luxembourg to the sea.
Which way we were going I did not know, I did not care. Absurdly
mingled with sick fancies came flashes of reason, when I could see the
sky frosted with silver, and little, bluish stars peeping down. At
times I recognized the mounted men around me as Prussian Uhlans, and
weakly wondered by what deviltry they had got into France, and what
malignant spell they cast over the land that the very stones did not
rise up and smite them from their yellow-and-black saddles.
Once--it was, I think, very near daybreak--I came out of a dream in
which I was swimming through oceans of water, drinking as I swam. The
carriage had stopped; I could not see the lancers, but presently I
heard them all talking in loud, angry voices. There appeared to be
some houses near by; I heard a dog barking, a great outcry of pigs and
feathered fowls, the noise of a scuffle, a trampling of heavy boots, a
shot!
Then the terrible voice of the Rittmeister: "Hang that man to his
barn gate! Pig of an assassin, I'll teach you to murder German
soldiers!"
A woman began to scream without ceasing.
"Burn that house!" bellowed the Rittmeister.
Through the prolonged screaming I heard the crash of window-glass;
presently a dull red light grew out of the gloom, brighter and
brighter. The screaming never ceased.
"Uhlans! Mount!" came the steady voice of the Rittmeister; the
carriage started. Almost at the word the darkness turned to flame;
against the raging furnace of a house on fire I saw the figure of a
man, inky black, hanging from the high cross-bar of the cow-yard gate,
and past him filed the shadowy horsemen, lances slanting backward from
their stirrups.
The last I remember was seeing the dead man's naked feet--for they
hanged him in his night-shirt--and the last I heard was that awful
screaming from the red shadows that flickered across the fields of
uncut wheat.
For presently my madness began again, and again I was bathed to the
mouth in cold, sweet waters, and I drank as I swam lazily in the
sunshine.
My next lucid interval came from pain almost unendurable. We were
fording a river in bright starlight; the carriage bumped across the
stones, water washed and slopped over the carriage floor. To right and
left, Prussian lancers were riding, and I saw the water boiling under
their horses and their long lances aslant the stars.
But there were more horsemen now, scores and scores of them, trampling
through the shallow river. And beyond I could see a line of cannon,
wallowing through the water, shadowy artillerymen clinging to forge
and caisson, mounted men astride straining teams, tall officers on
either flank, sitting their horses motionless in mid-stream.
The carriage stopped.
"Are you suffering?" came a low voice, close to my ear.
"Madame, could I have a little of that water?" I muttered.
Very gently she laid me back. I was entirely without power to move
below my waist, or to support my body.
She filled my cap with river water and held it while I drank. After I
had my fill she bathed my face, passing her wet hands through my hair
and over my eyes. The carriage moved on.
[Illustration: "TO RIGHT AND LEFT, PRUSSIAN LANCERS WERE RIDING"]
After a while she whispered.
"Are you awake?"
"Yes, madame."
"See the dawn--how red it is on the hills! There are vineyards there
on the heights,... and a castle,... and soldiers moving out across the
river meadows."
The rising sun was shining in my eyes as we came to a halt before
a small stone bridge over which a column of cavalry was
passing--Prussian hussars, by their crimson dolmans and little, flat
busbies.
Our Uhlan escort grouped themselves about us to watch the hussars
defile at a trot, and I saw the Rittmeister rigidly saluting their
standards as they bobbed past above a thicket of sabres.
"What are these Uhlans doing?" broke in a nasal voice behind us; an
officer, followed by two orderlies and a trumpeter, came galloping up
through the mud.
"Who's that--a dead Frenchman?" demanded the officer, leaning over
the edge of the carriage to give me a near-sighted stare. Then he saw
the Countess, stared at her, and touched the golden peak of his
helmet.
"At your service, madame," he said. "Is this officer dead?"
"Dying, general," said the Rittmeister, at salute.
"Then he will not require these men. Herr Rittmeister, I take your
Uhlans for my escort. Madame, you have my sympathy; can I be of
service?"
He spoke perfect French. The Countess looked up at him in a bewildered
way. "You cannot mean to abandon this dying man here?" she asked.
There was a silence, broken brusquely by the Rittmeister. "That
Frenchman did his duty!"
"Did he?" said the general, staring at the Countess.
"Very well; I want that carriage, but I won't take it. Give the
driver a white flag, and have him drive into the French lines. Herr
Rittmeister, give your orders! Madame, your most devoted!" And he
wheeled his beautiful horse and trotted off down the road, while the
Rittmeister hastily tied a handkerchief to a stick and tossed it up to
the speechless peasant on the box.
"Morsbronn is the nearest French post!" he said, in French. Then he
bent from his horse and looked down at me.
"You did your duty!" he snapped, and, barely saluting the Countess,
touched spurs to his mount and disappeared, followed at a gallop by
his mud-splashed Uhlans.
V