THE RUE DE L’ARC-EN-CIEL
He had left her at the gate of the gardens; but she did not seek her
friends again, nor think of going home. Conscious of no guilt, her own
silence was in itself as the accusation of a crime. In this man’s eyes
she was condemned. He believed the worst; she had permitted him to
believe it. All her surpassing love for Edmond had brought her but this
as its reward--that a stranger should have the right thus to charge
her. And she could not defend herself. A word would sacrifice the life
of him who had laughed at the perils of the city that she might have
news of her husband. The ultimate penalty of her folly--if folly it
were--must be paid. Gatelet had spared the life of her friend because
he believed the worst of their friendship. Any motive less strong would
not have sealed his lips. Even her confusing logic taught her that. If
Brandon were not to die as that other before the gates of the Minster,
she must suffer the shame which his presence in Strasburg had put upon
her. The very thought of it burned her as a fever. She passed through
the city, heedless of the sights and sounds around her. She felt that
she had no longer a home in that place. She shrank from men’s gaze and
the touch of women.
It was growing late in the afternoon when she left the gardens. A new
and strange activity was to be observed in the streets around her. By
here and there groups of men discussed the great news, how that General
von Werder himself was at Hausberge with two hundred field-pieces and
many mortars to shell the northern ramparts of the city. Officers of
the staff galloped recklessly through the narrow thoroughfares with
despatches from the Governor to the citadel. Shopkeepers stood at the
doors of their houses, and bewailed each other’s misfortunes. In the
air above was a tremulous suggestion of distant sounds, of the roar
of heavy artillery and the intervals of silence attendant. Once a man
touched her upon the shoulder and counselled her to walk beneath the
eaves of the houses.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “they have killed a woman to-day in the Rue du
Bain aux Plantes. Take my advice, and do not walk in the open.”
She thanked him, and passed on. It was odd to be told that there
was danger in the streets of that great city, to which she had
fled for safety; yet neither the peril nor the warning remained in
her thoughts. Again and again she heard the words which had been
spoken--“he is still in Strasburg; he waits for you; go to him.” Her
quick imagination depicted Brandon lying there, in the darkened room,
helpless, alone, perchance even suffering. For her sake he had come
to Strasburg; for her sake, to gratify her impatience, he had put his
life into the hands of the man who had insulted her. And she could not
reward the sacrifice. She must leave him alone still. She dare not go
to the house. He had sealed her lips; she could ask counsel of none.
This reflection of her own helplessness and of Brandon’s peril pursued
her without mercy. She feared to return to the Place Kleber, where
she must hear old Hélène’s platitudes, and be questioned upon the
trivial events of a trivial day. She would be alone, face to face with
the change that a word had brought into her life. How different, she
thought, were all things yesterday. Her secret had been her own then.
She had looked upon Strasburg as a refuge and a home until Edmond
should return to her. The city would never be that again. All the
gathering terror of the siege affrighted her. The regiments marching,
the rumbling guns, the galloping horses deafened her as with crashing
noises. She shrank from the excited throngs; she feared every cry,
every impulse of the crowds lest they should tell of a new spy brought
to justice. Yet, in her own mind, she did not doubt for an instant the
fidelity or the honour of the man who wished to serve her. Brandon was
no spy. He was one who had recklessly staked his own life that he might
keep his promise to her. And he was in peril. She repeated the word
always. An hour might bring discovery and death. She was the one friend
who knew of his presence in the city; and she might not see him. What
woman’s logic made such a law for her she could not explain. But she
held to her idea tenaciously, and, maintaining it, she turned into the
square before the Minster and entered the great church itself.
There were many in the nave and chapels of the cathedral, praying at
the altars for those who served France, or had died in her service.
Fantastic lights streamed down through the glorious windows, and shed a
lustre of crimson and green and violet upon the sunbeams which lingered
yet in the first hour of evening. From without, a murmur was to be
heard, as of squadrons tramping and the voices of many men. Ever and
anon, even those mighty walls trembled as the thunder of the cannonade
rolled heavily upon the distant horizon of hill and vineyard. But no
voice was raised to mar the majestic silence within the splendid
church; and it seemed to Beatrix, as she knelt for a few moments in the
chapel of St. John, that here, at least, was the abiding place of God’s
peace, here the haven which the city gave her no longer.
“Oh, my God, help me--help me to save him!”
She had no other prayer. The vulgar dictates of prudence and the
customs could not prevail in that sanctuary, where the counsel of love
and sacrifice was the daily word. Gradually, as her mind began to
gather up its little threads of argument, her woman’s nature conquered
her. She told herself that she was a coward for deserting the man
whose peril was of her own making. No love, she argued, would justify
a requital so base. And Brandon was an Englishman, alone there, lamed,
helpless among those who would consider themselves his enemies. Well
she knew that if her husband were in the city, he would be the first
to go to the Rue de l’Arc-en-Ciel. He had no friend in all Strasburg
whom he had trusted as he trusted Brandon North, the Englishman. When
he heard her story, he might well charge her with the betrayal and
desertion of his friend and comrade. And, she asked herself, was her
own love to be the sport of every coward who chose to spy upon her? She
had shame of the thought that Gatelet’s innuendos had been anything
but a matter of scornful indifference to her. She would tell Edmond,
when he returned, would tell him all; the debt should be repaid. And
she would go to the Rue de l’Arc-en-Ciel. She was determined upon
that now. Brandon must have a friend to help him. He might even lack
common necessaries. A woman’s pity for one who suffered was the final
argument. She left the church with beating heart, and turned her face
toward the house which harboured her friend.
It was almost dark then. A lurid glow of wavering crimson light hovered
in the sky to the northward and the eastward. She knew that the shells
were falling there, that there lay the terror of which men spoke in
hushed voices. Everywhere the people were seeking the shelter of
house or café; soldiers alone moved in the deserted streets. Many of
them black with powder, many fresh from the ramparts, a few drunk and
reeling, they gave her coarse greeting or even laid rough hands upon
her. But she continued unflinchingly, thinking always that Brandon
was waiting for her, or, it might be, accusing that ingratitude which
detained her. When, some little way from the cathedral, a shell struck
a house above her with a great crash, and masonry fell heavily upon
the pavement at her very feet she shrank back terrified into the
porch of the house, but abated nothing of her resolution. She could
hear the screams of the people in the rooms upstairs; she beheld a
wrecked apartment, the walls shattered, the roof pierced, the fire
raging in the _débris_--but no thought of sorrow for the people or of
their necessity detained her. Rather she fled from the gaping crowd
that gathered quickly in the street, for she feared that someone would
follow her--some word of hers betray her errand. When she entered the
Rue de l’Arc-en-Ciel she was trembling still with the excitement of her
own escape; but a new courage came to her, and it was born of the sure
knowledge that Brandon North was there, and that she was about to hear
his voice again.
There was a great throng of people in the narrow street, all gathered
about the shop of a chemist into which a little child had been carried
some few minutes before she came there. A gossip elbowing a road for
himself through the press, told her that a shell had fallen in that
place, and that the child had been struck on the arm by a fragment of
it.
“We shall have to go to the cellars to-morrow,” the man said grimly;
“they shoot the little ones, these Prussians; they have no hearts,
Mademoiselle. I have children of my own, and I can speak for the
fathers. It is not war which covers a child’s frock with blood. It is
the slaughter-house full of devils in blue coats. Be advised of me and
return to your house, Mademoiselle.”
[Illustration: “She shrank back terrified into the porch.”]
She thanked him and asked boldly for the house of Madame Clairon. He
looked at her, astonished. Her fine clothes, her grand air, the sweet
girlish face she lifted when she asked the question were not to be
reconciled with such a request.
“The house of Madame Clairon; but she is an _aubergiste_--she keeps the
wine shop yonder. You cannot have business there, Mademoiselle.”
His curiosity was now thoroughly aroused. Everyone suspected his
neighbour in Strasburg at that day. What had this delicate girl to
do with Madame Clairon and her house? Beatrix, on her part, found an
excuse quickly.
“We have news of one of her relations in a letter from Metz, Monsieur.
I did not know that it was such a house. Of course, I cannot go there.”
She turned abruptly and disappeared in the throng. The questioning
eyes of the man followed her as she went. She seemed to be conscious
of his searching gaze as though it pursued her to read her secret
and to betray it. But she saw him no more, and, as she passed the
chemist’s house, they carried out the child, a wan little thing with
eyes very wide open and bandaged arm, and blood upon the frock. She
turned from the place sick at heart. An infinite pity for the children
drove the thought of her own troubles from her mind. That those little
ones should suffer! The lights of the wine shop were dancing before
her eyes. She saw the child’s face still when she passed on into the
darkness of the street.
The crowd dispersed slowly, leaving but a few idlers upon the pavement.
She could not see the man who had questioned her, but suspicion of him
remained. Nearly an hour passed before she returned to the _auberge_,
and then she had no courage to enter it. Burly troopers, grimed with
powder and half drunk, lolled everywhere about its doors. The odour
of dregs and of stale tobacco, wafted even to the pavements without,
made her sick and faint. She passed the doors again and again until she
began to fear that her very presence was a danger to the man she would
have befriended. And he was there--in that den of drink and brutality.
She knew that she could not leave him in such a place.
A young girl came out of the _auberge_, singing. Her arms were bare,
her hair unkempt; but she gave the troopers wit for brutality, and
there was a smile upon her bright face as she ran from the house. When
she saw Beatrix standing there, as though about to question her, she
stopped abruptly and uttered a startled exclamation.
“Ah, Mademoiselle, it is you, then!”
She turned and looked up and down the street, and then continued
quickly:
“He has asked for you, oh, so many times every day. He is very ill,
Mademoiselle, and has no friends in Strasburg. If anyone knew that
he was an Englishman from across the Rhine, he could not stay here.
But you will see him now. The door is to the right there, the first
past the corner. I will let you in myself: I have done what I could,
but these others--they keep me always on my feet. It is ‘Jeannette’
here and ‘Jeannette’ there, and ‘Jeannette will do it’--and, oh,
Mademoiselle, how tired I am!”
She made a gesture as of one very weary of her life, but a moment
afterwards was in the café again with smiling face and with ready words
for the brutes who bandied their wit against hers. When she opened the
side door to Beatrix she had a candlestick in her hand, and she raised
her finger warningly.
“We must have a care, Mademoiselle. They are not all his friends as you
and I. And he will be so pleased! Ah, it is good to be loved when you
are ill!”
She did not see the flush on the other’s face, the flush of shame and
doubt and of denial, which could not well be spoken in that place.
Indeed, she did not wait for assent or protest, but ran up the stairs
with a child’s foot, and opened the door of a garret upon the third
floor. And so the friends came face to face again.
“Ah, Monsieur--here is Mademoiselle at last. No more loneliness now,
Monsieur; no more Jeannette. We are going to change all that. Shall we
come in, Monsieur?”
A deep voice, clear and musical, replied to them. Beatrix entered the
room with hesitating step, and stood for a little while, breathing
quickly in the close atmosphere. That was the friendship of Louis
Gatelet, then--that den of dirt, that hovel in the _auberge_; that
garret from which even a trooper below might have turned scornfully.
The very windows she saw were broken and mended with paper. The couch
upon which the wounded man lay was but a bed of rags. A single candle
in a dirty iron stick gave him light. The flickering rays of it showed
her the pallor of his face, the thin hands, the unshaven chin. And he
had been there for days, waiting for her to come to him. His friend had
left him there in that garret of the city, which even a beggar would
have passed by. She blamed herself that she had delayed even for an
hour.
“Oh, my God, Brandon, what a place! You cannot stop here.”
He pressed her hand lightly, and made an effort to raise himself from
the couch.
“That’s what I’ve been telling my leg every day for the last two days.
But it differs from me. I say ‘go;’ the leg says ‘stop.’ Who is to
decide when the limbs disagree?”
Jeannette set down the candle and sighed.
“Ah, Mademoiselle, if you could have seen him when he came here. That
was a dreadful day. I went from the house and found him lying in the
road--ah, _mon Dieu_, the dreadful wound, the pale face, the blood
upon the pavement! But he will get better now. You will cure him,
Mademoiselle. And you will not want Jeannette to help you. Oh--ah--I
know how it is, Mademoiselle, and I will come back in an hour.”
She slipped from the room, and closed the door quietly behind her. The
room possessed but one cane-seated chair, and that but half a back.
Beatrix drew it to the side of the couch, while Brandon began to speak
to her about his accident.
“I don’t like your coming here, and yet I am glad that you came,” he
said, with a look which implied the disappointment he had suffered.
“Of course, you must tell somebody now, and must not come alone again.
Old Hélène will be best. She is a good old soul, and may be prevailed
upon to hold her tongue. If only I knew where Richard Watts was living,
I would ask you to go to him. He has a better head than most, and
would help me out of a tight place. It just shows you, Beatrix, what
fools men can be sometimes. Bobbie Burns was right after all. The best
laid schemes don’t always hit it. There was nothing I left out of my
calculations that you could think of. I had even got a safe-conduct
to help me back to German lines. And then, just at the crossing here,
an artillery waggon crushes my foot, and down I go like a nettle. Was
there ever such a cursed piece of luck?”
He sank back again upon the pillow of rags, and a spasm of pain drew
down the muscles of his mouth and made him clench his hands. She
thought how greatly the wound had changed him. His coat hung limply
upon his chest; the hand that he stretched out showed awkward knuckles,
and skin drawn tight; his eyes were very bright, as the eyes of one who
needed sleep. But his manner was the manner of the old time. He was
angry with himself because he could not conceal from her the fact that
he was in pain.
“It’s nothing,” he said, when he saw her eyes fill with tears, and
guessed how heavy was her self-reproach. “If you wouldn’t mind pouring
me out a glass of that wine--a hundred thanks; you’re curing me
already, you know. And, of course, I dare not send to my old rooms.
Antoine, there, has a tongue as long as the Minster spire. He would
give me away in five minutes. You see, there’s not much chance of
disguise now, Beatrix. Gatelet says he got me in here only just in
time. One of the curates of St. Thomas’s, who knew me well, came to the
door just as they were carrying me upstairs. The fellow would have put
it all over Strasburg in five minutes. It’s their business to talk, and
they don’t neglect it. Gatelet, on the other hand, will hold his tongue
just as long as it suits him. How long it will suit him I really don’t
know. It’s a case of trusting in Providence and a fifth-rate Italian
quack he unearthed from somewhere. Perhaps it will be better now that
you have come. And you might find Richard Watts, eh?”
She had been very silent until that moment, for pity and dismay checked
her utterances. All her impulse was to flee the house and return with
someone who would carry him from that dreadful place. His very life,
she thought, depended upon her, and upon her alone. She knew not what
enemies of his watched this den. Even as they talked, she listened for
any sound of footsteps on the stairs. The cries and oaths in the wine
shop below brought back to her that picture of a man fighting for his
life in the cathedral square. If it should come to that? If Gatelet
should betray them?
“Brandon,” she said, ignoring his question, “what did your friend mean
by leaving you in this place?”
He laughed satirically.
“Oh, his magnanimity--nothing else--that’s what brought me here. You
could fill an eggcup with it. By-and-by the honour of France will
compel him to win glory by introducing me to the gentlemen below. They
are the fellows who ran away from us at Wörth. They showed us the soles
of their boots, which are made of brown paper, I believe. Here, in
Strasburg, they are the very devil. When Gatelet tells them that there
is a Prussian dragoon in the garret, they will come up, three stairs at
a time, with sabres in their hands. I fancy I hear them sometimes when
I try to sleep. It isn’t quite a cure for insomnia, and, yet, what can
I do? There’s no man in Strasburg, except Richard Watts, that I could
trust--and, well, Watts may not be in Strasburg. Besides, the place is
watched. I have seen men in the house opposite, and there is always
some blackguard at the front door below. If I charged Gatelet with it,
he would swell out with indignation. And, fancy owing anything to a rat
like that! If only it had been someone else! Of course, he told you I
was here.”
“To-day,” she said absently, for her brain was working quickly now; “I
came straight here from the Minster. He insulted me, Brandon. I cannot
speak of it. I am going now to tell Hélène. It would not be right to
keep the secret any longer. If Mr. Watts is in the city, he shall
know to-night. We cannot leave you one hour longer in this dreadful
place. Oh, I pray God that I shall find him! My folly brought you
here--nothing else, nothing else!”
She stood up and the tears fell fast and glistened upon her burning
cheeks. The man thought that her tenderness for him was the sweetest
thing in all the world; his love for her surged up in his heart as
a consuming passion. Yet he would sooner have cut off his right hand
than that she should have guessed the heavy secret of his lonely life.
The unbending honour of a man who had been honour’s servant from his
boyhood answered her almost brusquely.
“It was not your fault at all,” he said; “you don’t drive artillery
waggons, my dear Beatrix. And I am glad that you are going to tell
old Hélène. She is the best woman alive when anyone is down. Perhaps
she’ll smuggle in some soup or something. The food here is not exactly
on the restaurant scale. But don’t let her trouble if she can’t do it
safely--and remember we are all going to write to Edmond and to tell
him about this business directly it’s possible. Your other letter went,
I need not say. I smuggled it out all right, and he’s on his way home
by this time.”
She looked at him, half glad, half fearful.
“You sent the letter?”
“Of course I sent it. The girl here gave it to one of the German
gentlemen who are visiting Strasburg just now to take the waters--and
anything else they can pick up. Edmond will give his parole, although
you don’t ask him. He’ll be back here just as the fun is beginning. I
should imagine my appearance will amuse him. You must tell him all
about it; that goes without saying. And you won’t return here until
he is in the Place Kleber. I insist on that, Beatrix. If anyone is to
come, it must be Watts. By Jove, I should be glad to see his face, and
I don’t think he’d mind seeing mine.”
It was the third time he had mentioned the name of the old Bohemian,
and she began to see how great he believed the peril of his environment
to be. There, in that wretched hovel, with the dim light of a guttering
candle playing upon his haggard face, and strangers about him, and the
very scum of France’s soldiers in the tavern below, lamed, helpless,
alone--she knew that his life hung upon a thread indeed; and she gave
him of that pity which ever she bestowed upon the weak and suffering.
“They shall come and help you, Brandon. I will go and tell old Hélène.
God grant that we shall not be too late.”
“Amen to that, Beatrix--and a thousand thanks.”
She pressed his hand lightly and left the room, groping her way down
the rotting stairs to the light and voices of the city below. She told
herself that she was going to save the life of her friend. But the man
sank back upon his bed of rags, and, seeing the vision of her long
afterwards, he thought that the sun shone upon him still; and he forgot
the place and the hour, and seemed to walk with her in a house of
dreams, which he had built in the years gone by.