CONFESSION
The arm which now held her was an arm of iron. She was conscious of a
great hubbub going on about her: of angry voices and hurrying feet,
and a gabble of words which deafened her. Once she saw Gatelet, held
back by strong hands; she heard Richard Watts telling those who came
up to the café that the daughter of Madame Hélène had been insulted in
the place. But of the rest she remembered little, except that the same
strong arm led her quickly from the scene, and that she passed through
narrow streets, unfamiliar to her, and was taken at length into some
house, and into a little sitting-room there. When she asked where she
was, an English voice answered her, and an English hand held a glass of
wine to her lips.
“In the house of those that will take care of you, my dear--and, not a
word until you have drunk every drop; not a word, lady.”
She obeyed willingly, and looked up to see a kindly old dame, in a
white cotton dress, spotlessly clean, and wearing a bonnet which
recalled the lanes of England. Richard Watts himself, standing at the
dame’s side, watched her approvingly. Everything in that light and airy
room was English--the substantial buffet, the guns on the walls, the
pictures of hunting scenes, the great flagons of silver. But the gentle
face of the woman was the most typical English thing of all.
“How good you are to me!” Beatrix said, again and again; “how good it
is to hear an English voice!”
Old Richard Watts cried “Bravo!”
“English voices, English hands--that’s it, young lady. Stand by that
and you’ll never come to any harm. Eh, Anne Brown, is the little
passenger to stand by that? English voices and English hands--gad’s
truth, it’s there in a sentence--the whole of it.”
He walked to and fro, cracking his fingers excitedly; but the old dame
continued to say, “God bless me!” as she had said ever since her master
brought so strange a guest to the house.
“In a café? My word! And a Frenchman insulting her; oh, my dear, my
dear, that we should hear such things!”
Richard Watts took up the story, and told it again enthusiastically.
“I was going to see if there was anything left to eat in this city of
half-bricks except _pâté de foie gras_, child. If you hadn’t cried
out, I’d never have seen you, for I’m as blind as a bat. Then I heard
your voice, and looked up. ‘It’s the little passenger, by gad,’ I said.
The rest concerned the Frenchman. He was insulting you, eh? Listen to
that, Anne Brown; he insulted her. He asked for her answer. I gave it
him, old girl--he is reading it now. And lucky I thought of her name.
They would have torn us to pieces, the pair of us. But I remembered.
Trust old Dick Watts, who has the devil of a memory for names. He
remembered. ‘It’s old Hélène’s daughter,’ he said. And they stood by
us--gad’s truth, they stood by us.”
He helped himself to a glass of wine, and drank it at a gulp. Beatrix,
still hot and flushed, and scarce knowing what she did, rose and
thanked him once more.
“I can never be grateful enough,” she said; “and I must not intrude
upon you.”
Richard Watts laughed heartily.
“Intrude--listen to that, Anne Brown; the little passenger intrudes.”
“’Twould be a poor house where you could intrude, miss,” said the old
housekeeper decisively. “Let the master send a word to your home, and
tell your friends what has happened. We are not going to part with you
yet. You’re in no fit state to walk anywhere, I’m sure, and as for
carriages, God bless me, how many days is it since I saw one in this
street?”
Beatrix answered them in a low voice.
“I have no friends,” she said; “there is no one to be anxious about me.
It is something else--I cannot tell you--I wish to God I could.”
A great sense of loneliness and of her own terrible day overcame her,
and she sank into one of the chairs by the table and burst into a flood
of passionate weeping. That which no Frenchman in Strasburg could wring
from her was to be told in this room, where English friends watched her
with tears in their eyes, and everything recalled the home she had lost
and the faces in that England she would look upon no more.
“I cannot tell you--I must not tell you,” she repeated again and again
as the gentle arms of the woman were about her neck and a mother’s
voice besought her to trust them. But she told them in the end, word
by word, confessing all--Brandon’s danger, his presence in the city;
Gatelet’s threat that he would betray him that very night. And when
she had done, it was as though some great load of her life had been
transferred suddenly to another’s shoulders, and must be borne, as a
feather-weight, henceforth, by this giant Englishman, who had come out
of the city’s night in the hour of her necessity.
Richard Watts heard the story, sentence by sentence, often taking
her back a little way in the narrative; always ready with his word
of sympathy and encouragement. A quick thinker, he grappled with the
situation instantly. It was not her friend that he was called upon to
save, but his own--the man he had left at Wörth; the man whose father
he had known at Frankfort twenty years ago.
“It was like the mad scamp to come here,” he said, when she told him of
Brandon’s first visit; “he shouldn’t have done it. The news would have
waited. But war breeds folly. We must save him from that folly, little
lady. Do you think that the scoundrel down yonder has told anyone else?”
She shook her head, smiling through her tears.
“I have been too frightened to think, Mr. Watts.”
“Of course you have. It was his game to frighten you. I don’t suppose
he’s taken anyone into partnership, all the same. That wouldn’t suit
him. But he’ll tell all he knows about Brandon now, be sure of it. And
we haven’t much time to lose, my child.”
She could see that he was very thoughtful. For a little while she
did not venture to speak to him, as he paced the room silently, often
taking up his hat, and as often setting it down again. She knew that
the danger of that which he undertook was not hidden from him.
“If anything should happen to you!” she exclaimed suddenly.
“To me, young lady. Oh, don’t bother your head about that. I’m an
Englishman; they won’t hurt me.”
“And you think that you can save Brandon?”
“Ah, that’s another question.”
She shuddered.
“My God, if they should discover him--those men who killed the German
in the café.”
“We must see that they do not, little passenger.”
He put on his hat and went to the door; but upon the threshold he
turned and asked her yet another question:
“I shall find you at the Place Kleber to-night?”
“Yes; I am going home now.”
“Then, if the news is good, I will come there at six o’clock.”
He closed the door behind him and went out. The old dame brought her a
bowl of soup. She took a few sups of it, and made some excuse. Already
she had begun to count the minutes of waiting.