“IF STRASBURG FALLS”
There followed upon her illness a week of dreams, which were the
delirium of a brain overwrought, and of the burden she had carried for
so many days. She knew not where she was or whose were the voices which
spoke to her, but seemed to be living in a world apart--in a dreadful
valley of shadows and of constant turmoil. Faces came to her fitfully
in her dreams, the faces she had known in childhood--her mother’s face
and the face of Edmond bending over her while she slept. To him she
stretched out her arms, but could not touch his hand before the vision
passed. No finality even of the dream was permitted to that burning
brain. As in a whirlpool of the mind she was tossed hither and thither
in thought; now battling with the flames, which gave a golden radiance
to the city of doom; now living through the night of Wörth again; now
at her husband’s feet imploring him, for love of her, to save the
life of their friend. A thousand voices spoke to her, but she could
recognize none of them. She did not know that Strasburg, minute by
minute, crumbled to the dust. Sleep gave her nought but this prompting
to labour unceasing of the mind, to this unending battle of the flame
and smoke and faces of her visions.
Reason came back to her at last; but ten days had passed, and she was
in the Place Kleber no longer. When she opened her heavy eyes and
sought to raise herself upon her bed, she saw that they had carried
her to a strange house and laid her in a strange room. So bare and
gloomy and vault-like was that chamber that she might well have been
in the tombs. Even the pillars which carried the arches of the vaulted
ceiling suggested an abiding place of the dead. The candles burning at
her bedside were as watch-lights to her eyes. She heard no sound of any
voice, but only the thunder of the cannon rolling distantly over the
city above. Her weakness was beyond expression. She could not lift a
hand from the coverlet of the bed. She thought that she was dying, and
the rest of death seemed to come upon her as the sweetest gift of God.
Guillaumette came into the room presently walking upon tiptoe and
carrying a basin of soup in her hand. When she saw that her mistress
was awake, she set down the bowl quickly, and ran from the room crying,
“Monsieur, Monsieur!” The cry brought the aged Abbé Colot to the
place, and he entered in haste, uttering, as he did so, a prayer of
thanks that his little patient lived.
“Ah! my child; you are awake, then. Glory be to God for this hour.”
Beatrix pressed her hands to her eyes.
“Whose house is this?” she asked.
“It is my house--you have been very ill here. They brought you to
me from the Place Kleber. Ah, _mon enfant_, there is no more Place
Kleber--no more Strasburg. We live in the vaults; we do not see the
sun. You are very weak, Madame.”
She sighed, and laid her pretty head upon the pillow.
“If I only could remember, Monsieur!” she said. “I have seen so many
things. It is all night--night.”
“But it will be day soon, my child.”
Guillaumette chimed in with her word.
“And here is the beautiful soup, Madame. Oh! Madame, what soup it is.
And nothing soon to eat but the fat geese’s livers and the horses’
bones. I do not love the geese--not at all, Madame. And you have been
so ill, so ill. Every day I said, ‘She will die to-day.’ Was it not so,
Monsieur? Is she not to drink the beautiful soup?”
A poor wan smile crossed the pale face as Beatrix listened to the odd
confession. Her awakened mind was busy already at the point where its
chord of right reason had snapped.
“Has my husband been here?” she asked them suddenly.
The abbé shook his head. He had not heard of Lefort’s return, and he
set down her question to the delirium which had left her.
“He is not in Strasburg, surely, my child. He will come presently. Your
friends do not forget you. Monsieur Watts is here twice a day. He was
here this morning; he will come again to-night.”
She listened to him as to one who spoke of strange things. Her weakened
brain sought to grapple with the threads. Why did Richard Watts come
there? Why had Edmond not been to the house? Ah, she remembered. That
dreadful night of farewell--the threat, almost the curse upon her.
“Has Mr. Watts left any message for me?” was her next question.
“That you are to get well, my child. That is the message of us all. We
cannot lose Madame Hélène’s daughter; we are not going to lose her.
And she must not talk. That is the doctor’s command. Silence, silence,
until the little head is well again.”
“And the beautiful soup! Ah! Monsieur forgets the beautiful soup. We
can live in the cellars, Madame, when we have _the_ soup like that. It
is I who made it--I, Guillaumette. Will you not taste it, Madame--just
for Guillaumette’s sake?”
She held her mistress in her arms and began to feed her as a little
child. The abbé watched approvingly. He did not know why her husband
had not been to the house. The Captain’s duty as a soldier had kept him
from the city, he thought. And so he spoke of Strasburg’s sufferings in
a low and gentle voice soothing as a lullaby.
“Ah, we should give thanks to God that we have even the cellars of our
house, my child. There are others who have not straw to cover them.
But we have taught France her duty, and France will remember. The
brave General, I do not know how to find words to speak of him. Day
and night, day and night he refuses to listen to the cowards. We are a
city of fire and dust, and yet we remain a city. We have little food
to eat, yet God feeds our hearts. And we shall resist until the end,
though there be not one stone upon another. Yesterday, they tell me,
six hundred shells fell upon bastion eleven. Six hundred shells! Think
of it! These Germans are devils--the house of God even is not sacred
to them. But they are facing a brave people, my child. We know how to
suffer. Even the women do not complain. Ah! God be thanked for the
brave women who give us their prayers to-day.”
Beatrix seemed to listen to him, but found no interest in his words.
She was glad when he left her to sleep again, but no sleep rewarded her
busy brain. Line by line her own story came back to her. She was alone,
then! Edmond had left her forever. She would never know his kiss again.
He deemed her unfaithful to his country. The punishment of her folly
seemed bitter beyond words. She felt as some outcast, lacking country,
friends, and knowing not so much as one in all the world who would
speak a word of love to her.
Guillaumette watched at her bedside that afternoon and told her many
things in fragments of reluctant gossip. She had been very ill after
“Monsieur” left the house. Few buildings remained unharmed in the Place
Kleber. In the northern suburbs of the city the people lived in their
cellars. This room was one of the old vaults under the presbytery of
the abbé’s church in the Rue Nationale. Richard Watts had come to their
house when she was ill, and had insisted upon her removal. The abbé,
who slept in the sacristy of his church, and had loved “Madame” as
one of his own children, could not do enough for her. There were many
in Strasburg to condole with Madame Hélène’s daughter even at such
a time. General Uhrich himself had called at the house. No one knew
anything of the story, except that she was very ill, and that the abbé
had taken her there for safety. They had done all they could to make
the place comfortable--but there was no choice. Upstairs the iron death
was everywhere. Children had been killed at their mothers’ breasts. The
great library of Strasburg burned still, as some vast flambeau bidding
the Germans to look upon the unyielding heart of the city. There was
a party that wished to yield, but the General would not listen to it.
Monsieur Watts said that the General was a madman who had been weaned
on _pâté de foie gras_. The American, Dr. Forbes--ah, how clever he
was! He would return at sunset, and bring Monsieur Watts with him. They
came together always.
Beatrix heard the gossip greedily. Ten days had passed, then, since
Edmond left her. She trembled to think what those ten days might have
meant to Brandon. Richard Watts’s anxiety to see her she could construe
only as some desire that she should have news of her friend. Whether
it were ill or good news she dare not ask. In one way a vague sense
of relief succeeded the remembrance that Edmond knew her secret. She
did not believe, in her gentler moods, that his love for her could not
brook so womanly a folly as that of which he found her guilty. He would
come to reason when he had reflected upon all that she had told him.
Richard Watts presented himself at the house at five o’clock, and when
they brought his message she asked eagerly that she might see him.
It was good to look upon that burly figure; good to hear that cheery
English voice congratulating her. And he had so much to tell her.
“And so the little passenger is getting well again. Bravo, bravo! I
shall have rare news for old Anne Brown to-night. Eh, young lady, you
will send your love to old Anne Brown?”
He had the little hand in his for a moment and pressed the burning
fingers.
“You are kind to come,” she said.
“Kind, young lady--why, hark to that. Your father’s oldest friend
kind to come and see that little Beatrix is getting well again. What
nonsense!”
She thought upon his words.
“You knew my father, then?”
“Ay, better than them all; knew his heart, his very soul. Some day we
will talk of it--not now. You must get well again first, and have done
with this nonsense about Master Brandon. Oh, don’t be anxious about
him. The rogue can walk again, almost as well as I can.”
A sigh of relief escaped her lips. She told him, as shortly as she
might, the story of her husband’s return. He listened with grave face,
which could not cloak his anxiety.
“I feared from the first that this would happen,” she said. “Edmond
would not believe. He chose to misunderstand me. He has not been here
all these days. He threatened Brandon. It is a relief to know that they
have not met.”
Watts feigned to laugh at the idea. His assumption of a confident
indifference was none the less a failure.
“Strasburg cannot hold out three days,” he said. “It was lucky I went
to the Rue de l’Arc-en-Ciel when I did. We bribed their own man and got
over the roofs to Dr. Forbes’s house. He has been attending you, you
know--a right good fellow, though he was born in San Francisco. Brandon
is in his house now--about the last place they would look for him.
The American flag will protect him. When the city falls, men will be
reasonable again, and all this will be forgotten. We must wish the city
to open its gates, little passenger. That’s the only chance for all of
us. Meanwhile, trust me to keep those two fellows apart. I’ll have no
cut-throat business, if I can help it. What are they fighting about?
Devil take the rogues if they know. And why is Dick Hamilton’s daughter
lying here like a pretty spoiled dove in a cage? Because two fools have
been playing the fool’s game together. But we shall stop that. Trust
old Richard Watts and the Germans who make the music at the gates.”
Thus he sought to give her courage, and fearing to excite her, he left
her with an echo of his own self-reliance in her heart. She knew that
she had one friend working for her; and when she slept that night her
prayer was this--that the gates of Strasburg might be opened to the
enemy.