IN THE HOUSE OF LAROCHE
Beatrix had quitted the abbé’s house, indeed; yet her purpose was not
clear to her; nor did she know, as she crept up the stone stairs, and
stood once more in the streets of the city, whither her distress should
carry her, or to what end. She must prevent her husband committing this
crime, she thought. She must save the men from themselves. God alone
could help her to do that.
She was very weak of her illness still, and she shivered as she drew
her cloak about her and stood gazing up at the wondrous world of stars
above and at the gaunt shapes of the mediæval houses, which had leaned
upon the abbé’s church for three centuries, and yet could conjure up
the romance and colour of forgotten ages. There had been rain all day;
but the air of evening was sweet and fresh upon her face; and the
very solitude about her gave a charm to the sense of freedom which
was beyond all her experience. Not until she had walked a little way
and stood where she could overlook the Place Kleber, and the ground
where her home had been, did her mind recur to the dangers of the
city, and to the stories which they had told her in the haven of the
cellars. But, suddenly, out of the night the truth came. The northern
quarters of Strasburg were no more. A terrible desert of rubble and
ashes and fire confronted her. Distant buildings caught the quivering
iridescence, and were incarnadined with the play of crimson light.
Shells of houses vomited flame and smoke, and brilliant sparks burning
brightly in the clear night air. An unceasing crash of artillery was
the horrible music of the hour. She could see the golden paths of the
destroyer as the trail of falling stars bearing a message of doom.
The picture was grand beyond any her eyes had looked upon. She stood
spell-bound, unconscious of her peril.
Save for such troopers as were seeking to quell the fires, she saw no
one in the streets through which her journey carried her. By here and
there, a light shone in a cellar, and she could hear the voices of
those who lived there. A priest passed her at the New Church, carrying
the Host to the dying. He turned curious eyes upon her as she knelt,
but did not speak to her. A little way farther on a group of men with
lanterns were about a great waggon, which a shell had struck and
shattered; the blood of the dead horses still flowed fresh in the
gutters. She sought to pass unobserved; but as she drew near a terrible
report deafened her, and the whole street was illumined by a blinding
flash of light. She heard the shouts of the men as they ran to safety.
There was the thunder of falling masonry, a choking cloud of dust
hiding the stars--then darkness intolerable. She stood alone in the
street, and when she could see the way, she ran on again--she knew not
whither.
She must save her husband--must save Brandon. That was her watchword
always. Those who had befriended her must not commit this crime. She
had guessed that the malignity of Gatelet dictated the letter which she
had received. She would defeat that malignity. There were moments when
she thought of going to Richard Watts again; but reflection seemed to
say that hers must be the voice to save Edmond and her friend. She did
not know how it was that her footsteps carried her unconsciously to the
Rue de Kehl; but thither she went, and anon found herself before the
house of the American Consul. Brandon was there, in that house. She
determined, cost what it might, that she would hear the truth from his
own lips.
Many minutes passed before she could find courage to pull the great
brass handle, and when she did so the sonorous echoes of the bell
frightened her. But the man who opened the door, after he had spoken
a few words to her, admitted that she could see Mr. North. A moment
later Brandon himself--the old Brandon--with his quiet, calm voice, was
reasoning with her as he would have reasoned with a child.
“Beatrix,” he said gently, “could you not have trusted me?”
“You do not know what I have suffered, Brandon,” she exclaimed; “and
this--my God! tell me that it is not true?”
He made a little gesture of indifference.
“No harm will come to Edmond. I swear it on my honour. He has acted
with little sense--but that is the habit of the French soldier. He is a
good man at heart, and will love you none the less when this is over--”
“Promise me,” she exclaimed desperately, “you will not go to Laroche’s
house to-morrow.”
“If I go, it will not be to make a fool of myself.”
“But he will kill you.”
“I must trust to the help of a befriending Providence. There will
be some way out, and I shall find it. He must listen to me. He is
listening to our friend Watts at this moment. Possibly there will be
a method which does not occur to either of us at this moment. In any
case, no harm will come to him.”
“But you--how can I leave you to the alternative? Oh, my God, if he
should kill you, Brandon!”
He started and looked at her closely. She did not know that such words
were sweeter than life to him. His voice was colder and discouraging
when next he spoke.
“It will not come to that,” he said. “One man with a sword in his hand
does not fight another with a medicine bottle. I am still half an
invalid. Besides, is there no hope of common-sense?”
She buried her face in her hands, and the tears trickled through her
fingers. The sacrifice which this man contemplated was not to be hidden
from her. He would give his life that her husband might live.
“You shall not go,” she exclaimed earnestly. “Brandon, have I no right
of our friendship? You will not meet my husband to-morrow.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Would you have them say that the Englishman is a coward, Beatrix?”
The answer frightened her. The culminating hour of her suffering was
there in that room. Her tears, falling fast upon her white face, seemed
to burn Brandon’s fingers. He would have given his life to bring
laughter to those eyes he loved.
“Let us be sensible,” he continued, with a great effort to control
himself. “What can I do? What other course is there? If your husband
will make it a question of my honour, am I to let that, the honour of
an Englishman, be the sport of every fool in Strasburg? Of course, I
must go. The rest is in God’s hands. I shall do my best for your sake
and my own.”
He could give her no other answer. She might take from the house
nothing but this truth, that the destiny of him for whom she would have
made the ultimate sacrifice was in God’s keeping.
“I shall never forget, Brandon--never to my life’s end,” she said as
she left him.
“I trust there will be nothing to remember, Beatrix. You are the
brave one to come through the city at such a time; you must go back
at once. I ought to send one of our fellows with you, but under the
circumstances I suppose it’s best not. Perhaps Watts will bring good
news before morning. If you are going to his house now, you will hear
what he has to say and might let me know. I can’t believe that your
husband is serious--it would be too grotesque.”
She did not answer him, but at the door she stooped suddenly and kissed
his hand.
* * * * *
It was ten o’clock when she left the house and stood again in the
silent street, whose roof was of golden fire mingling with the stars,
and the radiance of the mirrored flames on many a spire and many a
dome. Nothing now, either of the scene or of her own peril, mattered
to her. The jibes of besotted gunners, the warnings of officers who
passed by to the citadel, the deafening roar of guns, even the dead in
the streets--she went on heedless of these things. Brandon was to give
his life for her lover’s. He would die at dawn, because he had been her
friend. Well she knew that Edmond would not heed the words which could
be spoken. That birthright of fallacy, which made of honour a god, was
far above logic or reason. He would kill Brandon for honour’s sake.
This intolerable thought of one man’s sacrifice for another man’s
folly was the culminating distress of that strange hour. While she
told herself again and again that such a sacrifice must never be, the
futility of her resolutions appeared in a clearer light with every step
she took. The gulf between Edmond and herself was never to be bridged
again. She knew that she could neither hope nor believe in France as
she had hoped and believed on the day when her destiny sent her to the
Niederwald. One by one these events recurred to her imagination--the
occasion of their picnic, the call to arms, the dreadful day of battle,
the weakening of the cords of faith, the lost glory of the army which
was to protect the children of France. How few were the weeks since she
had regarded her lover as one sent to her unmistakably to be that link
in the chain of her love which death alone might break. And now! Doubt,
suspicion, separation, above all, the contemplation of this crime, were
her fruits of war. She saw that they were fruits surpassing all agony
of death and battle, and even the pity of the children’s grief.
Until this time, and the hour was now eleven, there had been no thought
in her mind of making such an appeal to her husband as she had made to
Brandon. Her common-sense told her that her own concern for the life
of her English friend would be a new provocation to the crime. Edmond
would rejoice in her distress. It would prompt him to find a better
excuse, a new insult to his honour. Turn where she would, she could
see no way. Often there came to her lips the prayer that the gates of
Strasburg might be opened to the enemy before the sun should shine
again upon that scene of desolation and of death. Defeat, the shame of
France, alone could turn the peril from her doors. She knew well that
the end could not be distant; that whatever heroism the brave Uhrich
still might contemplate could but postpone the inevitable hour when
the white flag must fly from the citadel, and the roar of the guns be
heard no more. Perchance the superb heroism, the unbroken courage, the
splendid faith of Strasburg would, under other circumstances, have won
back that allegiance to France of which war had robbed her. But the
thought of to-morrow ever prevailed above such a hope as that. Brandon
would die at dawn. He would pay the penalty of his friendship for her.
She could pray, in truth, that the gates of Strasburg might be opened,
but there was no message of the night to answer her prayer. Everywhere
now the people sought the fitful sleep which the cellars and the
caverns of the city might give them. Those that were abroad battled
anew with the raging fire and the smoking _débris_. She seemed to be
imprisoned in some Inferno, where the air was hot and stifling, and
the voices were the moaning shells and the crash of the great guns and
the thunder of houses falling, or of the fire’s new victory. Nothing
affrighted her; she passed in and out to the dangerous places; among
the groups of blackened _pompiers_; through companies of artillerymen;
by scenes of death and agony; yet was not witness of the men or of
their work. If Strasburg would surrender! If the end would come! If she
could save Brandon! Never had she known such suffering of suspense,
never such a burden of excitement and of fear. The night was as a year
of terror enduring. She prayed to God that she might not live until
day dawned.
It was after midnight then, and she knew that she had been walking
aimlessly, without destination or desire of rest, for two hours. A
sudden faintness, the due of her illness, warned her at last that she
must seek some asylum and abandon a quest so futile. For a little
while, she rested upon a bench at the door of a deserted café; but when
her strength came back to her, she remembered the promise which old
Richard Watts had made, and once more she returned to his house. He met
her at the door. His grave face betrayed the tidings of which he was
the bearer.
“I have been expecting you for the last hour, child,” he said as he led
her into his English room; “they have told you, of course--”
“They have told me--yes,” she answered almost in a whisper.
“Are you going to your husband?”
“Why should I go?”
“Because he has need of you.”
She started back with a cry of terror.
“Oh, my God!” she cried, “what is it--what do you hide from me?”
“I hide nothing. It is best that you should know. I thought that you
did know when you came here. Your husband was struck by a fragment
of a shell in the Broglie to-night, and is now lying in the house of
Laroche, the surgeon.” For an instant she stood with eyes wide open and
hands trembling upon her breast.
“Take me to Edmond,” she said.