A mud-bedaubed nondescript who toiled at the heels of the Great
Headquarter Staff upon a huge velocipede of the big-wheeled,
bone-shaker type prevalent at that remote period, met plenty of
scowling glances from groups of peasants gathered at the corners of
villages and listening by the wayside. Even on territory occupied by
German troops, it was not safe for lagging soldiers to drop behind
upon the march. To enter roadside taverns or farmhouses with a
comrade was imprudent, to venture in alone was perilous, the sight of
the German uniform, the sound of the Teutonic gutturals, were so
fiercely abhorred. Of the reason for this loathing the Englishman
was not ignorant. Marching with the infantry of the German army, he
had followed where the Uhlans had passed.
He had slept, the night before the Army of the Red Prince had crossed
the river, in a little deserted country château,--an ideal honeymoon
nest for lovers, standing in a high-walled garden full of fruit-trees
and tangled roses in the middle of a sloping meadow on the banks of
the Moselle.
The butt of some Prussian soldier's rifle had served for key to the
locked door in the high garden-wall. Those who had gone before had
stripped the bushes and espaliers. The house had been entered, and
the dainty silk-upholstered drawing-room chairs and sofas had been
dragged out into the garden. The piano--a tiny rosewood
_bijou_--probably a wedding present--and the absurd little
billiard-table with which Monsieur had disported himself, stood
crookedly upon the gravel; a long tear in the green cloth of the one;
prints of tumblers, marks of greasy fingers marring the shiny veneer
of the other. Bottles that had contained Champagne and
Moselle--butts of cigars, empty tobacco-papers and match-boxes were
scattered everywhere--over gravel, and grass-plot and the once trim
garden-beds. An impromptu _café_-concert had evidently formed a
feature of the bivouac.
P. C. Breagh had slept in a charming bedroom, under rosebud-chintz
curtains looped with silken ropes, having carved wooden Cupids,
painted pink, instead of tassels. The bed was not as luxurious as it
might have been, because the blankets and sheets had been carried
off. Opening his eyes in the gray of morning he had seen himself as
he lay reflected in a long cheval-glass, and failed, for the moment,
to recognize in the bronzed, shaggy, unclean tatterdemalion therein
reflected the young Englishman of respectable appearance who had
interviewed the German States' Chancellor in the Wilhelm-strasse.
He was not alone in the room, that was the next discovery. A woman,
young and swarthy, dressed in the quaint costume of the country,
stood upon the other side of the bed, with a kitchen chopper in her
lifted right hand. He took in the chopper at a glance, and promptly
rolled off the bed upon the side facing the friendly cheval-glass,
and stood glowering at the black-eyed girl.
"I have startled Monsieur? A thousand apologies!"
She forced a smile with her curtsey and backed toward the door. P.
C. Breagh explained in his French that he was no robber but a
harmless traveler, and that she need not be alarmed.
"Monsieur is very kind!" Her chopper-hand hidden under her apron,
she explained that she had served as cook in the establishment. Upon
the news that M. de Bismarck was coming, _tout à coup_, Monsieur and
Madame had gone away together to Paris. They were noble and very
amiable, but old, old, and feeble.... They had left the little
château in her care....
"Mademoiselle is not easily frightened?" P. C. Breagh hinted.
Said the black-eyed, modestly:
"I am Angéle--nothing of Mademoiselle. A peasant--like my father,
who was gardener for Monsieur and Madame.... I was alone here when
the Prussian horsemen came, breaking the doors and shutters....
Everything was spoiled, or taken, wine, linen, the fowls in the
poultry-run. Destitution, ruin everywhere!..."
She accentuated her tale of loss by heavings of the bosom, shrugs of
the fine shoulders, dramatic gestures.
"Then my father returned and found ... No matter! Both he and I
should have been silent and endured everything.... It was not wise,
Monsieur, that the old man should have struck a Prussian, even for my
sake. For then he was beaten. Whenever I shut my eyes, I see it....
Therefore I have vowed not to sleep again until...." She opened her
eyes wide, and smiled, rather grimly, then changed the subject with a
wave of the unchoppered and visible hand. Was Monsieur hungry? By
searching, a crust of bread might be found in some cupboard, an egg
or two--laid by one of the abducted hens in some private corner--a
pinch of coffee and sugar sufficient for Monsieur!
"I should be glad of it. But--when you are in such trouble it seems
unfair," protested Monsieur. He added, reverting to the language of
the country, that he would be happy to pay for the _déjeuner_.
"But no! A meal for a bird!--Monsieur and Madame will never miss
it!" and Angéle curtseyed herself away, with forced smiles.
Left alone, P. C. Breagh bolted the door and finding water in the
bedroom jugs, and scented soap upon the washstand, enjoyed the luxury
of a comprehensive wash, drying himself, in the absence of towels,
upon a pillow-case. A pot of cold-cream, tinted a delicate pink and
bearing the label of Piesse and Lubin, he found, and anointed his
blistered feet therewith, and not without pangs of conscience--tore
up the pillow-case and bandaged them. He would pay the girl for the
damage done to her master's property, he told himself.
He combed his shock of dusty hair with a tortoise-shell comb he
picked up from the carpet, and went downstairs, knapsack in hand. It
was four o'clock. The dusty, foot-print and wheel-marked highway
beyond the broken door in the garden-wall was strangely bare and
lonely. The battalion he had marched with had bivouacked on the
other side of the village. The troops that would presently follow
were not yet upon the road.
The girl cried out that Monsieur's breakfast was ready. It had been
laid, looking quite tempting, on one of the little inlaid tables that
stood upon the tiny lawn. A truncheon of bread, fairly new, a pat of
butter, two eggs, and a bowl of fragrant, steaming milk and
coffee--such a meal as P. C. Breagh had not enjoyed for many a day.
He begged Angéle to share. She replied with a graceful wave of
abnegation that she had already eaten. P. C. Breagh expressed
regret, muttered his old Rockhampton grace and savagely fell to.
"Monsieur is Catholic?..."
The movement of his hand, making the sacred Sign, had not escaped
her. He nodded, with his mouth full, and Angéle turned pale under
her swarthy skin. Her guest vigorously beheaded an egg and reached
for the coffee-bowl. The expression of the girl's eyes, as he lifted
it to his mouth, brought something back to him. He sipped
cautiously--recognized the French equivalent for English
rat-poison--spat forth what he had taken, with a hideous grimace, and
poured the deadly stuff out upon the ground.
Then he got up and looked for Angéle, whose white-frilled cap,
crimson bodice, and striped stuff petticoat had vanished round the
corner of the little hen-house. He could hear the _klop-klop_ of her
varnished cow-leather clogs receding along paths unknown.
Said P. C. Breagh, speaking with mouth awry, for the intense
bitterness of the alkaloid had dried up tongue and palate:
"I'd like to follow that girl and shake her. But more than likely
her sweetheart and male relatives are lurking in the neighborhood
with pitchforks, to speed the unwelcome guest."
He went back to the breakfast-table, but the glamour had faded from
the banquet, and the leathery dryness of mouth and throat foiled him
in the effort to finish the egg he had begun. He pocketed the other,
abandoned the bread and butter as unreliable, strapped on his dusty
knapsack, and was hobbling away upon the sticks that had lately
served him as crutches, when he caught sight of an obviously new
coffin of thin tarred planking, on the gravel near the conservatory
door. It bore a cross and an inscription roughly scrawled in letters
of white paint:
|
--+--
|
|