They broke their fast on rolls and coffee, dressed and demanded, with
the bill, the promised carriage. This was not so quickly forthcoming
as the landlord of the _Coup d'Épée_ had prophesied. Indeed, the
debilitated conveyance of the wagonette type, drawn by one promoted
cart-horse, could only be had by grace of the traveler by whom it had
been previously engaged. He proved, when Adelaide swept her charge
downstairs, to be a _Monsieur Anglais_, traveling for pleasure. A
middle-sized, clean-shaven, inconspicuous, elderly man, in an
ill-fitting suit of drab-color. He sported a sealskin vest in spite
of the oppressive heat of the weather, and spoke the French of the
conversation-manual with the accent it inculcates. His baldish
grizzled head was covered with a straw hat bound with a preposterous
light-blue ribbon. His luggage consisted of a brown calfskin bag, a
portable easel, sketching-block and color-box, and a violin-case, of
which articles he took the most excessive care. Nothing could well
be more respectable, or appear more harmless. Juliette breathed more
freely at the sight of the elderly drab-clothed man.
He professed himself happy to accommodate the ladies with a share in
the wagonette as far as Bazeilles, where he meant to take train for
Verdun. Interpreting for Adelaide, who possessed no English,
Juliette learned that their own destination was not Metz, but Châlons.
That drive to Bazeilles in the freshness of the morning would have
been delightful under other circumstances. The night-mists yet hung
white as milk over the valleys, while the breasting rises crowned
with woodlands were golden in the sun. Tents of French brigades
snowed over the countryside. Bugles and trumpets sometimes drowned
the rushing of the Givonne, beside whose stream their road conducted
them. The stubbles were full of grain-devouring wood-pigeons, too
heavy even to rise and take wing when peasant-lads threw stones. The
drab Englishman praised the view in the set terms of the manual,
until discovering that Mademoiselle had command of the tongue of
Albion, he reverted to that language with evident relief.
"For I won't deny it comes easier, though I manage to get on with the
other when necessary. And since I left England--seven months ago--my
poor health requiring a holiday from business--it has been necessary
most of the time."
"Ask the hideous animal in the ugly clothes whether he has seen a
newspaper this morning," instructed Madame. "And find out if he
knows anything of the movements of the Emperor. Those miserables at
the inn were absolutely ignorant, or else they would not tell!"
The drab English traveler had reason to know something of his
Imperial Majesty, having recently encountered him with his suite at
the village of Gravelotte, eight miles from Metz. He explained in a
rambling manner, and with many divagations, that he himself had been
surprised by the intrusion of War at the outset of a sketching-tour
in the northwest of France, which was to have realized the ambition
of his life.
"Painting from Nature and playing on the violin.... Those are what I
may call my weaknesses," he told the ladies by-and-by.
He was moist-eyed and red-nosed and shaky-handed, which must have
interfered with his brush-work and bowing. An odor of strong waters
exhaled from his person and clothes. You, had you been there, could
have imagined him making an inventory, serving a summons, or, mounted
on a Holborn auctioneer's rostrum--knocking down second-hand works of
inferior Art to imaginary bidders, and vaunting the qualities of
sticky-toned violins. Save for his garrulity, he was inoffensive;
though his open conviction that his fellow-travelers were mother and
daughter caused Juliette infinite anguish and disquiet of mind.
"With regard to His Majesty the French Emperor, I was brought into
contact with him unexpectedly," said the drab man. "You can picture
me, young lady, in the enjoyment of my well-earned holiday,
strolling, as one may say, from village to village, enjoying the
fresh air and the scenery, such a change after five-and-twenty years
of Camberwell, the Courts of Law, and Furnival's Inn."
Adelaide complained:
"He bores me horribly, this red-nosed imbecile! Cannot he answer the
question? What is he saying now?"
The drab man prattled on:
"For from the cradle, as one might say, I have been the vassal and
slave of Business, having been sent by my father to a Mercantile and
Legal Training College at Bromersham when only seven years old. At
fifteen I was office-boy and under-clerk in the old gentleman's
office. Believed in beginning at the bottom of the ladder, you see!
At eighteen, articled--again to the old gentleman! He being a
solicitor and attorney with a good old-fashioned family practice, and
naturally being desirous to see his son a full-blown partner in the
Firm!..."
He sighed and shook his head sentimentally.
"No use to tell the old gentleman I had been born with other
ambitions. That Art had a fascination, and the voice of Music
called.... I used up reams of office wove-note in making pen-and-ink
designs for illustrations to the books I'd read on the sly, and the
plays I'd seen on the quiet.... I'd render popular airs on the
mouth-organ to the admiration of all the other clerks. 'Now, Mr.
William, let's have a Musical Selection!' they'd say whenever the old
gentleman popped out.... I saved up my money to pay for a course of
tuition in Drawing from the Round and Life Model at a Night School of
Art in Soho. But I never got time. The old gentleman must have been
more knowing than I suspected, for he always managed to keep my nose
to the grindstone. Will you believe that I bought this box, and this
easel, and the violin twenty years ago--and never got a chance to use
'em, until now? To such a degree was my liberty hectored over, and
the talents that might have made me the center of a circle of
admirers, blighted by the Senior Partner and Head of the Firm...."
Adelaide, growing more restive, interrupted:
"Does this fatuous person who talks so greatly afford any
information, or does he not?"
"--Yet I could show you a sketch of the Roman Aqueduct at Ars that
would surprise you," went on the drab man, addressing Juliette,
"regarded as emanating from the pencil of a simple amatoor. Also I
could touch off a French chansong on the violin in a style equally
creditable and gratifying--and justifying my retirement from Business
in the interests of Music and Art. But----"
He took out a plaid silk handkerchief and wiped his moist eyes with
it, and wagged the grizzled head that wore the absurd blue-ribboned
straw hat in a maudlin, despondent way.
"But just as I'd settled to the roving life, tramping from inn to inn
and finding 'em comfortable, the country cooking tasty, and the
country vintages nice--War breaks out and spoils everything! Another
week, and I should have bought a Bit of Ground!"
He mopped his eyes and snuffled a little, and put away the
handkerchief.
"It was going cheap--the Chatto and farm and wine-plant and
vineyards. I had a good look at the title-deeds--everything was in
order there, even to a professional eye.... All I had to do was to
put down the money. I'd have painted and fiddled, made wine and
drunk it--sold what I didn't drink, and branded the vintages:
'Château Musty, Dry, Sparkling ... Château Musty, Special Still.' ...
Château Musty, sweet, preferred by ladies.... Stop, though! It
wouldn't have been that name! My name is Furnival! Excuse me,
Mam'selle, but I think your lady-mother is making some remark to you.
At least she impresses me with that idea."
"Madame is greatly desirous of intelligence with respect to the
Emperor," Juliette explained. The talkative traveler looked
aggrieved:
"Pray tell the lady I am coming to him presently. After the War
broke out--Lord! what a hurrying and scurrying of soldiers....
Bugles blowing your head off at four o'clock in the morning--all the
wagons taken to carry baggage--all the farm-horses whipped off to
drag cannon ... no more sensible business done anywhere!... And when
the shooting began, it was a scandal! Positively perilous to
visitors! Why, I've been absolutely in danger of my life!..."
Adelaide's foot tapped impatiently on the floor of the wagonette.
Her fine eyes shot forth indignant sparks. She bit her crimson lips.
The drab Englishman regarded her mildly, commenting:
"If I wasn't accustomed by this time to French ways and manners, I
should take it that your mamma had a temper of her own. But it's the
national method of over-working the features.... Not that your
Emperor is given to too much expression. Heavy, he struck me as, and
puffily low-spirited! And even a worse sleeper than myself, if you
ask me! For I spent the night in a room over His Majesty's, the
night he stopped in the inn at Gravelotte, and didn't shut my eyes
for an instant with his groanings and his moanings and his tramp ings
to and fro...."
He wagged his head, and pursued with solemnity:
"In the morning I peeped out of the window and saw him drive off.
All sorts of French Nobs bowing and scraping.... Orders and Stars
and shiny carriages, and silver-mounted harness on prancing bays....
Yet if he had asked me, I wouldn't have changed places. Thinks I,
'How much better to be Me, plain William Furnival, an honest English
Commoner, than an Emperor whose crime-stained conscience keeps him
broad awake o' nights!'"
Said Juliette, her eyes blue fire, two angry roses in her usually
pale cheeks:
"But you, Monsieur--who also sleep badly--is that because you have
crime upon your soul?"
"What have you said to this creature that has frightened him?"
Adelaide demanded, as the drab traveler's jaw dropped, and his red
nose glowed brilliantly in a visage of dingy-white.
Juliette translated. Said Madame, regarding the perturbed Mr.
Furnival, with a glance of superb indifference:
"He is a runaway husband of some Englishwoman who keeps a _pension_.
Or the absconding clerk of a London notary."
Whatever he may or may not have been, he fell silent after the little
passage here recorded. At Bazeilles, where the driver was paid, and
the wagonette dismissed, though he entered the same train of vilely
dirty third-class carriages and goods-trucks, he traveled in a
compartment remote from that selected by his companions of the drive.
At Verdun they learned that the railway bridge below Metz had been
blown up by M. de Bazaine's Engineers, the line beyond being in
Prussian hands.... And at this point the drab gentleman got out,
hugging his violin-case, bag, and artist's fit-out. Juliette saw him
swallowed up in a roaring crowd of mobilists from the Ardennes, who
rushed upon and instantly crammed solid every corner of the train.
A good-looking officer, entering with the deluge, apologized to the
ladies in a well-bred, easy way:
"It is inconvenient, Mesdames, but at the same time necessary.... I
take these little ones to Châlons to be incorporated in the New Army
of MacMahon.... They are rough, as you perceive, and very few are
yet in uniform. But blue cloth and red cloth are less important than
chassepots, and they have them and can use them--these little ones of
mine! And when they receive orders to march north and give a helping
hand to M. de Bazaine--I prophesy that, boots or no boots, they will
keep up with the best!"
Adelaide smiled witchingly on the speaker, plied the archery of her
fine eyes, evoking admiring glances from the officer and his uncouth,
half-clad, half-trained mobilists. She said she had no doubt of the
courage of these sons of Western France. She had heard, she added,
that the Emperor was at Châlons, but that H.I.M. intended to resort
to Paris, having surrendered to another the _bâton_ of supreme
command.
"'To Paris'!" The officer shrugged. "Alas! at such a crisis in the
affairs of the nation, Paris would be the last shelter for the French
Emperor. It is no longer a secret that the Emperor has already left
Châlons with the Grand Headquarters Staff and the First Corps of the
Army of MacMahon.... Rheims is the destination--that intelligence is
also public property...."
"And the Prince?" Adelaide asked eagerly.
"Monseigneur the Prince Imperial left for Rheims with the Emperor,
but will be sent on from there to Rethel, with his carriages, and an
escort of Imperial Body Guards under Colonel Watrin. His three
_aides-de-camp_, Colonel Lamey, Colonel Comte Clary, and Commandant
Duperré of the battleship _Le Taureau_, attend him. Comte d'Aure is
equerry now instead of old Bachon!... Pardon, Madame?... You
descend here...? But I thought you were traveling to Châlons!...
Permit me to open the carriage door!"
And the prattling officer, who had promised himself a charming
_vis-à-vis_ upon the journey, must needs leap out upon the platform,
arrest the guard's arm in the act of signaling the start....
Adelaide was handed down.... Juliette followed with an avalanche of
Madame's traveling bags and parcels ... a discontented porter was
called upon to rescue her trunks and _portmanteaux_ from the van....
The signal fell, the train steamed out of the station. Juliette,
white and fagged, sitting on an up-piled luggage truck, was asked by
Adelaide:
"Where do you think we are going now, Mademoiselle?"
Came the weary answer:
"I do not know, Madame.... First, it was to Metz, and then to
Châlons. Now, it may be to Rheims, as the Emperor is there."
Adelaide returned tormentingly:
"But we are not going to Rheims."
A thrill passed through Juliette.
"My father is not a prisoner, then?"
"My faith!" said Adelaide, shrugging with ostentatious indifference.
"He is as he was yesterday. But all the same, my little one, we do
not go to Rheims, but to Rethel.... Tell me--you have brought with
you a walking-costume that is tolerable? Something more becoming
than this lugubrious garment you have on!"
Juliette replied in the negative. Adelaide's look was coldly
scornful as she scrutinized the little figure before her. Could this
really be her daughter, this pale, peaked, elfish thing?...
What sloping shoulders, what tragic, haunted eyes, what a long upper
lip, what lack of vivacity and elegance.... Her grandmother--that
well-loathed woman, lived again in de Bayard's child.
Monseigneur the Prince Imperial must have curious taste in feminine
beauty to have been smitten with this stiff little white-faced
mannequin. Whom de Bayard worshiped ... whom even Straz had
admired.... What were his words ... "_A little Queen of Diamonds,
fresh as a rosebud!_" Grand Dieu!... how comical! "_A rare
jewel.... A chic type.... A pocket edition of Psyche, before that
little affair with Cupid._"
Well, Cupid waited at Rethel.... Her red lips writhed with the
jeering laughter she stifled. Two devils of mockery looked through
the windows of her eyes. And with the swift understanding of this
stranger that came of their close, intimate relationship, Juliette
encountering that look, said mentally:
"She hates me! My mother hates me! For that reason she sought me
out and told me that false tale.... Because of that she lured me
away with her from Brussels! Because of that she has planned to do
something.... Oh, my father, if only you knew!..."