But she certainly had not planned to throw the carnation. The
missile hurled, she had been seized with paralyzing fright. The
shade of her grandmother seemed to rise, appalling in its shocked
propriety. One could almost hear her saying: "_My unhappy child, you
have become more like your mother than I could have believed, had I
not seen!..._"
Now in sheer desperation she mocked on, dissembling her terror.
"What is the matter? Why are you so dull and _distrait_? Are you
tired of living shut up in a garden? Answer me, I pray you,
Monsieur!"
He looked at her, and his cleft chin squared itself, and his broad
red eyebrows lowered into a line of determination. He said doggedly:
"The happiest time of my life has been spent shut up in this garden!
I believe you know that very well!"
She burst into silver laughter and cried to him teasingly:
"But you did not look at all happy when I peeped at you in the night
from my window. See! Thus, with the hands miles deep in the
pockets, and the shoulders elevated to the tips of the ears!"
She jumped up and mimicked the slouching gait of the midnight
cogitator, brilliantly and with fidelity, parading between the dinner
table and the long windows that opened toward the lawn. He
recognized himself, and reddened, while he laughed with vexation. He
had never before seen her in this mood of Puck-like mischief. He had
yet to become acquainted with another phase of Juliette.
"Did you learn to act so well at your Convent?" he asked her, and she
answered with sudden gravity:
"Acting can never be learned, Monsieur.... It is a gift, of the good
angels or the bad ones, which can be brought to perfection by use.
To 'make' an artist of the stage is not possible. He or she is born
... and that is all I know...." She added: "When I make my
appearance at the Théâtre Français, they shall send you a _billet de
faveur_. Then you shall see acting. I promise you!"
She was more like Queen Titania than ever as she held up her fairy
finger, and smiled and sparkled at the bewildered young man.
"For example, if MM. les Directeurs assign to me the part of a
grandmother of sixty, do you think I shall put on wrinkles with
paint? ... _Non, merci_! The true artist says to herself, '_I am
old!_' and she is old.... '_I am ugly!_' and she becomes hideous.
'_I am wicked!_' See here!... Is this a face to regard with love,
Monsieur?"
The last sentence had been croaked, rather than spoken. No Japanese
mask of a witch could well have been more furrowed, puckered,
scowling, or malignant than the face that had been Titania's a moment
back. Breagh called out in protest, half angry, half amused, wholly
fascinated; and Oberon's bright Queen came back again to say:
"Or I can be stupid, very stupid--if that will please you!...
Gentlemen sometimes admire stupid girls.... We had one at the
Convent--your countrywoman and a great heiress. Miss Smizz--the
daughter of Smizz and Co., Tea Merchants, of Mincing Lane."
She banished all expression save a smile of absolute fatuity, puffed
out her cheeks, narrowed her eyelids, permitting her eyes to twinkle
through the merest slits. She giggled inanely, and said, combining
the consonantal thickness of catarrh with the gobbling of a
hen-turkey...
"All the eggstras.... Whad does expedse battere whed you've got a
Forchud to fall bag od? Besides, Ba says I bust barry iddo the
Beerage, ad accoblishbeds are dod usually expegded of a doblebad's
wife!"
She added, in her own voice, summarily banishing Miss Smith, her
expectations, and her splutter:
"Do not be vexed with me, Monsieur Breagh, I beg of you!... I am
perhaps a little excited. There is something strange in the air....
I have a humming in my ears as though great crowds of people were
talking very softly.... What is it?" she asked in bewilderment,
pressing the fine points of her small fingers into her temples.
"What is the matter with me to-night?..."
Then P. C. Breagh spoke out, in a tone that hurled a challenge to
Destiny:
"There is nothing the matter with you!... That is the glory of it!
You were ill, and now you are well.... You can laugh again, and
sleep again, and cook a dinner and help to eat it.... You have made
capital use of your time!... For we came here on the twenty-first of
August, and this is the fifth of October. We have been shut up in a
garden, as you say yourself, for more than six weeks!..."
"Can it be possible?"
She looked at him intently and realized his earnestness. He answered
with a glow of pride in his work:
"Fact! And in all the time you have never seen a newspaper or asked
a question about the War. Even when you have heard the great guns
firing from the forts below Paris--Issy and Vanves and Montrouge and
the rest--you never said a word that showed you noticed.... Do you
know why?..."
His voice wavered exultantly. She looked at him and slightly shook
her head.
"No!..."
"Because I willed you to. By George! there are times when I believe
that even yet I'd make a doctor. Mental suggestion was the line I
took with you...." He rubbed his hands. "Not that I could have done
anything without the help of Madame Potier--first-class little
woman!--regular brick that she is!... You see, your brain had sucked
up all the trouble it was capable of holding. You wanted rest....
Well, you've had it, thank God! Night after night I've walked up and
down, backward and forward, on the lawn, just as you saw me doing
last night, saying: 'Sleep! Forget! You have my orders to!"
The tone of mastery thrilled, even while the muscles of her mouth
twitched with repressed laughter. He was beautiful in her eyes as he
leaned forward smiling at her. She said, repressing her tears, and
concealing her admiration:
"But last night you did not say 'Sleep!' but something else,
Monsieur...."
There was a swift change in him, telling her that for once he was not
listening. His eyes were alert, his ear eagerly drank in a sound
composed of many sounds that grew louder as they came more near. Now
the whole room was full of the trampling of horses and the fainter
clink of spur and scabbard and bridle.... Cavalry were passing up
one of the great avenues south of the Rue de Provence--not the Avenue
of St. Cloud--probably the Rue des Chantiers--there was a distant
roar of cheers.... Then in one little oasis of silence came the
rolling of carriages, and then the walls shivered with the roaring of
lusty lungs:
"_Hoch der König! Hoch der Kronprinz!_"--and the shouts were drowned
in a great burst of martial music, and the trampling of men and
horses, mingled with the beat of drums and the blare of trumpets,
rolled on tumultuously again.
The blood ebbed from Juliette's cheeks and lips to her heart as she
listened. Then the double doors of the dining room were butted open
with the corner of a wooden coffee tray, and Madame Potier appeared
with a steaming pot and two cups. She was pale round the hectic
patches that blazed in her thin face. Her black eyes leaped to
Breagh's with an eager question in them ... "_Have you told her?_"
... and he answered with an almost imperceptible shake of the head.
Then before either of them knew, Juliette had risen. She went to the
little woman and kissed her on the cheek. She said, taking one of
the gnarled work-worn hands in one of hers and holding out the other
to Carolan:
"Dear friends, to whom I owe so much, tell me now what in your great
compassion you have kept from me. For I think the time has come when
I must hear!"
The time had come, indeed, with the ring of Prussian cavalry hoofs
upon the ancient cobblestones, and the roll of the carriages that
came with them. And before either of those the girl addressed could
speak in answer, the resonant sound of a Prussian trumpet pierced
their silence:
"_Clear the way! Clear the way! Here comes the King!_"
And followed a cry, pitiful as the wail of a hare in a gin trap:
"Those are Prussians!" ... and another scream, shrill and thin and
clear.... Then a crash!... Madame Potier had dropped her coffee
tray.... Before the hot steam of the spilled liquid rose up from the
Tessier carpet, the small hand Breagh had clasped was suddenly,
violently snatched from him. He sprang to his feet, but Madame
Potier had been quicker than he. She had caught the girl round the
waist, and now wrestled with her.... The silent, desperate strife
was horrible. The slender black-clad figure writhed for freedom like
a snake.... Then all at once the life seemed to go out of it....
They carried her to the sofa and laid her down....
"Monsieur should have told her!" Madame Potier said angrily. "Why
leave it to the Prussians to break the news?..." Tears were running
down her cheeks as she unfastened the girl's dress, and rubbed the
limp hands, while Breagh dropped Cognac between the little teeth, a
drop or two at a time.
And presently Juliette was looking at them, not wildly, and Madame
Potier was answering: "It was nothing!... Madame was startled into
an attack of faintness when I was so clumsy as to drop the coffee
tray. Now I shall go and get more, and Monsieur will talk quietly to
Madame as she lies there. She must hear everything that we have kept
from her.... Yes, yes! that is quite understood!"
And she clumped away, with a backward glance of disdain directed at
the masculine boggler, and Breagh drew a chair near the sofa where
his wan Infanta lay, and sat down and told her all.
Red sunset flooded the autumn garden as he talked. Not a leaf
stirred, hardly a bird uttered a nooning note. But the strange sound
that had haunted not only the ears of Juliette went on incessantly.
It was the sighing and whispering and muttering of the vast crowds
that had filled the Rue des Chantiers behind the lines of troops to
witness the entrance of the conquerors, and now gorged the great
Place of the Prefecture (above whose entrance flaunted the standard
of the Hohenzollerns)--filled the upper end of the Avenue de
Paris--and surged over the vast expanse of the Place d'Armes, beating
in black and restless human waves against the lofty blue and golden
railings of the Royal Château, above whose golden dome floated the
black-and-white Prussian Standard and the white Flag with the red
Geneva Cross.
We know what he had to tell her.... The false step of MacMahon, the
unavailing attempt of Bazaine to break out of Metz, the conflict on
the Meuse, ending in defeat and the loss of 7,000 prisoners with guns
and transport. The flight and escape of the Emperor to the fortress
city of Sedan.... The battle between the ill-led, unfed, dispirited
French forces and the Three Armies. The taking of 20,000 French
prisoners, the wound of MacMahon, leading to his resignation of the
chief command into the hands of General Wimpffen, summoned from his
command in Algeria in time to capitulate. The pitiable surrender of
the Emperor's sword to the King of Prussia. His transport into
Belgium as a prisoner of War. The flight of the Empress from the
Tuileries. The formation at Paris of the New Government of National
Defense. The entry of the King of Prussia into Rheims, and the
arrival of the First and Third Armies in force before Paris. The
fight upon the heights of Châtillon--the defeat of Ducrot by a
Bavarian Division--the German advance upon Nemours and Pitiviers--the
investment of the capital, now encircled with an iron ring.
For three days the Crown Prince had been established with his Staff
at the Prefecture. This day had seen the Great Headquarters of the
Prussian King removed to Versailles, from Baron Rothschild's Castle
of Ferrières....
Truly it had been time to break the news to Juliette. She lay still
during the recital, only quivering now and then. She drank the
coffee when Madame Potier brought it, and thanked the faithful soul
affectionately. When the gas lamps were lighted, and the shutters
shut, she bade P. C. Breagh good night in a faint whisper, and gave
him both hands, saying with a liquid glance:
"Thank you, my friend!..."
He whispered as he kissed the little fingers:
"You will sleep to-night, will you not?..."
And she nodded in assent. But when he had gone to his bed at the
cottage, the old terrible thoughts came crowding back.
That electrifying blast of glorious sound from the silver instrument
of the Great Staff trumpeter had wakened and brought them like
hornets buzzing and stinging about her ears.... She longed for her
friend, but he had departed. And the loneliness was too terrible to
bear.
She caught up a little white shawl that she had brought with her, and
often wore when walking in the garden upon chilly evenings, or going
to Mass in the early mornings, before the sunshine had warmed the
air. One turn of the wrist draped it faultlessly about her head and
body. Thus shielded, she went into the hall, and laid her hand upon
the lock of the door.
As she did so, cavalry horses ridden at a sharp trot came clattering
down the cobbled street. They were pulled up outside the Tessier
mansion. There was an imperious tug at the gate bell. She waited
for the opening of the kitchen door.
Then she heard it unlocked, and the clatter of Madame Potier's clogs
upon the terrace. _Klop--klop--klop!_ they crossed the leads,
descended the three steps that led to the gravel walk, and went on to
the iron gate. It was locked, as always, in the absence of Madame
Tessier. Presently the keys clashed, the lock scrooped back from the
mortise, and the hinges uttered a protesting cry....
Then the harsh tones of a man, speaking French with a frightful
German accent, turned the listening girl to ice. There was an
exclamation from Madame Potier, a rejoinder in the stranger's
gutturals. A horse trampled. The rough voice of the rider swore at
the brute in German. Then there was a clatter of boots upon the
pavement, with a great clinking of spurs and scabbard, and the
now-dismounted rider said in his infamous French jargon:
"Go you before and open! His Excellency is coming in!"
Terrified, Madame Potier obeyed ... scuttling across the terrace like
a frightened beetle. Juliette, paralyzed with horror, heard the
heavy spurred footsteps crunch and jingle up the gravel walk and
ascend the steps to the hall door. Almost directly, as little Madame
Potier darted panting up the stairs from the kitchen, the hall
doorbell clanged a deafening peal.
A carriage had rolled down the Rue de Provence, and stopped before
the smaller gate, ere the doorbell's iron echoes had ceased shouting
through the house of the Tessiers. There were other voices at the
gate, other footsteps upon the gravel.... They mounted the steps. A
resonant, unforgotten voice said to the ringer in German:
"The Herr Intendant General may spare himself the trouble.... I will
interview the people of the house myself!"
The person addressed replied in the harsh tones that had terrified
Madame Potier:
"But supposing Your Excellency be met with some insolence?..."
The resonant voice answered with a smile in it: "In that case, Herr
Intendant General, my Excellency will take the risk. There are only
women in the house, and should they offer violence, I have Count
Hatzfeldt and Count Bismarck-Böhlen here!..."
There was a laugh--gay, mellow, and careless--and a young man's voice
answered:
"Your Excellency may safely rely on our protection!"
There was another laugh. Under cover of it, Madame Potier hissed
into the head folds of the white shawl:
"They have quartered the Prussian Chancellor and the Foreign Office
upon us. That is what the sacred brute in the big boots and
spectacles shouted, when I went down to open the front gate.... What
is the Prussian Foreign Office?"
From the white folds of the shawl a sibilant whisper hissed at her:
"It is a man. They call him Count Bismarck. Now if you love me, be
quiet, and watch and listen. He shall ring the bell with his own
hand.... Then I open the door!..."
"But, Madame!..." whispered the distracted caretaker.
No verbal answer.... The white shawl pulled closer, shrouding round
the slender form and girlish features. A little hand, firm and
unfaltering, ready upon the latch of the door.
Poor Potier whimpered....
"Madame Charles.... My child! my treasure! for the love of Christ
and Mary!... Tell me what you are going to do!"
The bell rang again, with a new and imperious hand upon it. She well
knew whose was the hand. And the snow-water in her veins became
liquid fire. She threw open the hall door and stepped back to admit
the Man of Iron.
He stood upon the doorsteps like the house's master, a huge
dominating figure, dressed as she had seen him on the battlefield of
Gravelotte, in his high black, pewter-buttoned military frock and
white peaked Cuirassier cap, riding cords, and great black jack-boots
with long steel spurs. He was powdered with dust as a man newly come
off a journey, though his boots were clean, for he had driven in a
carriage from Ferriéres. Upon the step below him stood Count
Hatzfeldt, his First Secretary, a man of thirty, tall,
broad-shouldered, and _débonnaire_, wearing, as did Bismarck-Böhlen,
the semi-military Foreign Office undress. The lean trap-jawed
personage in a dark uniform with velvet facings, whom we must
recognize as the Intendant General, waited in the background, glaring
through his spectacles at the tardy portress in the white shawl, and
the peaked face and flaring black eyes of little Madame Potier, who
stood beside her mistress as ready to spit and scratch for her sake
as a pussy cat to defend its young.
There was no pause. The dominating figure stepped into the hall.
His great Cuirassier sword clanked on the threshold. He touched the
peak of his cap with his bare right hand, and said, looking down from
his great height upon the women:
"This is the house of the Famille Tessier?"
One of the women, who was swaddled in a white shawl, dropped him a
stiff little middle-class reverence. Behind her, the other bobbed a
serving woman's curtsy. He went on, addressing White Shawl as the
superior:
"This house, Madame, has been selected as the official residence of
the Prussian Foreign Office. We shall pay you an adequate sum for
our accommodation, and remain here some weeks ... possibly three."
He glanced at Hatzfeldt, and said with a flicker of sardonic humor
playing in his heavy blue eyes, and about the corners of the deeply
cut mouth that was masked by the heavy iron-gray mustache:
"Though the actual duration of the visit depends--not upon
ourselves--but upon the decision of the United German Powers, and the
position which they shall decide to take up with regard to Conditions
of Peace. We are not the invited guests of France, whose stay can be
cut short because our manners do not prepossess our hostess. We came
because we thought it advisable ... we will go when it is convenient
to depart!"
"If Jules Faure could hear Your Excellency!..." said Bismarck-Böhlen,
grinning.
"He would cast up his fine eyes more tragically than he did at
Ferrières," said Hatzfeldt, "when the three words, '_Forfeiture of
Territory_,' drew from them so many patriotic tears...."
"He is a weeper," said the Minister, pulling off his left glove, "and
Wimpffen was a posturer, with his '_Moi, soldat de l'Armée
Français_'--and the Duke of FitzJames is a manufacturer of
bugaboos.... Our German caricaturists should draw him as a pavement
artist, holding the hat beside a horrible red-and-yellow chalk
picture of our atrocious cruelties in Bazeilles."