“Poor Monsieur Maurice!” I cried. “He has coughed so all the Winter; and he
was longing for the Spring! We were to have gathered primroses in the woods
when the warm days came back again--and--and--and I suppose the King
doesn't mean that I am not to speak to him any more!”
My sobs choked me, and I could say no more.
My father took me on his knee, and tried to comfort me.
“Don't cry, my little Gretchen,” he said tenderly; “don't cry! Tears can
help neither the prisoner nor thee.”
“But I may go to him all the same, father?” I pleaded.
“By my sword, I don't know,” stammered my father. “If it were a breach of
orders ... and yet for a baby like thee ... thou'rt no more than a mouse
about the room, after all!”
“I have read of a poor prisoner who broke his heart because the gaoler
killed a spider he loved,” said I, through my tears.
My father's features relaxed into a smile.
“But do you flatter yourself that Monsieur Maurice loves my little Mädchen
as much as that poor prisoner loved his spider?” he said, taking me by the
ear.
“Of course he does--and a hundred thousand times better!” I exclaimed, not
without a touch of indignation.
My father laughed outright.
“Thunder and Mars!” said he, “is the case so serious? Then Monsieur
Maurice, I suppose, must be allowed sometimes to see his little pet
spider.”
He took me up himself next morning to the prisoner's room, and then for the
first time I found a sentry in occupation of the corridor. He grounded his
musket and saluted as we passed.
“I bring you a visitor, Monsieur Maurice,” said my father.
He was leaning over the fire in a moody attitude when we went in, with his
arms on the chimney-piece, but turned at the first sound of my father's
voice.
“Colonel Bernhard,” he said, with a look of glad surprise, “this is kind,
I--I had scarcely dared to hope”....
He said no more, but took me by both hands, and kissed me on the forehead.
“I trust I'm not doing wrong,” said my father gruffly. “I hope it's not a
breach of orders.”
“I am sure it is not,” replied Monsieur Maurice, still holding my hands.
“Were your instructions twice as strict, they could not be supposed to
apply to this little maiden.”
“They are strict enough, Monsieur Maurice,” said my father, drily.
A faint flush rose to the prisoner's cheek.
“I know it,” he said. “And they are as unnecessary as they are strict. I
had given you my parole, Colonel Bernhard.”
My father pulled at his moustache, and looked uncomfortable.
“I'm sure you would have kept it, Monsieur Maurice,” he said.
Monsieur Maurice bowed.
“I wish it, however, to be distinctly understood,” he said, “that I
withdrew that parole from the moment when a sentry was stationed at my
door.”
“Naturally--naturally.”
“And, for my papers”....
“I wish to heaven they had said nothing about them!” interrupted my father,
impatiently.
“Thanks. 'Tis a petty tyranny; but it cannot be helped. Since, however,
you are instructed to seize them, here they are. They contain neither
political nor private matter--as you will see.”
“I shall see nothing of the kind, Monsieur Maurice,” said my father. “I
would not read a line of them for a marshal's bâton. The King must make a
gaoler of me, if it so pleases him; but not a spy. I shall seal up the
papers and send them to Berlin.”
“And I shall never see my manuscript again!” said Monsieur Maurice, with a
sigh. “Well--it was my first attempt at authorship--perhaps, my last--and
there is an end to it!”
My father ground some new and tremendous oath between his teeth.
“I hate to take it, Monsieur Maurice,” he said. “'Tis an odious office.”
“The office alone is yours, Colonel Bernhard,” said the prisoner, with all
a Frenchman's grace. “The odium rests with those who impose it on you.”
Hereupon they exchanged formal salutations; and my father, having warned me
not to be late for our mid-day meal, put the papers in his pocket, and left
me to take my daily French lesson.
7
The Winter lingered long, but the Spring came at last in a burst of
sunshine. The grey mists were rent away, as if by magic. The cold hues
vanished from the landscape. The earth became all freshness; the air all
warmth; the sky all light. The hedgerows caught a tint of tender green.
The crocuses came up in a single night. The woods which till now had
remained bare and brown, flushed suddenly, as if the coming Summer were
imprisoned in their glowing buds. The birds began to try their little
voices here and there. Never once, in all the years that have gone by
since then, have I seen so startling a transition. It was as if the Prince
in the dear old fairy tale had just kissed the Sleeping Beauty, and all
that enchanted world had sprung into life at the meeting of their lips.
But the Spring, with its sudden beauty and brightness, seems to have no
charm for Monsieur Maurice. He has permission to walk in the grounds twice
a week--with a sentry at his heels; but of that permission he sternly
refuses to take advantage. It was not wonderful that he preferred his
fireside and his books, while the sleet, and snow, and bitter east winds
lasted; but it seems too cruel that he should stay there now, cutting
himself off from all the warmth and sweetness of the opening season. In
vain I come to him with my hands full of dewy crocuses. In vain I hang
about him, pleading for just a turn or two on the terrace where the
sunshine falls hottest. He shakes his head, and is immoveable.
“No, petite,” he says. “Not to-day.”
“That is just what you said yesterday, Monsieur Maurice.”
“And it is just what I shall say to-morrow, Gretchen, if you ask me again.”
“But you won't stay in for ever, Monsieur Maurice!”
“Nay--'for ever' is a big word, little Gretchen.”
“I don't believe you know how brightly the sun is shining!” I say
coaxingly. “Just come to the window, and see.”
Unwillingly enough, he lets himself be dragged across the room--unwillingly
he looks out upon the glittering slopes and budding avenues beyond.
“Yes, yes--I see it,” he replies with an impatient sigh; “but the shadow of
that fellow in the corridor would hide the brightest sun that ever shone! I
am not a galley-slave, that I should walk about with a garde-chiourme
behind me.”
“What do you mean, Monsieur Maurice?” I ask, startled by his unusual
vehemence.
“I mean that I go free, petite--or not at all.”
“Then--then you will fall ill!” I falter, amid fast-gathering tears.
“No, no--not I, Gretchen. What can have put that idea into your wise little
head?”
“It was papa, Monsieur Maurice ... he said you were”....
Then, thinking suddenly how pale and wasted he had become of late, I
hesitated.
“He said I was--What?”
“I--I don't like to tell!”
“But if I insist on being told? Come, Gretchen, I must know what Colonel
Bernhard said.”
“He said it was wrong to stay in like this week after week, and month after
month. He--he said you were killing yourself by inches, Monsieur Maurice.”
Monsieur Maurice laughed a short bitter laugh.
“Killing myself!” he repeated. “Well, I hope not; for weary as I am of it,
I would sooner go on bearing the burden of life than do my enemies the
favour of dying out of their way.”
The words, the look, the accent made me tremble. I never forgot them.
How could I forget that Monsieur Maurice had enemies--enemies who longed
for his death?
So the first blush of early Spring went by; and the crocuses lived their
little life and passed away, and the primroses came in their turn,
yellowing every shady nook in the scented woods; and the larches put on
their crimson tassels, and the laburnum its mantle of golden fringe, and
the almond-tree burst into a leafless bloom of pink--and still Monsieur
Maurice, adhering to his resolve, refused to stir one step beyond the
threshold of his rooms.
Sad and monotonous now to the last degree, his life dragged heavily on. He
wrote no more. He read, or seemed to read, nearly the whole day through;
but I often observed that his eyes ceased travelling along the lines, and
that sometimes, for an hour and more together, he never turned a page.
“My little Gretchen,” he said to me one day, “you are too much in these
close rooms with me, and too little in the open air and sunshine.”
“I had rather be here, Monsieur Maurice,” I replied.
“But it is not good for you. You are losing all your roses.”
“I don't think it is good for me to be out when you are always indoors,” I
said, simply. “I don't care to run about, and--and I don't enjoy it.”
He looked at me--opened his lips as if about to speak--then checked
himself; walked to the window; and looked out silently.