do? If he stayed at Morteyn he stood a good chance of hanging. He
could not leave his aunt and uncle, nor could he tell them, for
the two old people would fall sick with the anxiety. And yet, if
he stayed at Morteyn, and the Germans came, it might compromise
the whole household and bring destruction to Château and park. He
had not thought of that before, but now he remembered also
another German rule, inflexible, unvarying. It was this, that in
a town or village where the inhabitants resisted by force or
injured any German soldier, the village should be burned and the
provisions and stock confiscated for the use of King Wilhelm's
army.
Shocked at his own thoughtlessness, he sprang to his feet and
walked hastily to the terrace. Nothing was to be seen on the
road, nor yet in the meadows beyond. Up-stairs he heard
Lorraine's voice, and his aunt's voice, too. Sometimes they
laughed a little in low tones, and he even caught the rustle of
stiff silken embroidery against the window-sill.
His mind was made up in an instant; his coolness returned as the
colour returns to a pale cheek. The Uhlans had probably not seen
him; if they had, it made little difference, for even the picquet
that had chased him could not have recognized him at that
distance. Then, again, in a whole regiment it was not likely that
the three horsemen who had peeped at Morteyn through the
road-gate could have been part of that same cursed picquet. No,
the thing to avoid was personal contact with any of the 11th
Uhlans. This would be a matter of simple prudence; outside of
that he had nothing to fear from the Prussian army. Whenever he
saw the schapskas and lances he would be cautious; when these
lances were pennoned with black and white, and when the schapskas
and schabraques were edged with yellow, he would keep out of the
way altogether. It shamed him terribly to think of his momentary
panic; he cursed himself for a coward, and dug his clenched fists
into both pockets. But even as he stood there, withering himself
with self-scorn, he could not help hoping that his aunt and uncle
would find it convenient to go to Paris soon. That would leave
him free to take his own chances by remaining, to be near
Lorraine. For it did not occur to him that he might leave Morteyn
as long as Lorraine stayed.
It was late in the afternoon when he lighted a pipe and walked
out to the road, where the smooth macadam no longer bore the
slightest trace of wheel or hoof, and nobody could have imagined
that part of an army corps had passed there the night before.
He felt lonely and a little despondent, and he walked along the
road to the shrine of Our Lady of Morteyn and sat down at her
naked stone feet. And as he sat there smoking, twirling his
shooting-cap in his hands, without the least warning a horseman,
advancing noiselessly across the turf, passed him, carbine on
thigh, busby glittering with the silver skull and crossbones.
Before he could straighten up another horseman passed, then
another, then three, then six, then a dozen, all sitting with
poised carbines, scarcely noticing him at all, the low, blazing
sun glittering on the silver skulls and crossed thigh-bones, deep
set in their sombre head-gear.
They were Black Hussars.
A distant movement came to his ear at the same time, the soft
shock of thousands of footfalls on the highway. He sprang up and
started forward, but a trooper warned him back with a stern
gesture, and he stood at the foot of the shrine, excited but
outwardly cool, listening to the approaching trample.
He knew what it meant now; these passing videttes were the dust
before the tempest, the prophecy of the deluge. For the sound on
the distant highway was the sound of infantry, and a host was on
the march, a host helmeted with steel and shod with steel, a vast
live bulk, gigantic, scaled in mail, whose limbs were human,
whose claws were lances and bayonets, whose red tongues were
flame-jets from a thousand cannon.
The German army had entered France and the province of Lorraine
was a name.
Like a hydra of three hideous heads the German army had pushed
its course over the Saar, over the Rhine, over the Lauter; it
sniffed at the frontier line; licked Wissembourg and the
Spicheren with flaming tongues, shuddered, coiled, and glided
over the boundary into the fair land of Lorraine. Then, like some
dreadful ringed monster, it cast off two segments, north, south,
and moved forward on its belly, while the two new segments,
already turned to living bodies, with heads and eyes and
contracted scales, struggled on alone, diverging to the north and
south, creeping, squirming, undulating, penetrating villages and
cities, stretching across hills and rivers, until all the land
was shining with shed scales and the sky reeked with the smoke of
flaming tongues. This was the invasion of France. Before it
Frossard recoiled, leaving the Spicheren a smoking hell; before
it Douay fell above the flames of Wissembourg; and yet Gravelotte
had not been, and Vionville was a peaceful name, and Mars-la-Tour
lay in the sunshine, mellow with harvests, gay with the scarlet
of the Garde Impériale.
On the hill-sides of Lorraine were letters of fire, writing for
all France to read, and every separate letter was a flaming
village. The Emperor read it and bent his weary steps towards
Châlons; Bazaine read it and said, "There is time;" MacMahon,
Canrobert, Leboeuf, Ladmirault read it and wondered idly what it
meant, till Vinoy turned a retreat into a triumph, and Gambetta,
flabby, pompous, unbalanced, bawled platitudes from the Palais
Bourbon.
In three splendid armies the tide of invasion set in; the Red
Prince tearing a bloody path to Metz, the Crown Prince riding
west by south, resting in Nancy, snubbing Toul, spreading out
into the valley of the Marne to build three monuments of bloody
bones--Saint-Marie, Amanvilliers, Saint-Privat.
Metz, crouching behind Saint-Quentin and Les Bottes, turned her
anxious eyes from Thionville to Saint-Julien and back to where
MacMahon's three rockets should have starred the sky; and what
she saw was the Red Prince riding like a fiery spectre from east
to west; what she saw was the spiked helmets of the Feldwache and
the sodded parapets of Longeau. Chained and naked, the beautiful
city crouched in the tempest that was to free her forever and
give her the life she scorned, the life more bitter than death.
Something of this ominous prophecy came to Jack, standing below
the shrine of Our Lady of Morteyn, listening to the on-coming
shock of German feet, as he watched the cavalry riding past in
the glow of the setting sun.
And now the infantry burst into view, a gloomy, solid column tramp,
tramp along the road--jägers, with their stiff fore-and-aft shakos,
dull-green tunics, and snuffy, red-striped trousers tucked into
dusty half-boots. On they came, on, on--would they never pass? At
last they were gone, somewhere into the flaming west, and now the
red sunbeams slanted on eagle crests and tipped the sea of polished
spiked helmets with fire, for a line regiment was coming, shaking
the earth with its rhythmical tramp--thud! thud! thud!
He looked across the fields to the hills beyond; more regiments,
dark masses moving against the sky, covered the landscape far as
the eye could reach; cavalry, too, were riding on the Saint-Avold
road through the woods; and beyond that, vague silhouettes of
moving wagons and horsemen, crawling out into the world of valleys
that stretched to Bar-le-Duc and Avricourt.
Oppressed, almost choked, as though a rising tide had washed
against his breast, ever mounting, seething, creeping, climbing,
he moved forward, waiting for a chance to cross the road and gain
the Château, where he could see the servants huddling over the
lawn, and the old vicomte, erect, motionless, on the terrace
beside his wife and Lorraine.
Already in the meadow behind him the first bivouac was pitched;
on the left stood a park of field artillery, ammunition-wagons in
the rear, and in front the long lines of picket-ropes to which
the horses were fastened, their harness piled on the grass behind
them.
The forge was alight, the farriers busy shoeing horses; the
armourer also bent beside his blazing forge, and the tinkling of
his hammer on small-arms rose musically above the dull shuffle of
leather-shod feet on the road.
To the right of the artillery, bisected as is the German fashion,
lay two halves of a battalion of infantry. In the foreground the
officers sat on their camp-chairs, smoking long faïence pipes; in
the rear, driven deep into the turf, the battalion flag stood
furled in its water-proof case, with the drum-major's halberd
beside it, and drums and band instruments around it on the grass.
Behind this lay a straight row of knapsacks, surrounded by the
rolled great-coats; ten paces to the rear another similar row;
between these two rows stood stacks of needle-guns, then another
row of knapsacks, another stack of needle-guns, stretching with
mathematical exactness to the grove of poplars by the river. A
cordon of sentinels surrounded the bivouac; there was a group of
soldiers around a beer-cart, another throng near the wine-cart.
All was quiet, orderly, and terribly sombre.
Near the poplar-trees the pioneers had dug their trenches and
lighted fires. Across the trenches, on poles of green wood, were
slung simmering camp-kettles.
He turned again towards the Château; a regiment of Saxon riders
was passing--had just passed--and he could get across now, for
the long line had ended and the last Prussian cuirassiers were
vanishing over the hill, straight into the blaze of the setting
sun.
As he entered the gate, behind him, from the meadow, an infantry
band crashed out into a splendid hymn--a hymn in praise of the
Most High God, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy.
And the soldiers' hoarse voices chimed in--
"Thou, who in the hollow of Thy Hand--"
And the deep drums boomed His praise.
XVII
THE KEEPERS OF THE HOUSE
The candles were lighted again in the ballroom, and again the
delicate, gilded canapés were covered with officers, great
stalwart fellows with blond hair and blue eyes, cuirassiers in
white tunics faced with red, cuirassiers in green and white,
black, yellow, and white, orange and white; dragoons in blue and
salmon colour, bearing the number "7" on their shoulder-straps,
dragoons of the Guard in blue and white, dragoons of the 2d
Regiment in black and blue. There were hussars too, dandies of
the 19th in their tasselled boots and crimson busby-crowns; Black
Hussars, bearing, even on their soft fatigue-caps, the emblems of
death, the skull and crossed thigh-bones. An Uhlan or two of the
2d Guard Regiment, trimmed with white and piped with scarlet,
dawdled around the salon, staring at gilded clock and candelabra,
or touching the grand-piano with hesitating but itching fingers.
Here and there officers of the general staff stood in consultation,
great, stiff, strapping men, faultlessly clothed in scarlet and
black, holding their spiked helmets carefully under their arms.
The pale blue of a Bavarian dotted the assembly at rare intervals,
some officer from Von Werder's army, attentive, shy, saying little
even when questioned. The huge Saxon officers, beaming with
good-nature, mixed amiably with the sour-visaged Brunswick men
and the stiff-necked Prussians.
In the long dining-room dinner was nearly ended. Facing each
other sat the old Vicomte and Madame de Morteyn, he pale,
dignified, exquisitely courteous, she equally pale but more
gentle in her sweet dignity. On the right sat the Red Prince,
stiff as steel, jerky in every movement, stern, forbidding,
unbending as much as his black Prussian blood would let him; on
the left sat a thin old man, bald as an ivory ball, pallid,
hairless of face, a frame of iron in a sombre, wrinkled tunic,
without a single decoration. His short hawk's nose, keen and fine
as a falcon's beak, quivered with every breath; his thin lips
rested one upon the other in stern, delicate curves. It was
Moltke, the master expert, come from Berlin to watch the wheels
turning in that vast complicated network of machinery which he
controlled with one fragile finger pressing the button.
There, too, was Von Zastrow, destined to make his error at
Gravelotte, there was Steinmetz, and the handsome Saxon prince,
and great, flabby August of Würtemberg, talking with Alvensleben,
dainty, pious, aristocratic. Behind, in the shadow, stood
Manstein and Goben, a grim, gray pair, with menacing eyes.
Perhaps they were thinking of the Red Prince's parting words at
the Spicheren: "Your duty is to march forward, always forward,
find the enemy, prevent his escape, and fight him wherever you
find him." To which the fastidious and devout Alvensleben
muttered, "In the name of God," and poor, brave Kamecke,
shuddering as he thought of his Westphalians and the cul-de-sac
where he had sent them on the 6th day of August, sighed and
looked out into deepening twilight.
Outside a Saxon infantry band began to play a masterpiece of
Beethoven. It seemed to be the signal for breaking up, and the
Red Prince, with abrupt deference, turned to Madame de Morteyn,
who gave the signal and rose. The Red Prince stepped back as the
old vicomte gave his wife a trembling arm. Then he bowed where he
stood, clothed in his tight, blood-red tunic, tall, powerful,
square-jawed, cruel-mouthed, and eyed like a wolf. But his
forehead was fine, broad, and benevolent, and his beard softened
the wicked curve of his lips.
Jack and Lorraine had again dined together in the little gilded
salon above, served by Lorraine's maid and wept over by the old
house-keeper.
The terrified servants scarcely dared to breathe as they crept
through the halls where, "like a flight of devils from hell" the
"Prussian ogres" had settled in the house. They came whimpering
to their mistress, but took courage at the calm, dignified
attitude of the old vicomte, and began to think that these
"children-eating Prussians" might perhaps forego their craving
for one evening. Therefore the chef did his best, encouraged by a
group of hysterical maids who had suddenly become keenly alive to
their own plumpness and possible desirability for ragoûts.
The old marquis himself received his unwelcome guests as though
he were receiving travelling strangers, to whom, now that they
were under his roof, faultless hospitality was due, nothing more,
merely the courtesy of a French nobleman to an uninvited guest.
Ah, but the steel was in his heart to the hilt. He, an old
soldier of the Malakoff, of Algeria, the brother in arms of
Changarnier, of Chanzy, he obliged to receive invaders--invaders
belonging to the same nation which had lined the streets of
Berlin so long ago, cringing, whining "Vive l'Empereur!" at the
crack of the thongs of Murat's horsemen!
Yet now it was that he showed himself the chivalrous soldier, the
old colonel of the old régime, the true beau-sabreur of an epoch
dead. And the Red Prince Frederick Charles knew it, and bowed low
as the vicomte left the dining-hall with his gentle, pale-faced
wife on his arm.
Jack, sitting after dinner with Lorraine in the bay-window above,
looked down upon the vast camp that covered the whole land, from
the hills to the Lisse, from the forest to the pastures above
Saint-Lys. There were no tents--the German army carried none.
Here and there a canvas-covered wagon glistened white in the
moonlight; the pale radiance fell on acres of stacked rifles, on
the brass rims of drums, and the spikes of the sentries' helmets.
Videttes, vaguely silhouetted on distant knolls, stood almost
motionless, save for the tossing of their horses' heads. Along
the river Lisse the infantry pickets lay, the sentinels,
patrolling their beats with brisk, firm steps, only pausing to
bring their heavy heels together, wheel squarely, and retrace
their steps, always alert and sturdy. The wind shifted to the
west and the faint chimes of Saint-Lys came quavering on the
breeze.
"The bells!" said Jack; "can you hear them?"
"Yes," said Lorraine, listlessly.
She had been very silent during their dinner. He wondered that
she had not shown any emotion at the sight of the invading
soldiers. She had not--she had scarcely even shown curiosity. He
thought that perhaps she did not realize what it meant, this
swarm of Prussians pouring into France between the Moselle and
the Rhine. He, American that he was, felt heartsick, humiliated,
at the sight of the spiked casques and armoured horsemen,
trampling the meadows of the province that he loved--the province
of Lorraine. For those strangers to France who know France know
two mothers; and though the native land is first and dearest, the
new mother, France, generous, tender, lies next in the hearts of
those whom she has sheltered.
So Jack felt the shame and humiliation as though a blow had been
struck at his own home and kin, and he suffered the more thinking
what his uncle must suffer. And Lorraine! His heart had bled for
her when the harsh treble of the little, flat Prussian drums
first broke out among the hills. He looked for the deep sorrow,
the patience, the proud endurance, the prouder faith that he
expected in her; he met with silence, even a distrait indifference.
Surely she could comprehend what this crushing disaster
prophesied for France? Surely she of all women, sensitive,
tender, and loyal, must know what love of kin and country meant?
Far away in the southwest the great heart of Paris throbbed in
silence, for the beautiful, sinful city, confused by the din of
the riffraff within her walls, blinded by lies and selfish
counsels, crouched in mute agony, listening for the first ominous
rumbling of a rotten, tottering Empire.
God alone knows why he gave to France, in the supreme moment of
her need, the beings who filled heaven with the wind of their
lungs and brought her to her knees in shame--not for brave men
dead in vain, not for a wasted land, scourged and flame-shrunken
from the Rhine to the Loire, not for provinces lost nor cities
gone forever--but for the strange creatures that her agony
brought forth, shapes simian and weird, all mouth and convulsive
movement, little pigmy abortions mouthing and playing antics
before high Heaven while the land ran blood in every furrow and
the world was a hell of flame.
Gambetta, that incubus of bombastic flabbiness, roaring prophecy
and platitude through the dismayed city, kept his eye on the
balcony of the particular edifice where, later, he should pose as
an animated Jericho trumpet. So, biding his time, he bellowed,
but it was the Comédie Française that was the loser, not the
people, when he sailed away in his balloon, posed, squatting
majestically as the god of war above the clouds of battle. And
little Thiers, furtive, timid, delighting in senile efforts to
stir the ferment of chaos till it boiled, he, too, was there,
owl-like, squeaky-voiced, a true "Bombyx à Lunettes." There, too,
was Hugo--often ridiculous in his terrible moods, egotistical,
sloppy, roaring. The Empire pinched Hugo, and he roared; and let
the rest of the world judge whether, under such circumstances,
there was majesty in the roar. The spectacle of Hugo, prancing on
the ramparts and hurling bad names at the German armies, recalls
the persistent but painful manoeuvres of a lion with a flea. Both
are terribly in earnest--neither is sublime.
Jack sat leaning on the window-ledge, his chin on both hands,
watching the moonlight rippling across the sea of steel below.
Lorraine, also silent, buried in an arm-chair, lay huddled
somewhere in the shadows, looking up at the stars, scarcely
visible in the radiance of the moon.
After a while she spoke in a low voice: "Do you remember in
chapel a week ago--what--"
"Yes, I know what you mean. Can you say it--any of it?"
"Yes, all."
Presently he heard her voice in the darkness repeating the
splendid lines:
"'In the days when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and
the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease
because they are few, and they that look out of the windows be
darkened.
"'And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of
the grinding is low, and they shall rise up at the voice of a
bird, and all the daughters of music shall be brought low.
"'Also they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fear shall
be in the way, and the almond-tree shall flourish, and the
grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail.
"'Because man goeth to his long home--'"
Her voice broke a little.
"'And the mourners go about the streets--'"
He leaned forward, his hand stretched out in the shadows. After a
moment her fingers touched his, moved a little, and were clasped
close. Then it was that, in her silence, he read a despair too
deep, too sudden, too stupefying for expression--a despair
scarcely yet understood. A sensitive young mind, stunned by
realities never dreamed of, recovers slowly; and the first
outward evidence of returning comprehension is an out-stretched
hand, a groping in the shadows for the hand of the best beloved.
Her hand was there, out-stretched, their fingers had met and
interlaced. A great lassitude weighed her down, mind and body.
Yesterday was so far away, and to-morrow so close at hand, but
not yet close enough to arouse her from an apathy unpierced as
yet by the keen shaft of grief.
He felt the lethargy in her yielding fingers; perhaps he began to
understand the sensitive girl lying in the arm-chair beside him,
perhaps he even saw ahead into the future that promised
everything or nothing, for France, for her, for him.
Madame de Morteyn came to take her away, but before he dropped
her hand in the shadows he felt a pressure that said, "Wait!"--so
he waited, there alone in the darkness.
The bells of Saint-Lys sounded again, scarcely vibrating in the
still air; a bank of sombre cloud buried the moon, and put out
the little stars one by one until the blackness of the night
crept in, blotting out river and tree and hill, hiding the silent
camp in fathomless shadow. He slept.
When he awoke, slowly, confused and uncertain, he found her close
to him, kneeling on the floor, her face on his knees. He touched
her arm, fearfully, scarcely daring; he touched her hair, falling
heavily over her face and shoulders and across his knees. Ah!
but she was tired--her very soul was weary and sick; and she was
too young to bear her trouble. Therefore she came back to him who
had reached out his hand to her. She could not cry--she could
only lie there and try to live through the bitterness of her
solitude. For now she knew at last that she was alone on earth.
The knowledge had come in a moment, it had come with the first
trample of the Prussian horsemen; she knew that her love, given
so wholly, so passionately, was nothing, had been nothing, to her
father. He whom she lived for--was it possible that he could
abandon her in such an hour? She had waited all day, all night;
she said in her heart that he would come from his machines and
his turret to be with her. Together they could have lived through
the shame of the day--of the bitter days to come; together they
could have suffered, knowing that they had each other to live
for.
But she could not face the Prussian scourge alone--she could not.
These two truths had been revealed to her with the first tap of
the Prussian drums: that every inch of soil, every grass-blade,
every pebble of her land was dearer to her than life; and that
her life was nothing to her father. He who alone in all the world
could have stood between her and the shameful pageant of
invasion, who could have taught her to face it, to front it
nobly, who could have bidden her hope and pray and wait--he sat
in his turret turning little wheels while the whole land shook
with the throes of invasion--their native land, Lorraine.
The death-throes of a nation are felt by all the world. Bismarck
placed a steel-clad hand upon the pulse of France, and knew
Lorraine lay dying. Amputation would end all--Moltke had the
apparatus ready; Bismarck, the great surgeon and greater
executioner, sat with mailed hand on the pulse of France and
waited.