When midnight sounded from the belfry of St. Sulpice the gates of Paris
were still choked with fragments of what had once been an army.
They entered with the night, a sullen horde, spattered with slime,
faint with hunger and exhaustion. There was little disorder at first,
and the throng at the gates parted silently as the troops tramped along
the freezing streets. Confusion came as the hours passed. Swiftly and
more swiftly, crowding squadron after squadron and battery on battery,
horses plunging and caissons jolting, the remnants from the front
surged through the gates, a chaos of cavalry and artillery struggling
for the right of way. Close upon them stumbled the infantry; here a
skeleton of a regiment marching with a desperate attempt at order,
there a riotous mob of Mobiles crushing their way to the streets, then
a turmoil of horsemen, cannon, troops without, officers, officers
without men, then again a line of ambulances, the wheels groaning under
their heavy loads.
Dumb with misery the crowd looked on.
All through the day the ambulances had been arriving, and all day long
the ragged throng whimpered and shivered by the barriers. At noon the
crowd was increased ten-fold, filling the squares about the gates, and
swarming over the inner fortifications.
At four o’clock in the afternoon the German batteries suddenly wreathed
themselves in smoke, and the shells fell fast on Montparnasse. At
twenty minutes after four two projectiles struck a house in the rue de
Bac, and a moment later the first shell fell in the Latin Quarter.
Braith was painting in bed when West came in very much scared.
“I wish you would come down; our house has been knocked into a cocked
hat, and I’m afraid that some of the pillagers may take it into their
heads to pay us a visit to-night.”
Braith jumped out of bed and bundled himself into a garment which had
once been an overcoat.
“Anybody hurt?” he inquired, struggling with a sleeve full of
dilapidated lining.
“No. Colette is barricaded in the cellar, and the concierge ran away to
the fortifications. There will be a rough gang there if the bombardment
keeps up. You might help us—”
“Of course,” said Braith; but it was not until they had reached the rue
Serpente and had turned in the passage which led to West’s cellar, that
the latter cried: “Have you seen Jack Trent, to-day?”
“No,” replied Braith, looking troubled, “he was not at Ambulance
Headquarters.”
“He stayed to take care of Sylvia, I suppose.”
A bomb came crashing through the roof of a house at the end of the
alley and burst in the basement, showering the street with slate
and plaster. A second struck a chimney and plunged into the garden,
followed by an avalanche of bricks, and another exploded with a
deafening report in the next street.
They hurried along the passage to the steps which led to the cellar.
Here again Braith stopped.
“Don’t you think I had better run up to see if Jack and Sylvia are well
entrenched? I can get back before dark.”
“No. Go in and find Colette, and I’ll go.”
“No, no, let me go, there’s no danger.”
“I know it,” replied West calmly; and, dragging Braith into the alley,
pointed to the cellar steps. The iron door was barred.
“Colette! Colette!” he called. The door swung inward, and the girl
sprang up the stairs to meet them. At that instant, Braith, glancing
behind him, gave a startled cry, and pushing the two before him into
the cellar, jumped down after them and slammed the iron door. A few
seconds later a heavy jar from the outside shook the hinges.
“They are here,” muttered West, very pale.
“That door,” observed Colette calmly, “will hold for ever.”
Braith examined the low iron structure, now trembling with the blows
rained on it from without. West glanced anxiously at Colette, who
displayed no agitation, and this comforted him.
“I don’t believe they will spend much time here,” said Braith; “they
only rummage in cellars for spirits, I imagine.”
“Unless they hear that valuables are buried there.”
“But surely nothing is buried here?” exclaimed Braith uneasily.
“Unfortunately there is,” growled West. “That miserly landlord of
mine—”
A crash from the outside, followed by a yell, cut him short; then blow
after blow shook the doors, until there came a sharp snap, a clinking
of metal and a triangular bit of iron fell inwards, leaving a hole
through which struggled a ray of light.
Instantly West knelt, and shoving his revolver through the aperture
fired every cartridge. For a moment the alley resounded with the racket
of the revolver, then absolute silence followed.
Presently a single questioning blow fell upon the door, and a moment
later another and another, and then a sudden crack zigzagged across the
iron plate.
“Here,” said West, seizing Colette by the wrist, “you follow me,
Braith!” and he ran swiftly toward a circular spot of light at the
further end of the cellar. The spot of light came from a barred
man-hole above. West motioned Braith to mount on his shoulders.
“Push it over. You _must_!”
With little effort Braith lifted the barred cover, scrambled out on his
stomach, and easily raised Colette from West’s shoulders.
“Quick, old chap!” cried the latter.
Braith twisted his legs around a fence-chain and leaned down again.
The cellar was flooded with a yellow light, and the air reeked with
the stench of petroleum torches. The iron door still held, but a whole
plate of metal was gone, and now as they looked a figure came creeping
through, holding a torch.
“Quick!” whispered Braith. “Jump!” and West hung dangling until Colette
grasped him by the collar, and he was dragged out. Then her nerves gave
way and she wept hysterically, but West threw his arm around her and
led her across the gardens into the next street, where Braith, after
replacing the man-hole cover and piling some stone slabs from the wall
over it, rejoined them. It was almost dark. They hurried through the
street, now only lighted by burning buildings, or the swift glare of
the shells. They gave wide berth to the fires, but at a distance saw
the flitting forms of pillagers among the _débris_. Sometimes they
passed a female fury crazed with drink shrieking anathemas upon the
world, or some slouching lout whose blackened face and hands betrayed
his share in the work of destruction. At last they reached the Seine
and passed the bridge, and then Braith said: “I must go back. I am
not sure of Jack and Sylvia.” As he spoke, he made way for a crowd
which came trampling across the bridge, and along the river wall by
the d’Orsay barracks. In the midst of it West caught the measured
tread of a platoon. A lantern passed, a file of bayonets, then
another lantern which glimmered on a deathly face behind, and Colette
gasped, “Hartman!” and he was gone. They peered fearfully across the
embankment, holding their breath. There was a shuffle of feet on the
quay, and the gate of the barracks slammed. A lantern shone for a
moment at the postern, the crowd pressed to the grille, then came the
clang of the volley from the stone parade.
One by one the petroleum torches flared up along the embankment, and
now the whole square was in motion. Down from the Champs Elysées
and across the Place de la Concorde straggled the fragments of the
battle, a company here, and a mob there. They poured in from every
street followed by women and children, and a great murmur, borne on
the icy wind, swept through the Arc de Triomphe and down the dark
avenue,—“Perdus! perdus!”
A ragged end of a battalion was pressing past, the spectre of
annihilation. West groaned. Then a figure sprang from the shadowy ranks
and called West’s name, and when he saw it was Trent he cried out.
Trent seized him, white with terror.
“Sylvia?”
West stared speechless, but Colette moaned, “Oh, Sylvia! Sylvia!—and
they are shelling the Quarter!”
“Trent!” shouted Braith; but he was gone, and they could not overtake
him.
The bombardment ceased as Trent crossed the Boulevard St. Germain,
but the entrance to the rue de Seine was blocked by a heap of smoking
bricks. Everywhere the shells had torn great holes in the pavement.
The café was a wreck of splinters and glass, the book-store tottered,
ripped from roof to basement, and the little bakery, long since closed,
bulged outward above a mass of slate and tin.
He climbed over the steaming bricks and hurried into the rue de
Tournon. On the corner a fire blazed, lighting up his own street, and
on the bank wall, beneath a shattered gas lamp, a child was writing
with a bit of cinder.
“HERE FELL THE FIRST SHELL.”
The letters stared him in the face. The rat-killer finished and stepped
back to view his work, but catching sight of Trent’s bayonet, screamed
and fled, and as Trent staggered across the shattered street, from
holes and crannies in the ruins fierce women fled from their work of
pillage, cursing him.
At first he could not find his house, for the tears blinded him, but
he felt along the wall and reached the door. A lantern burned in the
concierge’s lodge and the old man lay dead beside it. Faint with fright
he leaned a moment on his rifle, then, snatching the lantern, sprang
up the stairs. He tried to call, but his tongue hardly moved. On the
second floor he saw plaster on the stairway, and on the third the floor
was torn and the concierge lay in a pool of blood across the landing.
The next floor was his, _theirs_. The door hung from its hinges, the
walls gaped. He crept in and sank down by the bed, and there two arms
were flung around his neck, and a tear-stained face sought his own.
“Sylvia!”
“O Jack! Jack! Jack!”
From the tumbled pillow beside them a child wailed.
“They brought it; it is mine,” she sobbed.
“Ours,” he whispered, with his arms around them both.
Then from the stairs below came Braith’s anxious voice.
“Trent! Is all well?”