That morning Maurice and Jean listened for the last time to the gay,
ringing notes of the French bugles, and now they were on their way to
Pont-a-Mousson, marching in the ranks of the convoy of prisoners, which
was guarded front and rear by platoons of Prussian infantry, while a
file of men with fixed bayonets flanked the column on either side.
Whenever they came to a German post they heard only the lugubrious,
ear-piercing strains of the Prussian trumpets.
Maurice was glad to observe that the column took the left-hand road and
would pass through Sedan; perhaps he would have an opportunity of
seeing his sister Henriette. All the pleasure, however, that he had
experienced at his release from that foul cesspool where he had spent
nine days of agony was dashed to the ground and destroyed during the
three-mile march from the peninsula of Iges to the city. It was but
another form of his old distress to behold that array of prisoners,
shuffling timorously through the dust of the road, like a flock of
sheep with the dog at their heels. There is no spectacle in all the
world more pitiful than that of a column of vanquished troops being
marched off into captivity under guard of their conquerors, without
arms, their empty hands hanging idly at their sides; and these men,
clad in rags and tatters, besmeared with the filth in which they had
lain for more than a week, gaunt and wasted after their long fast, were
more like vagabonds than soldiers; they resembled loathsome, horribly
dirty tramps, whom the gendarmes would have picked up along the
highways and consigned to the lockup. As they passed through the
Faubourg of Torcy, where men paused on the sidewalks and women came to
their doors to regard them with mournful, compassionate interest, the
blush of shame rose to Maurice’s cheek, he hung his head and a bitter
taste came to his mouth.
Jean, whose epidermis was thicker and mind more practical, thought only
of their stupidity in not having brought off with them a loaf of bread
apiece. In the hurry of their abrupt departure they had even gone off
without breakfasting, and hunger soon made its presence felt by the
nerveless sensation in their legs. Others among the prisoners appeared
to be in the same boat, for they held out money, begging the people of
the place to sell them something to eat. There was one, an extremely
tall man, apparently very ill, who displayed a gold piece, extending it
above the heads of the soldiers of the escort; and he was almost
frantic that he could purchase nothing. Just at that time Jean, who had
been keeping his eyes open, perceived a bakery a short distance ahead,
before which were piled a dozen loaves of bread; he immediately got his
money ready and, as the column passed, tossed the baker a five-franc
piece and endeavored to secure two of the loaves; then, when the
Prussian who was marching at his side pushed him back roughly into the
ranks, he protested, demanding that he be allowed to recover his money
from the baker. But at that juncture the captain commanding the
detachment, a short, bald-headed man with a brutal expression of face,
came hastening up; he raised his revolver over Jean’s head as if about
to strike him with the butt, declaring with an oath that he would brain
the first man that dared to lift a finger. And the rest of the captives
continued to shamble on, stirring up the dust of the road with their
shuffling feet, with eyes averted and shoulders bowed, cowed and
abjectly submissive as a drove of cattle.
“Oh! how good it would seem to slap the fellow’s face just once!”
murmured Maurice, as if he meant it. “How I should like to let him have
just one from the shoulder, and drive his teeth down his dirty throat!”
And during the remainder of their march he could not endure to look on
that captain, with his ugly, supercilious face.
They had entered Sedan and were crossing the Pont de Meuse, and the
scenes of violence and brutality became more numerous than ever. A
woman darted forward and would have embraced a boyish young
sergeant—likely she was his mother—and was repulsed with a blow from a
musket-butt that felled her to the ground. On the Place Turenne the
guards hustled and maltreated some citizens because they cast
provisions to the prisoners. In the Grande Rue one of the convoy fell
in endeavoring to secure a bottle that a lady extended to him, and was
assisted to his feet with kicks. For a week now Sedan had witnessed the
saddening spectacle of the defeated driven like cattle through its
streets, and seemed no more accustomed to it than at the beginning;
each time a fresh detachment passed the city was stirred to its very
depths by a movement of pity and indignation.
Jean had recovered his equanimity; his thoughts, like Maurice’s,
reverted to Henriette, and the idea occurred to him that they might see
Delaherche somewhere among the throng. He gave his friend a nudge of
the elbow.
“Keep your eyes open if we pass through their street presently, will
you?”
They had scarce more than struck into the Rue Maqua, indeed, when they
became aware of several pairs of eyes turned on the column from one of
the tall windows of the factory, and as they drew nearer recognized
Delaherche and his wife Gilberte, their elbows resting on the railing
of the balcony, and behind them the tall, rigid form of old Madame
Delaherche. They had a supply of bread with them, and the manufacturer
was tossing the loaves down into the hands that were upstretched with
tremulous eagerness to receive them. Maurice saw at once that his
sister was not there, while Jean anxiously watched the flying loaves,
fearing there might none be left for them. They both had raised their
arms and were waving them frantically above their head, shouting
meanwhile with all the force of their lungs:
“Here we are! This way, this way!”
The Delaherches seemed delighted to see them in the midst of their
surprise. Their faces, pallid with emotion, suddenly brightened, and
they displayed by the warmth of their gestures the pleasure they
experienced in the encounter. There was one solitary loaf left, which
Gilberte insisted on throwing with her own hands, and pitched it into
Jean’s extended arms in such a charmingly awkward way that she gave a
winsome laugh at her own expense. Maurice, unable to stop on account of
the pressure from the rear, turned his head and shouted, in a tone of
anxious inquiry:
“And Henriette? Henriette?”
Delaherche replied with a long farrago, but his voice was inaudible in
the shuffling tramp of so many feet. He seemed to understand that the
young man had failed to catch his meaning, for he gesticulated like a
semaphore; there was one gesture in particular that he repeated several
times, extending his arm with a sweeping motion toward the south,
apparently intending to convey the idea of some point in the remote
distance: Off there, away off there. Already the head of the column was
wheeling into the Rue du Minil, the facade of the factory was lost to
sight, together with the kindly faces of the three Delaherches; the
last the two friends saw of them was the fluttering of the white
handkerchief with which Gilberte waved them a farewell.
“What did he say?” asked Jean.
Maurice, in a fever of anxiety, was still looking to the rear where
there was nothing to be seen. “I don’t know; I could not understand
him; I shall have no peace of mind until I hear from her.”
And the trailing, shambling line crept slowly onward, the Prussians
urging on the weary men with the brutality of conquerors; the column
left the city by the Minil gate in straggling, long-drawn array,
hastening their steps, like sheep at whose heels the dogs are snapping.
When they passed through Bazeilles Jean and Maurice thought of Weiss,
and cast their eyes about in an effort to distinguish the site of the
little house that had been defended with such bravery. While they were
at Camp Misery they had heard the woeful tale of slaughter and
conflagration that had blotted the pretty village from existence, and
the abominations that they now beheld exceeded all they had dreamed of
or imagined. At the expiration of twelve days the ruins were smoking
still; the tottering walls had fallen in, there were not ten houses
standing. It afforded them some small comfort, however, to meet a
procession of carts and wheelbarrows loaded with Bavarian helmets and
muskets that had been collected after the conflict. That evidence of
the chastisement that had been inflicted on those murderers and
incendiaries went far toward mitigating the affliction of defeat.
The column was to halt at Douzy to give the men an opportunity to eat
breakfast. It was not without much suffering that they reached that
place; already the prisoners’ strength was giving out, exhausted as
they were by their ten days of fasting. Those who the day before had
availed of the abundant supplies to gorge themselves were seized with
vertigo, their enfeebled legs refused to support their weight, and
their gluttony, far from restoring their lost strength, was a further
source of weakness to them. The consequence was that, when the train
was halted in a meadow to the left of the village, these poor creatures
flung themselves upon the ground with no desire to eat. Wine was
wanting; some charitable women who came, bringing a few bottles, were
driven off by the sentries. One of them in her affright fell and
sprained her ankle, and there ensued a painful scene of tears and
hysterics, during which the Prussians confiscated the bottles and drank
their contents amid jeers and insulting laughter. This tender
compassion of the peasants for the poor soldiers who were being led
away into captivity was manifested constantly along the route, while it
was said the harshness they displayed toward the generals amounted
almost to cruelty. At that same Douzy, only a few days previously, the
villagers had hooted and reviled a number of paroled officers who were
on their way to Pont-a-Mousson. The roads were not safe for general
officers; men wearing the blouse—escaped soldiers, or deserters, it may
be—fell on them with pitch-forks and endeavored to take their life as
traitors, credulously pinning their faith to that legend of bargain and
sale which, even twenty years later, was to continue to shed its
opprobrium upon those leaders who had commanded armies in that
campaign.
Maurice and Jean ate half their bread, and were so fortunate as to have
a mouthful of brandy with which to wash it down, thanks to the kindness
of a worthy old farmer. When the order was given to resume their
advance, however, the distress throughout the convoy was extreme. They
were to halt for the night at Mouzon, and although the march was a
short one, it seemed as if it would tax the men’s strength more
severely than they could bear; they could not get on their feet without
giving utterance to cries of pain, so stiff did their tired legs become
the moment they stopped to rest. Many removed their shoes to relieve
their galled and bleeding feet. Dysentery continued to rage; a man fell
before they had gone half a mile, and they had to prop him against a
wall and leave him. A little further on two others sank at the foot of
a hedge, and it was night before an old woman came along and picked
them up. All were stumbling, tottering, and dragging themselves along,
supporting their forms with canes, which the Prussians, perhaps in
derision, had suffered them to cut at the margin of a wood. They were a
straggling array of tramps and beggars, covered with sores, haggard,
emaciated, and footsore; a sight to bring tears to the eyes of the most
stony-hearted. And the guards continued to be as brutally strict as
ever; those who for any purpose attempted to leave the ranks were
driven back with blows, and the platoon that brought up the rear had
orders to prod with their bayonets those who hung back. A sergeant
having refused to go further, the captain summoned two of his men and
instructed them to seize him, one by either arm, and in this manner the
wretched man was dragged over the ground until he agreed to walk. And
what made the whole thing more bitter and harder to endure was the
utter insignificance of that little pimply-faced, bald-headed officer,
so insufferably consequential in his brutality, who took advantage of
his knowledge of French to vituperate the prisoners in it in curt,
incisive words that cut and stung like the lash of a whip.
“Oh!” Maurice furiously exclaimed, “to get the puppy in my hands and
drain him of his blood, drop by drop!”
His powers of endurance were almost exhausted, but it was his rage that
he had to choke down, even more than his fatigue, that was cause of his
suffering. Everything exasperated him and set on edge his tingling
nerves; the harsh notes of the Prussian trumpets particularly, which
inspired him with a desire to scream each time he heard them. He felt
he should never reach the end of their cruel journey without some
outbreak that would bring down on him the utmost severity of the guard.
Even now, when traversing the smallest hamlets, he suffered horribly
and felt as if he should die with shame to behold the eyes of the women
fixed pityingly on him; what would it be when they should enter
Germany, and the populace of the great cities should crowd the streets
to laugh and jeer at them as they passed? And he pictured to himself
the cattle cars into which they would be crowded for transportation,
the discomforts and humiliations they would have to suffer on the
journey, the dismal life in German fortresses under the leaden, wintry
sky. No, no; he would have none of it; better to take the risk of
leaving his bones by the roadside on French soil than go and rot off
yonder, for months and months, perhaps, in the dark depths of a
casemate.
“Listen,” he said below his breath to Jean, who was walking at his
side; “we will wait until we come to a wood; then we’ll break through
the guards and run for it among the trees. The Belgian frontier is not
far away; we shall have no trouble in finding someone to guide us to
it.”
Jean, accustomed as he was to look at things coolly and calculate
chances, put his veto on the mad scheme, although he, too, in his
revolt, was beginning to meditate the possibilities of an escape.
“Have you taken leave of your senses! the guard will fire on us, and we
shall both be killed.”
But Maurice replied there was a chance the soldiers might not hit them,
and then, after all, if their aim should prove true, it would not
matter so very much.
“Very well!” rejoined Jean, “but what is going to become of us
afterward, dressed in uniform as we are? You know perfectly well that
the country is swarming in every direction with Prussian troops; we
could not go far unless we had other clothes to put on. No, no, my lad,
it’s too risky; I’ll not let you attempt such an insane project.”
And he took the young man’s arm and held it pressed against his side,
as if they were mutually sustaining each other, continuing meanwhile to
chide and soothe him in a tone that was at once rough and affectionate.
Just then the sound of a whispered conversation close behind them
caused them to turn and look around. It was Chouteau and Loubet, who
had left the peninsula of Iges that morning at the same time as they,
and whom they had managed to steer clear of until the present moment.
Now the two worthies were close at their heels, and Chouteau must have
overheard Maurice’s words, his plan for escaping through the mazes of a
forest, for he had adopted it on his own behalf. His breath was hot
upon their neck as he murmured:
“Say, comrades, count us in on that. That’s a capital idea of yours, to
skip the ranch. Some of the boys have gone already, and sure we’re not
going to be such fools as to let those bloody pigs drag us away like
dogs into their infernal country. What do you say, eh? Shall we four
make a break for liberty?”
Maurice’s excitement was rising to fever-heat again; Jean turned and
said to the tempter:
“If you are so anxious to get away, why don’t you go? there’s nothing
to prevent you. What are you up to, any way?”
He flinched a little before the corporal’s direct glance, and allowed
the true motive of his proposal to escape him.
“_Dame_! it would be better that four should share the undertaking. One
or two of us might have a chance of getting off.”
Then Jean, with an emphatic shake of the head, refused to have anything
whatever to do with the matter; he distrusted the gentleman, he said,
as he was afraid he would play them some of his dirty tricks. He had to
exert all his authority with Maurice to retain him on his side, for at
that very moment an opportunity presented itself for attempting the
enterprise; they were passing the border of a small but very dense
wood, separated from the road only by the width of a field that was
covered by a thick growth of underbrush. Why should they not dash
across that field and vanish in the thicket? was there not safety for
them in that direction?
Loubet had so far said nothing. His mind was made up, however, that he
was not going to Germany to run to seed in one of their dungeons, and
his nose, mobile as a hound’s, was sniffing the atmosphere, his shifty
eyes were watching for the favorable moment. He would trust to his legs
and his mother wit, which had always helped him out of his scrapes thus
far. His decision was quickly made.
“Ah, _zut_! I’ve had enough of it; I’m off!”
He broke through the line of the escort, and with a single bound was in
the field, Chouteau following his example and running at his side. Two
of the Prussian soldiers immediately started in pursuit, but the others
seemed dazed, and it did not occur to them to send a ball after the
fugitives. The entire episode was so soon over that it was not easy to
note its different phases. Loubet dodged and doubled among the bushes
and it appeared as if he would certainly succeed in getting off, while
Chouteau, less nimble, was on the point of being captured, but the
latter, summoning up all his energies in a supreme burst of speed,
caught up with his comrade and dexterously tripped him; and while the
two Prussians were lumbering up to secure the fallen man, the other
darted into the wood and vanished. The guard, finally remembering that
they had muskets, fired a few ineffectual shots, and there was some
attempt made to search the thicket, which resulted in nothing.
Meantime the two soldiers were pummeling poor Loubet, who had not
regained his feet. The captain came running up, beside himself with
anger, and talked of making an example, and with this encouragement
kicks and cuffs and blows from musket-butts continued to rain down upon
the wretched man with such fury that when at last they stood him on his
feet he was found to have an arm broken and his skull fractured. A
peasant came along, driving a cart, in which he was placed, but he died
before reaching Mouzon.
“You see,” was all that Jean said to Maurice.
The two friends cast a look in the direction of the wood that
sufficiently expressed their sentiments toward the scoundrel who had
gained his freedom by such base means, while their hearts were stirred
with feelings of deepest compassion for the poor devil whom he had made
his victim, a guzzler and a toper, who certainly did not amount to
much, but a merry, good-natured fellow all the same, and nobody’s fool.
And that was always the way with those who kept bad company, Jean
moralizingly observed: they might be very fly, but sooner or later a
bigger rascal was sure to come along and make a meal of them.
Notwithstanding this terrible lesson Maurice, upon reaching Mouzon, was
still possessed by his unalterable determination to attempt an escape.
The prisoners were in such an exhausted condition when they reached the
place that the Prussians had to assist them to set up the few tents
that were placed at their disposal. The camp was formed near the town,
on low and marshy ground, and the worst of the business was that
another convoy having occupied the spot the day before, the field was
absolutely invisible under the superincumbent filth; it was no better
than a common cesspool, of unimaginable foulness. The sole means the
men had of self-protection was to scatter over the ground some large
flat stones, of which they were so fortunate as to find a number in the
vicinity. By way of compensation they had a somewhat less hard time of
it that evening; the strictness of their guardians was relaxed a little
once the captain had disappeared, doubtless to seek the comforts of an
inn. The sentries began by winking at the irregularity of the
proceeding when some children came along and commenced to toss fruit,
apples and pears, over their heads to the prisoners; the next thing was
they allowed the people of the neighborhood to enter the lines, so that
in a short time the camp was swarming with impromptu merchants, men and
women, offering for sale bread, wine, cigars, even. Those who had money
had no trouble in supplying their needs so far as eating, drinking, and
smoking were concerned. A bustling animation prevailed in the dim
twilight; it was like a corner of the market place in a town where a
fair is being held.
But Maurice drew Jean behind their tent and again said to him in his
nervous, flighty way:
“I can’t stand it; I shall make an effort to get away as soon as it is
dark. To-morrow our course will take us away from the frontier; it will
be too late.”
“Very well, we’ll try it,” Jean replied, his powers of resistance
exhausted, his imagination, too, seduced by the pleasing idea of
freedom. “They can’t do more than kill us.”
After that he began to scrutinize more narrowly the venders who
surrounded him on every side. There were some among the comrades who
had succeeded in supplying themselves with blouse and trousers, and it
was reported that some of the charitable people of the place had
regular stocks of garments on hand, designed to assist prisoners in
escaping. And almost immediately his attention was attracted to a
pretty girl, a tall blonde of sixteen with a pair of magnificent eyes,
who had on her arm a basket containing three loaves of bread. She was
not crying her wares like the rest; an anxious, engaging smile played
on her red lips, her manner was hesitating. He looked her steadily in
the face; their glances met and for an instant remained confounded.
Then she came up, with the embarrassed smile of a girl unaccustomed to
such business.
“Do you wish to buy some bread?”
He made no reply, but questioned her by an imperceptible movement of
the eyelids. On her answering yes, by an affirmative nod of the head,
he asked in a very low tone of voice:
“There is clothing?”
“Yes, under the loaves.”
Then she began to cry her merchandise aloud: “Bread! bread! who’ll buy
my bread?” But when Maurice would have slipped a twenty-franc piece
into her fingers she drew back her hand abruptly and ran away, leaving
the basket with them. The last they saw of her was the happy, tender
look in her pretty eyes, as in the distance she turned and smiled on
them.
When they were in possession of the basket Jean and Maurice found
difficulties staring them in the face. They had strayed away from their
tent, and in their agitated condition felt they should never succeed in
finding it again. Where were they to bestow themselves? and how effect
their change of garments? It seemed to them that the eyes of the entire
assemblage were focused on the basket, which Jean carried with an
awkward air, as if it contained dynamite, and that its contents must be
plainly visible to everyone. It would not do to waste time, however;
they must be up and doing. They stepped into the first vacant tent they
came to, where each of them hurriedly slipped on a pair of trousers and
donned a blouse, having first deposited their discarded uniforms in the
basket, which they placed on the ground in a dark corner of the tent
and abandoned to its fate. There was a circumstance that gave them no
small uneasiness, however; they found only one head-covering, a knitted
woolen cap, which Jean insisted Maurice should wear. The former,
fearing his bare-headedness might excite suspicion, was hanging about
the precincts of the camp on the lookout for a covering of some
description, when it occurred to him to purchase his hat from an
extremely dirty old man who was selling cigars.
“Brussels cigars, three sous apiece, two for five!”
Customs regulations were in abeyance since the battle of Sedan, and the
imports of Belgian merchandise had been greatly stimulated. The old man
had been making a handsome profit from his traffic, but that did not
prevent him from driving a sharp bargain when he understood the reason
why the two men wanted to buy his hat, a greasy old affair of felt with
a great hole in its crown. He finally consented to part with it for two
five-franc pieces, grumbling that he should certainly have a cold in
his head.
Then Jean had another idea, which was neither more nor less than to buy
out the old fellow’s stock in trade, the two dozen cigars that remained
unsold. The bargain effected, he pulled his hat down over his eyes and
began to cry in the itinerant hawker’s drawling tone:
“Here you are, Brussels cigars, two for three sous, two for three
sous!”
Their safety was now assured. He signaled Maurice to go on before. It
happened to the latter to discover an umbrella lying on the grass; he
picked it up and, as a few drops of rain began to fall just then,
opened it tranquilly as they were about to pass the line of sentries.
“Two for three sous, two for three sous, Brussels cigars!”
It took Jean less than two minutes to dispose of his stock of
merchandise. The men came crowding about him with chaff and laughter: a
reasonable fellow, that; he didn’t rob poor chaps of their money! The
Prussians themselves were attracted by such unheard-of bargains, and he
was compelled to trade with them. He had all the time been working his
way toward the edge of the enceinte, and his last two cigars went to a
big sergeant with an immense beard, who could not speak a word of
French.
“Don’t walk so fast, confound it!” Jean breathed in a whisper behind
Maurice’s back. “You’ll have them after us.”
Their legs seemed inclined to run away with them, although they did
their best to strike a sober gait. It caused them a great effort to
pause a moment at a cross-roads, where a number of people were
collected before an inn. Some villagers were chatting peaceably with
German soldiers, and the two runaways made a pretense of listening, and
even hazarded a few observations on the weather and the probability of
the rain continuing during the night. They trembled when they beheld a
man, a fleshy gentleman, eying them attentively, but as he smiled with
an air of great good-nature they thought they might venture to address
him, asking in a whisper:
“Can you tell us if the road to Belgium is guarded, sir?”
“Yes, it is; but you will be safe if you cross this wood and afterward
cut across the fields, to the left.”
Once they were in the wood, in the deep, dark silence of the slumbering
trees, where no sound reached their ears, where nothing stirred and
they believed their safety was assured them, they sank into each
other’s arms in an uncontrollable impulse of emotion. Maurice was
sobbing violently, while big tears trickled slowly down Jean’s cheeks.
It was the natural revulsion of their overtaxed feelings after the
long-protracted ordeal they had passed through, the joy and delight of
their mutual assurance that their troubles were at an end, and that
thenceforth suffering and they were to be strangers. And united by the
memory of what they had endured together in ties closer than those of
brotherhood, they clasped each other in a wild embrace, and the kiss
that they exchanged at that moment seemed to them to possess a savor
and a poignancy such as they had never experienced before in all their
life; a kiss such as they never could receive from lips of woman,
sealing their undying friendship, giving additional confirmation to the
certainty that thereafter their two hearts would be but one, for all
eternity.
When they had separated at last: “Little one,” said Jean, in a
trembling voice, “it is well for us to be here, but we are not at the
end. We must look about a bit and try to find our bearings.”
Maurice, although he had no acquaintance with that part of the
frontier, declared that all they had to do was to pursue a straight
course, whereon they resumed their way, moving among the trees in
Indian file with the greatest circumspection, until they reached the
edge of the thicket. There, mindful of the injunction of the
kind-hearted villager, they were about to turn to the left and take a
short cut across the fields, but on coming to a road, bordered with a
row of poplars on either side they beheld directly in their path the
watch-fire of a Prussian detachment. The bayonet of the sentry, pacing
his beat, gleamed in the ruddy light, the men were finishing their soup
and conversing; the fugitives stood not upon the order of their going,
but plunged into the recesses of the wood again, in mortal terror lest
they might be pursued. They thought they heard the sound of voices, of
footsteps on their trail, and thus for over an hour they wandered at
random among the copses, until all idea of locality was obliterated
from their brain; now racing like affrighted animals through the
underbrush, again brought up all standing, the cold sweat trickling
down their face, before a tree in which they beheld a Prussian. And the
end of it was that they again came out on the poplar-bordered road not
more than ten paces from the sentry, and quite near the soldiers, who
were toasting their toes in tranquil comfort.
“Hang the luck!” grumbled Jean. “This must be an enchanted wood.”
This time, however, they had been heard. The sound of snapping twigs
and rolling stones betrayed them. And as they did not answer the
challenge of the sentry, but made off at the double-quick, the men
seized their muskets and sent a shower of bullets crashing through the
thicket, into which the fugitives had plunged incontinently.
“_Nom de Dieu!_” ejaculated Jean, with a stifled cry of pain.
He had received something that felt like the cut of a whip in the calf
of his left leg, but the impact was so violent that it drove him up
against a tree.
“Are you hurt?” Maurice anxiously inquired.
“Yes, and in the leg, worse luck!”
They both stood holding their breath and listening, in dread expectancy
of hearing their pursuers clamoring at their heels; but the firing had
ceased and nothing stirred amid the intense stillness that had again
settled down upon the wood and the surrounding country. It was evident
that the Prussians had no inclination to beat up the thicket.
Jean, who was doing his best to keep on his feet; forced back a groan.
Maurice sustained him with his arm.
“Can’t you walk?”
“I should say not!” He gave way to a fit of rage, he, always so
self-contained. He clenched his fists, could have thumped himself. “God
in Heaven, if this is not hard luck! to have one’s legs knocked from
under him at the very time he is most in need of them! It’s too bad,
too bad, by my soul it is! Go on, you, and put yourself in safety!”
But Maurice laughed quietly as he answered:
“That is silly talk!”
He took his friend’s arm and helped him along, for neither of them had
any desire to linger there. When, laboriously and by dint of heroic
effort, they had advanced some half-dozen paces further, they halted
again with renewed alarm at beholding before them a house, standing at
the margin of the wood, apparently a sort of farmhouse. Not a light was
visible at any of the windows, the open courtyard gate yawned upon the
dark and deserted dwelling. And when they plucked up their courage a
little and ventured to enter the courtyard, great was their surprise to
find a horse standing there with a saddle on his back, with nothing to
indicate the why or wherefore of his being there. Perhaps it was the
owner’s intention to return, perhaps he was lying behind a bush with a
bullet in his brain. They never learned how it was.
But Maurice had conceived a new scheme, which appeared to afford him
great satisfaction.
“See here, the frontier is too far away; we should never succeed in
reaching it without a guide. What do you say to changing our plan and
going to Uncle Fouchard’s, at Remilly? I am so well acquainted with
every inch of the road that I’m sure I could take you there with my
eyes bandaged. Don’t you think it’s a good idea, eh? I’ll put you on
this horse, and I suppose Uncle Fouchard will grumble, but he’ll take
us in.”
Before starting he wished to take a look at the injured leg. There were
two orifices; the ball appeared to have entered the limb and passed
out, fracturing the tibia in its course. The flow of blood had not been
great; he did nothing more than bandage the upper part of the calf
tightly with his handkerchief.
“Do you fly, and leave me here,” Jean said again.
“Hold your tongue; you are silly!”
When Jean was seated firmly in the saddle Maurice took the bridle and
they made a start. It was somewhere about eleven o’clock, and he hoped
to make the journey in three hours, even if they should be unable to
proceed faster than a walk. A difficulty that he had not thought of
until then, however, presented itself to his mind and for a moment
filled him with consternation: how were they to cross the Meuse in
order to get to the left bank? The bridge at Mouzon would certainly be
guarded. At last he remembered that there was a ferry lower down the
stream, at Villers, and trusting to luck to befriend him, he shaped his
course for that village, striking across the meadows and tilled fields
of the right bank. All went well enough at first; they had only to
dodge a cavalry patrol which forced them to hide in the shadow of a
wall and remain there half an hour. Then the rain began to come down in
earnest and his progress became more laborious, compelled as he was to
tramp through the sodden fields beside the horse, which fortunately
showed itself to be a fine specimen of the equine race, and perfectly
gentle. On reaching Villers he found that his trust in the blind
goddess, Fortune, had not been misplaced; the ferryman, who, at that
late hour, had just returned from setting a Bavarian officer across the
river, took them at once and landed them on the other shore without
delay or accident.
And it was not until they reached the village, where they narrowly
escaped falling into the clutches of the pickets who were stationed
along the entire length of the Remilly road, that their dangers and
hardships really commenced; again they were obliged to take to the
fields, feeling their way along blind paths and cart-tracks that could
scarcely be discerned in the darkness. The most trivial obstacle
sufficed to drive them a long way out of their course. They squeezed
through hedges, scrambled down and up the steep banks of ditches,
forced a passage for themselves through the densest thickets. Jean, in
whom a low fever had developed under the drizzling rain, had sunk down
crosswise on his saddle in a condition of semi-consciousness, holding
on with both hands by the horse’s mane, while Maurice, who had slipped
the bridle over his right arm, had to steady him by the legs to keep
him from tumbling to the ground. For more than a league, for two long,
weary hours that seemed like an eternity, did they toil onward in this
fatiguing way; floundering, stumbling, slipping in such a manner that
it seemed at every moment as if men and beast must land together in a
heap at the bottom of some descent. The spectacle they presented was
one of utter, abject misery, besplashed with mud, the horse trembling
in every limb, the man upon his back a helpless mass, as if at his last
gasp, the other, wild-eyed and pale as death, keeping his feet only by
an effort of fraternal love. Day was breaking; it was not far from five
o’clock when at last they came to Remilly.
In the courtyard of his little farmhouse, which was situated at the
extremity of the pass of Harancourt, overlooking the village, Father
Fouchard was stowing away in his carriole the carcasses of two sheep
that he had slaughtered the day before. The sight of his nephew, coming
to him at that hour and in that sorry plight, caused him such
perturbation of spirit that, after the first explanatory words, he
roughly cried:
“You want me to take you in, you and your friend? and then settle
matters with the Prussians afterward, I suppose. I’m much obliged to
you, but no! I might as well die right straight off and have done with
it.”
He did not go so far, however, as to prohibit Maurice and Prosper from
taking Jean from the horse and laying him on the great table in the
kitchen. Silvine ran and got the bolster from her bed and slipped it
beneath the head of the wounded man, who was still unconscious. But it
irritated the old fellow to see the man lying on his table; he grumbled
and fretted, saying that the kitchen was no place for him; why did they
not take him away to the hospital at once? since there fortunately was
a hospital at Remilly, near the church, in the old schoolhouse; and
there was a big room in it, with everything nice and comfortable.
“To the hospital!” Maurice hotly replied, “and have the Prussians pack
him off to Germany as soon as he is well, for you know they treat all
the wounded as prisoners of war. Do you take me for a fool, uncle? I
did not bring him here to give him up.”
Things were beginning to look dubious, the uncle was threatening to
pitch them out upon the road, when someone mentioned Henriette’s name.
“What about Henriette?” inquired the young man.
And he learned that his sister had been an inmate of the house at
Remilly for the last two days; her affliction had weighed so heavily on
her that life at Sedan, where her existence had hitherto been a happy
one, was become a burden greater than she could bear. Chancing to meet
with Doctor Dalichamp of Raucourt, with whom she was acquainted, her
conversation with him had been the means of bringing her to take up her
abode with Father Fouchard, in whose house she had a little bedroom, in
order to devote herself entirely to the care of the sufferers in the
neighboring hospital. That alone, she said, would serve to quiet her
bitter memories. She paid her board and was the means of introducing
many small comforts into the life of the farmhouse, which caused Father
Fouchard to regard her with an eye of favor. The weather was always
fine with him, provided he was making money.
“Ah! so my sister is here,” said Maurice. “That must have been what M.
Delaherche wished to tell me, with his gestures that I could not
understand. Very well; if she is here, that settles it; we shall
remain.”
Notwithstanding his fatigue he started off at once in quest of her at
the ambulance, where she had been on duty during the preceding night,
while the uncle cursed his luck that kept him from being off with the
carriole to sell his mutton among the neighboring villages, so long as
the confounded business that he had got mixed up in remained
unfinished.
When Maurice returned with Henriette they caught the old man making a
critical examination of the horse, that Prosper had led away to the
stable. The animal seemed to please him; he was knocked up, but showed
signs of strength and endurance. The young man laughed and told his
uncle he might have him as a gift if he fancied him, while Henriette,
taking her relative aside, assured him Jean should be no expense to
him; that she would take charge of him and nurse him, and he might have
the little room behind the cow-stables, where no Prussian would ever
think to look for him. And Father Fouchard, still wearing a very sulky
face and but half convinced that there was anything to be made out of
the affair, finally closed the discussion by jumping into his carriole
and driving off, leaving her at liberty to act as she pleased.
It took Henriette but a few minutes, with the assistance of Silvine and
Prosper, to put the room in order; then she had Jean brought in and
they laid him on a cool, clean bed, he giving no sign of life during
the operation save to mutter some unintelligible words. He opened his
eyes and looked about him, but seemed not to be conscious of anyone’s
presence in the room. Maurice, who was just beginning to be aware how
utterly prostrated he was by his fatigue, was drinking a glass of wine
and eating a bit of cold meat, left over from the yesterday’s dinner,
when Doctor Dalichamp came in, as was his daily custom previous to
visiting the hospital, and the young man, in his anxiety for his
friend, mustered up his strength to follow him, together with his
sister, to the bedside of the patient.
The doctor was a short, thick-set man, with a big round head, on which
the hair, as well as the fringe of beard about his face, had long since
begun to be tinged with gray. The skin of his ruddy, mottled face was
tough and indurated as a peasant’s, spending as he did most of his time
in the open air, always on the go to relieve the sufferings of his
fellow-creatures; while the large, bright eyes, the massive nose,
indicative of obstinacy, and the benignant if somewhat sensual mouth
bore witness to the lifelong charities and good works of the honest
country doctor; a little brusque at times, not a man of genius, but
whom many years of practice in his profession had made an excellent
healer.
When he had examined Jean, still in a comatose state, he murmured:
“I am very much afraid that amputation will be necessary.”
The words produced a painful impression on Maurice and Henriette.
Presently, however, he added:
“Perhaps we may be able to save the leg, but it will require the utmost
care and attention, and will take a very long time. For the moment his
physical and mental depression is such that the only thing to do is to
let him sleep. To-morrow we shall know more.”
Then, having applied a dressing to the wound, he turned to Maurice,
whom he had known in bygone days, when he was a boy.
“And you, my good fellow, would be better off in bed than sitting
there.”
The young man continued to gaze before him into vacancy, as if he had
not heard. In the confused hallucination that was due to his fatigue he
developed a kind of delirium, a supersensitive nervous excitation that
embraced all he had suffered in mind and body since the beginning of
the campaign. The spectacle of his friend’s wretched state, his own
condition, scarce less pitiful, defeated, his hands tied, good for
nothing, the reflection that all those heroic efforts had culminated in
such disaster, all combined to incite him to frantic rebellion against
destiny. At last he spoke.
“It is not ended; no, no! we have not seen the end, and I must go away.
Since _he_ must lie there on his back for weeks, for months, perhaps, I
cannot stay; I must go, I must go at once. You will assist me, won’t
you, doctor? you will supply me with the means to escape and get back
to Paris?”
Pale and trembling, Henriette threw her arms about him and caught him
to her bosom.
“What words are those you speak? enfeebled as you are, after all the
suffering you have endured! but think not I shall let you go; you shall
stay here with me! Have you not paid the debt you owe your country? and
should you not think of me, too, whom you would leave to loneliness? of
me, who have nothing now in all the wide world save you?”
Their tears flowed and were mingled. They held each other in a wild
tumultuous embrace, with that fond affection which, in twins, often
seems as if it antedated existence. But for all that his exaltation did
not subside, but assumed a higher pitch.
“I tell you I must go. Should I not go I feel I should die of grief and
shame. You can have no idea how my blood boils and seethes in my veins
at the thought of remaining here in idleness. I tell you that this
business is not going to end thus, that we must be avenged. On whom, on
what? Ah! that I cannot tell; but avenged we must and shall be for such
misfortune, in order that we may yet have courage to live on!”
Doctor Dalichamp, who had been watching the scene with intense
interest, cautioned Henriette by signal to make no reply. Maurice would
doubtless be more rational after he should have slept; and sleep he
did, all that day and all the succeeding night, for more than twenty
hours, and never stirred hand or foot. When he awoke next morning,
however, he was as inflexible as ever in his determination to go away.
The fever had subsided; he was gloomy and restless, in haste to
withdraw himself from influences that he feared might weaken his
patriotic fervor. His sister, with many tears, made up her mind that he
must be allowed to have his way, and Doctor Dalichamp, when he came to
make his morning visit, promised to do what he could to facilitate the
young man’s escape by turning over to him the papers of a hospital
attendant who had died recently at Raucourt. It was arranged that
Maurice should don the gray blouse with the red cross of Geneva on its
sleeve and pass through Belgium, thence to make his way as best he
might to Paris, access to which was as yet uninterrupted.
He did not leave the house that day, keeping himself out of sight and
waiting for night to come. He scarcely opened his mouth, although he
did make an attempt to enlist the new farm-hand in his enterprise.
“Say, Prosper, don’t you feel as if you would like to go back and have
one more look at the Prussians?”
The ex-chasseur d’Afrique, who was eating a cheese sandwich, stopped
and held his knife suspended in the air.
“It don’t strike me that it is worth while, from what we were allowed
to see of them before. Why should you wish me to go back there, when
the only use our generals can find for the cavalry is to send it in
after the battle is ended and let it be cut to pieces? No, faith, I’m
sick of the business, giving us such dirty work as that to do!” There
was silence between them for a moment; then he went on, doubtless to
quiet the reproaches of his conscience as a soldier: “And then the work
is too heavy here just now; the plowing is just commencing, and then
there’ll be the fall sowing to be looked after. We must think of the
farm work, mustn’t we? for fighting is well enough in its way, but what
would become of us if we should cease to till the ground? You see how
it is; I can’t leave my work. Not that I am particularly in love with
Father Fouchard, for I doubt very strongly if I shall ever see the
color of his money, but the beasties are beginning to take to me, and
faith! when I was up there in the Old Field this morning, and gave a
look at that d——d Sedan lying yonder in the distance, you can’t tell
how good it made me feel to be guiding my oxen and driving the plow
through the furrow, all alone in the bright sunshine.”
As soon as it was fairly dark, Doctor Dalichamp came driving up in his
old gig. It was his intention to see Maurice to the frontier. Father
Fouchard, well pleased to be rid of one of his guests at least, stepped
out upon the road to watch and make sure there were none of the enemy’s
patrols prowling in the neighborhood, while Silvine put a few stitches
in the blouse of the defunct ambulance man, on the sleeve of which the
red cross of the corps was prominently displayed. The doctor, before
taking his place in the vehicle, examined Jean’s leg anew, but could
not as yet promise that he would be able to save it. The patient was
still in a profound lethargy, recognizing no one, never opening his
mouth to speak, and Maurice was about to leave him without the comfort
of a farewell, when, bending over to give him a last embrace, he saw
him open his eyes to their full extent; the lips parted, and in a faint
voice he said:
“You are going away?” And in reply to their astonished looks: “Yes, I
heard what you said, though I could not stir. Take the remainder of the
money, then. Put your hand in my trousers’ pocket and take it.”
Each of them had remaining nearly two hundred francs of the sum they
had received from the corps paymaster.
But Maurice protested. “The money!” he exclaimed. “Why, you have more
need of it than I, who have the use of both my legs. Two hundred francs
will be abundantly sufficient to see me to Paris, and to get knocked in
the head afterward won’t cost me a penny. I thank you, though, old
fellow, all the same, and good-by and good-luck to you; thanks, too,
for having always been so good and thoughtful, for, had it not been for
you, I should certainly be lying now at the bottom of some ditch, like
a dead dog.”
Jean made a deprecating gesture. “Hush. You owe me nothing; we are
quits. Would not the Prussians have gathered me in out there the other
day had you not picked me up and carried me off on your back? and
yesterday again you saved me from their clutches. Twice have I been
beholden to you for my life, and now I am in your debt. Ah, how unhappy
I shall be when I am no longer with you!” His voice trembled and tears
rose to his eyes. “Kiss me, dear boy!”
They embraced, and, as it had been in the wood the day before, that
kiss set the seal to the brotherhood of dangers braved in each other’s
company, those few weeks of soldier’s life in common that had served to
bind their hearts together with closer ties than years of ordinary
friendship could have done. Days of famine, sleepless nights, the
fatigue of the weary march, death ever present to their eyes, these
things made the foundation on which their affection rested. When two
hearts have thus by mutual gift bestowed themselves the one upon the
other and become fused and molten into one, is it possible ever to
sever the connection? But the kiss they had exchanged the day before,
among the darkling shadows of the forest, was replete with the joy of
their new-found safety and the hope that their escape awakened in their
bosom, while this was the kiss of parting, full of anguish and doubt
unutterable. Would they meet again some day? and how, under what
circumstances of sorrow or of gladness?
Doctor Dalichamp had clambered into his gig and was calling to Maurice.
The young man threw all his heart and soul into the embrace he gave his
sister Henriette, who, pale as death in her black mourning garments,
looked on his face in silence through her tears.
“He whom I leave to your care is my brother. Watch over him, love him
as I love him!”