Читать книгу The Maids of Paradise - Robert William Chambers - Страница 12

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Instantly I recognized in him the insolent priest who had confronted me on my way to La Trappe that morning. I knew him, although now he was wearing neither robe nor shovel-hat, nor those square shoes too large to buckle closely over his flat insteps.

And he knew me.

He appeared admirably cool and composed, glancing at the Countess for an instant with an interrogative expression; then he acknowledged my presence by bowing almost humorously.

“This is Monsieur Scarlett, of the Imperial Military Police,” said the Countess, in a clear voice, ending with that slightly rising inflection which demands an answer.

“Mr. Buckhurst,” I said, “I am an Inspector of Military Police, and I cannot begin to tell you what a pleasure this meeting is to me.”

“I have no doubt of that, monsieur,” said Buckhurst, in his smooth, almost caressing tones. “It, however, inconveniences me a great deal to cross the frontier to-day, even in your company, otherwise I should have surrendered with my confrères.”

“But there is no question of your crossing the frontier, Mr. Buckhurst,” I said.

His colorless eyes sought mine, then dropped. They were almost stone white in the lamp-light—white as his delicately chiselled face and hands.

“Are we not to be exiled?” he asked.

“You are not,” I said.

“Am I not under arrest?”

I stepped forward and placed him formally under arrest, touching him slightly on the shoulder. He did not move a muscle, yet, beneath the thin cloth of his coat I could divine a frame of iron.

“Your creed is one of non-resistance to violence,” I said—“is it not?”

“Yes,” he replied. I saw that gray ring around the pale pupil of his eyes contracting, little by little.

“You have not asked me why I arrest you,” I suggested, “and, monsieur, I must ask you to step back from that table—quick!—don’t move!—not one finger!”

For a second he looked into the barrel of my pistol with concentrated composure, then glanced at the table-drawer which he had jerked open. A revolver lay shining among the litter of glass tubes and papers in the drawer.

The Countess, too, saw the revolver and turned an astonished face to my prisoner.

“Who brought you here?” asked Buckhurst, quietly of me.

“I did,” said the Countess, her voice almost breaking. “Tell this man and his government that you are ready to face every charge against your honor! There is a dreadful mistake; they—they think you are—”

“A thief,” I interposed, with a smile. “The government only asks you to prove that you are not.”

Slowly Buckhurst turned his eyes on the Countess; the faintest glimmer of white teeth showed for an instant between the gray lines that were his lips.

“So you brought this man here?” he said. “Oh, I am glad to know it.”

“Then you cannot be that same John Buckhurst who stands in the tribune of the Château Rouge and promises all Paris to his chosen people,” I remarked, smiling.

“No,” he said, slowly, “I cannot be that man, nor can I—”

“Stop! Stand back from that table!” I cried.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, coolly.

“Madame,” said I, without taking my eyes from him, “in a community dedicated to peace, a revolver is an anachronism. So I think—if you move I will shoot you, Mr. Buckhurst!—so I think I had better take it, table-drawer and all—”

“Stop!” said Buckhurst.

“Oh no, I can’t stop now,” said I, cheerfully, “and if you attempt to upset that lamp you will make a sad mistake. Now walk to the door! Turn your back! Go slowly!—halt!”

With the table-drawer under one arm and my pistol-hand swinging, I followed Buckhurst out into the hall.

Daylight dazzled me; it must have affected Buckhurst, too, for he reached out to the stone balustrade and guided himself down the steps, five paces in front of me.

Under the trees on the lawn, beside the driveway, I saw Dr. Delmont standing, big, bushy head bent thoughtfully, hands clasped behind his back.

Near him, Tavernier and Bazard were lifting a few boxes into a farm-wagon. The carriage from Trois-Feuilles was also there, a stumpy Alsatian peasant on the box. But there were yet no signs of the escort of gendarmes which had been promised me.

As Buckhurst appeared, walking all alone ahead of me, Dr. Delmont looked up with a bitter laugh. “So they found you, too? Well, Buckhurst, this is too bad. They might have given you one more day on your experiments.”

“What experiments?” I asked, glancing at the bottles and retorts in the table-drawer.

“Nitrogen for exhausted soil,” said the Countess, quietly.

I set the table-drawer on the grass, rested my pistol on my hip, and looked around at my prisoners, who now were looking intently at me.

“Gentlemen,” said I, “let me warn you not to claim comradeship with Mr. Buckhurst. And I will show you one reason why.”

I picked up from the table-drawer a little stick about five inches long and held it up.

“What is that, doctor? You don’t know? Oh, you think it might be some sample of fertilizer containing concentrated nitrogen? You are mistaken, it is not nitrogen, but nitro-glycerine.”

Buckhurst’s face changed slightly.

“Is it not, Mr. Buckhurst?” I asked.

He was silent.

“Would you permit me to throw this bit of stuff at your feet?” And I made a gesture.

The superb nerve of the man was something to remember. He did not move, but over his face there crept a dreadful pallor, which even the others noticed, and they shrank away from him, shocked and amazed.

“Here, gentlemen,” I continued, “is a box with a German label—‘Oberlohe, Hanover.’ The silicious earth with which nitro-glycerine is mixed to make dynamite comes from Oberlohe, in Hanover.”

I laid my pistol on the table, struck a match, and deliberately lighted my stick of dynamite. It burned quietly with a brilliant flame, and I laid it on the grass and let it burn out like a lump of Greek fire.

“Messieurs,” I said, cocking and uncocking my pistol, “it is not because this man is a dangerous, political criminal and a maker of explosives that the government has sent me here to arrest him ... or kill him. It is because he is a common thief,... a thief who steals crucifixes,... like this one—”

I brushed aside a pile of papers in the drawer and drew out a big gold crucifix, marvellously chiselled from a lump of the solid metal.... “A thief,” I continued, “who strips the diamonds from crucifixes,... as this has been stripped,... and who sells a single stone to a Jew in Strasbourg, named Fishel Cohen,... now in prison to confront our friend Buckhurst.”

In the dead silence I heard Dr. Delmont’s heavy breathing. Tavernier gave a dry sob and covered his face with his thin hands. The young Countess stood motionless, frightfully white, staring at Buckhurst, who had folded his arms.

Sylvia Elven touched her, but the Countess shook her off and walked straight to Buckhurst.

“Look at me,” she said. “I have promised you my friendship, my faith and trust and support. And now I say to you, I believe in you. Tell them where that crucifix came from.”

Buckhurst looked at me, long enough to see that the end of his rope had come. Then he slowly turned his deadly eyes on the girl before him.

Scarlet to the roots of her hair, she stood there, utterly stunned. The white edges of Buckhurst’s teeth began to show again; for an instant I thought he meant to strike her. Then the sudden double beat of horses’ hoofs broke out along the avenue below, and, through the red sunset I saw a dozen horsemen come scampering up the drive toward us.

“They’ve sent me lancers instead of gendarmes for your escort,” I remarked to Dr. Delmont; at the same moment I stepped out into the driveway to signal the riders, raising my hand.

Instantly a pistol flashed—then another and another, and a dozen harsh voices shouted: “Hourra! Hourra! Preussen!”

“Mille tonnerre!” roared Delmont; “the Prussians are here!”

“Look out! Stand back there! Get the women back!” I cried, as an Uhlan wheeled his horse straight through a bed of geraniums and fired his horse-pistol at me.

Delmont dragged the young Countess to the shelter of an elm; Sylvia Elven and Tavernier followed; Buckhurst ran to the carriage and leaped in.

“No resistance!” bellowed Delmont, as Bazard snatched up the pistol I had taken from Buckhurst. But the invalid had already fired at a horseman, and had gone down under the merciless hoofs with a lance through his face.

My first impulse was to shoot Buckhurst, and I started for him.

Then, in front of me, a horse galloped into the table and fell with a crash, hurling his rider at my feet. I can see him yet sprawling there on the lawn, a lank, red-faced fellow, his helmet smashed in, and his spurred boots sticking fast in the sod.

Helter-skelter through the trees came the rest of the Uhlans, shouting their hoarse “Hourra! Hourra! Preussen!”—white-and-black pennons streaming from their lance-heads, pistols flashing in the early dusk.

I ran past Bazard’s trampled body and fired at an Uhlan who had seized the horses which were attached to the carriage where Buckhurst sat. The Uhlan’s horse reared and plunged, carrying him away at a frightful pace, and I do not know whether I hit him or not, but he dropped his pistol, and I picked it up and fired at another cavalryman who shouted and put his horse straight at me.

Again I ran around the wagon, through a clump of syringa bushes, and up the stone steps to the terrace, and after me galloped one of those incomparable cossack riders—an Uhlan, lance in rest, setting his wiry little horse to the stone steps with a loud “Hourra!”

It was too steep a grade for the gallant horse. I flung my pistol in the animal’s face and the poor brute reared straight up and fell backward, rolling over and over with his unfortunate rider, and falling with a tremendous splash into the pool below.

“In God’s name stop that!” roared Delmont, from below. “Give up, Scarlett! They mean us no harm!”

I could see the good doctor on the lawn, waving his handkerchief frantically at me; in a group behind stood the Countess and Sylvia; Tavernier was kneeling beside Bazard’s body; two Uhlans were raising their stunned comrade from the wreck of the table; other Uhlans cantered toward the foot of the terrace above which I stood.

“Come down, hussar!” called an officer. “We respect your uniform.”

“Will you parley?” I asked, listening intently for the gallop of my promised gendarmes. If I could only gain time and save Buckhurst. He was there in the carriage; I had seen him spring into it when the Germans burst in among the trees.

“Foulez-fous fous rendre? Oui ou non?” shouted the officer, in his terrible French.

“Eh bien,... non!” I cried, and ran for the château.

I heard the Uhlans dismount and run clattering and jingling up the stone steps. As I gained the doorway they shot at me, but I only fled the faster, springing up the stairway. Here I stood, sabre in hand, ready to stop the first man.

Up the stairs rushed three Uhlans, sabres shining in the dim light from the window behind me; I laid my forefinger flat on the blade of my sabre and shortened my arm for a thrust—then there came a blinding flash, a roar, and I was down, trying to rise, until a clinched fist struck me in the face and I fell flat on my back.

Without any emotion whatever I saw an Uhlan raise his sabre to finish me; also I saw a yellow-and-black sleeve interposed between death and myself.

“No butchery!” growled the big officer who had summoned me from the lawn. “Cursed pig, you’d sabre your own grandmother! Lift him, Sepp! You, there, Loisel!—lift him up. Is he gone?”

“He is alive, Herr Rittmeister,” said a soldier, “but his back is broken.”

“It isn’t,” I said.

“Herr Je!” muttered the Rittmeister; “an eel, and a Frenchman, and nine long lives! Here, you hussar, what’s the matter with you?”

“One of them shot me; I thought it was to be sabres,” said I, weakly.

“And why the devil wasn’t it sabres!” roared the officer, turning on his men. “One to three—and six more below! Sepp, you disgust me. Carry him out!”

I groaned as they lifted me. “Easy there!” growled the officer, “don’t pull him that way. Now, young hell-cat, set your teeth; you have eight more lives yet.”

They got me out to the terrace, and carried me to the lawn. One of the men brought a cup of water from the pool.

“Herr Rittmeister,” I said, faintly, “I had a prisoner here; he should be in the carriage. Is he?”

The officer walked briskly over to the carriage. “Nobody here but two women and a scared peasant!” he called out.

As I lay still staring up into the sky, I heard the Rittmeister addressing Dr. Delmont in angry tones. “By every law of civilized war I ought to hang you and your friend there! Civilians who fire on troops are treated that way. But I won’t. Your foolish companion lies yonder with a lance through his mouth. He’s dead; I say nothing. For you, I have no respect. But I have for that hell-cat who did his duty. You civilians—you go to the devil!”

“Are not your prisoners sacred from insult?” asked the doctor, angrily.

“Prisoners! My prisoners! You compliment yourself! Loisel! Send those impudent civilians into the house! I won’t look at them! They make me sick!”

The astonished doctor attempted to take his stand by me, offering his services, but the troopers hustled him and poor Tavernier off up the terrace steps.

“The two ladies in the carriage, Herr Rittmeister?” said a cavalryman, coming up at salute.

“What? Ladies? Oh yes.” Then he muttered in his mustache: “Always around—always everywhere. They can’t stay there. I want that carriage. Sepp!”

“At orders, Herr Rittmeister!”

“Carry that gentleman to the carriage. Place Schwartz and Ruppert in the wagon yonder. Get straw—you, Brauer, bring straw—and toss in those boxes, if there is room. Where’s Hofman?”

“In the pool, Herr Rittmeister.”

“Take him out,” said the officer, soberly. “Uhlans don’t abandon their dead.”

Two soldiers lifted me again and bore me away in the darkness. I was perfectly conscious.

And all the while I was listening for the gallop of my gendarmes, not that I cared very much, now that Buckhurst was gone.

“Herr Rittmeister,” I said, as they laid me in the carriage, “ask the Countess de Vassart if she will let me say good-bye to her.”

“With pleasure,” said the officer, promptly. “Madame, here is a polite young gentleman who desires to make his adieux. Permit me, madame—he is here in the dark. Sepp! fall back! Loisel, advance ten paces! Halt!”

“Is it you, Monsieur Scarlett?” came an unsteady voice, from the darkness.

“Yes, madame. Can you forgive me?”

“Forgive you? My poor friend, I have nothing to forgive. Are you badly hurt, Monsieur Scarlett?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered.

Suddenly the chapel bell of La Trappe rang out a startling peal; the Prussian captain shouted: “Stop that bell! Shoot every civilian in the house!” But the Uhlans, who rushed up the terrace, found the great doors bolted and the lower windows screened with steel shutters.

On the battlements of the south wing a red radiance grew brighter; somebody had thrown wood into the iron basket of the ancient beacon, and set fire to it.

“That teaches me a lesson!” bawled the enraged Rittmeister, shaking his fist up at the brightening alarm signal.

He vaulted into his saddle, wheeled his horse and rode up to the peasant, Brauer, who, frightened to the verge of stupidity, sat on the carriage-box.

“Do you know the wood-road that leads to Gunstett through the foot-hills?” he demanded, controlling his fury with a strong effort.

The blank face of the peasant was answer enough; the Rittmeister glared around; his eyes fell on the Countess.

“You know this country, madame?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Will you set us on our way through the Gunstett hill-road?”

“No.”

The chapel bell was clanging wildly; the beacon shot up in a whirling column of sparks and red smoke.

“Put that woman into the carriage!” bellowed the officer. “I’m cursed if I leave her to set the whole country yapping at our heels! Loisel, put her in beside the prisoner! Madame, it is useless to resist. Hark! What’s that sound of galloping?”

I listened. I heard nothing save the clamor of the chapel bell.

An Uhlan laid a heavy hand on the shoulder of the listening Countess; she tried to draw back, but he pushed her brutally into the carriage, and she stumbled and fell into the cushions beside me.

“Uhlans, into your saddles!” cried the Rittmeister, sharply. “Two men to the wagon!—a man on the box there! Here you, Jacques Bonhomme, drive carefully or I’ll hang you higher than the Strasbourg clock. Are the wounded in the straw? Sepp, take the riderless horses. Peloton, attention! Draw sabres! March! Trot!”

Fever had already begun to turn my head; the jolting of the carriage brought me to my senses at times; at times, too, I could hear the two wounded Uhlans groaning in the wagon behind me, the tramping of the cavalry ahead, the dull rattle of lance butts in the leather stirrup-boots.

If I could only have fainted, but I could not, and the agony grew so intense that I bit my lip through to choke the scream that strained my throat.

Once the carriage stopped; in the darkness I heard somebody whisper: “There go the French riders!” And I fancied I heard a far echo of hoof-strokes along the road to La Trappe. It might have been the fancy of an intermittent delirium; it may have been my delayed gendarmes—I never knew. And the carriage presently moved on more smoothly, as though we were now on one of those even military high-roads which traverse France from Luxembourg to the sea.

Which way we were going I did not know, I did not care. Absurdly mingled with sick fancies came flashes of reason, when I could see the sky frosted with silver, and little, bluish stars peeping down. At times I recognized the mounted men around me as Prussian Uhlans, and weakly wondered by what deviltry they had got into France, and what malignant spell they cast over the land that the very stones did not rise up and smite them from their yellow-and-black saddles.

Once—it was, I think, very near daybreak—I came out of a dream in which I was swimming through oceans of water, drinking as I swam. The carriage had stopped; I could not see the lancers, but presently I heard them all talking in loud, angry voices. There appeared to be some houses near by; I heard a dog barking, a great outcry of pigs and feathered fowls, the noise of a scuffle, a trampling of heavy boots, a shot!

Then the terrible voice of the Rittmeister: “Hang that man to his barn gate! Pig of an assassin, I’ll teach you to murder German soldiers!”

A woman began to scream without ceasing.

“Burn that house!” bellowed the Rittmeister.

Through the prolonged screaming I heard the crash of window-glass; presently a dull red light grew out of the gloom, brighter and brighter. The screaming never ceased.

“Uhlans! Mount!” came the steady voice of the Rittmeister; the carriage started. Almost at the word the darkness turned to flame; against the raging furnace of a house on fire I saw the figure of a man, inky black, hanging from the high cross-bar of the cow-yard gate, and past him filed the shadowy horsemen, lances slanting backward from their stirrups.

The last I remember was seeing the dead man’s naked feet—for they hanged him in his night-shirt—and the last I heard was that awful screaming from the red shadows that flickered across the fields of uncut wheat.

For presently my madness began again, and again I was bathed to the mouth in cold, sweet waters, and I drank as I swam lazily in the sunshine.

My next lucid interval came from pain almost unendurable. We were fording a river in bright starlight; the carriage bumped across the stones, water washed and slopped over the carriage floor. To right and left, Prussian lancers were riding, and I saw the water boiling under their horses and their long lances aslant the stars.

But there were more horsemen now, scores and scores of them, trampling through the shallow river. And beyond I could see a line of cannon, wallowing through the water, shadowy artillerymen clinging to forge and caisson, mounted men astride straining teams, tall officers on either flank, sitting their horses motionless in mid-stream.

The carriage stopped.

“Are you suffering?” came a low voice, close to my ear.

“Madame, could I have a little of that water?” I muttered.

Very gently she laid me back. I was entirely without power to move below my waist, or to support my body.

She filled my cap with river water and held it while I drank. After I had my fill she bathed my face, passing her wet hands through my hair and over my eyes. The carriage moved on.

“TO RIGHT AND LEFT, PRUSSIAN LANCERS WERE RIDING”

After a while she whispered.

“Are you awake?”

“Yes, madame.”

“See the dawn—how red it is on the hills! There are vineyards there on the heights,... and a castle,... and soldiers moving out across the river meadows.”

The rising sun was shining in my eyes as we came to a halt before a small stone bridge over which a column of cavalry was passing—Prussian hussars, by their crimson dolmans and little, flat busbies.

Our Uhlan escort grouped themselves about us to watch the hussars defile at a trot, and I saw the Rittmeister rigidly saluting their standards as they bobbed past above a thicket of sabres.

“What are these Uhlans doing?” broke in a nasal voice behind us; an officer, followed by two orderlies and a trumpeter, came galloping up through the mud.

“Who’s that—a dead Frenchman?” demanded the officer, leaning over the edge of the carriage to give me a near-sighted stare. Then he saw the Countess, stared at her, and touched the golden peak of his helmet.

“At your service, madame,” he said. “Is this officer dead?”

“Dying, general,” said the Rittmeister, at salute.

“Then he will not require these men. Herr Rittmeister, I take your Uhlans for my escort. Madame, you have my sympathy; can I be of service?”

He spoke perfect French. The Countess looked up at him in a bewildered way. “You cannot mean to abandon this dying man here?” she asked.

There was a silence, broken brusquely by the Rittmeister. “That Frenchman did his duty!”

“Did he?” said the general, staring at the Countess.

“Very well; I want that carriage, but I won’t take it. Give the driver a white flag, and have him drive into the French lines. Herr Rittmeister, give your orders! Madame, your most devoted!” And he wheeled his beautiful horse and trotted off down the road, while the Rittmeister hastily tied a handkerchief to a stick and tossed it up to the speechless peasant on the box.

“Morsbronn is the nearest French post!” he said, in French. Then he bent from his horse and looked down at me.

“You did your duty!” he snapped, and, barely saluting the Countess, touched spurs to his mount and disappeared, followed at a gallop by his mud-splashed Uhlans.