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_ The courtyard of the Nord Railway Station was lighted by oil-lamps
taken from locomotives; their silvered reflectors threw dazzling
rays from all sides on the under portion of the immense yellow
mass of the balloon; the upper portion was swaying to and fro with
gigantic ungainliness in the strong breeze. It was only a small
balloon, as balloons are measured, but it seemed monstrous as it
wavered over the human forms that were agitating themselves
beneath it. The cordage was silhouetted against the yellow
taffetas as high up as the widest diameter of the balloon, but
above that all was vague, and even spectators standing at a
distance could not clearly separate the summit of the great sphere
from the darkly moving sky. The car, held by ropes fastened to
stakes, rose now and then a few inches uneasily from the ground.
The sombre and severe architecture of the station-buildings
enclosed the balloon on every hand; it had only one way of escape.
Over the roofs of that architecture, which shut out the sounds of
the city, came the irregular booming of the bombardment. Shells
were falling in the southern quarters of Paris, doing perhaps not
a great deal of damage, but still plunging occasionally into the
midst of some domestic interior and making a sad mess of it. The
Parisians were convinced that the shells were aimed maliciously at
hospitals and museums; and when a child happened to be blown to
pieces their unspoken comments upon the Prussian savagery were
bitter. Their faces said: "Those barbarians cannot even spare our
children!" They amused themselves by creating a market in shells,
paying more for a live shell than a dead one, and modifying the
tariff according to the supply. And as the cattle-market was
empty, and the vegetable-market was empty, and beasts no longer
pastured on the grass of the parks, and the twenty-five million
rats of the metropolis were too numerous to furnish interest to
spectators, and the Bourse was practically deserted, the traffic
in shells sustained the starving mercantile instinct during a very
dull period. But the effect on the nerves was deleterious. The
nerves of everybody were like nothing but a raw wound. Violent
anger would spring up magically out of laughter, and blows out of
caresses. This indirect consequence of the bombardment was
particularly noticeable in the group of men under the balloon.
Each behaved as if he were controlling his temper in the most
difficult circumstances. Constantly they all gazed upwards into
the sky, though nothing could possibly be distinguished there save
the blurred edge of a flying cloud. But the booming came from that
sky; the shells that were dropping on Montrouge came out of that
sky; and the balloon was going up into it; the balloon was
ascending into its mysteries, to brave its dangers, to sweep over
the encircling ring of fire and savages.
Sophia stood apart with Carlier. Carlier had indicated a
particular spot, under the shelter of the colonnade, where he said
it was imperative that they should post themselves. Having guided
Sophia to this spot, and impressed upon her that they were not to
move, he seemed to consider that the activity of his role was
finished, and spoke no word. With the very high silk hat which he
always wore, and a thin old-fashioned overcoat whose collar was
turned up, he made a rather grotesque figure. Fortunately the
night was not very cold, or he might have passively frozen to
death on the edge of that feverish group. Sophia soon ignored him.
She watched the balloon. An aristocratic old man leaned against
the car, watch in hand; at intervals he scowled, or stamped his
foot. An old sailor, tranquilly smoking a pipe, walked round and
round the balloon, staring at it; once he climbed up into the
rigging, and once he jumped into the car and angrily threw out of
it a bag, which some one had placed in it. But for the most part
he was calm. Other persons of authority hurried about, talking and
gesticulating; and a number of workmen waited idly for orders.
"Where is Chirac?" suddenly cried the old man with the watch.
Several voices deferentially answered, and a man ran away into the
gloom on an errand.
Then Chirac appeared, nervous, self-conscious, restless. He was
enveloped in a fur coat that Sophia had never seen before, and he
carried dangling in his hand a cage containing six pigeons whose
whiteness stirred uneasily within it. The sailor took the cage
from him and all the persons of authority gathered round to
inspect the wonderful birds upon which, apparently, momentous
affairs depended. When the group separated, the sailor was to be
seen bending over the edge of the car to deposit the cage safely.
He then got into the car, still smoking his pipe, and perched
himself negligently on the wicker-work. The man with the watch was
conversing with Chirac; Chirac nodded his head frequently in
acquiescence, and seemed to be saying all the time: "Yes, sir!
Perfectly sir! I understand, sir! Yes, sir!"
Suddenly Chirac turned to the car and put a question to the
sailor, who shook his head. Whereupon Chirac gave a gesture of
submissive despair to the man with the watch. And in an instant
the whole throng was in a ferment.
"The victuals!" cried the man with the watch. "The victuals, name
of God! Must one be indeed an idiot to forget the victuals! Name
of God--of God!"
Sophia smiled at the agitation, and at the inefficient management
which had never thought of food. For it appeared that the food had
not merely been forgotten; it was a question which had not even
been considered. She could not help despising all that crowd of
self-important and fussy males to whom the idea had not occurred
that even balloonists must eat. And she wondered whether
everything was done like that. After a delay that seemed very
long, the problem of victuals was solved, chiefly, as far as
Sophia could judge, by means of cakes of chocolate and bottles of
wine.
"It is enough! It is enough!" Chirac shouted passionately several
times to a knot of men who began to argue with him.
Then he gazed round furtively, and with an inflation of the chest
and a patting of his fur coat he came directly towards Sophia.
Evidently Sophia's position had been prearranged between him and
Carlier. They could forget food, but they could think of Sophia's
position!
All eyes followed him. Those eyes could not, in the gloom,
distinguish Sophia's beauty, but they could see that she was young
and slim and elegant, and of foreign carriage. That was enough.
The very air seemed to vibrate with the intense curiosity of those
eyes. And immediately Chirac grew into the hero of some brilliant
and romantic adventure. Immediately he was envied and admired by
every man of authority present. What was she? Who was she? Was it
a serious passion or simply a caprice? Had she flung herself at
him? It was undeniable that lovely creatures did sometimes fling
themselves at lucky mediocrities. Was she a married woman? An
artiste? A girl? Such queries thumped beneath overcoats, while the
correctness of a ceremonious demeanour was strictly observed.
Chirac uncovered, and kissed her hand. The wind disarranged his
hair. She saw that his face was very pale and anxious beneath the
swagger of a sincere desire to be brave.
"Well, it is the moment!" he said.
"Did you all forget the food?" she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. "What will you? One cannot think of
everything."
"I hope you will have a safe voyage," she said.
She had already taken leave of him once, in the house, and heard
all about the balloon and the sailor-aeronaut and the
preparations; and now she had nothing to say, nothing whatever.
He shrugged his shoulders again. "I hope so!" he murmured, but in
a tone to convey that he had no such hope.
"The wind isn't too strong?" she suggested.
He shrugged his shoulders again. "What would you?"
"Is it in the direction you want?"
"Yes, nearly," he admitted unwillingly. Then rousing himself: "Eh,
well, madame. You have been extremely amiable to come. I held to
it very much--that you should come. It is because of you I quit
Paris."
She resented the speech by a frown.
"Ah!" he implored in a whisper. "Do not do that. Smile on me.
After all, it is not my fault. Remember that this may be the last
time I see you, the last time I regard your eyes."
She smiled. She was convinced of the genuineness of the emotion
which expressed itself in all this flamboyant behaviour. And she
had to make excuses to herself on behalf of Chirac. She smiled to
give him pleasure. The hard commonsense in her might sneer, but
indubitably she was the centre of a romantic episode. The balloon
darkly swinging there! The men waiting! The secrecy of the
mission! And Chirac, bare-headed in the wind that was to whisk him
away, telling her in fatalistic accents that her image had
devastated his life, while envious aspirants watched their
colloquy! Yes, it was romantic. And she was beautiful! Her beauty
was an active reality that went about the world playing tricks in
spite of herself. The thoughts that passed through her mind were
the large, splendid thoughts of romance. And it was Chirac who had
aroused them! A real drama existed, then, triumphing over the
accidental absurdities and pettinesses of the situation. Her final
words to Chirac were tender and encouraging.
He hurried back to the balloon, resuming his cap. He was received
with the respect due to one who comes fresh from conquest. He was
sacred.
Sophia rejoined Carlier, who had withdrawn, and began to talk to
him with a self-conscious garrulity. She spoke without reason and
scarcely noticed what she was saying. Already Chirac was snatched
out of her life, as other beings, so many of them, had been
snatched. She thought of their first meetings, and of the sympathy
which had always united them. He had lost his simplicity, now, in
the self-created crisis of his fate, and had sunk in her esteem.
And she was determined to like him all the more because he had
sunk in her esteem. She wondered whether he really had undertaken
this adventure from sentimental disappointment. She wondered
whether, if she had not forgotten to wind her watch one night,
they would still have been living quietly under the same roof in
the Rue Breda.
The sailor climbed definitely into the car; he had covered himself
with a large cloak. Chirac had got one leg over the side of the
car, and eight men were standing by the ropes, when a horse's
hoofs clattered through the guarded entrance to the courtyard,
amid an uproar of sudden excitement. The shiny chest of the horse
was flecked with the classic foam.
"A telegram from the Governor of Paris!"
As the orderly, checking his mount, approached the group, even the
old man with the watch raised his hat. The orderly responded, bent
down to make an inquiry, which Chirac answered, and then, with
another exchange of salutes, the official telegram was handed over
to Chirac, and the horse backed away from the crowd. It was quite
thrilling. Carlier was thrilled.
"He is never too prompt, the Governor. It is a quality!" said
Carlier, with irony.
Chirac entered the car. And then the old man with the watch drew a
black bag from the shadow behind him and entrusted it to Chirac,
who accepted it with a profound deference and hid it. The sailor
began to issue commands. The men at the ropes were bending down
now. Suddenly the balloon rose about a foot and trembled. The
sailor continued to shout. All the persons of authority gazed
motionless at the balloon. The moment of suspense was eternal.
"Let go all!" cried the sailor, standing up, and clinging to the
cordage. Chirac was seated in the car, a mass of dark fur with a
small patch of white in it. The men at the ropes were a knot of
struggling confused figures.
One side of the car tilted up, and the sailor was nearly pitched
out. Three men at the other side had failed to free the ropes.
"Let go, corpses!" the sailor yelled at them.
The balloon jumped, as if it were drawn by some terrific impulse
from the skies.
"Adieu!" called Chirac, pulling his cap off and waving it.
"Adieu!"
"Bon voyage! Bon voyage!" the little crowd cheered. And then,
"Vive la France!" Throats tightened, including Sophia's.
But the top of the balloon had leaned over, destroying its pear-
shape, and the whole mass swerved violently towards the wall of
the station, the car swinging under it like a toy, and an anchor
under the car. There was a cry of alarm. Then the great ball
leaped again, and swept over the high glass roof, escaping by
inches the spouting. The cheers expired instantly. ... The balloon
was gone. It was spirited away as if by some furious and mighty
power that had grown impatient in waiting for it. There remained
for a few seconds on the collective retina of the spectators a
vision of the inclined car swinging near the roof like the tail of
a kite. And then nothing! Blankness! Blackness! Already the
balloon was lost to sight in the vast stormy ocean of the night, a
plaything of the winds. The spectators became once more aware of
the dull booming of the cannonade. The balloon was already perhaps
flying unseen amid the wrack over those guns.
Sophia involuntarily caught her breath. A chill sense of
loneliness, of purposelessness, numbed her being.
Nobody ever saw Chirac or the old sailor again. The sea must have
swallowed them. Of the sixty-five balloons that left Paris during
the siege, two were not heard of. This was the first of the two.
Chirac had, at any rate, not magnified the peril, though his
intention was undoubtedly to magnify it. _
Read next: BOOK III SOPHIA: CHAPTER VII - SUCCESS: PART III
Read previous: BOOK III SOPHIA: CHAPTER VII - SUCCESS: PART I
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