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Lorraine: A romance, a novel by Robert W. Chambers |
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Chapter 17. The Keepers Of The House |
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_ CHAPTER XVII. THE KEEPERS OF THE HOUSE The candles were lighted again in the ballroom, and again the delicate, gilded canapes were covered with officers, great stalwart fellows with blond hair and blue eyes, cuirassiers in white tunics faced with red, cuirassiers in green and white, black, yellow, and white, orange and white; dragoons in blue and salmon colour, bearing the number "7" on their shoulder-straps, dragoons of the Guard in blue and white, dragoons of the 2d Regiment in black and blue. There were hussars too, dandies of the 19th in their tasselled boots and crimson busby-crowns; Black Hussars, bearing, even on their soft fatigue-caps, the emblems of death, the skull and crossed thigh-bones. An Uhlan or two of the 2d Guard Regiment, trimmed with white and piped with scarlet, dawdled around the salon, staring at gilded clock and candelabra, or touching the grand-piano with hesitating but itching fingers. Here and there officers of the general staff stood in consultation, great, stiff, strapping men, faultlessly clothed in scarlet and black, holding their spiked helmets carefully under their arms. The pale blue of a Bavarian dotted the assembly at rare intervals, some officer from Von Werder's army, attentive, shy, saying little even when questioned. The huge Saxon officers, beaming with good-nature, mixed amiably with the sour-visaged Brunswick men and the stiff-necked Prussians. In the long dining-room dinner was nearly ended. Facing each other sat the old Vicomte and Madame de Morteyn, he pale, dignified, exquisitely courteous, she equally pale but more gentle in her sweet dignity. On the right sat the Red Prince, stiff as steel, jerky in every movement, stern, forbidding, unbending as much as his black Prussian blood would let him; on the left sat a thin old man, bald as an ivory ball, pallid, hairless of face, a frame of iron in a sombre, wrinkled tunic, without a single decoration. His short hawk's nose, keen and fine as a falcon's beak, quivered with every breath; his thin lips rested one upon the other in stern, delicate curves. It was Moltke, the master expert, come from Berlin to watch the wheels turning in that vast complicated network of machinery which he controlled with one fragile finger pressing the button. There, too, was Von Zastrow, destined to make his error at Gravelotte, there was Steinmetz, and the handsome Saxon prince, and great, flabby August of Wuertemberg, talking with Alvensleben, dainty, pious, aristocratic. Behind, in the shadow, stood Manstein and Goben, a grim, gray pair, with menacing eyes. Perhaps they were thinking of the Red Prince's parting words at the Spicheren: "Your duty is to march forward, always forward, find the enemy, prevent his escape, and fight him wherever you find him." To which the fastidious and devout Alvensleben muttered, "In the name of God," and poor, brave Kamecke, shuddering as he thought of his Westphalians and the cul-de-sac where he had sent them on the 6th day of August, sighed and looked out into deepening twilight. Outside a Saxon infantry band began to play a masterpiece of Beethoven. It seemed to be the signal for breaking up, and the Red Prince, with abrupt deference, turned to Madame de Morteyn, who gave the signal and rose. The Red Prince stepped back as the old vicomte gave his wife a trembling arm. Then he bowed where he stood, clothed in his tight, blood-red tunic, tall, powerful, square-jawed, cruel-mouthed, and eyed like a wolf. But his forehead was fine, broad, and benevolent, and his beard softened the wicked curve of his lips. Jack and Lorraine had again dined together in the little gilded salon above, served by Lorraine's maid and wept over by the old house-keeper. The terrified servants scarcely dared to breathe as they crept through the halls where, "like a flight of devils from hell" the "Prussian ogres" had settled in the house. They came whimpering to their mistress, but took courage at the calm, dignified attitude of the old vicomte, and began to think that these "children-eating Prussians" might perhaps forego their craving for one evening. Therefore the chef did his best, encouraged by a group of hysterical maids who had suddenly become keenly alive to their own plumpness and possible desirability for ragouts. The old marquis himself received his unwelcome guests as though he were receiving travelling strangers, to whom, now that they were under his roof, faultless hospitality was due, nothing more, merely the courtesy of a French nobleman to an uninvited guest. Ah, but the steel was in his heart to the hilt. He, an old soldier of the Malakoff, of Algeria, the brother in arms of Changarnier, of Chanzy, he obliged to receive invaders--invaders belonging to the same nation which had lined the streets of Berlin so long ago, cringing, whining "Vive l'Empereur!" at the crack of the thongs of Murat's horsemen! Yet now it was that he showed himself the chivalrous soldier, the old colonel of the old regime, the true beau-sabreur of an epoch dead. And the Red Prince Frederick Charles knew it, and bowed low as the vicomte left the dining-hall with his gentle, pale-faced wife on his arm. Jack, sitting after dinner with Lorraine in the bay-window above, looked down upon the vast camp that covered the whole land, from the hills to the Lisse, from the forest to the pastures above Saint-Lys. There were no tents--the German army carried none. Here and there a canvas-covered wagon glistened white in the moonlight; the pale radiance fell on acres of stacked rifles, on the brass rims of drums, and the spikes of the sentries' helmets. Videttes, vaguely silhouetted on distant knolls, stood almost motionless, save for the tossing of their horses' heads. Along the river Lisse the infantry pickets lay, the sentinels, patrolling their beats with brisk, firm steps, only pausing to bring their heavy heels together, wheel squarely, and retrace their steps, always alert and sturdy. The wind shifted to the west and the faint chimes of Saint-Lys came quavering on the breeze. "The bells!" said Jack; "can you hear them?" "Yes," said Lorraine, listlessly. She had been very silent during their dinner. He wondered that she had not shown any emotion at the sight of the invading soldiers. She had not--she had scarcely even shown curiosity. He thought that perhaps she did not realize what it meant, this swarm of Prussians pouring into France between the Moselle and the Rhine. He, American that he was, felt heartsick, humiliated, at the sight of the spiked casques and armoured horsemen, trampling the meadows of the province that he loved--the province of Lorraine. For those strangers to France who know France know two mothers; and though the native land is first and dearest, the new mother, France, generous, tender, lies next in the hearts of those whom she has sheltered. So Jack felt the shame and humiliation as though a blow had been struck at his own home and kin, and he suffered the more thinking what his uncle must suffer. And Lorraine! His heart had bled for her when the harsh treble of the little, flat Prussian drums first broke out among the hills. He looked for the deep sorrow, the patience, the proud endurance, the prouder faith that he expected in her; he met with silence, even a distrait indifference. Surely she could comprehend what this crushing disaster prophesied for France? Surely she of all women, sensitive, tender, and loyal, must know what love of kin and country meant? Far away in the southwest the great heart of Paris throbbed in silence, for the beautiful, sinful city, confused by the din of the riffraff within her walls, blinded by lies and selfish counsels, crouched in mute agony, listening for the first ominous rumbling of a rotten, tottering Empire. God alone knows why he gave to France, in the supreme moment of her need, the beings who filled heaven with the wind of their lungs and brought her to her knees in shame--not for brave men dead in vain, not for a wasted land, scourged and flame-shrunken from the Rhine to the Loire, not for provinces lost nor cities gone forever--but for the strange creatures that her agony brought forth, shapes simian and weird, all mouth and convulsive movement, little pigmy abortions mouthing and playing antics before high Heaven while the land ran blood in every furrow and the world was a hell of flame. Gambetta, that incubus of bombastic flabbiness, roaring prophecy and platitude through the dismayed city, kept his eye on the balcony of the particular edifice where, later, he should pose as an animated Jericho trumpet. So, biding his time, he bellowed, but it was the Comedie Francaise that was the loser, not the people, when he sailed away in his balloon, posed, squatting majestically as the god of war above the clouds of battle. And little Thiers, furtive, timid, delighting in senile efforts to stir the ferment of chaos till it boiled, he, too, was there, owl-like, squeaky-voiced, a true "Bombyx a Lunettes." There, too, was Hugo--often ridiculous in his terrible moods, egotistical, sloppy, roaring. The Empire pinched Hugo, and he roared; and let the rest of the world judge whether, under such circumstances, there was majesty in the roar. The spectacle of Hugo, prancing on the ramparts and hurling bad names at the German armies, recalls the persistent but painful manoeuvres of a lion with a flea. Both are terribly in earnest--neither is sublime. Jack sat leaning on the window-ledge, his chin on both hands, watching the moonlight rippling across the sea of steel below. Lorraine, also silent, buried in an arm-chair, lay huddled somewhere in the shadows, looking up at the stars, scarcely visible in the radiance of the moon. After a while she spoke in a low voice: "Do you remember in chapel a week ago--what--" "Yes, I know what you mean. Can you say it--any of it?" "Yes, all." Presently he heard her voice in the darkness repeating the splendid lines: "'In the days when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and they that look out of the windows be darkened. "'And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and they shall rise up at the voice of a bird, and all the daughters of music shall be brought low. "'Also they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fear shall be in the way, and the almond-tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail. "'Because man goeth to his long home--'" Her voice broke a little. "'And the mourners go about the streets--'" He leaned forward, his hand stretched out in the shadows. After a moment her fingers touched his, moved a little, and were clasped close. Then it was that, in her silence, he read a despair too deep, too sudden, too stupefying for expression--a despair scarcely yet understood. A sensitive young mind, stunned by realities never dreamed of, recovers slowly; and the first outward evidence of returning comprehension is an out-stretched hand, a groping in the shadows for the hand of the best beloved. Her hand was there, out-stretched, their fingers had met and interlaced. A great lassitude weighed her down, mind and body. Yesterday was so far away, and to-morrow so close at hand, but not yet close enough to arouse her from an apathy unpierced as yet by the keen shaft of grief. He felt the lethargy in her yielding fingers; perhaps he began to understand the sensitive girl lying in the arm-chair beside him, perhaps he even saw ahead into the future that promised everything or nothing, for France, for her, for him. Madame de Morteyn came to take her away, but before he dropped her hand in the shadows he felt a pressure that said, "Wait!"--so he waited, there alone in the darkness. The bells of Saint-Lys sounded again, scarcely vibrating in the still air; a bank of sombre cloud buried the moon, and put out the little stars one by one until the blackness of the night crept in, blotting out river and tree and hill, hiding the silent camp in fathomless shadow. He slept. When he awoke, slowly, confused and uncertain, he found her close to him, kneeling on the floor, her face on his knees. He touched her arm, fearfully, scarcely daring; he touched her hair, falling heavily over her face and shoulders and across his knees. Ah! but she was tired--her very soul was weary and sick; and she was too young to bear her trouble. Therefore she came back to him who had reached out his hand to her. She could not cry--she could only lie there and try to live through the bitterness of her solitude. For now she knew at last that she was alone on earth. The knowledge had come in a moment, it had come with the first trample of the Prussian horsemen; she knew that her love, given so wholly, so passionately, was nothing, had been nothing, to her father. He whom she lived for--was it possible that he could abandon her in such an hour? She had waited all day, all night; she said in her heart that he would come from his machines and his turret to be with her. Together they could have lived through the shame of the day--of the bitter days to come; together they could have suffered, knowing that they had each other to live for. But she could not face the Prussian scourge alone--she could not. These two truths had been revealed to her with the first tap of the Prussian drums: that every inch of soil, every grass-blade, every pebble of her land was dearer to her than life; and that her life was nothing to her father. He who alone in all the world could have stood between her and the shameful pageant of invasion, who could have taught her to face it, to front it nobly, who could have bidden her hope and pray and wait--he sat in his turret turning little wheels while the whole land shook with the throes of invasion--their native land, Lorraine. The death-throes of a nation are felt by all the world. Bismarck placed a steel-clad hand upon the pulse of France, and knew Lorraine lay dying. Amputation would end all--Moltke had the apparatus ready; Bismarck, the great surgeon and greater executioner, sat with mailed hand on the pulse of France and waited. The girl, Lorraine, too, knew the crisis had come--sensitive prophetess in all that she held sacred! She had never prayed for the Emperor, but she always prayed for France when she asked forgiveness night and morning. At confession she had accused herself sometimes because she could not understand the deeper meaning of this daily prayer, but now she understood it; the fierce love for native soil that blazes up when that soil is stamped upon and spurned. All the devotion, all the tender adoration, that she had given her father turned now to bitter grief for this dear land of hers. It, at least, had been her mother, her comforter, her consolation; and there it lay before her--it called to her; she responded passionately, and gave it all her love. So she lay there in the dark, her hot face buried in her hands, close to one whom she needed and who needed her. He was too wise to speak or move; he loved her too much to touch again the hair, flung heavily across her face--to touch her flushed brow, her clasped hands, her slender body, delicate and warm, firm yet yielding. He waited for the tears to come. And when they fell, one by one, great, hot drops, they brought no relief until she told him all--all--her last and inmost hope and fear. Then when her white soul lay naked in all its innocence before him, and when the last word had been said, he raised her head and searched in her pure eyes for one message of love for himself. It was not there; and the last word had been said. And, even as he looked, holding her there almost in his arms, the Prussian trumpets clanged from the dim meadows and the drums thundered on the hills, and the invading army roused itself at the dawn of another day. _ |
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