Part 88 (2/2)
That shout of Gallic appreciation inflamed Sengoun: he reached for his hat, to lift and wave it, but found no hat on his head. So he waved his tattered sleeve instead:
”Hurrah for France!” he shouted. ”Hurrah for Russia! I'm Sengoun, of the Terek!--And I am to have a thousand lances with which to explain to the Germans my opinion of them and of their Emperor!”
The troopers cheered him from their stirrups, in spite of their officers, who pretended to check their men.
”_Vive la France! Vive la Russie!_” they roared. ”Forward the Terek Cossacks!”
Sengoun turned to Ilse Dumont:
”Madame,” he said, ”in grat.i.tude and admiration!”--and he gracefully saluted her hand. Then, to his comrade: ”Neeland!”--seizing both the American's hands. ”Such a night and such a comrade I shall never forget! I adore our night together; I love you as a brother. I shall see you before I go?”
”Surely, Sengoun, my dear comrade!”
”_Alors--au revoir!_” He sprang into the taxicab. ”To the Russian Emba.s.sy!” he called out; and turned to the half fainting girl on the seat beside him.
”Where do you live, my dear?” he asked very gently, taking her icy hand in his.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV
SUNRISE
When the taxicab carrying Captain Sengoun and the unknown Russian girl had finally disappeared far away down the Boulevard in the thin grey haze of early morning, Neeland looked around him; and it was a scene unfamiliar, unreal, that met his anxious eyes.
The sun had not yet gilded the chimney tops; east and west, as far as he could see, the Boulevard stretched away under its double line of trees between ranks of closed and silent houses, lying still and mysterious in the misty, bluish-grey light.
Except for police and munic.i.p.al guards, and two ambulances moving slowly away from the ruined cafe, across the street, the vast Boulevard was deserted; no taxicabs remained; no omnibuses moved; no early workmen pa.s.sed, no slow-moving farm wagons and milk wains from the suburbs; no _chiffoniers_ with sc.r.a.p-filled sacks on their curved backs, and steel-hooked staves, furtively sorting and picking among the night's debris on sidewalk and in gutter.
Here and there in front of half a dozen wrecked cafes little knots of policemen stood on the gla.s.s-littered sidewalk, in low-voiced consultation; far down the Boulevard, helmets gleamed dully through the haze where munic.i.p.al cavalry were quietly riding off the mobs and gradually pus.h.i.+ng them back toward the Montmartre and Villette quarters, whence they had arrived.
Mounted Munic.i.p.als still sat their beautiful horses in double line across the corner of the rue Vilna and parallel streets, closing that entire quarter where, to judge from a few fitful and far-away pistol shots, the methodical apache hunt was still in progress.
And it was a strange and sinister phase of Paris that Neeland now gazed upon through the misty stillness of early morning. For there was something terrible in the sudden quiet, where the swift and shadowy fury of earliest dawn had pa.s.sed: and the wrecked buildings sagged like corpses, stark and disembowelled, spilling out their dead intestines indecently under the whitening sky.
Save for the echoes of distant shots, no louder than the breaking of a splinter--save for the deadened stamp and stir of horses, a low-voiced order, the fainter clash of spurs and scabbards--an intense stillness brooded now over the city, ominously prophetic of what fateful awakening the coming sunrise threatened for the sleeping capital.
Neeland turned and looked at Ilse Dumont. She stood motionless on the sidewalk, in the clear, colourless light, staring fixedly across the street at the debris of the gaping, shattered Cafe des Bulgars. Her evening gown hung in filmy tinted shreds; her thick, dark hair in l.u.s.trous disorder shadowed her white shoulders; a streak of dry blood striped one delicate bare arm.
To see her standing there on the sidewalk in the full, unshadowed morning light, silent, dishevelled, scarcely clothed, seemed to him part of the ghastly unreality of this sombre and menacing vision, from which he ought to rouse himself.
She turned her head slowly; her haggard eyes met his without expression; and he found his tongue with the effort of a man who strives for utterance through a threatening dream:
”We can't stay here,” he said. The sound of his own voice steadied and cleared his senses. He glanced down at his own attire, blood-stained, and ragged; felt for the loose end of his collar, reb.u.t.toned it, and knotted the draggled white tie with the unconscious indifference of habit.
”What a nightmare!” he muttered to himself. ”The world has been turned upside down over night.” He looked up at her: ”We can't stay here,” he repeated. ”Where do you live?”
She did not appear to hear him. She had already started to move toward the rue Vilna, where the troopers barring that street still sat their restive horses. They were watching her and her dishevelled companion with the sophisticated amus.e.m.e.nt of men who, by clean daylight, encounter f.a.gged-out revellers of a riotous night.
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