Part 17 (1/2)
”Ah! Those Prussians!” she exclaimed, in a tone of the deepest hate, with a gesture of defiance towards Versailles. ”They will dare to fire at you!”
”Yes, I imagine they will do that, Minette,” he said with a laugh, ”and pretty hotly, too.”
”Well, if they kill you,” she said, pa.s.sionately, ”I will avenge you. I will go out through the outposts and will find my way to Versailles, and I will kill William or Bismarck. They may kill me afterwards, I care nothing for that. Charlotte Corday was a reactionist, but she slew Marat and died calmly and bravely. I could do as much and would to revenge you.”
”I hope you would not attempt anything so mad, Minette. Of course, I must take my chance as everyone else will do, and the Prussians will be no more to blame if one of their bullets killed me than if it had struck anyone else. Everyone who goes into a battle has to run his chances. I had an elder brother killed in the civil war we had in the States. I have no great love for the North, but I do not blame them especially for the death of my brother. There were a great number killed on both sides, and that he should be among them was the fortune of war. But it is bitterly cold, Minette; let us be walking. I am glad we are not on outpost duty to-night. I put on so many flannel s.h.i.+rts that I can hardly b.u.t.ton my tunic over them, but in spite of that it is cold work standing with one's hands on one's trigger looking out into the darkness. It is quite a relief when a rifle rings out either from our side or the other. Then for a bit everyone is alive and active, we think the Prussians are advancing, and they think we are, and we both blaze away merrily for a bit. Then there is a lull again, and perhaps an hour or two of dreary waiting till there is a fresh alarm. As soon as we are relieved, we hurry off to our quarter, where there is sure to be a fire blazing. Then we heat up the coffee in our canteens, pouring in a little spirits, and are soon warm again.”
”I cannot see why they don't form corps of women, Arnold; we have just as much at stake as the men have, and I am sure we should be quite as brave as the most of them, a great deal braver than the National Guard.”
”I have no doubt you would, dear, but it will be quite time for you to fight when all the men are used up. What the women ought to do is to drive the men outside the walls. If the women were to arm themselves with mops soaked in dirty water, and were to attack every man under forty they found lurking in the streets, they would soon make a change in things. You should begin in your own quarter first, for although they are always denouncing the bourgeois for not fighting, I cannot see that there is any more eagerness to go out at Montmartre than there is in the quarter of the Bank--in fact, a great deal less.”
”Why should the ouvriers fight with the Germans, Arnold--to them it matters little whether Paris is taken by the Germans or not--it is not they whose houses will be sacked, it is not they who will have to pay the indemnity.”
”No, but at least they are Frenchmen. They can talk enough about the honor of France, but it is little they do to preserve it. They shout, 'the Prussians must be destroyed,' and then go off quietly to their cabarets to smoke and drink. I do not admire the bourgeois, but I do not see anything more admirable among the ouvriers. They talk grandly but they do nothing. There is no difficulty in getting volunteers for the war companies among the National Guard of the centre, though to them the extra pay is nothing; but at Belleville and Montmartre the war companies don't fill up. They rail at the bourgeois but when it comes to fighting outside the walls I will wager that the shopkeepers show the most courage.”
”They will fight when there is anything to fight for,” she said, confidently, ”but they don't care to waste their time on the walls when there is nothing to do, and the Germans are miles away.”
”Well, we shall see,” he replied, grimly. ”Anyhow, I wish it were all over, and that we were on our way home. You have never seen a s.h.i.+p yet, Minette. You will be astonished when you go on board one of the great liners,” and as they walked along the Boulevards he told her of the floating palaces, in one of which they were to cross the ocean, and forgetting for a time the questions that absorbed her, she listened with the interest of a child hearing a fairy-tale. When they neared Montmartre they separated, for Minette would never walk with him in her own quarter.
The next morning, November 28th, the order was issued that the gates were to be closed and that no one was to be allowed to pa.s.s out under any pretext whatever. No one doubted that the long-expected sally was to be carried out. Bodies of troops marched through the streets, trains of wagons with munitions of war moved in the same direction, and in an hour all Paris knew that the sortie was to take place somewhere across the loop formed by the Marne.
”It is for to-morrow,” Pierre Leroux exclaimed, running into Cuthbert's room, ”we are to parade at daybreak. The gates are shut, and troops are moving about everywhere.”
”All right, Pierre; we have been looking for it for so long, that it comes almost as a surprise at last.”
Cuthbert got up, made himself a cup of coffee, drank it with a piece of dry bread, and then sallied out. Mary would be on duty at ten o'clock.
He knew the road she took on her way to the hospital and should meet her. In half an hour he saw the trim figure in the dark dress, and the white band round the arm.
”I suppose you have heard that we are going to stir up the German nest to-morrow,” he said gayly.
”Yes, I have heard,” she said, sadly, ”it is very dreadful.”
”It is what we have been waiting for and longing for for the last two months. We are to be under arms at daybreak, and as you will be at the ambulance for the next twenty-four hours I thought I would make an effort to catch you on the way. I want you to come round to my lodgings.”
She looked surprised.
”Of course I will come,” she said frankly, ”but what do you want me to do that for?”
”Well, there is no saying as to who will come back again tomorrow, Mary, and I want you to see my two pictures. I have been working at them for the last two months steadily. They are not quite finished yet, but another week would have been enough for the finis.h.i.+ng touches, but I don't suppose you will miss them. n.o.body has seen them yet, and n.o.body would have seen them till they were quite ready, but as it is possible they never may be finished I should like you to see them now. I am not taking you up under any false pretences,” he said, lightly, ”nor to try again to get you to change your mission. I only want you to see that I have been working honestly. I could see when I have spoken of my painting there was always a little incredulity in the way in which you listened to me. You had so completely made up your mind that I should never be earnest about anything that you could not bring yourself to believe that I wasn't amusing myself with art here, just as I did in London. I had intended to have brought them triumphantly in a fiacre to your place, when they were finished, and I can't deny myself the pleasure of disabusing your mind. It is not far out of your way, and if we walk fast you can still arrive at your ambulance in time. If there were any fiacres about I would call one, but they have quite disappeared. In the first place, because no one is rich enough to be able to pay for such luxuries, and in the second, because most of the horses have been turned to other uses.”
She did not seem to pay very much attention to what he was saying, but broke in with the question--
”Do you think there will be much fighting?”
”It would be folly to try to persuade you that there won't,” he said.
”When there are so many thousand men with guns and cannon who are determined to get out of a place, and an equal number of men with guns and cannon just as determined to keep them in, the chances are that, as the Irish say, there will be wigs on the green. I do not suppose the loss will be great in comparison to the number engaged, because certainly a good many of the French will reconsider their determination to get out, and will be seized with a burning desire to get back as soon as the German sh.e.l.ls begin to fall among them, still I do hope that they will make a decent fight of it. I know there are some tremendously strong batteries on the ground enclosed by the loop of the Marne, which is where they say it is going to be, and the forts will be able to help, so that certainly for a time we shall fight with great advantages. I do wish that it was not so cold, fighting is bad enough in summer; but the possibility of lying out all night on the snow wounded is one I very strongly object to.”
He continued to talk in the same light strain, until they reached his lodgings, in order to put the girl at her ease.
”So this is your sitting-room,” she said, with a laugh that had a tremor in it, ”it is just what I supposed it would be, very untidy, very dusty, and yet in its way, comfortable. Where are the pictures?”