Part 7 (2/2)

On September 29, 1870, there fell, close to Valoise, three brave men, nameless German officers. An Englishwoman, a lover of Germany, has put up this cross to their memory. May they rest in peace.

There came a deep frown over the Herr Doktor's mouth. He turned his back abruptly on the old stone cross, wondering bitterly whether the Englishwoman who had done this kindly act was still alive. If so, what must she now think of the treachery of her decadent fellow-countrymen?

Somewhat ruffled by this untoward incident, he walked on, till he found the deep, roughly made grave wherein his French colleague was about to be laid.

Above the now open vault rose a miniature stone chapel, and below the lintel of the roof ran in gold letters the words: 'Famille Rouannes.'

Walking slowly forward Max Keller went and stood before the gates, between which rose the pair of trestles placed ready for the coffin.

Four marble tablets were fixed on the left-hand side of the entrance to the chapel, and on each was commemorated a member of the Rouannes family. Jeanne's grandfather, dead forty-five years ago; her grandmother; an uncle who had died in childhood. And then, in blacker, clearer characters, an inscription which touched him nearly:

Dame Emile Rouannes, nee Demoiselle Jeanne de Bligniere. Mere aimee. Femme adoree.

To the right of the Rouannes monument, a square aperture cut in the cemetery wall commanded a wonderful view, not only of the town of Valoise, but of the spreading plains below. He went there, and leaning over the low parapet, gazed down at the place where, some hundred feet beneath him, was a little square from which fell away the grey and red roofs which seemed, in their turn, to drop sheer into the valley.

An autumn haze, rising from the river, and from the many other smaller waterways intersecting the woods and lands beyond the river, hung over the countryside. And as his short-sighted eyes tried to pierce the ma.s.ses of s.h.i.+fting mist which moved over the wide, flat expanse of land below, there suddenly broke on the still air the sound of solemn chanting, and he saw, moving up the long winding street which led from the parish church to the cemetery, the funeral procession of Jeanne Rouannes' father.

2

The procession was headed by a woman whom he knew to be the old priest's plain-featured housekeeper. She bore in her uplifted arms a cross, and, immediately after her, came Monsieur le Cure himself. In his black-and-silver mourning vestments the parish priest of Valoise looked an imposing, as well as a reverent, figure. Behind him were eight little boys in black ca.s.socks, each of whom in his right hand held a lighted candle, which guttered and spluttered in the wind. Very slowly, and pacing in ordered array, the priest and his attendant acolytes debouched into the little square.

There followed a moment of confusion, and in the centre of a black-robed crowd of elderly women--of women the majority of whom each held a child by the hand--the Herr Doktor suddenly saw something which made him recoil and press further in to that side of the wall which concealed him from the people below.

On a rickety low cart, drawn by a decrepit pony, was a large wooden packing-case on which some well-meaning hand had drawn, in black paint which still gleamed wetly in the sun, a rude cross.

Such was the makes.h.i.+ft coffin of Doctor Rouannes.

The colour flamed up into the Herr Doktor's face. With a shock of shame and, yes, of nave surprise, he realised how barbarous, how lamentable, even how grotesque, can be the minor consequences of Glorious War.

Behind the little cart and its untoward burden, Jeanne Rouannes, shrouded in black, and heavily veiled, walked alone, followed at a few paces by the two servants of the dead man. Suddenly the cart stopped, and out of the crowd there came forward eight very old men. Stooping down till their knees almost touched the ground, they lifted the white deal case on to their shoulders, and slowly, pantingly, began the task of bearing it up the stony path which led to the cemetery.

The Herr Doktor, shrinking back, instinctively held his breath; he feared that each dragging moment might bring with it the slipping of the awkward burden from some heaving shoulder, and at last the strain on his nerves became so great that he deliberately turned away, and stared, in wretched suspense, unseeingly before him.

It seemed as if hours instead of minutes pa.s.sed by ere he heard the muttered exclamations of relief: 'ca y est!' 'Enfin!' 'Oh, la, la!'

which signified that the eight old men had reached level ground at last.

Then, and not till then, the onlooker left the embrasure in the wall where he had been hidden. But no one glanced his way, or seemed conscious of his alien presence, and with aching heart he gazed his fill at the mournful little procession which was now pa.s.sing a few yards to his left.

The coffin bearers walked more firmly, their burden now better adjusted to their frail shoulders, and close behind them came Jeanne Rouannes.

She had thrown back her long black veil; her face looked as though it were of wax; alone her blue eyes, gleaming dry and bright, seemed alive.

Very soon the crowd surged up, forming a large semicircle, and the one stranger there fell back, on to the outer rim of it. But, even so, he could still see Jeanne Rouannes quite clearly. And when the rude case which served as her father's coffin had been placed on the trestles standing ready for it, the hard waxen look left her face, a long quivering sigh escaped her lips, and these same poor lips began to tremble piteously. As the tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, the Herr Doktor's filled in sympathy....

Suddenly their tear-dimmed eyes met, and though he did not know it, and was never to know it, she saw him, this German man, Max Keller, who loved her, as if for the first time--for the agony she was feeling unlocked the key to his heart, and made her see therein.

She blushed--a dusky, painful blush of outraged pride, anger, surprise, and quick self-examination and reproach. But no, she had done nothing to deserve, to bring upon herself, this new, this inconceivably outrageous humiliation! But very soon the deep colour receded, leaving her pale as she had been red, and it was with a composed countenance and downcast eyes that she stepped forward to perform the last of the pious offices the Catholic living perform to the Catholic dead--that of sprinkling holy water on the coffin.

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