Part 31 (1/2)

G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l of flame.

Gambetta, that incubus of bombastic flabbiness, roaring prophecy and plat.i.tude 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 G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 manuvres 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 gra.s.shopper 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 la.s.situde 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 hors.e.m.e.n; she knew that her love, given so wholly, so pa.s.sionately, 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 gra.s.s-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 n.o.bly, 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.