He left her at the door, the same dreamy brilliance in her sensitive face. She stood as if in a trance. He wondered what it meant—what her mysterious work was going to be?
CHAPTER XXXVII
THREE days later the magnificent imperial army entered the fallen metropolis, its scarlet, gold-embossed standards flying, its bands playing.
Waldron marched to meet them at the head of twenty-five thousand picked men of his garrison. His division more than made good the losses of battle.
When the grand march began at the entrance of the Queensboro Bridge—one hundred and sixty-five thousand men were in line. The immensity of the spectacle stunned the imagination of the curious thousands that pressed close to the curbs and watched them pass. When the German army entered Antwerp in the world war, the streets were absolutely deserted save for stray dogs and cats that howled from wrecked buildings. New York was consumed by a quenchless eagerness to look on their conquerors.
All day from seven o’clock in the morning until dark the torrent of brown kahki poured through Fifty-ninth Street and down Fifth Avenue. When the Avenue was filled by the solid ranks from Central Park to the Washington Arch, the imperial host at a given signal raised their shout of triumph.
“For God and Emperor!”
Until this moment they had moved in a silence that was uncanny. Their long-pent feelings gave the united yell of a hundred and sixty thousand an unearthly power. They shouted in chorus first from every regiment in one grand burst of defiant pride. And then they shouted by regiments, beginning with the first. The shout leaped from regiment to regiment until it swept the entire line far out on the plains of Long Island. Each marching host tried to lift the note higher until the frenzied bursts came with the shock of salvos of artillery.
And then they sang the songs of their grand army on the march. For an hour their voices rang the death knell of freedom while conquered thousands stood in awed silence.
Waldron moved at the head of the column on his white horse in gorgeous uniform. Beside him rode in service suit the Commander-in-chief on a black Arabian stallion with arched neck and sleek, shining sides.