“I pray God that he will understand,” she said gently.
He turned his face away. When she left him, ten minutes later, she said that she would not rest night or day until she found someone to befriend him. But he buried his face in the pillow of rags, and alone and in the darkness he thought that none had come between them; and he seemed to hold her in his strong arms and to tell her that his life was nothing to him, because he might not speak of his surpassing love for her.
CHAPTER XXIV
AN ULTIMATUM
She slept but fitfully that night, nor did she take any thought of rest. The new silence which had fallen upon the city in the hour of truce was for her an armistice of the mind. No longer might she hope for help or consolation from another. Brandon’s life was in her keeping. Her own friendship for him was not to be analysed or weighed up at such a time. She must save him, she said, and dawn must lead her to the task.
It was strangely silent in the city, and heavy black clouds loomed where the crimson pall had been. She heard the rain pattering upon the boards which defended the windows of the house; and ever and anon a distant bugle reminded her of those who watched in the fields of the unburied dead. But sleep was far from her eyes. Pacing that lonely room, her thoughts were not for Strasburg or those who suffered there. Sometimes she would recall those happy hours in the Niederwald when Edmond had held her in his arms and they had known the sweetest first-fruits of love unquestioning. How long ago that day seemed! Yet she could kneel still at her bedside and witness before God the truth and fidelity of the love she had given. A great longing to be taken back to her husband’s arms was the supreme thought of her night. She loved him so faithfully. He would never fail to understand her. If only he were in Strasburg, they would go to the Rue de l’Arc-en-Ciel together, and there would be no more peril for her friend. She was sure that she owed all she had done to her friendship for a fellow-countryman who had risked his life that she might have news of Edmond’s safety. She could not conceive the ingratitude which would leave her friend to the death of the streets, the death which she had witnessed in the café of the Minster.
The passionate desire for Edmond’s return was, indeed, ever joined to that ceaseless thought for Brandon’s safety. The terrible week, which had struck down the one being in Strasburg at whose side she might have knelt to tell her strange story, had made of her, she remembered, a rich woman almost beyond her knowledge. That was no day for the thought of bequests and wealth; yet even during the stress and distraction of siege, old Dolomot, the advocate, had come to speak of her inheritance, and had dwelt upon the new position she soon must take in the city. She had not reflected upon the power of money before that day, but now a great idea came to her—the idea of a woman who sees no side-issues but rejoices already in a scheme new-made. She would purchase Brandon’s life, she resolved. She cared not what price, she must pay. The men who lurked about the tavern—their lips should be sealed. She would buy silence and help—even from Gatelet, who was as poor as any captain of National Guards might be. And to that end she must have money. Old Dolomot would find it for her, and she would go to his house when day came. The morrow must send messengers to every quarter of the city for Richard Watts. Hope had saved Brandon already. She slept at dawn with hope for her dreams.
The truce of night was over when she quitted her house very early in the morning and set out to find Maître Dolomot. She could hear the guns booming again, and often a terrible sound of buildings falling, so that the very ground quaked beneath her feet and the whole city quivered with the impact. The fresh breezes of the day came to her choked with dust and sour with the acrid odours of gunpowder. She could see the smoke of fires against which the summer rain had warred in vain. Few civilians trod the streets of the northern suburbs, nor was there any sign of life except in the churches, towards which women turned tremblingly, as though the houses of God might defy the terror. At intervals some scene of surpassing desolation compelled her to remember the German oath that not one stone of Strasburg should stand upon another. She beheld acres of rubbish and dust which yesterday had been mansions of renown. Vast ruins vomited flame and smoke as though funnels of the very pit of hell. Ambulances passed her only to give visions of stricken faces and bloody clothes.
From this place of death and darkness she passed quickly to the safer streets and the southern arrondissement. There were people abroad here—timorous men who denounced the folly of the siege and cursed the name of Uhrich the brave; women, who spoke of their troubles and their hunger; little children, playing in the gutter, oblivious of the peril hurtling above them. One poor creature, driven from her home by a shell, ran to and fro distractedly with her babe in her arms. She called God to witness that the babe was dead; but the onlookers laughed at her, for they could hear the little one’s voice, and for the frenzy of fear they had no pity. Such gunners and mobiles as walked the streets were begging drink-money of the people. Beatrix sought to pass through them unobserved; but they swarmed about her threateningly, and when she threw down her purse they fought for it, with savage cries and bayonets drawn. She could still hear their voices when she turned into the Rue St. Thomas and rang at Maître Dolomot’s door.