It was ten o’clock when she left the house and stood again in the silent street, whose roof was of golden fire mingling with the stars, and the radiance of the mirrored flames on many a spire and many a dome. Nothing now, either of the scene or of her own peril, mattered to her. The jibes of besotted gunners, the warnings of officers who passed by to the citadel, the deafening roar of guns, even the dead in the streets—she went on heedless of these things. Brandon was to give his life for her lover’s. He would die at dawn, because he had been her friend. Well she knew that Edmond would not heed the words which could be spoken. That birthright of fallacy, which made of honour a god, was far above logic or reason. He would kill Brandon for honour’s sake.
This intolerable thought of one man’s sacrifice for another man’s folly was the culminating distress of that strange hour. While she told herself again and again that such a sacrifice must never be, the futility of her resolutions appeared in a clearer light with every step she took. The gulf between Edmond and herself was never to be bridged again. She knew that she could neither hope nor believe in France as she had hoped and believed on the day when her destiny sent her to the Niederwald. One by one these events recurred to her imagination—the occasion of their picnic, the call to arms, the dreadful day of battle, the weakening of the cords of faith, the lost glory of the army which was to protect the children of France. How few were the weeks since she had regarded her lover as one sent to her unmistakably to be that link in the chain of her love which death alone might break. And now! Doubt, suspicion, separation, above all, the contemplation of this crime, were her fruits of war. She saw that they were fruits surpassing all agony of death and battle, and even the pity of the children’s grief.
Until this time, and the hour was now eleven, there had been no thought in her mind of making such an appeal to her husband as she had made to Brandon. Her common-sense told her that her own concern for the life of her English friend would be a new provocation to the crime. Edmond would rejoice in her distress. It would prompt him to find a better excuse, a new insult to his honour. Turn where she would, she could see no way. Often there came to her lips the prayer that the gates of Strasburg might be opened to the enemy before the sun should shine again upon that scene of desolation and of death. Defeat, the shame of France, alone could turn the peril from her doors. She knew well that the end could not be distant; that whatever heroism the brave Uhrich still might contemplate could but postpone the inevitable hour when the white flag must fly from the citadel, and the roar of the guns be heard no more. Perchance the superb heroism, the unbroken courage, the splendid faith of Strasburg would, under other circumstances, have won back that allegiance to France of which war had robbed her. But the thought of to-morrow ever prevailed above such a hope as that. Brandon would die at dawn. He would pay the penalty of his friendship for her.
She could pray, in truth, that the gates of Strasburg might be opened, but there was no message of the night to answer her prayer. Everywhere now the people sought the fitful sleep which the cellars and the caverns of the city might give them. Those that were abroad battled anew with the raging fire and the smoking débris. She seemed to be imprisoned in some Inferno, where the air was hot and stifling, and the voices were the moaning shells and the crash of the great guns and the thunder of houses falling, or of the fire’s new victory. Nothing affrighted her; she passed in and out to the dangerous places; among the groups of blackened pompiers; through companies of artillerymen; by scenes of death and agony; yet was not witness of the men or of their work. If Strasburg would surrender! If the end would come! If she could save Brandon! Never had she known such suffering of suspense, never such a burden of excitement and of fear. The night was as a year of terror enduring. She prayed to God that she might not live until day dawned.
It was after midnight then, and she knew that she had been walking aimlessly, without destination or desire of rest, for two hours. A sudden faintness, the due of her illness, warned her at last that she must seek some asylum and abandon a quest so futile. For a little while, she rested upon a bench at the door of a deserted café; but when her strength came back to her, she remembered the promise which old Richard Watts had made, and once more she returned to his house. He met her at the door. His grave face betrayed the tidings of which he was the bearer.
“I have been expecting you for the last hour, child,” he said as he led her into his English room; “they have told you, of course—”
“They have told me—yes,” she answered almost in a whisper.
“Are you going to your husband?”
“Why should I go?”