The Garden of Swords

by Max Pemberton

Beatrix was in the arbour of the châlet, filling a bowl with the pink roses which were the pride of her garden, when Edmond came up the road from the village of Elsasshausen and held up his letters triumphantly. Ten days had passed since the bells of Strasburg rang for Madame Hélène’s grandchild. To Beatrix they had been as an unbroken hour of sunshine and of happiness. The hills and the valleys, the vineyards and farms of that pastoral scene were in keeping with the new sense of rest and of finality which had come upon her life. She wished for no friendship there, save the friendship which had been given her. The strange past, with its memories of strife and solitude and change unending, had been obliterated and forgotten. She had no longer the desire to return to England or to remember that she was an Englishwoman. A languorous indolence, bred of the mountains, possessed her as an ecstasy. She would have been content to hear that the châlet in the woods above the town of Wörth was to be her home until the end.

She was in the garden of the châlet, filling her bowl with roses, when Edmond returned with the letters which he had desired unceasingly. She could not understand that state of mind which hungered so greedily for all the dry bones of a soldier’s gossip. To know that old Hélène was well, to hear of her horse and her dogs—and of old Susanne, who had been her mother’s servant—that was news enough. But to be told that the sun was shining, or that Thérèse Lavencourt had gone to Dieppe, or that Lieutenant Jourda de Vaux had been seen on a new charger—what were such things to those who had the forests of the Vosges for their skyline, and in the valleys below them the trailing vines and the white houses of the villages, and the murmur of brooks, and the sleepy river warming itself in the glorious sunshine of the ripened summer? She wished to forget Strasburg. The châlet of the Niederwald, the châlet of the pines, the châlet above the old-world town of Wörth—she would remember it always as the guest house of her dreams, the rose-girt cradle of her love.

If all this childish enthusiasm of hers was very real to her, she could not complain when her husband did not attain similar altitudes of devotion to the châlet. The glitter and the movement of the cavalry life had become so much the mainspring of his thoughts and actions, that he did not always conceal his desire to fix a day when the hamlet of the Niederwald should become a memory of their holiday, and his old comrades of the “sixth” should congratulate him upon his return to them. Ready as he was to witness her childish delight in the solitude of the hills, yet he went every day to meet the facteur, who came from Wörth with the letters; and he read these letters aloud to her, and dwelt again and again upon every trivial word of gossip that had amused his brother officers.

When she ran to meet him at the garden gate on that morning of the fifteenth of July, she was glad, for his sake, to perceive that his letter hunger had been satisfied unduly. He carried a great white bundle in his hand, and he held it up triumphantly as a proud and well-earned possession. She remembered that day long afterwards—the sunshine on the woods, the white villages dotting the valley, the figure of her husband with his Tyrol hat and his knickerbocker suit. He had bought the Norfolk jacket in London as a compliment to her, and he called it a “Prince de Galles.” But it suited his fine figure to perfection; and there was laughter in his eyes and the bronze of the sun upon his cheeks, when he put his arm about her and kissed her many times as a prelude to his news.

“Again, ma chérie—again for your letter—two for my letters. Wait, the Colonel writes himself, and Laroche and Giraud—and Bocheron; you know Bocheron, he is a sous-lieutenant—and Bouillie, he is the Capitaine Trésorier—and Gaudet, he is our Porte Étendard. Sac à papier! I shall have something to read for a week.”

He gabbled on, full of the excitement of the news anticipated and of the goodwill toward him to which the letters bore witness. She would find no cause of complaint in that, but was full of proposals for their day and its delights.

“You can read them as we go,” she said, holding his hand still and leading him toward the low door of the house. “I have told Jacob to have the pony ready at ten o’clock. We shall be at the Niederbronn by twelve, and you will be hungry. But we can breakfast in the wood, and that will be jolly. If one could always breakfast in a wood—upon pâté de foie-gras and strawberries. To be Phyllis always—with the last new novel, and a husband to cut the leaves. There’s the ideal life for you.”

He nodded his head and pressed her arm affectionately. The letter which he read carried him back already in thought to Strasburg and his comrades.

“Listen,” he said; “old Tripard is furious about the new tunics. He is petitioning for the kurtka again and the old colours. They will match your eyes, Beatrix. We are to have the jonquille collars and the white cloaks with capes and sleeves. They are all right, but the people at Paris must give us back the kurtka. I do not want to look like a Prussian—moi. And the old coat was more comfortable. These tunics are for policemen. The regiment will not be the same in them. How can you remember Jena in a tunic made for a sergent de ville? They are spoiling us, and they will find it out when the day comes.”

She heard his complaint and laughed at it. Out there in the freshness of the garden, this talk of coat and cape was as some echo of a forgotten voice. She had eyes only for the green of the woods and the great red roses.