“Little wife, give me courage such as yours.”
It was his last farewell at the gate of the garden wherein her roses grew. For an instant, she remembered that she might be holding his hands and hearing his words for the last time. All the depth and intensity of her love compelled her so that she clung to him distractedly and with all her courage gone. He felt her tears upon his cheek, and was glad because of them. His strong arms crushed her dress and so held her that she seemed to stand heart to heart with him.
“Good-bye, mignonne. To-morrow I will write; in a month I will be home again.”
He stepped into the cart, and the pony began to trot down the hill to Wörth. The little farm with its lighted windows stood out on the mountain side as a cluster of stars above the garden of his home. He saw her again for an instant, her white dress fluttering against the background of the forest. He dare not ask himself what the night would mean to her. He did not know that when a month had passed, an Empire would have fallen, and the armies of France be no more.
From the valley, a blare of bugles echoed suddenly through the silent hills. Troops were moving already, then! The note thrilled him as with all the fire of battle and of war. To-morrow he would ride with his regiment again.
But to Beatrix, listening at the gate of the garden, the trumpet’s note was as some call to the place of death and tears.
CHAPTER VI
THE LAST DAY OF JULY
The sun had hardly begun to shine upon the glades of the Niederwald on the last day of July when Beatrix opened the window of her bedroom and looked over the woods and the green vineyards to the little white town of Wörth and the glistening river in the hollow of the valley. It was her habit now to wake at dawn, for sleep had ceased to be her friend; and there was a morning hope of the sunshine as though the day would bring some news of Edmond or of his regiment. Sometimes in her dreams she would believe that the reality was but imagination, or that she would awake to hear her husband’s voice. Every step upon the road before the farmhouse quickened her heart, and sent her breathlessly to the garden gate. The ultimate hope, that all might yet be well, was the solace of many an hour. They told her in the village that peace must come before the grapes were ripe. “It will be a race,” the old curé said; “those Prussians will run to Berlin and we shall run after them. In a month Monsieur will be home again.”