“Oh, I know Giraud, Madame—what a man! He is the great big boy—like that. He eats the soup with the sabre—hein? He will eat us up, Madame. And the Capitaine Chandellier—what an appetite, and we have but two pigeons and a cabbage for the soupe—!”
“Jacob shall ride to the village,” Beatrix said; “they will have eggs and poultry at the farm. I will go there myself—”
“But, Madame—! Look at the road and say how you shall go. Red and blue, red and blue—and the cannons everywhere, and the great fellows who know a pretty face, and the little fellows who must stand on tiptoe to kiss you—oh, I know those fellows. And I shall be the Captain in this house. Monsieur has wished it. Do not fear for me, Madame. Guillaumette knows the chasseurs. I shall go to the farm and the sergeants will stand upon the tiptoes. To me it is nothing. I box the face—oh, I have done it often.”
Beatrix found the merry voice tuned to her own new-gotten gaiety. Since that day of her pilgrimage to Niederbronn the burden of the hours had been a heavy one, but now she cast it off, and had forgotten that to-morrow she must take it up again. Everything in her home reminded her of Edmond. Sometimes she would stand before her glass to ask herself if he would find her changed, with eyes less bright and cheeks that lacked their colour. But the mirror told no such tale. There was laughter upon the pretty face it showed to her; a flush of pink suffused the clear white skin; the glossy black hair curled about the open forehead, and fell bewitchingly over the little ears. And she had put on the muslin gown and the sunbonnet he loved. Those who saw her at the door of the châlet, where she stood waiting for him, would have named her as some pretty school-girl, returned to her home from a convent. Yesterday, they would have said that she was a woman who had learned some of the lessons which life can teach.
The pitiless rain had ceased early in the afternoon, and for a little while the sun shone warm and clear upon the woods. Down there, upon the road to Strasburg, all the armies of France seemed to be blocked in confusion inextricable. Cuirassiers with dulled breastplates, hussars with bedraggled shakoes, artillerymen lashing their horses, aides-de-camp roaring oaths, waggons locked together, gun-carriages stuck in the ditches, staff officers threatening, peasants mad with terror—all these poured in toward Wörth, and the camps which MacMahon had found for them there. Even on the height above the valley, the woodland scene had quickened to the note of music and the tramping of the squadrons. Watch-fires sent their smoke curling above the shading trees; troopers stood at the cottage doors and clamoured loudly for bread and wine; horsemen passed the châlet riding wildly to Reichshofen and to Bitche. The very air seemed full of unrest; the birds winged upward fearing the cries they heard in the woods below them.
From sunset onward Beatrix never left the watching place by the garden gate. Every little pennant fluttering upon a lance down there on the high-road could make her heart tremble and bring blood to her cheeks. She was surprised that all this stress and toil of war moved her so little. The red fires burning in the woods, the echoes of the drums, the flying horsemen—all seemed in harmony with that hour of expectation. Edmond was coming home. Those who had no home, begging of her for the children’s sake as they fled to the mountains, moved her to an infinite pity. She saw their little wealth of home piled upon carts and waggons; she saw the children, hungry and outcast, before this wave of war, and her heart bled for them. If she had been an outcast with them, holding a child in her arms and knowing not whether to-morrow would give life or death! But she was all blest. Edmond was coming back to her.
“He came at sunset, galloping up the high road.”
He came at sunset, galloping up the high-road on his heavy charger. The mud had whitened his boots and found its way even to the dark blue tunic and the red plumes of his helmet. Fitful as the sunshine of the week had been, it had bronzed his face and robbed his hands of their whiteness. His moustache drooped with the damp, but his eyes were lighted with all the fires of excitement and of love, and she heard his loud cry of salutation even while she was asking herself if, indeed, he had come.
And so she ran to meet him, and holding her in his arms and whispering her name again and again, he crushed her pretty dress against the buttons of his tunic and covered her face with kisses, and seemed as though nevermore would he release her. In that moment she had her recompense for all the weary hours of waiting and distress.