He hammered upon the table with a blow which shook the glasses and brought a waiter hurrying to the place. But while his anger was still young, a great sound of cheering broke upon their ears, and all in the café stood up to see a great family coach, drawn by a pair of staid grey horses, roll in leisured dignity across the square. Within the coach there sat an old lady with hair as white as silver, and hollowed cheeks and kindly blue eyes, and such a nobility of manner and unassumed graciousness, that all the gentlest gifts of motherhood seemed united in her.
“Wait—wait! there is the Countess herself with Mademoiselle Beatrix by her side. Sac à papier!—he is lucky, the lancer. I would even forget that I have seven—”
“She has no eyes for winter, friend Hummel. They say that the English are an ugly nation, but, ma foi, there is one to give them the lie. And the lancer—there will be no King of Prussia in Strasburg while we have men like that. Mon Dieu—what shoulders!”
A tremendous cheer greeted the three occupants of the old-world coach. Hélène, Countess of Görsdorf, leant back upon the cushions of yellow satin, and there were tears of gladness in her eyes. Mademoiselle Beatrix, as the people called the English girl, looked neither to the right nor to the left, but timidly into the eyes of the young officer of lancers who sat before her, and whose blue uniform and scarlet breeches were a feast of colour in the gloom of the cathedral square. All that the peasants said of her was admitted readily by maturer critics. A brunette, she had nevertheless the blue eyes of the Saxon. Possessed of no particular features that made for any style of beauty, yet there was a winning sweetness of face and of expression which communicated itself instantly, and was not to be resisted. And she was Madame Hélène’s grandchild! Strasburg asked no more even from the wife of one of the best of her soldiers.
The carriage rolled by; the sun shone generously upon the glittering habiliments of the lancer, and upon the childish face of his English wife. Madame Hélène’s white hairs were as threads of silver. In the morning light, the tears upon her cheek sparkled as drops of golden dew. They were going to leave her alone at last—those children of hers; alone in the great house, the home she had loved; in the city of her girlhood and the beloved sanctuary of maternity. She said that God had willed it so; and there was a prayer in her heart that the years of her loneliness might be few.
Old Père Bonot, standing at the very edge of the causeway, raised his hat as the carriage passed, and when he cried “God bless them!” it may be that Madame Hélène’s prayer was echoed unconsciously by him, and that he thought of a distant valley in the mountains, and of one who slept there, and of the precious years, so quick to pass, when the first and last words of his happy days had been spoken by the child-wife who had loved him.
“Henriette—Henriette—I remember always!”
So does Death ride upon the coach of Life—and so, in that sunny city of Strasburg, where the bells rang a merry note, and the people feasted, and the old cathedral trembled to the swelling notes of its mighty organ, were there those who thought of the aftermath of years and of the hands for ever still. And this thought they remembered at a later day, so soon to come, when the thunder of the guns made music for their ears, and the priests who had lifted their hands to bless the living went out to the homes of the dying and the dead.