“If one could only be grateful enough!” she said to Hélène on the morning of the seventh day after her return. “I feel sometimes that I have lost the power to be thankful for anything. It will be different when Edmond comes home. And one can only wait, wait, wait.”
But grandmère shook her head in kindly rebuke.
“Of ourselves always, dear child! Is there no one else but a poor old woman and an impatient little wife in Strasburg to-day? Do not the streets teach us their lesson? Ah, the brave hearts in the streets, Beatrix; the brave men who would save our homes for us! What are we doing for them—we, the women of France? What help shall we give them when the need comes and the children suffer? And we must help them. What can we ask of the poor when the rich give nothing? Let us give abundantly, dear child, as it has been given to us.”
There was a noble courage in her voice; but to Beatrix that voice was as a sound from afar. She believed no longer in France or the armies of France. The mighty impotence of Wörth remained her abiding message. The doom of the city and of her home seemed already written. The childish fear, that this lack of faith put a bond upon her love, grew day by day. She was not worthy of the man who had whispered his ambitions to her in the châlet of the Niederwald and had sealed his vow of faith in France with a lover’s caress. Her very belief in the might and the glory of the Saxon stood against her as a sin. The future lay through a valley of shadows which gathered quickly about her path, and enveloped her in the gloom of foreboding and of doubt. She was not a Frenchwoman; she never would understand—never, never.
“Dear Hélène, how good you are,” she said impulsively. “I feel guilty when I listen to you. All that I see here makes me think of Edmond. If only one could write to him. If only one were sure that the prison meant nothing to him but four square walls and a German jailor. It would have been different, perhaps, a year ago—but now! Ah, mamma, you were never married in the Minster, and you never went to the Niederwald for your honeymoon. My life has changed since that day they came for him. I don’t think I have any heart left. I try to remember other things, but every day the question is, Will he come this morning—will it be next month, next year—or never, never again until the end?”
She lifted a white face to the kindly eyes, and felt old Hélène’s arms about her neck.
“I cannot lose him, even for France,” she said very pitifully; “you are not angry with me, Hélène?”
“Angry my child, God forbid! A thousand women’s hearts are heavy as yours to-day. We must not let them see our tears, we to whom they look for hope and courage. When Edmond comes, our hands must not be empty. Oh, think of it, Beatrix—there are Germans at Schiltigheim, Germans at the gates of our own city. To-morrow—ah, God knows what we shall see and hear to-morrow!”
There were tears upon her cheeks as this doubt for the city of her childhood came to trouble her. Beatrix knew well of what she was thinking. The armies of France had not saved them yesterday. Who should say that to-morrow would find those armies victorious?
“If all were as you, dear Hélène,” she said tenderly, “we need fear for nothing. And we shall know how to suffer for Edmond’s sake if the day comes. Sometimes I think that I should be glad for it to come. It is hard to be a woman when those in whom you trust have ceased to be men. At Wörth I believed that nothing in all the world could defeat the armies of France. I dare not tell you all I saw there. Strasburg cannot be like that. Nothing will ever be like that again.”