“It will be as our destiny writes it, my child. And we must have faith, faith always. It is all a woman can offer—her whole heart and soul and sympathy for those who suffer that she may have a home. Let us give unstintingly while we may.”
They went together to the windows of the house to watch the marching of a regiment, which went by with banners flying and drums rolling, and all the glorious panoply of war. It was a sunny Sabbath morning of August, and in all the steeples the bells were calling the citizens to Mass. When the troops had passed and the cheering for the “Mother of the City,” whose white hairs the soldiers had seen at the window, had died away, Beatrix quitted the house and went alone toward the Minster; for thither the citizens now turned, and there the great service of the day was to be held. She had never seen so many people abroad in the streets of Strasburg before; nor did they wear the air of those who feared for themselves or their houses. Women anticipated coming victories in colours which would not mourn the past irrevocable. Men walked in groups and spoke of the brave General Uhrich. Bands played everywhere. The cafés were scenes of mirth and excitement. In the churches themselves priests spoke of a nation fighting God’s battles, and moved their flocks to a frenzy of applause. Old soldiers told of Jena and of Italy. Little children carried long swords at their belts, and their watchword was “Aux armes.”
By these she passed quickly, for the bells told her that the service was about to begin. In the cathedral square she found a great concourse of people moved by some savage impulse she could not at first understand. Ferocious cries were raised; she heard the smashing of glass in the doors of a café, and saw bludgeons and sticks raised threateningly above the heads of the people. A man at her side told her that they had caught a spy and were about to kill him. They had taken him in the Minster itself. He had run to the café for shelter, but they would settle his affair, and he would go back to Germany no more. Had it been possible, she would have drawn back from the crowd; but the human wave engulfed her and carried her forward, almost to the doors of the house. Half fainting in the press, unable to make her voice heard, she became unwillingly the spectator of that tragedy of the Sabbath. She saw the white-faced man in the porch of the house; she heard his frenzied appeals for mercy. Foam dripped from his lips, his hair was dishevelled, his coat torn, his hands upraised to protect his face; but no one thought of pity or of justice. Men struck at him with their fists; a drunkard threw a glass at him and cut his forehead; the blows of canes fell upon his face as whips that strike a board; blood flowed from his nostrils. He fell fainting, and those about him beat out his brains as he lay senseless upon the floor.
The people swept by with clamorous shouts. The spy was dead. Strasburg had settled with him. For an instant, Beatrix reeled back against the window of the café. Everything in the cathedral square swam before her eyes. She thought that she would fall, but a strong arm was placed suddenly about her waist, and a voice that she knew whispered a word in her ear.
“Silence,” was the word; “I have brought the news I promised you.”
She looked up at the man’s face and read it through his disguise. Brandon North himself was at her side.