“How good you are!—how good! I shall rely upon your promise. We must join the others now. It will not do to be missed!”
So they went out together and mingled with the spinning rout of dancers, as the neglected wax-lights burned out in their silver branches, and the waning moon peeped through the curtains of the gray boudoir. One pale ray touched the portrait of the witch-Princess of Orleans, grasping the Crucifix in the dimpled hand that had never scrupled to pluck Sin’s reddest flowers—treading crowns and scepters under the dainty, naked feet so many lovers had kissed as gayly they danced downwards along the hellward path. And surely the proud, sensuous eyes leered with wicked triumph, and could it be that the smile upon the painted mouth had given place to laughter?
XXXVII
The General Court-Martial of Inquiry into the conduct of the junior Staff-officer left in command of the half-battalion of infantry detailed to guard the Ministry of Foreign Affairs upon a day to be marked with red upon the calendar, was held at the Barracks of the 999th in the Rue de l’Assyrie, between the official hours of Eight in the morning and Four in the afternoon.
One may suppose the pomp and solemnity of the affair, the portals guarded by sentries, Monsieur the Judge-Advocate and his subordinates in official robes, Monsieur the President and other stately cock-hated, plumed, bewigged personages of the General Staff, with the various officers convened as witnesses, solemnly filing in behind the Provost-Marshal and his guard—taking their seats, right and left according to rank, at the T-shaped arrangement of tables, covered with the significant Green Cloth; everyone arrayed in full Review-uniform, making the whitewashed mess-hall brilliant as a garden of flaunting summer flowers.
They took the votes according to the time-honored custom, beginning with the youngest person present. The Provost-Marshal and his merry men brought the Prisoner in.
Dunoisse, without sword or sash, went calmly to the place of dread at the bottom of the leg of the T of tables. Reporters for the Press were accommodated with a bench behind a board on trestles under the high window at the bottom of the hall. The Orders and Warrants were read, with clearing of throats and official hawking. And at each pause, from a balcony high up upon the plain bare wall behind the President’s table, came the silken frou-frou of ladies’ dresses and the rustling of ribbons and bonnet-plumes. And one heart among all those that throbbed there, under its covering of silken velvet and sable-fur, was sick with hidden apprehension and cold with secret dread.
There was no challenge on the part of the accused officer when the President-General asked the question: “Do you object to be tried by me or any of these officers whose names you have heard?” He bowed and replied, “No!”.... He had no suspicion of prejudice or malice lurking under any uniform present. And then, erect, in a rigid attitude of respect and attentive deference, the Prisoner listened to the reading of the Charge.
This occupied time, the process of Courts-Martial very successfully emulating the pompous prolixity of tribunals of the Civil kind. And while the python-periods dragged their tortuous length from sheet to sheet of official paper, Dunoisse found himself mentally traveling back to those early days at the Royal School of Technical Military Instruction, when de Moulny was Redskin’s hero and faithful Achates, Mentor and Admirable Crichton all rolled into one. And butt on occasions, it is to be added. For sometimes it is sweet to laugh at one you most sincerely love.
Thinking thus, he began to realize how in his loneliness he had clung to the memory of the old affection. How always,—always he had been hoping that the barriers of estrangement and silence might be broken down one day. That Alain might yet come to him with outstretched, eager hand, saying: