As at Paris, spy-fever raged in cities, towns and villages, while the armies of the invader plowed bleeding furrows in the flank of prostrate France. For the Prussian Secret Intelligence Department had its emissaries everywhere. Hotels, public bureaus, railway stations, shops, offices, even clubs, had harbored them unknowingly. Now they cropped up on all sides, speaking French with the Gallic accent, their German brains full of neatly pigeon-holed and docketed information, ready to place themselves at the disposal of their friends. Hence, patriotic Frenchmen, favored by chance or heredity with blue eyes, fair hair, ruddy complexions and the advantage as to inches over their neighbors, found themselves cold-shouldered by their intimates and subjected to unpleasantly suspicious scrutiny when consuming refreshment in cafés and restaurants, or strolling with their acquaintances on public boulevards.
English artists attached to illustrated newspapers, special correspondents, handicapped by blonde whiskers and an imperfect acquaintance with the French language, found themselves in many a tight place. "Mort aux espions!" is not a cheering cry when some thousands of red-hot throats are uttering it, and half a dozen soldiers or gendarmes form the only barrier between the unlucky suspects and the furious mob.
XLII
A mud-bedaubed nondescript who toiled at the heels of the Great Headquarter Staff upon a huge velocipede of the big-wheeled, bone-shaker type prevalent at that remote period, met plenty of scowling glances from groups of peasants gathered at the corners of villages and listening by the wayside. Even on territory occupied by German troops, it was not safe for lagging soldiers to drop behind upon the march. To enter roadside taverns or farmhouses with a comrade was imprudent, to venture in alone was perilous, the sight of the German uniform, the sound of the Teutonic gutturals, were so fiercely abhorred. Of the reason for this loathing the Englishman was not ignorant. Marching with the infantry of the German army, he had followed where the Uhlans had passed.
He had slept, the night before the Army of the Red Prince had crossed the river, in a little deserted country château,—an ideal honeymoon nest for lovers, standing in a high-walled garden full of fruit-trees and tangled roses in the middle of a sloping meadow on the banks of the Moselle.
The butt of some Prussian soldier's rifle had served for key to the locked door in the high garden-wall. Those who had gone before had stripped the bushes and espaliers. The house had been entered, and the dainty silk-upholstered drawing-room chairs and sofas had been dragged out into the garden. The piano—a tiny rosewood bijou—probably a wedding present—and the absurd little billiard-table with which Monsieur had disported himself, stood crookedly upon the gravel; a long tear in the green cloth of the one; prints of tumblers, marks of greasy fingers marring the shiny veneer of the other. Bottles that had contained Champagne and Moselle—butts of cigars, empty tobacco-papers and match-boxes were scattered everywhere—over gravel, and grass-plot and the once trim garden-beds. An impromptu café-concert had evidently formed a feature of the bivouac.
P. C. Breagh had slept in a charming bedroom, under rosebud-chintz curtains looped with silken ropes, having carved wooden Cupids, painted pink, instead of tassels. The bed was not as luxurious as it might have been, because the blankets and sheets had been carried off. Opening his eyes in the gray of morning he had seen himself as he lay reflected in a long cheval-glass, and failed, for the moment, to recognize in the bronzed, shaggy, unclean tatterdemalion therein reflected the young Englishman of respectable appearance who had interviewed the German States' Chancellor in the Wilhelm-strasse.
He was not alone in the room, that was the next discovery. A woman, young and swarthy, dressed in the quaint costume of the country, stood upon the other side of the bed, with a kitchen chopper in her lifted right hand. He took in the chopper at a glance, and promptly rolled off the bed upon the side facing the friendly cheval-glass, and stood glowering at the black-eyed girl.
"I have startled Monsieur? A thousand apologies!"