Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 83
As he lay diverted by these pleasant thoughts, he became aware of a cloud of dust on the road below. He watched it; it came nearer and nearer; he could distinguish the red trousers of French infantry; a gun boomed from some distant bastion; another, still more distant, answered the signal. The Mouse sat up. He could see that the dust cloud enveloped heavy moving columns of troops, advancing slowly toward the walls of Paris. At the Porte Rouge drums were beating.
The Mouse rose, stretched, yawned and slouched off down the embankment to the street. As he passed the bird store, Yolette and Hildé came to the door, gazing anxiously toward the fortifications.
The Mouse leered at them, removed his cap, laying a dirty hand on his heart. “Always the ladies’ slave,” he called across the street, and shuffled on toward the Porte Rouge.
At the gate he shoved and elbowed his way through the increasing throng until he reached the pont-levis. The line sentinels drove him back again, but he managed to crawl up to the grille and hang on to the steel bars. Here he found himself in company with two bosom friends, Bibi la Goutte and Mon Oncle.
“Mince!” observed Bibi, as a column of dusty hussars galloped up to the drawbridge and drew bridle, “they’ve seen uncomfortable things out yonder — those hussars. It’s Vinoy’s 13th corps back from Badinguet’s fête champêtre.”
Mon Oncle sneered and mimicked the officer’s commands as a close column of infantry came plodding through the gate, haggard, ghastly, beneath their coat of tan and dust.
“Bigre!” observed Bibi, under his breath, but the Mouse climbed up on the grille and hurled insults at the exhausted troops: “Malheur, si ça fait pas gueler! On dirait des chaouchs de Biribi! Ah! mince, on prend des airs deja! Mort aux crétins! On n’est pus su’ l’pavé de Badinguet, tas de sergots!”
Then he spat upon the ground, shook his fist at the sky, shrugged and slouched out of the crowd, followed closely by Bibi la Goutte and Mon Oncle.
The latter was somewhat puzzled at the Mouse’s sudden outburst, and looked doubtfully at Bibi.
“The Mouse is capricious,” he observed.
“No,” said Bibi, scornfully, “the Mouse doesn’t care, except that there’s another army corps in Paris now; and when the hour comes to do a little pillaging — these imbecile soldiers may annoy us.”
The Mouse remained mute, but, as he trudged over the glacis, he cast a glance of horrible malignity at the battered, sun-scorched soldiers, toiling across the drawbridge below.
Then, with a gesture, he turned his back, closed his sightless eye and sat down on the grass. Bibi regarded him in breathless admiration, his lean jaws working with emotion.
“What a general he would make!” he whispered to Mon Oncle.
“Or what an assassin!” replied Mon Oncle, aloud, mopping his fat face.
The Mouse felt the compliment, but said nothing. The drums beat continuously down by the gate, the dull cries of the officers came up to them from below mingled with the murmur of the throng at the pont-levis.
Bibi, sitting on the grass, nodded drowsily in the hot sunshine. Mon Oncle stretched his short bandy legs out under an acacia bush, and presently fell asleep. The Mouse, too, appeared to slumber, except when a breeze moved the brim of his cap, and a stray spot of sunlight glimmered on the iris of his sightless eye.
CHAPTER III.
APARTMENT TO LET.
YOLETTE, STANDING AT the door of the bird store, with her arm around Hildé’s waist, and one hand shading her face, could see the exhausted infantry tramping through the Porte Rouge, between the steadily increasing throngs of people.
The crowd at first was silent but gravely attentive. Little by little, however, they realised what it meant; they began to understand that this entry of Blanchard’s division from Mézières, intact, was nothing less than the first actual triumph for French strategy since the Uhlan vanguard galloped over the frontier and the Prussian needle-guns cracked across the Spicheren in the early days of August. For, when Blanchard’s division of Vinoy’s 13th corps stole out of Mézières at dawn on September 2, 1870, with the furnace breath of Sedan in their faces and the German cavalry at their heels, nobody, not even General Vinoy himself, dared hope to turn a retreat into victory or to bring back one soldier out of ten again under the guns of Paris.
Yet now it was done. On September 5 Blanchard’s division joined Maud’huy’s at Laon, and the 13th corps was reunited. And here they were; it was Guilhem’s brigade, the 6th Hussars and the 42nd and 35th line infantry that surged in at the Porte Rouge, drums beating, beating, beating, through the pulsating dust waves, bayonets crimsoned by the red level rays of the setting sun.
Suddenly on the forts of Issy, Vanves, Montrouge and Bicêtre the siege guns boomed their welcome to the returning troops. Fort after fort took up the salute, bastion after bastion, until from the fort d’Ivry to the battery of the Double Crown, and from Fontenay to the Fortress of the East, the thunder rolled in one majestic reverberation, dominated by the tremendous shocks from Mont-Valérien.
When the roar from the sixteen forts had ceased and the immense waves of sound rolled further and further away, leaving in the ears of the people nothing but the drum taps of marching columns, a sentiment, long unknown, stirred every heart in Paris. The sentiment was hope. At the Porte Rouge they were cheering now; Montparnasse heard the unaccustomed sound, and the streets swarmed from the Luxembourg to the Montrouge gate. They were cheering, too, in the north, across the river, where the artillery of Maud’huy’s division was parking along the avenue de la Grande-Armée.
Down at the Porte Rouge the hussars entered at a trot, trumpeters sounding the regimental march, while the crowd broke into frantic cheering, and tear-choked voices blessed them and tear-stained faces were raised to the hard, bright sky, burnished with a fiercer radiance where the sun hung over the smoking Meudon woods, like a disk of polished copper.
And so after all they had returned, this army given up for lost; they had returned singed by the flames in the north, stained with northern rain and mud and dust, exhausted, starving, reeling under the weight of their knapsacks and rifles, but saved from annihilation.
Paris forgot everything except that — forgot the red trail of butchery from Forbach to Metz; forgot the smoking debris of battles lost and battles worse than lost; forgot Strassebourg, crumbling under German shells; forgot Metz, drenched with blood, cowering under the spectre of famine; forgot Toul and Belfort and the imbecile manœuvres of an ironclad fleet — all this was forgotten in the joy of the moment. What if three German armies were even then on the march toward Paris? Paris would be ready; Paris would arm; nothing should withstand her; nothing could penetrate her cuirassed armour of enormous forts — sixteen forts strung outside the walls on a circle of lesser redoubts and batteries, sixty kilometres in circumference. A necklace of steel, a double necklace, for inside the ring of forts lay the city fortifications proper — the enormous enceinte forty-one kilometres long, encircling the city from the Seine to the Marne. The forts and the ninety-four bastions mounted two thousand two hundred cannon, huge pieces of fifteen and twelve, and even a few thirteen ton, marine monsters of nineteen and sixteen. The people had heard their voices from Mont-Valérien, setting the whole city rocking with the earthquake of their welcome to the 13th corps. And how the throngs cheered!
Hildé and Yolette leaned together from their door and saw a pillar of dust, dyed crimson in the sun’s last level rays, moving up the rue d’Ypres.
“They are coming — they will pass here,” cried Hildé; “look, Yolette!”
“I see,” said Yolette, her voice unsteady with excitement: “I am going to get all our bread and the three bottles of wine!”
She dropped her sister’s hand and ran back through the shop to the kitchen, talking all the while excitedly to herself; “quick! quick! first the wine — then a glass — no, three glasses — now, the bread — all of it — now a little basket — ah, mon dieu! where is my little basket? Oh, there you are; and there is a brioche in you, too! It shall be eaten by one of our brave soldiers!” Schéhèrazade, the lioness, sprawling on a rug in the small square parlour, blinked amiably up into Yolette’s flushed face. The girl stooped and gave her a hasty kiss in passing — then ran out with the basket, closing the door quickly behind her.
The street was a turmoil. A torrent of dust flooded with sunset light rolled and eddied above the red caps of the passing troops. Strange timid eyes sought hers, strange eager faces rose up before her and passed on, blotted out in the whirls of crimsoned dust. The tears sprang to her eyes; she could not speak, but she held out her basket to the passing troops. A soldier somewhere in the throng cried: “Is the wine for us, madame?” and another close beside her wiped the red wine from his lips with the sleeve of a stained overcoat and passed the bottle to a comrade, laughing from sheer weakness.
“Our poor soldiers! Our poor soldiers!” repeated Hildé, holding to Yolette’s apron; “See! Look! Everybody is bringing them bread and wine now! But you were the first, Yolette, you thought of it first, my darling!”
Yolette saw nothing distinctly in the surging crowd around, but from every side spectral faces appeared through the dust, sad, boyish eyes grew brighter as they met hers — grimy, calloused hands reached out for a morsel of bread or a drop of wine.
Already Hildé had run back to the kitchen and returned with a big china bowl, into which she poured their last bottle of wine; and now the bowl passed from lip to lip until it was lost to sight in the dust cloud.
“Everybody is bringing bread and wine — look, Yolette,” cried Hildé; “Oh, the poor things — the poor sick things! Do you believe they will all get a little wine? There are so many — so many—”
“The bowl is empty,” began Yolette; but at that moment the dust cloud wavered, grew thinner, whirled up in one last flurry as a mounted officer galloped by, then slowly settled and sifted back into the roadway.
The regiment had passed.
Yolette watched the vanishing column down the street until the dust hid the last straggler and the tap, tap, tap of the drum died away. Hildé, standing beside her, dried the tears from her cheeks.
After a silence Yolette said: “If we are going to have war — here — near Paris — nobody will want to rent our apartment—”
“I don’t know,” replied Hildé; “it is a very nice apartment, and not at all dear.” Yolette came back to the doorstep, touching the corner of her apron to her eyes.
“I mean that if the Germans do come, their cannon balls might fly over the rampart there, and hit our house. Perhaps nobody would care to take an apartment so near the fortifications, if they knew that.”
“Of course we will explain the danger before accepting anybody’s money,” added Yolette, “but I do hope somebody may like the apartment. I don’t know what we shall do if it is not rented by October.”
She stood a moment on the door-step, thinking, saddened by the memory of the regiment that had just passed.
Hildé clasped both hands behind her and looked up at the sky. It was not yet dusk, although the sun had gone down behind the blue forest of Meudon, but the fresh sweetness of twilight was in the air. Soft lights lay across the grassy glacis opposite; the shrubs on the talus moved in the evening breeze.
Something else was moving over there, too — three sinister figures, shuffling across the grass. The Mouse and his two familiars were going back to the passage de l’Ombre.
As the Mouse passed he flourished his cap again and called across the street something about being a slave to the ladies, but that speech had well-nigh been his last, for just as the shabby trio started to traverse the roadway two horsemen wheeled at a gallop out of the rue Pandore, and one of them hustled Bibi la Goutte into the arms of Mon Oncle, who collapsed with a muffled shriek, dragging down the Mouse as he fell.
There is a Providence for drunkards; there is also Hermes, the god of thieves, otherwise nothing could have saved the Mouse and Bibi from the horses’ hoofs.
The two riders drew bridle, wheeled and turned to see what damage had been done, as the Mouse picked himself out of the dust with a frightful imprecation.
One of the horsemen, who had impulsively dismounted, was immediately set upon by Bibi and Mon Oncle. Taken by surprise he knocked them both flat with his loaded riding crop, and, jumping back, called out in English:
“For heaven’s sake, Bourke, ride that one-eyed fellow down, — he’s got a knife!”
The other horseman set spurs to his mount and sprang at the Mouse. That ornamental bandit took to his heels, lunging out viciously with his knife as he passed the dismounted man. The latter slashed the Mouse twice with his riding crop, and, in turn, was felled by a blow with a club wielded by the fat hands of Mon Oncle.
“Harewood!” cried Bourke, hastily dismounting, “have they hurt you badly?”
The fallen man scrambled to his feet. There were two red streaks on his face; his hair was wet and matted.
“No; where have they gone?”
“Into that dark alley. Do you want to follow them? Hold on, man, don’t tumble! — wait — I’ll give you an arm. Are you badly hurt? By Jove! I believe you are!”
“I’m not; I’m all right. I’ll — I’ll just go over and sit down a moment. Is there a cut on my head?”
“Yes,” said Bourke. “Come over to that house. I’ll ask for a little cold water.”
He slung the bridles of both horses under his left elbow, and with his right arm supported his dazed comrade to the bird store, where Hildé and Yolette stood watching them in silent consternation.
“Well,” said Harewood faintly, “there are our little friends of the pigeons.”
Yolette recognized them as they reached the sidewalk; Hildé took one hesitating step forward, leaned on Yolette’s shoulder and fixed her frightened eyes on Harewood. That young man was so dizzy that he could only accomplish the bow he attempted by holding on to Bourke. Bourke took off his hat and asked for water; Yolette, outwardly self-possessed, brought a basin of water, a towel, and her own smelling salts, while Hildé dragged out a chair and seated Harewood upon it.
And now, the feminine instinct of consolation being fully awakened in both Hildé and Yolette, Harewood was requested to smell the smelling salts, and rest in the chair, and sip a little brandy from a glass. He did as he was bidden. Bourke expressed his obligations, and Harewood’s, in sincere if not fluent terms; Hildé and Yolette said that he and Harewood were very welcome.
After that Bourke was too diffident and Harewood too dazed to continue conversation in the French language, so they were silent.
Yolette tore strips from a cambric handkerchief, and soaked them in water, and looked at Harewood’s damaged head. Hildé turned away. She could not bear to see suffering, and she felt that the young man in the chair was probably enduring unheard-of agony.
Bourke repeated at intervals, “How is it, old fellow? Better?” until he remembered that politeness required him to say what he had to say in French. He stood on the sidewalk, and looked up at the façade of the grimy house where the two signs hung.
“Apartment to let,” he repeated aloud. Then a thought struck him. “Harewood, here’s an apartment to let directly over our heads. It’s what we’re looking for — good view from the fortifications, you know, and close to the Porte Rouge. What do you say? Shall I look at it?”
“If you like,” said Harewood with an effort; “Bourke, I believe — I believe I’m going to ask you to take me to a hotel. My noddle goes round and round, you know. I don’t think I should care about riding out to Saint Cloud to-night.”
Bourke examined his comrade’s head anxiously.
“We’ll have to ride back to the Luxembourg quarter to find a hotel,” he observed, “there are no hotels out here. Can you stand the jolting?”
“Oh, yes,” replied Harewood.
“If you choose,” continued Bourke, “we might take that apartment now — if it’s furnished — and I could bundle you into bed and ride the horses back and have our traps sent up to-morrow.”
He turned to Hildé and made his excuses for using English instead of French:
“I do not speak French fluently; we were talking about the apartment which, I notice, is to rent on the top floor. Could you tell me where I might find the concierge or the landlord?”
“The landlord?” repeated Hildé; “why — why — I — and my sister are the landlords.”
She smiled very prettily as she spoke. Yolette’s eyes brightened. Could it be that after all they were actually going to rent their apartment?
“It is furnished,” said Yolette, looking at Harewood.
She spoke with reserve, but her heart beat high and two spots of colour deepened in her cheeks.
“We should be very glad to rent it,” said Hildé in a grave voice; “it is not at all dear, I think.”
She mentioned the price diffidently.
“That, of course, includes heat, light, and attendance,” added Yolette, turning to Harewood.
“Gas?” asked Bourke.
“No, candles, monsieur. The fireplaces burn wood.”
“And the attendance?” asked Bourke, curiously.
“My sister and I — you see — we are the attendants,” said Yolette, without embarrassment.
“Will you show me the apartment now?” asked Bourke.
“With pleasure, monsieur.”
He glanced at Harewood. Harewood nodded back. Hildé brought a lighted candle to the stairway, and Yolette took it, inviting Bourke, with a gesture, to follow.
When they had gone away up the stairs, Hildé returned to Harewood and stood a moment, silent. Presently she went out to the street and caressed the two horses. They turned their gentle heads and looked at her with dark, liquid eyes.
“Are you fond of horses?” asked Harewood, sitting upright, and touching the bandage on his throbbing head.
