Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 89
“I don’t know,” she said, seating herself, and passing her needle through a bit of flannel. She looked up at him once, then dropped her lids and began to sew. After a silence she looked up again, saying:
“Yolette and I are Bretonnes; did you know it?”
“I think I suspected,” he replied, smiling.
“Why, monsieur?”
“Yolette’s eyes — they are the rare Breton blue. Besides, your songs are always Finistère songs — and you know how few French people can understand the Breton language. You and Yolette often speak it when you are alone together.”
She watched him shyly, a little indignant that he knew so much more than she could have suspected.
“Really,” she said, “it would be only just if I understood English — when you and Monsieur Bourke talk together so rapidly — tr-r-r-r-r! C-r-r-r! — in your English tongue! I am displeased, monsieur; I shall talk no more Breton with Yolette.”
“Will you sing something in Breton for me if I sing you a beautiful little English song, Hildé?”
Hildé laughed outright.
“Yes — if you sing first.”
“Here goes, then! It’s a song I’m very fond of,” and he began to drone out “Jim Crow.”
“Horrid!” cried Hildé, putting both hands over her ears; “how can you make such sounds — like June beetles around a candle!”
“Isn’t it pretty?” demanded Harewood, a little disconcerted. He hadn’t much voice, but he was fond of music and proportionally soulful when he sang. “Jim Crow” being his favourite — and his limit, he had sung it with an enthusiasm that set Hildé’s nerves on edge.
“Anyway,” he said, “it isn’t as ding-dong as the French songs,
“Henriette était fille
D’un baron de renom,
D’une illustre famille
Était le beau Damon,
Il était fait au tour,
Elle était jeune et belle,
Et d’un parfait amour
Ils étaient le modele.
“I don’t know anything to compare with that for imbecility,” he added.
Hildé was laughing so gaily that Schéhèrazade woke up, cast a reproachful glance at them both and loped off into the garden. This made Hildé laugh the more, and Harewood, catching the infection, laughed too, not knowing exactly why.
“We are very ridiculous,” said Hildé, gathering up her needlework. Her cheeks were aglow with delicate colour, her eyes brilliant and fairly dancing with mirth. After an interval, the sudden soberness which always follows laughter came upon them. Hildé resumed her sewing, Harewood leaned back in his chair, watching her wistfully.
Dreaming there in the silent room, where bars of sunlight lay across the carpet and drowsy flies buzzed along the window panes, there came to them a sense of peace, of stillness, of desire fulfilled, something they had never before known nor even wished for.
She began speaking to him quite naturally, indolently occupied with her needle, now and then raising her head to look at him, resting her clear eyes on his with confidence. Such moments are rare in life, but they come to all at times, when everything seems but the continuation of familiar conditions, long established, an unchanging régime, pleasant, even in tenor, without trouble, without desire. She told him of the convent, of the death of her uncle, of her hopes, her fears. She spoke of Brittany, of Carhaix, of the Pardon of the Birds, and of Sainte Anne d’Auray. She painted for him in quaint phrases the chapel of Morlaix, the coast of Saint Gildas, the Icelanders and the blessing of the fleet. He asked her to sing and she sang the “Ar Vinorez” deliciously.
Carmel,
Carmel,
Na vo ket dimet ar vinorez
Ken vo bet pardon ar Carmel —
She told him naïvely of Ker-Is, that city punished and submerged because of the fault of Ahes, daughter of Gradlon, the king:
“Qu’y a-t-il dans la ville d’Is, — si la jeunesse est tellement joyeuse, — et si j’entends le biniou—”
She recited the Gwerz of Count Gweto, and her eyes filled at the moment of peril:
“Seigneur Dieu ma fille, comment fera-t-on!” And the reply:
“Allez danz la chambre blanche prendre de beaux atours!”
All the pathos and mystery of the Bretonne was in her eyes and voice as she paused in her sewing and intoned for him the “Vespers of Saint Gildas—”
“O Vierge glorieuse Marie!” until he seemed to hear the sea bells tolling off the cliffs and the long coast swell washing, rocking, washing, where the surf curls in a flurry of settling silver sands.
“There is something more in Brittany,” he said, vaguely uneasy— “something besides the waves and the bell-buoy, and the vespers of the sea. At Treguier they have a song, called ‘Little Madeleine’ or ‘Madeleinic.’ ”
“Madelenik!” she said, her face lighting up with an imperceptible smile; “it is really a chansonnette for the inn, with its gay refrain;
“Ho! fois! j’y vais;
Ho! fois! je n’y vais pas.”
It is very easy, monsieur, to see where you spent your evenings in Treguier.”
He laughed and hummed the dashing chorus —
“Ho! fe! graon; ho! fe! na naon!”
until she caught the spirit and joined her clear voice to his, and they sang the chanson of little Madeleine until between laughter and tears Hildé sank back, both white hands closing her ears in protest.
At the same moment Yolette appeared, market basket over her arm, a picture of amazement.
“What on earth is all this about, little Madeleine!” she cried: “never — never have I seen such children — never! never! And, monsieur, may I ask who taught you my native language?”
Harewood confessed his knowledge, while Hildé, becoming very serious, opened the basket and made a mental invoice of the contents.
“Yolette, you forgot the pigeons.”
“No,” said Yolette, “I did not forget, but do you know they are a little too dear? The butcher said it was because the Germans were stealing everything in the north. I told him it was nonsense.”
“I think,” said Harewood, “that things are going to be a little dearer in Paris. Of course everybody says that we have food enough to last a long time, even if the Germans should blockade the whole department, but it will make things more expensive, and I only wish to say that you must not be too indulgent to Monsieur Bourke and myself.”
Hildé looked up at him without answering; all her shyness had returned with the return of Yolette. Her sister smiled and glanced at the basket, saying: “I think the dinner will be nice — even without pigeons.”
She started toward the kitchen, but paused to say; “O, I forgot to tell you, the soldiers are marching into the Prince Murat barracks, and a company of sailors have brought a cannon and are mounting it on top of the ramparts across the street.”
“If they fire it will break every window in the house, won’t it?” exclaimed Hildé, in consternation.
Harewood frowned and started for the door.
“Hark!” said Yolette, “the people are cheering outside. I can hear the drums in the barracks, can you? Hildé, where are you going?”
Hildé had started with Harewood, but now she hesitated, looking at Yolette with troubled eyes.
“If — if they fire the cannon — and it bursts — —” she began.
“Of course,” said Yolette, gravely; “then why do you go near it?”
Hildé looked blankly at her sister, then sat down and bent swiftly over her sewing. She had not been thinking of her own safety but of Harewood’s; and when she realised that, her cheeks turned scarlet.
CHAPTER IX.
THE PROPHET.
WHEN HAREWOOD REACHED the front door he stood amazed. The rue d’Ypres, that broad, sunny street, usually as quiet and deserted as a country road, was thronged with people, from the Porte Rouge to the Prince Murat barracks. In front of the house the people were silent and attentive, watching a swarm of labourers gathered around the bastion. A company of sailors from the fleet stood, leaning on their rifles, in front of a strange, shapeless structure that towered into the air above the heads of the crowd, one long steel arm stretched out stark against the sky. Beyond it, on the rusty rails of the narrow-gauge track, stood a car truck, painted blue, and on this truck lay a gigantic cannon.
The gun-carriage had already been placed on the circular track, sunk into the cement below the ramparts, the terrassiers were shaving the terrace, sodding it along the glacis and piling sacks filled with earth across the angles of the epaulment. The rotten gabions and packed barrels that supported the gun-terrace were being removed and new ones substituted; locksmiths and carpenters worked in the bomb-proofs, and the tinkle of chisel and thud of mallet came up, half-smothered, from below.
Down the street drums were rolling sonorously from the court of the caserne; and now, bugles sounding, rifles glittering in the sun, a company of infantry issued from the sallyport and marched solidly on to the Porte Rouge, their red trousers a long undulating line against the green of the glacis.
Suddenly above the crowd the great derrick began to move, three chains dangling from its single rigid arm, the little rusty engine staggering under spasms of steam jets. Slowly the cannon swung up into the air, turning as the steel arm turned, further, further, lower and lower. Then, in the stillness, a boatswain’s whistle sounded, once, twice; the crowd swayed forward, and thousands of voices rose in thundering cheers:
“Vive la France!”
All that night Harewood lay restlessly on his bed, thinking of the future, which, until he first met Hildé, had held no terrors for him. Now it was different. The menace of a siege meant something more than excitement and newspaper despatches, it meant danger, perhaps famine, perhaps annihilation, to a city that had suddenly become important to him — because Hildé lived there. He had never seen a siege. His ideas on the subject were founded on histories. He could not believe that any army would be able to absolutely isolate such a city as Paris — itself nothing but a gigantic citadel, with its double armour of fortresses and ramparts, its suburbs, railways, forests and rivers. He believed that even if a German army sat down before the walls it could never sustain such a position against hunger, against the sorties of the hundred thousands of troops, against those new armies that everybody said were forming in the south, at Bordeaux, at Tours, at Rouen, from the war ports to the Loire. In common with the great mass of the Parisians, he never doubted that, as soon as the Germans appeared, the bombardment would begin; but he doubted the ability of a Prussian artilleryman to send shells into Paris from a gun outside the range of Mont-Valérien. Nevertheless, he was not satisfied with the rue d’Ypres as a haven of safety for Hildé at such a time. It was practically on the city ramparts, it was close to one of the gates, the Porte Rouge, and closer still to the barracks, and he knew that if the German cannon troubled the city at all, the fire would be concentrated on the fortifications, the gates, the magazines and the barracks.
Lying there in the darkness, he could hear, from the ramparts, the marine sentinels’ challenge as they walked the rounds; the stir and the movement of horses, the dull creaking of wheels. He thought of the four great forts that covered the country beyond the Vaugirard secteur, Montrouge, Vanves, Ivry and Bicêtre. If the Germans attempted to seize Meudon, there was the fort of Issy; if they advanced toward Creteil, the fort of Charenton blocked the way. Could they hold Saint Cloud with Mont-Valérien looming like a thundercloud in the north? Could they seize Sèvres, under the cannon of the Point-du-Jour? No, he could not see how a German battery would be able to send its shells into the bastions of Montrouge, and this conclusion comforted him until he fell asleep to dream of a cloudless sky raining shells over a city where Hildé lay white and dead; and he awoke, trembling in every limb. He turned over and tried to go to sleep again, but he could not, dreading a sleep that might bring such dreams.
He thought of Bourke, slumbering peacefully in the next room; he thought of Red Riding Hood and of Yolette, also asleep; but for a long time he avoided the path of thought which he had so often shirked before — the path that led to the solution of a question. Awake, sometimes asleep, the question repeated itself — it was repeating itself now, more persistently, more monotonously than ever. The question was “Hildé,” and Hildé remained an enigma, not because he could not solve the enigma, but because he would not. As he lay there, he felt that the time was coming when it would be impossible to evade an explanation with himself. He shifted his head restlessly and opened his eyes in the darkness, and before he knew it he had faced the question at last.
What had happened to him? What was going to happen? Why should thoughts of Hildé occupy him constantly? Was it because, in a moment of unselfishness, he had renounced the idle amusement of inspiring affection in a young girl? Why had he renounced it? Every man, consciously or unconsciously, seeks the same amusement; and if conscience intervenes, is it not easy to pretend that the woman was perfectly aware of the game? Or, if the result does turn out grave for the woman, a man can always have recourse to those little exercises of diplomatic hair-splitting with his conscience, to which men’s consciences so easily adapt themselves.
It is merely a matter of chance, this amusement which may or may not be harmless; a selfish man takes the risk, risking nothing himself.
All this was clear to Harewood as he lay there in the dark; but it did not satisfy him as it had once. Moreover, whereas, a few days ago, he was certain that he himself risked nothing; now he was far from sure. He asked himself whether he was in danger of caring seriously for Hildé, but could not reply. Had he been simply curious to know how far he could go? Had it been vanity, after all, or a lower incentive?
His face grew hot with shame and self resentment; he was mentally vindicating Hildé — defending her against himself; but he did not know it; he thought it was himself that he was vindicating. This mental protest of innocence left him calmer and less restless, and after a little he fell asleep. Whatever he dreamed must have been pleasant, for the morning sun, stealing into the room, illuminated his face, young, peaceful, touched with a smile as innocent as the woman he was walking with in dreamland.
Bourke woke him, regretfully, saying; “What the deuce are you grinning about in your sleep? Get up, Jim, I’m going to Saint Cloud to see what’s in the wind? You’ll come, too, won’t you?”
“Yes,” said Harewood, “I suppose the trains are running yet. What’s the news?”
While he was bathing and dressing, Bourke ran over the morning papers, reading aloud the telegraphic despatches.
“Hello — what do you think of this? When the Germans entered Laon, some crazy French soldier ran to the citadel and flung a torch into the magazine!”
“Read it,” said Harewood, lathering his face for a shave.
“Here it is: ‘Through the cowardice or treachery of the Governor of Laon, the Duke of Mecklenbourg entered the city on the ninth of September at the head of the enemy’s 6th cavalry division. It was raining heavily. Suddenly a frightful explosion shook the city to its foundations; the citadel had blown up, killing more than a hundred of our soldiers and three hundred and fifty Prussians. This awful catastrophe was the work of an old French soldier, a veteran of the Crimea and of Italy, who, not having the courage to surrender the place to the Prussians, crept into the magazine and set fire to it, blowing himself and everybody there to pieces. The Duke of Mecklenbourg was wounded: our General Theremin was killed. The German troops, recovering themselves, cried that they were betrayed, and flinging themselves upon our unarmed Mobiles, massacred them in the streets and at the house doors. The slaughter was swift and merciless. Yet, who, remembering the horrible courage of that heroic madman, can pronounce one word of blame or of regret for his deed? Honour to the dead!’ ”
Harewood, razor poised, face lathered, stared at Bourke.
“It’s simply ghastly,” he said; “it brings the whole business out more plainly, doesn’t it? Laon is only a few days’ march from Paris. I can’t realise that people are doing things like that while you and I sit still and scribble rot to the journals.”
“I don’t know that we’ve had such an easy time of it,” said Bourke; “Mars-la-Tour was no football game, Jim. And as for you — you’ve given the Prussians chances enough to shoot your idiotic head off, haven’t you?”
“Nonsense,” said Harewood, returning to his shaving; “I mean that there’s a vast difference between us and those poor devils of soldiers out there. That citadel business chills me to the marrow. Go ahead with your newspapers, Cecil.”
Bourke continued reading aloud, skimming through the mass of proclamations, edicts, appeals from hospitals and charities, until he was tired.
“There’s nothing new,” he said, throwing down the journal; “it’s merely the same crisis growing more acute hour by hour. As far as I can make out, the Germans are somewhere between here and Laon, the French fleet has done nothing, the Mobiles are a nuisance, the National Guards are raising hell in Belleville, an army is forming along the Loire to assist Paris, and Garibaldi is coming to France. That’s a fair synopsis of the whole business. As for the United States interfering, it’s not likely: Italy’s gratitude is not to be counted on: France must face the music alone.”
“I wish,” observed Harewood, “that the Paris journals would exhibit less hysteria and more common sense. They’ve had Bismarck killed every week since last August, they’ve captured Moltke, they’ve inoculated the Red Prince with typhus, they’ve announced the mutiny of every regiment in the Bavarian and Saxon armies. Look at the way the government is blowing up tunnels and bridges. What lunacy! They’re only hampering their own movements, and it takes about a day to lay pontoons.” He put on his coat, standing up for Bourke to brush him.
“That’s a big cannon they’ve mounted down there,” he observed, looking out of the window. “Come on, Cecil, breakfast must be waiting.”
As they descended the stairs, Hildé and Yolette stood at the front door looking at the cannon across the street.
