CHAPTER XIX.
THE SEARCH.
“Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop Than when we soar.”
There were many who thought the war was over that rainy morning after thefall of Sedan. For events were made to follow each other quickly by thosethree sleepless men who moved kings and emperors and armies at theirwill. Bismarck, Moltke, and Roon must have slept but little--if theyclosed their eyes at all--between the evening of the first and themorning of the third day of September. For human foresight must have itslimits, and the German leaders could hardly have dreamt, in their mostoptimistic moments, of the triumph that awaited them. Bismarck couldhardly have foreseen that he should have to provide for an imperialprisoner. Moltke’s marvellous plans of campaign could scarcely haveembraced the details necessary to the immediate disposal of ninetythousand prisoners of war, with many guns and horses and much ammunition.
It was but twenty-four hours after he had left Sedan to seek, and seek invain, the King of Prussia, that the third Napoleon--the modern man ofdestiny who had climbed so high and fallen so very low--set out on hisjourney to the Palace of Wilhelmshöhe, never to set foot on French soilagain. For he was to seek a home, and finally a grave, in England, wherehis bones will lie till that day when France shall think fit to depositthem by those of the founder of the adventurous dynasty.
Among those who stood in the muddy street of Donchéry that morning, andwatched in silence the departure of the simple carriage, was MademoiselleBrun, whose stern eyes rested for a moment on the sphinx-like face, metfor an instant the dull and extinct gaze of the man who had twisted allFrance round his little finger.
When the cavalcade had passed by, she turned away and walked towardsSedan. The road was crowded with troops, coming and going almost insilence. Long strings of baggage-carts splashed past. Here and there anambulance waggon of lighter build was allowed a quicker passage.Messengers rode, or hurried on foot, one way and the other; but fewspoke, and a hush seemed to hang over all. There was no cheering thismorning--even that was done. The rain splashed pitilessly down on thesemen who had won a great victory, who now hurried hither and thither,afraid of they knew not what, cowering beneath the silence of Heaven.
Mademoiselle was stopped outside the gates of Sedan.
“You can go no further!” said an under-officer of a Bavarian regiment inpassable French, the first to question the coming or going of thisinsignificant and self-possessed woman.
“But I can stay here?” returned mademoiselle in German. In teaching, shehad learnt--which is more than many teachers do.
“Yes, you can stay here,” laughed the German.
And she stayed there patiently for hours in the rain and mud. It wasafternoon before her reward came. No one heeded her, as, standing on anoverturned gun-carriage, beneath her shabby umbrella, she watched thefirst detachment of nearly ten thousand Frenchmen march out of thefortress to their captivity in Germany.
“No cavalry?” she said to a bystander when the last detachment had gone.
“There is no cavalry left, ma bonne dame,” replied the old man to whomshe had spoken.
“No cavalry left! And Lory de Vasselot was a cuirassier. And Denise lovedLory.” Mademoiselle Brun knew that, though perhaps Denise herself wasscarcely aware of it. In these three thoughts mademoiselle told the wholehistory of Sedan as it affected her. Solferino had, for her, narroweddown to one man, fat and old at that, riding at the head of his troops ona great horse specially chosen to carry bulk. The victory that was to marone empire and make another, years after Solferino, was summed up inthree thoughts by the woman who had the courage to live frankly in herown small woman’s world, who was ready to fight--as resolutely as anyfought at Sedan--for Denise. She turned and went down that historic road,showing now, as ever, a steady and courageous face to the world, thoughall who spoke to her stabbed her with the words, “There is no cavalryleft--no cavalry left, ma bonne dame.”
She hovered about Donchéry and Sedan, and the ruins of Bazeilles, forsome days, and made sure that Lory de Vasselot had not gone, a prisoner,to Germany. The confusion in the French camp was greater than any hadanticipated, and no reliable records of any sort were obtainable.Mademoiselle could not even ascertain whether Lory had fought at Sedan;but she shrewdly guessed that the mad attempt to cut a way through theGerman lines was such as would recommend itself to his heart. Shehaunted, therefore, the heights of Bazeilles, seeking among the dead onewho wore the cuirassier uniform. She found, God knows, enough, but notLory de Vasselot.
All this while she never wrote to Fréjus, judging, with a deadly commonsense, that no news is better than bad news. Day by day she continued herself-imposed task, on the slippery hill-sides and in the muddy valleys,until at last she passed for a peasant-woman, so bedraggled was herdress, so lined and weather-beaten her face. Her hair grew white in thosedays, her face greyer. She had not even enough to eat. She lay down andslept whenever she could find a roof to cover her. And always, night andday, she carried with her the burthen of that bad news of which she wouldnot seek to relieve herself by the usual human method of telling it toanother.
And one day she wandered into a church ten miles on the French side ofSedan, intending perhaps to tell her bad news to One who will alwayslisten. But she found that this was no longer a house of prayer, forthe dead and dying were lying in rows on the floor. As she entered, atall man, coming quickly out, almost knocked her down. His arms werefull of cooking utensils. He was in his shirt-sleeves: blood-stained,smoke-grimed, unshaven and unwashed. He turned to apologize, and beganexplaining that this was no place for a woman; but he stopped short. Itwas the millionaire Baron de Mélide.
Mademoiselle Brun sat suddenly down on a bench near the door. She did notlook at him. Indeed, she purposely looked away and bit her lip with herlittle fierce teeth because it would quiver. In a moment she hadrecovered herself.
“I have come to help you,” she said.
“God knows, we want you,” replied the baron--a phlegmatic man, who,nevertheless, saw the quivering lip, and turned away hastily. For he knewthat mademoiselle would never forgive herself, or him, if she broke downnow.
“Here,” he said, with a clumsy gaiety, “will you wash these plates anddishes? You will find the pump in the curé’s garden. We have nurses anddoctors, but we have no one to wash up. And it is I who do it. This is myhospital. I have borrowed the building from the good God.”
Mademoiselle was naturally a secretive woman. She could even be silentabout her neighbours’ affairs. Susini had been guided by a quickintuition, characteristic of his race, when he had confided in thisFrenchwoman. She had been some hours in the baron’s hospital before sheeven mentioned Lory’s name.
“And the Count de Vasselot?” she inquired, in her usual curt form ofinterrogation, as they were taking a hurried and unceremonious meal inthe vestry by the light of an altar candle.
The baron shook his head and gulped down his food.
“No news?” inquired Mademoiselle Brun.
“None.”
They continued to eat for some minutes in silence.
“Was he at Sedan?” asked mademoiselle, at length.
“Yes,” replied the baron, gravely. And then they continued their meal insilence by the light of the flickering candle.
“Have you any one looking for him?” asked mademoiselle, as she rose fromthe table and began to clear it.
“I have sent two of my men to do so,” replied the baron, who was bynature no more expansive than his old governess. And for some days therewas no mention of de Vasselot between them.
Mademoiselle found plenty of work to do besides the menial labours ofwhich she had relieved the man who deemed himself fit for nothing morecomplicated than washing dishes and providing funds. She wrote lettersfor the wounded, and also for the dead. She had a way of looking at thosewho groaned unnecessarily and out of idle self-pity, which was conduciveto silence, and therefore to the comfort of others. She smoothed nopillows and proffered no soft w
ords of sympathy. But it was she who foundout that the curé had a piano. She it was who took two hospitalattendants to the priest’s humble house and brought the instrument away.She had it placed inside the altar rails, and fought the curé afterwardsin the vestry as to the heinousness of the proceeding.
“You will not play secular airs?” pleaded the old man.
“All that there is of the most secular,” replied she, inexorably. “Andthe recording angels will, no doubt, enter it to my account--and notyours, monsieur le curé”.
So Mademoiselle Brun played to the wounded all through the longafternoons until her fingers grew stiff. And the doctors said that shesaved more than one fretting life. She was not a great musician, but shehad a soothing, old-fashioned touch. She only played such ancient airs asshe could remember. And the more she played the more she remembered. Itseemed to come back to her--each day a little more. Which was odd, forthe music was, as she had promised the curé, secular enough, and couldnot, therefore, have been inspired by her sacred surroundings within thealtar rails. Though, after all, it may have been that those who recordedthis sacrilege against Mademoiselle Brun, not only made a cross-entry onthe credit side, but helped her memory to recall that forgotten music.
Thus the days slipped by, and little news filtered through to the quietArdennes village. The tide of war had rolled on. The Germans, it wassaid, were already halfway to Paris. And from Paris itself the tidingswere well-nigh incredible. One thing alone was certain; the Bonapartedynasty was at an end and the mighty schemes of an ambitious woman hadcrumbled like ashes within her hands. All the plotting of the Regency hadfallen to pieces with the fall of the greatest schemer of them all, whomthe Paris government fatuously attempted to hookdwink. Napoleon the Thirdwas indeed a clever man, since his own wife never knew how clever he was.So France was now a howling Republic--a Republic being a communitywherein every man is not only equal to, but better than his neighbour,and may therefore shout his loudest.
No great battles followed Sedan. France had but one army left, and thatwas shut up in Metz, under the command of another of the Paris plotterswho was a bad general and not even a good conspirator.
Poor France had again fallen into bad hands. It seemed the end of allthings. And yet for Mademoiselle Brun, who loved France as well as any,all these troubles were one day dispersed by a single note of a man’svoice. She was at the piano, it being afternoon, and was so used to theshuffling of the bearer’s feet that she no longer turned to look when onewas carried in and another, a dead one perhaps, was carried out.
She heard a laugh, however, that made her music suddenly mute. It wasLory de Vasselot who was laughing, as they carried him into the littlechurch. He was explaining to the baron that he had heard of his hospital,and had caused himself to be carried thither as soon as he could be movedfrom the cottage, where he had been cared for by some peasants.
The laugh was silenced, however, at the sight of Mademoiselle Brun.
“You here, mademoiselle?” he said. “Alone, I hope,” he added, wincing asthe bearers set him down.
“Yes, I am alone. Denise is safe at Fréjus with Jane de Mélide.”
“Ah!”
“And your wounds?” said Mademoiselle Brun.
“A sabre-cut on the right shoulder, a bullet through the left leg--voilàtout. I was in Sedan, and we tried to get out. That is all I know,mademoiselle.”
Mademoiselle stood over him with her hands crossed at her waist, lookingdown at him with compressed lips.
“Not dangerous?” she inquired, glancing at his bandages, which indeedwere numerous enough.
“I shall be in the saddle again in three weeks, they tell me. If the waronly lasts--” He gave an odd, eager laugh. “If the war only lasts--”
Then he suddenly turned white and lost consciousness.
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