The Maids of Paradise

Buckhurst looked up at me. “It is rather strange that a French officer should not know the railroads in his own country,” he said.

I was silent. I was not the only officer whose shame was his ignorance of the country he had sworn to defend. Long before the war broke out, every German regimental officer, commissioned and non-commissioned, carried a better map of France than could be found in France itself. And the French government had issued to us a few wretched charts of Germany, badly printed, full of gross errors, one or two maps to a regiment, and a few scattered about among the corps headquarters – among officers who did not even know the general topography of their own side of the Rhine.

“Is there a railroad at Saverne?” I repeated, sullenly.

“You will take a train at Strasbourg,” replied Buckhurst.

“And then?”

“And then you go to Avricourt,” he said. “I suppose at least you know where that is?”

“It is on the route to Paris,” said I, keeping my temper. “Are we going direct to Paris?”

“Madame de Vassart desires to go there,” he said, glancing at her with a sort of sneaking deference which he now assumed in her presence.

“It is true,” said the Countess, turning to me. “I wish to rest for a little while before I go to Point Paradise. I am curiously tired of poverty, Monsieur Scarlett,” she added, and held out her shabby gloves with a gesture of despair; “I am reduced to very little – I have scarcely anything left… and I am weak enough to long for the scent of the winter violets on the boulevards.”

With a faint smile she touched the bright hair above her brow, where the wind had flung a gleaming tendril over her black veil.

As I looked at her, I marvelled that she had found it possible to forsake all that was fair and lovely in life, to dare ignore caste, to deliberately face ridicule and insult and the scornful anger of her own kind, for the sake of the filthy scum festering in the sinkholes of the world.

There are brave priests who go among lepers, there are brave missionaries who dispute with the devil over the souls of half-apes in the Dark Continent. Under the Cross they do the duty they were bred to.

But she was bred to other things. Her lungs were never made to breathe the polluted atmosphere of the proletariat, yelping and slavering in their kennels; her strait young soul was never born for communion with the crooked souls of social pariahs, with the stunted and warped intelligence of fanatics, with the crippled but fierce minds which dominated the Internationale.

Not that such contact could ever taint her; but it might break her heart one day.

“You will think me very weak and cowardly to seek shelter and comfort at such a time,” she said, raising her gray eyes to me. “But I feel as though all my strength had slipped away from me. I mean to go back to my work; I only need a few days of quiet among familiar scenes – pleasant scenes that I knew when I was young. I think that if I could only see a single care-free face – only one among all those who – who once seemed to love me – ”

She turned her head quickly and stared out at the tall pines which fringed the dusty road.

Buckhurst blinked at her.

It was late in the afternoon when the last Prussian outpost hailed us. I had been asleep for hours, but was awakened by the clatter of horses, and I opened my eyes to see a dozen Uhlans come cantering up and surround our carriage.

After a long discussion with Buckhurst and a rigid scrutiny of our permit to pass the lines, the slim officer in command viséd the order. One of the troopers tied a white handkerchief to his lance-tip, wheeled his wiry horse, and, followed by a trumpeter, trotted off ahead of us. Our carriage creaked after them, slowly moving to the summit of a hill over which the road rose.

Presently, very far away on the gray-green hill-side, I saw a bit of white move. The Uhlan flourished his lance from which the handkerchief fluttered; the trumpeter set his trumpet to his lips and blew the parley.

One minute, two, three, ten passed. Then, distant galloping sounded along the road, nearer, nearer; three horsemen suddenly wheeled into view ahead – French dragoons, advancing at a solid gallop. The Uhlan with the flag spurred forward to meet them, saluted, wheeled his horse, and came back.

Paid mercenary that I was, my heart began to beat very fast at sight of those French troopers with their steel helmets bound with leopard-hide and their horsehair plumes whipping the breeze, and their sun-bronzed, alert faces and pleasant eyes. I had had enough of the supercilious, near-sighted eyes of the Teuton.

As for the young Countess, she sat there smiling, while the clumsy dragoons came rattling up, beaming at my red riding-breeches, and all saluting the Countess with a cheerful yet respectful swagger that touched me deeply as I noted the lines of hunger in their lean jaws.

And now the brief ceremony was over and our rusty vehicle moved off down the hill, while the Uhlans turned bridle and clattered off, scattering showers of muddy gravel in the rising wind.

The remains of our luncheon lay in a basket under our seat – plenty of bread and beef, and nearly a quart of red wine.

“Call the escort – they are starving,” I said to Buckhurst.

“I think not,” he said, coolly. “I may eat again.”

“Call the escort!” I repeated, sharply.

Buckhurst looked up at me in silence, then glanced warily at the Countess.

A few moments later the gaunt dragoons were munching dry bread as they rode, passing the bottle from saddle to saddle.

We were ascending another hill; the Countess, anxious to stretch her limbs, had descended to the road, and now walked ahead, one hand holding her hat, which the ever-freshening wind threatened.

Buckhurst bent towards me and said: “My friend, your suggestion that we deprive ourselves to feed those cavalrymen was a trifle peremptory in tone. I am wondering how much your tone will change when we reach Paris.”

“You will see,” said I.

“Oh, of course I’ll see,” he said… “and so will you.”

“I thought you had means to protect yourself,” I observed.

“I have. Besides, I think you would rather keep those diamonds than give them up for the pleasure of playing me false.”

I laughed in a mean manner, which reassured him. “Look here,” said I, “if I were to make trouble for you in Paris I’d be the most besotted fool in France, and you know it.”

He nodded.

And so I should have been. For there was something vastly more important to do than to arrest John Buckhurst for theft; and before I suffered a hair of his sleek, gray head to come to harm I’d have hung myself for a hopeless idiot. Oh no; my friend John Buckhurst had such colossal irons in the fire that I knew it would take many more men as strong as he to lift them out again. And I meant to know what those irons were for, and who were the gentlemen to aid him lift them. So not only must Buckhurst remain free as a lively black cricket in a bog, but he must not be frightened if I could help it.

And to that end I leered at him knowingly, and presently bestowed a fatuous wink upon him.

It was unpleasant for me to do this, for it implied that I was his creature; and, in spite of the remorseless requirements of my profession, I have an inborn hatred of falsehood in any shape. To lie in the line of duty is one of the disagreeable necessities of certain professions; and mine is not the only one nor the least respectable. The art of war is to deceive; strategy is the art of demonstrating falsehood plausibly; there is nothing respectable in the military profession except the manual – which is now losing importance in the eyes of advanced theorists. All men are liars – a few are unselfish ones.

“You have given me your word of honor,” said Buckhurst.

“Have I?” I had not, and he knew it. I hoped I might not be forced to.

“Haven’t you?” asked Buckhurst.

“You sneered at my word of honor,” I said, with all the spite of a coward; “now you don’t get it.”

He no longer wanted it, but all he said was: “Don’t take unnecessary offence; you’re smart enough to know when you’re well off.”

I dozed towards sunset, waking when the Countess stepped back into the carriage and seated herself by my side. Then, after a little, I slept again. And it was nearly dark when I was awakened by the startling whistle of a locomotive. The carriage appeared to be moving slowly between tall rows of poplars and telegraph-poles; a battery of artillery was clanking along just ahead. In the dark southern sky a luminous haze hung.

“The lights of Strasbourg,” whispered the Countess, as I sat up, rubbing my hot eyes.

I looked for Buckhurst; his place was empty.

“Mr. Buckhurst left us at the railroad crossing,” she said.

“Left us!”

“Yes! He boarded a train loaded with wounded… He had business to transact in Colmar before he presented himself to the authorities in Paris… And we are to go by way of Avricourt.”

So Buckhurst had already begun to execute his programme. But the abrupt, infernal precision of the man jarred me unpleasantly.

In the dark I felt cautiously for my diamonds; they were safe in my left hip-pocket.

The wind had died out, and a fine rain began to filter down through a mist which lay over the flat plain as we entered the suburbs of Strasbourg.

Again and again we were halted by sentinels, then permitted to proceed in the darkness, along deserted avenues lighted by gas-jets burning in tall bronze lamp-posts through a halo of iridescent fog.

We passed deserted suburban villas, blank stretches of stucco walls enclosing gardens, patches of cabbages, thickets of hop-poles to which the drenched vines clung fantastically, and scores of abandoned houses, shutters locked, blinds drawn.

High to the east the ramparts of the city loomed, set at regular distances with electric lights; from the invisible citadel rockets were rising, spraying the fog with jewelled flakes, crumbling to golden powder in the starless void above.

Presently our carriage stopped before a tremendous mass of masonry pierced by an iron, arched gate, through which double files of farm-wagons were rolling, escorted by customs guards and marines.

“No room! no room!” shouted the soldiers. “This is the Porte de Pierre. Go to the Porte de Saverne!”

So we passed on beneath the bastions, skirting the ramparts to the Porte de Saverne, where, after a harangue, the gate guards admitted us, and we entered Strasbourg in the midst of a crush of vehicles. At the railroad station hundreds of cars choked the tracks; loaded freight trains stalled in the confusion, trains piled with ammunition and provisions, trains crowded with horses and cattle and sheep, filling the air with melancholy plaints; locomotives backing and whistling, locomotives blowing off deafening blasts of steam; gongs sounding, bells ringing, station-masters’ trumpets blowing; and, above all, the immense clamor of human voices.

The Countess and our Alsatian driver helped me to the platform, I looked around with dread at the throng, being too weak to battle for a foothold; but the brave Alsatian elbowed a path for me, and the Countess warded off the plunging human cattle, and at length I found myself beside the cars where line-soldiers stood guard at every ten paces and gendarmes stalked about, shoving the frantic people into double files.

“Last train for Paris!” bawled an official in gilt and blue; and to the anxious question of the Countess he shook his head, saying, “There is no room, madame; it is utterly impossible – pardon, I cannot discuss anything now; the Prussians are signalled at Ostwald, and their shells may fall here at any moment.”

“If that is so,” I said, “this lady cannot stay here!”

“I can’t help that!” he shouted, starting off down the platform.

I caught the sleeve of a captain of gendarmerie who was running to enter a first-class compartment.

“Eh – what do you want, monsieur?” he snapped, in surprise. Then, as I made him a sign, he regarded me with amazement. I had given the distress signal of the secret police.

“Try to make room for this lady in your compartment,” I said.

“Willingly, monsieur. Hasten, madame; the train is already moving!” and he tore open the compartment door and swung the Countess to the car platform.

I suppose she thought I was to follow, for when the officer slammed the compartment door she stepped to the window and tried to open it.

“Quick!” she cried to the guard, who had just locked the door; “help that officer in! He is wounded – can’t you see he is wounded?”

The train was gliding along the asphalt platform; I hobbled beside the locked compartment, where she stood at the window.

“Will you unlock that door?” said the Countess to the guard. “I wish to leave the train!”

The cars were rolling a little faster than I could move along.

The Countess leaned from the open window; through the driving rain her face in the lamp-light was pitifully white. I made a last effort and caught up with her car.

“A safe journey, madame,” I stammered, catching at the hand she held out and brushing the shabby-gloved fingers with my lips.

“I shall never forgive this wanton self-sacrifice,” she said, unsteadily. Then the car rolled silently past me, swifter, swifter, and her white face faded from my sight. Yet still I stood there, bareheaded, in the rain, while the twin red lamps on the rear car grew smaller and smaller, until they, too, were shut out in the closing curtains of the fog.

As I turned away into the lighted station a hospital train from the north glided into the yard and stopped. Soldiers immediately started carrying out the wounded and placing them in rows on mattresses ranged along the walls of the passenger depot; sisters of charity, hovering over the mutilated creatures, were already giving first aid to the injured; policemen kept the crowd from trampling the dead and dying; gendarmes began to clear the platforms, calling out sharply, “No more trains to-night! Move on! This platform is for government officials only!”

Through the scrambling mob a file of wounded tottered, escorted by police; women were forced back and pushed out into the street, only to be again menaced by galloping military ambulances arriving, accompanied by hussars. The confusion grew into a tumult; men struggled and elbowed for a passage to the platforms, women sobbed and cried; through the uproar the treble wail of terrified children broke out.

Jostled, shoved, pulled this way and that, I felt that I was destined to go down under the people’s feet, and I don’t know what would have become of me had not a violent push sent me against the door of the telegraph office. The door gave way, and I fell on my knees, staggered to my feet, and crept out once more to the platform.

The station-master passed, a haggard gentleman in rumpled uniform and gilt cap; and as he left the office by the outer door the heavy explosion of a rampart cannon shook the station.

“Can you get me to Paris?” I asked.

“Quick, then,” he muttered; “this way – lean on me, monsieur! I am trying to send another train out – but Heaven alone knows! Quick, this way!”

The glare of a locomotive’s headlight dazzled me; I made towards it, clinging to the arm of the station-master; the ground under my feet rocked with the shock of the siege-guns. Suddenly a shell fell and burst in the yard outside; there was a cry, a rush of trainmen, a gendarme shouting; then the piercing alarm notes of locomotives, squealing like terrified leviathans.

The train drawn up along the platform gave a jerk and immediately moved out towards the open country, compartment doors swinging wide, trainmen and guards running alongside, followed by a mob of frenzied passengers, who leaped into empty compartments, flinging satchels and rugs to the four winds. Crash! A shell fell through the sloping roof of the platform and blew up. Through the white cloud and brilliant glare I saw a porter, wheeling boxes and trunks, fall, buried under an avalanche of baggage, and a sister of charity throw up her arms as though to shield her face from the fragments.

A car, doors swinging wide, glided past me; I caught the rail and fell forward into a compartment. The cushions of the seats were afire, and a policeman was hammering out the sparks with naked fists.

I was too weak to aid him. Presently he hurled the last burning cushion from the open door and leaped out into the train-yard, where red and green lamps glowed and the brilliant flare of bursting shells lighted the fog. By this time the train was moving swiftly; the car windows shook with the thunder from the ramparts under which we were passing; then came inky darkness – a tunnel – then a rush of mist and wind from the open door as we swept out into the country.

Passengers clinging to the platforms now made their way into the compartment where I lay almost senseless, and soon the little place was crowded, and somebody slammed the door.

Then the flying locomotive, far ahead, shrieked, and the train leaped, rushing forward into the unknown. Blackness, stupefying blackness, outside; inside, unseen, the huddled passengers, breathing heavily with sudden stifled sobs, or the choked, indrawn breath of terror; but not a word, not a quaver of human voices; peril strangled speech as our black train flew onward through the night.