The Maids of Paradise Part 12

"Are you suffering?" came a low voice, close to my ear.

"Madame, could I have a little of that water?" I muttered.

Very gently she laid me back. I was entirely without power to move below my waist, or to support my body.

She filled my cap with river water and held it while I drank. After I had my fill she bathed my face, pa.s.sing her wet hands through my hair and over my eyes. The carriage moved on.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "TO RIGHT AND LEFT, PRUSSIAN LANCERS WERE RIDING"]

After a while she whispered.

"Are you awake?"

"Yes, madame."

"See the dawn--how red it is on the hills! There are vineyards there on the heights,... and a castle,... and soldiers moving out across the river meadows."

The rising sun was shining in my eyes as we came to a halt before a small stone bridge over which a column of cavalry was pa.s.sing--Prussian hussars, by their crimson dolmans and little, flat busbies.

Our Uhlan escort grouped themselves about us to watch the hussars defile at a trot, and I saw the Rittmeister rigidly saluting their standards as they bobbed past above a thicket of sabres.

"What are these Uhlans doing?" broke in a nasal voice behind us; an officer, followed by two orderlies and a trumpeter, came galloping up through the mud.

"Who's that--a dead Frenchman?" demanded the officer, leaning over the edge of the carriage to give me a near-sighted stare. Then he saw the Countess, stared at her, and touched the golden peak of his helmet.

"At your service, madame," he said. "Is this officer dead?"

"Dying, general," said the Rittmeister, at salute.

"Then he will not require these men. Herr Rittmeister, I take your Uhlans for my escort. Madame, you have my sympathy; can I be of service?"

He spoke perfect French. The Countess looked up at him in a bewildered way. "You cannot mean to abandon this dying man here?" she asked.

There was a silence, broken brusquely by the Rittmeister. "That Frenchman did his duty!"

"Did he?" said the general, staring at the Countess.

"Very well; I want that carriage, but I won't take it. Give the driver a white flag, and have him drive into the French lines. Herr Rittmeister, give your orders! Madame, your most devoted!" And he wheeled his beautiful horse and trotted off down the road, while the Rittmeister hastily tied a handkerchief to a stick and tossed it up to the speechless peasant on the box.

"Morsbronn is the nearest French post!" he said, in French. Then he bent from his horse and looked down at me.

"You did your duty!" he snapped, and, barely saluting the Countess, touched spurs to his mount and disappeared, followed at a gallop by his mud-splashed Uhlans.

V

THE IMMORTALS

When I became conscious again I was lying on a table. Two men were leaning over me; a third came up, holding a basin. There was an odor of carbolic in the air.

The man with the basin made a horrid grimace when he caught my eye; his face was a curious golden yellow, his eyes jet black, and at first I took him for a fever phantom.

Then my bewildered eyes fastened on his scarlet fez, pulled down over his left ear, the sky-blue Zouave jacket, with its bright-yellow arabesques, the canvas breeches, leggings laced close over the thin shins and ankles of an Arab. And I knew him for a soldier of African riflemen, one of those brave children of the desert whom we called "Turcos," and whose faith in the greatness of France has never faltered since the first blue battalion of Africa was formed under the eagles of the First Empire.

"Hallo, Mustapha!" I said, faintly; "what are they doing to me now?"

The Turco's golden-bronze visage relaxed; he saluted me.

"Macache sabir," he said; "they picked a bullet from your spine, my inspector."

An officer in the uniform of a staff-surgeon came around the table where I was lying.

"Bon!" he exclaimed, eying me sharply through his gold-rimmed gla.s.ses. "Can you feel your hind-legs now, young man?"

I could feel them all too intensely, and I said so.

The surgeon began to turn down his shirt-sleeves and b.u.t.ton his cuffs, saying, "You're lucky to have a pain in your legs." Turning to the Turco, he added, "Lift him!" And the giant rifleman picked me up and laid me in a long chair by the window.

"Your case is one of those amusing cases," continued the surgeon, buckling on his sword and revolver; "very amusing, I a.s.sure you. As for the bullet, I could have turned it out with a straw, only it rested there _exactly_ where it stopped the use of those long legs of yours!--a fine example of temporary reflex paralysis, and no hemorrhage to speak of--nothing to swear about, young man. By-the-way, you ought to go to bed for a few days."

He clasped his short baldric over his smartly b.u.t.toned tunic. The room was shaking with the discharges of cannon.

"A millimetre farther and that bullet would have cracked your spine.

Remember that and keep off your feet. Ouf! The cannon are tuning up!"

as a terrible discharge shattered the gla.s.s in the window-panes beside me.

"Where am I, doctor?" I asked.

"Parbleu, in Morsbronn! Can't you hear the orchestra, zim-bam-zim!

The Prussians are playing their Wagner music for us. Here, swallow this. How do you feel now?"

"Sleepy. Did you say a day or two, doctor?"

"I said a week or two--perhaps longer. I'll look in this evening if I'm not up to my chin in amputations. Take these every hour if in pain. Go to sleep, my son."

With a paternal tap on my head, he drew on his scarlet, gold-banded cap, tightened the check strap, and walked out of the room.

Down-stairs I heard him cursing because his horse had been shot. I never saw him again.

Dozing feverishly, hearing the cannon through troubled slumber, I awoke toward noon quite free from any considerable pain, but thirsty and restless, and numbed to the hips. Alarmed, I strove to move my feet, and succeeded. Then, freed from the haunting terror of paralysis, I fell to pinching my legs with satisfaction, my eyes roving about in search of water.

The room where I lay was in disorder; it appeared to be completely furnished with well-made old pieces, long out of date, but not old enough to be desirable. Chairs, sofas, tables were all fashioned in that poor design which marked the early period of the Consulate; the mirror was a fine sheet of gla.s.s imbedded in Pompeian and Egyptian designs; the clock, which had stopped, was a meaningless lump of gilt and marble, supported on gilt sphinxes. Over the bed hung a tarnished canopy broidered with a coronet, which, from the strawberry leaves and the pearls raised above them, I took to be the coronet of a count of English origin.

The room appeared to be very old, and I knew the house must have stood for centuries somewhere along the single street of Morsbronn, though I could not remember seeing any building in the village which, judging from the exterior, seemed likely to contain such a room as this.

The nearer and heavier cannon-shots had ceased, but the window-sashes hummed with the steady thunder of a battle going on somewhere among the mountains. Knowing the Alsatian frontier fairly well, I understood that a battle among the mountains must mean that our First Corps had been attacked, and that we were on the defensive on French soil.