The Maids of Paradise Part 78

Together we carried her back through the smoking hallway, up the stairs to my bedroom, and laid her in the bed.

The child opened her eyes as we drew the blankets.

"Where is Speed?" she asked, dreamily.

A moment later he came in, and she turned her head languidly and smiled.

"Jacqueline! Jacqueline!" he whispered, bending close above her.

"Do you love me, Speed?"

"Ah, Jacqueline," he stammered, "more than you can understand."

Suddenly a step sounded on the stairs, a rifle-stock grounded, clanging, and a sonorous voice rang out:

"Salute, O my brother of the toug! The enemies of France are dead!"

And in the silence around him Salah Ben-Ahmed the Marabout recited the fatha, bearing witness to the eternal unity of G.o.d.

Late that night the light cavalry from Lorient rode into Paradise. At dawn the colonel, established in the mayory, from whence its foolish occupant had fled, sent for Speed and me, and when we reported he drew from his heavy dolman our commissions, restoring us to rank and pay in the regiment _de marche_ which he commanded.

At sunrise I had bade good-bye to the sweetest woman on earth; at noon we were miles to the westward, riding like demons on Buckhurst's heavy trail.

I am not sure that we ever saw him again, though once, weeks later, Speed and I and a dozen hussars gave chase to a mounted man near St.

Brieuc, and that man might have been Buckhurst. He led us a magnificent chase straight to the coast, where we rode plump into a covey of Prussian hussars, who were standing on their saddles, hacking away at the telegraph-wires with their heavy, curved sabres.

That was our first and last sight of the enemy in either Prussian or communistic guise, though in the long, terrible days and nights of that winter of '71, when three French armies froze, and the white death, not the Prussians, ended all for France, rumors of insurrection came to us from the starving capital, and we heard of the red flag flying on the Hotel-de-Ville, and the rising of the carbineers under Flourens; and some spoke of the leader of the insurrection and called him John Buckhurst.

That Buckhurst could have penetrated Paris neither Speed nor I believed; but, as all now know, we were wrong, though the testimony concerning his death[A] at the hands of his terrible colleague, Mortier, was not in evidence until a young ruffian, known as "The Mouse," confessed before he expiated his crimes on Sartory Plain in 1872.

Thus, for three blank, bitter months, freezing and starving, the 1st Regiment _de marche_ of Lorient Hussars stood guard at Brest over the diamonds of the crown of France.

[A] This affair is dealt with in _Ashes of Empire_.

XXII

THE SECRET

The news of the collapse of the army of the East found our wretchedly clothed and half-starved hussars still patrolling the environs of Brest from Belair to the Pont Tournant, and from the banks of the Elorn clear around the ramparts to Lannion Bay, where the ice-sheathed iron-clads lay with banked fires off the Port Militaire, and the goulet guard-boats patrolled the Port de Commerce from the Pa.s.se de l'Ouest to the hook on the Digue and clear around to Cap Espagnol.

All Brest, from the battlements of the Chateau of St. Martin, in Belair, was on watch, so wrought up was the governor over the attempt on the treasure-train. For three months our troopers scarcely left their saddles, except to be taken to the hospital in Recouvrance.

The rigor of the constant alert wore us to shadows; rockets from the goulet, the tocsin, the warning boom of a gun from the castle, found us spurring our jaded horses through ice and snow to scour the landward banlieue and purge it of a dreaded revolt. The names of Marx, of Flourens, of Buckhurst, were constantly repeated; news of troubles at Bordeaux, rumors of the red flag at Ma.r.s.eilles, only served to increase the rigid system of patrol, which brought death to those in the trenches as well as to our sleet-soaked videttes.

Suddenly the nightmare ended with a telegram. Paris had surrendered.

Immediately the craze to go beset us all; our improvised squadrons became clamoring mobs of peasants, wild to go home. Deserters left us every night; they shot some in full flight; some were shot after drum-head seances in which Speed and I voted in vain for acquittal.

But affairs grew worse; our men neglected their horses; bands of fugitives robbed the suburbs, roving about, pillaging, murdering, even burning the wretched hovels where nothing save the four walls remained even for the miserable inmates.

Our hussars were sent on patrol again, but they deserted with horses and arms in scores, until, when we rode into the Rue du Bois d'Amour, scarce a squadron clattered into the smoky gateway, and the infantry of the line across the street jeered and cursed us from their barracks.

On the last day of February our regiment was disbanded, and the officers ordered to hold themselves in readiness to recruit the debris of a dragoon regiment, one squadron of which at once took possession of our miserable barracks.

On the first day of March, by papers from London, we learned that the war was at an end, and that the preliminary treaty of Sunday, the 26th, had been signed at Versailles.

The same mail brought to me an astonishing offer from Cairo, to a.s.sist in the reorganization and accept a commission in the Egyptian military police. Speed and I, shivering in our ragged uniforms by the barrack stove, discussed the matter over a loaf of bread and a few sardines, until we fell asleep in our greasy chairs and dreamed of hot sunshine, and of palms, and of a crimson sunset against which a colossal basking monster, half woman, half lion, crouched, wallowing to her stone b.r.e.a.s.t.s in a hot sea of sand.

When I awoke in the black morning hours I knew that I should go. All the roaming instinct in me was roused. I, a nomad, had stayed too long in one stale place; I must be moving on. A feverish longing seized me; inertia became unbearable; the restless sea called me louder and louder, thundering on the breakwater; the gulls, wheeling above the a.r.s.enal at dawn, screamed a challenge.

Leave of absence, and permission to travel pending acceptance of my resignation, I asked for and obtained before the stable trumpets awoke my comrade from his heavy slumber by the barrack stove.

I made my packet--not much--a few threadbare garments folded around her letters, one to mark each miserable day that had pa.s.sed since I spurred my horse out of Trecourt on the track of the wickedest man I ever knew.

Speed awoke with the trumpets, and stared at me where I knelt before the stove in my civilian clothes, strapping up my little packet.

"Oh," he said, briefly, "I knew you were going."

"So did I," I replied. "Will you ride to Trecourt with me? I have two weeks' permission for you."

He had no clothing but the uniform he wore, and no baggage except a razor, a shirt, a tooth-brush, and a bundle of letters, all written on Madame de Va.s.sart's crested paper, but not signed by her.

We bolted our breakfast of soup and black bread, and bawled for our horses, almost crazed with impatience, now that the moment had come at last.

"Good-bye!" shouted the shivering dragoon officers, wistfully, as we wheeled our horses and spurred, clattering, towards the black gates.

"Good-bye and good luck! We drink to those you love, comrades!"

"And they shall drink to you! Good-bye! Good-bye!" we cried, till the salt sea-wind tore the words from our teeth and bowed our heads as we galloped through the suburbs and out into the icy high-road, where, above us, the telegraph-wires sang their whirring dirge, and the wind in the gorse whistled, and the distant forest sounded and resounded with the gale's wailing.

On, on, hammering the flinty road with steel-shod hoofs, racing with the racing clouds, thundering across the pontoon, where benumbed soldiers huddled to stare, then bounding forward through the narrow lanes of hamlets, where pinched faces peered out at us from hovels, and gaunt dogs fled from us into the frozen hedge.

Far ahead we caught sight of the smoke of a locomotive.

"Landerneau!" gasped Speed. "Ride hard, Scarlett!"

The station-master saw us and halted the moving train at a frantic signal from Speed, whose uniform was to be reckoned with by all station-masters, and ten minutes later we stood swaying in a cattle-car, huddled close to our horses to keep warm, while the locomotive tore eastward, whistling frantically, and an ocean of black smoke poured past, swarming with sparks. Crossing the Aune trestle with a ripping roar, the train rushed through Chateaulin, south, then east, then south.

Toward noon, Speed, clinging to the stall-bars, called out to me that he could see Quimper, and in a few moments we rolled into the station, dropped two cars, and steamed out again into the beautiful Breton country, where the winter wheat was green as new gra.s.s and the gorse glimmered, and the clear streams rushed seaward between their thickets of golden willows and green briers, already flushing with the promise of new buds.

Rosporden we pa.s.sed at full speed; scarcely a patch of melting snow remained at Bannalec; and when we steamed slowly into Quimperle, the Lata ran crystal-clear as a summer stream, and I saw the faint blue of violets on the southern slope of the beech-woods.

Some gendarmes aided us to disembark our horses, and a sub-officer respectfully offered us hospitality at the barracks across the square; but we were in our saddles the moment our horses' hoofs struck the pavement, galloping for Paradise, with a sweet, keen wind blowing, hinting already of the sea.