fous rendre? Oui ou non?” shouted the officer, in his terrible French.
“Eh bien… non!” I cried, and ran for the château.
I heard the Uhlans dismount and run clattering and jingling up the stone steps. As I gained the doorway they shot at me, but I only fled the faster, springing up the stairway. Here I stood, sabre in hand, ready to stop the first man.
Up the stairs rushed three Uhlans, sabres shining in the dim light from the window behind me; I laid my forefinger flat on the blade of my sabre and shortened my arm for a thrust – then there came a blinding flash, a roar, and I was down, trying to rise, until a clinched fist struck me in the face and I fell flat on my back.
Without any emotion whatever I saw an Uhlan raise his sabre to finish me; also I saw a yellow-and-black sleeve interposed between death and myself.
“No butchery!” growled the big officer who had summoned me from the lawn. “Cursed pig, you’d sabre your own grandmother! Lift him, Sepp! You, there, Loisel! – lift him up. Is he gone?”
“He is alive, Herr Rittmeister,” said a soldier, “but his back is broken.”
“It isn’t,” I said.
“Herr Je!” muttered the Rittmeister; “an eel, and a Frenchman, and nine long lives! Here, you hussar, what’s the matter with you?”
“One of them shot me; I thought it was to be sabres,” said I, weakly.
“And why the devil wasn’t it sabres!” roared the officer, turning on his men. “One to three – and six more below! Sepp, you disgust me. Carry him out!”
I groaned as they lifted me. “Easy there!” growled the officer, “don’t pull him that way. Now, young hell-cat, set your teeth; you have eight more lives yet.”
They got me out to the terrace, and carried me to the lawn. One of the men brought a cup of water from the pool.
“Herr Rittmeister,” I said, faintly, “I had a prisoner here; he should be in the carriage. Is he?”
The officer walked briskly over to the carriage. “Nobody here but two women and a scared peasant!” he called out.
As I lay still staring up into the sky, I heard the Rittmeister addressing Dr. Delmont in angry tones. “By every law of civilized war I ought to hang you and your friend there! Civilians who fire on troops are treated that way. But I won’t. Your foolish companion lies yonder with a lance through his mouth. He’s dead; I say nothing. For you, I have no respect. But I have for that hell-cat who did his duty. You civilians – you go to the devil!”
“Are not your prisoners sacred from insult?” asked the doctor, angrily.
“Prisoners! My prisoners! You compliment yourself! Loisel! Send those impudent civilians into the house! I won’t look at them! They make me sick!”
The astonished doctor attempted to take his stand by me, offering his services, but the troopers hustled him and poor Tavernier off up the terrace steps.
“The two ladies in the carriage, Herr Rittmeister?” said a cavalryman, coming up at salute.
“What? Ladies? Oh yes.” Then he muttered in his mustache: “Always around – always everywhere. They can’t stay there. I want that carriage. Sepp!”
“At orders, Herr Rittmeister!”
“Carry that gentleman to the carriage. Place Schwartz and Ruppert in the wagon yonder. Get straw – you, Brauer, bring straw – and toss in those boxes, if there is room. Where’s Hofman?”
“In the pool, Herr Rittmeister.”
“Take him out,” said the officer, soberly. “Uhlans don’t abandon their dead.”
Two soldiers lifted me again and bore me away in the darkness. I was perfectly conscious.
And all the while I was listening for the gallop of my gendarmes, not that I cared very much, now that Buckhurst was gone.
“Herr Rittmeister,” I said, as they laid me in the carriage, “ask the Countess de Vassart if she will let me say good-bye to her.”
“With pleasure,” said the officer, promptly. “Madame, here is a polite young gentleman who desires to make his adieux. Permit me, madame – he is here in the dark. Sepp! fall back! Loisel, advance ten paces! Halt!”
“Is it you, Monsieur Scarlett?” came an unsteady voice, from the darkness.
“Yes, madame. Can you forgive me?”
“Forgive you? My poor friend, I have nothing to forgive. Are you badly hurt, Monsieur Scarlett?”
“I don’t know,” I muttered.
Suddenly the chapel bell of La Trappe rang out a startling peal; the Prussian captain shouted: “Stop that bell! Shoot every civilian in the house!” But the Uhlans, who rushed up the terrace, found the great doors bolted and the lower windows screened with steel shutters.
On the battlements of the south wing a red radiance grew brighter; somebody had thrown wood into the iron basket of the ancient beacon, and set fire to it.
“That teaches me a lesson!” bawled the enraged Rittmeister, shaking his fist up at the brightening alarm signal.
He vaulted into his saddle, wheeled his horse and rode up to the peasant, Brauer, who, frightened to the verge of stupidity, sat on the carriage-box.
“Do you know the wood-road that leads to Gunstett through the foot-hills?” he demanded, controlling his fury with a strong effort.
The blank face of the peasant was answer enough; the Rittmeister glared around; his eyes fell on the Countess.
“You know this country, madame?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Will you set us on our way through the Gunstett hill-road?”
“No.”
The chapel bell was clanging wildly; the beacon shot up in a whirling column of sparks and red smoke.
“Put that woman into the carriage!” bellowed the officer. “I’m cursed if I leave her to set the whole country yapping at our heels! Loisel, put her in beside the prisoner! Madame, it is useless to resist. Hark! What’s that sound of galloping?”
I listened. I heard nothing save the clamor of the chapel bell.
An Uhlan laid a heavy hand on the shoulder of the listening Countess; she tried to draw back, but he pushed her brutally into the carriage, and she stumbled and fell into the cushions beside me.
“Uhlans, into your saddles!” cried the Rittmeister, sharply. “Two men to the wagon! – a man on the box there! Here you, Jacques Bonhomme, drive carefully or I’ll hang you higher than the Strasbourg clock. Are the wounded in the straw? Sepp, take the riderless horses. Peloton, attention! Draw sabres! March! Trot!”
Fever had already begun to turn my head; the jolting of the carriage brought me to my senses at times; at times, too, I could
