"Oh, Silvine will come back all right," he concluded in his tranquil voice. "She must have taken shelter with Doctor Dalichamp, her godfather. You would think to look at her that she wouldn't dare to say boo to a goose, but she is a girl of courage, all the same. Yes, yes; she has lots of good qualities, Silvine has."
Was it an attempt on his part to be jocose? or did he wish to explain why it was he kept her in his service, that girl who had caused dissension between father and son, whose child by the Prussian was in the house? He again gave his boy that sidelong look and laughed his voiceless laugh.
"Little Charlot is asleep there in his room; she surely won't be long away, now."
Honore, with quivering lips, looked so intently at his father that the old man began to pace the floor again. Mon Dieu! yes, the child was there; doubtless he would have to look on him. A painful silence filled the room, while he mechanically cut himself more bread and began to eat again. Jean also continued his operations in that line, without finding it necessary to say a word. Maurice contemplated the furniture, the old sideboard, the antique clock, and reflected on the long summer days that he had spent at Remilly in bygone times with his sister Henriette. The minutes slipped away, the clock struck eleven.
"The devil!" he murmured, "it will never do to let the regiment go off without us!"
He stepped to the window and opened it, Fouchard making no objection. Beneath lay the valley, a great bowl filled to the brim with blackness; presently, however, when his eyes became more accustomed to the obscurity, he had no difficulty in distinguishing the bridge, illuminated by the fires on the two banks. The cuirassiers were passing still, like phantoms in their long white cloaks, while their steeds trod upon the bosom of the stream and a chill wind of terror breathed on them from behind; and so the spectral train moved on, apparently interminable, in an endless, slow-moving vision of unsubstantial forms. Toward the right, over the bare hills where the slumbering army lay, there brooded a stillness and repose like death.
"Ah well!" said Maurice with a gesture of disappointment, "'twill be to-morrow morning."
He had left the window open, and Father Fouchard, seizing his gun, straddled the sill and stepped outside, as lightly as a young man. For a time they could hear his tramp upon the road, as regular as that of a sentry pacing his beat, but presently it ceased and the only sound that reached their ears was the distant clamor on the crowded bridge; it must be that he had seated himself by the wayside, where he could watch for approaching danger and at slightest sign leap to defend his property.
Honore's anxiety meantime was momentarily increasing; his eyes were fixed constantly on the clock. It was less than four miles from Raucourt to Remilly, an easy hour's walk for a woman as young and strong as Silvine. Why had she not returned in all that time since the old man lost sight of her in the confusion? He thought of the disorder of a retreating army corps, spreading over the country and blocking the roads; some accident must certainly have happened, and he pictured her in distress, wandering among the lonely fields, trampled under foot by the horsemen.
But suddenly the three men rose to their feet, moved by a common impulse. There was a sound of rapid steps coming up the road and the old man was heard to cock his weapon.
"Who goes there?" he shouted. "Is it you, Silvine?"
There was no reply. He repeated his question, threatening to fire. Then a laboring, breathless voice managed to articulate:
"Yes, yes, Father Fouchard; it is I." And she quickly asked: "And Charlot?"
"He is abed and asleep."
"That is well! Thanks."
There was no longer cause for her to hasten; she gave utterance to a deep-drawn sigh, as if to rid herself of her burden of fatigue and distress.
"Go in by the window," said Fouchard. "There is company in there."
She was greatly agitated when, leaping lightly into the room, she beheld the three men. In the uncertain candle-light she gave the impression of being very dark, with thick black hair and a pair of large, fine, lustrous eyes, the chief adornment of a small oval face, strong by reason of its tranquil resignation. The sudden meeting with Honore had sent all the blood rushing from her heart to her cheeks; and yet she was hardly surprised to find him there; he had been in her thoughts all the way home from Raucourt.
He, trembling with agitation, his heart in his throat, spoke with affected calmness:
"Good-evening, Silvine."
"Good-evening, Honore."
Then, to keep from breaking down and bursting into tears, she turned away, and recognizing Maurice, gave him a smile. Jean's presence was embarrassing to her. She felt as if she were choking somehow, and removed the foulard that she wore about her neck.
Honore continued, dropping the friendly thou of other days:
"We were anxious about you, Silvine, on account of the Prussians being so near at hand."
All at once her face became very pale and showed great distress; raising her hand to her eyes as if to shut out some atrocious vision, and directing an involuntary glance toward the room where Charlot was slumbering, she murmured:
"The Prussians-Oh! yes, yes, I saw them."
Sinking wearily upon a chair she told how, when the 7th corps came into Raucourt, she had fled for shelter to the house of her godfather, Doctor Dalichamp, hoping that Father Fouchard would think to come and take her up before he left the town. The main street was filled with a surging throng, so dense that not even a dog could have squeezed his way through it, and up to four o'clock she had felt no particular alarm, tranquilly employed in scraping lint in company with some of the ladies of the place; for the doctor, with the thought that they might be called on to care for some of the wounded, should there be a battle over in the direction of Metz and Verdun, had been busying himself for the last two weeks with improvising a hospital in the great hall of the mairie. Some people who dropped in remarked that they might find use for their hospital sooner than they expected, and sure enough, a little after midday, the roar of artillery had reached their ears from over Beaumont way. But that was not near enough to cause anxiety and no one was alarmed, when, all at once, just as the last of the French troops were filing out of Raucourt, a shell, with a frightful crash, came tearing through the roof of a neighboring house. Two others followed in quick succession; it was a German battery shelling the rear-guard of the 7th corps. Some of the wounded from Beaumont had already been brought in to the mairie, where it was feared that the enemy's projectiles would finish them as they lay on their mattresses waiting for the doctor to come and operate on them. The men were crazed with fear, and would have risen and gone down into the cellars, notwithstanding their mangled limbs, which extorted from them shrieks of agony.
"And then," continued Silvine, "I don't know how it happened, but all at once the uproar was succeeded by a deathlike stillness. I had gone upstairs and was looking from a window that commanded a view of the street and fields. There was not a soul in sight, not a 'red-leg' to be seen anywhere, when I heard the tramp, tramp of heavy footsteps, and then a voice shouted something that I could not understand and all the muskets came to the ground together with a great crash. And I looked down into the street below, and there was a crowd of small, dirty-looking men in black, with ugly, big faces and wearing helmets like those our firemen wear. Someone told me they were Bavarians. Then I raised my eyes again and saw, oh! thousands and thousands of them, streaming in by the roads, across the fields, through the woods, in serried, never-ending columns. In the twinkling of an eye the ground was black with them, a black swarm, a swarm of black locusts, coming thicker and thicker, so that, in no time at all, the earth was hid from sight."