The Garden of Swords by Max Pemberton

Author:Max Pemberton [Pemberton, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aeterna Classics
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER XVI

THE PROMISE

They found a haven of refuge for her in the house of the curé of Morsbronn, and she slept there until the sun was shining upon Wörth again. It was odd to wake in that little white bedroom, and to find herself wrapped about with the cloak of a Hessian dragoon, and to hear the voices of men busy in the rooms below, and those other sounds of squadrons marching and of guns rolling by to Strasburg and the West. She could not, for a little while, recall the means by which she had come to the house; neither was there any clear memory of yesterday, nor of its events. When she looked from the window, out upon the high road, she could see a red cross flying from the pillar of the garden gates, and everywhere, on the heights above and in the valley below, the spiked helmets glistened in the sunshine. These indomitable Prussians were the masters of Wörth, then! The glorious army of yesterday—that army which was to defend the homes of France—it was an army no more. A sense of her utter helplessness took possession of her anew. Sheremembered, one by one, the circumstances she had forgotten. They had burned her house. Edmond was a prisoner. Brandon North had brought her to the priest’s cottage, and would come again at dawn to put her on the road to Strasburg. She must return to her friends, he had said. Wörth was no longer a fit place for her.

He came at eight o’clock, and waited for her in the garden of the cottage. She could hardly believe, even yet, that this great fellow, in the dark green uniform, was the same Brandon who had been her English friend in Strasburg. A new dignity was the soldier’s gift to him. The invincible might of Germany, the victory of the Saxon, were so many sops to his own ambition. He spoke to her almost as a brother, and, for the first time, she had a certain awe of him.

“I’m sorry to be troublesome,” he said, when he saw her at the window of the room; “we march in half an hour, and if you can be ready, an Englishman here, who is driving to Hagenau, will take you in his cart. Do you think you can manage it?”

“You still believe that I ought to go?”

“Well—it’s for you to say. If you want to stop at Wörth an hour longer than you can help, I shall be surprised. That’s all.”

She nodded her head, and began to make a hurried toilet. Upon going downstairs, she found the priest standing before the door of his sitting-room, and barring it to her. A forgotten candle guttered in a stick upon a table; and there were bloody bandages and a tumbler of water beside it. Low moaning sounds came from the apartment, and even there, in the hall, a dark crimson stain gave sanctity to the boards.

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