Robert Chambers - The Maids of Paradise

Once – it was, I think, very near daybreak – I came out of a dream in which I was swimming through oceans of water, drinking as I swam. The carriage had stopped; I could not see the lancers, but presently I heard them all talking in loud, angry voices. There appeared to be some houses near by; I heard a dog barking, a great outcry of pigs and feathered fowls, the noise of a scuffle, a trampling of heavy boots, a shot!

Then the terrible voice of the Rittmeister: “Hang that man to his barn gate! Pig of an assassin, I’ll teach you to murder German soldiers!”

A woman began to scream without ceasing.

“Burn that house!” bellowed the Rittmeister.

Through the prolonged screaming I heard the crash of window-glass; presently a dull red light grew out of the gloom, brighter and brighter. The screaming never ceased.

“Uhlans! Mount!” came the steady voice of the Rittmeister; the carriage started. Almost at the word the darkness turned to flame; against the raging furnace of a house on fire I saw the figure of a man, inky black, hanging from the high cross-bar of the cow-yard gate, and past him filed the shadowy horsemen, lances slanting backward from their stirrups.

The last I remember was seeing the dead man’s naked feet – for they hanged him in his night-shirt – and the last I heard was that awful screaming from the red shadows that flickered across the fields of uncut wheat.

For presently my madness began again, and again I was bathed to the mouth in cold, sweet waters, and I drank as I swam lazily in the sunshine.

My next lucid interval came from pain almost unendurable. We were fording a river in bright starlight; the carriage bumped across the stones, water washed and slopped over the carriage floor. To right and left, Prussian lancers were riding, and I saw the water boiling under their horses and their long lances aslant the stars.

But there were more horsemen now, scores and scores of them, trampling through the shallow river. And beyond I could see a line of cannon, wallowing through the water, shadowy artillerymen clinging to forge and caisson, mounted men astride straining teams, tall officers on either flank, sitting their horses motionless in mid-stream.

The carriage stopped.

“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, passing her wet hands through my hair and over my eyes. The carriage moved on.

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 passing – 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.

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 glasses. “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 button 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 assure 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 buttoned 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 glass 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.”