Chapter XIX: The Chateau De Caille

And now to account for the mysterious disappearance of Charlie Pierrepont, which the Herr Doctor could only account for by supposing that in the restlessness of his agony, or desire to procure water, he had crawled away into some obscure corner to die. But such was not the case.

It was still dusky night, or lighted only by the moon, when Charlie, lying where we left him, began to surmise whether the morning sun would evermore gladden his eyes, that were staring upward at the stars, as they twinkled through the branches of those trees amid which the battle had been partly fought, and the stems of which, in places, were barked and whitened by the passing whirlwinds of shot from the mitrailleuses.

'If I die,' thought he, 'the label at my neck will tell the burial party who I am--or was.'

And as the slow hours of the night stole on, he thought of the ghastly face of the French captain who killed the young ensign Donnersberg, and the peculiar hatred and inhumanity expressed by his dying wish. The sound of wheels coming slowly along now roused him. A party of the Krankentrager, picking up the wounded, were passing near. He tried to call aloud, but his voice had failed him.

'How high the moon is to-night,' said one.

'How bright, you mean; for I don't suppose she is higher up than usual,' replied another.

'But it would be a lovely night for having another turn with the French schelms, in their long blue coats and red kepis.'

'There has been slaughter enough, for one day, Rudiger; ugh!--how thick the corpses lie here, where the horrible mitrailleuses have been playing.'

The waggon was stopped, and the soldiers looked about them.

Suddenly one said--

'There is young Herr Pierrepont, the Englander of the 95th. How in his heart he loved the crack of the zundnadelgewehr, or the click of steel on steel! So he is gone, too!'

'He is worth a dozen dead men yet!' exclaimed one of the Krankentrager, leaping off the seat of the ambulance waggon, on seeing Charlie's eyes and hand move.

Some brandy-and-water was given him as a reviver, and he was lifted into the waggon, which was already full, and was hence driven from the field; and here we may mention that the Krankentrager is one of the best-organized corps in the Prussian army, and its special duty is to carry the sick and wounded.

In this Franco-Prussian war, it is to be recorded that to their immortal honour, the Sisters of Mercy were always on every field of battle _before the firing ceased_, and they went on foot, each little company preceded by a Catholic priest or Lutheran pastor.

Luckily, as it proved in the end for Charlie, he had fallen into the hands of Landwehr men alone, for ere long, conceiving him to be dead, they took him out of the waggon and left him at the door of a mansion, which proved to be the Chateau de Caillé.

Prior to this, as the waggon was driven slowly and tortuously, to avoid mutilating the killed and wounded, who lay thickly everywhere, in literal heaps in some places, in ranks in others, the moon went down, clouds overspread the sky, and, to add to the miseries of the helpless, rain began to fall. In the action of the previous day, the canopy of the waggon in which Charlie Pierrepont lay had been destroyed by a passing shot. No other had been substituted, so there he Jay, with seven others, packed closely side by side, some dying, some actually dead, with the rain of heaven pouring into their open months and eyes.

Some there were who stirred restlessly from side to side, constantly requesting their position to be shifted, as the agonies of death came on; and when they died they were lifted from the waggon and laid by the side of the way.

To the grim corps of grave-diggers was assigned the duty of noting the neck-labels, and doing what was necessary then!

As Charlie lay very still and motionless with eyes closed, sunk indeed into a species of stupor, the unskilled men of the Landwehr concluded that he was dead, and lifting him from the waggon, laid him near the gate of the chateau, and drove off, just as grey dawn began to brighten on the wooded hills that look down, the Moselle, and the great spire of the distant cathedral of Metz.

So there he was left to be killed, perhaps outright, by the first vindictive peasant of Lorraine who might be going a-field to his work; but there was too much gunpowder in the air about Metz just then to permit other work to be done than 'the harvest of death.'

Now, before those terrible fellows in spike-helmets came into that peaceful part of pleasant Lorraine, where the old chateau lies embosomed among vineyards and apple-bowers--the Lorraine that whilom belonged to the mother of Mary Queen of Scots--it had been the wont and custom of Célandine de Caillé, at the hour of seven every morning, to go to early mass in a little chapel near the highway that leads to Metz. She dared not venture so far now; but by mere force of habit, she was saying the prayers for mass among the dew-drops in the flower-garden, when something caused her to peep out of the front gate, and then she saw---- What? Oh, it could not be!

Was this pale, ghastly, sodden, and blood-stained creature the handsome young soldier who, but yesterday morning about the same hour, after being startled by the Uhlan trumpet, had marched away so proudly at the head of his Thuringians, with his silver epaulettes glittering in the sun, and had yet in his havresack--soaked with his own gore--the food so kindly placed there by Célandine?

It seemed incredible, yet so it was!

A shriek escaped the startled girl, and she rushed indoors for her father, her _bonne_, and everybody else; assistance was soon procured, the sufferer carried indoors, placed in bed, his uniform hidden, for the Francs-Tireurs were hovering about, and medical aid was procured from the nearest village, in the person of a young doctor, Adolphe Guerrand, on whom, as an admirer of Célandine, they could rely for silence and secrecy.

The thunder of war was an awful event to the inmates of that little secluded chateau, to none more than to Monsieur de Caillé, whose days were usually spent in dozing about his flower-garden, plucking off a faded leaf here and there, or training vines and sprays, and whose evenings were passed over a bottle of vin ordinaire with the Curé, or listening to Célandine's performances on a--well, it was _not_ a grand trichord piano, because it had been her grandmother's.

Some days and nights elapsed--strange, drearily days and nights to Charlie Pierrepont, who only knew at times where, by a strange coincidence, he was. They were passed by him in a chaos or confusion of thought, in dreams of Ernestine, of the day in the Hoch Munster, and the evening in the church at Burtscheid, of battle-fields, with lines of red kepis, fierce bearded faces, and hedges of bristling bayonets looming through the smoke, of the roaring shriek of those dreadful mitrailleuses--the veritable invention of Satan; yea, even the scowl and curse of the French captain were not forgotten; but after a time Charlie's thoughts became coherent; he knew fully where he was; that a conical rifle bullet had been cut out of his back, near the spine, by the skilful hands of Adolphe Guerrand; that he had a narrow escape from death; that he was recovering, and had, as nurses, Célandine de Caillé and her kind old _bonne_.

'Ah! Célandine--Mademoiselle Célandine,' said he, taking the girl's tiny hand within his own, and just touching it with his lips, 'neither your holy water, nor the consecrated medal, acted as a charm. In what a condition have I come back to you!'

'But for my medal and the holy water, perhaps a cannon-ball might have taken off your head,' retorted little Mademoiselle de Caillé.

'True,' replied Charlie, as he kissed her hand again.

Three weeks had elapsed since the battle in which Charlie had fallen wounded; two days after, as Célandine told him, Gravelotte had been fought, and then the French had been defeated after a dreadful struggle, and driven back to Metz. Strasbourg was besieged, Phalsburg bombarded, the Prussians were daily everywhere victorious.

'And, alas! monsieur,' said the little maid, clasping her pretty hands, and lifting upward eyes that were suffused with tears, 'France is lost! The glory of my France is gone! And surely now the cries of Melusine will be heard!'

'Melusine?' asked Charlie, with surprise. 'Who is she?'

'Don't you know, monsieur? Have you never heard of the "_Cris de Melusine_?"'

'Never.'

'It is an old legend believed in by most of our peasantry. Brantôme says she is a spirit that haunts the old castle of Lusignan, where, by loud shrieks, she announces any disasters that are to befall France.'

'She must have been shrieking pretty loud and long of late,' said Charlie, smiling at the earnestness of the girl, who, in her love of the legendary, reminded him, he thought, of Ernestine, and he liked her the better for it.

So Charlie continued to be attended daily by the young Doctor Guerrand, and nursed by Célandine in secret, as it would have been perilous for Charlie had the exasperated peasantry learned that a Prussian officer was concealed in the chateau. The heart of the young French doctor Guerrand was full of bitterness for the disgrace that was falling on his country, and, were it not that by his practice he supported an aged mother, he would have cast aside the lancet and betaken to the chassepot.

'_Sacre!_' said he, on one occasion, to Charlie; 'in this war the French seem to make more use of their feet than their hands; but we won't talk of politics.'

'Why, Doctor?'

'Because I always lose my temper. I am a Republican now. I have become so in the bitterness of my heart. But, thank Heaven, we shall soon be rid of our Emperor, as you will, ere long, of your Kaiser; for what are kings, emperors, and princes, but a crowned confederacy against the freedom of the world? _Sacre!_'

And the young Republican ground his teeth in his fierce energy.

Charlie had Ernestine's photo, done and coloured at Aix-la-Chapelle. It was one which, so far as these sun pictures go, represented her to the life, and he had seen her in that particular posé, and with that expression on her soft face, many, many times. He kept it beneath his pillow. Never did he tire of gazing on it; thus, more than once, his active little nurse caught him with the blue velvet case in his hand.

'Ah! It is monsieur's mother?' said she, trying to get a peep at it.

'It is not,' said Charlie, with a fond smile.

'A sister, then? I have seen that it is a lady!'

'No, Célandine.'

'Something as dear as both would be?'

'I cannot say.'

'How so, monsieur?'

'I scarcely ever saw my mother. And when I left home to soldier in Prussia, my sisters were mere children; but dear she is, indeed.'

'Ah,--a _fiancée_?' said Célandine, laughing and clapping her hands.

'Yes, mademoiselle.'

'Ah, show me the likeness, monsieur,' she entreated; so Charlie gave her the case. 'How sweet, how lovely she looks! Do let me kiss her! Monsieur Pierrepont, I congratulate you. And when are you to be married?'

'Alas!' muttered Charlie, as his countenance fell.

'Surely she loves you?' asked Célandine, with her blue eyes dilated.

'Loves me?--dearly! so each of us has one secret of the heart to treasure.'

'What have I?' asked the girl, demurely.

'You have Adolphe.'

'Ah!--yes; M. Adolphe loves me, I believe, and--and perhaps I may learn to love him in time. I am not sure. I may marry some one else, and learn to love that some one. Mon père will arrange all that for me, and it will be so kind of him.'

Charlie looked puzzled; but ere long, in the case of Célandine herself, he was to see how matrimonial matters are arranged in the land of the silver lilies.

Her question, 'When are you to be married?' opened up no new train of thought to Charlie; that important _when_ had been a source of frequent and painful surmise; but a new idea was ever before him now.

What had Ernestine heard of his fate?--that he was killed, wounded, or missing? He had no means of communicating with her now, and thus sparing her that which he would gladly have done--a single sigh, a single throb of pain.

There was no one at the chateau could tell him where the 95th were, whether in front of Metz, besieging Strasbourg, or fighting at Phalsburg. But, oh, how to relieve the grief of his betrothed! He would not, for worlds, have cost that warm, wilful, and impassioned heart one pang!

Yet there he lay on his back, with a closing wound, helpless.

Like an iron weight it bore on his heart, the remoteness and dubiety of their meeting again; and when all thought of his personal danger passed away, this reflection weighed more heavily on him than ever, while his very career as a soldier made the future more uncertain and gloomy.

He had but one fixed, yet vague, idea--that, at the risk of his life, he would see Ernestine before he returned to the regiment in which he was, as yet, unfit to serve, and assure her of his all-unaltered love. Times there were when he thought he would ask Célandine to write to her, but in turn was afraid to do so--to Herminia, or to Ernestine, over whose postal correspondence, doubtless, the Countess kept a strict vigil--or, if she did write, there was no other post than the field one between France and Prussia now, and that was with the German army.

So Charlie could but lie on his bed and writhe, though in the kindly hands of the sweetest of little nurses.

Would the Countess Adelaide, he sometimes asked himself, feel any compunction for her proud severity, any pity for her daughter's honest lover, on hearing of his probable fate? Alas! it seemed more likely that she would exult at it as a barrier, a bramble, removed from her path. The Count was an old soldier; perhaps he might relent and prove generous; and so, on and on, Charlie hoped, surmised, and pondered, till his very brain ached.

Célandine knew that Charlie was English by birth, yet Prussian by sympathy, which she deplored--they were such barbarians, those men in the spiked helmets. Thus when she played or sang to him, which she did with great taste and sweetness, with good taste she only chose neutral airs and songs, such as those from the Trovatore, etc., and in these Adolphe Guerrand frequently joined her.

As she was in her mere girlhood, it appeared that she was too young to marry, nor had ever thought of it; and more than all, as Adolphe was poor, having only his practice as a hard-working village practitioner, Monsieur de Caillé was by no means disposed to look upon him, even in the future, as an eligible suitor for his daughter, till a letter reached young Guerrand from Paris by which one morning he found himself rich by one of the most extraordinary chances in the world.

It happened that just a week before the Prussians crossed the Rhine, Adolphe Guerrand had been at Blankenberg with a patient, to whom he had prescribed sea-bathing, and, when walking on the beach there, had found a carefully sealed bottle among some sea-weed. Holding it between him and the light, he saw that it contained a written document, and conceiving naturally that it was a message from the sea--the last farewell from some sinking ship, he drew the cork, and perused the damp paper, which was properly signed and dated, from on board a French vessel, which had sprung a leak, and was going down in the middle of the Atlantic. And thus it ran on, in French:

'About to perish by drowning, I commend my soul to God, the Blessed Virgin, and all the saints. I hereby constitute my sole heir the finder of this will, which I enclose in a glass bottle. The labour of years, my fortune amounts to two hundred and twenty thousand francs, and I am without a relation in the world. I wish the house I have resided in at Paris to be converted into a chapel of St. Dominique, my patron saint. The fortune is deposited in the hands of the notary, M. Vantin, in the Rue St. Honoré. _Ora pro me_.

'DOMINIQUE SOURDEVAL.'

The letter was from Vantin, the notary, to the young doctor, who thus found himself suddenly rich, so all obstacles were removed to a union with Célandine, when she was a few years older, though the family of Adolphe was of humble origin and that of De Caillé ancient, and shone at the court of Louis XIII. It was of a Madame de Caillé that we are told, how when that monarch was once playing at shuttlecock with her at Versailles, it fell into her bosom, on which she desired his majesty to take it; but such was his royal delicacy that, to avoid the snare laid by the charming Lorrainer, he discreetly extricated the toy with the aid of the tongs.

Thus, on the first day of Charlie's convalescence, the formal betrothal of the daughter of the house took place; and to him it seemed a very cold-blooded affair to the wild, passionate, and solemn episode between himself and Ernestine in that lonely church at Burtscheid.

Adolphe was in his twenty-fifth year, naturally sanguine and enthusiastic; his clear-cut features and thoughtful eyes were now full of light and brightness; there was a greater springiness in his step, born of the knowledge that he was now rich and the inheritor of a fortune--the fortune of M. de Sourdeval, so mysteriously cast at his feet by the waves of the sea.

A well-bred French girl, of course, expects one day to be wedded, but chiefly looks forward to the event as an opportunity of displaying her presents and trousseau, and is supposed to have no preference in the matter. To Célandine it seemed only natural that she should accept her father's choice, just as he had done the choice of _his_ parents in espousing her mother.

Yet in her heart of hearts, the girl--though very young--had grown fond of Charlie Pierrepont, her helpless charge, who was always so gentle and grateful, so sad, too, and who looked, withal, so manly and soldier-like. And with this sentiment in her heart, the girl was to contract what we must call a French marriage. So full of cross-purposes, hidden currents of thought, and secret springs of action, is this work-a-day world of ours!

She knew that it is understood and accepted in her native country that unions cannot, as in England, be contracted on the impulse of love or romantic notions, but upon principles of cold and practical utility, as mere transactions between parents; but they are sometimes equally so on this side of the Straits of Dover.

So, on the day referred to, M. de Caillé said to his daughter, with his eyebrows elevated as if he had quite made a discovery, while kissing her on the forehead, 'I have found you a husband, my love.'

'Merci, mon père--who is he?' asked Célandine, as if she had not the slightest guess on the subject.

'The time will come anon--but here he is,' and he led in Adolphe, who approached Célandine, whose eyes were fixed on Charlie, pale, wan, and propping himself on a cane of M. de Caillé's.

At such a crisis, Adolphe Guerrand had vague ideas--from what he had read in novels and seen at the theatre of the Porte St. Martin, when he was a student in Paris, at the Ecole de Medicin--that he should drop on his knees, or at least on one knee; but the floor was very slippery, and Célandine not being much in love with him, and very much inclined to laugh, he didn't attempt a melodramatic posé at this betrothal, which Charlie saw as in a dream; for his thoughts were at Burtscheid, and the heart-stirring parting words of Ernestine were lingering in his ear.