Argosy, Vol. 1 (1882) — page 347: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

338 the heart under his small blouse ache painfully, although he knew not why. He slipped his hand from his grand- father’s and stole back to her. He pulled at her skirt as she stood defi- antly in the doorway, watching her tor- mentors move slowly down the hill. “ Clarisse?’”’ he said timidly. She did not seem to hear him, or even know that he was there, until the grandfather, missing the child, looked back and seeing him with her called sharply: “Make haste, you little stupid! Don’t you remember that your mother forbade you talking to Clarisse! ”’ And then it was that Clarisse pushed the boy from her, as if his innocent touch had hurt, and went inside. For a moment she stood in the center of the bare little room, her hands to her head. Dien,” ‘She murmured, never to forget!” The taunting laughter and the taunt- ing voices came more indistinctly to her ears and finally melted quite away. Outside Napoleon’s heavenly banner became faint and fainter still. Clar- isse moved slowly across the floor and leaned against her loom. Below in the valley echoes of a great excitement reached her; wild voices and shouts and cries. “The courier has come,” she told herself, going on with her work. She would not join the eager crowds that always marked his coming. She could not bear to meet their smiles, their laughter, to watch the peasant women draw their children away as if her touch would wither. She pushed the shuttle back. She would hear be- fore long. She could wait. But time passed and she did not hear. The echoes from the valley still reached her, wilder, more incessant. There were hoarse cheers and the sound of the hurried tramp of soldiers —the hurried tramp of retreat. Clarisse left her loom and went down the slope into the village. No “am I THE ARGOSY. one heeded her. No one even smiled at her or laughed derisively, and wo- men forgot to draw their children from her as she passed. ‘“ Defeat!” she heard on every hand. The men called it, and calling, cursed. The women cried it, and the cnildren echoed tt in awe struck tones. The straggling, broken and crushed portions of France’s once proud le- gions hurrying to Sedan, shouted it in voices still strained and dust laden from the battle. “ Defeat! On to Sedan! ” Clarisse slowly climbed the hill and entered the low doorway of her cot- tage. Inside it was quite dark, and in the furthest corner the loom stood specter-like. Outside Napoleon’s col- ors had faded from the sky that rested over France, dark and starless. Clarisse shut the door and drew the white curtain at the window. II, THE sun rose slowly and Clarisse, who had spent the night in the shadow of the still loom, watched it as it came gloriously into sight. Below in the valley the army of the French was still retreating to Sedan. Now and again a straggler passed her doorway in search of a protection that the long, open, dusty highroad did not offer. None of them paused to speak to her and she did not attempt to question them. One or two had turned haggard faces to her and had looked at her with bloodshot eyes in which there was no sign of recognition of her presence, only an awful overwhelming suffering and despair. As the sun reached its zenith the numbers increased, and she noticed that all sense of order in the retreat had vanished. Every man was for himself. Every man was for— Sedan. “The pursuit!’ some one called down in the valley at her feet ard th. CO