The last tramp of footsteps, the last rumbling of the wagon wheels, died away in the distance.No renewal of firing from the position occupied by the enemy disturbed the silence that followed.The Germans knew that the French were in retreat.A few minutes more and they would take possession of the abandoned village: the tumult of their approach should become audible at the cottage.In the meantime the stillness was ter rible.Even the wounded wretches who were left in the kitchen waited their fate in silence.
Alone in the room, Mercy's first look was directed to the bed.
The two women had met in the confusion of the first skirmish at the close of twilight.Separated, on their arrival at the cottage, by the duties required of the nurse, they had only met again in the captain's room.The acquaintance between them had been a short one; and it had given no promise of ripening into friendship.But the fatal accident had roused Mercy's interest in the stranger.She took the candle, and approached the corpse of the woman who had been literally killed at her side.
She stood by the bed, looking down in the silence of the night at the stillness of the dead face.
It was a striking face--once seen (in life or in death) not to be forgotten afterward.The forehead was unusually low and broad; the eyes unusually far apart; the mouth and chin remarkably small.With tender hands Mercy smoothed the disheveled hair and arranged the crumpled dress."Not five minutes since," she thought to herself, "I was longing to change places with you! " She turned from the bed with a sigh."I wish I could change places now!"The silence began to oppress her.She walked slowly to the other end of the room.
The cloak on the floor--her own cloak, which she had lent to Miss Roseberry--attracted her attention as she passed it.She picked it up and brushed the dust from it, and laid it across a chair.This done, she put the light back on the table, and going to the window, listened for the first sounds of the German advance.The faint passage of the wind through some trees near at hand was the only sound that caught her ears.She turned from the window, and seated herself at the table, thinking.Was there any duty still left undone that Christian charity owed to the dead? Was there any further service that pressed for performance in the interval before the Germans appeared?
Mercy recalled the conversation that had passed between her ill- fated companion and herself.Miss Roseberry had spoken of her object in returning to England.She had mentioned a lady--a connection by marriage, to whom she was personally a stranger--who was waiting to receive her.Some one capable of stating how the poor creature had met with her death ought to write to her only friend.Who was to do it? There was nobody to do it but the one witness of the catastrophe now left in the cottage--Mercy herself.
She lifted the cloak from the chair on which she had placed it, and took from the pocket the leather letter-case which Grace had shown to her.The only way of discovering the address to write to in England was to open the case and examine the papers inside.Mercy opened the case--and stopped, feeling a strange reluctance to carry the investigation any farther.
A moment's consideration satisfied her that her scruples were misplaced.If she respected the case as inviolable, the Germans would certainly not hesitate to examine it, and the Germans would hardly trouble themselves to write to England.Which were the fittest eyes to inspect the papers of the deceased lady--the eyes of men and foreigners, or the eyes of her own countrywoman? Mercy's hesitation left her.She emptied the contents of the case on the table.
That trifling action decided the whole future course of her life.
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