The New Magdalen | Page 3

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[Italics are indicatedby underscores James Rusk,
[email protected].]

THE NEW MAGDALEN
by Wilkie Collins

TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES ALLSTON COLLINS. (9th April,
1873.)

FIRST SCENE.
The Cottage on the Frontier.
PREAMBLE.
THE place is France.
The time is autumn, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy--the year
of the war between France and Germany.
The persons are, Captain Arnault, of the French army; Surgeon Surville,
of the French ambulance; Surgeon Wetzel, of the German army; Mercy
Merrick, attached as nurse to the French ambulance; and Grace
Roseberry, a traveling lady on her way to England.
CHAPTER I.
THE TWO WOMEN.
IT was a dark night. The rain was pouring in torrents.
Late in the evening a skirmishing party of the French and a skirmishing
party of the Germans had met, by accident, near the little village of
Lagrange, close to the German frontier. In the struggle that followed,
the French had (for once) got the better of the enemy. For the time, at
least, a few hundreds out of the host of the invaders had been forced
back over the frontier. It was a trifling affair, occurring not long after
the great German victory of Weissenbourg, and the newspapers took
little or no notice of it.
Captain Arnault, commanding on the French side, sat alone in one of
the cottages of the village, inhabited by the miller of the district. The
Captain was reading, by the light of a solitary tallow-candle, some
intercepted dispatches taken from the Germans. He had suffered the
wood fire, scattered over the large open grate, to burn low; the red
embers only faintly illuminated a part of the room. On the floor behind
him lay some of the miller's empty sacks. In a corner opposite to him

was the miller's solid walnut-wood bed. On the walls all around him
were the miller's colored prints, representing a happy mixture of
devotional and domestic subjects. A door of communication leading
into the kitchen of the cottage had been torn from its hinges, and used
to carry the men wounded in the skirmish from the field. They were
now comfortably laid at rest in the kitchen, under the care of the French
surgeon and the English nurse attached to the ambulance. A piece of
coarse canvas screened the opening between the two rooms in place of
the door. A second door, leading from the bed-chamber into the yard,
was locked; and the wooden shutter protecting the one window of the
room was carefully barred. Sentinels, doubled in number, were placed
at all the outposts. The French commander had neglected no precaution
which could reasonably insure for himself and for his men a quiet and
comfortable night.
Still absorbed in his perusal of the dispatches, and now and then
making notes of what he read by the help of writing materials placed at
his side, Captain Arnault was interrupted by the appearance of an
intruder in the room. Surgeon Surville, entering from the kitchen, drew
aside the canvas screen, and approached the little round table at which
his superior officer was sitting.
"What is it?" said the captain, sharply.
"A question to ask," replied the surgeon. "Are we safe for the night?"
"Why do you want to know?" inquired the captain, suspiciously.
The surgeon pointed to the kitchen, now the hospital devoted to the
wounded men.
"The poor fellows are anxious about the next few hours," he replied.
"They dread a surprise, and they ask me if there is any reasonable hope
of their having one night's rest. What do you think of the chances?"
The captain shrugged his shoulders. The surgeon persisted.
"Surely you ought to know?" he said.

"I know that we are in possession of the village for the present,"
retorted Captain Arnault, "and I know no more. Here are the papers of
the enemy." He held them up