Lorraine: A Romance
by Robert W. Chambers · English · Gutenberg #24181 · 502,740 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Lorraine: A Romance
Author: Robert W. Chambers
Release date: January 6, 2008 [eBook #24181]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24181
Credits: Produced by Roberta Staehlin, Suzanne Shell and the Online
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LORRAINE: A ROMANCE ***
Produced by Roberta Staehlin, Suzanne Shell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
LORRAINE
A ROMANCE
By ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
Author of "Cardigan,"
"The Maid at Arms,"
"The Maids of Paradise,"
"The Fighting Chance," etc.
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with Harper & Brothers
Copyright, 1897, by Harper & Brothers.
All rights reserved.
TO
MY FATHER
LORRAINE!
_When Yesterday shall dawn again,
And the long line athwart the hill
Shall quicken with the bugle's thrill,
Thine own shall come to thee, Lorraine!_
_Then in each vineyard, vale, and plain,
The quiet dead shall stir the earth
And rise, reborn, in thy new birth--
Thou holy martyr-maid, Lorraine!_
_Is it in vain thy sweet tears stain
Thy mother's breast? Her castled crest
Is lifted now! God guide her quest!
She seeks thine own for thee, Lorraine!_
_So Yesterday shall live again,
And the steel line along the Rhine
Shall cuirass thee and all that's thine.
France lives--thy France--divine Lorraine!_
R. W. C.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author desires to acknowledge his indebtedness to the
valuable volumes of Messrs. Victor Duruy, Archibald Forbes,
Sir William Fraser, Dr. J. von Pflugk-Harttung, G.
Tissandier, Comdt. Grandin, and "Un Officier de Marine,"
concerning (wholly or in part) the events of 1870-1871.
Occasionally the author has deemed it best to change the
names of villages, officers, and regiments or battalions.
The author believes that the romance separated from the
facts should leave the historical basis virtually accurate.
R. W. C.
New York, September, 1897.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A Maker of Maps 1
II. Telegrams for Two 11
III. Summer Thunder 20
IV. The Farandole 30
V. Cowards and Their Courage 39
VI. Trains East and West 51
VII. The Road To Paradise 59
VIII. Under the Yoke 63
IX. Saarbrück 79
X. An Unexpected Encounter 95
XI. "Keep Thy Faith" 102
XII. From the Frontier 116
XIII. Aide-de-camp 131
XIV. The Marquis Makes Himself Agreeable 139
XV. The Invasion of Lorraine 157
XVI. "In the Hollow of Thy Hand" 171
XVII. The Keepers of the House 179
XVIII. The Stretching of Necks 190
XIX. Rickerl's Sabre 205
XX. Sir Thorald Is Silent 213
XXI. The White Cross 226
XXII. A Door Is Locked 239
XXIII. Lorraine Sleeps 250
XXIV. Lorraine Awakes 258
XXV. Princess Imperial 270
XXVI. The Shadow of Pomp 278
XXVII. Ça Ira! 285
XXVIII. The Braconnier 297
XXIX. The Message of the Flag 306
XXX. The Valley of the Shadow 324
XXXI. The Prophecy of Lorraine 334
LORRAINE
I
A MAKER OF MAPS
There was a rustle in the bushes, the sound of twigs snapping, a
soft foot-fall on the dead leaves.
Marche stopped, took his pipe out of his mouth, and listened.
Patter! patter! patter! over the crackling underbrush, now near,
now far away in the depths of the forest; then sudden silence,
the silence that startles.
He turned his head warily, right, left; he knelt noiselessly,
striving to pierce the thicket with his restless eyes. After a
moment he arose on tiptoe, unslung his gun, cocked both barrels,
and listened again, pipe tightly clutched between his white
teeth.
All around lay the beautiful Lorraine forests, dim and sweet,
dusky as velvet in their leafy depths. A single sunbeam, striking
obliquely through the brush tangle, powdered the forest mould
with gold.
He heard the little river Lisse, flowing, flowing, where green
branches swept its placid surface with a thousand new-born
leaves; he heard a throstle singing in the summer wind.
Suddenly, far ahead, something gray shambled loosely across the
path, leaped a brush heap, slunk under a fallen tree, and loped
on again.
For a moment Marche refused to believe his own eyes. A wolf in
Lorraine!--a big, gray timber-wolf, here, within a mile of the
Château Morteyn! He could see it yet, passing like a shadow along
the trees. Before he knew it he was following, running noiselessly
over the soft, mossy path, holding his little shot-gun tightly. As
he ran, his eyes fixed on the spot where the wolf had disappeared,
he began to doubt his senses again, he began to believe that the
thing he saw was some shaggy sheep-dog from the Moselle, astray in
the Lorraine forests. But he held his pace, his pipe griped in his
teeth, his gun swinging at his side. Presently, as he turned into
a grass-grown carrefour, a mere waste of wild-flowers and tangled
briers, he caught his ankle in a strand of ivy and fell headlong.
Sprawling there on the moss and dead leaves, the sound of human
voices struck his ear, and he sat up, scowling and rubbing his
knees.
The voices came nearer; two people were approaching the carrefour.
Jack Marche, angry and dirty, looked through the bushes, stanching
a long scratch on his wrist with his pocket-handkerchief. The people
were in sight now--a man, tall, square-shouldered, striding swiftly
through the woods, followed by a young girl. Twice she sprang
forward and seized him by the arm, but he shook her off roughly
and hastened on. As they entered the carrefour, the girl ran in
front of him and pushed him back with all her strength.
"Come, now," said the man, recovering his balance, "you had
better stop this before I lose patience. Go back!"
The girl barred his way with slender arms out-stretched.
"What are you doing in my woods?" she demanded. "Answer me! I
will know, this time!"
"Let me pass!" sneered the man. He held a roll of papers in one
hand; in the other, steel compasses that glittered in the sun.
"I shall not let you pass!" she said, desperately; "you shall not
pass! I wish to know what it means, why you and the others come
into my woods and make maps of every path, of every brook, of
every bridge--yes, of every wall and tree and rock! I have seen
you before--you and the others. You are strangers in my country!"
"Get out of my path," said the man, sullenly.
"Then give me that map you have made! I know what you are! You
come from across the Rhine!"
The man scowled and stepped towards her.
"You are a German spy!" she cried, passionately.
"You little fool!" he snarled, seizing her arm. He shook her
brutally; the scarlet skirts fluttered, a little rent came in the
velvet bodice, the heavy, shining hair tumbled down over her
eyes.
In a moment Marche had the man by the throat. He held him there,
striking him again and again in the face. Twice the man tried to
stab him with the steel compasses, but Marche dragged them out of
his fist and hammered him until he choked and spluttered and
collapsed on the ground, only to stagger to his feet again and
lurch into the thicket of second growth. There he tripped and
fell as Marche had fallen on the ivy, but, unlike Marche, he
wriggled under the bushes and ran on, stooping low, never
glancing back.
The impulse that comes to men to shoot when anything is running
for safety came over Marche for an instant. Instinctively he
raised his gun, hesitated, lowered it, still watching the running
man with cold, bright eyes.
"Well," he said, turning to the girl behind him, "he's gone now.
Ought I to have fired? Ma foi! I'm sorry I didn't! He has torn
your bodice and your skirt!"
The girl stood breathless, cheeks aflame, burnished tangled hair
shadowing her eyes.
"We have the map," she said, with a little gasp.
Marche picked up a crumpled roll of paper from the ground and
opened it. It contained a rough topographical sketch of the
surrounding country, a detail of a dozen small forest paths, a
map of the whole course of the river Lisse from its source to its
junction with the Moselle, and a beautiful plan of the Château de
Nesville.
"That is my house!" said the girl; "he has a map of my house! How
dare he!"
"The Château de Nesville?" asked Marche, astonished; "are you
Lorraine?"
"Yes! I'm Lorraine. Didn't you know it?"
"Lorraine de Nesville?" he repeated, curiously.
"Yes! How dares that German to come into my woods and make maps and
carry them back across the Rhine! I have seen him before--twice--drawing
and measuring along the park wall. I told my father, but he thinks only
of his balloons. I have seen others, too--other strange men in the
chase--always measuring or staring about or drawing. Why? What do
Germans want of maps of France? I thought of it all day--every day; I
watched, I listened in the forest. And do you know what I think?"
"What?" asked Marche.
She pushed back her splendid hair and faced him.
"War!" she said, in a low voice.
"War?" he repeated, stupidly. She stretched out an arm towards
the east; then, with a passionate gesture, she stepped to his
side.
"War! Yes! War! War! War! I cannot tell you how I know it--I ask
myself how--and to myself I answer: 'It is coming! I, Lorraine,
know it!'"
A fierce light flashed from her eyes, blue as corn-flowers in
July.
"It is in dreams I see and hear now--in dreams; and I see the
vineyards black with helmets, and the Moselle redder than the
setting sun, and over all the land of France I see bayonets,
moving, moving, like the Rhine in flood!"
The light in her eyes died out; she straightened up; her lithe
young body trembled.
"I have never before told this to any one," she said, faintly;
"my father does not listen when I speak. You are Jack Marche, are
you not?"
He did not answer, but stood awkwardly, folding and unfolding the
crumpled maps.
"You are the vicomte's nephew--a guest at the Château Morteyn?"
she asked.
"Yes," said Marche.
"Then you are Monsieur Jack Marche?"
He took off his shooting-cap and laughed frankly. "You find me
carrying a gun on your grounds," he said; "I'm sure you take me
for a poacher."
She glanced at his leggings.
"Now," he began, "I ask permission to explain; I am afraid that
you will be inclined to doubt my explanation. I almost doubt it
myself, but here it is. Do you know that there are wolves in
these woods?"
"Wolves?" she repeated, horrified.
"I saw one; I followed it to this carrefour."
She leaned against a tree; her hands fell to her sides.
There was a silence; then she said, "You will not believe what I
am going to say--you will call it superstition--perhaps
stupidity. But do you know that wolves have never appeared along
the Moselle except before a battle? Seventy years ago they were
seen before the battle of Colmar. That was the last time. And now
they appear again."
"I may have been mistaken," he said, hastily; "those shaggy
sheep-dogs from the Moselle are very much like timber-wolves in
colour. Tell me, Mademoiselle de Nesville, why should you believe
that we are going to have a war? Two weeks ago the Emperor spoke
of the perfect tranquillity of Europe." He smiled and added,
"France seeks no quarrels. Because a brute of a German comes
sneaking into these woods to satisfy his national thirst for
prying, I don't see why war should result."
"War did result," she said, smiling also, and glancing at his
torn shooting-coat; "I haven't even thanked you yet, Monsieur
Marche--for your victory."
With a sudden gesture, proud, yet half shy, she held out one
hand, and he took it in his own hands, bronzed and brier
scratched.
"I thought," she said, withdrawing her fingers, "that I ought to
give you an American 'shake hands.' I suppose you are wondering
why we haven't met before. There are reasons."
She looked down at her scarlet skirt, touched a triangular tear
in it, and, partly turning her head, raised her arms and twisted
the tangled hair into a heavy burnished knot at her neck.
"You wear the costume of Lorraine," he ventured.
"Is it not pretty? I love it. Alone in the house I always wear
it, the scarlet skirts banded with black, the velvet bodice and
silver chains--oh! he has broken my chain, too!"
He leaned on his gun, watching her, fascinated with the grace of
her white fingers twisting her hair.
"To think that you should have first seen me so! What will they
say at the Château Morteyn?"
"But I shall tell nobody," laughed Marche.
"Then you are very honourable, and I thank you. Mon Dieu, they
talk enough about me--you have heard them--do not deny it,
Monsieur Marche. It is always, 'Lorraine did this, Lorraine did
that, Lorraine is shocking, Lorraine is silly, Lorraine--' O
Dieu! que sais'je! Poor Lorraine!"
"Poor Lorraine!" he repeated, solemnly. They both laughed
outright.
"I know all about the house-party at the Château Morteyn," she
resumed, mending a tear in her velvet bodice with a hair-pin. "I
was invited, as you probably know, Monsieur Marche; but I did not
go, and doubtless the old vicomte is saying, 'I wonder why
Lorraine does not come?' and Madame de Morteyn replies, 'Lorraine
is a very uncertain quantity, my dear'--oh, I am sure that they
are saying these things."
"I think I heard some such dialogue yesterday," said Marche, much
amused. Lorraine raised her head and looked at him.
"You think I am a crazy child in tatters, neglected and wild as a
falcon from the Vosges. I know you do. Everybody says so, and
everybody pities me and my father. Why? Parbleu! he makes
experiments with air-ships that they don't understand. Voilà! As
for me, I am more than happy. I have my forest and my fields; I
have my horses and my books. I dress as I choose; I go where I
choose. Am I not happy, Monsieur Marche?"
"I should say," he admitted, "that you are."
"You see," she continued, with a pretty, confidential nod, "I can
talk to you because you are the vicomte's American nephew, and I
have heard all about you and your lovely sister, and it is all
right--isn't it?"
"It is," said Marche, fervently.
"Of course. Now I shall tell you why I did not go to the Château
and meet your sister and the others. Perhaps you will not
comprehend. Shall I tell you?"
"I'll try to comprehend," said Marche, laughing.
"Well, then, would you believe it? I--Lorraine de Nesville--have
outgrown my clothes, monsieur, and my beautiful new gowns are
coming from Paris this week, and then--"
"Then!" repeated Marche.
"Then you shall see," said Lorraine, gravely.
Jack, bewildered, fascinated, stood leaning on his gun, watching
every movement of the lithe figure before him.
"Until your gowns arrive, I shall not see you again?" he asked.
She looked up quickly.
"Do you wish to?"
"Very much!" he blurted out, and then, aware of the undue fervor
he had shown, repeated: "Very much--if you don't mind," in a
subdued but anxious voice.
Again she raised her eyes to his, doubtfully, perhaps a little
wistfully.
"It wouldn't be right, would it--until you are presented?"
He was silent.
"Still," she said, looking up into the sky, "I often come to the
river below, usually after luncheon."
"I wonder if there are any gudgeon there?" he said; "I could
bring a rod--"
"Oh, but are you coming? Is that right? I think there are fish
there," she added, innocently, "and I usually come after
luncheon."
"And when your gowns arrive from Paris--"
"Then! Then you shall see! Oh! I shall be a very different
person; I shall be timid and silent and stupid and awkward, and I
shall answer, 'Oui, monsieur;' 'Non, monsieur,' and you will
behold in me the jeune fille of the romances."
"Don't!" he protested.
"I shall!" she cried, shaking out her scarlet skirts full
breadth. "Good-by!"
In a second she had gone, straight away through the forest,
leaving in his ears the music of her voice, on his finger-tips
the touch of her warm hand.
He stood, leaning on his gun--a minute, an hour?--he did not
know.
Presently earthly sounds began to come back to drown the
delicious voice in his ears; he heard the little river Lisse,
flowing, flowing under green branches; he heard a throstle
singing in the summer wind; he heard, far in the deeper forest,
something passing--patter, patter, patter--over the dead leaves.
II
TELEGRAMS FOR TWO
Jack Marche tucked his gun under his arm and turned away along
the overgrown wood-road that stretched from the De Nesville
forests to the more open woods of Morteyn.
He walked slowly, puffing his pipe, pondering over his encounter with
the châtelaine of the Château de Nesville. He thought, too, of the old
Vicomte de Morteyn and his gentle wife, of the little house-party of
which he and his sister Dorothy made two, of Sir Thorald and Lady
Hesketh, their youthful and totally irresponsible chaperons on the
journey from Paris to Morteyn.
"They're lunching on the Lisse," he thought. "I'll not get a bite
if Ricky is there."
When Madame de Morteyn wrote to Sir Thorald and Lady Hesketh on
the first of July, she asked them to chaperon her two nieces and
some other pretty girls in the American colony whom they might
wish to bring, for a month, to Morteyn.
"The devil!" said Sir Thorald when he read the letter; "am I to
pick out the girls, Molly?"
"Betty and I will select the men," said Lady Hesketh, sweetly;
"you may do as you please."
He did. He suggested a great many, and wrote a list for his wife.
That prudent young woman carefully crossed out every name, saying,
"Thorald! I am ashamed of you!" and substituted another list. She
had chosen, besides Dorothy Marche and Betty Castlemaine, the two
nieces in question, Barbara Lisle and her inseparable little German
friend, Alixe von Elster; also the latter's brother, Rickerl, or
Ricky, as he was called in diplomatic circles. She closed the list
with Cecil Page, because she knew that Betty Castlemaine, Madame
de Morteyn's younger niece, looked kindly, at times, upon this
blond giant.
And so it happened that the whole party invaded three first-class
compartments of an east-bound train at the Gare de l'Est, and
twenty-two hours later were trooping up the terrace steps of the
Château Morteyn, here in the forests and fragrant meadows of
Lorraine.
Madame de Morteyn kissed all the girls on both cheeks, and the
old vicomte embraced his nieces, Betty Castlemaine and Dorothy
Marche, and threatened to kiss the others, including Molly
Hesketh. He desisted, he assured them, only because he feared Sir
Thorald might feel bound to follow his example; to which Lady
Hesketh replied that she didn't care and smiled at the vicomte.
The days had flown very swiftly for all: Jack Marche taught
Barbara Lisle to fish for gudgeon; Betty Castlemaine tormented
Cecil Page to his infinitely miserable delight; Ricky von Elster
made tender eyes at Dorothy Marche and rowed her up and down the
Lisse; and his sister Alixe read sentimental verses under the
beech-trees and sighed for the sweet mysteries that young German
girls sigh for--heart-friendships, lovers, _Ewigkeit_--God knows
what!--something or other that turns the heart to tears until
everything slops over and the very heavens sob.
They were happy enough together in the Château and out-of-doors.
Little incidents occurred that might as well not have occurred,
but apparently no scars were left nor any incurable pang. True,
Molly Hesketh made eyes at Ricky von Elster; but she reproved him
bitterly when he kissed her hand in the orangery one evening;
true also that Sir Thorald whispered airy nothings into the
shell-like ear of Alixe von Elster until that German maiden could
not have repeated her German alphabet. But, except for the
chaperons, the unmarried people did well enough, as unmarried
people usually do when let alone.
So, on that cloudless day of July, 1870, Rickerl von Elster sat
in the green row-boat and tugged at the oars while Sir Thorald
smoked a cigar placidly and Lady Hesketh trailed her pointed
fingers over the surface of the water.
"Ricky, my son," said Sir Thorald, "you probably gallop better
than you row. Who ever heard of an Uhlan in a boat? Molly, take
his oars away."
"Ricky shall row me if he wishes," replied Molly Hesketh; "and
you do, don't you, Ricky? Thorald will set you on shore if you
want."
"I have no confidence in Uhlan officers," said her spouse,
darkly.
Rickerl looked pleased; perspiration stood on his blond eyebrows
and his broad face glowed.
"As an officer of cavalry in the Prussian army," he said, "and as
an attaché of the German Embassy in Paris, I suggest that we
return to first principles and rejoin our base of supplies."
"He's thirsty," said Molly, gravely. "The base of supplies, so
long cut loose from, is there under the willows, and I see six
feet two of Cecil Page carrying a case of bottles."
"Row, Ricky!" urged Sir Thorald; "they will leave nothing for
Uhlan foragers!"
The boat rubbed its nose against the mossy bank; Lady Hesketh
placed her fair hands in Ricky's chubby ones and sprang to the
shore.
"Cecil Page," she said, "I am thirsty. Where are the others?"
Betty and Dorothy looked out from their seat in the tall grass.
"Charles brought the hamper; there it is," said Cecil.
Barbara Lisle and sentimental little Alixe von Elster strolled up
and looked lovingly upon the sandwiches.
Cecil Page stood and sulked, until Dorothy took pity and made
room on the moss beside her.
"Can't you have a little mercy, Betty?" she whispered; "Cecil
moons like a wounded elephant."
So Betty smiled at him and asked for more salad, and Cecil
brought it and basked in her smiles.
"Where is Jack Marche?" asked Molly Hesketh. "Dorothy, your
brother went into the chase with a gun, and where is he?"
"What does he want to shoot in July? It's too late for rooks,"
said Sir Thorald, pouring out champagne-cup for Barbara Lisle.
"I don't know where Jack went," said Dorothy. "He heard one of
the keepers complain of the hawks, so, I suppose, he took a gun.
I wonder why that strange Lorraine de Nesville doesn't come to
call. I am simply dying to see her."
"I saw her once," observed Sir Thorald.
"You generally do," added his wife.
"What?"
"See what others don't."
Sir Thorald, a trifle disconcerted, applied himself to caviare
and, later, to a bottle of Moselle.
"She's a beauty, they say--" began Ricky, and might have
continued had he not caught the danger-signal in Molly Hesketh's
black eyes.
"Lorraine de Nesville," said Lady Hesketh, "is only a child of
seventeen. Her father makes balloons."
"Not the little, red, squeaky kind," added Sir Thorald; "Molly,
he is an amateur aeronaut."
"He'd much better take care of Lorraine. The poor child runs wild
all over the country. They say she rides like a witch on a
broom--"
"Astride?" cried Sir Thorald.
"For shame!" said his wife; "I--I--upon my word, I have heard
that she has done that, too. Ricky! what do you mean by yawning?"
Ricky had been listening, mouth open. He shut it hurriedly and
grew pink to the roots of his colourless hair.
Betty Castlemaine looked at Cecil, and Dorothy Marche laughed.
"What of it?" she said; "there is nobody here who would dare to!"
"Oh, shocking!" said little Alixe, and tried to look as though
she meant it.
At that moment Sir Thorald caught sight of Jack Marche, strolling
up through the trees, gun tucked under his left arm.
"No luncheon, no salad, no champagne-cup, no cigarette!" he
called; "all gone! all gone! Molly's smoked my last--"
"Jack Marche, where have you been?" demanded Molly Hesketh. "No,
you needn't dodge my accusing finger! Barbara, look at him!"
"It's a pretty finger--if Sir Thorald will permit me to say so,"
said Jack, laughing and setting his gun up against a tree.
"Dorrie, didn't you save any salad? Ricky, you devouring scourge,
there's not a bit of caviare! I'm hungry--Oh, thanks, Betty, you
did think of the prodigal, didn't you?"
"It was Cecil," she said, slyly; "I was saving it for him. What
did you shoot, Jack?"
"Now you people listen and I'll tell you what I didn't shoot."
"A poor little hawk?" asked Betty.
"No--a poor little wolf!"
In the midst of cries of astonishment and exclamations Sir
Thorald arose, waving a napkin.
"I knew it!" he said--"I knew I saw a wolf in the woods day
before yesterday, but I didn't dare tell Molly; she never
believes me."
"And you deliberately chose to expose us to the danger of being eaten
alive?" said Lady Hesketh, in an awful voice. "Ricky, I'm going to
get into that boat at once; Dorothy--Betty Castlemaine--bring Alixe
and Barbara Lisle. We are going to embark at once."
"Ricky and his boat-load of beauty," laughed Sir Thorald.
"Really, Molly, I hesitated to tell you because--I was afraid--"
"What, you horrid thing?--afraid he'd bite me?"
"Afraid you'd bite the wolf, my dear," he whispered so that
nobody but she heard it; "I say, Ricky, we ought to have a wolf
drive! What do you think?"
The subject started, all chimed in with enthusiasm except Alixe
von Elster, who sat with big, soulful eyes fixed on Sir Thorald
and trembled for that bad young man's precious skin.
"We have two weeks to stay yet," said Cecil, glancing
involuntarily at Betty Castlemaine; "we can get up a drive in a
week."
"You are not going, Cecil," said Betty, in a low voice, partly to
practise controlling him, partly to see him blush.
Lady Hesketh, however, took enough interest in the sport to
insist, and Jack Marche promised to see the head-keeper at once.
"I think I see him now," said Sir Thorald--"no, it's Bosquet's
boy from the post-office. Those are telegrams he's got."
The little postman's son came trotting across the meadow, waving
two blue envelopes.
"Monsieur le Capitaine Rickerl von Elster and Monsieur Jack
Marche--two telegrams this instant from Paris, messieurs! I
salute you." And he took off his peaked cap, adding, as he saw
the others, "Messieurs, mesdames," and nodded his curly, blond
head and smiled.
"Don't apologize--read your telegrams!" said Lady Hesketh; "dear
me! dear me! if they take you two away and leave Thorald, I
shall--I shall yawn!"
Ricky's broad face changed as he read his despatch; and Molly
Hesketh, shamelessly peeping over his shoulder, exclaimed, "It's
cipher! How stupid! Can you understand it, Ricky?"
Yes, Rickerl von Elster understood it well enough. He paled a
little, thrust the crumpled telegram into his pocket, and looked
vaguely at the circle of faces. After a moment he said, standing
very straight, "I must leave to-morrow morning."
"Recalled? Confound your ambassador, Ricky!" said Sir Thorald.
"Recalled to Paris in midsummer! Well, I'm--"
"Not to Paris," said Rickerl, with a curious catch in his
voice--"to Berlin. I join my regiment at once."
Jack Marche, who had been studying his telegram with puzzled
eyes, held it out to Sir Thorald.
"Can't make head or tail of it; can you?" he demanded.
Sir Thorald took it and read aloud: "New York _Herald_ offers you
your own price and all expenses. Cable, if accepted."
"'Cable, if accepted,'" repeated Betty Castlemaine; "accept
what?"
"Exactly! What?" said Jack. "Do they want a story? What do
'expenses' mean? I'm not going to Africa again if I know it."
"It sounds as though the _Herald_ wanted you for some expedition;
it sounds as if everybody knew about the expedition, except you.
Nobody ever hears any news at Morteyn," said Molly Hesketh,
dejectedly. "Are you going, Jack?"
"Going? Where?"
"Does your telegram throw any light on Jack's, Ricky?" asked Sir
Thorald.
But Rickerl von Elster turned away without answering.
III
SUMMER THUNDER
When the old vicomte was well enough to entertain anybody at all,
which was not very often, he did it skilfully. So when he filled
the Château with young people and told them to amuse themselves
and not bother him, the house-party was necessarily a success.
He himself sat all day in the sunshine, studying the week's Paris
newspapers with dim, kindly eyes, or played interminable chess
games with his wife on the flower terrace.
She was sixty; he had passed threescore and ten. They never
strayed far from each other. It had always been so from the
first, and the first was when Helen Bruce, of New York City,
married Georges Vicomte de Morteyn. That was long ago.
The chess-table stood on the terrace in the shadow of the
flower-crowned parapets; the old vicomte sat opposite his wife,
one hand touching the black knight, one foot propped up on a pile
of cushions. He pushed the knight slowly from square to square
and twisted his white imperial with stiff fingers.
"Helen," he asked, mildly, "are you bored?"
"No, dear."
Madame de Morteyn smiled at her husband and lifted a pawn in her
thin, blue-veined hand; but the vicomte had not finished, and she
replaced the pawn and leaned back in her chair, moving the two
little coffee-cups aside so that she could see what her husband
was doing with the knight.
From the lawn below came the chatter and laughter of girls. On
the edge of the lawn the little river Lisse glided noiselessly
towards the beech woods, whose depths, saturated with sunshine,
rang with the mellow notes of nesting thrushes.
The middle of July had found the leaves as fresh and tender as
when they opened in May, the willow's silver green cooled the
richer verdure of beach and sycamore; the round poplar leaves,
pale yellow and orange in the sunlight, hung brilliant as lighted
lanterns where the sun burned through.
"Helen?"
"Dear?"
"I am not at all certain what to do with my queen's knight. May I
have another cup of coffee?"
Madame de Morteyn poured the coffee from the little silver
coffee-pot.
"It is hot; be careful, dear."
The vicomte sipped his coffee, looking at her with faded eyes.
She knew what he was going to say; it was always the same, and
her answer was always the same. And always, as at that first
breakfast--their wedding-breakfast--her pale cheeks bloomed again
with a subtle colour, the ghost of roses long dead.
"Helen, are you thinking of that morning?"
"Yes, Georges."
"Of our wedding-breakfast--here--at this same table?"
"Yes, Georges."
The vicomte set his cup back in the saucer and, trembling, poured
a pale, golden liquid from a decanter into two tiny glasses.
"A glass of wine?--I have the honour, my dear--"
The colour touched her cheeks as their glasses met; the still air
tinkled with the melody of crystal touching crystal; a golden
drop fell from the brimming glasses. The young people on the lawn
below were very noisy.
She placed her empty glass on the table; the delicate glow in her
cheeks faded as skies fade at twilight. He, with grave head
leaning on his hand, looked vaguely at the chess-board, and saw,
mirrored on every onyx square, the eyes of his wife.
"Will you have the journals, dear?" she asked presently. She
handed him the _Gaulois_, and he thanked her and opened it,
peering closely at the black print.
After a moment he read: "M. Ollivier declared, in the Corps
Législatif, that 'at no time in the history of France has the
maintenance of peace been more assured than to-day.' Oh, that
journal is two weeks' old, Helen.
"The treaty of Paris in 1856 assured peace in the Orient, and the
treaty of Prague in 1866 assures peace in Germany," continued the
vicomte; "I don't see why it should be necessary for Monsieur
Ollivier to insist."
He dropped the paper on the stones and touched his white
mustache.
"You are thinking of General Chanzy," said his wife,
laughing--"you always twist your mustache like that when you're
thinking of Chanzy."
He smiled, for he was thinking of Chanzy, his sword-brother; and
the hot plains of Oran and the dusty columns of cavalry passed
before his eyes--moving, moving across a world of desert into the
flaming disk of the setting sun.
"Is to-day the 16th of July, Helen?"
"Yes, dear."
"Then Chanzy is coming back from Oran. I know you dread it. We
shall talk of nothing but Abd-el-Kader and Spahis and Turcos, and
how we lost our Kabyle tobacco at Bou-Youb."
She had heard all about it, too; she knew every étape of the 48th
of the Line--from the camp at Sathonay to Sidi-Bel-Abbès, and
from Daya to Djebel-Mikaidon. Not that she cared for sabres and
red trousers, but nothing that concerned her husband was
indifferent to her.
"I hope General Chanzy will come," she said, "and tell you all
about those poor Kabyles and the Legion and that horrid 2d
Zouaves that you and he laugh over. Are you tired, dear?"
"No. Shall we play? I believe it was my move. How warm it is in
the sun--no, don't stir, dear--I like it, and my gout is better
for it. What do you suppose all those young people are doing?
Hear Betty Castlemaine laugh! It is very fortunate for them,
Helen, that I married an American with an American's disregard of
French conventionalities."
"I am very strict," said his wife, smiling; "I can survey them en
chaperone."
"If you turn around. But you don't."
"I do when it is necessary," said Madame de Morteyn, indignantly;
"Molly Hesketh is there."
The vicomte laughed and picked up the knight again.
"You see," he said, waving it in the air, "that I also have
become a very good American. I think no evil until it comes, and
when it comes I say, 'Shocking!'"
"Georges!"
"That's what I say, my dear--"
"Georges!"
"There, dear, I won't tease. Hark! What is that?"
Madame de Morteyn leaned over the parapet.
"It is Jean Bosquet. Shall I speak to him?"
"Perhaps he has the Paris papers."
"Jean!" she called; and presently the little postman came
trotting up the long stone steps from the drive. Had he anything?
Nothing for Monsieur le Vicomte except a bundle of the week's
journals from Paris. So Madame de Morteyn took the papers, and
the little postman doffed his cap again and trotted away, blue
blouse fluttering and sabots echoing along the terrace pavement.
"I am tired of chess," said the old vicomte; "would you mind
reading the _Gaulois_?"
"The politics, dear?"
"Yes, the weekly summary--if it won't bore you."
"Tais toi! Écoute. This is dated July 3d. Shall I begin?"
"Yes, Helen."
She held the paper nearer and read: "'A Paris journal publishes a
despatch through l'agence Havas which declares that a deputation
from the Spanish Government has left Madrid for Berlin to offer
the crown of Spain to Leopold von Hohenzollern.'"
"What!" cried the vicomte, angrily. Two chessmen tipped over and
rolled among the others.
"It's what it says, mon ami; look--see--it is exactly as I read
it."
"Are those Spaniards crazy?" muttered the vicomte, tugging at his
imperial. "Look, Helen, read what the next day's journal says."
His wife unfolded the paper dated the 4th of July and found the
column and read: "'The press of Paris unanimously accuses the
Imperial Government of allowing Prim and Bismarck to intrigue
against the interests of France. The French ambassador, Count
Benedetti, interviewed the King of Prussia at Ems and requested
him to prevent Prince Leopold von Hohenzollern's acceptance. It
is rumoured that the King of Prussia declined to interfere.'"
Madame de Morteyn tossed the journal on to the terrace and opened
another.
"'On the 12th of July the Spanish ambassador to Paris informed
the Duc de Gramont, Minister of Foreign Affairs, that the Prince
von Hohenzollern renounces his candidacy to the Spanish throne.'"
"À la bonheur!" said the vicomte, with a sigh of relief; "that
settles the Hohenzollern matter. My dear, can you imagine France
permitting a German prince to mount the throne of Spain? It was
more than a menace--it was almost an insult. Do you remember
Count Bismarck when he was ambassador to France? He is a man who
fascinates me. How he used to watch the Emperor! I can see him
yet--those puffy, pale eyes! You saw him also, dear--you
remember, at Saint-Cloud?"
"Yes; I thought him brusque and malicious."
"I know he is at the bottom of this. I'm glad it is over. Did you
finish the telegraphic news?"
"Almost all. It says--dear me, Georges!--it says that the Duc de
Gramont refuses to accept any pledge from the Spanish ambassador
unless that old Von Werther--the German ambassador, you
know--guarantees that Prince Leopold von Hohenzollern will never
again attempt to mount the Spanish throne!"
There was a silence. The old vicomte stirred restlessly and
knocked over some more chessmen.
"Sufficient unto the day--" he said, at last; "the Duc de Gramont
is making a mistake to press the matter. The word of the Spanish
ambassador is enough--until he breaks it. General Leboeuf might
occupy himself in the interim--profitably, I think."
"General Leboeuf is minister of war. What do you mean, Georges?"
"Yes, dear, Leboeuf is minister of war."
"And you think this German prince may some time again--"
"I think France should be ready if he does. Is she ready? Not if
Chanzy and I know a Turco from a Kabyle. Perhaps Count Bismarck
wants us to press his king for guarantees. I don't trust him. If
he does, we should not oblige him. Gramont is making a grave
mistake. Suppose the King of Prussia should refuse and say it is
not his affair? Then we would be obliged to accept that answer,
or--"
"Or what, Georges?"
"Or--well, my dear--or fight. But Gramont is not wicked enough,
nor is France crazy enough, to wish to go to war over a
contingency--a possibility that might never happen. I foresee a
snub for our ambassador at Ems, but that is all. Do you care to
play any more? I tipped over my king and his castles."
"Perhaps it is an omen--the King of Prussia, you know, and his
fortresses. I feel superstitious, Georges!"
The vicomte smiled and set the pieces up on their proper squares.
"It is settled; the Spanish ambassador pledges his word that
Prince Hohenzollern will not be King of Spain. France should be
satisfied. It is my move, I believe, and I move so--check to you,
my dear!"
"I resign, dearest. Listen! Here come the children up the terrace
steps."
"But--but--Helen, you must not resign so soon. Why should you?"
"Because you are already beaten," she laughed, gently--"your king
and his castles and all his men! How headstrong you Chasseurs
d'Afrique are!"
"I'm not beaten!" said the old man, stoutly, and leaned closer
over the board. Then he also laughed, and said, "Tiens! tiens!
tiens!" and his wife rose and gave him her arm. Two pretty girls
came running up the terrace, and the old vicomte stood up,
crying: "Children! Naughty ones! I see you coming! Madame de
Morteyn has beaten me at chess. Laugh if you dare! Betty
Castlemaine, I see you smiling!"
"I?" laughed that young lady, turning her flushed face from her
aunt to her uncle.
"Yes, you did," repeated the vicomte, "and you are not the niece
that I love any more. Where have you been? And you, Dorothy
Marche?--your hair is very much tangled."
"We have been lunching by the Lisse," said Dorothy, "and Jack
caught a gudgeon; here it is."
"Pooh!" said the old vicomte; "I must show them how to fish.
Helen, I shall go fishing--"
"Some time," said his wife, gently. "Betty, where are the men?"
"Jack and Barbara Lisle are fishing; Sir Thorald and Lady Hesketh
are in the green boat, and Ricky is rowing them. The others are
somewhere. Ricky got a telegram, and must go to Berlin."
"Tell Rickerl von Elster that his king is making mischief,"
laughed the vicomte, "and he may go back to Berlin when he
chooses." Then, smiling at the young, flushed faces, he leaned on
his wife's arm and passed slowly along the terrace towards the
house.
"I wonder why Lorraine has not come?" he said to his wife. "Won't
she come to-night for the dance?"
"Lorraine is a very sweet but a very uncertain girl," replied
Madame de Morteyn. She led him through the great bay-window
opening on the terrace, drew his easy-chair before his desk,
placed the journals before him, and, stooping, kissed him.
"If you want me, send Charles. I really ought to be with the
young people a moment. I wonder why Ricky must leave?"
"How far away are you going, Helen?"
"Only to the Lisse."
"Then I shall read about Monsieur Bismarck and his Spanish
friends until you come. The day is long without you."
They smiled at each other, and she sat down by the window.
"Read," she said; "I can see my children from here. I wonder why
Ricky is leaving?"
Suddenly, in the silence of the summer noon, far in the east, a
dull sound shook the stillness. Again they heard it--again, and
again--a deep boom, muttering, reverberating like summer thunder.
"Why should they fire cannon to-day, Helen?" asked the old man,
querulously. "Why should they fire cannon beyond the Rhine?"
"It is thunder," she said, gently; "it will storm before long."
"I am tired," said the vicomte. "Helen, I shall sleep. Sit by
me--so--no--nearer yet! Are the children happy?"
"Yes, dear."
"When the cannon cease, I shall fall asleep. Listen! what is
that?"
"A blackbird singing in the pear-tree."
"And what is that--that sound of galloping? Look out and see,
Helen."
"It is a gendarme riding fast towards the Rhine."
IV
THE FARANDOLE
That evening Dorothy Marche stood on the terrace in the moonlight
waving her plumed fan and listening to the orchestra from the
hamlet of Saint-Lys. The orchestra--two violins, a reed-pipe, a
biniou, and a harp--were playing away with might and main.
Through the bay-window she could see the crystal chandeliers
glittering with prismatic light, the slender gilded chairs, the
cabinets and canapés, golden, backed with tapestry; and
everywhere massed banks of ferns and lilies. They were dancing in
there; she saw Lady Hesketh floating in the determined grip of
Cecil Page, she saw Sir Thorald proudly prancing to the air of
the farandole; Betty Castlemaine, Jack, Alixe, Barbara Lisle
passed the window only to re-pass and pass again in a whirl of
gauze and filmy colour; and the swish! swish! swish! of silken
petticoats, and the rub of little feet on the polished floor grew
into a rhythmic, monotonous cadence, beating, beating the measure
of the farandole.
Dorothy waved her fan and looked at Rickerl, standing in the
moonlight beside her.
"Why won't you dance, Ricky?" she asked; "it is your last
evening, if you are determined to leave to-morrow." He turned to
her with an abrupt gesture; she thought he was going to speak,
but he did not, and after a moment she said: "Do you know what
that despatch from the New York _Herald_ to my brother means?"
"Yes," he said. His voice was dull, almost indifferent.
"Will you tell me?"
"Yes, to-morrow."
"Is--is it anything dangerous that they want him to do?"
"Yes."
"Ricky--tell me, then! You frighten me."
"To-morrow--perhaps to-night."
"Perhaps to-night?"
"If I receive another telegram. I expect to."
"Then, if you receive another despatch, we shall all know?"
Rickerl von Elster bent his head and laid a gloved hand lightly
on her own.
"I am very unhappy," he said, simply. "May we not speak of other
things?"
"Yes, Ricky," she said, faintly. He looked almost handsome there
in the moonlight, but under his evening dress the square build of
the Prussian trooper, the rigid back, and sturdy limbs were
perhaps too apparent for ideal civilian elegance. Dorothy looked
into his serious young face. He touched his blond mustache, felt
unconsciously for the sabre that was not dangling from his left
hip, remembered, coloured, and stood up even straighter.
"We are thinking of the same thing," said Dorothy; "I was trying
to recall that last time we met--do you remember? In Paris?"
He nodded; eyes fixed on hers.
"At the Diplomatic Ball?"
"Yes."
"And you were in uniform, and your sabre was very beautiful,
but--do you remember how it clashed and banged on the marble
stairway, and how the other attachés teased you until you tucked
it under your left arm? Dear me! I was fascinated by your
patent-leather sabre-tache, and your little spurs, that rang like
tiny chimes when you walked. What sentimental creatures young
girls are! Ne c'est pas, Ricky?"
"I have never forgotten that evening," he said, in a voice so low
that she leaned involuntarily nearer.
"We were very young then," she said, waving her fan.
"It was not a year ago."
"We were young," she repeated, coldly.
"Yet I shall never forget, Dorothy."
She closed her fan and began to examine the fluffy plumes. Her
cheeks were red, and she bit her lips continually.
"Do you particularly admire Molly Hesketh's hand?" she asked,
indifferently.
He turned crimson. How could she know of the episode in the
orangery? Know? There was no mystery in that; Molly Hesketh had
told her. But Rickerl von Elster, loyal in little things, saw but
one explanation--Dorothy must have seen him.
"Yes--I kissed her hand," he said. He did not add that Molly had
dared him.
Dorothy raised her head with an icy smile.
"Is it honourable to confess such a thing?" she asked, in steady
tones.
"But--but you knew it, for you saw me--" he stammered.
"I did not!" she flashed out, and walked straight into the house.
"Dorrie!" cried her brother as she swept by him, "what do you
think? Lorraine de Nesville is coming this evening!"
"Lorraine?" said his sister--"dear me, I am dying to see her."
"Then turn around," whispered Betty Castlemaine, leaning across
from Cecil's arm. "Oh, Dorrie! what a beauty!"
At the same moment the old vicomte rose from his gilded chair and
stepped forward to the threshold, saying, "Lorraine! Lorraine!
Then you have come at last, little bad one?" And he kissed her
white hands and led her to his wife, murmuring, "Helen, what
shall we do with the little bad one who never comes to bid two
old people good-day?"
"Ah, Lorraine!" said Madame de Morteyn; "kiss me, my child."
There she stood, her cheeks faintly touched with colour, her
splendid eyes shining like azure stars, the candle-light setting
her heavy hair aglow till it glistened and burned as molten ore
flashes in a crucible. They pressed around her; she saw, through
the flare of yellow light, a sea of rosy faces; a vague mist of
lace set with jewels; and she smiled at them while the colour
deepened in her cheeks. There was music in her ears and music in
her heart, and she was dancing now--dancing with a tall, bronzed
young fellow who held her strong and safe, and whose eyes
continually sought her own.
"You see," she said, demurely, "that my gowns came to-day from
Paris."
"It is a dream--this one," he said, smiling back into her eyes,
"but I shall never forget the scarlet skirt and little bodice of
velvet, and the silver chains, and your hair--"
"My hair? It is still on my head."
"It was tangled across your face--then."
"Taisez-vous, Monsieur Marche!"
"And you seem to have grown taller--"
"It is my ball-gown."
"And you do not cast down your eyes and say, 'Oui, monsieur,'
'Non, monsieur'--"
"Non, monsieur."
Again they laughed, looking into each other's eyes, and there was
music in the room and music in their hearts.
Presently the candle-light gave place to moonlight, and they
found themselves on the terrace, seated, listening to the voice
of the wind in the forest; and they heard the little river Lisse
among the rushes and the murmur of leaves on the eaves.
When they became aware of their own silence they turned to each
other with the gentle haste born of confusion, for each feared
that the other might not understand. Then, smiling, half fearful,
they reassured each other with their silence.
She was the first to break the stillness, hesitating as one who
breaks the seal of a letter long expected, half dreaded: "I came
late because my father was restless, and I thought he might need
me. Did you hear cannon along the Rhine?"
"Yes. Some German fête. I thought at first it might be thunder.
Give me your fan."
"You do not hold it right--there--"
"Do you feel the breeze? Your fan is perfumed--or is it the
lilies on the terrace? They are dancing again; must we go back?"
She looked out into the dazzling moonlight of Lorraine; a
nightingale began singing far away in the distant swamp; a bat
darted by, turned, rose, dipped, and vanished.
"They are dancing," she repeated.
"Must we go?"
"No."
In the stillness the nightingale grew bolder; the woods seemed
saturated with song.
"My father is restless; I must return soon," she said, with a
little sigh. "I shall go in presently and make my adieux. I wish
you might know my father. Will you? He would like you. He speaks
to few people except me. I know all that he thinks, all that he
dreams of. I know also all that he has done, all that he is
doing, all that he will do--God willing. Why is it I tell you
this? Ma foi, I do not know. And I am going to tell you more.
Have you heard that my father has made a balloon?"
"Yes--everybody speaks of it," he answered, gravely.
"But--ah, this is the wonderful part!--he has made a balloon that
can be inflated in five seconds! Think! All other balloons
require a long, long while, and many tubes; and one must take
them to a usine de gaz. My father's balloon needs no gas--that
is, it needs no common illuminating gas."
"A montgolfier?" asked Marche, curiously.
"Oh, pooh! The idea! No, it is like other balloons, except
that--well--there is needed merely a handful of silvery dust--to
which you touch a drop of water--piff! puff! c'est fini! The
balloon is filled."
"And what is this silvery dust?" he asked, laughing.
"Voilà! Do you not wish you knew? I--Lorraine de Nesville--I know!
It is a secret. If the time ever should come--in case of war, for
instance--my father will give the secret to France--freely--without
recompense--a secret that all the nations of Europe could not buy!
Now, don't you wish you knew, monsieur?"
"And you know?"
"Yes," she said, with a tantalizing toss of her head.
"Then you'd better look out," he laughed; "if European nations
get wind of this they might kidnap you."
"They know it already," she said, seriously. "Austria, Spain,
Portugal, and Russia have sent agents to my father--as though he
bought and sold the welfare of his country!"
"And that map-making fellow this morning--do you suppose he might
have been hanging about after that sort of thing--trying to pry
and pick up some scrap of information?"
"I don't know," she said, quietly; "I only saw him making maps.
Listen! there are two secrets that my father possesses, and they
are both in writing. I do not know where he keeps them, but I
know what they are. Shall I tell you? Then listen--I shall
whisper. One is the chemical formula for the silvery dust, the
gas of which can fill a balloon in five seconds. The other
is--you will be astonished--the plan for a navigable balloon!"
"Has he tried it?"
"A dozen times. I went up twice. It steers like a ship."
"Do people know this, too?"
"Germany does. Once we sailed, papa and I, up over our forest and
across the country to the German frontier. We were not very high;
we could see the soldiers at the custom-house, and they saw us,
and--would you believe it?--they fired their horrid guns at
us--pop! pop! pop! But we were too quick; we simply sailed back
again against the very air-currents that brought us. One bullet
made a hole in the silk, but we didn't come down. Papa says a
dozen bullets cannot bring a balloon down, even when they pierce
the silk, because the air-pressure is great enough to keep the
gas in. But he says that if they fire a shell, that is what is to
be dreaded, for the gas, once aflame!--that ends all. Dear me! we
talk a great deal of war--you and I. It is time for me to go."
They rose in the moonlight; he gave her back her fan. For a full
minute they stood silent, facing each other. She broke a lily
from its stem, and drew it out of the cluster at her breast. She
did not offer it, but he knew it was his, and he took it.
"Symbol of France," she whispered.
"Symbol of Lorraine," he said, aloud.
A deep boom, sullen as summer thunder, shook the echoes awake
among the shrouded hills, rolling, reverberating, resounding,
until the echoes carried it on from valley to valley, off into
the world of shadows.
The utter silence that followed was broken by a call, a gallop of
hoofs on the gravel drive, the clink of stirrups, the snorting of
hard-run horses.
Somebody cried, "A telegram for you, Ricky!" There was a patter
of feet on the terrace, a chorus of voices: "What is it, Ricky?"
"Must you go at once?" "Whatever is the matter?"
The young German soldier, very pale, turned to the circle of
lamp-lit faces.
"France and Germany--I--I--"
"What?" cried Sir Thorald, violently.
"War was declared at noon to-day!"
Lorraine gave a gasp and reached out one hand. Jack Marche took
it in both of his.
Inside the ballroom the orchestra was still playing the
farandole.
V
COWARDS AND THEIR COURAGE
Rickerl took the old vicomte's withered hand; he could not speak;
his sister Alixe was crying.
"War? War? Allons donc!" muttered the old man. "Helen! Ricky says
we are to have war. Helen, do you hear? War!"
Then Rickerl hurried away to dress, for he was to ride to the
Rhine, nor spare whip nor spur; and Barbara Lisle comforted
little Alixe, who wept as she watched the maids throwing
everything pell-mell into their trunks; for they, too, were to
leave at daylight on the Moselle Express for Cologne.
Below, a boy appeared, leading Rickerl's horse from the stables;
there were lanterns moving along the drive, and dark figures
passing, clustering about the two steaming horses of the
messengers, where a groom stood with a pail of water and a
sponge. Everywhere the hum of voices rose and died away like the
rumour of swarming bees. "War!" "War is declared!" "When?" "War
was declared to-day!" "When?" "War was declared to-day at noon!"
And always the burden of the busy voices was the same, menacing,
incredulous, half-whispered, but always the same--"War! war!
war!"
Booted and spurred, square-shouldered and muscular in his corded
riding-suit, Rickerl passed the terrace again after the last
adieux. The last? No, for as his heavy horse stamped out across
the drive a voice murmured his name, a hand fell on his arm.
"Dorothy," he whispered, bending from his saddle.
"I love you, Ricky," she gasped.
And they say women are cowards!
He lifted her to his breast, held her crushed and panting; she
put both hands before her eyes.
"There has never been any one but you; do you believe it?" he
stammered.
"Yes."
"Then you are mine!"
"Yes. May God spare you!"
And Rickerl, loyal in little things, swung her gently to the
ground again, unkissed.
There was a flurry of gravel, a glimpse of a horse rearing,
plunging, springing into the darkness--that was all. And she
crept back to the terrace with hot, tearless lids, that burned
till all her body quivered with the fever in her aching eyes. She
passed the orchestra, trudging back to Saint-Lys along the gravel
drive, the two fat violinists stolidly smoking their Alsacian
pipes, the harp-player muttering to the aged piper, the little
biniou man from the Côte-d'Or, excited, mercurial, gesticulating
at every step. War! war! war! The burden of the ghastly monotone
was in her brain, her tired heart kept beating out the cadence
that her little slippered feet echoed along the gravel--War! war!
At the foot of the steps which skirted the terrace she met her
brother and Lorraine watching the groom rubbing down the
messengers' horses. A lantern, glimmering on the ground, shed a
sickly light under their eyes.
"Dorrie," said Jack, "Sir Thorald and Lady Hesketh think that we all
should start for Paris by the early train. They have already sent
some of our trunks to Saint-Lys; Mademoiselle de Nesville"--he
turned with a gesture almost caressing to Lorraine--"Mademoiselle
de Nesville has generously offered her carriage to help transport
the luggage, and she is going to wait until it returns."
"And uncle--and our aunt De Morteyn?"
"I shall stay at Morteyn until they decide whether to close the
house and go to Paris or to stay until October. Dorrie, dear, we
are very near the frontier here."
"There will be no invasion," said Lorraine, faintly.
"The Rhine is very near," repeated Dorothy. She was thinking of
Rickerl.
"So you and Betty and Cecil," continued Jack, "are to go with the
Heskeths to Paris. Poor little Alixe is crying her eyes out
up-stairs. She and Barbara Lisle are going to Cologne, where
Ricky will either find them or have his father meet them."
After a moment he added, "It seems incredible, this news. They
say, in the village, that the King of Prussia insulted the French
ambassador, Count Benedetti, on the public promenade of Ems. It's
all about that Hohenzollern business and the Spanish succession.
Everybody thought it was settled, of course, because the Spanish
ambassador said so, and Prince Leopold von Hohenzollern withdrew
his claim. I can't understand it; I can scarcely believe it."
Dorothy stood a moment, looking at the stars in the midnight
sky. Then she turned with a sigh to Lorraine.
"Good-night," she said, and they kissed each other, these two
young girls who an hour before had been strangers.
"Shall I see you again? We leave by the early train," whispered
Dorothy.
"No--I must return when my carriage comes back from the village.
Good-by, dear--good-by, dear Dorothy."
A moment later, Dorothy, flinging her short ermine-edged cloak
from her shoulders, entered the empty ballroom and threw herself
upon the gilded canapé.
One by one the candles spluttered, glimmered, flashed up, and
went out, leaving a trail of smoke in the still air. Up-stairs
little Alixe was sobbing herself to sleep in Barbara's arms; in
his own chamber the old vicomte paced to and fro, and to and fro,
and his sweet-faced wife watched him in silence, her thin hand
shading her eyes in the lamplight. In the next room Sir Thorald
and Lady Hesketh sat close together, whispering. Only Betty
Castlemaine and Cecil Page had lost little of their cheerfulness,
perhaps because neither were French, and Cecil was not going to
the war, and--after all, war promised to be an exciting thing,
and well worth the absorbed attention of two very young lovers.
Arm in arm, they promenaded the empty halls and galleries,
meeting no one save here and there a pale-faced maid or scared
flunky; and at length they entered the gilded ballroom where
Dorothy lay, flung full length on the canapé.
She submitted to Betty's caresses, and went away to bed with her,
saying good-night to Cecil in a tear-choked voice; and a moment
later Cecil sought his own chamber, lighted a pipe, and gave
himself up to delightful visions of Betty, protected from several
Prussian army-corps by the single might of his strong right arm.
At the foot of the terrace, Lorraine de Nesville stood with Jack,
watching the dark drive for the lamps of the returning carriage.
Her maid loitered near, exchanging whispered gossip with the
groom, who now stood undecided, holding both horses and waiting
for orders. Presently Jack asked him where the messengers were,
and he said he didn't know, but that they had perhaps gone to the
kitchens for refreshments.
"Go and find them, then; here, give me the bridles," said Jack;
"if they are eating, let them finish; I'll hold their horses. Why
doesn't Mademoiselle de Nesville's carriage come back from
Saint-Lys? When you leave the kitchens, go down the road and look
for it. Tell them to hurry."
The groom touched his cap and hastened away.
"I wish the carriage would come--I wish the carriage would
hurry," repeated Lorraine, at intervals. "My father is alone; I
am nervous, I don't know why. What are you reading?"
"My telegram from the New York _Herald_," he answered,
thoughtfully.
"It is easy to understand now," she said.
"Yes, easy to understand. They want me for war correspondent."
"Are you going?"
"I don't know--" He hesitated, trying to see her eyes in the
darkness. "I don't know; shall you stay here in the Moselle
Valley?"
"Yes--I suppose so."
"You are very near the Rhine."
"There will be--there shall be no invasion," she said,
feverishly. "France also ends at the Rhine; let them look to
their own!"
She moved impatiently, stepped from the stones to the damp
gravel, and walked slowly across the misty lawn. He followed,
leading the horses behind him and holding his telegram open in
his right hand. Presently she looked back over her shoulder, saw
him following, and waited.
"Why, will you go as war correspondent?" she asked when he came
up, leading the saddled horses.
"I don't know; I was on the _Herald_ staff in New York; they gave
me a roving commission, which I enjoyed so much that I resigned
and stayed in Paris. I had not dreamed that I should ever be
needed--I did not think of anything like this."
"Have you never seen war?"
"Nothing to speak of. I was the _Herald's_ representative at
Sadowa, and before that I saw some Kabyles shot in Oran. Where
are you going?"
"To the river. We can hear the carriage when it comes, and I want
to see the lights of the Château de Nesville."
"From the river? Can you?"
"Yes--the trees are cut away north of the boat-house. Look! I
told you so. My father is there alone."
Far away in the night the lights of the Château de Nesville
glimmered between the trees, smaller, paler, yellower than the
splendid stars that crowned the black vault above the forest.
After a silence she reached out her hand abruptly and took the
telegram from between his fingers. In the starlight she read it,
once, twice; then raised her head and smiled at him.
"Are you going?"
"I don't know. Yes."
"No," she said, and tore the telegram into bits.
One by one she tossed the pieces on to the bosom of the placid
Lisse, where they sailed away towards the Moselle like dim, blue
blossoms floating idly with the current.
"Are you angry?" she whispered.
He saw that she was trembling, and that her face had grown very
pale.
"What is the matter?" he asked, amazed.
"The matter--the matter is this: I--I--Lorraine de Nesville--am
afraid! I am afraid! It is fear--it is fear!"
"Fear?" he asked, gently.
"Yes!" she cried. "Yes, it is fear! I cannot help it--I never
before knew it--that I--I could be afraid. Don't--don't leave
us--my father and me!" she cried, passionately. "We are so alone
there in the house--I fear the forest--I fear--"
She trembled violently; a wolf howled on the distant hill.
"I shall gallop back to the Château de Nesville with you," he said;
"I shall be close beside you, riding by your carriage-window. Don't
tremble so--Mademoiselle de Nesville."
"It is terrible," she stammered; "I never knew I was a coward."
"You are anxious for your father," he said, quietly; "you are no
coward!"
"I am--I tremble--see! I shiver."
"It was the wolf--"
"Ah, yes--the wolf that warned us of war! and the men--that one who
made maps; I never could do again what I did! Then I was afraid of
nothing; now I fear everything--the howl of that beast on the hill,
the wind in the trees, the ripple of the Lisse--C'est plus fort que
moi--I am a coward. Listen! Can you hear the carriage?"
"No."
"Listen--ah, listen!"
"It is the noise of the river."
"The river? How black it is! Hark!"
"The wind."
"Hark!"
"The wind again--"
"Look!" She seized his arm frantically. "Look! Oh, what--what was
that?"
The report of a gun, faint but clear, came to their ears.
Something flashed from the lighted windows of the Château de
Nesville--another flash broke out--another--then three dull
reports sounded, and the night wind spread the echoes broadcast
among the wooded hills.
For a second she stood beside him, white, rigid, speechless; then
her little hand crushed his arm and she pushed him violently
towards the horses.
"Mount!" she cried; "ride! ride!"
Scarcely conscious of what he did, he backed one of the horses,
seized the gathered bridle and mane, and flung himself astride.
The horse reared, backed again, and stood stamping. At the same
instant he swung about in his saddle and cried, "Go back to the
house!"
But she was already in the saddle, guiding the other horse, her
silken skirts crushed, her hair flying, sawing at the bridle-bit
with gloved fingers. The wind lifted the cloak on her shoulders,
her little satin slipper sought one stirrup.
"Ride!" she gasped, and lashed her horse.
He saw her pass him in a whirl of silken draperies streaming in
the wind; the swan's-down cloak hid her body like a cloud. In a
second he was galloping at her bridle-rein; and both horses, nose
to nose and neck to neck, pounded across the gravel drive,
wheeled, leaped forward, and plunged down the soft wood road,
straight into the heart of the forest. The lace from her corsage
fluttered in the air; the lilies at her breast fell one by one,
strewing the road with white blossoms. The wind loosened her
heavy hair to the neck, seized it, twisted it, and flung it out
on the wind. Under the clusters of ribbon on her shoulders there
was a gleam of ivory; her long gloves slipped to the wrists; her
hair whipped the rounded arms, bare and white below the riotous
ribbons, snapping and fluttering on her shoulders; her cloak
unclasped at the throat and whirled to the ground, trampled into
the forest mould.
They struck a man in the darkness; they heard him shriek; the
horses staggered an instant, that was all, except a gasp from the
girl, bending with whitened cheeks close to her horse's mane.
"Look out! A lantern!--close ahead!" panted Marche.
The sharp crack of a revolver cut him short, his horse leaped
forward, the blood spurting from its neck.
"Are you hit?" he cried.
"No! no! Ride!"
Again and again, but fainter and fainter, came the crack! crack!
of the revolver, like a long whip snapped in the wind.
"Are you hit?" he asked again.
"Yes, it is nothing! Ride!"
In the darkness and confusion of the plunging horses he managed
to lean over to her where she bent in her saddle; and, on one
white, round shoulder, he saw the crimson welt of a bullet, from
which the blood was welling up out of the satin skin.
And now, in the gloom, the park wall loomed up along the river,
and he shouted for the lodge-keeper, rising in his stirrups; but
the iron gate swung wide, and the broad, empty avenue stretched
up to the Château.
They galloped up to the door; he slipped from his horse, swung
Lorraine to the ground, and sprang up the low steps. The door was
open, the long hall brilliantly lighted.
"It is I--Lorraine!" cried the girl. A tall, bearded man burst in
from a room on the left, clutching a fowling-piece.
"Lorraine! They've got the box! The balloon secret was in it!" he
groaned; "they are in the house yet--" He stared wildly at Marche,
then at his daughter. His face was discoloured with bruises, his
thick, blond hair fell in disorder across steel-blue eyes that
gleamed with fury.
Almost at the same moment there came a crash of glass, a heavy
fall from the porch, and then a shot.
In an instant Marche was at the door; he saw a game-keeper raise
his gun and aim at him, and he shrank back as the report roared
in his ears.
"You fool!" he shouted; "don't shoot at me! drop your gun and
follow!" He jumped to the ground and started across the garden
where a dark figure was clutching the wall and trying to climb to
the top. He was too late--the man was over; but he followed,
jumped, caught the tiled top, and hurled himself headlong into
the bushes below.
Close to him a man started from the thicket, and ran down the wet
road--splash! splash! slop! slop! through the puddles; but Marche
caught him and dragged him down into the mud, where they rolled
and thrashed and spattered and struck each other. Twice the man
tore away and struggled to his feet, and twice Marche fastened to
his knees until the huge, lumbering body swayed and fell again.
It might have gone hard with Jack, for the man suddenly dropped
the steel box he was clutching to his breast and fell upon the
young fellow with a sullen roar. His knotted, wiry fingers had
already found Jack's throat; he lifted the young fellow's head
and strove to break his neck. Then, in a flash, he leaped back
and lifted a heavy stone from the wall; at the same instant
somebody fired at him from the wall; he wheeled and sprang into
the woods.
That was all Jack Marche knew until a lantern flared in his
eyes, and he saw Lorraine's father, bright-eyed, feverish,
dishevelled, beside him.
"Raise him!" said a voice that he knew was Lorraine's.
They lifted Jack to his knees; he stumbled to his feet, torn,
bloody, filthy with mud, but in his arms, clasped tight, was the
steel box, intact.
"Lorraine!--my box!--look!" cried her father, and the lantern
shook in his hands as he clutched the casket.
But Lorraine stepped forward and flung both arms around Jack
Marche's neck.
Her face was deadly pale; the blood oozed from the wounded
shoulder. For the first time her father saw that she had been
shot. He stared at her, clutching the steel box in his nervous
hands.
With all the strength she had left she crushed Jack to her and
kissed him. Then, weak with the loss of blood, she leaned on her
father.
"I am going to faint," she whispered; "help me, father."
VI
TRAINS EAST AND WEST
It was dawn when Jack Marche galloped into the court-yard of the
Château Morteyn and wearily dismounted. People were already
moving about the upper floors; servants stared at him as he
climbed the steps to the terrace; his face was scratched, his
clothes smeared with caked mud and blood.
He went straight to his chamber, tore off his clothes, took a
hasty plunge in a cold tub, and rubbed his aching limbs until
they glowed. Then he dressed rapidly, donned his riding breeches
and boots, slipped a revolver into his pocket, and went
down-stairs, where he could already hear the others at breakfast.
Very quietly and modestly he told his story between sips of
café-au-lait.
"You see," he ended, "that the country is full of spies, who
hesitate at nothing. There were three or four of them who tried
to rob the Château; they seem perfectly possessed to get at the
secrets of the Marquis de Nesville's balloons. There is no doubt
but that for months past they have been making maps of the whole
region in most minute detail; they have evidently been expecting
this war for a long time. Incidentally, now that war is declared,
they have opened hostilities on their own account."
"You did for some of them?" asked Sir Thorald, who had been
fidgeting and staring at Jack through a gold-edged monocle.
"No--I--we rode down and trampled a man in the dark; I should
think it would have been enough to brain him, but when I galloped
back just now he was gone, and I don't know how badly he was
hit."
"But the fellow that started to smash you with a
paving-stone--the Marquis de Nesville fired at him, didn't he?"
insisted Sir Thorald.
"Yes, I think he hit him, but it was a long shot. Lorraine was
superb--"
He stopped, colouring up a little.
"She did it all," he resumed--"she rode through the woods like a
whirlwind! Good heavens! I never saw such a cyclone incarnate!
And her pluck when she was hit!--and then very quietly she went
to her father and fainted in his arms."
Jack had not told all that had happened. The part that he had not
told was the part that he thought of most--Lorraine's white arms
around his neck and the touch of her innocent lips on his
forehead. In silent consternation the young people listened;
Dorothy slipped out of her chair and came and rested her hands on
her brother's shoulder; Betty Castlemaine looked at Cecil with
large, questioning eyes that asked, "Would you do something
heroic for me?" and Cecil's eyes replied, "Oh, for a chance to
annihilate a couple of regiments!" This pleased Betty, and she
ate a muffin with appreciation. The old vicomte leaned heavily on
his elbow and looked at his wife, who sat opposite, pallid and
eating nothing. He had decided to remain at Morteyn, but this
episode disquieted him--not on his own account.
"Helen," he said, "Jack and I will stay, but you must go with the
children. There is no danger--there can be no invasion, for our
troops will be passing here by night; I only wish to be sure
that--that in case--in case things should go dreadfully wrong,
you would not be compelled to witness anything unpleasant."
Madame de Morteyn shook her head gently.
"Why speak of it?" she said; "you know I will not go."
"I'll stay, too," said Sir Thorald, eagerly; "Cecil and Molly can
take the children to Paris; Madame de Morteyn, you really should
go also."
She leaned back and shook her head decisively.
"Then you will both come, you and Madame de Morteyn?" urged Lady
Hesketh of the vicomte.
The old man hesitated. His wife smiled. She knew he could not
leave in the face of the enemy; she had been the wife of this old
African campaigner for thirty years, and she knew what she knew.
"Helen--" he began.
"Yes, dear, we will both stay; the city is too hot in July," she
said; "Sir Thorald, some coffee? No more? Betty, you want another
muffin?--they are there by Cecil. Children, I think I hear the
carriages coming; you must not make Lady Hesketh wait."
"I have half a mind to stay," said Molly Hesketh. Sir Thorald
said she might if she wanted to enlist, and they all tried to
smile, but the sickly gray of early morning, sombre, threatening,
fell on faces haggard with foreboding--young faces, too, lighted
by the pale flames of the candles.
Alixe von Elster and Barbara Lisle went first; there were tears
and embraces, and au revoirs and aufwiedersehens.
Little Alixe blanched and trembled when Sir Thorald bent over
her, not entirely unconscious of the havoc his drooping mustache
and cynical eyes had made in her credulous German bosom. Molly
Hesketh kissed her, wishing that she could pinch her; and so they
left, tearful, anxious, to be driven to Courtenay, and whirled
from there across the Rhine to Cologne.
Sir Thorald and Lady Hesketh lingered on the terrace after the
others had returned to the breakfast-room.
"Thorald," she said, "you are a brute!"
"Eh?" cried Sir Thorald.
"You're a brute!"
"Molly, what the deuce is the matter?"
"Nothing--if you ever see her again, I'll tell Ricky."
"I might say the same thing in regard to Ricky, my dear," said
Sir Thorald, mildly.
"It is not true," she said; "I did no damage to him; and you
know--you know down in the depths of your fickle soul that--that--"
"What, my dear?"
"Never mind!" said Molly, sharply; but she crimsoned when he
kissed her, and held tightly to his sleeve.
"Good ged!" thought Sir Thorald; "what a devil I am with women!"
But now the carriages drove up--coupés, dog-carts, and a
victoria.
"They say we ought not to miss this train," said Cecil, coming
from the stables and flourishing a whip; "they say the line may
be seized for government use exclusively in a few hours."
The old house-keeper, Madame Paillard, nodded and pointed to her
son, the under-keeper.
"François says, Monsieur Page, that six trains loaded with troops
passed through Saint-Lys between midnight and dawn; dis,
François, c'est le Sieur Bosz qui t'a renseigné--pas?"
"Oui, mamam!"
"Then hurry," said Lady Hesketh. "Thorald, call the others."
"I," said Cecil, "am going to drive Betty in the dog-cart."
"She'll probably take the reins," said Sir Thorald, cynically.
Cecil brandished his whip and looked determined; but it was Betty
who drove him to Saint-Lys station, after all.
The adieux were said, even more tearfully this time. Jack kissed
his sister tenderly, and she wept a little on his shoulder--thinking
of Rickerl.
One by one the vehicles rolled away down the gravel drive; and
last of all came Molly Hesketh in the coupé with Jack Marche.
Molly was sad and a trifle distraite. Those periodical mental
illuminations during which she discovered for the thousandth and odd
time that she loved her husband usually left her fairly innocuous.
But she was a born flirt; the virus was bred in the bone, and after
the first half-mile she opened her batteries--her eyes--as a matter
of course on Jack.
What she got for her pains was a little sermon ending, "See here,
Molly--three years ago you played the devil with me until I
kissed you, and then you were furious and threatened to tell Sir
Thorald. The truth is, you're in love with him, and there is no
more harm in you than there is in a china kitten."
"Jack!" she gasped.
"And," he resumed, "you live in Paris, and you see lots of things
and you hear lots of things that you don't hear and see in
Lincolnshire. But you're British, Molly, and you are domestic,
although you hate the idea, and there will never be a desolated
hearth in the Hesketh household as long as you speak your
mother-tongue and read Anthony Trollope."
The rest of the road was traversed in silence. They rattled over
the stones in the single street of Saint-Lys, rolled into the
gravel oval behind the Gare, and drew up amid a hubbub of
restless teams, market-wagons, and station-trucks.
"See the soldiers!" said Jack, lifting Lady Hesketh to the
platform, where the others were already gathered in a circle. A
train was just gliding out of the station, bound eastward, and
from every window red caps projected and sunburned, boyish faces
expanded into grins as they saw Lady Hesketh and her charges.
"Vive l'Angleterre!" they cried. "Vive Madame la Reine! Vive
Johnbull et son rosbif!" the latter observation aimed at Sir
Thorald.
Sir Thorald waved his eye-glass to them condescendingly; faster
and faster moved the train; the red caps and fresh, tanned
faces, the laughing eyes became a blur and then a streak; and far
down the glistening track the faint cheers died away and were
drowned in the roar of the wheels--little whirling wheels that
were bearing them merrily to their graves at Wissembourg.
"Here comes our train," said Cecil. "Jack, my boy, you'll
probably see some fun; take care of your hide, old chap!" He
didn't mean to be patronizing, but he had Betty demurely leaning
on his arm, and--dear me!--how could he help patronizing the
other poor devils in the world who had not Betty, and who never
could have Betty?
"Montez, madame, s'il vous plait!--Montez, messieurs!" cried the
Chef de Gare; "last train for Paris until Wednesday! All aboard!"
and he slammed and locked the doors, while the engineer, leaning
impatiently from his cab, looked back along the line of cars and
blew his whistle warningly.
"Good-by, Dorrie!" cried Jack.
"Good-by, my darling Jack! Be careful; you will, won't you?" But
she was still thinking of Rickerl, bless her little heart!
Lady Hesketh waved him a demure adieu from the open window,
relented, and gave his hand a hasty squeeze with her gloved
fingers.
"Take care of Lorraine," she said, solemnly; then laughed at his
telltale eyes, and leaned back on her husband's shoulder, still
laughing.
The cars were gliding more swiftly past the platform now; he
caught a glimpse of Betty kissing her hand to him, of Cecil
bestowing a gracious adieu, of Sir Thorald's eye-glass--then they
were gone; and far up the tracks the diminishing end of the last
car dwindled to a dark square, a spot, a dot, and was ingulfed in
a flurry of dust. As he turned away and passed along the platform
to the dog-cart, there came a roar, a shriek of a locomotive, a
rush, and a train swept by towards the east, leaving a blear of
scarlet in his eyes, and his ears ringing with the soldiers'
cheers: "Vive la France! Vive l'Empereur! À Berlin! À Berlin! À
Berlin!" A furtive-eyed young peasant beside him shrugged his
shoulders.
"Bismarck has called for the menu; his cannon are hungry," he
sneered; "there goes the bill of fare."
"That's very funny," said a fierce little man with a gray
mustache, "but the bill of fare isn't complete--the class of '71
has just been called out!" and he pointed to a placard freshly
pasted on the side of the station.
"The--the class of '71?" muttered the furtive-eyed peasant,
turning livid.
"Exactly--the bill of fare needs the hors d'oeuvres; you'll go as
an olive, and probably come back a sardine--in a box."
And the fierce little man grinned, lighted a cigarette, and
sauntered away, still grinning.
What did he care? He was a pompier and exempt.
VII
THE ROAD TO PARADISE
The road between Saint-Lys and Morteyn was not a military road,
but it was firm and smooth, and Jack drove back again towards the
Château at a smart trot, flicking at leaves and twigs with
Cecil's whip.
The sun had brushed the veil of rain from the horizon; the
leaves, fresh and tender, stirred and sparkled with dew in the
morning breeze, and all the air was sweet-scented. In the
stillness of the fields, where wheat stretched along the road
like a green river tinged with gold, there was something that
troubled him. Silence is oppressive to sinners and prophets. He
concluded he was the former, and sighed restlessly, looking out
across the fields, where, deep in the stalks of the wheat,
blood-red poppies opened like raw wounds. At other times he had
compared them to little fairy camp-fires; but his mood was
pessimistic, and he saw, in the furrows that the plough had
raised, the scars on the breast of a tortured earth; and he read
sermons in bundles of fresh-cut fagots; and death was written
where a sickle lay beside a pile of grass, crisping to hay in the
splendid sun of Lorraine.
What he did not see were the corn-flowers peeping at him with
dewy blue eyes; the vineyards, where the fruit hung faintly
touched with bloom; the field birds, the rosy-breasted finches,
the thrush, as speckled as her own eggs--no, nor did he hear
them; for the silence that weighed on his heart came from his
heart. Yet all the summer wind was athrill with harmony.
Thousands of feathered throats swelled and bubbled melody, from
the clouds to the feathery heath, from the scintillating azure in
the zenith to the roots of the glittering wheat where the
corn-flowers lay like bits of blue sky fallen to the earth.
As he drove he thought of Lorraine, of her love for her father
and her goodness. He already recognized that dominant passion in
her, her unselfish adoration of her father--a father who sat all
day behind bolted doors trifling with metals and gases and little
spinning, noiseless wheels. The selfish to the unselfish, the
dead to the living, the dwarf to the giant, and the sinner to the
saint--this is the world and they that dwell therein.
He thought of her as he had seen her last, smiling up into the
handsome, bearded face that questioned her. No, the wound was
nothing--a little blood lost--enough to make her faint at his
feet--that was all. But his precious box was safe--and she had
flung her loyal arms about the man who saved it and had kissed
him before her father, because he had secured what was dearer to
her than life--her father's happiness--a little metal box full of
it.
Her father was very grateful and very solicitous about her
wounded shoulder; but he opened his box before he thought about
bandages. Everything was intact, except the conservatory window
and his daughter's shoulder. Both could be mended--but his box!
ah, that, if lost, could never be replaced.
Jack's throat was hard and dry. A lump came into it, and he
swallowed with a shrug, and flicked at a fly on the headstall. A
vision of Sir Thorald, bending over little Alixe, came before his
eyes. "Pah!" he muttered, in disgust. Sir Thorald was one of
those men who cease to care for a woman when she begins to care
for them. Jack knew it; that was why he had been so gentle with
Molly Hesketh, who had turned his head when he was a boy and
given him his first emotions--passion, hate--and then knowledge;
for of all the deep emotions that a man shall know before he dies
the first consciousness of knowledge is the most profound; it
sounds the depths of heaven and hell in the space of time that
the heart beats twice.
He was passing through the woods now, the lovely oak and beech
woods of Lorraine. An ancient dame, bending her crooked back
beneath a load of fagots, gave him "God bless you!" and he drew
rein and returned the gift--but his was in silver, with the head
of his imperial majesty stamped on one side.
As he drove, rabbits ran back into the woods, hoisting their
white signals of conciliation. "Peace and good will" they seemed
to read, "but a wise rabbit takes to the woods." Pheasants, too,
stepped daintily from under the filbert bushes, twisting their
gorgeous necks curiously as he passed. Once, in the hollow of a
gorge where a little stream trickled under layers of wet leaves,
he saw a wild-boar standing hock-deep in the ooze, rooting under
mosses and rotten branches, absorbed in his rooting. Twice deer
leaped from the young growth on the edge of the fields and
bounded lazily into denser cover, only to stop when half
concealed and stare back at him with gentle, curious eyes. The
horse pricked up his ears at such times and introduced a few
waltz steps into his steady if monotonous repertoire, but Jack
let him have his fling, thinking that the deer were as tame as
the horse, and both were tamer than man.
Excepting the black panther, man has learned his lesson slowest
of all, the lesson of acquiescence in the inevitable.
"I'll never learn it," said Jack, aloud. His voice startled
him--it was trembling.
Lorraine! Lorraine! Life has begun for a very young man. Teach
him to see and bring him to accept existence in the innocence of
your knowledge; for, if he and the world collide, he fears the
result to the world.
A few moments later he drove into Paradise, which is known to
some as the Château de Nesville.
VIII
UNDER THE YOKE
During the next two weeks Jack Marche drove into Paradise
fourteen times, and fourteen times he drove out of Paradise, back
to the Château Morteyn. Heaven is nearer than people suppose; it
was three miles from the road shrine at Morteyn.
Our Lady of Morteyn, sculptured in the cold stone above the
shrine, had looked with her wide stone eyes on many lovers, and
had known they were lovers because their piety was as sudden as
it was fervid.
Twice a day Jack's riding-cap was reverently doffed as he drew
bridle before the shrine, going and coming from Paradise.
At evening, too, when the old vicomte slept on his pillow and the
last light went out in the stables, Our Lady of Morteyn saw a
very young man sitting, with his head in his hands, at her feet;
and he took no harm from the cold stones, because Our Lady of
Morteyn is gentle and gracious, and the summer nights were hot in
the province of Lorraine.
There had been little stir or excitement in Morteyn. Even in
Saint-Lys, where all day and all night the troop-trains rushed
by, the cheers of the war-bound soldiers leaning from the flying
cars were becoming monotonous in the ears of the sober villagers.
When the long, flat cars, piled with cannon, passed, the people
stared at the slender guns, mute, canvas-covered, tilted skyward.
They stared, too, at the barred cars, rolling past in interminable
trains, loaded with horses and canvas-jacketed troopers who peered
between the slats and shouted to the women in the street. Other
trains came and went, trains weighted with bellowing cattle or
huddled sheep, trains choked with small square boxes marked
"Cartouches" or "Obus--7^me"; trains piled high with grain or
clothing, or folded tents packed between varnished poles and piles
of tin basins. Once a little excitement came to Saint-Lys when a
battalion of red-legged infantry tramped into the village square
and stacked rifles and jeered at the mayor and drank many bottles
of red wine to the health of the shy-eyed girls peeping at them
from every lattice. But they were only waiting for the next train,
and when it came their bugles echoed from the bridge to the square,
and they went away--went where the others had gone--laughing,
singing, cheering from the car-windows, where the sun beat down
on their red caps, and set their buttons glittering like a million
swarming fire-flies.
The village life, the daily duties, the dull routine from the
vineyard to the grain-field, and from the étang to the forest had
not changed in Saint-Lys.
There might be war somewhere; it would never come to Saint-Lys.
There might be death, yonder towards the Rhine--probably beyond
it, far beyond it. What of it? Death comes to all, but it comes
slowly in Saint-Lys; and the days are long, and one must eat to
live, and there is much to be done between the rising and the
setting of a peasant's sun.
There, below in Paris, were wise heads and many soldiers. They,
in Paris, knew what to do, and the war might begin and end with
nothing but a soiled newspaper in the Café Saint-Lys to show for
it--as far as the people of Saint-Lys knew.
True, at the summons of the mayor, the National Guard of
Saint-Lys mustered in the square, seven strong and a bugler. This
was merely a display of force--it meant nothing--but let those
across the Rhine beware!
The fierce little man with the gray mustache, who was named
Tricasse, and who commanded the Saint-Lys Pompiers, spoke gravely
of Francs-corps, and drank too much eau-de-vie every evening. But
these warlike ebullitions simmered away peacefully in the
sunshine, and the tranquil current of life flowed as smoothly
through Saint-Lys as the river Lisse itself, limpid, noiseless,
under the village bridge.
Only one man had left the village, and that was Brun, the
furtive-eyed young peasant, the sole representative in Saint-Lys
of the conscript class of 1871. And he would never have gone had
not a gendarme pulled him from under his mother's bed and hustled
him on to the first Paris-bound train, which happened to be a
cattle train, where Brun mingled his lamentations with the
bleating of sheep and the desolate bellow of thirsty cows.
Jack Marche heard of these things but saw little of them. The
great war wave rolling through the provinces towards the Rhine
skirted them at Saint-Lys, and scarcely disturbed them. They
heard that Douay was marching through the country somewhere, some
said towards Wissembourg, some said towards Saarbrück. But these
towns were names to the peasants of Saint-Lys--tant pis for the
two towns! And General Douay--who was he? Probably a fat man in
red breeches and polished boots, wearing a cocked-hat and a cross
on his breast. Anyway, they would chase the Prussians and kill a
few, as they had chased the Russians in the Crimea, and the
Italians in Rome, and the Kabyles in Oran. The result? Nothing
but a few new colours for the ribbons in their sweethearts'
hair--like that pretty Magenta and Solferino and Sebastopol gray.
"Fichtre! Faut-il gaspiller tout de même! mais, à la guerre comme
à la guerre!" which meant nothing in Saint-Lys.
It meant more to Jack Marche, riding one sultry afternoon through
the woods, idly drumming on his spurred boots with a battered
riding-crop.
It was his daily afternoon ride to the Château de Nesville; the
shy wood creatures were beginning to know him, even the younger
rabbits of the most recent generation sat up and mumbled their
prehensile lips, watching him with large, moist eyes. As for the
red squirrels in the chestnut-trees, and the dappled deer in the
carrefours, and the sulky boars that bristled at him from the
overgrown sentiers, they accepted him on condition that he kept
to the road. And he did, head bent, thoughtful eyes fixed on his
saddle-bow, drumming absently with his riding-crop on his spurred
boots, his bridle loose on his horse's neck.
There was little to break the monotony of the ride; a sudden gush
of song from a spotted thrush, the rustle of a pheasant in the
brake, perhaps the modest greeting of a rare keeper patrolling
his beat--nothing more. He went armed; he carried a long Colt's
six-shooter in his holster, not because he feared for his own
skin, but he thought it just as well to be ready in case of
trouble at the Château de Nesville. However, he did not fear
trouble again; the French armies were moving everywhere on the
frontier, and the spies, of course, had long ago betaken
themselves and their projects to the other bank of the Rhine.
The Marquis de Nesville himself felt perfectly secure, now that
the attempt had been made and had failed.
He told Jack so on the few occasions when he descended from his
room during the young fellow's visits. He made not the slightest
objections to Jack's seeing Lorraine when and where he pleased,
and this very un-Gallic behaviour puzzled Jack until he began to
comprehend the depths of the man's selfish absorption in his
balloons. It was more than absorption, it was mania pure and
simple, an absolute inability to see or hear or think or
understand anything except his own devices in the little bolted
chamber above.
He did care for Lorraine to the extent of providing for her every
want--he did remember her existence when he wanted something
himself. Also it was true that he would not have permitted a
Frenchman to visit Lorraine as Jack did. He hated two persons;
one of these was Jack's uncle, the Vicomte de Morteyn. On the
other hand, he admired him, too, because the vicomte, like
himself, was a royalist and shunned the Tuileries as the devil
shuns holy water. Therefore he was his equal, and he liked him
because he could hate him without loss of self-respect. The
reason he hated him was this--the Vicomte de Morteyn had
pooh-poohed the balloons. That occurred years ago, but he never
forgot it, and had never seen the old vicomte since. Whether or
not Lorraine visited the old people at Morteyn, he had neither
time nor inclination to inquire.
This was the man, tall, gentle, clean-cut of limb and feature,
and bearded like Jove--this was the man to whom Lorraine devoted
her whole existence. Every heart-beat was for him, every thought,
every prayer. And she was very devout.
This also was why she came to Jack so confidently and laid her
white hands in his when he sprang from his saddle, his heart in
flames of adoration.
He knew this, he knew that her undisguised pleasure in his
company was, for her, only another link that welded her closer to
her father. At night, often, when he had ridden back again, he
thought of it, and paled with resentment. At times he almost
hated her father. He could have borne it easier if the Marquis de
Nesville had been a loving father, even a tyrannically solicitous
father; but to see such love thrown before a marble-faced man,
whose expression never changed except when speaking of his
imbecile machines! "How can he! How can he!" muttered Jack,
riding through the woods. His face was sombre, almost stern; and
always he beat the devil's tattoo on his boot with the battered
riding-crop.
But now he came to the park gate, and the keeper touched his cap
and smiled, and dragged the heavy grille back till it creaked on
its hinges.
Lorraine came down the path to meet him; she had never before
done that, and he brightened and sprang to the ground, radiant
with happiness.
She had brought some sugar for the horse; the beautiful creature
followed her, thrusting its soft, satin muzzle into her hand,
ears pricked forward, wise eyes fixed on her.
"None for me?" asked Jack.
"Sugar?"
With a sudden gesture she held a lump out to him in the centre of
her pink palm.
Before she could withdraw the hand he had touched it with his
lips, and, a little gravely, she withdrew it and walked on in
silence by his side.
Her shoulder had healed, and she no longer wore the silken
support for her arm. She was dressed in black--the effect of her
glistening hair and blond skin was dazzling. His eyes wandered
from the white wrist, dainty and rounded, to the full curved
neck--to the delicate throat and proud little head. Her body,
supple as perfect Greek sculpture; her grace and gentle dignity;
her innocence, sweet as the light in her blue eyes, set him
dreaming again as he walked at her side, preoccupied, almost
saddened, a little afraid that such happiness as was his should
provoke the gods to end it.
He need not have taken thought for the gods, for the gods take
thought for themselves; and they were already busy at Saarbrück.
Their mills are not always slow in grinding; nor, on the other
hand, are they always sure. They may have been ages ago, but now
the gods are so out of date that saints and sinners have a chance
about equally.
They traversed the lawn, skirted the tall wall of solid masonry
that separated the chase from the park, and, passing a gate at
the hedge, came to a little stone bridge, beneath which the Lisse
ran dimpling. They watched the horse pursuing his own way
tranquilly towards the stables, and, when they saw a groom come
out and lead him in, they turned to each other, ready to begin
another day of perfect contentment.
First of all he asked about her shoulder, and she told him
truthfully that it was well. Then she inquired about the old
vicomte and Madame de Morteyn, and intrusted pretty little
messages to him for them, which he, unlike most young men,
usually remembered to deliver.
"My father," she said, "has not been to breakfast or dinner since
the day before yesterday. I should have been alarmed, but I
listened at the door and heard him moving about with his
machinery. I sent him some very nice things to eat; I don't know
if he liked them, for he sent no message back. Do you suppose he
is hungry?"
"No," said Jack; "if he were he would say so." He was careful not
to speak bitterly, and she noticed nothing.
"I believe," she said, "that he is about to make another
ascension. He often stays a long time in his room, alone, before
he is ready. Will it not be delightful? I shall perhaps be
permitted to go up with him. Don't you wish you might go with
us?"
"Yes," said Jack, with a little more earnestness than he
intended.
"Oh! you do? If you are very good, perhaps--perhaps--but I dare
not promise. If it were my balloon I would take you."
"Would you--really?"
"Of course--you know it. But it isn't my balloon, you know."
After a moment she went on: "I have been thinking all day how
noble and good it is of my father to consecrate his life to a
purpose that shall be of use to France. He has not said so, but I
know that, if the next ascension proves that his discovery is
beyond the chance of failure, he will notify the government and
place his invention at their disposal. Monsieur Marche, when I
think of his unselfish nobleness, the tears come--I cannot help
it."
"You, too, are noble," said Jack, resentfully.
"I? Oh, if you knew! I--I am actually wicked! Would you believe
it, I sometimes think and think and wish that my father could
spend more time with me--with me!--a most silly and thoughtless
girl who would sacrifice the welfare of France to her own
caprice. Think of it! I pray--very often--that I may learn to be
unselfish; but I must be very bad, for I often cry myself to
sleep. Is it not wicked?"
"Very," said Jack, but his smile faded and there was a catch in
his voice.
"You see," she said, with a gesture of despair, "even you feel
it, too!"
"Do you really wish to know what I do think--of you?" he asked,
in a low voice.
It was on the tip of her tongue to say "Yes." She checked
herself, lips apart, and her eyes became troubled.
There was something about Jack Marche that she had not been able
to understand. It occupied her--it took up a good share of her
attention, but she did not know where to begin to philosophize,
nor yet where to end. He was different from other men--that she
understood. But where was that difference?--in his clear, brown
eyes, sunny as brown streams in October?--in his serious young
face?--in his mouth, clean cut and slightly smiling under his
short, crisp mustache, burned blond by the sun? Where was the
difference?--in his voice?--in his gestures?--in the turn of his
head?
Lorraine did not know, but as often as she gave the riddle up she
recommenced it, idly sometimes, sometimes piqued that the
solution seemed no nearer. Once, the evening she had met him
after their first encounter in the forest carrefour--that evening
on the terrace when she stood looking out into the dazzling
Lorraine moonlight--she felt that the solution of the riddle had
been very near. But now, two weeks later, it seemed further off
than ever. And yet this problem, that occupied her so, must
surely be worth the solving. What was it, then, in Jack Marche
that made him what he was?--gentle, sweet-tempered, a delightful
companion--yes, a companion that she would not now know how to do
without.
And yet, at times, there came into his eyes and into his voice
something that troubled her--she could not tell why--something
that mystified and checked her, and set her thinking again on the
old, old problem that had seemed so near solution that evening on
the moonlit terrace.
That was why she started to say "Yes" to his question, and did
not, but stood with lips half parted and blue eyes troubled.
He looked at her in silence for a moment, then, with a
half-impatient gesture, turned to the river.
"Shall we sit down on the moss?" she asked, vaguely conscious
that his sympathies had, for a moment, lost touch with hers.
He followed her down the trodden foot-path to the bank of the
stream, and, when she had seated herself at the foot of a
linden-tree, he threw himself at her feet.
They were silent. He picked up a faded bunch of blue corn-flowers
which they had left there, forgotten, the day before. One by one
he broke the blossoms from the stalks and tossed them into the
water.
She, watching them floating away under the bridge, thought of the
blue bits of paper--the telegram--that she had torn up and tossed
upon the water two weeks before. He was thinking of the same
thing, for, when she said, abruptly: "I should not have done
that!" he knew what she meant, and replied: "Such things are
always your right--if you care to use it."
She laughed. "Then you believe still in the feudal system? I do
not; I am a good republican."
"It is easy," he said, also laughing, "for a young lady with
generations of counts and vicomtes behind her to be a republican.
It is easier still for a man with generations of republicans
behind him to turn royalist. It is the way of the world,
mademoiselle."
"Then you shall say: 'Long live the king!'" she said; "say it
this instant!"
"Long live--your king!"
"My king?"
"I'm his subject if you are; I'll shout for no other king."
"Now, whatever is he talking about?" thought Lorraine, and the
suspicion of a cloud gathered in her clear eyes again, but was
dissipated at once when he said: "I have answered the _Herald's_
telegram."
"What did you say?" she asked, quickly.
"I accepted--"
"What!"
There was resentment in her voice. She felt that he had done
something which was tacitly understood to be against her wishes.
True, what difference did it make to her? None; she would lose a
delightful companion. Suddenly, something of the significance of
such a loss came to her. It was not a revelation, scarcely an
illumination, but she understood that if he went she should be
lonely--yes, even unhappy. Then, too, unconsciously, she had
assumed a mental attitude of interest in his movements--of
partial proprietorship in his thoughts. She felt vaguely that she
had been overlooked in the decision he had made; that even if she
had not been consulted, at least he might have told her what he
intended to do. Lorraine was at a loss to understand herself. But
she was easily understood. For two weeks her attitude had been
that of every innocent, lovable girl when in the presence of the
man whom she frankly cares for; and that attitude was one of
mental proprietorship. Now, suddenly finding that his sympathies
and ideas moved independently of her sympathies--that her mental
influence, which existed until now unconsciously, was in reality
no influence at all, she awoke to the fact that she perhaps
counted for nothing with him. Therefore resentment appeared in
the faintest of straight lines between her eyes.
"Do you care?" he asked, carelessly.
"I? Why, no."
If she had smiled at him and said "Yes," he would have despaired;
but she frowned a trifle and said "No," and Jack's heart began to
beat.
"I cabled them two words: 'Accept--provisionally,'" he said.
"Oh, what did you mean?"
"Provisionally meant--with your consent."
"My--my consent?"
"Yes--if it is your pleasure."
Pleasure! Her sweet eyes answered what her lips withheld. Her
little heart beat high. So then she did influence this cool young
man, with his brown eyes faintly smiling, and his indolent limbs
crossed on the moss at her feet. At the same moment her instinct
told her to tighten her hold. This was so perfectly feminine, so
instinctively human, that she had done it before she herself was
aware of it. "I shall think it over," she said, looking at him,
gravely; "I may permit you to accept."
So was accomplished the admitted subjugation of Jack Marche--a
stroke of diplomacy on his part; and he passed under the yoke in
such a manner that even the blindest of maids could see that he
was not vaulting over it instead.
Having openly and admittedly established her sovereignty, she was
happy--so happy that she began to feel that perhaps the victory
was not unshared by him.
"I shall think it over very seriously," she repeated, watching
his laughing eyes; "I am not sure that I shall permit you to go."
"I only wish to go as a special, not a regular correspondent. I
wish to be at liberty to roam about and sketch or write what I
please. I think my material will always be found in your
vicinity."
Her heart fluttered a little; this surprised her so much that her
cheeks grew suddenly warm and pink. A little confused, she said
what she had not dreamed of saying: "You won't go very far away,
will you?" And before she could modify her speech he had
answered, impetuously: "Never, until you send me away!"
A mottled thrush on the top of the linden-tree surveyed the scene
curiously. She had never beheld such a pitiably embarrassed young
couple in all her life. It was so different in Thrushdom.
Lorraine's first impulse was to go away and close several doors
and sit down, very still, and think. Her next impulse was to stay
and see what Jack would do. He seemed to be embarrassed, too--he
fidgeted and tossed twigs and pebbles into the river. She felt
that she, who already admittedly was arbiter of his goings and
comings, should do something to relieve this uneasy and strained
situation. So she folded her hands on her black dress and said:
"There is something I have been wishing to tell you for two
weeks, but I did not because I was not sure that I was right, and
I did not wish to trouble you unnecessarily. Now, perhaps, you
would be willing to share the trouble with me. Would you?"
Before the eager answer came to his lips she continued, hastily: "The
man who made maps--the man whom you struck in the carrefour--is the
same man who ran away with the box; I know it!"
"That spy?--that tall, square-shouldered fellow with the pink
skin and little, pale, pinkish eyes?"
"Yes. I know his name, too."
Jack sat up on the moss and listened anxiously.
"His name is Von Steyr--Siurd von Steyr. It was written in pencil
on the back of one map. The morning after the assault on the
house, when they thought I was ill in bed, I got up and dressed
and went down to examine the road where you caught the man and
saved my father's little steel box. There I found a strip of
cloth torn from your evening coat, and--oh, Monsieur Marche!--I
found the great, flat stone with which he tried to crush you,
just as my father fired from the wall!"
The sudden memory, the thought of what might have happened, came
to her in a flash for the first time. She looked at him--her
hands were in his before she could understand why.
"Go on," he whispered.
Her eyes met his half fearfully--she withdrew her fingers with a
nervous movement and sat silent.
"Tell me," he urged, and took one of her hands again. She did not
withdraw it--she seemed confused; and presently he dropped her
hand and sat waiting for her to speak, his heart beating
furiously.
"There is not much more to tell," she said at last, in a voice
that seemed not quite under control. "I followed the broken
bushes and his footmarks along the river until I came to a stone
where I think he sat down. He was bleeding, too--my father shot
him--and he tore bits of paper and cloth to cover the wound--he
even tore up another map. I found part of it, with his name on
the back again--not all of it, though, but enough. Here it is."
She handed him a bit of paper. On one side were the fragments of
a map in water-colour; on the other, written in German script, he
read "Siurd von Steyr."
"It's enough," said Jack; "what a plucky girl you are, anyway!"
"I? You don't think so!--do you?"
"You are the bravest, sweetest--"
"Dear me! You must not say that! You are sadly uneducated, and I
see I must take you under my control at once. Man is born to
obey! I have decided about your answer to the _Herald's_
telegram."
"May I know the result?" he asked, laughingly.
"To-morrow. There is a brook-lily on the border of the sedge-grass.
You may bring it to me."
So began the education of Jack Marche--under the yoke. And
Lorraine's education began, too--but she was sublimely unconscious
of that fact.
This also is a law in the world.
IX
SAARBRÜCK
On the first day of August, late in the afternoon, a peasant
driving an exhausted horse pulled up at the Château Morteyn,
where Jack Marche stood on the terrace, smoking and cutting at
leaves with his riding-crop.
"What's the matter, Passerat?" asked Jack, good-humouredly; "are
the Prussians in the valley?"
"You are right, Monsieur Marche--the Prussians have crossed the
Saar!" blurted out the man. His face was agitated, and he wiped
the sweat from his cheeks with the sleeve of his blouse.
"Nonsense!" said Jack, sharply.
"Monsieur--I saw them! They chased me--the Uhlans with their
spears and devilish yellow horses."
"Where?" demanded Jack, with an incredulous shrug.
"I had been to Forbach, where my cousin Passerat is a miner in
the coal-mines. This morning I left to drive to Saint-Lys, having
in my wagon these sacks of coal that my cousin Passerat procured
for me, à prix réduit. It would take all day; I did not care--I
had bread and red wine--you understand, my cousin Passerat and I,
we had been gay in Saint-Avold, too--dame! we see each other
seldom. I may have had more eau-de-vie than another--it is
permitted on fête-days! Monsieur, I was tired--I possibly
slept--the road was hot. Then something awakes me; I rub my
eyes--behold me awake!--staring dumfounded at what? Parbleu!--at
two ugly Uhlans sitting on their yellow horses on a hill! 'No!
no!' I cry to myself; 'it is impossible!' It is a bad dream! Dieu
de Dieu! It is no dream! My Uhlans come galloping down the hill;
I hear them bawling 'Halt! Wer da!' It is terrible! 'Passerat!' I
shriek, 'it is the hour to vanish!'"
The man paused, overcome by emotions and eau-de-vie.
"Well," said Jack, "go on!"
"And I am here, monsieur," ended the peasant, hazily.
"Passerat, you said you had taken too much eau-de-vie?" suggested
Jack, with a smile of encouragement.
"Much? Monsieur, you do not believe me?"
"I believe you had a dream."
"Bon," said the peasant, "I want no more such dreams."
"Are you going to inform the mayor of Saint-Lys?" asked Jack.
"Of course," muttered Passerat, gathering up his reins; "heu!
da-da! heu! cocotte! en route!" and he rattled sulkily away,
perhaps a little uncertain himself as to the concreteness of his
recent vision.
Jack looked after him.
"There might be something in it," he mused, "but, dear me! his
nose is unpleasantly--sunburned."
That same morning, Lorraine had announced her decision. It was
that Jack might accept the position of special, or rather
occasional, war correspondent for the New York _Herald_ if he
would promise not to remain absent for more than a day at a time.
This, Jack thought, practically nullified the consent, for what
in the world could a man see of the campaign under such
circumstances? Still, he did not object; he was too happy.
"However," he thought, "I might ride over to Saarbrück. Suppose I
should be on hand at the first battle of the war?"
As a mere lad he had already seen service with the Austrians at
Sadowa; he had risked his modest head more than once in the
murderous province of Oran, where General Chanzy scoured the hot
plains like a scourge of Allah.
He had lived, too, at headquarters, and shared the officers' mess
where "cherba," "tadjines," "kous-kous," and "méchoin" formed the
menu, and a "Kreima Kebira" served as his roof. He had done his
duty as correspondent, merely because it was his duty; he would
have preferred an easier assignment, for he took no pleasure in
cruelty and death and the never-to-be-forgotten agony of proud,
dark faces, where mud-stained turbans hung in ribbons and
tinselled saddles reeked with Arab horses' blood.
War correspondent? It had happened to be his calling; but the
accident of his profession had been none of his own seeking. Now
that he needed nothing in the way of recompense, he hesitated to
take it up again. Instinctive loyalty to his old newspaper was
all that had induced him to entertain the idea. Loyalty and
deference to Lorraine compelled him to modify his acceptance.
Therefore it was not altogether idle curiosity, but partly a sense
of obligation, that made him think of riding to Saarbrück to see
what he could see for his journal within the twenty-four-hour
limit that Lorraine had set.
It was too late to ride over that evening and return in time to
keep his word to Lorraine, so he decided to start at daybreak,
realizing at the same time, with a pang, that it meant not seeing
Lorraine all day.
He went up to his chamber and sat down to think. He would write a
note to Lorraine; he had never done such a thing, and he hoped
she might not find fault with him.
He tossed his riding-crop on to the desk, picked up a pen, and
wrote carefully, ending the single page with, "It is reported
that Uhlans have been encountered in the direction of Saarbrück,
and, although I do not believe it, I shall go there to-morrow and
see for myself. I will be back within the twelve hours. May I
ride over to tell you about these mythical Uhlans when I return?"
He called a groom and bade him drive to the Château de Nesville
with the note. Then he went down to sit with the old vicomte and
Madame de Morteyn until it came dinner-time, and the oil-lamps in
the gilded salon were lighted, and the candles blazed up on
either side of the gilt French clock.
After dinner he played chess with his uncle until the old man
fell asleep in his chair. There was an interval of silence.
"Jack," said his aunt, "you are a dear, good boy. Tell me, do you
love our little Lorraine?"
The suddenness of the question struck him dumb. His aunt smiled;
her faded eyes were very tender and kindly, and she laid both
frail hands on his shoulders.
"It is my wish," she said, in a low voice; "remember that, Jack.
Now go and walk on the terrace, for she will surely answer your
note."
"How--how did you know I wrote her?" he stammered.
"When a young man sends his aunt's servants on such very
unorthodox errands, what can he expect, especially when those
servants are faithful?"
"That groom told you, Aunt Helen?"
"Yes. Jack, these French servants don't understand such things.
Be more careful, for Lorraine's sake."
"But--I will--but did the note reach her?"
His aunt smiled. "Yes. I took the responsibility upon myself, and
there will be no gossip."
Jack leaned over and kissed the amused mouth, and the old lady
gave him a little hug and told him to go and walk on the terrace.
The groom was already there, holding a note in one hand,
gilt-banded cap in the other.
His first letter from Lorraine! He opened it feverishly. In the
middle of a thin sheet of note-paper was written the motto of the
De Nesvilles, "Tiens ta Foy."
Beneath, in a girlish hand, a single line:
"I shall wait for you at dusk. Lorraine."
All night long, as he lay half asleep on his pillow, the words
repeated themselves in his drowsy brain: "Tiens ta Foy!" "Tiens
ta Foy!" (Keep thy Faith!). Aye, he would keep it unto death--he
knew it even in his slumber. But he did not know how near to
death that faith might lead him.
The wood-sparrows were chirping outside his window when he awoke.
It was scarcely dawn, but he heard the maid knocking at his door,
and the rattle of silver and china announced the morning coffee.
He stepped from his bed into the tub of cold water, yawning and
shivering, but the pallor of his skin soon gave place to a
healthy glow, and his clean-cut body and strong young limbs
hardened and grew pink and firm again under the coarse towel.
Breakfast he ate hastily by candle-light, and presently he
dressed, buckled his spurs over the insteps, caught up gloves,
cap, and riding-crop, and, slinging a field-glass over his
Norfolk jacket, lighted a pipe and went noiselessly down-stairs.
There was a chill in the gray dawn as he mounted and rode out
through the shadowy portals of the wrought-iron grille; a vapour,
floating like loose cobwebs, undulated above the placid river;
the tree-tops were festooned with mist. Save for the distant
chatter of wood-sparrows, stirring under the eaves of the
Château, the stillness was profound.
As he left the park and cantered into the broad red highway, he
turned in his saddle and looked towards the Château de Nesville.
At first he could not see it, but as he rode over the bridge he
caught a glimpse of the pointed roof and single turret, a dim
silhouette through the mist. Then it vanished in the films of
fog.
The road to Saarbrück was a military road, and easy travelling.
The character of the country had changed as suddenly as a
drop-scene falls in a theatre; for now all around stretched
fields cut into squares by hedges--fields deep-laden with
heavy-fruited strawberries, white and crimson. Currants, too,
glowed like strung rubies frosted with the dew; plum-trees spread
little pale shadows across the ruddy earth, and beyond them the
disk of the sun appeared, pushing upward behind a half-ploughed
hill. Everywhere slender fruit-trees spread their grafted
branches; everywhere in the crumbling furrows of the soil, warm
as ochre, the bunched strawberries hung like drops of red wine
under the sun-bronzed leaves.
The sun was an hour high when he walked his horse up the last
hill that hides the valley of the Saar. Already, through the
constant rushing melody of bird music, his ears had distinguished
another sound--a low, incessant hum, monotonous, interminable as
the noise of a stream in a gorge. It was not the river Saar
moving over its bed of sand and yellow pebbles; it was not the
breeze in the furze. He knew what it was; he had heard it before,
in Oran--in the stillness of dawn, where, below, among the
shadowy plains, an army was awaking under dim tents.
And now his horse's head rose up black against the sky; now the
valley broke into view below, gray, indistinct in the shadows,
crossed by ghostly lines of poplars that dwindled away to the
horizon.
At the same instant something moved in the fields to the left,
and a shrill voice called: "Qui-vive?" Before he could draw
bridle blue-jacketed cavalrymen were riding at either stirrup,
carbine on thigh, peering curiously into his face, pushing their
active light-bay horses close to his big black horse.
Jack laughed good-humouredly and fumbled in the breast of his
Norfolk jacket for his papers.
"I'm only a special," he said; "I think you'll find the papers in
order--if not, you've only to gallop back to the Château Morteyn
to verify them."
An officer with a bewildering series of silver arabesques on
either sleeve guided a nervous horse through the throng of
troopers, returned Jack's pleasant salute, reached out a gloved
hand for his papers, and read them, sitting silently in his
saddle. When he finished, he removed the cigarette from his lips,
looked eagerly at Jack, and said:
"You are from Morteyn?"
"Yes."
"A guest?"
"The Vicomte de Morteyn is my uncle."
The officer burst into a boyish laugh.
"Jack Marche!"
"Eh!" cried Jack, startled.
Then he looked more closely at the young officer before him, who
was laughing in his face.
"Well, upon my word! No--it can't be little Georges Carrière?"
"Yes, it can!" cried the other, briskly; "none of your damned
airs, Jack! Embrace me, my son!"
"My son, I won't!" said Jack, leaning forward joyously--"the
idea! Little Georges calls me his son! And he's learning the
paternal tricks of the old generals, and doubtless he calls his
troopers 'mes enfants,' and--"
"Oh, shut up!" said Georges, giving him an impetuous hug; "what
are you up to now--more war correspondence? For the same old
_Herald_? Nom d'une pipe! It's cooler here than in Oran. It'll
be hotter, too--in another way," with a gay gesture towards the
valley below. "Jack Marche, tell me all about everything!"
On either side the blue-jacketed troopers fell back, grinning
with sympathy as Georges guided his horse into a field on the
right, motioning Jack to follow.
"We can talk here a bit," he said; "you've lots of time to ride
on. Now, fire ahead!"
Jack told him of the three years spent in idleness, of the vapid
life in Paris, the long summers in Brittany, his desire to learn
to paint, and his despair when he found he couldn't.
"I can sketch like the mischief, though," he said. "Now tell me
about Oran, and our dear General Chanzy, and that devil's own
'Legion,' and the Hell's Selected 2d Zouaves! Do you remember
that day at Damas when Chanzy visited the Emir Abd-el-Kader at
Doummar, and the fifteen Spahis of the escort, and that little
imp of the Legion who was caught roaming around the harem, and--"
Georges burst into a laugh.
"I can't answer all that in a second! Wait! Do you want to know about
Chanzy? Well, he's still in Bel-Abbès, and he's been named commander
of the Legion of Honour, and he's no end of a swell. He'll be coming
back now that we've got to chase these sausage-eaters across the
Rhine. Look at me! You used to say that I'd stopped growing and could
never aspire to a mustache! Now look! Eh? Five feet eleven and--_what_
do you think of my mustache? Oh, that African sun sets things growing!
I'm lieutenant, too."
"Does the African sun also influence your growth in the line of
promotion?" asked Jack, grinning.
"Same old farceur, too!" mused Georges. "Now, what the mischief
are you doing here? Oh, you are staying at Morteyn?"
"Yes."
"I--er--I used to visit another house--er--near by. You know the
Marquis de Nesville?" asked Georges, innocently.
"I? Oh yes."
"You have--perhaps you have met Mademoiselle de Nesville?"
"Yes," said Jack, shortly.
"Oh."
There was a silence. Jack shuffled his booted toes in his
stirrups; Georges looked out across the valley.
In the valley the vapours were rising; behind the curtain of
shredded mist the landscape lay hilly, nearly treeless, cut by
winding roads and rank on rank of spare poplars. Farther away
clumps of woods appeared, and little hillocks, and now, as the
air cleared, the spire of a church glimmered. Suddenly a thin
line of silver cut the landscape beyond the retreating fog. The
Saar!
"Where are the Prussians?" asked Jack, breaking the silence.
Georges laid his gloved hand on his companion's arm.
"Do you see that spire? That is Saarbrück. They are there."
"This side of the Rhine, too?"
"Yes," said Georges, reddening a little; "wait, my friend."
"They must have crossed the Saar on the bridges from
Saint-Johann, then. I heard that Uhlans had been signalled near
the Saar, but I didn't believe it. Uhlans in France? Georges,
when are you fellows going to chase them back?"
"This morning--you're just in time, as usual," said Georges,
airily. "Do you want me to give you an idea of our positions?
Listen, then: we're massed along the frontier from Sierk and Metz
to Hagenau and Strasbourg. The Prussians lie at right angles to
us, from Mainz to Lauterburg and from Trier to Saarbrück. Except
near Saarbrück they are on their side of the boundary, let me
tell you! Look! Now you can see Forbach through the trees. We're
there and we're at Saint-Avold and Bitsch and Saargemünd, too. As
for me, I'm with this damned rear-guard, and I count tents and
tin pails, and I raise the devil with stragglers and generally
ennui myself. I'm no gendarme! There's a regiment of gendarmes
five miles north, and I don't see why they can't do depot duty
and police this country."
"The same child--kicking, kicking, kicking!" observed Jack. "You
ought to thank your luck that you are a spectator for once. Give
me your glass."
He raised the binoculars and levelled them at the valley.
"Hello! I didn't see those troops before. Infantry, eh? And there
goes a regiment--no, a brigade--no, a division, at least, of
cavalry. I see cuirassiers, too. Good heavens! Their breastplates
take the sun like heliographs! There are troops everywhere;
there's an artillery train on that road beyond Saint-Avold. Here,
take the glasses."
"Keep them--I know where they are. What time is it, Jack? My
repeater is running wild--as if it were chasing Prussians."
"It's half-past nine; I had no idea that it was so late! Ha!
there goes a mass of infantry along the hill. See it? They're
headed for Saarbrück! Georges, what's that big marquee in the
wheat-field?"
"The Emperor is there," said Georges, proudly; "those troopers
are the Cuirassiers of the Hundred-Guards. See their white
mantles? The Prince Imperial is there, too. Poor little man--he
looks so tired and bewildered."
Jack kept his glasses fixed on the white dot that marked the
imperial headquarters, but the air was hazy and the distance too
great to see anything except specks and points of white and
black, slowly shifting, gathering, and collecting again in the
grain-field, that looked like a tiny square of pale gilt on the
hill-top.
Suddenly a spot of white vapour appeared over the spire of
Saarbrück, then another, then three together, little round clouds
that hung motionless, wavered, split, and disappeared in the
sunshine, only to be followed by more round cloud clots. A moment
later the dull mutter of cannon disturbed the morning air,
distant rumblings and faint shocks that seemed to come from an
infinite distance.
Jack handed back the binoculars and opened his own field-glasses
in silence. Neither spoke, but they instinctively leaned forward,
side by side, sweeping the panorama with slow, methodical
movements, glasses firmly levelled. And now, in the valley below,
the long roads grew black with moving columns of cavalry and
artillery; the fields on either side were alive with infantry,
dim red squares and oblongs, creeping across the landscape
towards that line of silver, the Saar.
"It's a flank movement on Wissembourg," said Jack, suddenly; "or
are they swinging around to take Saint-Johann from the north?"
"Watch Saarbrück," muttered Georges between his teeth.
The slow seconds crept into minutes, the minutes into hours, as
they waited there, fascinated. Already the sharper rattle of
musketry broke out on the hills south of the Saar, and the
projectiles fell fast in the little river, beyond which the
single spire of Saarbrück rose, capped with the smoke of
exploding shells.
Jack sat sketching in a canvas-covered book, raising his brown
eyes from time to time, or writing on a pad laid flat on his
saddle-pommel.
The two young fellows conversed in low tones, laughing quietly or
smoking in absorbed silence, and even their subdued voices were
louder than the roll of the distant cannonade.
Suddenly the wind changed and their ears were filled with the
hollow boom of cannon. And now, nearer than they could have
believed, the crash of volley firing mingled with the whirring
crackle of gatlings and the spattering rattle of Montigny
mitrailleuses from the Guard artillery.
"Fichtre!" said Georges, with a shrug, "not only dancing, but
music! What are you sketching, Jack? Let me see. Hm! Pretty
good--for you. You've got Forbach too near, though. I wonder what
the Emperor is doing. It seems too bad to drag that sick child of
his out to see a lot of men fall over dead. Poor little Lulu!"
"Kicking, kicking ever!" murmured Jack; "the same fierce
Republican, eh? I've no sympathy with you--I'm too American."
"Cheap cynicism," observed Georges. "Hello!--here's an aide-de-camp
with orders. Wait a second, will you?" and the young fellow gathered
bridle and galloped out into the high-road, where his troopers stood
around an officer wearing the black-and-scarlet of the artillery. A
moment later a bugle began to sound the assembly; blue-clad cavalrymen
appeared as by magic from every thicket, every field, every hollow,
while below, in the nearer valley, another bugle, shrill and fantastic,
summoned the squadrons to the colours. Already the better part of a
regiment had gathered, four abreast, along the red road. Jack could
see their eagles now, gilt and circled with gilded wreaths.
He pocketed sketch-book and pad and turned his horse out through
the fields to the road.
"We're off!" laughed Georges. "Thank God! and the devil take the
rear-guard! Will you ride with us, Jack? We've driven the
Prussians across the Saar."
He turned to his troopers and signalled the trumpeter. "Trot!" he
cried; and the squadron of hussars moved off down the hill in a
whirl of dust and flying pebbles.
Jack wheeled his horse and brought him alongside of Georges' wiry
mount.
"It didn't last long--eh, old chap?" laughed the youthful hussar;
"only from ten o'clock till noon--eh? It's not quite noon yet.
We're to join the regiment, but where we're going after that I
don't know. They say the Prussians have quit Saarbrück in a
hurry. I suppose we'll be in Germany to-night, and then--vlan!
vlan! eh, old fellow? We'll be out for a long campaign. I'd like
to see Berlin--I wish I spoke German."
"They say," said Jack, "that most of the German officers speak
French."
"Bird of ill-omen, croaker, cease! What the devil do we want to
learn German for? I can say, 'Wein, Weib, und Gesang,' and that's
enough for any French hussar to know."
They had come up with the whole regiment now, which was moving
slowly down the valley, and Georges reported to his captain, who
in turn reported to the major, who presently had a confab with
the colonel. Then far away at the head of the column the mounted
band began the regimental march, a gay air with plenty of
trombone and kettle-drum in it, and the horses ambled and danced
in sympathy, with an accompaniment of rattling carbines and
clinking, clashing sabre-scabbards.
"Quelle farandole!" laughed Georges. "Are you going all the way
to Berlin with us? Pst! Look! There go the Hundred-Guards! The
Emperor is coming back from the front. It's all over with the
sausage-eaters, et puis--bon-soir, Bismarck!"
Far away, across the hills, the white mantles of the
Hundred-Guards flashed in the sunshine, rising, falling, as the
horses plunged up the hills. For a moment Jack caught a glimpse
of a carriage in the distance, a carriage preceded by outriders
in crimson and gold, and followed by a mass of glittering
cuirassiers.
"It's the Emperor. Listen, we are going to cheer," cried Georges.
He rose in his saddle and drew his sabre, and at the same instant
a deep roar shook the regiment to its centre--
"Vive l'Empereur!"
X
AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER
It was a little after noon when the regiment halted on the
Saint-Avold highway, blocked in front by a train of Guard artillery,
and on either flank by columns of infantry--voltigeurs, red-legged
fantassins loaded with camp equipment, engineers in crimson and
bluish-black, and a whole battalion of Turcos, scarlet fez rakishly
hauled down over one ear, canvas zouave trousers tucked into canvas
leggings that fitted their finely moulded ankles like gloves.
Jack rested patiently on his horse, waiting for the road to be
cleared, and beside him sat Georges, chatting paternally with the
giant standard-bearer of the Turcos. The huge fellow laughed and
showed his dazzling teeth under the crisp jet beard, for Georges
was talking to him in his native tongue--and it was many miles
from Saint-Avold to Oran. His standard, ornamented with the
"opened hand and spread fingers," fluttered and snapped, and
stood out straight in the valley breeze.
"What's that advertisement--the hand of Providence?" cried an
impudent line soldier, leaning on his musket.
"Is it the hand that spanked Bismarck?" yelled another. The
Turcos grinned under their scarlet head-dresses.
"Ohé, Mustapha!" shouted the line soldiers, "Ohé, le Croissant!"
and their band-master, laughing, raised his tasselled baton, and
the band burst out in a roll of drums and cymbals, "Partons pour
la Syrie."
"Petite riffa!" said the big standard-bearer, beaming--which was
very good French for a Kabyle.
"See here, Georges," said Jack, suddenly, "I've promised to be
back at Morteyn before dark, and if your regiment is going to
stick here much longer I'm going on."
"You want to send your despatches?" asked Georges. "You could
ride on to Saarbrück and telegraph from there. Will you? Then
hunt up the regiment later. We are to see a little of each other,
are we not, old fellow?"
"Not if you're going Prussian-hunting across the Rhine. When you
come back crowned with bay and laurel and pretzels, you can stop
at Morteyn."
They nodded and clasped hands.
"Au revoir!" laughed Georges. "What shall I bring you from
Berlin?"
"I'm no Herod," replied Jack; "bring back your own feather-head
safely--that's all I ask." And with a smile and a gay salute the
young fellows parted, turning occasionally in their saddles to
wave a last adieu, until Jack's big horse disappeared among the
dense platoons ahead.
For a quarter of an hour he sidled and pushed and shoved, and
picked a cautious path through section after section of field
artillery, seeing here and there an officer whom he knew, saluting
cheerily, making a thousand excuses for his haste to the good-natured
artillerymen, who only grinned in reply. As he rode, he noted with
misgivings that the cannon were not breech-loaders. He had recently
heard a good deal about the Prussian new model for field artillery,
and he had read, in the French journals, reports of their wonderful
range and flat trajectory. The cannon that he passed, with the
exception of the Montigny mitrailleuses and the American gatlings,
were all beautiful pieces, bronzed and engraved with crown and LN
and eagle, but for all their beauty they were only muzzle-loaders.
In a little while he came to the head of the column. The road in
front seemed to be clear enough, and he wondered why they had
halted, blocking half a division of infantry and cavalry behind
them. There really was no reason at all. He did not know it, but
he had seen the first case of that indescribable disease that
raged in France in 1870-71--that malady that cannot be termed
paralysis or apathy or inertia. It was all three, and it was
malignant, for it came from a befouled and degraded court, spread
to the government, infected the provinces, sparing neither prince
nor peasant, until over the whole fair land of France it crept
and hung, a fetid, miasmic effluvia, till the nation, hopeless,
weary, despairing, bereft of nerve and sinew, sank under it into
utter physical and moral prostration.
This was the terrible fever that burned the best blood out of the
nation--a fever that had its inception in the corruption of the
empire, its crisis at Sedan, its delirium in the Commune! The
nation's convalescence is slow but sure.
Jack touched spurs to his horse and galloped out into the
Saarbrück road. He passed a heavy, fat-necked general, sitting
on his horse, his dull, apoplectic eyes following the gestures of
a staff-officer who was tracing routes and railroads on a map
nailed against a poplar-tree. He passed other generals, deep in
consultation, absently rolling cigarettes between their
kid-gloved fingers; and everywhere dragoon patrols, gallant
troopers in blue and garance, wearing steel helmets bound with
leopard-skin above the visors. He passed ambulances, too, blue
vehicles covered with framed yellow canvas, flying the red cross.
One of the field-surgeons gave him a brief outline of the
casualties and general result of the battle, and he thanked him
and hastened on towards Saarbrück, whence he expected to send his
despatches to Paris. But now the road was again choked with
marching infantry as far as the eye could see, dense masses,
pushing along in an eddying cloud of red dust that blew to the
east and hung across the fields like smoke from a locomotive. Men
with stretchers were passing; he saw an officer, face white as
chalk, sunburned hands clinched, lying in a canvas hand-stretcher,
borne by four men of the hospital corps. Edging his way to the
meadow, he put his horse to the ditch, cleared it, and galloped on
towards a spire that rose close ahead, outlined dimly in the smoke
and dust, and in ten minutes he was in Saarbrück.
Up a stony street, desolate, deserted, lined with rows of closed
machine-shops, he passed, and out into another street where a
regiment of lancers was defiling amid a confusion of shouts and
shrill commands, the racket of drums echoing from wall to
pavement, and the ear-splitting flourish of trumpets mingled with
the heavy rumble of artillery and the cracking of leather
thongs. Already the pontoons were beginning to span the river
Saar, already the engineers were swarming over the three ruined
bridges, jackets cast aside, picks rising and falling--clink!
clank! clink! clank!--and the scrape of mortar and trowel on the
granite grew into an incessant sound, harsh and discordant. The
market square was impassable; infantry gorged every foot of the
stony pavement, ambulances creaked through the throng, rolling
like white ships in a tempest, signals set.
In the sea of faces around him he recognized the correspondent of
the London _Times_.
"Hello, Williams!" he called; "where the devil is the telegraph?"
The Englishman, red in the face and dripping with perspiration,
waved his hand spasmodically.
"The military are using it; you'll have to wait until four
o'clock. Are you with us in this scrimmage? The fellows are down
by the Hôtel Post trying to mend the wires there. Archibald
Grahame is with the Germans!"
Jack turned in his saddle with a friendly gesture of thanks and
adieu. If he were going to send his despatch, he had no time to
waste in Saarbrück--he understood that at a glance. For a moment
he thought of going to the Hôtel Post and taking his chances with
his brother correspondents; then, abruptly wheeling his horse, he
trotted out into the long shed that formed one of an interminable
series of coal shelters, passed through it, gained the outer
street, touched up his horse, and tore away, headed straight for
Forbach. For he had decided that at Forbach was his chance to
beat the other correspondents, and he took the chance, knowing
that in case the telegraph there was also occupied he could still
get back to Morteyn, and from there to Saint-Lys, before the
others had wired to their respective journals.
It was three o'clock when he clattered into the single street of
Forbach amid the blowing of bugles from a cuirassier regiment
that was just leaving at a trot. The streets were thronged with
gendarmes and cavalry of all arms, lancers in baggy, scarlet
trousers and clumsy schapskas weighted with gold cord, chasseurs
à cheval in turquoise blue and silver, dragoons, Spahis,
remount-troopers, and here and there a huge rider of the
Hundred-Guards, glittering like a scaled dragon in his splendid
armour.
He pushed his way past the Hôtel Post and into the garden, where,
at a table, an old general sat reading letters.
With a hasty glance at him, Jack bowed, and asked permission to
take the unoccupied chair and use the table. The officer inclined
his head with a peculiarly graceful movement, and, without more
ado, Jack sat down, placed his pad flat on the table, and wrote
his despatch in pencil:
"FORBACH, 2d August, 1870.
"The first shot of the war was fired this morning at ten
o'clock. At that hour the French opened on Saarbrück
with twenty-three pieces of artillery. The bombardment
continued until twelve. At two o'clock the Germans,
having evacuated Saarbrück, retreated across the Saar to
Saint-Johann. The latter village is also now being
evacuated; the French are pushing across the Saar by
means of pontoons; the three bridges are also being
rapidly repaired.
"Reports vary, but it is probable that the losses on the
German side will number four officers and seventy-nine
men killed--wounded unknown. The French lost six
officers and eighty men killed; wounded list not
completed.
"The Emperor was present with the Prince Imperial."
Leaving his pad on the table and his riding-crop and gloves over
it, he gathered up the loose leaves of his telegram and hastened
across the street to the telegraph office. For the moment the
instrument was idle, and the operator took his despatch, read it
aloud to the censor, an officer of artillery, who viséd it and
nodded.
"A longer despatch is to follow--can I have the wires again in
half an hour?" asked Jack.
Both operator and censor laughed and said, "No promises,
monsieur; come and see." And Jack hastened back to the garden of
the hôtel and sat down once more under the trees, scarcely
glancing at the old officer beside him. Again he wrote:
"The truth is that the whole affair was scarcely more
than a skirmish. A handful of the 2d Battalion of
Fusilliers, a squadron or two of Uhlans, and a battery
of Prussian artillery have for days faced and held in
check a whole French division. When they were attacked
they tranquilly turned a bold front to the French, made
a devil of a racket with their cannon, and slipped
across the frontier with trifling loss. If the French
are going to celebrate this as a victory, Europe will
laugh--"
He paused, frowning and biting his pencil. Presently he noticed
that several troopers of the Hundred-Guards were watching him
from the street; sentinels of the same corps were patrolling the
garden, their long, bayoneted carbines over their steel-bound
shoulders. At the same moment his eyes fell upon the old officer
beside him. The officer raised his head.
It was the Emperor, Napoleon III.
XI
"KEEP THY FAITH"
Jack was startled, and he instinctively stood up very straight,
as he always did when surprised.
Under the Emperor's crimson képi, heavy with gold, the old, old
eyes, half closed, peered at him, as a drowsy buzzard watches the
sky, with filmy, changeless gaze. His face was the colour of
clay, the loose folds of the cheeks hung pallid over a heavy
chin; his lips were hidden beneath a mustache and imperial,
unkempt but waxed at the ends. From the shadow of his crimson cap
the hair straggled forward, half hiding two large, wrinkled,
yellow ears.
With a smile and a slight gesture exquisitely courteous, the
Emperor said: "Pray do not allow me to interrupt you, monsieur;
old soldiers are of small account when a nation's newspapers
wait."
"Sire!" protested Jack, flushing.
Napoleon III.'s eyes twinkled, and he picked up his letter again,
still smiling.
"Such good news, monsieur, should not be kept waiting. You are
English? No? Then American? Oh!"
The Emperor rolled a cigarette, gazing into vacancy with dreamy
eyes, narrow as slits in a mask. Jack sat down again, pencil in
hand, a little flustered and uncertain.
The Emperor struck a wax-match on a gold matchbox, leaning his
elbow on the table to steady his shaking hand. Presently he
slowly crossed one baggy red-trouser knee over the other and,
blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke into the sunshine, said: "I
suppose your despatch will arrive considerably in advance of the
telegrams of the other correspondents, who seem to be blocked in
Saarbrück?"
He glanced obliquely at Jack, grave and impassible.
"I trust so, sire," said Jack, seriously.
The Emperor laughed outright, crumpled the letter in his gloved
hand, tossed the cigarette away, and rose painfully, leaning for
support on the table.
Jack rose, too.
"Monsieur," said Napoleon, playfully, as though attempting to
conceal intense physical suffering, "I am in search of a
motto--for reasons. I shall have a regiment or two carry
'Saarbrück' on their colours. What motto should they also carry?"
Jack spoke before he intended it--he never knew why: "Sire, the
only motto I know is this: 'Tiens ta Foy!'"
The Man of December turned his narrow eyes on him. Then, bowing
with the dignity and grace that he, of all living monarchs,
possessed, the Emperor passed slowly through the garden and
entered the little hôtel, the clash of presented carbines ringing
in the still air behind him.
Jack sat down, considerably exercised in his mind, thinking of
what he had said. The splendid old crusader's motto, "Keep thy
Faith," was scarcely the motto to suggest to the man of the Coup
d'État, the man of Rome, the man of Mexico. The very bones of
Victor Noir would twist in their coffin at the words; and the
lungs of that other Victor, the one named Hugo, would swell and
expand until the bellowing voice rang like a Jersey fog-siren
over the channel, over the ocean, till the seven seas vibrated
and the four winds swept it to the four ends of the earth.
Very soberly he finished his despatch, picked up his gloves and
crop, and again walked over to the telegraph station.
The censor read the pencilled scrawl, smiled, drew a red pencil
through some of it, smiled again, and said: "I trust it will not
inconvenience monsieur too much."
"Not at all," said Jack, pleasantly.
He had not expected to get it all through, and he bowed and
thanked the censor, and went out to where his horse stood,
cropping the tender leaves of a spreading chestnut-tree.
It was five o'clock by his watch when he trotted out into the
Morteyn road, now entirely deserted except by a peasant or two,
staring, under their inverted hands, at the distant spire of
Saarbrück.
Far away in the valley he caught glimpses of troops, glancing at
times over his shoulder, but the distant squares and columns on
hill-side and road seemed to be motionless. Already the thin,
glimmering line of the Saar had faded from view; the afternoon
haze hung blue on every hill-side; the woods were purple and
vague as streaks of cloud at evening.
He passed Saint-Avold far to the south, too far to see anything
of the division that lay encamped there; and presently he turned
into the river road that follows the Saar until the great highway
to Metz cuts it at an acute angle. From this cross-road he could
see the railway, where a line of freight-cars, drawn by a puffing
locomotive, was passing--cars of all colours, marked on one end
"Elsass-Lothringen," on the other "Alsace-Lorraine."
He had brought with him a slice of bread and a flask of Moselle,
and, as he had had no time to eat since daybreak, he gravely
began munching away, drinking now and then from his flask and
absently eying the road ahead.
He thought of Lorraine and of his promise. If only all promises
were as easily kept! He had plenty of time to reach Morteyn
before dark, taking it at an easy canter, so he let his horse
walk up the hills while he swallowed his bread and wine and mused
on war and love and emperors.
He had been riding in this abstracted study for some time, and
had lighted a pipe to aid his dreams, when, from the hill-side
ahead, he caught a glimpse of something that sparkled in the
afternoon sunshine, and he rose in his saddle and looked to see
what it might be. After a moment he made out five mounted troopers,
moving about on the crest of the hill, the sun slanting on stirrup
metal and lance-tip. As he was about to resume his meditations,
something about these lancers caught his eye--something that did
not seem quite right--he couldn't tell what. Of course they were
French lancers, they could be nothing else, here in the rear of the
army, but still they were rather odd-looking lancers, after all.
The eyes of a mariner and the eyes of a soldier, or of a man who
foregathers with soldiers, are quick to detect strange rigging.
Therefore Jack unslung his glasses and levelled them on the group
of mounted men, who were now moving towards him at an easy lope,
their tall lances, butts in stirrups, swinging free from the
arm-loops, their horses' manes tossing in the hill breeze.
The next moment he seized his bridle, drove both spurs into his
horse, and plunged ahead, dropping pipe and flask in the road
unheeded. At the same time a hoarse shout came quavering across
the fields, a shout as harsh and sinister as the menacing cry of
a hawk; but he dashed on, raising a whirlwind of red dust. Now he
could see them plainly enough, their slim boots, their yellow
facings and reverses, the shiny little helmets with the square
tops like inverted goblets, the steel lances from which black and
white pennons streamed.
They were Uhlans!
For a minute it was a question in his mind whether or not they
would be able to cut him off. A ditch in the meadow halted them
for a second or two, but they took it like chamois and came
cantering up towards the high-road, shouting hoarsely and
brandishing their lances.
It was true that, being a non-combatant and a foreigner with a
passport, and, furthermore, an accredited newspaper correspondent,
he had nothing to fear except, perhaps, a tedious detention and a
long-winded explanation. But it was not that. He had promised to
be at Morteyn by night, and now, if these Uhlans caught him and
marched him off to their main post, he would certainly spend one
night at least in the woods or fields. A sudden anger, almost a
fury, seized him that these men should interfere with his promise;
that they should in any way influence his own free going and coming,
and he struck his horse with the riding-crop and clattered on along
the highway.
"Halt!" shouted a voice, in German--"halt! or we fire!" and again
in French: "Halt! We shall fire!"
They were not far from the road now, but he saw that he could
pass them easily.
"Halt! halt!" they shouted, breathless.
Instinctively he ducked, and at the same moment piff! piff! their
revolvers began, and two bullets sang past near enough to make
his ears tingle.
Then they settled down to outride him; he heard their scurry and
jingle behind, and for a minute or two they held their own, but
little by little he forged ahead, and they began to shoot at him
from their saddles. One of them, however, had not wasted time in
shooting; Jack heard him, always behind, and now he seemed to be
drawing nearer, steadily but slowly closing up the gap between
them.
Jack glanced back. There he was, a big, blond, bony Uhlan, lance
couched, clattering up the hill; but the others had already
halted far behind, watching the race from the bottom of the
incline.
"Tiens ta Foy," he muttered to himself, digging both spurs into
his horse; "I'll not prove faithless to her first request--not if
I know it. Good Lord! how near that Uhlan is!"
Again he glanced behind, hesitated, and finally shouted: "Go
back! I am no soldier! Go back!"
"I'll show you!" bellowed the Uhlan. "Stop your horse! or when I
catch you--"
"Go back!" cried Jack, angrily; "go back or I'll fire!" and he
whipped out his long Colt's and shook it above his head.
With a derisive yell the Uhlan banged away--once, twice, three
times--and the bullets buzzed around Jack's ears till they sang.
He swung around, crimson with fury, and raised the heavy
six-shooter.
"By God!" he shouted; "then take it yourself!" and he fired one
shot, standing up in his stirrups to steady his aim.
He heard a cry, he saw a horse rear straight up through the dust;
there was a gleam of yellow, a flash of a falling lance, a groan.
Then, as he galloped on, pale and tight-lipped, a riderless horse
thundered along behind him, mane tossing in the whirling dust.
With sudden instinct, Jack drew bridle and wheeled his trembling
mount--the riderless horse tore past him--and he trotted soberly
back to the dusty heap in the road. It may have merely been the
impulse to see what he had done, it may have been a nobler
impulse, for Jack dismounted and bent over the fallen man. Then
he raised him in his arms by the shoulders and drew him towards
the road-side. The Uhlan was heavy, his spurs dragged in the
dust. Very gently Jack propped him up against a poplar-tree,
looked for a moment at the wound in his head, and then ran for
his horse. It was high time, too; the other Uhlans came racing
and tearing uphill, hallooing like Cossacks, and he vaulted into
his saddle and again set spurs to his horse.
Now it was a ride for life; he understood that thoroughly, and
settled down to it, bending low in the saddle, bridle in one
hand, revolver in the other. And as he rode his sobered thoughts
dwelt now on Lorraine, now on the great lank Uhlan, lying
stricken in the red dust of the highway. He seemed to see him
yet, blond, dusty, the sweat in beads on his blanched cheeks, the
crimson furrow in his colourless scalp. He had seen, too, the
padded yellow shoulder-knots bearing the regimental number "11,"
and he knew that he had shot a trooper of the 11th Uhlans, and
that the 11th Uhlan Regiment was Rickerl's regiment. He set his
teeth and stared fearfully over his shoulder. The pursuit had
ceased; the Uhlans, dismounted, were gathered about the tree
under which their comrade lay gasping. Jack brought his horse to
a gallop, to a canter, and finally to a trot. The horse was not
winded, but it trembled and reeked with sweat and lather.
Beyond him lay the forest of La Bruine, red in the slanting rays
of the setting sun. Beyond this the road swung into the Morteyn
road, that lay cool and moist along the willows that bordered the
river Lisse.
The sun glided behind the woods as he reached the bridge that
crosses the Lisse, and the evening glow on feathery willow and
dusty alder turned stem and leaf to shimmering rose.
It was seven o'clock, and he knew that he could keep his word to
Lorraine. And now, too, he began to feel the fatigue of the day
and the strain of the last two hours. In his excitement he had
not noticed that two bullets had passed through his jacket, one
close to the pocket, one ripping the gun-pads at the collar. The
horse, too, was bleeding from the shoulder where a long raw
streak traced the flight of a grazing ball.
His face was pale and serious when, at evening, he rode into the
porte-cochère of the Château de Nesville and dismounted, stiffly.
He was sore, fatigued, and covered with dust from cap to spur;
his eyes, heavily ringed but bright, roamed restlessly from
window to porch.
"I've kept my faith," he muttered to himself--"I've kept my
faith, anyway." But now he began to understand what might follow
if he, a foreigner and a non-combatant, was ever caught by the
11th regiment of Uhlans. It sickened him when he thought of what
he had done; he could find no excuse for himself--not even the
shots that had come singing about his ears. Who was he, a
foreigner, that he should shoot down a brave German cavalryman
who was simply following instructions? His promise to Lorraine?
Was that sufficient excuse for taking human life? Puzzled, weary,
and profoundly sad, he stood thinking, undecided what to do. He
knew that he had not killed the Uhlan outright, but, whether or
not the soldier could recover, he was uncertain. He, who had seen
the horrors of naked, gaping wounds at Sadowa--he who had seen
the pitiable sights of Oran, where Chanzy and his troops had swept
the land in a whirlwind of flame and sword--he, this same cool young
fellow, could not contemplate that dusty figure in the red road
without a shudder of self-accusation--yes, of self-disgust. He told
himself that he had fired too quickly, that he had fired in anger,
not in self-protection. He felt sure that he could have outridden
the Uhlan in the end. Perhaps he was too severe on himself; he did
not think of the fusillade at his back, his coat torn by two bullets,
the raw furrow on his horse's shoulder. He only asked himself whether,
to keep his promise, he was justified in what he had done, and he felt
that he had acted hastily and in anger, and that he was a very poor
specimen of young men. It was just as well, perhaps, that he thought
so; the sentiment under the circumstances was not unhealthy. Moreover,
he knew in his heart that, under any conditions, he would place his
duty to Lorraine first of all. So he was puzzled and tired and unhappy
when Lorraine, her arms full of brook-lilies, came down the gravel
drive and said: "You have kept your faith, you shall wear a lily for
me; will you?"
He could not meet her eyes, he could scarcely reply to her shy
questions.
When she saw the wounded horse she grieved over its smarting
shoulder, and insisted on stabling it herself.
"Wait for me," she said; "I insist. You must find a glass of wine
for yourself and go with old Pierre and dust your clothes. Then
come back; I shall be in the arbour."
He looked after her until she entered the stables, leading the
exhausted horse with a tenderness that touched him deeply. He
felt so mean, so contemptible, so utterly beneath the notice of
this child who stood grieving over his wounded horse.
A dusty and dirty and perspiring man is at a disadvantage with
himself. His misdemeanours assume exaggerated proportions,
especially when he is confronted with a girl in a cool gown that
is perfumed by blossoms pure and spotless and fragrant as the
young breast that crushes them.
So when he had found old Pierre and had followed him to a
bath-room, the water that washed the stains from brow and wrist
seemed also to purify the stain that is popularly supposed to
resist earthly ablutions. A clean body and a clean conscience is
not a proverb, but there are, perhaps, worse maxims in the world.
When he dried his face and looked into a mirror, his sins had
dwindled a bit; when Pierre dusted his clothes and polished his
spurs and boots, life assumed a brighter aspect. Fatigue, too, came
to dull that busybody--that tireless, gossiping gadabout--conscience.
Fatigue and remorse are enemies; slumber and the white flag of sleep
stand truce between them.
"Pierre," he said; "get a dog-cart; I am going to drive to
Morteyn. You will find me in the arbour on the lawn. Is the
marquis visible?"
"No, Monsieur Jack, he is still locked up in the turret."
"And the balloon?"
"Dame! Je n'en sais rien, monsieur."
So Jack walked down-stairs and out through the porch to the lawn,
where he saw Lorraine already seated in the arbour, placing the
long-stemmed lilies in gilded bowls.
"It will be dark soon," he said, stepping up beside her. "Thank
you for being good to my horse. Is it more than a scratch?"
"No--it is nothing. The horse shall stand in our stable until
to-morrow. Are you very tired? Sit beside me. Do you care to tell
me anything of what you did?"
"Do you care to know?"
"Of course," she said.
So he told her; not all, however--not of that ride and the chase
and the shots from the saddle. But he spoke of the Emperor and
the distant battle that had seemed like a scene in a painted
landscape. He told her, too, of Georges Carrière.
"Why, I know him," she said, brightening with pleasure; "he is
charming--isn't he?"
"Why, yes," said Jack; but for all he tried his voice sounded
coldly.
"Don't you think so?" asked Lorraine, opening her blue eyes.
Again he tried to speak warmly of the friend he was really fond
of, and again he felt that he had failed. Why? He would not ask
himself--but he knew. This shamed him, and he began an elaborate
eulogy on poor Georges, conscientious, self-effacing, but very,
very unsatisfactory.
The maid beside him listened demurely. She also knew things that
she had not known a week ago. That possibly is why, like a little
bird stretching its new wings, she also tried her own resources,
innocently, timidly. And the torment of Jack began.
"Monsieur Marche, do you think that Lieutenant Carrière may come
to Morteyn?"
"He said he would; I--er--I hope he will. Don't you?"
"I? Oh yes. When will he come?"
"I don't know," said Jack, sulkily.
"Oh! I thought you were very fond of him and that, of course, you
would know when--"
"Nobody knows; if he's gone with the army into Germany it is
impossible to say when the war will end." Then he made a silly,
boorish observation which was, "I hope for your sake he will come
soon."
Oh, but he was ashamed of it now! The groom in the stable yonder
would have had better tact. Truly, it takes a man of gentle
breeding to demonstrate what under-breeding really can be. If
Lorraine was shocked she did not show it. A maid unloved,
unloving, pardons nothing; a maid with a lover invests herself
with all powers and prerogatives, and the greatest of these is
the power to pardon. It is not only a power, it is a need, a
desire, an imperative necessity to pardon much in him who loves
much. This may be only because she also understands. Pardon and
doubt repel each other. So Lorraine, having grown wise in a week,
pardoned Jack mentally. Outwardly it was otherwise, and Jack
became aware that the atmosphere was uncomfortably charged with
lightning. It gleamed a moment in her eyes ere her lips opened.
"Take your dog-cart and go back to Morteyn," said Lorraine,
quietly.
"Let me stay; I am ashamed," he said, turning red.
"No; I do not wish to see you again--for a long, long
time--forever."
Her head was bent and her fingers were busy among the lilies in
the gilded bowl.
"Do you send me away?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because you are more than rude."
"I am ashamed; forgive me."
"No."
She glanced up at him from her drooping lashes. She had pardoned
him long ago.
"No," she repeated, "I cannot forgive."
"Lorraine--"
"There is the dog-cart," she whispered, almost breathlessly. So
he said good-night and went away.
She stood on the dim lawn, her arms full of blossoms, listening
to the sound of the wheels until they died away beyond the park
gate.
She had turned whiter than the lilies at her breast. This was
because she was still very young and not quite as wise as some
maidens.
For the same reason she left her warm bed that night to creep
through the garden and slip into the stable and lay her
tear-stained cheeks on the neck of Jack's horse.
XII
FROM THE FRONTIER
During the next three days, for the first time since he had known
her, he did not go to see Lorraine. How he stood it--how he ever
dragged through those miserable hours--he himself never could
understand.
The wide sculptured eyes of Our Lady of Morteyn above the shrine
seemed to soften when he went there to sit at her feet and stare
at nothing. It was not tears, but dew, that gathered under the
stone lids, for the night had grown suddenly hot, and everything
lay moist in the starlight. Night changed to midnight, and
midnight to dawn, and dawn to another day, cloudless, pitiless;
and Jack awoke again, and his waking thought was of Lorraine.
All day long he sat with the old vicomte, reading to him when he
wished, playing interminable games of chess, sick at heart with a
longing that almost amounted to anger. He could not tell his
aunt. As far as that went, the wise old lady had divined that
their first trouble had come to them in all the appalling and
exaggerated proportions that such troubles assume, but she smiled
gently to herself, for she, too, had been young, and the ways of
lovers had been her ways, and the paths of love she had trodden,
and she had drained love's cup at bitter springs.
That night she came to his bedside and kissed him, saying:
"To-morrow you shall carry my love and my thanks to Lorraine for
her care of the horse."
"I can't," muttered Jack.
"Pooh!" said Madame de Morteyn, and closed the bedroom door; and
Jack slept better that night.
It was ten o'clock the next morning before he appeared at
breakfast, and it was plain, even to the thrush on the lawn
outside, that he had bestowed an elaboration upon his toilet that
suggested either a duel or a wedding.
Madame de Morteyn hid her face, for she could not repress the
smile that tormented her sweet mouth. Even the vicomte said: "Oh!
You're not off for Paris, Jack, are you?"
After breakfast he wandered moodily out to the terrace, where his
aunt found him half an hour later, mooning and contemplating his
spotless gloves.
"Then you are not going to ride over to the Château de Nesville?"
she asked, trying not to laugh.
"Oh!" he said, with affected surprise, "did you wish me to go to
the Château?"
"Yes, Jack dear, if you are not too much occupied." She could not
repress the mischievous accent on the "too." "Are you going to
drive?"
"No; I shall walk--unless you are in a hurry."
"No more than you are, dear," she said, gravely.
He looked at her with sudden suspicion, but she was not smiling.
"Very well," he said, gloomily.
About eleven o'clock he had sauntered half the distance down the
forest road that leads to the Château de Nesville. His heart
seemed to tug and tug and urge him forward; his legs refused
obedience; he sulked. But there was the fresh smell of loam and
moss and aromatic leaves, the music of the Lisse on the pebbles,
the joyous chorus of feathered creatures from every thicket, and
there were the antics of the giddy young rabbits that scuttled
through the warrens, leaping, tumbling, sitting up, lop-eared and
impudent, or diving head-first into their burrows.
Under the stems of a thorn thicket two cock-pheasants were having a
difference, and were enthusiastically settling that difference in the
approved method of game-cocks. He lingered to see which might win,
but a misstep and a sudden crack of a dry twig startled them, and
they withdrew like two stately but indignant old gentlemen who had
been subjected to uncalled-for importunities.
Presently he felt cheerful enough to smoke, and he searched in
every pocket for his pipe. Then he remembered that he had dropped
it when he dropped his silver flask, there in the road where he
had first been startled by the Uhlans.
This train of thought depressed him again, but he resolutely put
it from his mind, lighted a cigarette, and moved on.
Just ahead, around the bend in the path, lay the grass-grown
carrefour where he had first seen Lorraine. He thought of her as
he remembered her then, flushed, indignant, blocking the path
while the map-making spy sneered in her face and crowded past
her, still sneering. He thought, too, of her scarlet skirt, and
the little velvet bodice and the silver chains. He thought of her
heavy hair, dishevelled, glimmering in her eyes. At the same
moment he turned the corner; the carrefour lay before him,
overgrown, silent, deserted. A sudden tenderness filled his
heart--ah, how we love those whom we have protected!--and he
stood for a moment in the sunshine with bowed head, living over
the episode that he could never forget. Every word, every
gesture, the shape of the very folds in her skirt, he remembered;
yes, and the little triangular tear, the broken silver chain, the
ripped bodice!
And she, in her innocence, had promised to see him there at the
river-bank below. He had never gone, because that very night she
had come to Morteyn, and since then he had seen her every day at
her own home.
As he stood he could hear the river Lisse whispering, calling
him. He would go--just to see the hidden rendezvous--for old
love's sake; it was a step from the path, no more.
Then that strange instinct, that sudden certainty that comes at
times to all, seized him, and he knew that Lorraine was there by
the river; he knew it as surely as though he saw her before him.
And she was there, standing by the still water, silver chains
drooping over the velvet bodice, scarlet skirt hanging brilliant
and heavy as a drooping poppy in the sun.
"Dear me," she said, very calmly, "I thought you had quite
forgotten me. Why have you not been to the Château, Monsieur
Marche?"
And this, after she had told him to go away and not to return!
Wise in the little busy ways of the world of men, he was
uneducated in the ways of a maid.
Therefore he was speechless.
"And now," she said, with the air of an early Christian
tête-à-tête with Nero--"and now you do not speak to me? Why?"
"Because," he blurted out, "I thought you did not care to have
me!"
Surprise, sorrow, grief gave place to pity in her eyes.
"What a silly man!" she observed. "I am going to sit down on the
moss. Are you intending to call upon my father? He is still in
the turret. If you can spare a moment I will tell you what he is
doing."
Yes, he had a moment to spare--not many moments--he hoped she
would understand that!--but he had one or two little ones at her
disposal.
She read this in his affected hesitation. She would make him pay
dearly for it. Vengeance should be hers!
He stood a moment, eying the water as though it had done him
personal injury. Then he sat down.
"The balloon is almost ready, steering-gear and all," she said.
"I saw papa yesterday for a moment; I tried to get him to stay
with me, but he could not."
She looked wistfully across the river.
Jack watched her. His heart ached for her, and he bent nearer.
"Forgive me for causing you any unhappiness," he said. "Will
you?"
"Yes."
Oh! where was her vengeance now? So far beneath her!
"These four days have been the most wretched days to me, the most
unhappy I have ever lived," he said. The emotion in his voice
brought the soft colour to her face. She did not answer; she
would have if she had wished to check him.
"I will never again, as long as I live, give you one
moment's--displeasure." He was going to say "pain," but he dared
not.
Still she was silent, her idle white fingers clasped in her lap,
her eyes fixed on the river. Little by little the colour deepened
in her cheeks. It was when she felt them burning that she spoke,
nervously, scarcely comprehending her own words: "I--I also was
unhappy--I was silly; we both are very silly--don't you think so?
We are such good friends that it seems absurd to quarrel as we have.
I have forgotten everything that was unpleasant--it was so little
that I could not remember if I tried! Could you? I am very happy
now; I am going to listen while you amuse me with stories." She
curled up against a tree and smiled at him--at the love in his eyes
which she dared not read, which she dared not acknowledge to herself.
It was there, plain enough for a wilful maid to see; it burned under
his sun-tanned cheeks, it softened the firm lips. A thrill of
contentment passed through her. She was satisfied; the world was
kind again.
He lay at her feet, pulling blades of grass from the bank and
idly biting the whitened stems. The voice of the Lisse was in his
ears, he breathed the sweet wood perfume and he saw the sunlight
wrinkle and crinkle the surface ripples where the water washed
through the sedges, and the long grasses quivered and bent with
the glittering current.
"Tell you stories?" he asked again.
"Yes--stories that never have really happened--but that should
have happened."
"Then listen! There was once--many, many years ago--a maid and a
man--"
Good gracious--but that story is as old as life itself! He did
not realize it, nor did she. It seemed new to them.
The sun of noon was moving towards the west when they remembered
that they were hungry.
"You shall come home and lunch with me; will you? Perhaps papa
may be there, too," she said. This hope, always renewed with
every dawn, always fading with the night, lived eternal in her
breast--this hope, that one day she should have her father to
herself.
"Will you come?" she asked, shyly.
"Yes. Do you know it will be our first luncheon together?"
"Oh, but you brought me an ice at the dance that evening; don't
you remember?"
"Yes, but that was not a supper--I mean a luncheon together--with
a table between us and--you know what I mean."
"I don't," she said, smiling dreamily; so he knew that she did.
They hurried a little on the way to the Château, and he laughed
at her appetite, which made her laugh, too, only she pretended
not to like it.
At the porch she left him to change her gown, and slipped away
up-stairs, while he found old Pierre and was dusted and fussed
over until he couldn't stand it another moment. Luckily he heard
Lorraine calling her maid on the porch, and he went to her at
once.
"Papa says you may lunch here--I spoke to him through the
key-hole. It is all ready; will you come?"
A serious-minded maid served them with salad and thin
bread-and-butter.
"Tea!" exclaimed Jack.
"Isn't that very American?" asked Lorraine, timidly. "I thought
you might like it; I understood that all Americans drank tea."
"They do," he said, gravely; "it is a terrible habit--a national
vice--but they do."
"Now you are laughing at me!" she cried. "Marianne, please to
remove that tea! No, no, I won't leave it--and you can suffer if
you wish. And to think that I--"
They were both laughing so that the maid's face grew more
serious, and she removed the teapot as though she were bearing
some strange and poisonous creature to a deserved doom.
As they sat opposite each other, smiling, a little flurried at
finding themselves alone at table together, but eating with the
appetites of very young lovers, the warm summer wind, blowing
through the open windows, bore to their ears the songs of forest
birds. It bore another sound, too; Jack had heard it for the last
two hours, or had imagined he heard it--a low, monotonous
vibration, now almost distinct, now lost, now again discernible,
but too vague, too indefinite to be anything but that faint
summer harmony which comes from distant breezes, distant
movements, mingling with the stir of drowsy field insects, half
torpid in the heat of noon.
Still it was always there; and now, turning his ear to the
window, he laid down knife and fork to listen.
"I have also noticed it," said Lorraine, answering his unasked
question.
"Do you hear it now?"
"Yes--more distinctly now."
A few moments later Jack leaned back in his chair and listened
again.
"Yes," said Lorraine, "it seems to come nearer. What is it?"
"It comes from the southeast. I don't know," he answered.
They rose and walked to the window. She was so near that he
breathed the subtle fragrance of her hair, the fresh sweetness of
her white gown, that rustled beside him.
"Hark!" whispered Lorraine; "I can almost hear voices in the
breezes--the murmur of voices, as if millions of tiny people were
calling us from the ends and outer edges of the earth."
"There is a throbbing, too. Do you notice it?"
"Yes--like one's heart at night. Ah, now it comes nearer--oh,
nearer! nearer! Oh, what can it be?"
He knew now; he knew that indefinable battle--rumour that steals
into the senses long before it is really audible. It is not a
sound--not even a vibration; it is an immense foreboding that
weights the air with prophecy.
"From the south and east," he repeated; "from the Landesgrenze."
"The frontier?"
"Yes. Hark!"
"I hear."
"From the frontier," he said again. "From the river Lauter and
from Wissembourg."
"What is it?" she whispered, close beside him.
"Cannon!"
Yes, it was cannon--they knew it now--cannon throbbing,
throbbing, throbbing along the horizon where the crags of the
Geisberg echoed the dull thunder and shook it far out across the
vineyards of Wissembourg, where the heights of Kapsweyer,
resounding, hurled back the echoes to the mountains in the north.
"Why--why does it seem to come nearer?" asked Lorraine.
"Nearer?" He knew it had come nearer, but how could he tell her
what that meant?
"It is a battle--is it not?" she asked again.
"Yes, a battle."
She said nothing more, but stood leaning along the wall, her white
forehead pressed against the edge of the raised window-sash. Outside,
the little birds had grown suddenly silent; there was a stillness
that comes before a rain; the leaves on the shrubbery scarcely moved.
And now, nearer and nearer swelled the rumour of battle,
undulating, quavering over forest and hill, and the muttering of
the cannon grew to a rumble that jarred the air.
As currents in the upper atmosphere shift and settle north,
south, east, west, so the tide of sound wavered and drifted, and
set westward, flowing nearer and nearer and louder and louder,
until the hoarse, crashing tumult, still vague and distant, was
cut by the sharper notes of single cannon that spoke out,
suddenly impetuous, in the dull din.
The whole Château was awake now; maids, grooms, valets,
gardeners, and keepers were gathering outside the iron grille of
the park, whispering together and looking out across the fields.
There was nothing to see except pastures and woods, and
low-rounded hills crowned with vineyards. Nothing more except a
single strangely shaped cloud, sombre, slender at the base, but
spreading at the top like a palm.
"I am going up to speak to your father," said Jack, carelessly;
"may I?"
Interrupt her father! Lorraine fairly gasped.
"Stay here," he added, with the faintest touch of authority in
his tone; and, before she could protest, he had sped away up the
staircase and round and round the long circular stairs that led
to the single turret.
A little out of breath, he knocked at the door which faced the
top step. There was no answer. He rapped again, impatiently. A
voice startled him: "Lorraine, I am busy!"
"Open," called Jack; "I must see you!"
"I am busy!" replied the marquis. Irritation and surprise were in
his tones.
"Open!" called Jack again; "there is no time to lose!"
Suddenly the door was jerked back and the marquis appeared, pale,
handsome, his eyes cold and blue as icebergs.
"Monsieur Marche--" he began, almost discourteously.
"Pardon," interrupted Jack; "I am going into your room. I wish to
look out of that turret window. Come also--you must know what to
expect."
Astonished, almost angry, the Marquis de Nesville followed him to
the turret window.
"Oh," said Jack, softly, staring out into the sunshine, "it is
time, is it not, that we knew what was going on along the
frontier? Look there!"
On the horizon vast shapeless clouds lay piled, gigantic coils
and masses of vapour, dark, ominous, illuminated by faint, pallid
lights that played under them incessantly; and over all towered
one tall column of smoke, spreading above like an enormous
palm-tree. But this was not all. The vast panorama of hill and
valley and plain, cut by roads that undulated like narrow satin
ribbons on a brocaded surface, was covered with moving objects,
swarming, inundating the landscape. To the south a green hill
grew black with the human tide, to the north long lines and
oblongs and squares moved across the land, slowly, almost
imperceptibly--but they were moving, always moving east.
"It is an army coming," said the marquis.
"It is a rout," said Jack, quietly.
The marquis moved suddenly, as though to avoid a blow.
"What troops are those?" he asked, after a silence.
"It is the French army," replied Jack. "Have you not heard the
cannonade?"
"No--my machines make some noise when I'm working. I hear it now.
What is that cloud--a fire?"
"It is the battle cloud."
"And the smoke on the horizon?"
"The smoke from the guns. They are fighting beyond
Saarbrück--yes, beyond Pfalzburg and Wörth; they are fighting
beyond the Lauter."
"Wissembourg?"
"I think so. They are nearer now. Monsieur de Nesville, the
battle has gone against the French."
"How do you know?" demanded the marquis, harshly.
"I have seen battles. One need only listen and look at the army
yonder. They will pass Morteyn; I think they will pass for miles
through the country. It looks to me like a retreat towards Metz,
but I am not sure. The throngs of troops below are fugitives, not
the regular geometrical figures that you see to the north. Those
are regiments and divisions moving towards the west in good
order."
The two men stepped back into the room and faced each other.
"After the rain the flood, after the rout the invasion," said
Jack, firmly. "You cannot know it too quickly. You know it now,
and you can make your plans."
He was thinking of Lorraine's safety when he spoke, but the
marquis turned instinctively to a mass of machinery and chemical
paraphernalia behind him.
"You will have your hands full," said Jack, repressing an angry
sneer; "if you wish, my aunt De Morteyn will charge herself with
Mademoiselle de Nesville's safety."
"True, Lorraine might go to Morteyn," murmured the marquis,
absently, examining a smoky retort half filled with a silvery
heap of dust.
"Then, may I drive her over after dinner?"
"Yes," replied the other, indifferently.
Jack started towards the stairs, hesitated, and turned around.
"Your inventions are not safe, of course, if the German army
comes. Do you need my help?"
"My inventions are my own affair," said the marquis, angrily.
Jack flushed scarlet, swung on his heels, and marched out of the
room and down the stairs. On the lower steps he met Lorraine's
maid, and told her briefly to pack her mistress's trunks for a
visit to Morteyn.
Lorraine was waiting for him at the window where he had left her,
a scared, uncertain little maid in truth.
"The battle is very near, isn't it?" she asked.
"No, miles away yet."
"Did you speak to papa? Did he send word to me? Does he want me?"
He found it hard to tell her what message her father had sent,
but he did.
"I am to go to Morteyn? Oh, I cannot! I cannot! Papa will be
alone here!" she said, aghast.
"Perhaps you had better see him," he said, almost bitterly.
She hurried away up the stairs; he heard her little eager feet on
the stone steps that led to the turret; climbing up, up, up,
until the sound was lost in the upper stories of the house. He
went out to the stables and ordered the dog-cart and a wagon for
her trunks. He did not fear that this order might be premature,
for he thought he had not misjudged the Marquis de Nesville. And
he had not, for, before the cart was ready, Lorraine, silent,
pale, tearless, came noiselessly down the stairs holding her
little cloak over one arm.
"I am to stay a week," she said; "he does not want me." She
added, hastily, "He is so busy and worried, and there is much to
be done, and if the Prussians should come he must hide the
balloon and the box of plans and formula--"
"I know," said Jack, tenderly; "it will lift a weight from his
mind when he knows you are safe with my aunt."
"He is so good, he thinks only of my safety," faltered Lorraine.
"Come," said Jack, in a voice that sounded husky; "the horse is
waiting; I am to drive you. Your maid will follow with the trunks
this evening. Are you ready? Give me your cloak. There--now, are
you ready?"
"Yes."
He aided her to mount the dog-cart--her light touch was on his
arm. He turned to the groom at the horse's head, sprang to the
seat, and nodded. Lorraine leaned back and looked up at the
turret where her father was.
"Allons! En route!" cried Jack, cheerily, snapping his
ribbon-decked whip.
At the same instant a horseless cavalryman, gray with dust and
dripping with blood and sweat, staggered out on the road from
among the trees. He turned a deathly face to theirs, stopped,
tottered, and called out--"Jack!"
"Georges!" cried Jack, amazed.
"Give me a horse, for God's sake!" he gasped. "I've just killed
mine. I--I must get to Metz by midnight--"
XIII
AIDE-DE-CAMP
Lorraine and Jack sprang to the road from opposite sides of the
vehicle; Georges' drawn face was stretched into an attempt at a
smile which was ghastly, for the stiff, black blood that had
caked in a dripping ridge from his forehead to his chin cracked
and grew moist and scarlet, and his hollow cheeks whitened under
the coat of dust. But he drew himself up by an effort and saluted
Lorraine with a punctilious deference that still had a touch of
jauntiness to it--the jauntiness of a youthful cavalry officer in
the presence of a pretty woman.
Old Pierre, who had witnessed the episode from the butler's
window, came limping down the path, holding a glass and a carafe
of brandy.
"You are right, Pierre," said Jack. "Georges, drink it up, old
fellow. There, now you can stand on those pins of yours. What's
that--a sabre cut?"
"No, a scratch from an Uhlan's lance-tip. Cut like a razor,
didn't it? I've just killed my horse, trying to get over a ditch.
Can you give me a mount, Jack?"
"There isn't a horse in the stable that can carry you to Metz,"
said Lorraine, quietly; "Diable is lame and Porthos is not shod.
I can give you my pony."
"Can't you get a train?" asked Jack, astonished.
"No, the Uhlans are in our rear, everywhere. The railroad is torn
up, the viaducts smashed, the wires cut, and general deuce to
pay. I ran into an Uhlan or two--you notice it perhaps," he
added, with a grim smile. "Could you drive me to Morteyn? Do you
think the vicomte would lend me a horse?"
"Of course he would," said Jack; "come, then--there is room for
three," with an anxious glance at Lorraine.
"Indeed, there is always room for a soldier of France!" cried
Lorraine. At the same moment she instinctively laid one hand
lightly on Jack's arm. Their eyes spoke for an instant--the
generous appeal that shone in hers was met and answered by a
response that brought the delicate colour into her cheeks.
"Let me hang on behind," pleaded Georges--"I'm so dirty, you
know." But they bundled him into the seat between them, and Jack
touched his beribboned whip to the horse's ears, and away they
went speeding over the soft forest road in the cool of the fading
day; old Pierre, bottle and glass in hand, gaping after them and
shaking his gray head.
Jack began to fire volleys of questions at the young hussar as
soon as they entered the forest, and poor Georges replied as best
he could.
"I don't know very much about it; I was detached yesterday and
taken on General Douay's staff. We were at Wissembourg--you know
that little town on the Lauter where the vineyards cover
everything and the mountains are pretty steep to the north and
west. All I know is this: about six o'clock this morning our
outposts on the hills to the south began banging way in a great
panic. They had been attacked, it seems, by the 4th Bavarian
Division, Count Bothmer's, I believe. Our posts fell back to the
town, where the 1st Turcos reinforced them at the railroad
station. The artillery were at it on our left, too, and there was
a most infernal racket. The next thing I saw was those crazy
Bavarians, with their little flat drums beating, and their
fur-crested helmets all bobbing, marching calmly up the Geisberg.
Jack, those fellows went through the vineyards like fiends
astride a tempest. That was at two o'clock. The Prussian
Crown-Prince rode into the town an hour before; we couldn't hold
it--Heaven knows why. That's all I saw--except the death of our
general."
"General Douay?" cried Lorraine, horrified.
"Yes, he was killed about ten o'clock in the morning. The town
was stormed through the Hagenauer Thor by the Bavarians. After
that we still held the Geisberg and the Château. You should have
seen it when we left it. I'll say it was a butcher's shambles.
I'd say more if Mademoiselle de Nesville were not here." He was
trying hard to bear up--to speak lightly of the frightful
calamity that had overwhelmed General Abel Douay and his entire
division.
"The fight at the Château was worth seeing," said Georges,
airily. "They went at it with drums beating and flags flying. Oh,
but they fell like leaves in the gardens, there--the paths and
shrubbery were littered with them, dead, dying, gasping, crawling
about, like singed flies under a lamp. We had them beaten, too,
if it hadn't been for their General von Kirchbach. He stood in
the garden--he'd been hit, too--and bawled for the artillery.
Then they came at us again in three divisions. Where they got all
their regiments, I don't know, but their 7th Grenadier Guards
were there, and their 47th, 58th, 59th, 80th, and 87th regiments
of the line, not counting a Jäger battalion and no end of
artillery. They carried the Three Poplars--a hill--and they began
devastating everything. We couldn't face their fire--I don't know
why, Jack; it breaks my heart when I say it, but we couldn't hold
them. Then they began howling for cannon, and, of course, that
settled the Château. The town was in flames when I left."
After a silence, Jack asked him whether it was a rout or a
retreat.
"We're falling back in very decent order," said Georges,
eagerly--"really, we are. Of course, there were some troops that
got into a sort of panic--the Uhlans are annoying us considerably.
The Turcos fought well. We fairly riddled the 58th Prussians--their
king's regiment, you know. It was the 2d Bavarian Corps that did
for us. We will meet them later."
"Where are you going--to Metz?" inquired Jack, soberly.
"Yes; I've a packet for Bazaine--I don't know what. They're
trying to reach him by wire, but those confounded Uhlans are
destroying everything. My dear fellow, you need not worry; we
have been checked, that's all. Our promenade to Berlin is
postponed in deference to King Wilhelm's earnest wishes."
They all tried to laugh a little, and Jack chirped to his horse,
but even that sober animal seemed to feel the depression, for he
responded in fits and starts and jerks that were unpleasant and
jarring to Georges' aching head.
The sky had become covered with bands of wet-looking clouds, the
leaves of the forest stirred noiselessly on their stems. Along
the river willows quivered and aspens turned their leaves white
side to the sky. In the querulous notes of the birds there was a
prophecy of storms, the river muttered among its hollows of
floods and tempests.
Suddenly a great sombre raven sailed to the road, alighted,
sidled back, and sat fearlessly watching them.
Lorraine shivered and nestled closer to Jack.
"Oh," she murmured, "I never saw one before--except in pictures."
"They belong in the snow--they have no business here," said Jack;
"they always make me think of those pictures of Russia--the
retreat of the Grand Army, you know."
"Wolves and ravens," said Lorraine, in a low voice; "I know why
they come to us here in France--Monsieur Marche, did I not tell
you that day in the carrefour?"
"Yes," he answered; "do you really think you are a prophetess?"
"Did you see wolves here?" asked Georges.
"Yes; before war was declared. I told Monsieur Marche--it is a
legend of our country. He, of course, laughed at it. I also do not
believe everything I am told--but--I don't know--I have alway
believed that, ever since I was, oh, very, very small--like that."
She held one small gloved hand about twelve inches from the floor
of the cart.
"At such a height and such an age it is natural to believe
anything," said Jack. "I, too, accepted many strange doctrines
then."
"You are laughing again," said Lorraine.
So they passed through the forest, trying to be cheerful, even
succeeding at times. But Georges' face grew paler every minute,
and his smile was so painful that Lorraine could not bear it and
turned her head away, her hand tightening on the box-rail
alongside.
As they were about to turn out into the Morteyn road, where the
forest ended, Jack suddenly checked the horse and rose to his
feet.
"What is it?" asked Lorraine. "Oh, I see! Oh, look!"
The Morteyn road was filled with infantry, solid, plodding
columns, pressing fast towards the west. The fields, too, were
black with men, engineers, weighted down with their heavy
equipments, resting in long double rows, eyes vacant, heads bent.
Above the thickets of rifles sweeping past, mounted officers sat
in their saddles, as though carried along on the surface of the
serried tide. Standards fringed with gold slanted in the last
rays of the sun, sabres glimmered, curving upward from the
thronged rifles, and over all sounded the shuffle, shuffle of
worn shoes in the dust, a mournful, monotonous cadence, a
hopeless measure, whose burden was despair, whose beat was the
rhythm of breaking hearts.
Oh, but it cut Lorraine to see their boyish faces, dusty, gaunt,
hollow-eyed, turn to her and turn away without a change, without
a shade of expression. The mask of blank apathy stamped on every
visage almost terrified her. On they came, on, on, and still on,
under a forest of shining rifles. A convoy of munitions crowded
in the rear of the column, surrounded by troopers of the
train-des-equipages; then followed more infantry, then cavalry,
dragoons, who sat listlessly in their high saddles, carbines
bobbing on their broad backs, whalebone plumes matted with dust.
Georges rose painfully from his seat, stepped to the side, and
climbed down into the road. He felt in the breast of his dolman
for the packet, adjusted his sabre, and turned to Lorraine.
"There is a squadron of the Remount Cavalry over in that
meadow--I can get a horse there," he said. "Thank you, Jack.
Good-by, Mademoiselle de Nesville, you have been more than
generous."
"You can have a horse from the Morteyn stables," said Jack; "my
dear fellow, I can't bear to see you go--to think of your riding
to Metz to-night."
"It's got to be done, you know," said Georges. He bowed; Lorraine
stretched out her hand and he gravely touched it with his
fingers. Then he exchanged a nervous gripe with Jack, and turned
away hurriedly, crowding between the passing dragoons, traversing
the meadows until they lost him in the throng.
"We cannot get to the house by the road," said Jack; "we must
take the stable path;" and he lifted the reins and turned the
horse's head.
The stable road was narrow, and crossed with sprays of tender
leaves. The leaves touched Lorraine's eyes, they rubbed across
her fair brow, robbing her of single threads of glittering hair,
they brushed a single bright tear from her cheeks and held it,
glimmering like a drop of dew.
"Behold the end of the world," said Lorraine--"I am weeping."
He turned and looked into her eyes.
"Is that strange?" he asked, gently.
"Yes; I have often wished to cry. I never could--except once
before--and that was four days ago."
The day of their quarrel! He thrilled from head to foot, but
dared not speak.
"Four days ago," said Lorraine again. She thought of herself
gliding from her bed to seek the stable where Jack's horse stood,
she thought of her hot face pressed to the wounded creature's
neck. Then, suddenly aware of what she had confessed, she leaned
back and covered her face with her hands.
"Lorraine!" he whispered, brokenly.
But they were already at the Château.
"Lorraine, my child!" cried Madame de Morteyn, leaning from the
terrace. Her voice was drowned in the crash of drums rolling,
rolling, from the lawn below, and the trumpets broke out in harsh
chorus, shrill, discordant, terrible.
The Emperor had arrived at Morteyn.
XIV
THE MARQUIS MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE
The Emperor dined with the Vicomte and Madame de Morteyn that
evening in the great dining-room. The Château, patrolled by
doubled guards of the Cent Gardes, was surrounded by triple
hedges of bayonets and a perfect pest of police spies, secret
agents, and flunkys. In the breakfast-room General Frossard and
his staff were also dining; and up-stairs, in a small gilded
salon, Jack and Lorraine ate soberly, tenderly cared for by the
old house-keeper.
Outside they could hear the steady tramp of passing infantry
along the dark road, the clank of artillery, and the muffled
trample of cavalry. Frossard's Corps was moving rapidly, its back
to the Rhine.
"I saw the Prince Imperial," said Jack; "he was in the
conservatory, writing to his mother, the Empress. Have you ever
seen him, Mademoiselle de Nesville? He is young, really a mere
child, but he looks very manly in his uniform. He has that same
charm, that same delicate, winning courtesy that the Emperor is
famous for. But he looks so pale and tired--like a school-boy in
the Lycée."
"It would have been unfortunate if the Emperor had stopped at the
Château de Nesville," said Lorraine, sipping her small glass of
Moselle; "papa hates him."
"Many Royalists do."
"It is not that only; there is something else--something that I
don't know about. It concerns my brother who died many years ago,
before I was born. Have I never spoken of my brother? Has papa
never said anything?"
"No," said Jack, gently.
"Well, when my brother was alive, our family lived in Paris. That
is all I know, except that my brother died shortly before the empire
was proclaimed, and papa and mamma came to our country-place here,
where I was born. René's--my brother's--death had something to do
with my father's hatred of the empire, I know that. But papa will
never speak of it to me, except to tell me that I must always
remember that the Emperor has been the curse of the De Nesvilles.
Hark! Hear the troops passing. Why do they never cheer their
Emperor?"
"They cheered him at Saarbrück--I heard them. You are not eating;
are you tired?"
"A little. I shall go with Marianne, I think; I am sleepy. Are
you going to sit up? Do you think we can sleep with the noise of
the horses passing? I should like to see the Emperor at table."
"Wait," said Jack; "I'll go down and find out whether we can't
slip into the ballroom."
"Then I'll go too," said Lorraine, rising. "Marianne, stay here;
I will return in a moment;" and she slipped after Jack, down the
broad staircase and out to the terrace, where a huge cuirassier
officer stood in the moonlight, his straight sabre shimmering,
his white mantle open over the silver breastplate.
The ballroom was brilliantly lighted, the gilded canapés and
chairs were covered with officers in every conceivable uniform,
lounging, sprawling, chatting, and gesticulating, or pulling
papers and maps over the floor. A general traced routes across
the map at his feet with the point of a naked sword; an officer
of dragoons, squatting on his haunches, followed the movement of
the sword-point and chewed an unlighted cigarette. Officers were
coming and going constantly, entering by the hallway and leaving
through the door-like windows that swung open to the floor. The
sinister face of a police-spy peered into the conservatory at
intervals, where a slender, pale-faced boy sat, clothed in a
colonel's uniform, writing on a carved table. It was the Prince
Imperial, back from Saarbrück and his "baptism of fire," back
also from the Spicheren and the disaster of Wörth. He was writing
to his mother, that unhappy, anxious woman who looked every day
from the Tuileri
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