“Hurrah! Preussen!”
The Prussian cavalry were charging the cannon.
Suddenly he heard them close at hand; they loomed everywhere in the smoke, they were among the infantry, among the cannoneers; a tall rider in silver helmet and armour plunged out into the road behind them, his horse staggered, trembled, then man and beast collapsed in a shower of bullets. Others were coming, too, galloping in through the grain stubble and thickets, shaking their long, straight sabres, but the infantry chased them, and fell upon them, clubbing, shooting, stabbing, pulling horses and men to earth. The cannon, which had ceased, began again; the infantry were cheering; trumpets blew persistently, faintly and more faintly. In the road a big, bearded man was crawling on his hands and knees away from a dead horse. His helmet fell off in the dust.
Jack gathered the reins and called to the horse. As the heavy cart moved off, the ground began to tremble again with the shock of on-coming horses, and again, through the swelling tumult, he caught the cry —
“Hurrah! Preussen!”
The Prussian cuirassiers were coming back.
“Is Sir Thorald dying?” he asked of Alixe; “can he live if I lash the horse?”
“Look at him, Jack,” she muttered.
“I see; he cannot live. I shall drive slowly. You — you are wounded, are you? there — on the neck—”
“It is his blood on my breast.”
CHAPTER XXI
THE WHITE CROSS
At ten o’clock that night Jack stepped from the ballroom to the terrace of the Château Morteyn and listened to the distant murmur of the river Lisse, below the meadow. The day of horror had ended with a dozen dropping shots from the outposts, now lining the banks of the Lisse from the Château de Nesville to Morteyn. The French infantry had been pouring into Morteyn since late afternoon; they had entered the park when he entered, driving his tumbril with its blood-stained burden; they had turned the river into a moat, the meadow into an earthwork, the Château itself into a fortress.
On the concrete terrace beside him a gatling-gun glimmered in the starlight; sentinels leaned on their elbows, sprawling across the parapets; shadowy ranks of sleeping men lay among the shrubbery below, white-faced, exhausted, motionless.
There were low voices from the darkened ballroom, the stir and tinkle of spurred boots, the ring of sabres. Out in the hard macadamized road, cannon were passing into the park by the iron gate; beyond the road masses of men moved in the starlight.
After a moment Jack turned away and entered the house. For the hundredth time he mounted the stairs to Lorraine’s bedroom door and listened, holding his breath. He heard nothing — not a cry — not a sob. It had been so from the first, when he had told her that her father lay dead somewhere in the forest of Morteyn.
She had said nothing — she went to her room and sat down on the bed, white and still. Sir Thorald lay in the next room, breathing deeply. Alixe was kneeling beside him, crying silently.
Twice a surgeon from an infantry regiment had come and gone away after a glance at Sir Thorald. A captain came later and asked for a Sister of Mercy.
“She can’t go,” said Jack, in a low voice. But little Alixe rose, still crying, and followed the captain to the stables, where a dozen mangled soldiers lay in the straw and hay.
It was midnight when she returned to find Jack standing beside Sir Thorald in the dark. When he saw it was Alixe he led her gently into the hall.
“He is conscious now; I will call you when the time comes. Go into that room — Lorraine is there, alone. Ah, go, Alixe; it is charity! — and you wear the white cross—”
“It is dyed scarlet,” she whispered through her tears.
He returned to Sir Thorald, who lay moving his restless hands over the sheets and turning his head constantly from side to side.
“Go on,” said Jack; “finish what you were saying.”
“Will she come?”
“Yes — in time.”
Sir Thorald relapsed into a rambling, monotonous account of some military movement near Wissembourg until Jack spoke again:
“Yes — I know; tell me about Alixe.”
“Yes — Alixe,” muttered Sir Thorald— “is she here? I was wrong; I saw her at Cologne; that was all, Jack — nothing more.”
“There is more,” said Jack; “tell me.”
“Yes, there is more. I saw that — that she loved me. There was a scene — I am not always a beast — I tried not to be. Then — then I found that there was nothing left but to go away — somewhere — and live — without her. It was too late. She knew it—”
“Go on,” said Jack.
Suddenly Sir Thorald’s voice grew clear.
“Can’t you understand?” he asked; “I damned both our souls. She is buying hers back with tears and blood — with the white cross on her heart and death in her eyes! And I am dying here — and she’s to drag out the years afterwards—”
He choked; Jack watched him quietly.
Sir Thorald turned his head to him when the coughing ceased.
“She went with a field ambulance; I went, too. I was shot below that vineyard. They told her; that is all. Am I dying?”
Jack did not answer.
“Will you write to Molly?” asked Sir Thorald, drowsily.
“Yes. God help you, Sir Thorald.”
“Who cares?” muttered Sir Thorald. “I’m a beast — a dying beast. May I see Alixe?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell her to come — now. Soon I’ll wish to be alone; that’s the way beasts die — alone.”
He rambled on again about a battle somewhere in the south, and Jack went to the door and called, “Alixe!”
She came, pallid and weeping, carrying a lighted candle.
Jack took it from her hand and blew out the flame.
“They won’t let us have a light; they fear bombardment. Go in now.”
“Is he dying?”
“God knows.”
“God?” repeated Alixe.
Jack bent and touched the child’s forehead with his lips.
“Pray for him,” he said; “I shall write his wife to-night.”
Alixe went in to the bedside to kneel again and buy back two souls with the agony of her child’s heart.
“Pray,” she said to Sir Thorald.
“Pray,” he repeated.
Jack closed the door.
Up and down the dark hall he wandered, pausing at times to listen to some far rifle-shot and the answering fusillade along the picket-line. Once he stopped an officer on the stairway and asked for a priest, but, remembering that Sir Thorald was Protestant, turned away with a vague apology and resumed his objectless wandering.
At times he fancied he heard cannon, so far away that nothing of sound remained, only a faint jar on the night air. Twice he looked from the window over the vast black forest, thinking of the dead man lying there alone. And then he longed to go to Lorraine; he felt that he must touch her, that his hand on hers might help her somehow.
At last, deadly weary, he sat down on the stairs by her door to try to think out the problems that to-morrow would bring.
His aunt and uncle had gone on to Paris; Lorraine’s father was dead and her home had been turned into a fort. Saint-Lys was heavily occupied by the Germans, and they held the railroad also in their possession. It seemed out of the question to stay in Morteyn with Lorraine, for an assault on the Château was imminent. How could he get her to Paris? That was the only place for her now.
He thought, too, of his own danger from the Uhlans. He had told Lorraine, partly because he wished her to understand their position, partly because the story of his capture, trial, and escape led up to the tragedy that he scarcely knew how to break to her. But he had done it, and she, pale as death, had gone silently to her room, motioning him away as he stood awkwardly at the door.
That last glimpse of the room remained in his mind, it obliterated everything else at moments — Lorraine sitting on her bedside, her blue eye
s vacant, her face whiter than the pillows.
And so he sat there on the stairs, the dawn creeping into the hallway; and his eyes never left the panels of her door. There was not a sound from within. This for a while frightened him, and again and again he started impulsively towards the door, only to turn back again and watch there in the coming dawn. Presently he remembered that dawn might bring an attack on the Château, and he rose and hurried down-stairs to the terrace where a crowd of officers stood watching the woods through their night-glasses. The general impression among them was that there might be an attack. They yawned and smoked and studied the woods, but they were polite, and answered all his questions with a courteous light-heartedness that jarred on him. He glanced for a moment at the infantry, now moving across the meadow towards the river; he saw troops standing at ease along the park wall, troops sitting in long ranks in the vegetable garden, troops passing the stables, carrying pickaxes and wheeling wheelbarrows piled with empty canvas sacks.
Sleepy-eyed boyish soldiers of the artillery were harnessing the battery horses, rubbing them down, bathing wounded limbs or braiding the tails. The farrier was shoeing a great black horse, who turned its gentle eyes towards the hay-bales piled in front of the stable. One or two slim officers, in pale-blue fur-edged pelisses, strolled among the trampled flower-beds, smoking cigars and watching a line of men shovelling earth into canvas sacks. The odour of soup was in the air; the kitchen echoed with the din of pots and pans. Outside, too, the camp-kettles were steaming and the rattle of gammels came across the lawn.
“Who is in command here?” asked Jack, turning to a handsome dragoon officer who stood leaning on his sabre, the horse-hair crinière blowing about his helmet.
“Why, General Farron!” said the officer in surprise.
“Farron!” repeated Jack; “is he back from Africa, here in France — here at Morteyn?”
“He is at the Château de Nesville,” said the officer, smiling. “You seem to know him, monsieur.”
“Indeed I do,” said Jack, warmly. “Do you think he will come here?”
“I suppose so. Shall I send you word when he arrives?”
Another officer came up, a general, white-haired and sombre.
“Is this the Vicomte de Morteyn?” he asked, looking at Jack.
“His nephew; the vicomte has gone to Paris. My name is Marche,” said Jack.
The general saluted him; Jack bowed.
“I regret the military necessity of occupying the Château; the government will indemnify Monsieur le Vicomte—”
Jack held up his hand: “My uncle is an old soldier of France — the government is welcome; I bid you welcome in the name of the Vicomte de Morteyn.”
The old general flushed and bowed deeply.
“I thank you in the name of the government. Blood will tell. It is easy, Monsieur Marche, to see that you are the nephew of the Vicomte de Morteyn.”
“Monsieur Marche,” said the young dragoon officer, respectfully, “is a friend of General Farron.”
“I had the honour to be attached as correspondent to his staff — in Oran,” said Jack.
The old general held out his hand with a gesture entirely charming.
“I envy General Farron your friendship,” he said. “I had a son — perhaps your age. He died — yesterday.” After a silence, he said: “There are ladies in the Château?”
“Yes,” replied Jack, soberly.
The general turned with a gesture towards the woods. “It is too late to move them; we are, it appears, fairly well walled in. The cellar, in case of bombardment, is the best you can do for them. How many are there?”
“Two, general. One is a Sister of Mercy.”
Other officers began to gather on the terrace, glasses persistently focussed on the nearer woods. Somebody called to an officer below the terrace to hurry the cannon.
Jack made his way through the throng of officers to the stairs, mounted them, and knocked at Lorraine’s door.
“Is it you — Jack?”
“Yes.”
“Come.”
He went in.
Lorraine lay on the bed, quiet and pale; it startled him to see her so calm. For an instant he hesitated on the threshold, then went slowly to the bedside. She held out one hand; he took it.
“I cannot cry,” she said; “I cannot. Sit beside me, Jack. Listen: I am wicked — I have not a single tear for my father. I have been here — so — all night long. I prayed to weep; I cannot. I understand he is dead — that I shall never again wait for him, watch at his door in the turret, dream he is calling me; I understand that he will never call me again — never again — never. And I cannot weep. Do you hate me? I am tired — so tired, like a child — very young.”
She raised her other hand and laid it in his. “I need you,” she said; “I am too tired, too young, to be so alone. It is myself I suffer for; think, Jack, myself, in such a moment. I am selfish, I know it. Oh, if I could weep now! Why can I not? I loved my father. And now I can only think of his little machines in the turret and his balloon, and — oh! — I only remember the long days of my life when I waited on the turret stairs hoping he would come out, dreaming he would come some day and take me in his arms and kiss me and hold me close, as I am to you. And now he never will. And I waited all my life!”
“Hush!” he whispered, touching her hair; “you are feverish.”
Her head was pressed close to him; his arms held her tightly; she sighed like a restless child.
“Never again — never — for he is dead. And yet I could have lived forever, waiting for him on the turret stairs. Do you understand?”
Holding her strained to his breast he trembled at the fierce hopelessness in her voice. In a moment he recognized that a crisis was coming; that she was utterly irresponsible, utterly beyond reasoning. Like a spectre her loveless childhood had risen and confronted her; and now that there was no longer even hope, she had turned desperately upon herself with the blank despair of a wounded animal. End it all! — that was her one impulse. He felt it already taking shape; she shivered in his arms.
“But there is a God—” he began, fearfully.
She looked up at him with vacant eyes, hot and burning.
He tried again: “I love you, Lorraine—”
Her straight brows knitted and she struggled to free herself.
“Let me go!” she whispered. “I do not wish to live — I can’t! — I can’t!”
Then he played his last card, and, holding her close, looked straight into her eyes.
“France needs us all,” he said.
She grew quiet. Suddenly the warm blood dyed her cheeks. Then, drop by drop, the tears came; her sweet face, wet and flushed, nestled quietly close to his own face.
“We will both live for that,” he said; “we will do what we can.”
For an hour she lay sobbing her heart out in his arms; and when she was quiet at last he told her how the land lay trembling under the invasion, how their armies had struggled and dwindled and lost ground, how France, humbled, drenched with blood and tears, still stood upright calling to her children. He spoke of the dead, the dying, the mutilated creatures gasping out their souls in the ditches.
“Life is worth living,” he said. “If our place is not in the field with the wounded, not in the hospital, not in the prisons where these boys are herded like diseased cattle, then it is perhaps at the shrine’s foot. Pray for France, Lorraine, pray and work, for there is work to do.”
“There is work; we will go together,” she whispered.
“Yes, together. Perhaps we can help a little. Your father, when he died, had the steel box with him. Lorraine, when he is found and is laid to rest, we will take that box to the French lines. The secret must belong to France!”
She was eager enough now; she sat up on the bed and listened with bright, wet eyes while he told her what they two might do for her land of France.
“Dear — dear Jack!” she cried, softly.
But he knew t
hat it was not the love of a maid for a man that parted her lips; it was the love of the land, of her land of Lorraine, that fierce, passionate love of soil that had at last blazed up, purified in the long years of a loveless life. All that she had felt for her father turned to a burning thrill for her country. It is such moments that make children defenders of barricades, that make devils or saints of the innocent. The maid that rode in mail, crowned, holding aloft the banner of the fleur-de-lys, died at the stake; her ashes were the ashes of a saint. The maid who flung her bullets from the barricade, who carried a dagger to the Rue Haxo, who spat in the faces of the line when they shoved her to the wall in the Luxembourg, died too for France. Her soul is the soul of a martyr; but all martyrs are not saints.
For another hour they sat there, planning, devising, eager to begin their predestined work. They spoke of the dead, too, and Lorraine wept at last for her father.
“There was a Sister of Mercy here,” she said; “I saw her. I could not speak to her. Later I knew it was Alixe. You called her?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she?”
“Shall I speak to her?”
He went out into the hall and tapped at the door of the next room.
“Alixe?”
“Yes — Jack.”
He entered.
Sir Thorald lay very still under the sheets, the crucifix on his breast. At first Jack thought he was dead, but the slight motion of the chest under the sheets reassured him. He turned to Alixe:
“Go for a minute and comfort Lorraine,” he whispered. “Go, my child.”
“I — I cannot—”
“Go,” said Sir Thorald, in a distinct voice.
When she had gone, Jack bent over Sir Thorald. A great pity filled him, and he touched the half-opened hand with his own.
Sir Thorald looked up at him wistfully.
“I am not worth it,” he said.
“Yes, we all are worth it.”
“I am not,” gasped Sir Thorald. “Jack, you are good. Do you believe, at least, that I loved her?”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 72