Chambers Robert William
Lorraine
CHAPTER 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."
CHAPTER 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'œuvres; 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.
