Chapter XXII: A Door Is Locked 239 (4)

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 Tuileries into the streets of a city already clamorous, already sullenly suspicious of its Emperor and Empress.

The boy's face was beautiful. He raised his head and sat silently biting his pen, eyes wandering. Perhaps he was listening to the retreat of Frossard's Corps through the fair province of Lorraine--a province that he should never live to see again. A few months more, a few battles, a few villages in flames, a few cities ravaged, a few thousand corpses piled from the frontier to the Loire--and then, what? Why, an emperor the less and an emperor the more, and a new name for a province--that is all.

His delicate, high-bred face fell; he shaded his sad eyes with one thin hand and wrote again--all that a good son writes to a mother, all that a good soldier writes to a sovereign, all that a good prince writes to an empress.

"Oh, what sad eyes!" whispered Lorraine; "he is too young to see such things."

"He may see worse," said Jack. "Come, shall we walk around the lawn to the dining-room?"

They descended the dark steps, her arm resting lightly on his, and he guided her through a throng of gossiping cavalrymen and hurrying but polite officers towards the western wing of the Château, the trample of the passing army always in their ears.

As he was about to cross the drive, a figure stepped from the shadow of the porte-cochère--a man in a rough tweed suit, who lifted his wide-awake politely and asked Jack if he was not English.

"American," said Jack, guardedly.

The man was apparently much relieved. He made a frank, manly apology for his intrusion, looked appealingly at Lorraine, and said, with a laugh: "The fact is, I'm astray in the wrong camp. I rode out from the Spicheren and got mixed in the roads, and first I knew I fell in with Frossard's Corps, and I can't get away. I thought you were an Englishman; you're American, it seems, and really I may venture to feel that there is hope for me--may I not?"

"Why, yes," said Jack; "whatever I can do, I'll do gladly."

"Then let me observe without hesitation," continued the man, smiling under his crisp mustache, "that I'm in search of a modest dinner and a shelter of even more modest dimensions. I'm a war correspondent, unattached just at present, but following the German army. My name is Archibald Grahame."

At the name of the great war correspondent Jack stared, then impulsively held out his hand.

"Aha!" said Grahame, "you must be a correspondent, too. Ha! I thought I was not wrong."

He bowed again to Lorraine, who returned his manly salute very sweetly. "If," she thought, "Jack is inclined to be nice to this sturdy young man in tweeds, I also will be as nice as I can."

"My name is Marche--Jack Marche," said Jack, in some trepidation. "I am not a correspondent--that is, not an active one."

"You were at Sadowa, and you've been in Oran with Chanzy," said Grahame, quickly.

Jack flushed with pleasure to find that the great Archibald Grahame had heard of him.

"We must take Mr. Grahame up-stairs at once--must we not?--if he is hungry," suggested Lorraine, whose tender heart was touched at the thought of a hungry human being.

They all laughed, and Grahame thanked her with that whimsical but charming courtesy that endeared him to all who knew him.

"It is awkward, now, isn't it, Mr. Marche? Here I am in France with the army I tried to keep away from, roofless, supperless, and rather expecting some of these sentinels or police agents may begin to inquire into my affairs. If they do they'll take me for a spy. I was threatened by the villagers in a little hamlet west of Saint-Avold--and how I'm going to get back to my Hohenzollerns I haven't the faintest notion."

"There'll surely be some way. My uncle will vouch for you and get you a safe-conduct," said Jack. "Perhaps, Mr. Grahame, you had better come and dine in our salon up-stairs. Will you? The Emperor occupies the large dining-room, and General Frossard and his staff have the breakfast-room."

Amused by the young fellow's doubt that a simple salon on the first floor might not be commensurate with the hospitality of Morteyn, Archibald Grahame stepped pleasantly to the other side of the road; and so, with Lorraine between them, they climbed the terrace and scaled the stairs to the little gilt salon where Lorraine's maid Marianne and the old house-keeper sat awaiting her return.

Lorraine was very wide-awake now--she was excited by the stir and the brilliant uniforms. She unconsciously took command, too, feeling that she should act the hostess in the absence of Madame de Morteyn. The old house-keeper, who adored her, supported her loyally; so, between Marianne and herself, a very delightful dinner was served to the hungry but patient Grahame when he returned with Jack from the latter's chamber, where he had left most of the dust and travel stains of a long tramp across country.

And how the great war correspondent did eat and drink! It made Jack hungry again to watch him, so with a laughing apology to Lorraine he joined in with a will, enthusiastically applauded and encouraged by Grahame.

"I could tell you were a correspondent by your appetite," said Grahame. "Dear me! it takes a campaign to make life worth living!"

"Life is not worth living, then, without an appetite?" inquired Lorraine, mischievously.

"No," said Grahame, seriously; "and you also will be of that opinion some day, mademoiselle."

His kindly, humourous eyes turned inquiringly from Jack to Lorraine and from Lorraine to Jack. He was puzzled, perhaps, but did not betray it.

They were not married, because Lorraine was Mademoiselle de Nesville and Jack was Monsieur Marche. Cousins? Probably. Engaged? Probably. So Grahame smiled benignly and emptied another bottle of Moselle with a frank abandon that fascinated the old house-keeper.

"And you don't mean to say that you are going to put me up for the night, too?" he asked Jack. "You place me under eternal obligation, and I accept with that understanding. If you run into my Hohenzollerns, they'll receive you as a brother."

"I don't think he will visit the Hohenzollern Regiment," observed Lorraine, demurely.

"No--er--the fact is, I'm not doing much newspaper work now," said Jack.

Grahame was puzzled but bland.

"Tell us, Monsieur Grahame, of what you saw in the Spicheren," said Lorraine. "Is it a very bad defeat? I am sure it cannot be. Of course, France will win, sooner or later; nobody doubts that."

Before Grahame could manufacture a suitable reply--and his wit was as quick as his courtesy--a door opened and Madame de Morteyn entered, sad-eyed but smiling.

Jack jumped up and asked leave to present Mr. Grahame, and the old lady received him very sweetly, insisting that he should make the Château his home as long as he stayed in the vicinity.

A few moments later she went away with Lorraine and her maid, and Jack and Archibald Grahame were left together to sip their Moselle and smoke some very excellent cigars that Jack found in the library.

"Mr. Grahame," said Jack, diffidently, "if it would not be an impertinent question, who is going to run away in this campaign?"

Grahame's face fell; his sombre glance swept the beautiful room and rested on a picture--the "Battle of Waterloo."

"It will be worse than that," he said, abruptly. "May I take one of these cigars? Oh, thank you."

Jack's heart sank, but he smiled and passed a lighted cigar-lamp to the other.

"My judgment has been otherwise," he said, "and what you say troubles me."

"It troubles me, too," said Grahame, looking out of the dark window at the watery clouds, ragged, uncanny, whirling one by one like tattered witches across the disk of a misshapen moon.

After a silence Jack relighted his half-burned cigar.

"Then it is invasion?" he asked.

"Yes--invasion."

"When?"

"Now."

"Good heavens! the very stones in the fields will rise up!"

"If the people did so too it might be to better purpose," observed Grahame, dryly. Then he emptied his glass, flicked the ashes from his cigar, and, sitting erect in his chair, said, "See here, Marche, you and I are accustomed to this sort of thing, we've seen campaigns and we have learned to judge dispassionately and, I think, fairly accurately; but, on my honour, I never before have seen the beginning of such a tempest--never! You say the very stones will rise up in the fields of France. You are right. For the fields will be ploughed with solid shot, and the shells will sow the earth with iron from the Rhine to the Loire. Good Lord, do these people know what is coming over the frontier?"

"Prussians," said Jack.

"Yes, Prussians and a few others--Würtembergers, Saxons, Bavarians, men from Baden, from Hesse, from the Schwarzwald--from Hamburg to the Tyrol they are coming in three armies. I saw the Spicheren, I saw Wissembourg--I have seen and I know."

Presently he opened a fresh bottle, and, with that whimsical smile and frank simplicity that won whom he chose to win, leaned towards Jack and began speaking as though the younger man were his peer in experience and age:

"Shall I tell you what I saw across the Rhine? I saw the machinery at work--the little wheels and cogs turning and grinding and setting in motion that stupendous machine that Gneisenau patented and Von Moltke improved--the great Mobilization Machine! How this machine does its work it is not easy to realize unless one has actually watched its operation. I saw it--and what I saw left me divided between admiration and--well, damn it all!--sadness.