Part 16

"_Nach Verdun--Verdunkelung! Nach Verdun--Verdunkelung!_"

It was the voice of the crazed Brandenburger. There was a scuffle, the sound of a man hurried away, resisting.

All through that dark journey as the car bumped and lurched over the atrocious roads, the words beat in a refrain through the mind of the neutral. "_Nach Verdun--Verdunkelung!_" He wondered. Eclipse? Was it the sun of Germany that set on the French position? The Oberst was loquaciously cheerful.

That night, in the great map-hung apartment, the War-Lords received the news that their further advance was barred.

Next morning a furious counter-attack surrounded a handful of defenders in the fort for which they had paid so much. The French reinforcements had arrived.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 11: War economy.]

[Footnote 12: "The thing is absolutely simple!"]

[Footnote 13: Vide Mr. John Buchan's _History of the War_, Vol. XIII.]

[Footnote 14: "Nach" means "to, towards," and also "after."--"To Verdun! _After_ Verdun--Paris!"]

[Footnote 15: "I beg permission, Your Majesty."]

[Footnote 16: "Granted."]

[Footnote 17: "To Verdun! _After_ Verdun--Eclipse."]

[Footnote 18: "To Verdun! After Verdun--Paris!"]

THE CHÂTELAINE OF LYSBOISÉE

(AN IDYLL BETWEEN THE TRENCHES, 1914)

(Note.--This story is founded upon an actual occurrence narrated by Paul Grabein, "Im Auto durch Feindesland," Berlin, 1916.)

The sun set while a regiment of Zouaves was marching across the plateau. The after-glow yet illumined the sky when its leading files turned obliquely off to the right along a rough track that presently dropped abruptly into a deep ravine, sculped by one of the streamlet tributaries of the Oise. Bare for a little way below the lip, save for some scattered juniper bushes stiffly perpendicular from the close-cropped slope, the sides of the ravine were dark with a dense growth of tree and thorn. The road plunged into it.

Down and down went the road in a gloomy tunnel of arching boughs that scarce left an interstice for the twilight sky. It reached the floor of the little valley, followed it to the right in a more gentle descent. On its left a brook fell swiftly through a plantation of silver birch in a channel that brimmed to the long, rank, water-flattened grass and anon plashed over boulders in a miniature cascade. Save for the steady tramp of the marching troops and the occasional squawk of a frightened jay, there was no sound in the valley.

Mounted upon a magnificent black horse, the colonel rode at the head of the column. Seen in profile, his face was remarkable--virile, powerful, and intellectual. When it turned to full face it fascinated. Not the steel-grey eyes looked for under those level brows, but a pair of full brown orbs, romantic as those of an Arab, met the gaze. He raised his hand as the column approached a pair of high ornamental iron gates, set in a frame of lofty arched stone and surmounted by a carved escutcheon, on the left side of the road. "Halt!"

Behind him there was a clatter of accoutrements as the long column broke its ranks, settled itself in seated groups, with piled arms, by the roadside. In front, the advance-guard, receiving the order from the connecting files, halted also. The colonel walked his horse to the gates. The padlocked chain that had held them closed hung broken from one of the wrought-iron scrolls. The gates had evidently been forced. He pressed his horse's flank against one of them, slipped through the opening, and set off at a trot down a long avenue of ancient poplars. His capitaine-adjutant, cantering up from the leading company, followed the wave of his hand.

Beyond the clearing of lawn and Cupid-crowned fountain into which he emerged, lay a long white stone mansion, picturesque but not remarkable in its seventeenth-century architecture. Every window was shuttered. Throwing the reins to his companion, he dismounted and, with the stiff gait from long hours in the saddle, ascended the broad curving steps to the main entrance.

Only at his second summons on the loud, harshly clanging bell was there any answering sign of life. One of the great doors opened slightly until checked by a chain, and a woman's voice asked: "Who is it?"

"French officers, madame. Is the _patronne_ at home?"

"I cannot see you," said the voice, evading the question.

The colonel placed himself so as to be visible through the narrow aperture. "Attendez!" said the voice. The door closed again.

A minute or two of waiting in the chill, misty air and once more the door opened, this time fully. "Entrez, monsieur!" said the voice.

He found himself in a large lofty hall, dimly illumined by the candle held by a little bent old woman. "Par ici, monsieur!" she said.

She led him through salon after salon. In the flickering light he could only just discern that they were richly furnished. At last she stopped and tapped at a closed door.

He was admitted into an apartment of costly and tasteful comfort, lit with warm soft radiance from a shaded pedestal lamp. Pine logs were burning on the hearth of a high stone fireplace. To one side stood a grand piano. A great dog, stretched before the hearth, growled surlily. These were salient details he was scarcely conscious of noting. His eyes were held by the woman who rose from an arm-chair by the fire.

Tall, gowned simply in a long robe of soft pale green, the lamplight shimmered on the waved masses of her auburn hair as she moved. Not vulgarly beautiful--the mouth was large, though well-cut--an oval ivory-white face looked into his. No longer very young--she was at least thirty--her instantly felt charm came accentuated by a hint of incomplete maturity. Those quiet eyes could still look at life with a questioning scrutiny, receptive of the new experience. They met his now and a personality leaped into them, communed with him ere yet a word had been uttered. Outwardly, only, they were still strangers. He noticed that she wore no jewellery as he bowed courteously, fez in hand.

"Madame, I am the colonel of the --th Regiment of Zouaves. A necessity, that must be disagreeable to you, forces me to ask your hospitality for my officers and men."

"For to-night only?" Her voice was singularly deep and rich.

"Perhaps for several, madame."

"You are many?"

"Eleven hundred men and twenty officers."

"A strong battalion!"

"Three battalions, madame," he corrected gently.

The expression of the eyes, which had never left his, changed slightly. The wordless, languageless message they were exchanging with his own was interrupted. "Ah," she said in a voice of sympathy. "You come from the battle? From the Marne?"

"Yes, madame. We were on the Ourcq. Since then, on the Aisne."

Her face lit up.

"But certainly! Who would refuse anything to the brave men who have saved France! You will excuse the coolness of your reception, Monsieur le colonel? We have had other guests--less welcome." The colonel thought of the broken chain on the gate. "Marie!" This to the old woman who stood by the door, shading the candle in her hand, incongruous in this luxurious apartment. "Place the large dining-room at the disposition of _messieurs les officiers_. The kitchen also." She turned again to the colonel. "I can offer only ten bedrooms to your officers, Monsieur le colonel, but doubtless they can arrange themselves. The stables are large, there are three barns and a disused mill, and there is a loft at the top of the house. I hope you will find room for all your men. There is plenty of straw in the barns. They may use it freely. Please consider the house entirely at your disposition." And all this time the eyes were talking wordlessly. And his, although he knew it not, were replying.

"You are too kind, madame!"

"It is a happy privilege, Monsieur le colonel!"

His business was finished, yet he felt curiously unwilling to go, much though awaited him to do. His apology seemed addressed as much to his own hidden inner self as to her.

"Mille remerciments, madame! You will excuse me if I withdraw? My men are very tired. Once more, a thousand thanks, madame----?"

She answered his unuttered question, a smile lighting up eyes and face.

"--La comtesse de Beaupré et Lysboisée."

He bowed.

"Le colonel Victor de Montévrault."

She held out a slender hand. Involuntarily, almost, he touched it with his lips as he took it in his own. She did not stir. He did not see her face.

"Au revoir, madame, et tous mes remerciments!"

"Au revoir, monsieur," she answered in her rich, deep voice.

He felt her eyes upon him as he turned to follow Marie, candle in hand, once more through the series of dark apartments.

A little later and the château and its precincts were thronged with the soldiers of the three war-worn battalions as they installed themselves for the night. From the great yard between the stables and the barns came the glow of cooking fires.

But not for all was the hour of rest arrived. In a little room of the château the colonel, with his three _chefs de bataillon_ of whom one only was a major, was poring over a large-scale map and indicating the positions for the lines of sentries, outposts and _grand'gardes_. Up the opposite side of the ravine to that which they had ascended, well in advance across the high open ground, and down the valley road he posted them. On the three battalion commanders the greatest vigilance was enjoined. Ahead of them there should be French cavalry, but those were the days of flux and reflux in the meeting tides of war, and all things were possible.

Later still, the colonel sat at the head of the long lamp-lit table in the great dining-room. From the walls dim portraits in lustreless frames looked down upon the backs of the loudly chattering Frenchmen in the exotic, Oriental uniforms. There was little or no talk of the bitter, terrible but finally victorious days through which they--it seemed to each of them miraculously--had lived. Animated discussion of the future was the rule--a future confidently regarded through the glow of the so recently victorious past. Bold strategic plans were elaborated, illustrated with cruet and table-knives. There was much talk of envelopment, of a rapid dash on Le Cateau, Valenciennes and Mons that should hurl the Boche, deprived of his communications, into the tangled thicket of the Ardennes, if indeed he escaped at all. The colonel took no part in these arguments. He sat silently sipping the wine which a generous hostess had caused to be placed in ample quantity upon the table. His large brown eyes were soft, the muscles of his face relaxed. It is possible that he thought of something quite other than war.

One of the soldier orderlies flitting behind the chairs touched him on the shoulder.

"Pardon, mon colonel, but the domestic wishes to speak to you."

He turned in his chair to see the ancient Marie at the door.

"Madame presents her compliments, m'sieu le colonel, and would be honoured if you would take your coffee with her."

The colonel rose in his chair.

"Bonsoir et bonne nuit, messieurs!"

"Bonsoir, mon colonel," was reiterated from the score of upturned faces. "Bonne nuit."

In her cosy warm salon the châtelaine sat by the fire, a glow softly playing over her features. At her side, on a little table, a silver coffee-service steamed. As the colonel entered she looked up to greet him with a smile, indicating the corresponding arm-chair on the other side of the hearth. The large dog at her feet raised his head, wagged his tail in friendly welcome.

In a few moments they were conversing with the ease of those who have known each other for long years. Wartime, and particularly the kaleidoscopic wartime of those early days, is a great ripener of acquaintance. None might venture to forecast the circumstances of the morrow, to predict continued life for self or other. The actual moment must be snatched. The colonel with his quiet assured poise, his alert intelligence; the countess, polished grande dame and yet something more, a being of exquisite intuitions, would have set, naturally, to partners whatever the circumstances of their meeting. Each of the pair offered interest to the other. He, soldierly, his massive intellectual head on the broad shoulders, the glowing soft eyes so strangely set in the cold face, the Oriental Zouave uniform emphasising their hint of romance, claimed the eye not less than her slender figure, gowned with the refinement of a consummate civilisation, her supple yet strong carriage of the auburn glory that crowned the pale oval face, the flowing, delicate curve from rounded chin to the gently mobile breast. Her eloquent eyes were long-lashed, downcast towards the fire. He was asking the reason of her stay here in the danger zone. She turned them upon him.

"This is my own house--my family's house--the château of Lysboisée. Since my husband's death three years ago I have always inhabited it for a great part of the year. I have always loved it. I was a child in this dark ravine, among the birches of the water-meadows. My own life--that I have never shared with anyone--is here. I am of the country. All the peasant people know me, love me. And when the war came I felt that I must be among them, that I could not leave my house, my own dear house, alone, unprotected against anything that might happen. So I hurried here at a time when everybody was hurrying the other way. But the servants had gone. Only old Marie remained, and she and I have lived here all these black weeks, only Roland," she patted the dog's head smilingly, "to watch over us. We have had many visits from the German cavalry, but no violence. They saw, perhaps, that I was not afraid. Now the people are beginning to creep back to their homes."

He nodded his head sympathetically, described how the peasants of the Aisne valley crept back to their farms, continued their field-tasks close behind the trenches, apparently indifferent to the shrapnel and the _marmites_.

"Yes," she murmured, gazing thoughtfully into the fire, "amidst so much death the flame of life burns ever higher, will not, must not be extinguished."

There was a little pause, during which the colonel sipped his coffee. Lightly, with the smile of a prima ballerina pirouetting away from a serious posture into which she would have you believe she fell unwittingly, the countess commenced to talk of Paris of the days before the war. With a young enthusiasm she spoke of her morning rides in the Bois, of restaurants and dinner-parties--mentioning a name here and there that might lead to the discovery of a mutual acquaintance, of concerts and the play. The colonel listened, speaking little, seeing her--though she did not so much as hint at them--circled by a crowd of admirers.

"And madame," she said innocently, "does she inhabit Paris?"

"Madame----?" He was obviously at a loss.

"You are not married, then?"

"No, madame."

"But," she persisted gently, "you have doubtless friends in Paris? A man such as you----" she stopped, smiling. "I am indiscreet."

"Madame," he replied in a quiet voice, "I have been in Africa for more than twenty years. The Paris I knew exists no more."

She turned her gaze full on him. The freshness of the man appeared suddenly to her. An involuntary little blush suffused her face. She covered it by a slight withdrawal from the fire.

"Tell me about Africa," she commanded.

He spoke at first depreciatingly of the country, the grave of so many of France's best, so remote from all that to a Frenchman makes life worth while. Then as he warmed to his description she saw that he loved that parched land of immense distances where the pitiless sun consumes the human soul or heats it to an intense unworldly fervour. He told of interminable marches over the glowing sands, of forgotten skirmishes where a wound was worse than death, of fierce razzias, of lonely outpost nights in the desert underneath a miracle of stars, where under the naked presence of the infinite one watched, finger on trigger, for the gleam of a creeping burnous. She found herself seeking to detect a deliberate elimination of the feminine in his reminiscences. With sure instinct she felt there was a woman somewhere in the background. How far back?

"You have suffered much," she said, her deep rich voice all sympathy.

"Who has not suffered who lives?" he replied.

There was again a pause, where the breathing of the couched dog was the only sound.

"Will you not play something?" he asked, suddenly, looking at the piano. "My opportunities have been few----"

She rose, went to the piano, and seated herself without a word. She played, not with the brilliance of the showy amateur nor with the hard precision of the professional, but as though the notes on which her light fingers fell re-echoed an intimate music of the soul. Through the grave breath-restrained emotion of a Chopin Nocturne she led him, then, with an enigmatic inconsequence, into the flitting, dainty, Harlequin and Columbine passion of a Chaminade that left a question poised, smilingly. A moment's interval, and with a deep contralto voice she commenced to sing a chanson of old France, that followed, simply, exquisite quiet notes, compact of love and the tragedy of love, poignantly eloquent in their unadorned statement of the theme. He went across to the piano, stood over her. She felt his presence very close. A thrill passed into her voice, magical. She finished and stood up with a sudden movement. His glowing eyes were full with tears.

"Bonsoir, monsieur," she said abruptly, stretching out her hand. The voice was not her own.

He took her hand in his, held it tightly. His breath came in deep halations from a heaving chest.

"Madame," he said in a low intense voice, "you are divine!"

She strove to release her hand.

"_Voyons!_" she said plaintively, almost tearfully, averting her face. "We met only to-day."

"And to-morrow?--Who knows?"

"No! no! no!" she cried and tore away her hand from his. "Bonsoir, monsieur!" She ran across the room like a startled fawn, bowed herself against the stone fireplace, her face hidden. He saw her shoulders heave.

He followed her, stood irresolute. She turned on him suddenly.

"Oh, isn't there enough suffering in the world," she cried, "without----?"

"Without love?" He advanced with outstretched arms, laid his hands upon her shoulders. She stiffened, fending him off. "Without love? If to love is to suffer," he said in a voice deeply harmonious, "to love is also to live. And I have waited so long to live! Have waited for you, my twin soul! We met only to-day? What if we have only to-day to live----?"

She leaned back, away from him, yet held in his grasp.

"Oh, no, no, no! I mustn't listen!" Her bosom filled. Her eyes closed. She crumpled suddenly in his arms.

* * * * *

The next morning, mounted upon a fine-bred chestnut mare, a zealous Zouave at the bridle, she waited in the great courtyard behind the château. She had offered her knowledge of the locality to the colonel and gladly he had accepted it. He came towards her now on his noble black horse, bending down in grave talk with the chef de bataillon walking by his stirrup. She acknowledged his salutation, and a moment later they were riding out of the great gate together.

The ravine of Lysboisée lifted its towering further wall of dark undergrowth immediately behind the château. A narrow path, frequently stepped, zigzagging through the hanger in steep gradients, made the ascent of the sheer acclivity possible. Side by side they walked their horses up, bending often in the saddle to escape the low overhanging branches. They rode in silence, each in their own thoughts. She glanced sideways at her companion. It was the face of a soldier, not of a lover. Obviously he pondered some problem. She sighed. This undisturbed solitude, the screen of thick woodland arching over them, on the two pacing animals that nosed each other amicably, awoke primitive instincts in her. But she kept silence, made no movement.

At last, as though summoned by her thought, he turned his head towards her.

"You have received bad news, mon ami?" she asked.

"Orders that throw a heavy responsibility upon me," he answered.

Again they relapsed into silence. The ascent continued. Only a few yards short of the summit did the undergrowth cease.

For a dozen paces the path ran over bare close-cropped grass, then, sunk in a rough cutting, surmounted the crest.

A little beyond, on the open down, the grand'garde--a weak company of Zouaves--was digging energetically at shelter-trenches. The colonel spoke with the officer, rode on.

"Would you please take me to the highest point, chère amie?" he asked. The countess bowed her head, without a word. A touch of the spur, and he followed her at an easy, touch-controlled canter, his horse eager to get abreast the mare. At last she reined up, met his eyes with a smile.

They stood upon a knoll in the downs, wide-spaced horizon all round. Far to the south and east were the dark masses of the Forêt de Laigue. From beyond them came a heavy distant roll of artillery. The colonel listened, searching the panorama with narrowed eyes. At his request she pointed out localities and the direction of localities. He turned to look backward, saw the lips of the ravine widening out to the south-east until the slopes fell into another valley. His face hardened.

"Let us go back, chère amie," he said. "As quickly as possible."

At a swift, swinging gallop--the skirts of her amazon fluttering in the wind--they hastened back to the grand'garde. The officer came up. The colonel took out his note-book.

"Have you any spades or farm implements, madame?" he asked.

He nodded to her affirmation, writing the while in his note-book. He tore out the page, folded it, gave it to the officer. "To be delivered to the Commandant Legros at the Château. Without delay."

Then he turned his horse and, followed by his companion, rode slowly along the lip of the ravine. She searched his features, anxiously.

He stopped in a depression of the down, out of sight of the grand'garde. He turned to her, and her heart fluttered at the tenderness of his face.

"Pauline," he said gravely, laying his hand upon her arm, "you must not stay here. Listen! The regiment on our left extends to the head of the ravine. The orders I received this morning left me to choose on which side of the ravine I should place my trenches. We advance no further. We are only a screen, but the screen must be maintained, must not be risked. I am obliged to choose the other side of the ravine. We shall almost certainly be attacked. I do not know when--nothing is known. But you would be in danger. You must leave this afternoon, go right back--to Amiens, Paris."

She checked an impulse to quick speech, smiled at him.

"Mon ami, I was almost unjust to you----"

"You will go?"

She shook her head.

"No, cher ami, I remain with you."

"But if we are attacked and have to retire to the other side of the ravine? You cannot remain in the trenches."

"No. I should remain in my house until you advance again." She turned an appealing, coquettish glance upon him. "Should I be something to fight for?" She checked his protestations. "No, cher ami, I know all your arguments. They are useless. What did you say last night?--What if we have only to-day to live?" Her voice sank, her eyes dropped. "Cher ami, I want not a moment that your duty claims,--but those others, those precious little instants, can you not accept me in them? So little time is ours, _cher_!"

The horses had drawn close together. He put his right arm round her waist. She leaned back, face upturned. Their eyes met in a long deep look. Their mouths approached, were one. The flame of life burned high in them. Their horses' ears quivered to a louder roar of the distant guns.

Slowly they rode home together, by an easier, more roundabout path she showed him.