Chapter 14
His voice choked; he cleared it and went on: "The very name of Uhlan is held in horror in France now; the word Prussian is a curse when it falls from French lips. God knows why we are fighting! We Germans obey, that is all. I am a captain in a Prussian cavalry regiment; the call comes, that is all that I know. And here I am, riding through the land I love; I sit on my horse and see the torch touched to field and barn; I see railroads torn out of the ground, I see wretched peasants hung to the rafters of their own cottages." He lowered his voice; his face grew paler. "I see the friend I care most for in all the world, a rope around his neck, my own troopers dragging him to the vilest death a man can die! That is war! Why? I am a Prussian, it is not necessary for me to know; but the regiment moves, and I move! it halts, I halt! it charges, retreats, burns, tramples, rends, devastates! I am always with it, unless some bullet settles me. For this war is nearly ended, Jack, nearly ended--a battle or two, a siege or two, nothing more. What can stand against us? Not this bewildered France."
Jack was silent.
Rickerl's blue eyes sought his; he rested his square chin on one hand and spoke again:
"Jack, do you know that--that I love your sister?"
"Her last letter said as much," replied Jack, coldly.
Rickerl watched his face.
"You are sorry?"
"I don't know; I had hoped she would marry an American. Have you spoken?"
"Yes." This was a chivalrous falsehood; it was Dorothy who had spoken first, there in the gravel drive as he rode away from Morteyn.
Jack glanced at him angrily.
"It was not honourable," he said; "my aunt's permission should have been asked, as you know; also, incidentally, my own. Does--does Dorothy care for you? Oh, you need not answer that; I think she does. Well, this war may change things."
"Yes," said Rickerl, sadly.
"I don't mean that," cried Jack; "Heaven knows I wouldn't have you hurt, Ricky; don't think I meant that--"
"I don't," said Rickerl, half smiling; "you risked your skin to save me half an hour ago."
"And you called off your bloody pack of hangmen for me," said Jack; "I'm devilish grateful, Ricky--indeed I am--and you know I'd be glad to have you in the family if--if it wasn't for this cursed war. Never mind, Dorothy generally has what she wants, even if it's--"
"Even if it's an Uhlan?" suggested Rickerl, gravely.
Jack smiled and laid his hand on Rickerl's arm.
"She ought to see you now, bareheaded, dusty, in your shirt-sleeves! You're not much like the attache at the Diplomatic ball--eh, Ricky? If you marry Dorothy I'll punch your head. Come on, we've got to find out where we are."
"That's my road," observed Rickerl, quietly, pointing across the fields.
"Where? Why?"
"Don't you see?"
Jack searched the distant landscape in vain.
"No, are the Germans there? Oh, now I see. Why, it's a squadron of your cursed Uhlans!"
"Yes," said Rickerl, mildly.
"Then they've been chased out of the Chateau de Nesville!"
"Probably. They may come back. Jack, can't you get out of this country?"
"Perhaps," replied Jack, soberly. He thought of Lorraine, of the marquis lying mangled and dead in the forest beside the fragments of his balloon.
"Your Lieutenant von Steyr is a dirty butcher," he said. "I hope you'll finish him when you find him."
"He fired explosive bullets, which your franc-tireurs use on us," retorted Rickerl, growing red.
"Oh," cried Jack in disgust, "the whole business makes me sick! Ricky, give me your hand--there! Don't let this war end our friendship. Go to your Uhlans now. As for me, I must get back to Morteyn. What Lorraine will do, where she can go, how she will stand this ghastly news, I don't know; and I wish there was somebody else to tell her. My uncle and aunt have already gone to Paris, they said they would not wait for me. Lorraine is at Morteyn, alone except for her maid, and she is probably frightened at my not returning as I promised. Do you think you can get to your Uhlans safely? They passed into the grove beyond the hills. What the mischief are those cannon shelling, anyway? Well, good-by! Better not come up the hill with me, or you'll have to part with your sabre for good. We did lose our franc-tireur friends beautifully. I'll write Dorothy; I'll tell her that I captured you, sabre and all. Good-by! Good-by, old fellow! If you'll promise not to get a bullet in your blond hide I'll promise to be a brother-in-law to you!"
Rickerl looked very manly as he stood there, booted, bareheaded, his thin shirt, soaked with sweat, outlining his muscular figure.
They lingered a moment, hands closely clasped, looking gravely into each other's faces. Then, with a gesture, half sad, half friendly, Rickerl started across the stubble towards the distant grove where his Uhlans had taken cover.
Jack watched him until his white shirt became a speck, a dot, and finally vanished among the trees on the blue hill. When he was gone, Jack turned sharply away and climbed the furze-covered slope from whence he hoped to see the cannon, now firing only at five-minute intervals. As he toiled up the incline he carefully kept himself under cover, for he had no desire to meet any lurking franc-tireurs. It is true that, even when the franc-tireurs had been closest, there in the swamp among the rank marsh grasses, the distance was too great for them to have identified him with certainty. But he thought it best to keep out of their way until within hail of the regular troops, so he took advantage of bushes and inequalities of the slope to reconnoitre the landscape before he reached the summit of the ridge. There was a tufted thicket of yellow broom in flower on the crest of the ridge; behind this he lay and looked out across the plain.
A little valley separated this hill from the vineyard, terraced up to the north, ridge upon ridge. The cannon smoke shot up from the thickets of vines, rose, and drifted to the west, blotting out the greater portion of the vineyard. The cannon themselves were invisible. At times Jack fancied he saw a human silhouette when the white smoke rushed outward, but the spectral vines loomed up everywhere through the dense cannon-fog and he could not be sure.
However, there were plenty of troops below the hill now--infantry of the line trudging along the dusty road in fairly good order, and below the vineyard, among the uncut fields of flax, more infantry crouched, probably supporting the three-gun battery on the hill.
At that distance he could not tell a franc-tireur from any regular foot-soldier except line-infantry; their red caps and trousers were never to be mistaken. As he looked, he wondered at a nation that clothed its troops in a colour that furnished such a fearfully distinct mark to the enemy. A French army, moving, cannot conceal itself; the red of trousers and caps, the mirror-like reflections of cuirass and casque and lance-tip, advertise the presence of French troops so persistently that an enemy need never fear any open landscape by daylight.
Jack watched the cannonade, lying on his stomach, chin supported by both hands. He was perfectly cool now; he neither feared the Uhlans nor the franc-tireurs. For a while he vainly tried to comprehend the reason of the cannonade; the shells shot out across the valley in tall curves, dropping into a distant bit of hazy blue woodland, or exploded above the trees; the column of infantry below plodded doggedly southward; the infantry in the flax-field lay supine. Clearly something was interfering with the retreat of the troops--something that threatened them from those distant woods. And now he could see cavalry moving about the crest of the nearer hills, but, without his glass, it was not possible to tell what they were. Often he looked at the nearer forest that hid the Chateau de Nesville. Somewhere within those sombre woods lay the dead marquis.
With a sigh he rose to his knees, shivered in the sunshine, passed one hand over his forehead, and finally stood up. Hunger had made him faint; his head grew dizzy.
"It must be noon, at least," he muttered, and started down the hill and across the fields towards the woods of Morteyn. As he walked he pulled the bearded wheat from ripening stems and chewed it to dull his hunger. The raw place on his neck, where the rope had chafed, stung when the perspiration started. He moved quickly but warily, keeping a sharp lookout on every side. Once he passed a miniature vineyard, heavy with white-wine grapes; and, as he threaded a silent path among the vines, he ate his fill and slaked his thirst with the cool amber fruit. He had reached the edge of the little vineyard, and was about to cross a tangle of briers and stubble, when something caught his eye in the thicket; it was a man's face--and he stopped.
For a minute they stared at each other, making no movement, no sound.
"Sir Thorald!"--faltered Jack.
But Sir Thorald Hesketh could not speak, for he had a bullet through his lungs.
As Jack sprang into the brier tangle towards him, a slim figure in the black garments of the Sisters of Mercy rose from Sir Thorald's side. He saw the white cross on her breast, he saw the white face above it and the whiter lips.
It was Alixe von Elster.
At the same instant the road in front was filled with French infantry, running.
Alixe caught his arm, her head turned towards the road where the infantry were crowding past at double-quick, enveloped in a whirling torrent of red dust.
"There is a cart there," she said. "Oh, Jack, find it quickly! The driver is on the seat--and I can't leave Sir Thorald."
In his amazement he stood hesitating, looking from the girl to Sir Thorald; but she drew him to the edge of the thicket and pointed to the road, crying, "Go! go!" and he stumbled down the pasture slope to the edge of the road.
Past him plodded the red-legged infantry; he saw, through the whirlwind of dust, the vague outlines of a tumbril and horse standing below in the ditch, and he ran along the grassy depression towards the vehicle. And now he saw the driver, kneeling in the cart, his blue blouse a mass of blood, his discoloured face staring out at the passing troops.
As he seized the horse's head and started up the slope again, firing broke out among the thickets close at hand; the infantry swung out to the west in a long sagging line; the chassepots began banging right and left. For an instant he caught a glimpse of cavalry riding hard across a bit of stubble--Uhlans he saw at a glance--then the smoke hid them. But in that brief instant he had seen, among the galloping cavalrymen, a mounted figure, bareheaded, wearing a white shirt, and he knew that Rickerl was riding for his life.
Sick at heart he peered into the straight, low rampart of smoke; he watched the spirts of rifle-flame piercing it; he saw it turn blacker when a cannon bellowed in the increasing din. The infantry were lying down out there in the meadow; shadowy gray forms passed, repassed, reeled, ran, dropped, and rose again. Close at hand a long line of men lay flat on their bellies in the wheat stubble. When each rifle spoke the smoke rippled through the short wheat stalks or eddied and curled over the ground like the gray foam of an outrushing surf.
He backed the horse and heavy cart, turned both, half blinded by the rifle-smoke, and started up the incline. Two bullets, speeding over the clover like singing bees, rang loudly on the iron-bound cartwheels; the horse plunged and swerved, dragging Jack with him, and the dead figure, kneeling in the cart, tumbled over the tail-board with a grotesque wave of its stiffening limbs. There it lay, sprawling in an impossible posture in the ditch. A startled grasshopper alighted on its face, turned around, crawled to the ear, and sat there.
And now the volley firing grew to a sustained crackle, through which the single cannon boomed and boomed, hidden in the surging smoke that rolled in waves, sinking, rising, like the waves of a wind-whipped sea.
"Where are you, Alixe?" he shouted.
"Here! Hurry!"
She stood on the edge of the brier tangle as he laboured up the slope with the horse and cart. Sir Thorald's breathing was horrible to hear when they stooped and lifted him; Alixe was crying. They laid him on the blood-soaked straw; Alixe crept in beside him and took his head on her knees.
"To Morteyn?" whispered Jack. "Perhaps we can find a surgeon nearer--"
"Oh, hurry!" she sobbed; and he climbed heavily to the seat and started back towards the road.
The road was empty where he turned in out of the fields, but, just above, he heard cannon thundering in the mist. As he drew in the reins, undecided, the cannonade suddenly redoubled in fury; the infantry fire blazed out with a new violence; above the terrific blast he heard trumpets sounding, and beneath it he felt the vibration of the earth; horses were neighing out beyond the smoke; a thousand voices rose in a far, hoarse shout:
"Hurrah! Preussen!"
The Prussian cavalry were charging the cannon.
Suddenly he heard them close at hand; they loomed everywhere in the smoke, they were among the infantry, among the cannoneers; a tall rider in silver helmet and armour plunged out into the road behind them, his horse staggered, trembled, then man and beast collapsed in a shower of bullets. Others were coming, too, galloping in through the grain stubble and thickets, shaking their long, straight sabres, but the infantry chased them, and fell upon them, clubbing, shooting, stabbing, pulling horses and men to earth. The cannon, which had ceased, began again; the infantry were cheering; trumpets blew persistently, faintly and more faintly. In the road a big, bearded man was crawling on his hands and knees away from a dead horse. His helmet fell off in the dust.
Jack gathered the reins and called to the horse. As the heavy cart moved off, the ground began to tremble again with the shock of on-coming horses, and again, through the swelling tumult, he caught the cry--
"Hurrah! Preussen!"
The Prussian cuirassiers were coming back.
"Is Sir Thorald dying?" he asked of Alixe; "can he live if I lash the horse?"
"Look at him, Jack," she muttered.
"I see; he cannot live. I shall drive slowly. You--you are wounded, are you? there--on the neck--"
"It is his blood on my breast."
XXI
THE WHITE CROSS
At ten o'clock that night Jack stepped from the ballroom to the terrace of the Chateau Morteyn and listened to the distant murmur of the river Lisse, below the meadow. The day of horror had ended with a dozen dropping shots from the outposts, now lining the banks of the Lisse from the Chateau de Nesville to Morteyn. The French infantry had been pouring into Morteyn since late afternoon; they had entered the park when he entered, driving his tumbril with its blood-stained burden; they had turned the river into a moat, the meadow into an earthwork, the Chateau itself into a fortress.
On the concrete terrace beside him a gatling-gun glimmered in the starlight; sentinels leaned on their elbows, sprawling across the parapets; shadowy ranks of sleeping men lay among the shrubbery below, white-faced, exhausted, motionless.
There were low voices from the darkened ballroom, the stir and tinkle of spurred boots, the ring of sabres. Out in the hard macadamized road, cannon were passing into the park by the iron gate; beyond the road masses of men moved in the starlight.
After a moment Jack turned away and entered the house. For the hundredth time he mounted the stairs to Lorraine's bedroom door and listened, holding his breath. He heard nothing--not a cry--not a sob. It had been so from the first, when he had told her that her father lay dead somewhere in the forest of Morteyn.
She had said nothing--she went to her room and sat down on the bed, white and still. Sir Thorald lay in the next room, breathing deeply. Alixe was kneeling beside him, crying silently.
Twice a surgeon from an infantry regiment had come and gone away after a glance at Sir Thorald. A captain came later and asked for a Sister of Mercy.
"She can't go," said Jack, in a low voice. But little Alixe rose, still crying, and followed the captain to the stables, where a dozen mangled soldiers lay in the straw and hay.
It was midnight when she returned to find Jack standing beside Sir Thorald in the dark. When he saw it was Alixe he led her gently into the hall.
"He is conscious now; I will call you when the time comes. Go into that room--Lorraine is there, alone. Ah, go, Alixe; it is charity!--and you wear the white cross--"
"It is dyed scarlet," she whispered through her tears.
He returned to Sir Thorald, who lay moving his restless hands over the sheets and turning his head constantly from side to side.
"Go on," said Jack; "finish what you were saying."
"Will she come?"
"Yes--in time."
Sir Thorald relapsed into a rambling, monotonous account of some military movement near Wissembourg until Jack spoke again:
"Yes--I know; tell me about Alixe."
"Yes--Alixe," muttered Sir Thorald--"is she here? I was wrong; I saw her at Cologne; that was all, Jack--nothing more."
"There is more," said Jack; "tell me."
"Yes, there is more. I saw that--that she loved me. There was a scene--I am not always a beast--I tried not to be. Then--then I found that there was nothing left but to go away--somewhere--and live--without her. It was too late. She knew it--"
"Go on," said Jack.
Suddenly Sir Thorald's voice grew clear.
"Can't you understand?" he asked; "I damned both our souls. She is buying hers back with tears and blood--with the white cross on her heart and death in her eyes! And I am dying here--and she's to drag out the years afterwards--"
He choked; Jack watched him quietly.
Sir Thorald turned his head to him when the coughing ceased.
"She went with a field ambulance; I went, too. I was shot below that vineyard. They told her; that is all. Am I dying?"
Jack did not answer.
"Will you write to Molly?" asked Sir Thorald, drowsily.
"Yes. God help you, Sir Thorald."
"Who cares?" muttered Sir Thorald. "I'm a beast--a dying beast. May I see Alixe?"
"Yes."
"Then tell her to come--now. Soon I'll wish to be alone; that's the way beasts die--alone."
He rambled on again about a battle somewhere in the south, and Jack went to the door and called, "Alixe!"
She came, pallid and weeping, carrying a lighted candle.
Jack took it from her hand and blew out the flame.
"They won't let us have a light; they fear bombardment. Go in now."
"Is he dying?"
"God knows."
"God?" repeated Alixe.
Jack bent and touched the child's forehead with his lips.
"Pray for him," he said; "I shall write his wife to-night."
Alixe went in to the bedside to kneel again and buy back two souls with the agony of her child's heart.
"Pray," she said to Sir Thorald.
"Pray," he repeated.
Jack closed the door.
Up and down the dark hall he wandered, pausing at times to listen to some far rifle-shot and the answering fusillade along the picket-line. Once he stopped an officer on the stairway and asked for a priest, but, remembering that Sir Thorald was Protestant, turned away with a vague apology and resumed his objectless wandering.
At times he fancied he heard cannon, so far away that nothing of sound remained, only a faint jar on the night air. Twice he looked from the window over the vast black forest, thinking of the dead man lying there alone. And then he longed to go to Lorraine; he felt that he must touch her, that his hand on hers might help her somehow.
At last, deadly weary, he sat down on the stairs by her door to try to think out the problems that to-morrow would bring.
His aunt and uncle had gone on to Paris; Lorraine's father was dead and her home had been turned into a fort. Saint-Lys was heavily occupied by the Germans, and they held the railroad also in their possession. It seemed out of the question to stay in Morteyn with Lorraine, for an assault on the Chateau was imminent. How could he get her to Paris? That was the only place for her now.
He thought, too, of his own danger from the Uhlans. He had told Lorraine, partly because he wished her to understand their position, partly because the story of his capture, trial, and escape led up to the tragedy that he scarcely knew how to break to her. But he had done it, and she, pale as death, had gone silently to her room, motioning him away as he stood awkwardly at the door.
That last glimpse of the room remained in his mind, it obliterated everything else at moments--Lorraine sitting on her bedside, her blue eyes vacant, her face whiter than the pillows.
And so he sat there on the stairs, the dawn creeping into the hallway; and his eyes never left the panels of her door. There was not a sound from within. This for a while frightened him, and again and again he started impulsively towards the door, only to turn back again and watch there in the coming dawn. Presently he remembered that dawn might bring an attack on the Chateau, and he rose and hurried down-stairs to the terrace where a crowd of officers stood watching the woods through their night-glasses. The general impression among them was that there might be an attack. They yawned and smoked and studied the woods, but they were polite, and answered all his questions with a courteous light-heartedness that jarred on him. He glanced for a moment at the infantry, now moving across the meadow towards the river; he saw troops standing at ease along the park wall, troops sitting in long ranks in the vegetable garden, troops passing the stables, carrying pickaxes and wheeling wheelbarrows piled with empty canvas sacks.
Sleepy-eyed boyish soldiers of the artillery were harnessing the battery horses, rubbing them down, bathing wounded limbs or braiding the tails. The farrier was shoeing a great black horse, who turned its gentle eyes towards the hay-bales piled in front of the stable. One or two slim officers, in pale-blue fur-edged pelisses, strolled among the trampled flower-beds, smoking cigars and watching a line of men shovelling earth into canvas sacks. The odour of soup was in the air; the kitchen echoed with the din of pots and pans. Outside, too, the camp-kettles were steaming and the rattle of gammels came across the lawn.
"Who is in command here?" asked Jack, turning to a handsome dragoon officer who stood leaning on his sabre, the horse-hair criniere blowing about his helmet.
"Why, General Farron!" said the officer in surprise.
"Farron!" repeated Jack; "is he back from Africa, here in France--here at Morteyn?"
"He is at the Chateau de Nesville," said the officer, smiling. "You seem to know him, monsieur."
"Indeed I do," said Jack, warmly. "Do you think he will come here?"
"I suppose so. Shall I send you word when he arrives?"
Another officer came up, a general, white-haired and sombre.
"Is this the Vicomte de Morteyn?" he asked, looking at Jack.
"His nephew; the vicomte has gone to Paris. My name is Marche," said Jack.
The general saluted him; Jack bowed.
"I regret the military necessity of occupying the Chateau; the government will indemnify Monsieur le Vicomte--"
Jack held up his hand: "My uncle is an old soldier of France--the government is welcome; I bid you welcome in the name of the Vicomte de Morteyn."
The old general flushed and bowed deeply.
"I thank you in the name of the government. Blood will tell. It is easy, Monsieur Marche, to see that you are the nephew of the Vicomte de Morteyn."
"Monsieur Marche," said the young dragoon officer, respectfully, "is a friend of General Farron."
"I had the honour to be attached as correspondent to his staff--in Oran," said Jack.
The old general held out his hand with a gesture entirely charming.
"I envy General Farron your friendship," he said. "I had a son--perhaps your age. He died--yesterday." After a silence, he said: "There are ladies in the Chateau?"
"Yes," replied Jack, soberly.