Chapter 20

The repeated shocks, the dreadful experiences and encounters, the indelible impressions of desolation and grief and suffering had deadened in Lorraine all sense of personal suffering or grief. For her land and her people her heart had bled, drop by drop--her sensitive soul lay crushed within her. Nothing of selfish despair came over her, because France still stood. She had suffered too much to remember herself. Even her love for Jack had become merely a detail. She loved as she breathed--involuntarily. There was nothing new or strange or sweet in it--nothing was left of its freshness, its grace, its delicacy. The bloom was gone.

In her tired breast her heart beat faintly; its burden was the weary repetition of a prayer--an old, old prayer--a supplication--for mercy, for France, and for the salvation of its people. Where she had learned it she did not know; how she remembered it, why she repeated it, minute by minute, hour by hour, she could not tell. But it was always beating in her heart, this prayer--old, so old!--and half forgotten--

"'To Thee, Mary, exalted-- To Thee, Mary, exalted--'"

Her tired heart took up the rhythm where her mind refused to follow, and she leaned on Jack's shoulder, looking out over the gray land with innocent, sorrowful eyes.

Vaguely she remembered her lonely childhood, but did not grieve; vaguely she thought of her youth, passing away from a tear-drenched land through the smoke of battles. She did not grieve--the last sad tear for self had fallen and quenched the last smouldering spark of selfishness. The wasted hills of her province seemed to rise from their ashes and sear her eyes; the flames of a devastated land dazzled and pained her; every drop of French blood that drenched the mother-land seemed drawn from her own veins--every cry of terror, every groan, every gasp, seemed wrenched from her own slender body. The quiet, wide-eyed dead accused her, the stark skeletons of ravaged houses reproached her.

She turned to the man she loved, but it was the voice of a dying land that answered, "Come!" and she responded with all a passion of surrender. What had she accomplished as yet? In the bitterness of her loneliness she answered, "Nothing." She had worked by the wayside as she passed--in the field, in the hospital, in the midst of beleaguered soldiers. But what was that? There was something else further on that called her--what she did not know, and yet she knew it was waiting somewhere for her. "Perhaps it is death," she mused, leaning on Jack's shoulder. "Perhaps it is _his_ death." That did not frighten her; if it was to be, it would be; but, through it, through the hideous turmoil of fire and blood and pounding guns and shouting--through death itself--somewhere, on the other side of the dreadful valley of terror, lay salvation for the mother-land. Thither they were bound--she and the man she loved.

All around them lay the flat, colourless plains of Luxembourg; to the east, the wagon-train of wounded crawled across the landscape under a pallid sky. The road now bore towards the frontier again; Jack shook the reins listlessly; the horse loped on. Slowly they approached the border, where, on the French side, the convoy crept forward enveloped in ragged clouds of dust. Now they could distinguish the drivers, blue-bloused and tattered, swinging their long whips; now they saw the infantry, plodding on behind the wagons, stringing along on either flank, their officers riding with bent heads, the red legs of the fantassins blurred through the red dust.

At the junction of the two roads stood a boundary post. A slovenly Luxembourg gendarme sat on a stone under it, smoking and balancing his rifle over both knees.

"You can't pass," he said, looking up as Jack drew rein. A moment later he pocketed a gold piece that Jack offered, yawned, laughed, and yawned again.

"You can buy contraband cigars at two sous each in the village below," he observed.

"What news is there to tell?" demanded Jack.

"News? The same as usual. They are shelling Strassbourg with mortars; the city is on fire. Six hundred women and children left the city; the International Aid Society demanded it."

Presently he added: "A big battle was fought this morning along the Meuse. You can hear the guns yet."

"I have heard them for an hour," replied Jack.

They listened. Far to the south the steady intonation of the cannon vibrated, a vague sustained rumour, no louder, no lower, always the same monotonous measure, flowing like the harmony of flowing water, passionless, changeless, interminable.

"Along the Meuse?" asked Jack, at last.

"Yes."

"Sedan?"

"Yes, Sedan."

The slow convoy was passing now; the creak of wheel and the harsh scrape of axle and spring grated in their ears; the wind changed; the murmur of the cannonade was blotted out in the trample of hoofs, the thud of marching infantry.

Jack swung his horse's head and drove out across the boundary into the French road. On every side crowded the teams, where the low mutter of the wounded rose from the foul straw; on every side pressed the red-legged infantry, rifles _en bandouliere_, shrunken, faded caps pushed back from thin, sick faces.

"My soldiers!" murmured Lorraine, sitting up straight. "Oh, the pity of it!--the pity!"

An officer passed, followed by a bugler. He glanced vacantly at Jack, then at Lorraine. Another officer came by, leading his patient, bleeding horse, over which was flung the dusty body of a brother soldier.

The long convoy was moving more swiftly now; the air trembled with the cries of the mangled or the hoarse groans of the dying. A Sister of Mercy--her frail arm in a sling--crept on her knees among the wounded lying in a straw-filled cart. Over all, louder, deeper, dominating the confusion of the horses and the tramp of men, rolled the cannonade. The pulsating air, deep-laden with the monstrous waves of sound, seemed to beat in Lorraine's face--the throbbing of her heart ceased for a moment. Louder, louder, nearer, more terrible sounded the thunder, breaking in long, majestic reverberations among the nearer hills; the earth began to shake, the sky struck back the iron-throated echoes--sounding, resounding, from horizon to horizon.

And now the troops around them were firing as they advanced; sheeted mist lashed with lightning enveloped the convoy, through which rang the tremendous clang of the cannon. Once there came a momentary break in the smoke--a gleam of hills, and a valley black with men--a glimpse of a distant town, a river--then the stinging smoke rushed outward, the little flames leaped and sank and played through the fog. Broad, level bands of mist, fringed with flame, cut the pasture to the right; the earth rocked with the stupendous cannon shock, the ripping rifle crashes chimed a dreadful treble.

There was a bridge there in the mist; an iron gate, a heavy wall of masonry, a glimpse of a moat below. The crowded wagons, groaning under their load of death, the dusty infantry, the officers, the startled horses, jammed the bridge to the parapets. Wheels splintered and cracked, long-lashed whips snapped and rose, horses strained, recoiled, leaped up, and fell scrambling and kicking.

"Open the gates, for God's sake!" they were shouting.

A great shell, moaning in its flight above the smoke, shrieked and plunged headlong among the wagons. There came a glare of blinding light, a velvety white cloud, a roar, and through the gates, no longer choked, rolled the wagon-train, a frantic stampede of men and horses. It caught the dog-cart and its occupants with it; it crushed the horse, seized the vehicle, and flung it inside the gates as a flood flings driftwood on the rocks.

Jack clung to the reins; the wretched horse staggered out into the stony street, fell, and rolled over stone-dead.

Jack turned and caught Lorraine in both arms, and jumped to a sidewalk crowded with soldiers, and at the same time the crush of wagons ground the dog-cart to splinters on the cobble-stones. The crowd choked every inch of the pavement--women, children, soldiers, shouting out something that seemed to move the masses to delirium. Jack, his arm around Lorraine, beat his way forward through the throng, murmuring anxiously, "Are you hurt, Lorraine? Are you hurt?" And she replied, faintly, "No, Jack. Oh, what is it? What is it?"

Soldiers blocked his way now, but he pushed between them towards a cleared space on a slope of grass. Up the slope he staggered and out on to a stone terrace above the crush of the street. An officer stood alone on the terrace, pulling at some ropes around a pole on the parapet.

"What--what is that?" stammered Lorraine, as a white flag shot up along the flag-staff and fluttered drearily over the wall.

"Lorraine!" cried Jack; but she sprang to the pole and tore the ropes free. The white flag fell to the ground.

The officer turned to her, his face whiter than the flag. The crowd in the street below roared.

"Monsieur," gasped Lorraine, "France is not conquered! That flag is the flag of dishonour!"

They stared at each other in silence, then the officer stepped to the flag-pole and picked up the ropes.

"Not that!--not that!" cried Lorraine, shuddering.

"It is the Emperor's orders."

The officer drew the rope tight--the white flag crawled slowly up the staff, fluttered, and stopped.

Lorraine covered her eyes with her hands; the roar of the crowd below was in her ears.

"O God!--O God!" she whispered.

"Lorraine!" whispered Jack, both arms around her.

Her head fell forward on her breast.

Overhead the white flag caught the breeze again, and floated out over the ramparts of Sedan.

"By the Emperor's orders," said the officer, coming close to Jack.

Then for the first time Jack saw that it was Georges Carriere who stood there, ghastly pale, his eyes fixed on Lorraine.

"She has fainted," muttered Jack, lifting her. "Georges, is it all over?"

"Yes," said Georges, and he walked over to the flag-pole, and stood there looking up at the white badge of dishonour.

XXX

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

Daylight was fading in the room where Lorraine lay in a stupor so deep that at moments the Sister of Mercy and the young military surgeon could scarcely believe her alive there on the pillows.

Jack, his head on his arms, stood by the window, staring out vacantly at the streak of light in the west, against which, on the straight, gray ramparts, the white flag flapped black against the dying sun.

Under the window, in the muddy, black streets, the packed throngs swayed and staggered and trampled through the filth, amid a crush of camp-wagons, artillery, ambulances, and crowding squadrons of cavalry. Riotous line soldiers cried out "Treason!" and hissed their generals or cursed their Emperor; the tall cuirassiers surged by in silence, sombre faces turned towards the west, where the white flag flew on the ramparts. Heavier, denser, more suffocating grew the crush; an ambulance broke down, a caisson smashed into a lamp-post, a cuirassier's horse slipped in the greasy depths of the filth, pitching its steel-clad rider to the pavement. Through the Place d'Alsace-Lorraine, through the Avenue du College and the Place d'Armes, passed the turbulent torrent of men and horses and cannon. The Grande Rue was choked from the church to the bronze statue in the Place Turenne; the Porte de Paris was piled with dead, the Porte de Balan tottered a mass of ruins.

The cannonade still shook the hills to the south in spite of the white flag on the citadel. There were white flags, too, on the ramparts, on the Port des Capucins, and at the Gate of Paris. An officer, followed by a lancer, who carried a white pennon on his lance-point, entered the street from the north. A dozen soldiers and officers hacked it off with their sabres, crying, "No surrender! no surrender!" Shells continued to fall into the packed streets, blowing horrible gaps in the masses of struggling men. The sun set in a crimson blaze, reflecting on window and roof and the bloody waters of the river. When at last it sank behind the smoky hills, the blackness in the city was lighted by lurid flames from burning houses and the swift crimson glare of Prussian shells, still plunging into the town. Through the crash of crumbling walls, the hiss and explosion of falling shells, the awful clamour and din in the streets, the town clock struck solemnly six times. As if at a signal the firing died away; a desolate silence fell over the city--a silence full of rumours, of strange movements--a stillness pulsating with the death gasps of a nation.

Out on the heights of La Moncelle, of Daigny, and Givonne lanterns glimmered where the good Sisters of Mercy and the ambulance corps passed among the dead and dying--the thirty-five thousand dead and dying! The plateau of Illy, where the cavalry had charged again and again, was twinkling with thousands of lanterns; on the heights of Frenois Prussian torches swung, signalling victory.

But the spectacle in the interior of the town--a town of nineteen thousand people, into which now were crushed seventy thousand frantic soldiers, was dreadful beyond description. Horror multiplied on horror. The two bridges and the streets were so jammed with horses and artillery trains that it seemed impossible for any human being to move another inch. In the glare of the flames from the houses on fire, in the middle of the smoke, horses, cannon, fourgons, charrettes, ambulances, piles of dead and dying, formed a sickening pell-mell. In this chaos starving soldiers, holding lighted lanterns, tore strips of flesh from dead horses lying in the mud, killed by the shells. Arms, broken and foul with blood and mud--rifles, pistols, sabres, lances, casques, mitrailleuses--covered the pavements.

The gates of the town were closed; the water in the fortification moats reflected the red light from the flames. The glacis of the ramparts was covered by black masses of soldiers, watching the placing of a cordon of German sentinels around the walls.

All public buildings, all the churches, were choked with wounded; their blood covered everything. On the steps of the churches poor wretches sat bandaging their torn limbs with strips of bloody muslin.

Strange sounds came from the stone walls along the street, where zouaves, turcos, and line soldiers, cursing and weeping with rage, were smashing their rifles to pieces rather than surrender them. Artillerymen were spiking their guns, some ran them into the river, some hammered the mitrailleuses out of shape with pickaxes. The cavalry flung their sabres into the river, the cuirassiers threw away revolvers and helmets. Everywhere officers were breaking their swords and cursing the surrender. The officers of the 74th of the Line threw their sabres and even their decorations into the Meuse. Everywhere, too, regiments were burning their colours and destroying their eagles; the colonel of the 52d of the Line himself burned his colours in the presence of all the officers of the regiment, in the centre of the street. The 88th and 30th, the 68th, the 78th, and 74th regiments followed this example. "Mort aux Vaches!" howled a herd of half-crazed reservists, bursting into the crush. "Mort aux Prussiens! A la lanterne, Badinguet! Vive la Republique!"

Jack turned away from the window. The tall Sister of Mercy stood beside the bed where Lorraine lay.

Jack made a sign.

"She is asleep," murmured the Sister; "you may come nearer now. Close the window."

Before he could reach the bed the door was opened violently from without, and an officer entered swinging a lantern. He did not see Lorraine at first, but held the door open, saying to Jack: "Pardon, monsieur; this house is reserved. I am very sorry to trouble you."

Another officer entered, an old man, covered to the eyes by his crimson gold-brocaded cap. Two more followed.

"There is a sick person here," said Jack. "You cannot have the intention of turning her out! It is inhuman--"

He stopped short, stupefied at the sight of the old officer, who now stood bareheaded in the lantern-light, looking at the bed where Lorraine lay. It was the Emperor!--her father.

Slowly the Emperor advanced to the bed, his dreary eyes fixed on Lorraine's pale cheeks.

In the silence the cries from the street outside rose clear and distinct:

"Vive la Republique! A bas l'Empereur!"

The Emperor spoke, looking straight at Lorraine: "Gentlemen, we cannot disturb a woman. Pray find another house."

After a moment the officers began to back out, one by one, through the doorway. The Emperor still stood by the bed, his vague, inscrutable eyes fixed on Lorraine.

Jack moved towards the bed, trembling. The Emperor raised his colourless face.

"Monsieur--your sister? No--your wife?"

"My promised wife, sire," muttered Jack, cold with fear.

"A child," said the Emperor, softly.

With a vague gesture he stepped nearer, smoothed the coverlet, bent closer, and touched the sleeping girl's forehead with his lips. Then he stood up, gray-faced, impassive.

"I am an old man," he said, as though to himself. He looked at Jack, who now came close to him, holding out something in one hand. It was the steel box.

"For me, monsieur?" asked the Emperor.

Jack nodded. He could not speak.

The Emperor took the box, still looking at Jack.

There was a moment's silence, then Jack spoke: "It may be too late. It is a plan of a balloon--we brought it to you from Lorraine--"

The uproar in the streets drowned his voice--"Mort a l'Empereur! A bas l'Empire!"

A staff-officer opened the door and peered in; the Emperor stepped to the threshold.

"I thank you--I thank you both, my children," he said. His eyes wandered again towards the bed; the cries in the street rang out furiously.

"Mort a l'Empereur!"

The Sister of Mercy was kneeling by the bed; Jack shivered, and dropped his head.

When he looked up the Emperor had gone.

All night long he watched at the bedside, leaning on his elbow, one hand shading his eyes from the candle-flame. The Sister of Mercy, white and worn with the duties of that terrible day, slept upright in an arm-chair.

Dawn brought the sad notes of Prussian trumpets from the ramparts pealing through the devastated city; at sunrise the pavements rang and shook with the trample of the White Cuirassiers. A Saxon infantry band burst into the "Wacht am Rhine" at the Paris Gate; the Place Turenne vomited Uhlans. Jack sank down by the bed, burying his face in the sheets.

The Sister of Mercy rubbed her eyes and started up. She touched Jack on the shoulder.

"I am going to be very ill," he said, raising a face burning with fever. "Never mind me, but stay with her."

"I understand," said the Sister, gently. "You must lie in the room beyond."

The fever seized Jack with a swiftness incredible.

"Then--swear it--by the--by the Saviour there--there on your crucifix!" he muttered.

"I swear," she answered, softly.

His mind wandered a little, but he set his teeth and rose, staggering to the table. He wrote something on a bit of paper with shaking fingers.

"Send for them," he said. "You can telegraph now. They are in Brussels--my sister--my family--"

Then, blinded by the raging fever, he made his way uncertainly to the bed, groped for Lorraine's hand, pressed it, and lay down at her feet.

"Call the surgeon!" he gasped.

And it was very many days before he said anything else with as much sense in it.

"God help them!" cried the Sister of Mercy, tearfully, her thin hands clasped to her lips. Alone she guided Jack into the room beyond.

Outside the Prussian bands were playing. The sun flung a long, golden beam through the window straight across Lorraine's breast.

She stirred, and murmured in her sleep, "Jack! Jack! 'Tiens ta Foy!'"

But Jack was past hearing now; and when, at sundown, the young surgeon came into his room he was nearly past all aid.

"Typhoid?" asked the Sister.

"The Pest!" said the surgeon, gravely.

The Sister started a little.

"I will stay," she murmured. "Send this despatch when you go out. Can he live?"

They whispered together a moment, stepping softly to the door of the room where Lorraine lay.

"It can't be helped now," said the surgeon, looking at Lorraine; "she'll be well enough by to-morrow; she must stay with you. The chances are that he will die."

The trample of the White Cuirassiers in the street outside filled the room; the serried squadrons thundered past, steel ringing on steel, horses neighing, trumpets sounding the "Royal March." Lorraine's eyes unclosed.

"Jack!"

There was no answer.

The surgeon whispered to the Sister of Mercy: "Don't forget to hang out the pest flag."

"Jack! Jack!" wailed Lorraine, sitting up in bed. Through the tangled masses of her heavy hair, gilded by the morning sunshine, her eyes, bright with fever, roamed around the room, startled, despairing. Under the window the White Cuirassiers were singing as they rode:

"Flieg', Adler, flieg'! Wir stuermen nach, Ein einig Volk in Waffen, Wir stuermen nach ob tausendfach Des Todes Pforten Klaffen! Und fallen wir, flieg', Adler, flieg'! Aus unserm Blute maechst der Sieg! Vorwaerts! Flieg', Adler, flieg'! Victoria! Victoria! Mit uns ist Gott!"

Terrified, turning her head from side to side, Lorraine stretched out her hands. She tried to speak, but her ears were filled with the deep voices shouting the splendid battle-hymn--

"Fly, Eagle! fly! With us is God!"

She crept out of bed, her bare feet white with cold, her bare arms flushed and burning. Blinded by the blaze of the rising sun, she felt her way around the room, calling, "Jack! Jack!" The window was open; she crept to it. The street was a surging, scintillating torrent of steel.

"God with us!"

The White Cuirassiers shook their glittering sabres; the melancholy trumpet's blast swept skyward; the standards flapped. Suddenly the stony street trembled with the outcrash of drums; the cuirassiers halted, the steel-mailed squadrons parted right and left; a carriage drove at a gallop through the opened ranks. Lorraine leaned from the window; the officer in the carriage looked up.

As the fallen Emperor's eyes met Lorraine's, she stretched out both little bare arms and cried: "Vive la France!"--and he was gone to his captivity, the White Cuirassiers galloping on every side.

The Sister of Mercy opened the door behind, calling her.

"He is dying," she said. "He is in here. Come quickly!"

Lorraine turned her head. Her eyes were sweet and serene, her whole pale face transfigured.

"He will live," she said. "I am here."

"It is the pest!" muttered the Sister.

Lorraine glided into the hall and unclosed the door of the silent room.

He opened his eyes.

"There is no death!" she whispered, her face against his. "There is neither death nor sorrow nor dying."

The clamour in the street died out; the wind was still; the pest flag under the window hung motionless.

He sighed; his eyes closed.

She stretched out beside him, her body against his, her bare arms around his neck.

His heart fluttered; stopped; fluttered; was silent; moved once again; ceased.

"Jack!"

Again his heart stirred--or was it her own?

When the morning sun broke over the ramparts of Sedan she fell asleep in his arms, lulled by the pulsations of his heart.

XXXI

THE PROPHECY OF LORRAINE

When the Vicomte and Madame de Morteyn arrived in Sedan from Brussels the last of the French prisoners had been gone a week; the foul city was swept clean; the corpse-choked river no longer flung its dead across the shallows of the island of Glaires; the canal was untroubled by the ghastly freight of death that had collected like logs on a boom below the village of Iges.