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.
All that day those of the regiment not required for outposts laboured
hard at the new entrenchments on the high, western edge of the
ravine--a long, long line of delving men. Ranges were marked out;
reserves of ammunition, food and water carried up. The energising
source of all this activity, the colonel, laboured also, without haste
and without rest. His brain worked quickly, coolly, definite in its
decisions. She, his companion, unobtrusively at hand when required
for information or material of defence, vanished unnoticed when her
presence might become importunate. She quenched her personality,
transfused, she felt, her life-force into him as he worked, an
emotionless intellect. With his chefs-de-bataillon he elaborated plans
of defence; nothing was left to chance; nothing could be misunderstood.
Personally he supervised, corrected, the siting of the trenches, the
emplacements of the mitrailleuses. In the afternoon he rode over to the
colonel of the adjoining regiment, concerted arrangements. From the
général de brigade he obtained the promise of a battery in support on
the morrow.
But he was uneasy. Patrols sent out had failed to get into touch with
the covering cavalry. The distant artillery roll was nearer. There
had been one inexplicable burst of fire some miles away to the right.
As night fell he ordered the new trenches to be manned with the bulk
of his force, leaving outposts and grand'garde on the plateau above
the ravine and down the valley. One company only he retained near the
château.
That evening he sat again in the salon of his hostess. All was quiet.
The dog snored in front of the hearth. At his request the countess
seated herself at the piano, played dreamily with bowed head. The soft
harmonies that awoke under her fingers seemed only to make the silence
musical.
Suddenly a shot re-echoed loud along the valley; another and another
followed. There was a burst of rapid, irregular fire, indefinitely
prolonged. The colonel rushed to a window, flung it open, listened. The
outposts down the valley were being driven in.
His companion had risen, stood by the piano with tense features. There
was a loud hurried knock on the door. She ran to open it. A Zouave
entered, breathing heavily from swift exertion. Saluting, he handed a
message to the colonel. It was from the commander of the grand'garde on
the edge of the ravine above. He reported that his advanced posts were
in contact with the enemy, were retiring. For one moment the colonel
stood by the window, listening to the rapid clatter of the rifles,
deciding which was the heavier attack.
He wrote an order to the officer above. The messenger disappeared. The
countess was holding out his fez and his revolver. One wild embrace and
he sprang out of the room, dashed through the adjoining salons, out
into the night.
In the courtyard he found the reserve company assembled, awaiting his
orders. He gave them, quickly, succinctly. The company fell into fours,
doubled out of the courtyard into the darkness to form a screen across
the valley behind which the men above could seek safety. From the
widening ravine the rifle fire swelled in intensity, was a continuous
loud re-echoing clatter. Above, sharp definite reports rang out,
were rapidly multiplied. It was the grand'garde--_feu à volonté_.
He glanced to the other wall of the ravine and smiled in a grim
satisfaction. His orders were being obeyed. The long line of trenches
he knew to be there lay in silence and darkness.
Above him there was one fierce paroxysm of fire and then the reports
diminished, sprang from lower levels. He saw quick flashes of light
among the trees. Wounded men limped and hobbled past him in the
darkness. The outpost was retiring into the valley. A bullet cracked
close to him. He turned, suddenly conscious of companionship. The
countess was standing at his side, her pale dress luminous in the
night. The dog growled angrily in front of her.
"Pauline!" His voice was almost a shriek of alarm for her. "Pauline!
For the love of God, come with me--now--there is yet time! I cannot
leave you!"
She grasped his hand, as a friend would.
"No, _cher_--I stay--as a pledge for your victorious return!"
The last men of the outpost were running past them. Overhead the
bullets cracked viciously, phutting against the walls.
"I implore you! There may be heavy fighting!"
"No, mon ami. I stay." Her voice was quite decided. "I have cellars."
She pressed his hand, then, with a quick movement, flung herself into
his arms, was one with him for a brief second. He unloosed her embrace.
"Go, then," he said, his voice trembling. "Quickly. God be with you!"
"And with you, my beloved! Take the dog with you--he will tell me where
you are." She bent down to the animal, whispered to him, pointed to the
colonel. Heavy volleys crashed out of the trees above. She sprang back
into the house.
The dog at his heels, the colonel raced after the last of his men. They
turned to spit livid spurts of flame at the dark wall of the ravine. In
a few moments they were clambering up a steep path through the wood on
the other side.
Half an hour later the Germans felt the long line of trenches on the
lip of the ravine, attacked, and were heavily repulsed.
* * * * *
At dawn the colonel reconnoitred the situation from his position on the
height. In front of him the enemy, abandoning the valley in which lay
so many of his dead, had entrenched himself along the opposite edge of
the ravine. Vicious little bursts of rifle fire at scattered parties or
individuals who hazarded themselves for a moment out of cover betokened
the vigilance of both sides, and on both sides the many spadefuls of
earth tossed in the air showed that the work of strengthening the
positions was proceeding feverishly. So far no artillery had entered
into the fray, but at any moment the first shell from one party or the
other might come whining across the gulf. To the right of the Zouaves
another battalion had established contact, was maintaining itself. To
the left, at the head of the ravine, where they joined with the next
regiment, a fierce fight was proceeding--attack and counter-attack
which finally left the positions unchanged. Far to right and left the
crackle of rifle fire swelled and continued. Mingled with it came the
rapid detonations of field-guns, their reports ever nearer. The battle
was developing all along the line. The colonel received positive orders
to maintain himself at all costs, to risk nothing. Upon the maintenance
of this thin screen depended the safety of two armies, forming and in
motion, perhaps the fate of France.
Through his glasses the colonel gazed into the depths of the ravine,
where the white stone château glinted through the dark, thickly
surrounding trees. A wisp of smoke ascended from one of the chimneys
and he had to be content with that assurance that all was well. A
patrol sent out in the first light had failed to reach it. All access
to the château was commanded by spurs from the other side of the
ravine. But apparently it was unoccupied by the enemy. He thought
suddenly of the dog, wondered what had happened to it. In the stress
of the night attack he had lost sight of it, forgotten it. Even as he
searched his memory it came bounding along the trench towards him,
nosed against his leg. There was something fastened to its collar, a
letter.
As he read it, all the passion of his ascetic, sun-parched years,
awakened by the exquisite charm of that slender pale woman lonely
there below him, surged up in him, overmastering, obliterating all
else. The eloquent eyes under the auburn hair were vivid to him, spoke
to his deepest soul. Her letter was a prose lyric of passion wherein
all emotions--longing, tenderness, anxiety, surrender, pride in her
lover, even a flash of the doubt born of swiftly-given love--contended.
It was revelatory of her inmost self as her speech had never been.
She, it seemed, had also waited--waited. Some of the phrases in
it--"The burning sacrament of your kiss"--"linked in an instant for
eternity"--branded themselves upon his brain. In a whirl of cerebral
excitement he tore out a page from his note-book, dashed off a letter
not less ardent, not less than hers the ecstasy of a soul that lives at
last in the consuming fire of love.
He attached it to the dog's collar, pointed away. The animal sprang
over the low parapet, disappeared in the undergrowth below.
An artillery officer came up, reported himself as the observer of the
newly arrived battery. He evinced much professional interest in the
château, seemed eager to make it the target for his guns. The colonel
explained the situation.
All through the multitudinous tasks and responsibilities of the day his
soul yearned out to the lonely woman below. To have risked his life in
an endeavour to see her would have been more than a joy, it would have
been the satisfaction of a need of his being--but his life was pledged
to France. To him his duty was a religion with which his love did not
conflict, nay both, upon the summit of his life, blended and were one.
Yet tempted, he found himself speculating upon the possibility of
creeping down at nightfall.
But night saw the intense glare of three German searchlights shoot out
of the darkness. A storm of shrapnel burst fiercely over the trenches
of the Zouaves. A wild attack of shadowy forms surging up out of the
undergrowth beat against the parapet, ebbed back in an inferno of
noise from the long line of countless stabs of flame, was hurled into
the ravine under the reiterated crashes, the sudden livid flares of
shrapnel from the battery behind.
Down below, at the highest window of the château, the countess stood
looking out into the night, her lover's letter pressed close against
her bosom. High above her flickered and spurted the endless rifle
flashes from _his_ trenches, paling the stars above the dark hill. The
noise of the conflict, the shouts and cries amid the re-echoing din,
was a tribute to his power. She gloried in it, exulted when the attack
subsided, withdrew in a clamour of voices past the château to the hill
behind.
Descending, she wrote yet another letter to him--a proud pæan of love
triumphant. Then suddenly she flung herself, face downward, arms
outstretched, across the table in a passion of irrepressible tears.
She lay thus a long time, until the heaving of her body ceased and she
slept, her cheek upon the letter.
The morning was yet young when she despatched the dog once more upon
his mission to her lover. Save for an occasional shot, the opposing
trenches were quiet. Stretcher parties were at work in the valley.
Waited upon by the ancient Marie--eloquent in her protestations of
terror during the night--she breakfasted, counting the minutes until
the return of her messenger. Roland arrived, pleased with himself,
as his energetic tail testified. Once more with swelling breast and
radiant face she read her lover's letter, passionate as the first. In a
postscript, it begged her to give no information that might imperil her.
During the day the battle woke again between the trenches at the head
of the ravine, continued in fierce spasms hour after hour. In the
afternoon she wrote another letter, despatched it and received an
answer. She was strangely, exaltedly happy. _He_ was holding firm.
No one came to the château. At night she again posted herself at the
window to watch the flashes from his trenches.
The third day dawned. She wrote, assuring him of her safety--of much
else. The reply duly arrived. A false peace brooded over the little
valley. Ceding to an impulse, she went out, tried to get a clearer view
of his position, to see--she would not admit to herself her absurd
hope. Then, regretting her imprudence, she returned hurriedly.