"Molly, what the deuce is the matter?"
"Nothing--if you ever see her again, I'll tell Ricky."
"I might say the same thing in regard to Ricky, my dear," said
Sir Thorald, mildly.
"It is not true," she said; "I did no damage to him; and you
know--you know down in the depths of your fickle soul that--that--"
"What, my dear?"
"Never mind!" said Molly, sharply; but she crimsoned when he
kissed her, and held tightly to his sleeve.
"Good ged!" thought Sir Thorald; "what a devil I am with women!"
But now the carriages drove up--coupés, dog-carts, and a
victoria.
"They say we ought not to miss this train," said Cecil, coming
from the stables and flourishing a whip; "they say the line may
be seized for government use exclusively in a few hours."
The old house-keeper, Madame Paillard, nodded and pointed to her
son, the under-keeper.
"François says, Monsieur Page, that six trains loaded with troops
passed through Saint-Lys between midnight and dawn; dis,
François, c'est le Sieur Bosz qui t'a renseigné--pas?"
"Oui, mamam!"
"Then hurry," said Lady Hesketh. "Thorald, call the others."
"I," said Cecil, "am going to drive Betty in the dog-cart."
"She'll probably take the reins," said Sir Thorald, cynically.
Cecil brandished his whip and looked determined; but it was Betty
who drove him to Saint-Lys station, after all.
The adieux were said, even more tearfully this time. Jack kissed
his sister tenderly, and she wept a little on his shoulder--thinking
of Rickerl.
One by one the vehicles rolled away down the gravel drive; and
last of all came Molly Hesketh in the coupé with Jack Marche.
Molly was sad and a trifle distraite. Those periodical mental
illuminations during which she discovered for the thousandth and odd
time that she loved her husband usually left her fairly innocuous.
But she was a born flirt; the virus was bred in the bone, and after
the first half-mile she opened her batteries--her eyes--as a matter
of course on Jack.
What she got for her pains was a little sermon ending, "See here,
Molly--three years ago you played the devil with me until I
kissed you, and then you were furious and threatened to tell Sir
Thorald. The truth is, you're in love with him, and there is no
more harm in you than there is in a china kitten."
"Jack!" she gasped.
"And," he resumed, "you live in Paris, and you see lots of things
and you hear lots of things that you don't hear and see in
Lincolnshire. But you're British, Molly, and you are domestic,
although you hate the idea, and there will never be a desolated
hearth in the Hesketh household as long as you speak your
mother-tongue and read Anthony Trollope."
The rest of the road was traversed in silence. They rattled over
the stones in the single street of Saint-Lys, rolled into the
gravel oval behind the Gare, and drew up amid a hubbub of
restless teams, market-wagons, and station-trucks.
"See the soldiers!" said Jack, lifting Lady Hesketh to the
platform, where the others were already gathered in a circle. A
train was just gliding out of the station, bound eastward, and
from every window red caps projected and sunburned, boyish faces
expanded into grins as they saw Lady Hesketh and her charges.
"Vive l'Angleterre!" they cried. "Vive Madame la Reine! Vive
Johnbull et son rosbif!" the latter observation aimed at Sir
Thorald.
Sir Thorald waved his eye-glass to them condescendingly; faster
and faster moved the train; the red caps and fresh, tanned
faces, the laughing eyes became a blur and then a streak; and far
down the glistening track the faint cheers died away and were
drowned in the roar of the wheels--little whirling wheels that
were bearing them merrily to their graves at Wissembourg.
"Here comes our train," said Cecil. "Jack, my boy, you'll
probably see some fun; take care of your hide, old chap!" He
didn't mean to be patronizing, but he had Betty demurely leaning
on his arm, and--dear me!--how could he help patronizing the
other poor devils in the world who had not Betty, and who never
could have Betty?
"Montez, madame, s'il vous plait!--Montez, messieurs!" cried the
Chef de Gare; "last train for Paris until Wednesday! All aboard!"
and he slammed and locked the doors, while the engineer, leaning
impatiently from his cab, looked back along the line of cars and
blew his whistle warningly.
"Good-by, Dorrie!" cried Jack.
"Good-by, my darling Jack! Be careful; you will, won't you?" But
she was still thinking of Rickerl, bless her little heart!
Lady Hesketh waved him a demure adieu from the open window,
relented, and gave his hand a hasty squeeze with her gloved
fingers.
"Take care of Lorraine," she said, solemnly; then laughed at his
telltale eyes, and leaned back on her husband's shoulder, still
laughing.
The cars were gliding more swiftly past the platform now; he
caught a glimpse of Betty kissing her hand to him, of Cecil
bestowing a gracious adieu, of Sir Thorald's eye-glass--then they
were gone; and far up the tracks the diminishing end of the last
car dwindled to a dark square, a spot, a dot, and was ingulfed in
a flurry of dust. As he turned away and passed along the platform
to the dog-cart, there came a roar, a shriek of a locomotive, a
rush, and a train swept by towards the east, leaving a blear of
scarlet in his eyes, and his ears ringing with the soldiers'
cheers: "Vive la France! Vive l'Empereur! À Berlin! À Berlin! À
Berlin!" A furtive-eyed young peasant beside him shrugged his
shoulders.
"Bismarck has called for the menu; his cannon are hungry," he
sneered; "there goes the bill of fare."
"That's very funny," said a fierce little man with a gray
mustache, "but the bill of fare isn't complete--the class of '71
has just been called out!" and he pointed to a placard freshly
pasted on the side of the station.
"The--the class of '71?" muttered the furtive-eyed peasant,
turning livid.
"Exactly--the bill of fare needs the hors d'oeuvres; you'll go as
an olive, and probably come back a sardine--in a box."
And the fierce little man grinned, lighted a cigarette, and
sauntered away, still grinning.
What did he care? He was a pompier and exempt.
VII
THE ROAD TO PARADISE
The road between Saint-Lys and Morteyn was not a military road,
but it was firm and smooth, and Jack drove back again towards the
Château at a smart trot, flicking at leaves and twigs with
Cecil's whip.
The sun had brushed the veil of rain from the horizon; the
leaves, fresh and tender, stirred and sparkled with dew in the
morning breeze, and all the air was sweet-scented. In the
stillness of the fields, where wheat stretched along the road
like a green river tinged with gold, there was something that
troubled him. Silence is oppressive to sinners and prophets. He
concluded he was the former, and sighed restlessly, looking out
across the fields, where, deep in the stalks of the wheat,
blood-red poppies opened like raw wounds. At other times he had
compared them to little fairy camp-fires; but his mood was
pessimistic, and he saw, in the furrows that the plough had
raised, the scars on the breast of a tortured earth; and he read
sermons in bundles of fresh-cut fagots; and death was written
where a sickle lay beside a pile of grass, crisping to hay in the
splendid sun of Lorraine.
What he did not see were the corn-flowers peeping at him with
dewy blue eyes; the vineyards, where the fruit hung faintly
touched with bloom; the field birds, the rosy-breasted finches,
the thrush, as speckled as her own eggs--no, nor did he hear
them; for the silence that weighed on his heart came from his
heart. Yet all the summer wind was athrill with harmony.
Thousands of feathered throats swelled and bubbled melody, from
the clouds to the feathery heath, from the scintillating azure in
the zenith to the roots of the glittering wheat where the
corn-flowers lay like bits of blue sky fallen to the earth.
As he drove he thought of Lorraine, of her love for her father
and her goodness. He already recognized that dominant passion in
her, her unselfish adoration of her father--a father who sat all
day behind bolted doors trifling with metals and gases and little
spinning, noiseless wheels. The selfish to the unselfish, the
dead to the living, the dwarf to the giant, and the sinner to the
saint--this is the world and they that dwell therein.
He thought of her as he had seen her last, smiling up into the
handsome, bearded face that questioned her. No, the wound was
nothing--a little blood lost--enough to make her faint at his
feet--that was all. But his precious box was safe--and she had
flung her loyal arms about the man who saved it and had kissed
him before her father, because he had secured what was dearer to
her than life--her father's happiness--a little metal box full of
it.
Her father was very grateful and very solicitous about her
wounded shoulder; but he opened his box before he thought about
bandages. Everything was intact, except the conservatory window
and his daughter's shoulder. Both could be mended--but his box!
ah, that, if lost, could never be replaced.
Jack's throat was hard and dry. A lump came into it, and he
swallowed with a shrug, and flicked at a fly on the headstall. A
vision of Sir Thorald, bending over little Alixe, came before his
eyes. "Pah!" he muttered, in disgust. Sir Thorald was one of
those men who cease to care for a woman when she begins to care
for them. Jack knew it; that was why he had been so gentle with
Molly Hesketh, who had turned his head when he was a boy and
given him his first emotions--passion, hate--and then knowledge;
for of all the deep emotions that a man shall know before he dies
the first consciousness of knowledge is the most profound; it
sounds the depths of heaven and hell in the space of time that
the heart beats twice.
He was passing through the woods now, the lovely oak and beech
woods of Lorraine. An ancient dame, bending her crooked back
beneath a load of fagots, gave him "God bless you!" and he drew
rein and returned the gift--but his was in silver, with the head
of his imperial majesty stamped on one side.
As he drove, rabbits ran back into the woods, hoisting their
white signals of conciliation. "Peace and good will" they seemed
to read, "but a wise rabbit takes to the woods." Pheasants, too,
stepped daintily from under the filbert bushes, twisting their
gorgeous necks curiously as he passed. Once, in the hollow of a
gorge where a little stream trickled under layers of wet leaves,
he saw a wild-boar standing hock-deep in the ooze, rooting under
mosses and rotten branches, absorbed in his rooting. Twice deer
leaped from the young growth on the edge of the fields and
bounded lazily into denser cover, only to stop when half
concealed and stare back at him with gentle, curious eyes. The
horse pricked up his ears at such times and introduced a few
waltz steps into his steady if monotonous repertoire, but Jack
let him have his fling, thinking that the deer were as tame as
the horse, and both were tamer than man.
Excepting the black panther, man has learned his lesson slowest
of all, the lesson of acquiescence in the inevitable.
"I'll never learn it," said Jack, aloud. His voice startled
him--it was trembling.
Lorraine! Lorraine! Life has begun for a very young man. Teach
him to see and bring him to accept existence in the innocence of
your knowledge; for, if he and the world collide, he fears the
result to the world.
A few moments later he drove into Paradise, which is known to
some as the Château de Nesville.
VIII
UNDER THE YOKE
During the next two weeks Jack Marche drove into Paradise
fourteen times, and fourteen times he drove out of Paradise, back
to the Château Morteyn. Heaven is nearer than people suppose; it
was three miles from the road shrine at Morteyn.
Our Lady of Morteyn, sculptured in the cold stone above the
shrine, had looked with her wide stone eyes on many lovers, and
had known they were lovers because their piety was as sudden as
it was fervid.
Twice a day Jack's riding-cap was reverently doffed as he drew
bridle before the shrine, going and coming from Paradise.
At evening, too, when the old vicomte slept on his pillow and the
last light went out in the stables, Our Lady of Morteyn saw a
very young man sitting, with his head in his hands, at her feet;
and he took no harm from the cold stones, because Our Lady of
Morteyn is gentle and gracious, and the summer nights were hot in
the province of Lorraine.
There had been little stir or excitement in Morteyn. Even in
Saint-Lys, where all day and all night the troop-trains rushed
by, the cheers of the war-bound soldiers leaning from the flying
cars were becoming monotonous in the ears of the sober villagers.
When the long, flat cars, piled with cannon, passed, the people
stared at the slender guns, mute, canvas-covered, tilted skyward.
They stared, too, at the barred cars, rolling past in interminable
trains, loaded with horses and canvas-jacketed troopers who peered
between the slats and shouted to the women in the street. Other
trains came and went, trains weighted with bellowing cattle or
huddled sheep, trains choked with small square boxes marked
"Cartouches" or "Obus--7^me"; trains piled high with grain or
clothing, or folded tents packed between varnished poles and piles
of tin basins. Once a little excitement came to Saint-Lys when a
battalion of red-legged infantry tramped into the village square
and stacked rifles and jeered at the mayor and drank many bottles
of red wine to the health of the shy-eyed girls peeping at them
from every lattice. But they were only waiting for the next train,
and when it came their bugles echoed from the bridge to the square,
and they went away--went where the others had gone--laughing,
singing, cheering from the car-windows, where the sun beat down
on their red caps, and set their buttons glittering like a million
swarming fire-flies.
The village life, the daily duties, the dull routine from the
vineyard to the grain-field, and from the étang to the forest had
not changed in Saint-Lys.
There might be war somewhere; it would never come to Saint-Lys.
There might be death, yonder towards the Rhine--probably beyond
it, far beyond it. What of it? Death comes to all, but it comes
slowly in Saint-Lys; and the days are long, and one must eat to
live, and there is much to be done between the rising and the
setting of a peasant's sun.
There, below in Paris, were wise heads and many soldiers. They,
in Paris, knew what to do, and the war might begin and end with
nothing but a soiled newspaper in the Café Saint-Lys to show for
it--as far as the people of Saint-Lys knew.
True, at the summons of the mayor, the National Guard of
Saint-Lys mustered in the square, seven strong and a bugler. This
was merely a display of force--it meant nothing--but let those
across the Rhine beware!
The fierce little man with the gray mustache, who was named
Tricasse, and who commanded the Saint-Lys Pompiers, spoke gravely
of Francs-corps, and drank too much eau-de-vie every evening. But
these warlike ebullitions simmered away peacefully in the
sunshine, and the tranquil current of life flowed as smoothly
through Saint-Lys as the river Lisse itself, limpid, noiseless,
under the village bridge.
Only one man had left the village, and that was Brun, the
furtive-eyed young peasant, the sole representative in Saint-Lys
of the conscript class of 1871. And he would never have gone had
not a gendarme pulled him from under his mother's bed and hustled
him on to the first Paris-bound train, which happened to be a
cattle train, where Brun mingled his lamentations with the
bleating of sheep and the desolate bellow of thirsty cows.
Jack Marche heard of these things but saw little of them. The
great war wave rolling through the provinces towards the Rhine
skirted them at Saint-Lys, and scarcely disturbed them. They
heard that Douay was marching through the country somewhere, some
said towards Wissembourg, some said towards Saarbrück. But these
towns were names to the peasants of Saint-Lys--tant pis for the
two towns! And General Douay--who was he? Probably a fat man in
red breeches and polished boots, wearing a cocked-hat and a cross
on his breast. Anyway, they would chase the Prussians and kill a
few, as they had chased the Russians in the Crimea, and the
Italians in Rome, and the Kabyles in Oran. The result? Nothing
but a few new colours for the ribbons in their sweethearts'
hair--like that pretty Magenta and Solferino and Sebastopol gray.
"Fichtre! Faut-il gaspiller tout de même! mais, à la guerre comme
à la guerre!" which meant nothing in Saint-Lys.
It meant more to Jack Marche, riding one sultry afternoon through
the woods, idly drumming on his spurred boots with a battered
riding-crop.
It was his daily afternoon ride to the Château de Nesville; the
shy wood creatures were beginning to know him, even the younger
rabbits of the most recent generation sat up and mumbled their
prehensile lips, watching him with large, moist eyes. As for the
red squirrels in the chestnut-trees, and the dappled deer in the
carrefours, and the sulky boars that bristled at him from the
overgrown sentiers, they accepted him on condition that he kept
to the road. And he did, head bent, thoughtful eyes fixed on his
saddle-bow, drumming absently with his riding-crop on his spurred
boots, his bridle loose on his horse's neck.
There was little to break the monotony of the ride; a sudden gush
of song from a spotted thrush, the rustle of a pheasant in the
brake, perhaps the modest greeting of a rare keeper patrolling
his beat--nothing more. He went armed; he carried a long Colt's
six-shooter in his holster, not because he feared for his own
skin, but he thought it just as well to be ready in case of
trouble at the Château de Nesville. However, he did not fear
trouble again; the French armies were moving everywhere on the
frontier, and the spies, of course, had long ago betaken
themselves and their projects to the other bank of the Rhine.
The Marquis de Nesville himself felt perfectly secure, now that
the attempt had been made and had failed.
He told Jack so on the few occasions when he descended from his
room during the young fellow's visits. He made not the slightest
objections to Jack's seeing Lorraine when and where he pleased,
and this very un-Gallic behaviour puzzled Jack until he began to
comprehend the depths of the man's selfish absorption in his
balloons. It was more than absorption, it was mania pure and
simple, an absolute inability to see or hear or think or
understand anything except his own devices in the little bolted
chamber above.
He did care for Lorraine to the extent of providing for her every
want--he did remember her existence when he wanted something
himself. Also it was true that he would not have permitted a
Frenchman to visit Lorraine as Jack did. He hated two persons;
one of these was Jack's uncle, the Vicomte de Morteyn. On the
other hand, he admired him, too, because the vicomte, like
himself, was a royalist and shunned the Tuileries as the devil
shuns holy water. Therefore he was his equal, and he liked him
because he could hate him without loss of self-respect. The
reason he hated him was this--the Vicomte de Morteyn had
pooh-poohed the balloons. That occurred years ago, but he never
forgot it, and had never seen the old vicomte since. Whether or
not Lorraine visited the old people at Morteyn, he had neither
time nor inclination to inquire.
This was the man, tall, gentle, clean-cut of limb and feature,
and bearded like Jove--this was the man to whom Lorraine devoted
her whole existence. Every heart-beat was for him, every thought,
every prayer. And she was very devout.
This also was why she came to Jack so confidently and laid her
white hands in his when he sprang from his saddle, his heart in
flames of adoration.
He knew this, he knew that her undisguised pleasure in his
company was, for her, only another link that welded her closer to
her father. At night, often, when he had ridden back again, he
thought of it, and paled with resentment. At times he almost
hated her father. He could have borne it easier if the Marquis de
Nesville had been a loving father, even a tyrannically solicitous
father; but to see such love thrown before a marble-faced man,
whose expression never changed except when speaking of his
imbecile machines! "How can he! How can he!" muttered Jack,
riding through the woods. His face was sombre, almost stern; and
always he beat the devil's tattoo on his boot with the battered
riding-crop.
But now he came to the park gate, and the keeper touched his cap
and smiled, and dragged the heavy grille back till it creaked on
its hinges.
Lorraine came down the path to meet him; she had never before
done that, and he brightened and sprang to the ground, radiant
with happiness.
She had brought some sugar for the horse; the beautiful creature
followed her, thrusting its soft, satin muzzle into her hand,
ears pricked forward, wise eyes fixed on her.
"None for me?" asked Jack.
"Sugar?"
With a sudden gesture she held a lump out to him in the centre of
her pink palm.
Before she could withdraw the hand he had touched it with his
lips, and, a little gravely, she withdrew it and walked on in
silence by his side.
Her shoulder had healed, and she no longer wore the silken
support for her arm. She was dressed in black--the effect of her
glistening hair and blond skin was dazzling. His eyes wandered
from the white wrist, dainty and rounded, to the full curved
neck--to the delicate throat and proud little head. Her body,
supple as perfect Greek sculpture; her grace and gentle dignity;
her innocence, sweet as the light in her blue eyes, set him
dreaming again as he walked at her side, preoccupied, almost
saddened, a little afraid that such happiness as was his should
provoke the gods to end it.
He need not have taken thought for the gods, for the gods take
thought for themselves; and they were already busy at Saarbrück.
Their mills are not always slow in grinding; nor, on the other
hand, are they always sure. They may have been ages ago, but now
the gods are so out of date that saints and sinners have a chance
about equally.
They traversed the lawn, skirted the tall wall of solid masonry
that separated the chase from the park, and, passing a gate at
the hedge, came to a little stone bridge, beneath which the Lisse
ran dimpling. They watched the horse pursuing his own way
tranquilly towards the stables, and, when they saw a groom come
out and lead him in, they turned to each other, ready to begin
another day of perfect contentment.
First of all he asked about her shoulder, and she told him
truthfully that it was well. Then she inquired about the old
vicomte and Madame de Morteyn, and intrusted pretty little
messages to him for them, which he, unlike most young men,
usually remembered to deliver.
"My father," she said, "has not been to breakfast or dinner since
the day before yesterday. I should have been alarmed, but I
listened at the door and heard him moving about with his
machinery. I sent him some very nice things to eat; I don't know
if he liked them, for he sent no message back. Do you suppose he
is hungry?"
"No," said Jack; "if he were he would say so." He was careful not
to speak bitterly, and she noticed nothing.
"I believe," she said, "that he is about to make another
ascension. He often stays a long time in his room, alone, before
he is ready. Will it not be delightful? I shall perhaps be
permitted to go up with him. Don't you wish you might go with
us?"
"Yes," said Jack, with a little more earnestness than he
intended.
"Oh! you do? If you are very good, perhaps--perhaps--but I dare
not promise. If it were my balloon I would take you."
"Would you--really?"
"Of course--you know it. But it isn't my balloon, you know."
After a moment she went on: "I have been thinking all day how
noble and good it is of my father to consecrate his life to a
purpose that shall be of use to France. He has not said so, but I
know that, if the next ascension proves that his discovery is
beyond the chance of failure, he will notify the government and
place his invention at their disposal. Monsieur Marche, when I
think of his unselfish nobleness, the tears come--I cannot help
it."
"You, too, are noble," said Jack, resentfully.