and, as he had had no time to eat since daybreak, he gravely
began munching away, drinking now and then from his flask and
absently eying the road ahead.
He thought of Lorraine and of his promise. If only all promises
were as easily kept! He had plenty of time to reach Morteyn
before dark, taking it at an easy canter, so he let his horse
walk up the hills while he swallowed his bread and wine and mused
on war and love and emperors.
He had been riding in this abstracted study for some time, and
had lighted a pipe to aid his dreams, when, from the hill-side
ahead, he caught a glimpse of something that sparkled in the
afternoon sunshine, and he rose in his saddle and looked to see
what it might be. After a moment he made out five mounted troopers,
moving about on the crest of the hill, the sun slanting on stirrup
metal and lance-tip. As he was about to resume his meditations,
something about these lancers caught his eye--something that did
not seem quite right--he couldn't tell what. Of course they were
French lancers, they could be nothing else, here in the rear of the
army, but still they were rather odd-looking lancers, after all.
The eyes of a mariner and the eyes of a soldier, or of a man who
foregathers with soldiers, are quick to detect strange rigging.
Therefore Jack unslung his glasses and levelled them on the group
of mounted men, who were now moving towards him at an easy lope,
their tall lances, butts in stirrups, swinging free from the
arm-loops, their horses' manes tossing in the hill breeze.
The next moment he seized his bridle, drove both spurs into his
horse, and plunged ahead, dropping pipe and flask in the road
unheeded. At the same time a hoarse shout came quavering across
the fields, a shout as harsh and sinister as the menacing cry of
a hawk; but he dashed on, raising a whirlwind of red dust. Now he
could see them plainly enough, their slim boots, their yellow
facings and reverses, the shiny little helmets with the square
tops like inverted goblets, the steel lances from which black and
white pennons streamed.
They were Uhlans!
For a minute it was a question in his mind whether or not they
would be able to cut him off. A ditch in the meadow halted them
for a second or two, but they took it like chamois and came
cantering up towards the high-road, shouting hoarsely and
brandishing their lances.
It was true that, being a non-combatant and a foreigner with a
passport, and, furthermore, an accredited newspaper correspondent,
he had nothing to fear except, perhaps, a tedious detention and a
long-winded explanation. But it was not that. He had promised to
be at Morteyn by night, and now, if these Uhlans caught him and
marched him off to their main post, he would certainly spend one
night at least in the woods or fields. A sudden anger, almost a
fury, seized him that these men should interfere with his promise;
that they should in any way influence his own free going and coming,
and he struck his horse with the riding-crop and clattered on along
the highway.
"Halt!" shouted a voice, in German--"halt! or we fire!" and again
in French: "Halt! We shall fire!"
They were not far from the road now, but he saw that he could
pass them easily.
"Halt! halt!" they shouted, breathless.
Instinctively he ducked, and at the same moment piff! piff! their
revolvers began, and two bullets sang past near enough to make
his ears tingle.
Then they settled down to outride him; he heard their scurry and
jingle behind, and for a minute or two they held their own, but
little by little he forged ahead, and they began to shoot at him
from their saddles. One of them, however, had not wasted time in
shooting; Jack heard him, always behind, and now he seemed to be
drawing nearer, steadily but slowly closing up the gap between
them.
Jack glanced back. There he was, a big, blond, bony Uhlan, lance
couched, clattering up the hill; but the others had already
halted far behind, watching the race from the bottom of the
incline.
"Tiens ta Foy," he muttered to himself, digging both spurs into
his horse; "I'll not prove faithless to her first request--not if
I know it. Good Lord! how near that Uhlan is!"
Again he glanced behind, hesitated, and finally shouted: "Go
back! I am no soldier! Go back!"
"I'll show you!" bellowed the Uhlan. "Stop your horse! or when I
catch you--"
"Go back!" cried Jack, angrily; "go back or I'll fire!" and he
whipped out his long Colt's and shook it above his head.
With a derisive yell the Uhlan banged away--once, twice, three
times--and the bullets buzzed around Jack's ears till they sang.
He swung around, crimson with fury, and raised the heavy
six-shooter.
"By God!" he shouted; "then take it yourself!" and he fired one
shot, standing up in his stirrups to steady his aim.
He heard a cry, he saw a horse rear straight up through the dust;
there was a gleam of yellow, a flash of a falling lance, a groan.
Then, as he galloped on, pale and tight-lipped, a riderless horse
thundered along behind him, mane tossing in the whirling dust.
With sudden instinct, Jack drew bridle and wheeled his trembling
mount--the riderless horse tore past him--and he trotted soberly
back to the dusty heap in the road. It may have merely been the
impulse to see what he had done, it may have been a nobler
impulse, for Jack dismounted and bent over the fallen man. Then
he raised him in his arms by the shoulders and drew him towards
the road-side. The Uhlan was heavy, his spurs dragged in the
dust. Very gently Jack propped him up against a poplar-tree,
looked for a moment at the wound in his head, and then ran for
his horse. It was high time, too; the other Uhlans came racing
and tearing uphill, hallooing like Cossacks, and he vaulted into
his saddle and again set spurs to his horse.
Now it was a ride for life; he understood that thoroughly, and
settled down to it, bending low in the saddle, bridle in one
hand, revolver in the other. And as he rode his sobered thoughts
dwelt now on Lorraine, now on the great lank Uhlan, lying
stricken in the red dust of the highway. He seemed to see him
yet, blond, dusty, the sweat in beads on his blanched cheeks, the
crimson furrow in his colourless scalp. He had seen, too, the
padded yellow shoulder-knots bearing the regimental number "11,"
and he knew that he had shot a trooper of the 11th Uhlans, and
that the 11th Uhlan Regiment was Rickerl's regiment. He set his
teeth and stared fearfully over his shoulder. The pursuit had
ceased; the Uhlans, dismounted, were gathered about the tree
under which their comrade lay gasping. Jack brought his horse to
a gallop, to a canter, and finally to a trot. The horse was not
winded, but it trembled and reeked with sweat and lather.
Beyond him lay the forest of La Bruine, red in the slanting rays
of the setting sun. Beyond this the road swung into the Morteyn
road, that lay cool and moist along the willows that bordered the
river Lisse.
The sun glided behind the woods as he reached the bridge that
crosses the Lisse, and the evening glow on feathery willow and
dusty alder turned stem and leaf to shimmering rose.
It was seven o'clock, and he knew that he could keep his word to
Lorraine. And now, too, he began to feel the fatigue of the day
and the strain of the last two hours. In his excitement he had
not noticed that two bullets had passed through his jacket, one
close to the pocket, one ripping the gun-pads at the collar. The
horse, too, was bleeding from the shoulder where a long raw
streak traced the flight of a grazing ball.
His face was pale and serious when, at evening, he rode into the
porte-cochère of the Château de Nesville and dismounted, stiffly.
He was sore, fatigued, and covered with dust from cap to spur;
his eyes, heavily ringed but bright, roamed restlessly from
window to porch.
"I've kept my faith," he muttered to himself--"I've kept my
faith, anyway." But now he began to understand what might follow
if he, a foreigner and a non-combatant, was ever caught by the
11th regiment of Uhlans. It sickened him when he thought of what
he had done; he could find no excuse for himself--not even the
shots that had come singing about his ears. Who was he, a
foreigner, that he should shoot down a brave German cavalryman
who was simply following instructions? His promise to Lorraine?
Was that sufficient excuse for taking human life? Puzzled, weary,
and profoundly sad, he stood thinking, undecided what to do. He
knew that he had not killed the Uhlan outright, but, whether or
not the soldier could recover, he was uncertain. He, who had seen
the horrors of naked, gaping wounds at Sadowa--he who had seen
the pitiable sights of Oran, where Chanzy and his troops had swept
the land in a whirlwind of flame and sword--he, this same cool young
fellow, could not contemplate that dusty figure in the red road
without a shudder of self-accusation--yes, of self-disgust. He told
himself that he had fired too quickly, that he had fired in anger,
not in self-protection. He felt sure that he could have outridden
the Uhlan in the end. Perhaps he was too severe on himself; he did
not think of the fusillade at his back, his coat torn by two bullets,
the raw furrow on his horse's shoulder. He only asked himself whether,
to keep his promise, he was justified in what he had done, and he felt
that he had acted hastily and in anger, and that he was a very poor
specimen of young men. It was just as well, perhaps, that he thought
so; the sentiment under the circumstances was not unhealthy. Moreover,
he knew in his heart that, under any conditions, he would place his
duty to Lorraine first of all. So he was puzzled and tired and unhappy
when Lorraine, her arms full of brook-lilies, came down the gravel
drive and said: "You have kept your faith, you shall wear a lily for
me; will you?"
He could not meet her eyes, he could scarcely reply to her shy
questions.
When she saw the wounded horse she grieved over its smarting
shoulder, and insisted on stabling it herself.
"Wait for me," she said; "I insist. You must find a glass of wine
for yourself and go with old Pierre and dust your clothes. Then
come back; I shall be in the arbour."
He looked after her until she entered the stables, leading the
exhausted horse with a tenderness that touched him deeply. He
felt so mean, so contemptible, so utterly beneath the notice of
this child who stood grieving over his wounded horse.
A dusty and dirty and perspiring man is at a disadvantage with
himself. His misdemeanours assume exaggerated proportions,
especially when he is confronted with a girl in a cool gown that
is perfumed by blossoms pure and spotless and fragrant as the
young breast that crushes them.
So when he had found old Pierre and had followed him to a
bath-room, the water that washed the stains from brow and wrist
seemed also to purify the stain that is popularly supposed to
resist earthly ablutions. A clean body and a clean conscience is
not a proverb, but there are, perhaps, worse maxims in the world.
When he dried his face and looked into a mirror, his sins had
dwindled a bit; when Pierre dusted his clothes and polished his
spurs and boots, life assumed a brighter aspect. Fatigue, too, came
to dull that busybody--that tireless, gossiping gadabout--conscience.
Fatigue and remorse are enemies; slumber and the white flag of sleep
stand truce between them.
"Pierre," he said; "get a dog-cart; I am going to drive to
Morteyn. You will find me in the arbour on the lawn. Is the
marquis visible?"
"No, Monsieur Jack, he is still locked up in the turret."
"And the balloon?"
"Dame! Je n'en sais rien, monsieur."
So Jack walked down-stairs and out through the porch to the lawn,
where he saw Lorraine already seated in the arbour, placing the
long-stemmed lilies in gilded bowls.
"It will be dark soon," he said, stepping up beside her. "Thank
you for being good to my horse. Is it more than a scratch?"
"No--it is nothing. The horse shall stand in our stable until
to-morrow. Are you very tired? Sit beside me. Do you care to tell
me anything of what you did?"
"Do you care to know?"
"Of course," she said.
So he told her; not all, however--not of that ride and the chase
and the shots from the saddle. But he spoke of the Emperor and
the distant battle that had seemed like a scene in a painted
landscape. He told her, too, of Georges Carrière.
"Why, I know him," she said, brightening with pleasure; "he is
charming--isn't he?"
"Why, yes," said Jack; but for all he tried his voice sounded
coldly.
"Don't you think so?" asked Lorraine, opening her blue eyes.
Again he tried to speak warmly of the friend he was really fond
of, and again he felt that he had failed. Why? He would not ask
himself--but he knew. This shamed him, and he began an elaborate
eulogy on poor Georges, conscientious, self-effacing, but very,
very unsatisfactory.
The maid beside him listened demurely. She also knew things that
she had not known a week ago. That possibly is why, like a little
bird stretching its new wings, she also tried her own resources,
innocently, timidly. And the torment of Jack began.
"Monsieur Marche, do you think that Lieutenant Carrière may come
to Morteyn?"
"He said he would; I--er--I hope he will. Don't you?"
"I? Oh yes. When will he come?"
"I don't know," said Jack, sulkily.
"Oh! I thought you were very fond of him and that, of course, you
would know when--"
"Nobody knows; if he's gone with the army into Germany it is
impossible to say when the war will end." Then he made a silly,
boorish observation which was, "I hope for your sake he will come
soon."
Oh, but he was ashamed of it now! The groom in the stable yonder
would have had better tact. Truly, it takes a man of gentle
breeding to demonstrate what under-breeding really can be. If
Lorraine was shocked she did not show it. A maid unloved,
unloving, pardons nothing; a maid with a lover invests herself
with all powers and prerogatives, and the greatest of these is
the power to pardon. It is not only a power, it is a need, a
desire, an imperative necessity to pardon much in him who loves
much. This may be only because she also understands. Pardon and
doubt repel each other. So Lorraine, having grown wise in a week,
pardoned Jack mentally. Outwardly it was otherwise, and Jack
became aware that the atmosphere was uncomfortably charged with
lightning. It gleamed a moment in her eyes ere her lips opened.
"Take your dog-cart and go back to Morteyn," said Lorraine,
quietly.
"Let me stay; I am ashamed," he said, turning red.
"No; I do not wish to see you again--for a long, long
time--forever."
Her head was bent and her fingers were busy among the lilies in
the gilded bowl.
"Do you send me away?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because you are more than rude."
"I am ashamed; forgive me."
"No."
She glanced up at him from her drooping lashes. She had pardoned
him long ago.
"No," she repeated, "I cannot forgive."
"Lorraine--"
"There is the dog-cart," she whispered, almost breathlessly. So
he said good-night and went away.
She stood on the dim lawn, her arms full of blossoms, listening
to the sound of the wheels until they died away beyond the park
gate.
She had turned whiter than the lilies at her breast. This was
because she was still very young and not quite as wise as some
maidens.
For the same reason she left her warm bed that night to creep
through the garden and slip into the stable and lay her
tear-stained cheeks on the neck of Jack's horse.
XII
FROM THE FRONTIER
During the next three days, for the first time since he had known
her, he did not go to see Lorraine. How he stood it--how he ever
dragged through those miserable hours--he himself never could
understand.
The wide sculptured eyes of Our Lady of Morteyn above the shrine
seemed to soften when he went there to sit at her feet and stare
at nothing. It was not tears, but dew, that gathered under the
stone lids, for the night had grown suddenly hot, and everything
lay moist in the starlight. Night changed to midnight, and
midnight to dawn, and dawn to another day, cloudless, pitiless;
and Jack awoke again, and his waking thought was of Lorraine.
All day long he sat with the old vicomte, reading to him when he
wished, playing interminable games of chess, sick at heart with a
longing that almost amounted to anger. He could not tell his
aunt. As far as that went, the wise old lady had divined that
their first trouble had come to them in all the appalling and
exaggerated proportions that such troubles assume, but she smiled
gently to herself, for she, too, had been young, and the ways of
lovers had been her ways, and the paths of love she had trodden,
and she had drained love's cup at bitter springs.
That night she came to his bedside and kissed him, saying:
"To-morrow you shall carry my love and my thanks to Lorraine for
her care of the horse."
"I can't," muttered Jack.
"Pooh!" said Madame de Morteyn, and closed the bedroom door; and
Jack slept better that night.
It was ten o'clock the next morning before he appeared at
breakfast, and it was plain, even to the thrush on the lawn
outside, that he had bestowed an elaboration upon his toilet that
suggested either a duel or a wedding.
Madame de Morteyn hid her face, for she could not repress the
smile that tormented her sweet mouth. Even the vicomte said: "Oh!
You're not off for Paris, Jack, are you?"
After breakfast he wandered moodily out to the terrace, where his
aunt found him half an hour later, mooning and contemplating his
spotless gloves.
"Then you are not going to ride over to the Château de Nesville?"
she asked, trying not to laugh.
"Oh!" he said, with affected surprise, "did you wish me to go to
the Château?"
"Yes, Jack dear, if you are not too much occupied." She could not
repress the mischievous accent on the "too." "Are you going to
drive?"
"No; I shall walk--unless you are in a hurry."
"No more than you are, dear," she said, gravely.
He looked at her with sudden suspicion, but she was not smiling.
"Very well," he said, gloomily.
About eleven o'clock he had sauntered half the distance down the
forest road that leads to the Château de Nesville. His heart
seemed to tug and tug and urge him forward; his legs refused
obedience; he sulked. But there was the fresh smell of loam and
moss and aromatic leaves, the music of the Lisse on the pebbles,
the joyous chorus of feathered creatures from every thicket, and
there were the antics of the giddy young rabbits that scuttled
through the warrens, leaping, tumbling, sitting up, lop-eared and
impudent, or diving head-first into their burrows.
Under the stems of a thorn thicket two cock-pheasants were having a
difference, and were enthusiastically settling that difference in the
approved method of game-cocks. He lingered to see which might win,
but a misstep and a sudden crack of a dry twig startled them, and
they withdrew like two stately but indignant old gentlemen who had
been subjected to uncalled-for importunities.
Presently he felt cheerful enough to smoke, and he searched in
every pocket for his pipe. Then he remembered that he had dropped
it when he dropped his silver flask, there in the road where he
had first been startled by the Uhlans.
This train of thought depressed him again, but he resolutely put
it from his mind, lighted a cigarette, and moved on.
Just ahead, around the bend in the path, lay the grass-grown
carrefour where he had first seen Lorraine. He thought of her as
he remembered her then, flushed, indignant, blocking the path
while the map-making spy sneered in her face and crowded past
her, still sneering. He thought, too, of her scarlet skirt, and
the little velvet bodice and the silver chains. He thought of her
heavy hair, dishevelled, glimmering in her eyes. At the same
moment he turned the corner; the carrefour lay before him,
overgrown, silent, deserted. A sudden tenderness filled his
heart--ah, how we love those whom we have protected!--and he
stood for a moment in the sunshine with bowed head, living over
the episode that he could never forget. Every word, every
gesture, the shape of the very folds in her skirt, he remembered;
yes, and the little triangular tear, the broken silver chain, the
ripped bodice!
And she, in her innocence, had promised to see him there at the
river-bank below. He had never gone, because that very night she
had come to Morteyn, and since then he had seen her every day at
her own home.
As he stood he could hear the river Lisse whispering, calling
him. He would go--just to see the hidden rendezvous--for old
love's sake; it was a step from the path, no more.
Then that strange instinct, that sudden certainty that comes at
times to all, seized him, and he knew that Lorraine was there by
the river; he knew it as surely as though he saw her before him.
And she was there, standing by the still water, silver chains
drooping over the velvet bodice, scarlet skirt hanging brilliant
and heavy as a drooping poppy in the sun.
"Dear me," she said, very calmly, "I thought you had quite
forgotten me. Why have you not been to the Château, Monsieur
Marche?"
And this, after she had told him to go away and not to return!
Wise in the little busy ways of the world of men, he was
uneducated in the ways of a maid.
Therefore he was speechless.
"And now," she said, with the air of an early Christian
tête-à-tête with Nero--"and now you do not speak to me? Why?"
"Because," he blurted out, "I thought you did not care to have
me!"
Surprise, sorrow, grief gave place to pity in her eyes.
"What a silly man!" she observed. "I am going to sit down on the
moss. Are you intending to call upon my father? He is still in
the turret. If you can spare a moment I will tell you what he is
doing."
Yes, he had a moment to spare--not many moments--he hoped she
would understand that!--but he had one or two little ones at her
disposal.
She read this in his affected hesitation. She would make him pay
dearly for it. Vengeance should be hers!
He stood a moment, eying the water as though it had done him
personal injury. Then he sat down.
"The balloon is almost ready, steering-gear and all," she said.
"I saw papa yesterday for a moment; I tried to get him to stay
with me, but he could not."
She looked wistfully across the river.
Jack watched her. His heart ached for her, and he bent nearer.
"Forgive me for causing you any unhappiness," he said. "Will
you?"
"Yes."
Oh! where was her vengeance now? So far beneath her!
"These four days have been the most wretched days to me, the most
unhappy I have ever lived," he said. The emotion in his voice
brought the soft colour to her face. She did not answer; she
would have if she had wished to check him.
"I will never again, as long as I live, give you one
moment's--displeasure." He was going to say "pain," but he dared
not.
Still she was silent, her idle white fingers clasped in her lap,
her eyes fixed on the river. Little by little the colour deepened
in her cheeks. It was when she felt them burning that she spoke,
nervously, scarcely comprehending her own words: "I--I also was
unhappy--I was silly; we both are very silly--don't you think so?
We are such good friends that it seems absurd to quarrel as we have.
I have forgotten everything that was unpleasant--it was so little
that I could not remember if I tried! Could you? I am very happy
now; I am going to listen while you amuse me with stories." She
curled up against a tree and smiled at him--at the love in his eyes
which she dared not read, which she dared not acknowledge to herself.
It was there, plain enough for a wilful maid to see; it burned under
his sun-tanned cheeks, it softened the firm lips. A thrill of
contentment passed through her. She was satisfied; the world was
kind again.
He lay at her feet, pulling blades of grass from the bank and
idly biting the whitened stems. The voice of the Lisse was in his
ears, he breathed the sweet wood perfume and he saw the sunlight
wrinkle and crinkle the surface ripples where the water washed
through the sedges, and the long grasses quivered and bent with
the glittering current.
"Tell you stories?" he asked again.
"Yes--stories that never have really happened--but that should
have happened."
"Then listen! There was once--many, many years ago--a maid and a
man--"
Good gracious--but that story is as old as life itself! He did
not realize it, nor did she. It seemed new to them.
The sun of noon was moving towards the west when they remembered
that they were hungry.