may be there, too," she said. This hope, always renewed with
every dawn, always fading with the night, lived eternal in her
breast--this hope, that one day she should have her father to
herself.
"Will you come?" she asked, shyly.
"Yes. Do you know it will be our first luncheon together?"
"Oh, but you brought me an ice at the dance that evening; don't
you remember?"
"Yes, but that was not a supper--I mean a luncheon together--with
a table between us and--you know what I mean."
"I don't," she said, smiling dreamily; so he knew that she did.
They hurried a little on the way to the Château, and he laughed
at her appetite, which made her laugh, too, only she pretended
not to like it.
At the porch she left him to change her gown, and slipped away
up-stairs, while he found old Pierre and was dusted and fussed
over until he couldn't stand it another moment. Luckily he heard
Lorraine calling her maid on the porch, and he went to her at
once.
"Papa says you may lunch here--I spoke to him through the
key-hole. It is all ready; will you come?"
A serious-minded maid served them with salad and thin
bread-and-butter.
"Tea!" exclaimed Jack.
"Isn't that very American?" asked Lorraine, timidly. "I thought
you might like it; I understood that all Americans drank tea."
"They do," he said, gravely; "it is a terrible habit--a national
vice--but they do."
"Now you are laughing at me!" she cried. "Marianne, please to
remove that tea! No, no, I won't leave it--and you can suffer if
you wish. And to think that I--"
They were both laughing so that the maid's face grew more
serious, and she removed the teapot as though she were bearing
some strange and poisonous creature to a deserved doom.
As they sat opposite each other, smiling, a little flurried at
finding themselves alone at table together, but eating with the
appetites of very young lovers, the warm summer wind, blowing
through the open windows, bore to their ears the songs of forest
birds. It bore another sound, too; Jack had heard it for the last
two hours, or had imagined he heard it--a low, monotonous
vibration, now almost distinct, now lost, now again discernible,
but too vague, too indefinite to be anything but that faint
summer harmony which comes from distant breezes, distant
movements, mingling with the stir of drowsy field insects, half
torpid in the heat of noon.
Still it was always there; and now, turning his ear to the
window, he laid down knife and fork to listen.
"I have also noticed it," said Lorraine, answering his unasked
question.
"Do you hear it now?"
"Yes--more distinctly now."
A few moments later Jack leaned back in his chair and listened
again.
"Yes," said Lorraine, "it seems to come nearer. What is it?"
"It comes from the southeast. I don't know," he answered.
They rose and walked to the window. She was so near that he
breathed the subtle fragrance of her hair, the fresh sweetness of
her white gown, that rustled beside him.
"Hark!" whispered Lorraine; "I can almost hear voices in the
breezes--the murmur of voices, as if millions of tiny people were
calling us from the ends and outer edges of the earth."
"There is a throbbing, too. Do you notice it?"
"Yes--like one's heart at night. Ah, now it comes nearer--oh,
nearer! nearer! Oh, what can it be?"
He knew now; he knew that indefinable battle--rumour that steals
into the senses long before it is really audible. It is not a
sound--not even a vibration; it is an immense foreboding that
weights the air with prophecy.
"From the south and east," he repeated; "from the Landesgrenze."
"The frontier?"
"Yes. Hark!"
"I hear."
"From the frontier," he said again. "From the river Lauter and
from Wissembourg."
"What is it?" she whispered, close beside him.
"Cannon!"
Yes, it was cannon--they knew it now--cannon throbbing,
throbbing, throbbing along the horizon where the crags of the
Geisberg echoed the dull thunder and shook it far out across the
vineyards of Wissembourg, where the heights of Kapsweyer,
resounding, hurled back the echoes to the mountains in the north.
"Why--why does it seem to come nearer?" asked Lorraine.
"Nearer?" He knew it had come nearer, but how could he tell her
what that meant?
"It is a battle--is it not?" she asked again.
"Yes, a battle."
She said nothing more, but stood leaning along the wall, her white
forehead pressed against the edge of the raised window-sash. Outside,
the little birds had grown suddenly silent; there was a stillness
that comes before a rain; the leaves on the shrubbery scarcely moved.
And now, nearer and nearer swelled the rumour of battle,
undulating, quavering over forest and hill, and the muttering of
the cannon grew to a rumble that jarred the air.
As currents in the upper atmosphere shift and settle north,
south, east, west, so the tide of sound wavered and drifted, and
set westward, flowing nearer and nearer and louder and louder,
until the hoarse, crashing tumult, still vague and distant, was
cut by the sharper notes of single cannon that spoke out,
suddenly impetuous, in the dull din.
The whole Château was awake now; maids, grooms, valets,
gardeners, and keepers were gathering outside the iron grille of
the park, whispering together and looking out across the fields.
There was nothing to see except pastures and woods, and
low-rounded hills crowned with vineyards. Nothing more except a
single strangely shaped cloud, sombre, slender at the base, but
spreading at the top like a palm.
"I am going up to speak to your father," said Jack, carelessly;
"may I?"
Interrupt her father! Lorraine fairly gasped.
"Stay here," he added, with the faintest touch of authority in
his tone; and, before she could protest, he had sped away up the
staircase and round and round the long circular stairs that led
to the single turret.
A little out of breath, he knocked at the door which faced the
top step. There was no answer. He rapped again, impatiently. A
voice startled him: "Lorraine, I am busy!"
"Open," called Jack; "I must see you!"
"I am busy!" replied the marquis. Irritation and surprise were in
his tones.
"Open!" called Jack again; "there is no time to lose!"
Suddenly the door was jerked back and the marquis appeared, pale,
handsome, his eyes cold and blue as icebergs.
"Monsieur Marche--" he began, almost discourteously.
"Pardon," interrupted Jack; "I am going into your room. I wish to
look out of that turret window. Come also--you must know what to
expect."
Astonished, almost angry, the Marquis de Nesville followed him to
the turret window.
"Oh," said Jack, softly, staring out into the sunshine, "it is
time, is it not, that we knew what was going on along the
frontier? Look there!"
On the horizon vast shapeless clouds lay piled, gigantic coils
and masses of vapour, dark, ominous, illuminated by faint, pallid
lights that played under them incessantly; and over all towered
one tall column of smoke, spreading above like an enormous
palm-tree. But this was not all. The vast panorama of hill and
valley and plain, cut by roads that undulated like narrow satin
ribbons on a brocaded surface, was covered with moving objects,
swarming, inundating the landscape. To the south a green hill
grew black with the human tide, to the north long lines and
oblongs and squares moved across the land, slowly, almost
imperceptibly--but they were moving, always moving east.
"It is an army coming," said the marquis.
"It is a rout," said Jack, quietly.
The marquis moved suddenly, as though to avoid a blow.
"What troops are those?" he asked, after a silence.
"It is the French army," replied Jack. "Have you not heard the
cannonade?"
"No--my machines make some noise when I'm working. I hear it now.
What is that cloud--a fire?"
"It is the battle cloud."
"And the smoke on the horizon?"
"The smoke from the guns. They are fighting beyond
Saarbrück--yes, beyond Pfalzburg and Wörth; they are fighting
beyond the Lauter."
"Wissembourg?"
"I think so. They are nearer now. Monsieur de Nesville, the
battle has gone against the French."
"How do you know?" demanded the marquis, harshly.
"I have seen battles. One need only listen and look at the army
yonder. They will pass Morteyn; I think they will pass for miles
through the country. It looks to me like a retreat towards Metz,
but I am not sure. The throngs of troops below are fugitives, not
the regular geometrical figures that you see to the north. Those
are regiments and divisions moving towards the west in good
order."
The two men stepped back into the room and faced each other.
"After the rain the flood, after the rout the invasion," said
Jack, firmly. "You cannot know it too quickly. You know it now,
and you can make your plans."
He was thinking of Lorraine's safety when he spoke, but the
marquis turned instinctively to a mass of machinery and chemical
paraphernalia behind him.
"You will have your hands full," said Jack, repressing an angry
sneer; "if you wish, my aunt De Morteyn will charge herself with
Mademoiselle de Nesville's safety."
"True, Lorraine might go to Morteyn," murmured the marquis,
absently, examining a smoky retort half filled with a silvery
heap of dust.
"Then, may I drive her over after dinner?"
"Yes," replied the other, indifferently.
Jack started towards the stairs, hesitated, and turned around.
"Your inventions are not safe, of course, if the German army
comes. Do you need my help?"
"My inventions are my own affair," said the marquis, angrily.
Jack flushed scarlet, swung on his heels, and marched out of the
room and down the stairs. On the lower steps he met Lorraine's
maid, and told her briefly to pack her mistress's trunks for a
visit to Morteyn.
Lorraine was waiting for him at the window where he had left her,
a scared, uncertain little maid in truth.
"The battle is very near, isn't it?" she asked.
"No, miles away yet."
"Did you speak to papa? Did he send word to me? Does he want me?"
He found it hard to tell her what message her father had sent,
but he did.
"I am to go to Morteyn? Oh, I cannot! I cannot! Papa will be
alone here!" she said, aghast.
"Perhaps you had better see him," he said, almost bitterly.
She hurried away up the stairs; he heard her little eager feet on
the stone steps that led to the turret; climbing up, up, up,
until the sound was lost in the upper stories of the house. He
went out to the stables and ordered the dog-cart and a wagon for
her trunks. He did not fear that this order might be premature,
for he thought he had not misjudged the Marquis de Nesville. And
he had not, for, before the cart was ready, Lorraine, silent,
pale, tearless, came noiselessly down the stairs holding her
little cloak over one arm.
"I am to stay a week," she said; "he does not want me." She
added, hastily, "He is so busy and worried, and there is much to
be done, and if the Prussians should come he must hide the
balloon and the box of plans and formula--"
"I know," said Jack, tenderly; "it will lift a weight from his
mind when he knows you are safe with my aunt."
"He is so good, he thinks only of my safety," faltered Lorraine.
"Come," said Jack, in a voice that sounded husky; "the horse is
waiting; I am to drive you. Your maid will follow with the trunks
this evening. Are you ready? Give me your cloak. There--now, are
you ready?"
"Yes."
He aided her to mount the dog-cart--her light touch was on his
arm. He turned to the groom at the horse's head, sprang to the
seat, and nodded. Lorraine leaned back and looked up at the
turret where her father was.
"Allons! En route!" cried Jack, cheerily, snapping his
ribbon-decked whip.
At the same instant a horseless cavalryman, gray with dust and
dripping with blood and sweat, staggered out on the road from
among the trees. He turned a deathly face to theirs, stopped,
tottered, and called out--"Jack!"
"Georges!" cried Jack, amazed.
"Give me a horse, for God's sake!" he gasped. "I've just killed
mine. I--I must get to Metz by midnight--"
XIII
AIDE-DE-CAMP
Lorraine and Jack sprang to the road from opposite sides of the
vehicle; Georges' drawn face was stretched into an attempt at a
smile which was ghastly, for the stiff, black blood that had
caked in a dripping ridge from his forehead to his chin cracked
and grew moist and scarlet, and his hollow cheeks whitened under
the coat of dust. But he drew himself up by an effort and saluted
Lorraine with a punctilious deference that still had a touch of
jauntiness to it--the jauntiness of a youthful cavalry officer in
the presence of a pretty woman.
Old Pierre, who had witnessed the episode from the butler's
window, came limping down the path, holding a glass and a carafe
of brandy.
"You are right, Pierre," said Jack. "Georges, drink it up, old
fellow. There, now you can stand on those pins of yours. What's
that--a sabre cut?"
"No, a scratch from an Uhlan's lance-tip. Cut like a razor,
didn't it? I've just killed my horse, trying to get over a ditch.
Can you give me a mount, Jack?"
"There isn't a horse in the stable that can carry you to Metz,"
said Lorraine, quietly; "Diable is lame and Porthos is not shod.
I can give you my pony."
"Can't you get a train?" asked Jack, astonished.
"No, the Uhlans are in our rear, everywhere. The railroad is torn
up, the viaducts smashed, the wires cut, and general deuce to
pay. I ran into an Uhlan or two--you notice it perhaps," he
added, with a grim smile. "Could you drive me to Morteyn? Do you
think the vicomte would lend me a horse?"
"Of course he would," said Jack; "come, then--there is room for
three," with an anxious glance at Lorraine.
"Indeed, there is always room for a soldier of France!" cried
Lorraine. At the same moment she instinctively laid one hand
lightly on Jack's arm. Their eyes spoke for an instant--the
generous appeal that shone in hers was met and answered by a
response that brought the delicate colour into her cheeks.
"Let me hang on behind," pleaded Georges--"I'm so dirty, you
know." But they bundled him into the seat between them, and Jack
touched his beribboned whip to the horse's ears, and away they
went speeding over the soft forest road in the cool of the fading
day; old Pierre, bottle and glass in hand, gaping after them and
shaking his gray head.
Jack began to fire volleys of questions at the young hussar as
soon as they entered the forest, and poor Georges replied as best
he could.
"I don't know very much about it; I was detached yesterday and
taken on General Douay's staff. We were at Wissembourg--you know
that little town on the Lauter where the vineyards cover
everything and the mountains are pretty steep to the north and
west. All I know is this: about six o'clock this morning our
outposts on the hills to the south began banging way in a great
panic. They had been attacked, it seems, by the 4th Bavarian
Division, Count Bothmer's, I believe. Our posts fell back to the
town, where the 1st Turcos reinforced them at the railroad
station. The artillery were at it on our left, too, and there was
a most infernal racket. The next thing I saw was those crazy
Bavarians, with their little flat drums beating, and their
fur-crested helmets all bobbing, marching calmly up the Geisberg.
Jack, those fellows went through the vineyards like fiends
astride a tempest. That was at two o'clock. The Prussian
Crown-Prince rode into the town an hour before; we couldn't hold
it--Heaven knows why. That's all I saw--except the death of our
general."
"General Douay?" cried Lorraine, horrified.
"Yes, he was killed about ten o'clock in the morning. The town
was stormed through the Hagenauer Thor by the Bavarians. After
that we still held the Geisberg and the Château. You should have
seen it when we left it. I'll say it was a butcher's shambles.
I'd say more if Mademoiselle de Nesville were not here." He was
trying hard to bear up--to speak lightly of the frightful
calamity that had overwhelmed General Abel Douay and his entire
division.
"The fight at the Château was worth seeing," said Georges,
airily. "They went at it with drums beating and flags flying. Oh,
but they fell like leaves in the gardens, there--the paths and
shrubbery were littered with them, dead, dying, gasping, crawling
about, like singed flies under a lamp. We had them beaten, too,
if it hadn't been for their General von Kirchbach. He stood in
the garden--he'd been hit, too--and bawled for the artillery.
Then they came at us again in three divisions. Where they got all
their regiments, I don't know, but their 7th Grenadier Guards
were there, and their 47th, 58th, 59th, 80th, and 87th regiments
of the line, not counting a Jäger battalion and no end of
artillery. They carried the Three Poplars--a hill--and they began
devastating everything. We couldn't face their fire--I don't know
why, Jack; it breaks my heart when I say it, but we couldn't hold
them. Then they began howling for cannon, and, of course, that
settled the Château. The town was in flames when I left."
After a silence, Jack asked him whether it was a rout or a
retreat.
"We're falling back in very decent order," said Georges,
eagerly--"really, we are. Of course, there were some troops that
got into a sort of panic--the Uhlans are annoying us considerably.
The Turcos fought well. We fairly riddled the 58th Prussians--their
king's regiment, you know. It was the 2d Bavarian Corps that did
for us. We will meet them later."
"Where are you going--to Metz?" inquired Jack, soberly.
"Yes; I've a packet for Bazaine--I don't know what. They're
trying to reach him by wire, but those confounded Uhlans are
destroying everything. My dear fellow, you need not worry; we
have been checked, that's all. Our promenade to Berlin is
postponed in deference to King Wilhelm's earnest wishes."
They all tried to laugh a little, and Jack chirped to his horse,
but even that sober animal seemed to feel the depression, for he
responded in fits and starts and jerks that were unpleasant and
jarring to Georges' aching head.
The sky had become covered with bands of wet-looking clouds, the
leaves of the forest stirred noiselessly on their stems. Along
the river willows quivered and aspens turned their leaves white
side to the sky. In the querulous notes of the birds there was a
prophecy of storms, the river muttered among its hollows of
floods and tempests.
Suddenly a great sombre raven sailed to the road, alighted,
sidled back, and sat fearlessly watching them.
Lorraine shivered and nestled closer to Jack.
"Oh," she murmured, "I never saw one before--except in pictures."
"They belong in the snow--they have no business here," said Jack;
"they always make me think of those pictures of Russia--the
retreat of the Grand Army, you know."
"Wolves and ravens," said Lorraine, in a low voice; "I know why
they come to us here in France--Monsieur Marche, did I not tell
you that day in the carrefour?"
"Yes," he answered; "do you really think you are a prophetess?"
"Did you see wolves here?" asked Georges.
"Yes; before war was declared. I told Monsieur Marche--it is a
legend of our country. He, of course, laughed at it. I also do not
believe everything I am told--but--I don't know--I have alway
believed that, ever since I was, oh, very, very small--like that."
She held one small gloved hand about twelve inches from the floor
of the cart.
"At such a height and such an age it is natural to believe
anything," said Jack. "I, too, accepted many strange doctrines
then."
"You are laughing again," said Lorraine.
So they passed through the forest, trying to be cheerful, even
succeeding at times. But Georges' face grew paler every minute,
and his smile was so painful that Lorraine could not bear it and
turned her head away, her hand tightening on the box-rail
alongside.
As they were about to turn out into the Morteyn road, where the
forest ended, Jack suddenly checked the horse and rose to his
feet.
"What is it?" asked Lorraine. "Oh, I see! Oh, look!"
The Morteyn road was filled with infantry, solid, plodding
columns, pressing fast towards the west. The fields, too, were
black with men, engineers, weighted down with their heavy
equipments, resting in long double rows, eyes vacant, heads bent.
Above the thickets of rifles sweeping past, mounted officers sat
in their saddles, as though carried along on the surface of the
serried tide. Standards fringed with gold slanted in the last
rays of the sun, sabres glimmered, curving upward from the
thronged rifles, and over all sounded the shuffle, shuffle of
worn shoes in the dust, a mournful, monotonous cadence, a
hopeless measure, whose burden was despair, whose beat was the
rhythm of breaking hearts.
Oh, but it cut Lorraine to see their boyish faces, dusty, gaunt,
hollow-eyed, turn to her and turn away without a change, without
a shade of expression. The mask of blank apathy stamped on every
visage almost terrified her. On they came, on, on, and still on,
under a forest of shining rifles. A convoy of munitions crowded
in the rear of the column, surrounded by troopers of the
train-des-equipages; then followed more infantry, then cavalry,
dragoons, who sat listlessly in their high saddles, carbines
bobbing on their broad backs, whalebone plumes matted with dust.
Georges rose painfully from his seat, stepped to the side, and
climbed down into the road. He felt in the breast of his dolman
for the packet, adjusted his sabre, and turned to Lorraine.
"There is a squadron of the Remount Cavalry over in that
meadow--I can get a horse there," he said. "Thank you, Jack.
Good-by, Mademoiselle de Nesville, you have been more than
generous."
"You can have a horse from the Morteyn stables," said Jack; "my
dear fellow, I can't bear to see you go--to think of your riding
to Metz to-night."
"It's got to be done, you know," said Georges. He bowed; Lorraine
stretched out her hand and he gravely touched it with his
fingers. Then he exchanged a nervous gripe with Jack, and turned
away hurriedly, crowding between the passing dragoons, traversing
the meadows until they lost him in the throng.
"We cannot get to the house by the road," said Jack; "we must
take the stable path;" and he lifted the reins and turned the
horse's head.
The stable road was narrow, and crossed with sprays of tender
leaves. The leaves touched Lorraine's eyes, they rubbed across
her fair brow, robbing her of single threads of glittering hair,
they brushed a single bright tear from her cheeks and held it,
glimmering like a drop of dew.
"Behold the end of the world," said Lorraine--"I am weeping."
He turned and looked into her eyes.
"Is that strange?" he asked, gently.
"Yes; I have often wished to cry. I never could--except once
before--and that was four days ago."
The day of their quarrel! He thrilled from head to foot, but
dared not speak.
"Four days ago," said Lorraine again. She thought of herself
gliding from her bed to seek the stable where Jack's horse stood,
she thought of her hot face pressed to the wounded creature's
neck. Then, suddenly aware of what she had confessed, she leaned
back and covered her face with her hands.
"Lorraine!" he whispered, brokenly.
But they were already at the Château.
"Lorraine, my child!" cried Madame de Morteyn, leaning from the
terrace. Her voice was drowned in the crash of drums rolling,
rolling, from the lawn below, and the trumpets broke out in harsh
chorus, shrill, discordant, terrible.
The Emperor had arrived at Morteyn.
XIV
THE MARQUIS MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE
The Emperor dined with the Vicomte and Madame de Morteyn that
evening in the great dining-room. The Château, patrolled by
doubled guards of the Cent Gardes, was surrounded by triple
hedges of bayonets and a perfect pest of police spies, secret
agents, and flunkys. In the breakfast-room General Frossard and
his staff were also dining; and up-stairs, in a small gilded
salon, Jack and Lorraine ate soberly, tenderly cared for by the
old house-keeper.
Outside they could hear the steady tramp of passing infantry
along the dark road, the clank of artillery, and the muffled
trample of cavalry. Frossard's Corps was moving rapidly, its back
to the Rhine.
"I saw the Prince Imperial," said Jack; "he was in the
conservatory, writing to his mother, the Empress. Have you ever
seen him, Mademoiselle de Nesville? He is young, really a mere
child, but he looks very manly in his uniform. He has that same
charm, that same delicate, winning courtesy that the Emperor is
famous for. But he looks so pale and tired--like a school-boy in
the Lycée."