her hands clasped under her cheek, Jack leaned back against the
tree and picked up the box. He turned it softly, so that the
bullet within should not rattle. After a moment he opened his
penknife and touched the broken fragment of the key in the lock.
Idly turning the knife-blade this way and that, but noiselessly,
for fear of troubling Lorraine, he thought of the past, the
present, and the future. Sir Thorald lay dead on the hillock
above the river Lisse; Alixe slept beside him; Rickerl was
somewhere in the country, riding with his Uhlan scourges; Molly
Hesketh waited in Paris for her dead husband; the Marquis de
Nesville's bones were lying in the forest where he now sat,
watching the sleeping child of the dead man. His child? Jack
looked at her tenderly. No, not the child of the Marquis de
Nesville, but a foundling, a lost waif in the Lorraine Hills,
perhaps a child of chance. What of it? She would never know. The
Château de Nesville was a smouldering mass of fire; the lands
could revert to the country; she should never again need them,
never again see them, for he would take her to his own land when
trouble of war had passed, and there she should forget pain and
sorrow and her desolate, loveless childhood; she should only
remember that in the Province of Lorraine she had met the man she
loved. All else should be a memory of green trees and vineyards
and rivers, growing vaguer and dimmer as the healing years passed
on.
The knife-blade in the box bent, sprang back--the box flew open.
He did not realize it at first; he looked at the three folded
papers lying within, curiously, indolently. Presently he took
them and looked at the superscriptions written on the back, in
the handwriting of the marquis. The three papers were inscribed
as follows:
"1. For the French Government after the fall of the
Empire."
"2. For the French Government on the death of Louis
Bonaparte, falsely called Emperor."
"3. To whom it may concern!"
"To whom it may concern!" he repeated, looking at the third
paper. Presently he opened it and read it, and as he read his
heart seemed to cease its beating.
"_TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN_!
"Grief has unsettled my mind, yet, what I now write is
true, and, if there is a God, I solemnly call His curses
on me and mine if I lie.
"My only son, René Philip d'Harcourt de Nesville, was
assassinated on the Grand Boulevard in Paris, on the 2d
of December, 1851. His assassin was a monster named
Louis Bonaparte, now known falsely as Napoleon III.,
Emperor of the French. His paid murderers shot my boy
down, and stabbed him to death with their bayonets, in
front of the Café Tortoni. I carried his body home; I
sat at the window, with my dead boy on my knees, and I
saw Louis Bonaparte ride into the Rue St. Honoré with
his murderous Lancers, and I saw children spit at him
and hurl curses at him from the barricade.
"Now I, Gilbert, Marquis de Nesville, swore to strike.
And I struck, not at his life--that can wait. I struck
at the root of all his pride and honour--I struck at
that which he held dearer than these--at his dynasty!
"Do the people of France remember when the Empress was
first declared enciente? The cannon thundered from the
orangerie at Saint-Cloud, the dome of the Invalides
blazed rockets, the city glittered under a canopy of
coloured fire. Oh, they were very careful of the Empress
of the French! They went to Saint-Cloud, and later to
Versailles, as they go to holy cities, praying. And the
Emperor himself grew younger, they said.
"Then came the news that the expected heir, a son, had
been born dead! Lies!
"I, Gilbert de Nesville, was in the forest when the
Empress of the French fell ill. When separated from the
others she called to Morny, and bade him drive for the
love of Heaven! And they drove--they drove to the
Trianon, and there was no one there. And there the child
was born. Morny held it in his arms. He came out to the
colonnade holding it in his arms, and calling for a
messenger. I came, and when I was close to Morny I
struck him in the face and he fell senseless. I took the
child and wrapped it in my cloak. This is the truth!
"They dared not tell it; they dared not, for fear and
for shame. They said that an heir had been born dead;
and they mourned for their dead son. It was only a
daughter. She is alive; she loves me, and, God forgive
me, I hate her for defeating my just vengeance.
"And I call her Lorraine de Nesville."
XXVI
THE SHADOW OF POMP
The long evening shadows were lengthening among the trees; sleepy
birds twitted in dusky thickets; Lorraine slept.
Jack still stood staring at the paper in his hands, trying to
understand the purport of what he read and reread, until the page
became a blur and his hot eyes burned.
All the significance of the situation rose before him. This
child, the daughter of the oath-breaker, the butcher of December,
the sly, slow diplomate of Europe, the man of Rome, of Mexico,
the man now reeling back to Châlons under the iron blows of an
aroused people. In Paris, already, they cursed his name; they
hurled insults at the poor Empress, that mother in despair.
Thiers, putting his senile fingers in the porridge, stirred a
ferment that had not even germinated since the guillotine towered
in the Place de la Concorde and the tumbrils rattled through the
streets. He did not know what he was stirring. The same impulse
that possessed Gladstone to devastate trees animated Thiers. He
stirred the dangerous mess because he liked to stir, nothing
more. But from that hell's broth the crimson spectre of the
Commune was to rise, when the smoke of Sedan had drifted clear of
a mutilated nation.
Through the heavy clouds of death which were already girdling
Paris, that flabby Cyclops, Gambetta, was to mouth his monstrous
platitudes, and brood over the battle-smoke, a nightmare of
pomposity and fanfaronade--in a balloon. All France was bowed
down in shame at the sight of the grotesque convoy, who were
proclaiming her destiny among nations, and their destiny to lead
her to victory and "la gloire." A scorched, blood-soaked land, a
pall of smoke through which brave men bared their breasts to the
blast from the Rhine, and died uncomplainingly, willingly,
cheerfully, for the mother-land--was it not pitiful?
The sublime martyrdom of the men who marched, who shall write it?
And who shall write of those others--Bazaine, Napoleon, Thiers,
Gambetta, Favre, Ollivier?
If Bazaine died, cursed by a nation, his martyrdom, for martyrdom
it was, was no greater than that of the humblest French peasant,
who, dying, knew at last that he died, not for France, but
because the men who sent him were worse than criminal--they were
imbecile.
The men who marched were sublime; they were the incarnation of
embattled France; the starving people of Metz, of Strassbourg, of
Paris, were sublime. But there was nothing sublime about Monsieur
Adolphe Thiers, nothing heroic about Hugo, nothing respectable
about Gambetta. The marshal with the fat neck and Spanish
affiliations, the poor confused, inert, over-fed marshal caged in
Metz by the Red Prince, harassed, bewildered, stunned by the
clashing of politics and military strategy, which his meagre
brain was unable to reconcile or separate--this unfortunate
incapable was deserving of pity, perhaps of contempt. His cup
was to be bitterer than that--it was to be drained, too, with the
shouts of "Traitor" stunning his fleshy ears.
He was no traitor. Cannot France understand that this single word
"traitor" has brought her to contempt in the eyes of the world?
There are two words that mar every glorious, sublime page of the
terrible history of 1870-71, and these two words are "treason"
and "revenge." Let the nation face the truth, let the people
write "incapacity" for "treason," and "honour" for "revenge," and
then the abused term "la gloire" will be justified in the eyes of
men.
As for Thiers, let men judge him from his three revolutions, let
the unknown dead in the ditches beyond the enceinte judge him,
let the spectres of the murdered from Père Lachaise to the
bullet-pitted terrace of the Luxembourg judge this meddler, this
potterer in epoch-making cataclysms. Bismarck, gray, imbittered,
without honour in an unenlightened court, can still smile when he
remembers Jules Favre and his prayer for the National Guard.
And these were the men who formed the convoy around the chariot
of France militant, France in arms!--a cortège at once hideous,
shameful, ridiculous, grotesque.
What was left of the Empire? Metz still held out; Strassbourg
trembled under the shock of Prussian mortars; Paris strained its
eyes for the first silhouette of the Uhlan on the heights of
Versailles; and through the chill of the dying year the sombre
Emperor, hunted, driven, threatened, tumbled into the snare of
Sedan as a sick buzzard flutters exhausted to earth under a
shower of clubs and stones.
The end was to be brutal: a charge or two of devoted men, a crush
at the narrow gates, a white flag, a brusque gesture from
Bismarck, nothing more except a "guard of honour," an imperial
special train, and Belgian newsboys shrieking along the station
platform, "Extra! Fall of the Empire! Paris proclaims the
Republic! Flight of the Empress! Extra!"
Jack, sitting with the paper in his hands, read between the
lines, and knew that the prophecy of evil days would be
fulfilled. But as yet the writing on the wall of Alsatian hills
had not spelled "Sedan," nor did he know of the shambles of
Mars-la-Tour, the bloody work at Buzancy, the retreat from
Châlons, and the evacuation of Vitry.
Buzancy marked the beginning of the end. It was nothing but a
skirmish; the 3d Saxon Cavalry, a squadron or two of the 18th
Uhlans, and Zwinker's Battery fought a half-dozen squadrons of
chasseurs. But the red-letter mark on the result was unmistakable.
Bazaine's correspondence was captured. On the same day the second
sortie occurred from Strassbourg. It was time, for the trenches
and parallels had been pushed within six hundred paces of the
glacis. And so it was everywhere, the whole country was in a
ferment of disorganized but desperate resistance of astonishment,
indignation, dismay.
The nation could not realize that it was too late, that it was
not conquest but invasion which the armies of France must prepare
for. Blow after blow fell, disaster after disaster stunned the
country, while the government studied new and effective forms of
lying and evasion, and the hunted Emperor drifted on to his doom
in the pitfall of Sedan.
All Alsace except Belfort, Strassbourg, Schlettstadt, and Neuf
Brisac was in German hands, under German power, governed by
German law. The Uhlans scoured the country as clean as possible,
but the franc-tireurs roamed from forest to forest, sometimes
gallantly facing martyrdom, sometimes looting, burning,
pillaging, and murdering. If Germans maintain that the only good
franc-tireur is a dead franc-tireur, they are not always
justified. Let them sit first in judgment on Andreas Hofer.
England had Hereward; America, Harry Lee; and, when the South is
ready to acknowledge Mosby and Quantrell of the same feather, it
will be time for France to blush for her franc-tireurs. Noble and
ignoble, patriots and cowards, the justified and the misguided
wore the straight képi and the sheepskin jacket. All figs in
Spain are not poisoned.
With the fall of the Château Morteyn, the war in Lorraine would
degenerate into a combat between picquets of Uhlans and roving
franc-tireurs. There would be executions of spies, vengeance on
peasants, examples made of franc-tireurs, and all the horrors of
irregular warfare. Jack knew this; he understood it perfectly
when the muddy French infantry tramped out of the Château Morteyn
and vanished among the dark hills in the rain.
For himself, had he been alone, there would have been nothing to
keep him in the devastated province. Indeed, considering his
peculiarly strained relations with the Uhlans of Rickerl's
regiment, it behooved him to get across the Belgian frontier
very promptly.
Now he not only had Lorraine, he had the woman who loved him and
who was ready to sacrifice herself and him too for the honour of
France. She lived for one thing--the box, with its pitiful
contents, its secrets of aërial navigation and destruction, must
be placed at the service of France. The government was France
now, and the Empress was the government. Lorraine knew nothing of
the reasons her father had had for his hatred of the Emperor and
the Empire. Personal grievances, even when those grievances were
her father's, even though they might be justified, would never
deter her from placing the secrets that might aid, might save,
France with the man who, at that moment, in her eyes, represented
the safety, security, the very existence of the land she loved.
Jack knew this. Whether she was right or not did not occur to him
to ask. But the irony of it, the grim necessity of such a fate,
staggered him--a daughter seeking her father at the verge of his
ruin--a child, long lost, forgotten, unrecognized, unclaimed,
finding the blind path to a father who, when she had been torn
from him, dared not seek for her, dared not whisper of her
existence except to Morny in the cloaked shadows of secret
places.
For good or ill Jack made up his mind; he had decided for himself
and for her. Her loveless, lonely childhood had been enough of
sorrow for one young life; she should have no further storm, no
more heartaches, nothing but peace and love and the strong arm of
a man to shield her. Let her remember the only father she had
ever known--let her remember him with faithful love and sorrow
as she would. For the wrong he had done, let him account to
another tribunal; her, the echo of that crime and hate and
passion must never reach.
Why should he, the man who loved her, bring to her this heritage
of ruin? Why should he tear the veil from her trusting eyes and
show her a land bought with blood and broken oaths, sold in blood
and infamy? Why should he show her this, and say, "This is the
work of your imperial family! There is your father!--some call
him the Assassin of December! There is your mother!--read the
pages of an Eastern diary! There, too, is your brother, a sick
child of fifteen, baptized at Saarbrück, endowed at Sedan?"
It was enough that France lay prostrate, that the wounded
screamed from the blood-wet fields, that the quiet dead lay under
the pall of smoke from the nation's funeral pyre. It was enough
that the parents suffer, that the son drag out an existence among
indifferent or hostile people in an alien land. The daughter
should never know, never weep when they wept, never pray when
they prayed. This was retribution--not his, he only watched in
silence the working of divine justice.
He tore the paper into fragments and ground them under his heel
deep into the soft forest mould.
Lorraine slept.
He stood a long while in silence looking down at her. She was
breathing quietly, regularly; her long, curling lashes rested on
curved cheeks, delicate as an infant's.
Half fearfully he stooped to arouse her. A footfall sounded on
the dead leaves behind him, and a franc-tireur touched him on the
shoulder.
XXVII
ÇA IRA!
"What do you want?" asked Jack, in a voice that vibrated
unpleasantly. There was a dangerous light in his eyes; his lips
grew thinner and whiter. One by one a dozen franc-tireurs stepped
from behind the trees on every side, rifles shimmering in the
subdued afternoon haze--wiry, gloomy-eyed men, their sleeveless
sheepskin jackets belted in with leather, their sombre caps and
trousers thinly banded with orange braid. They looked at him
without speaking, almost without curiosity, fingering their
gunlocks, bayoneted rifles unslung.
"Your name?" said the man who had touched him on the shoulder.
He did not reply at once. One of the men began to laugh.
"He's the vicomte's nephew," said another; and, pointing at
Lorraine, who, now aroused, sat up on the moss beside Jack, he
continued: "And that is the little châtelaine of the Château de
Nesville." He took off his straight-visored cap.
The circle of gaunt, sallow faces grew friendly, and, as Lorraine
stood up, looking questioningly from one to the other, caps were
doffed, rifle-butts fell to the ground.
"Why, it's Monsieur Tricasse of the Saint-Lys Pompiers!" she
said. "Oh, and there is le Père Passerat, and little Émile Brun!
Émile, my son, why are you not with your regiment?" The dark
faces lighted up; somebody snickered; Brun, the conscript of the
class of '71 who had been hauled by the heels from under his
mother's bed, looked confused and twiddled his thumbs.
One by one the franc-tireurs came shambling up to pay their
awkward respects to Lorraine and to Jack, while Tricasse pulled
his bristling mustache and clattered his sabre in its sheath
approvingly. When his men had acquitted themselves with all the
awkward sincerity of Lorraine peasants, he advanced with a superb
bow and flourish, lifting his cap from his gray head:
"In my quality of ex-pompier and commandant of the 'Terrors of
Morteyn'--my battalion"--here he made a sweeping gesture as
though briefly reviewing an army corps instead of a dozen
wolfish-eyed peasants--"I extend to our honoured and beloved
Châtelaine de Nesville, and to our honoured guest, Monsieur
Marche, the protection and safe-conduct of the 'Terrors of
Morteyn.'"
As he spoke his expression became exalted. He, Tricasse,
ex-pompier and exempt, was posing as the saviour of his province,
and he felt that, though German armies stretched in endless ranks
from the Loire to the Meuse, he, Tricasse, was the man of
destiny, the man of the place and the hour when beauty was in
distress.
Lorraine, her eyes dim with gentle tears, held out both slender
hands; Tricasse bent low and touched them with his grizzled
mustache. Then he straightened up, frowned at his men, and said
"Attention!" in a very fierce voice.
The half-starved fellows shuffled into a single rank; their faces
were wreathed in sheepish smiles. Jack noticed that a Bavarian
helmet and side-arm hung from the knapsack of one, a mere
freckled lad, downy and dimpled. Tricasse drew his sabre, turned,
marched solemnly along the front, wheeled again, and saluted.
Jack lifted his cap; Lorraine, her arm in his, bowed and smiled
tearfully.
"The dear, brave fellows!" she cried, impulsively, whereat every
man reddened, and Tricasse grew giddy with emotion. He tried to
speak; his emotion was great.
"In my capacity of ex-pompier," he gasped, then went to pieces,
and hid his eyes in his hands. The "Terrors of Morteyn" wept with
him to a man.
Presently, with a gesture to Tricasse, Jack led Lorraine down the
slope, past the spring, and on through the forest, three
"Terrors" leading, rifles poised, Tricasse and the others
following, alert and balancing their cocked rifles.
"How far is your camp?" asked Jack. "We need food and the warmth
of a fire. Tell me, Monsieur Tricasse, what is left of the two
châteaux?"
Lorraine bent nearer as the old man said: "The Château de Nesville
is a mass of cinders; Morteyn, a stone skeleton. Pierre is dead.
There are many dead there--many, many dead. The Prussians burned
Saint-Lys yesterday; they shot Bosquet, the letter-carrier; they
hung his boy to the railroad trestle, then shot him to pieces. The
Curé is a prisoner; the Mayor of Saint-Lys and the Notary have
been sent to the camp at Strassbourg. We, my 'Terrors of Morteyn'
and I, are still facing the vandals; except for us, the Province
of Lorraine is empty of Frenchmen in armed resistance."
The old man, in his grotesque uniform, touched his bristling
mustache and muttered: "Nom d'une pipe!" several times to steady
his voice.
Lorraine and Jack pressed on silently, sorrowfully, hand in hand,
watching the scouts ahead, who were creeping on through the
trees, heads turning from side to side, rifles raised. They
passed along the back of a thickly wooded ridge for some
distance, perhaps a mile, before the thin blue line of a
smouldering camp-fire rose almost in their very faces. A low
challenge from a clump of birch-trees was answered, there came
the sound of rifles dropping, the noise of feet among the leaves,
a whisper, and before they knew it they were standing at the
mouth of a hole in the bank, from which came the odour of
beef-broth simmering. Two or three franc-tireurs passed them,
looking up curiously into their faces. Tricasse dragged a
dilapidated cane-chair from the dirt-cave and placed it before
Lorraine as though he were inviting her to an imperial throne.
"Thank you," she said, sweetly, and seated herself, not
relinquishing Jack's hand.
Two tin basins of soup were brought to them; they ate it, soaking
bits of crust in it.
The men pretended not to watch them. With all their instinctive
delicacy these clumsy peasants busied themselves in guard-mounting,
weapon cleaning, and their cuisine, as though there was no such
thing as a pretty woman within miles. But it tried their gallantry
as Frenchmen and their tact as Lorraine peasants. Furtive glances,
deprecatory and timid, were met by the sweetest of smiles from
Lorraine or a kindly nod from Jack. Tricasse, utterly unbalanced by
his new rôle of protector of beauty, gave orders in fierce, agitated
whispers, and made sudden aimless promenades around the birch thicket.
In one of these prowls he discovered a toad staring at the camp-fire,
and he drew his sword with a furious gesture, as though no living
toad were good enough to intrude on the Châtelaine of the Château de
Nesville; but the toad hopped away, and Tricasse unbent his brows
and resumed his agitated prowl.
When Lorraine had finished her soup, Jack took both plates into
the cave and gave them to a man who, squatted on his haunches,
was washing dishes. Lorraine followed him and sat down on a
blanket, leaning back against the side of the cave.
"Wait for me," said Jack. She drew his head down to hers.
They lingered there in the darkness a moment, unconscious of the
amazed but humourous glances of the cook; then Jack went out and
found Tricasse, and walked with him to the top of the tree-clad
ridge.
A road ran under the overhanging bank.
"I didn't know we were so near a road," said Jack, startled.
Tricasse laid his finger on his lips.
"It is the high-road to Saint-Lys. We have settled more than one
Uhlan dog on that curve there by the oak-tree. Look! Here comes
one of our men. See! He's got something, too."
Sure enough, around the bend in the road slunk a franc-tireur,
loaded down with what appeared to be mail-sacks. Cautiously he
reconnoitred the bank, the road, the forest on the other side,
whistled softly, and, at Tricasse's answering whistle, came
puffing and blowing up the slope, and flung a mail-bag, a rifle,
a Bavarian helmet, and a German knapsack to the ground.
"The big police officer?" inquired Tricasse, eagerly.
"Yes, the big one with the red beard. He died hard. I used the
bayonet only," said the franc-tireur, looking moodily at the
dried blood on his hairy fists. "I got a Bavarian sentry, too;
there's the proof."
Jack looked at the helmet. Tricasse ripped up the mail-sack with
his long clasp-knife. "They stole our mail; they will not steal
it again," observed Tricasse, sorting the letters and shuffling
them like cards.
One by one he looked them over, sorted out two, stuffed the rest
into the breast of his sheepskin coat, and stood up.
"There are two letters for you, Monsieur Marche, that were going
to be read by the Prussian police officials," he said, holding
the letters out. "What do you think of our new system of mail
delivery? German delivery, franc-tireur facteur, eh, Monsieur
Marche?"
"Give me the letters," said Jack, quietly.
He sat down and read them both, again and again. Tricasse turned
his back, and stirred the Bavarian helmet with his boot-toe; the
franc-tireur gathered up his spoils, and, at a gesture from
Tricasse, carried them down the slope towards the hidden camp.
"Put out the fire, too," called Tricasse, softly. "I begin to
smell it."
When Jack had finished his reading, he looked up at Tricasse,
folding the letters and placing them in his breast, where the
flat steel box was.
"Letters from Paris," he said. "The Uhlans have appeared in the
Eure-et-Seine and at Melun. They are arming the forts and
enceinte, and the city is being provisioned for a siege."
"Paris!" blurted out Tricasse, aghast.
Jack nodded, silently.
After a moment he resumed: "The Emperor is said to be with the
army near Mézières on the south bank of the Meuse. We are going
to find him, Mademoiselle de Nesville and I. Tell us what to do."
Tricasse stared at him, incapable of speech.
"Very well," said Jack, gently, "think it over. Tell me, at
least, how we can avoid the German lines. We must start this
evening."
He turned and descended the bank rapidly, letting himself down by
the trunks of the birch saplings, treading softly and cautiously
over stones and dead leaves, for the road was so near that a
careless footstep might perhaps be heard by passing Uhlans. In a
few minutes he crossed the ridge, and descended into the hollow,
where the odour of the extinguished fire lingered in the air.