together under the poplar-trees, heads turned to the plain. Some
teamsters pushed an empty wagon out beyond the line of trees and
overturned it; others stood up in their wagons, reins gathered,
long whips swinging. The wounded moaned incessantly; some sat up
in the straw, heads turned also towards the dim, gray plain.
"It's an attack," said Grahame, coolly. "Marche, we're in for it
now!"
After a moment, he added, "What did I tell you? Look there!"
Out on the plain, where the mist was clearing along the edge of a
belt of trees, something was moving.
"What is it?" asked Lorraine, in a scarcely audible voice.
Before Grahame could speak a tumult of cries and groans burst out
along the line of wagons; a bugle clanged furiously; the
teamsters shouted and pointed with their whips.
Out of the shadow of the grove two glittering double lines of
horsemen trotted, halted, formed, extended right and left, and
trotted on again. To the right another darker and more compact
square of horsemen broke into a gallop, swinging a thicket of
lances above their heads, from which fluttered a mass of black
and white pennons.
"Cuirassiers and Uhlans!" muttered Grahame, under his breath. He
stood up in his seat; Jack rose also, straining his eyes, but
Lorraine hid her face in her hands and crouched in the chaise,
her head buried in the cushions.
The silence was enervating; even the horses turned their gentle
eyes wonderingly to that line of steel and lances; even the
wounded, tremulous, haggard, held their breath between clenched
teeth and stiff, swollen lips.
"Nom de Dieu! Serrez les rangs, tas de bleus!" yelled an officer,
riding along the edge of the road, revolver in one hand, naked
sabre flashing in the other.
A dozen artillerymen were pushing a mitrailleuse up behind the
overturned wagon. It stuck in the ditch.
"À nous, la ligne!" they shouted, dragging at the wheels until a
handful of fantassins ran out and pulled the little death machine
into place.
"Du calme! Du calme! Ne tirez pas trop vite, ménagez vos
cartouches! Tenez ferme, mes enfants!" said an old officer,
dismounting and walking coolly out beyond the line of trees.
"Oui! oui! comptez sur nous! Vive le Colonel!" shouted the
soldiers, shaking their chassepots in the air.
On came the long lines, distinct now--the blue and yellow of the
Uhlans, the white and scarlet of the cuirassiers, plain against
the gray trees and grayer pastures. Suddenly a level sheet of
flame played around the stalled wagons; the smoke gushed out
over the dark ground; the air split with the crash of rifles. In
the uproar bugles blew furiously and the harsh German cavalry
trumpets, peal on peal, nearer, nearer, nearer, answered their
clangour.
"Hourra! Preussen!"
The deep, thundering shout rose hoarsely through the rifles'
roaring fusillade; horses reared; teamsters lashed and swore, and
the rattle of harness and wheel broke out and was smothered in
the sheeted crashing of the volleys and the shock of the coming
charge.
And now it burst like an ocean roller, smashing into the wagon
lines, a turmoil of smoke and flashes, a chaos of maddened,
plunging horses and bayonets, and the flashing downward strokes
of heavy sabres. Grahame seized the reins, and lashed his horses;
a cuirassier drove his bloody, foam-covered charger into the road
in front and fell, butchered by a dozen bayonets.
Three Uhlans followed, whirling their lances and crashing through
the lines, their frantic horses crazed by blows and wounds. More
cuirassiers galloped up; the crush became horrible. A horse and
steel-clad rider were hurled bodily under the wagon-wheels--an
Uhlan, transfixed by a bayonet, still clung to his shattered
lance-butt, screaming, staggering in his stirrups. Suddenly the
window of the post-chaise was smashed in and a horse and rider
pitched under the wheels, almost overturning carriage and
occupants.
"Easy, Marche!" shouted Grahame. "Don't try to get out!"
Jack heard him, but sprang into the road. For an instant he
reeled about in the crush and smoke, then, stooping, he seized a
prostrate man, lifted him, and with one tremendous effort pitched
him into the chaise.
Grahame, standing up in the driver's seat, watched him in
amazement for a moment; but his horses demanded all his attention
now, for they were backing under the pressure of the cart in
front.
As for Jack, once in the chaise again he pulled the unconscious
man to the seat, calling Lorraine to hold him up. Then he tore
the Uhlan's helmet from the stunned man's head and flung it out
into the road; after it he threw sabre and revolver.
"Give me that rug!" he cried to Lorraine, and he seized it and
wrapped it around the Uhlan's legs.
Grahame had managed to get clear of the other wagon now and was
driving out into the pasture, almost obscured by rifle smoke.
"Oh, Jack!" faltered Lorraine--"it is Rickerl!"
It was Rickerl, stunned by the fall from his horse, lying back
between them.
"They'd kill him if they saw his uniform!" muttered Jack. "Hark!
the French are cheering! They've repulsed the charge! Grahame, do
you hear?--do you hear?"
"I hear!" shouted Grahame. "These horses are crazy; I can't hold
them."
The troops around them, hidden in the smoke, began to cheer
frantically; the mitrailleuse whirred and rolled out its hail of
death.
"Vive la France! Mort aux Prussiens!" howled the soldiers. A
mounted officer, his cap on the point of his sabre, his face laid
open by a lance-thrust, stood shouting, "Vive la Nation! Vive la
Nation!" while a boyish bugler shook his brass bugle in the air,
speechless with joy.
Grahame drove the terrified horses along the line of wagons for a
few paces, then, wheeling, let them gallop straight out into the
pasture on the left of the road, where a double line of trees in
the distance marked the course of a parallel road.
The chaise lurched and jolted; Rickerl, unconscious still, fell
in a limp heap, but Jack and Lorraine held him up and watched the
horses, now galloping under slackened reins.
"There are houses there! Look!" cried Grahame. "By Jove, there's
a Luxembourg gendarme, too. I--I believe we're in Luxembourg,
Marche! Upon my soul, we are! See! There is a frontier post!"
He tried to stop the horses; two strange-looking soldiers,
wearing glossy shakos and white-and-blue aiguillettes, began to
bawl at him; a group of peasants before the cottages fled,
screaming.
Grahame threw all his strength into his arms and dragged the
horses to a stand-still.
"Are we in Luxembourg?" he called to the gendarmes, who ran up,
gesticulating violently. "Are we? Good! Hold those horses, if you
please, gentlemen. There's a wounded man here. Carry him to one
of those houses. Marche, lift him, if you can. Hello! his arm is
broken at the wrist. Go easy--you, I mean--Now!"
Lorraine, aided by Jack, stepped from the post-chaise and stood
shivering as two peasants came forward and lifted Rickerl. When
they had taken him away to one of the stone houses she turned
quietly to a gendarme and said: "Monsieur, can you tell me where
the Emperor is?"
"The Emperor?" repeated the gendarme. "The Emperor is with his
army, below there along the Meuse. They are fighting--since four
this morning--at Sedan."
He pointed to the southeast.
She looked out across the wide plain.
"That convoy is going to Sedan," said the gendarme. "The army is
near Sedan; there is a battle there."
"Thank you," said Lorraine, quietly. "Jack, the Emperor is near
Sedan."
"Yes," he nodded; "we will go when you can stand it."
"I am ready. Oh, we must not wait, Jack; did you not see how they
even attacked the wounded?"
He turned and looked into her eyes.
"It is the first French cheer I have heard," she continued,
feverishly. "They beat back those Prussians and cheered for
France! Oh, Jack, there is time yet! France is rising now--France
is resisting. We must do our part; we must not wait. Jack, I am
ready!"
"We can't walk," he muttered.
"We will go with the convoy. They are on the way to Sedan, where
the Emperor is. Jack, they are fighting at Sedan! Do you
understand?"
She came closer, looking up into his troubled eyes.
"Show me the box," she whispered.
He drew the flat steel box from his coat.
After a moment she said, "Nothing must stop us now. I am ready!"
"You are not ready," he replied, sullenly; "you need rest."
"'Tiens ta Foy,' Jack."
The colour dyed his pale cheeks and he straightened up. "Always,
Lorraine."
Grahame called to them from the cottage: "You can get a horse and
wagon here! Come and eat something at once!"
Slowly, with weary, drooping heads, they walked across the road,
past a wretched custom-house, where two painted sentry-boxes
leaned, past a squalid barnyard full of amber-coloured, unsavoury
puddles and gaunt poultry, up to the thatched stone house where
Grahame stood waiting. Over the door hung a withered branch of
mistletoe, above this swung a sign:
ESTAMINET.
"Your Uhlan is in a bad way, I think," began Grahame; "he's got a
broken arm and two broken ribs. This is a nasty little place to
leave him in."
"Grahame," said Jack, earnestly, "I've got to leave him. I am
forced to go to Sedan as soon as we can swallow a bit of bread
and wine. The Uhlan is my comrade and friend; he may be more than
that some day. What on earth am I to do?"
They followed Grahame into a room where a table stood covered by
a moist, unpleasant cloth. The meal was simple--a half-bottle of
sour red wine for each guest, a fragment of black bread, and a
râgout made of something that had once been alive--possibly a
chicken, possibly a sheep.
Grahame finished his wine, bolted a morsel or two of bread and
râgout, and leaned back in his chair with a whimsical glance at
Lorraine.
"Now, I'll tell you what I'll do, Marche," he said. "My horses
need rest, so do I, so does our wounded Uhlan. I'll stay in this
garden of Eden until noon, if you like, then I'll drive our
wounded man to Diekirch, where the Hôtel des Ardennes is as good
an inn as you can find in Luxembourg, or in Belgium either. Then
I'll follow you to Sedan."
They all rose from the table; Lorraine came and held out her
hand, thanking Grahame for his kindness to them and to Rickerl.
"Good-by," said Grahame, going with them to the door. "There's
your dog-cart; it's paid for, and here's a little bag of French
money--no thanks, my dear fellow; we can settle all that later.
But what the deuce you two children are going to Sedan for is
more than my old brains can comprehend."
He stood, with handsome head bared, and bent gravely over
Lorraine's hands--impulsive little hands, now trembling, as the
tears of gratitude trembled on her lashes.
And so they drove away in their dog-cart, down the flat,
poplar-bordered road, silent, deeply moved, wondering what the
end might be.
The repeated shocks, the dreadful experiences and encounters, the
indelible impressions of desolation and grief and suffering had
deadened in Lorraine all sense of personal suffering or grief.
For her land and her people her heart had bled, drop by drop--her
sensitive soul lay crushed within her. Nothing of selfish despair
came over her, because France still stood. She had suffered too
much to remember herself. Even her love for Jack had become
merely a detail. She loved as she breathed--involuntarily. There
was nothing new or strange or sweet in it--nothing was left of
its freshness, its grace, its delicacy. The bloom was gone.
In her tired breast her heart beat faintly; its burden was the weary
repetition of a prayer--an old, old prayer--a supplication--for
mercy, for France, and for the salvation of its people. Where she
had learned it she did not know; how she remembered it, why she
repeated it, minute by minute, hour by hour, she could not tell.
But it was always beating in her heart, this prayer--old, so
old!--and half forgotten--
"'To Thee, Mary, exalted--
To Thee, Mary, exalted--'"
Her tired heart took up the rhythm where her mind refused to
follow, and she leaned on Jack's shoulder, looking out over the
gray land with innocent, sorrowful eyes.
Vaguely she remembered her lonely childhood, but did not grieve;
vaguely she thought of her youth, passing away from a tear-drenched
land through the smoke of battles. She did not grieve--the last sad
tear for self had fallen and quenched the last smouldering spark of
selfishness. The wasted hills of her province seemed to rise from
their ashes and sear her eyes; the flames of a devastated land
dazzled and pained her; every drop of French blood that drenched
the mother-land seemed drawn from her own veins--every cry of
terror, every groan, every gasp, seemed wrenched from her own
slender body. The quiet, wide-eyed dead accused her, the stark
skeletons of ravaged houses reproached her.
She turned to the man she loved, but it was the voice of a dying
land that answered, "Come!" and she responded with all a passion
of surrender. What had she accomplished as yet? In the bitterness
of her loneliness she answered, "Nothing." She had worked by the
wayside as she passed--in the field, in the hospital, in the
midst of beleaguered soldiers. But what was that? There was
something else further on that called her--what she did not know,
and yet she knew it was waiting somewhere for her. "Perhaps it is
death," she mused, leaning on Jack's shoulder. "Perhaps it is
_his_ death." That did not frighten her; if it was to be, it
would be; but, through it, through the hideous turmoil of fire
and blood and pounding guns and shouting--through death
itself--somewhere, on the other side of the dreadful valley of
terror, lay salvation for the mother-land. Thither they were
bound--she and the man she loved.
All around them lay the flat, colourless plains of Luxembourg; to
the east, the wagon-train of wounded crawled across the landscape
under a pallid sky. The road now bore towards the frontier again;
Jack shook the reins listlessly; the horse loped on. Slowly they
approached the border, where, on the French side, the convoy
crept forward enveloped in ragged clouds of dust. Now they could
distinguish the drivers, blue-bloused and tattered, swinging
their long whips; now they saw the infantry, plodding on behind
the wagons, stringing along on either flank, their officers
riding with bent heads, the red legs of the fantassins blurred
through the red dust.
At the junction of the two roads stood a boundary post. A
slovenly Luxembourg gendarme sat on a stone under it, smoking and
balancing his rifle over both knees.
"You can't pass," he said, looking up as Jack drew rein. A moment
later he pocketed a gold piece that Jack offered, yawned,
laughed, and yawned again.
"You can buy contraband cigars at two sous each in the village
below," he observed.
"What news is there to tell?" demanded Jack.
"News? The same as usual. They are shelling Strassbourg with
mortars; the city is on fire. Six hundred women and children left
the city; the International Aid Society demanded it."
Presently he added: "A big battle was fought this morning along
the Meuse. You can hear the guns yet."
"I have heard them for an hour," replied Jack.
They listened. Far to the south the steady intonation of the
cannon vibrated, a vague sustained rumour, no louder, no lower,
always the same monotonous measure, flowing like the harmony of
flowing water, passionless, changeless, interminable.
"Along the Meuse?" asked Jack, at last.
"Yes."
"Sedan?"
"Yes, Sedan."
The slow convoy was passing now; the creak of wheel and the harsh
scrape of axle and spring grated in their ears; the wind changed;
the murmur of the cannonade was blotted out in the trample of
hoofs, the thud of marching infantry.
Jack swung his horse's head and drove out across the boundary
into the French road. On every side crowded the teams, where the
low mutter of the wounded rose from the foul straw; on every side
pressed the red-legged infantry, rifles _en bandoulière_,
shrunken, faded caps pushed back from thin, sick faces.
"My soldiers!" murmured Lorraine, sitting up straight. "Oh, the
pity of it!--the pity!"
An officer passed, followed by a bugler. He glanced vacantly at
Jack, then at Lorraine. Another officer came by, leading his
patient, bleeding horse, over which was flung the dusty body of a
brother soldier.
The long convoy was moving more swiftly now; the air trembled
with the cries of the mangled or the hoarse groans of the dying.
A Sister of Mercy--her frail arm in a sling--crept on her knees
among the wounded lying in a straw-filled cart. Over all, louder,
deeper, dominating the confusion of the horses and the tramp of
men, rolled the cannonade. The pulsating air, deep-laden with the
monstrous waves of sound, seemed to beat in Lorraine's face--the
throbbing of her heart ceased for a moment. Louder, louder,
nearer, more terrible sounded the thunder, breaking in long,
majestic reverberations among the nearer hills; the earth began
to shake, the sky struck back the iron-throated echoes--sounding,
resounding, from horizon to horizon.
And now the troops around them were firing as they advanced;
sheeted mist lashed with lightning enveloped the convoy, through
which rang the tremendous clang of the cannon. Once there came a
momentary break in the smoke--a gleam of hills, and a valley
black with men--a glimpse of a distant town, a river--then the
stinging smoke rushed outward, the little flames leaped and sank
and played through the fog. Broad, level bands of mist, fringed
with flame, cut the pasture to the right; the earth rocked with
the stupendous cannon shock, the ripping rifle crashes chimed a
dreadful treble.
There was a bridge there in the mist; an iron gate, a heavy wall
of masonry, a glimpse of a moat below. The crowded wagons,
groaning under their load of death, the dusty infantry, the
officers, the startled horses, jammed the bridge to the parapets.
Wheels splintered and cracked, long-lashed whips snapped and
rose, horses strained, recoiled, leaped up, and fell scrambling
and kicking.
"Open the gates, for God's sake!" they were shouting.
A great shell, moaning in its flight above the smoke, shrieked
and plunged headlong among the wagons. There came a glare of
blinding light, a velvety white cloud, a roar, and through the
gates, no longer choked, rolled the wagon-train, a frantic
stampede of men and horses. It caught the dog-cart and its
occupants with it; it crushed the horse, seized the vehicle, and
flung it inside the gates as a flood flings driftwood on the
rocks.
Jack clung to the reins; the wretched horse staggered out into
the stony street, fell, and rolled over stone-dead.
Jack turned and caught Lorraine in both arms, and jumped to a
sidewalk crowded with soldiers, and at the same time the crush of
wagons ground the dog-cart to splinters on the cobble-stones. The
crowd choked every inch of the pavement--women, children,
soldiers, shouting out something that seemed to move the masses
to delirium. Jack, his arm around Lorraine, beat his way forward
through the throng, murmuring anxiously, "Are you hurt, Lorraine?
Are you hurt?" And she replied, faintly, "No, Jack. Oh, what is
it? What is it?"
Soldiers blocked his way now, but he pushed between them towards
a cleared space on a slope of grass. Up the slope he staggered
and out on to a stone terrace above the crush of the street. An
officer stood alone on the terrace, pulling at some ropes around
a pole on the parapet.
"What--what is that?" stammered Lorraine, as a white flag shot up
along the flag-staff and fluttered drearily over the wall.
"Lorraine!" cried Jack; but she sprang to the pole and tore the
ropes free. The white flag fell to the ground.
The officer turned to her, his face whiter than the flag. The
crowd in the street below roared.
"Monsieur," gasped Lorraine, "France is not conquered! That flag
is the flag of dishonour!"
They stared at each other in silence, then the officer stepped to
the flag-pole and picked up the ropes.
"Not that!--not that!" cried Lorraine, shuddering.
"It is the Emperor's orders."
The officer drew the rope tight--the white flag crawled slowly up
the staff, fluttered, and stopped.
Lorraine covered her eyes with her hands; the roar of the crowd
below was in her ears.
"O God!--O God!" she whispered.
"Lorraine!" whispered Jack, both arms around her.
Her head fell forward on her breast.
Overhead the white flag caught the breeze again, and floated out
over the ramparts of Sedan.
"By the Emperor's orders," said the officer, coming close to
Jack.
Then for the first time Jack saw that it was Georges Carrière who
stood there, ghastly pale, his eyes fixed on Lorraine.
"She has fainted," muttered Jack, lifting her. "Georges, is it
all over?"
"Yes," said Georges, and he walked over to the flag-pole, and
stood there looking up at the white badge of dishonour.
XXX
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW
Daylight was fading in the room where Lorraine lay in a stupor so
deep that at moments the Sister of Mercy and the young military
surgeon could scarcely believe her alive there on the pillows.
Jack, his head on his arms, stood by the window, staring out
vacantly at the streak of light in the west, against which, on
the straight, gray ramparts, the white flag flapped black against
the dying sun.
Under the window, in the muddy, black streets, the packed throngs
swayed and staggered and trampled through the filth, amid a crush
of camp-wagons, artillery, ambulances, and crowding squadrons of
cavalry. Riotous line soldiers cried out "Treason!" and hissed
their generals or cursed their Emperor; the tall cuirassiers
surged by in silence, sombre faces turned towards the west, where
the white flag flew on the ramparts. Heavier, denser, more
suffocating grew the crush; an ambulance broke down, a caisson
smashed into a lamp-post, a cuirassier's horse slipped in the
greasy depths of the filth, pitching its steel-clad rider to the
pavement. Through the Place d'Alsace-Lorraine, through the Avenue
du Collège and the Place d'Armes, passed the turbulent torrent of
men and horses and cannon. The Grande Rue was choked from the
church to the bronze statue in the Place Turenne; the Porte de
Paris was piled with dead, the Porte de Balan tottered a mass of
ruins.
The cannonade still shook the hills to the south in spite of the
white flag on the citadel. There were white flags, too, on the
ramparts, on the Port des Capucins, and at the Gate of Paris. An
officer, followed by a lancer, who carried a white pennon on his
lance-point, entered the street from the north. A dozen soldiers
and officers hacked it off with their sabres, crying, "No
surrender! no surrender!" Shells continued to fall into the
packed streets, blowing horrible gaps in the masses of struggling
men. The sun set in a crimson blaze, reflecting on window and
roof and the bloody waters of the river. When at last it sank
behind the smoky hills, the blackness in the city was lighted by
lurid flames from burning houses and the swift crimson glare of
Prussian shells, still plunging into the town. Through the crash
of crumbling walls, the hiss and explosion of falling shells, the
awful clamour and din in the streets, the town clock struck
solemnly six times. As if at a signal the firing died away; a
desolate silence fell over the city--a silence full of rumours,
of strange movements--a stillness pulsating with the death gasps
of a nation.
Out on the heights of La Moncelle, of Daigny, and Givonne
lanterns glimmered where the good Sisters of Mercy and the
ambulance corps passed among the dead and dying--the thirty-five
thousand dead and dying! The plateau of Illy, where the cavalry
had charged again and again, was twinkling with thousands of
lanterns; on the heights of Frénois Prussian torches swung,
signalling victory.