Chapter XXII: A Door Is Locked 239 (7)

"And you called off your bloody pack of hangmen for me," said Jack; "I'm devilish grateful, Ricky--indeed I am--and you know I'd be glad to have you in the family if--if it wasn't for this cursed war. Never mind, Dorothy generally has what she wants, even if it's--"

"Even if it's an Uhlan?" suggested Rickerl, gravely.

Jack smiled and laid his hand on Rickerl's arm.

"She ought to see you now, bareheaded, dusty, in your shirt-sleeves! You're not much like the attaché at the Diplomatic ball--eh, Ricky? If you marry Dorothy I'll punch your head. Come on, we've got to find out where we are."

"That's my road," observed Rickerl, quietly, pointing across the fields.

"Where? Why?"

"Don't you see?"

Jack searched the distant landscape in vain.

"No, are the Germans there? Oh, now I see. Why, it's a squadron of your cursed Uhlans!"

"Yes," said Rickerl, mildly.

"Then they've been chased out of the Château de Nesville!"

"Probably. They may come back. Jack, can't you get out of this country?"

"Perhaps," replied Jack, soberly. He thought of Lorraine, of the marquis lying mangled and dead in the forest beside the fragments of his balloon.

"Your Lieutenant von Steyr is a dirty butcher," he said. "I hope you'll finish him when you find him."

"He fired explosive bullets, which your franc-tireurs use on us," retorted Rickerl, growing red.

"Oh," cried Jack in disgust, "the whole business makes me sick! Ricky, give me your hand--there! Don't let this war end our friendship. Go to your Uhlans now. As for me, I must get back to Morteyn. What Lorraine will do, where she can go, how she will stand this ghastly news, I don't know; and I wish there was somebody else to tell her. My uncle and aunt have already gone to Paris, they said they would not wait for me. Lorraine is at Morteyn, alone except for her maid, and she is probably frightened at my not returning as I promised. Do you think you can get to your Uhlans safely? They passed into the grove beyond the hills. What the mischief are those cannon shelling, anyway? Well, good-by! Better not come up the hill with me, or you'll have to part with your sabre for good. We did lose our franc-tireur friends beautifully. I'll write Dorothy; I'll tell her that I captured you, sabre and all. Good-by! Good-by, old fellow! If you'll promise not to get a bullet in your blond hide I'll promise to be a brother-in-law to you!"

Rickerl looked very manly as he stood there, booted, bareheaded, his thin shirt, soaked with sweat, outlining his muscular figure.

They lingered a moment, hands closely clasped, looking gravely into each other's faces. Then, with a gesture, half sad, half friendly, Rickerl started across the stubble towards the distant grove where his Uhlans had taken cover.

Jack watched him until his white shirt became a speck, a dot, and finally vanished among the trees on the blue hill. When he was gone, Jack turned sharply away and climbed the furze-covered slope from whence he hoped to see the cannon, now firing only at five-minute intervals. As he toiled up the incline he carefully kept himself under cover, for he had no desire to meet any lurking franc-tireurs. It is true that, even when the franc-tireurs had been closest, there in the swamp among the rank marsh grasses, the distance was too great for them to have identified him with certainty. But he thought it best to keep out of their way until within hail of the regular troops, so he took advantage of bushes and inequalities of the slope to reconnoitre the landscape before he reached the summit of the ridge. There was a tufted thicket of yellow broom in flower on the crest of the ridge; behind this he lay and looked out across the plain.

A little valley separated this hill from the vineyard, terraced up to the north, ridge upon ridge. The cannon smoke shot up from the thickets of vines, rose, and drifted to the west, blotting out the greater portion of the vineyard. The cannon themselves were invisible. At times Jack fancied he saw a human silhouette when the white smoke rushed outward, but the spectral vines loomed up everywhere through the dense cannon-fog and he could not be sure.

However, there were plenty of troops below the hill now--infantry of the line trudging along the dusty road in fairly good order, and below the vineyard, among the uncut fields of flax, more infantry crouched, probably supporting the three-gun battery on the hill.

At that distance he could not tell a franc-tireur from any regular foot-soldier except line-infantry; their red caps and trousers were never to be mistaken. As he looked, he wondered at a nation that clothed its troops in a colour that furnished such a fearfully distinct mark to the enemy. A French army, moving, cannot conceal itself; the red of trousers and caps, the mirror-like reflections of cuirass and casque and lance-tip, advertise the presence of French troops so persistently that an enemy need never fear any open landscape by daylight.

Jack watched the cannonade, lying on his stomach, chin supported by both hands. He was perfectly cool now; he neither feared the Uhlans nor the franc-tireurs. For a while he vainly tried to comprehend the reason of the cannonade; the shells shot out across the valley in tall curves, dropping into a distant bit of hazy blue woodland, or exploded above the trees; the column of infantry below plodded doggedly southward; the infantry in the flax-field lay supine. Clearly something was interfering with the retreat of the troops--something that threatened them from those distant woods. And now he could see cavalry moving about the crest of the nearer hills, but, without his glass, it was not possible to tell what they were. Often he looked at the nearer forest that hid the Château de Nesville. Somewhere within those sombre woods lay the dead marquis.

With a sigh he rose to his knees, shivered in the sunshine, passed one hand over his forehead, and finally stood up. Hunger had made him faint; his head grew dizzy.

"It must be noon, at least," he muttered, and started down the hill and across the fields towards the woods of Morteyn. As he walked he pulled the bearded wheat from ripening stems and chewed it to dull his hunger. The raw place on his neck, where the rope had chafed, stung when the perspiration started. He moved quickly but warily, keeping a sharp lookout on every side. Once he passed a miniature vineyard, heavy with white-wine grapes; and, as he threaded a silent path among the vines, he ate his fill and slaked his thirst with the cool amber fruit. He had reached the edge of the little vineyard, and was about to cross a tangle of briers and stubble, when something caught his eye in the thicket; it was a man's face--and he stopped.

For a minute they stared at each other, making no movement, no sound.

"Sir Thorald!"--faltered Jack.

But Sir Thorald Hesketh could not speak, for he had a bullet through his lungs.

As Jack sprang into the brier tangle towards him, a slim figure in the black garments of the Sisters of Mercy rose from Sir Thorald's side. He saw the white cross on her breast, he saw the white face above it and the whiter lips.

It was Alixe von Elster.

At the same instant the road in front was filled with French infantry, running.

Alixe caught his arm, her head turned towards the road where the infantry were crowding past at double-quick, enveloped in a whirling torrent of red dust.

"There is a cart there," she said. "Oh, Jack, find it quickly! The driver is on the seat--and I can't leave Sir Thorald."

In his amazement he stood hesitating, looking from the girl to Sir Thorald; but she drew him to the edge of the thicket and pointed to the road, crying, "Go! go!" and he stumbled down the pasture slope to the edge of the road.

Past him plodded the red-legged infantry; he saw, through the whirlwind of dust, the vague outlines of a tumbril and horse standing below in the ditch, and he ran along the grassy depression towards the vehicle. And now he saw the driver, kneeling in the cart, his blue blouse a mass of blood, his discoloured face staring out at the passing troops.

As he seized the horse's head and started up the slope again, firing broke out among the thickets close at hand; the infantry swung out to the west in a long sagging line; the chassepots began banging right and left. For an instant he caught a glimpse of cavalry riding hard across a bit of stubble--Uhlans he saw at a glance--then the smoke hid them. But in that brief instant he had seen, among the galloping cavalrymen, a mounted figure, bareheaded, wearing a white shirt, and he knew that Rickerl was riding for his life.

Sick at heart he peered into the straight, low rampart of smoke; he watched the spirts of rifle-flame piercing it; he saw it turn blacker when a cannon bellowed in the increasing din. The infantry were lying down out there in the meadow; shadowy gray forms passed, repassed, reeled, ran, dropped, and rose again. Close at hand a long line of men lay flat on their bellies in the wheat stubble. When each rifle spoke the smoke rippled through the short wheat stalks or eddied and curled over the ground like the gray foam of an outrushing surf.

He backed the horse and heavy cart, turned both, half blinded by the rifle-smoke, and started up the incline. Two bullets, speeding over the clover like singing bees, rang loudly on the iron-bound cartwheels; the horse plunged and swerved, dragging Jack with him, and the dead figure, kneeling in the cart, tumbled over the tail-board with a grotesque wave of its stiffening limbs. There it lay, sprawling in an impossible posture in the ditch. A startled grasshopper alighted on its face, turned around, crawled to the ear, and sat there.

And now the volley firing grew to a sustained crackle, through which the single cannon boomed and boomed, hidden in the surging smoke that rolled in waves, sinking, rising, like the waves of a wind-whipped sea.

"Where are you, Alixe?" he shouted.

"Here! Hurry!"

She stood on the edge of the brier tangle as he laboured up the slope with the horse and cart. Sir Thorald's breathing was horrible to hear when they stooped and lifted him; Alixe was crying. They laid him on the blood-soaked straw; Alixe crept in beside him and took his head on her knees.

"To Morteyn?" whispered Jack. "Perhaps we can find a surgeon nearer--"

"Oh, hurry!" she sobbed; and he climbed heavily to the seat and started back towards the road.

The road was empty where he turned in out of the fields, but, just above, he heard cannon thundering in the mist. As he drew in the reins, undecided, the cannonade suddenly redoubled in fury; the infantry fire blazed out with a new violence; above the terrific blast he heard trumpets sounding, and beneath it he felt the vibration of the earth; horses were neighing out beyond the smoke; a thousand voices rose in a far, hoarse shout:

"Hurrah! Preussen!"

The Prussian cavalry were charging the cannon.

Suddenly he heard them close at hand; they loomed everywhere in the smoke, they were among the infantry, among the cannoneers; a tall rider in silver helmet and armour plunged out into the road behind them, his horse staggered, trembled, then man and beast collapsed in a shower of bullets. Others were coming, too, galloping in through the grain stubble and thickets, shaking their long, straight sabres, but the infantry chased them, and fell upon them, clubbing, shooting, stabbing, pulling horses and men to earth. The cannon, which had ceased, began again; the infantry were cheering; trumpets blew persistently, faintly and more faintly. In the road a big, bearded man was crawling on his hands and knees away from a dead horse. His helmet fell off in the dust.

Jack gathered the reins and called to the horse. As the heavy cart moved off, the ground began to tremble again with the shock of on-coming horses, and again, through the swelling tumult, he caught the cry--

"Hurrah! Preussen!"

The Prussian cuirassiers were coming back.

"Is Sir Thorald dying?" he asked of Alixe; "can he live if I lash the horse?"

"Look at him, Jack," she muttered.

"I see; he cannot live. I shall drive slowly. You--you are wounded, are you? there--on the neck--"

"It is his blood on my breast."

XXI

THE WHITE CROSS

At ten o'clock that night Jack stepped from the ballroom to the terrace of the Château Morteyn and listened to the distant murmur of the river Lisse, below the meadow. The day of horror had ended with a dozen dropping shots from the outposts, now lining the banks of the Lisse from the Château de Nesville to Morteyn. The French infantry had been pouring into Morteyn since late afternoon; they had entered the park when he entered, driving his tumbril with its blood-stained burden; they had turned the river into a moat, the meadow into an earthwork, the Château itself into a fortress.

On the concrete terrace beside him a gatling-gun glimmered in the starlight; sentinels leaned on their elbows, sprawling across the parapets; shadowy ranks of sleeping men lay among the shrubbery below, white-faced, exhausted, motionless.

There were low voices from the darkened ballroom, the stir and tinkle of spurred boots, the ring of sabres. Out in the hard macadamized road, cannon were passing into the park by the iron gate; beyond the road masses of men moved in the starlight.

After a moment Jack turned away and entered the house. For the hundredth time he mounted the stairs to Lorraine's bedroom door and listened, holding his breath. He heard nothing--not a cry--not a sob. It had been so from the first, when he had told her that her father lay dead somewhere in the forest of Morteyn.

She had said nothing--she went to her room and sat down on the bed, white and still. Sir Thorald lay in the next room, breathing deeply. Alixe was kneeling beside him, crying silently.

Twice a surgeon from an infantry regiment had come and gone away after a glance at Sir Thorald. A captain came later and asked for a Sister of Mercy.

"She can't go," said Jack, in a low voice. But little Alixe rose, still crying, and followed the captain to the stables, where a dozen mangled soldiers lay in the straw and hay.

It was midnight when she returned to find Jack standing beside Sir Thorald in the dark. When he saw it was Alixe he led her gently into the hall.

"He is conscious now; I will call you when the time comes. Go into that room--Lorraine is there, alone. Ah, go, Alixe; it is charity!--and you wear the white cross--"

"It is dyed scarlet," she whispered through her tears.

He returned to Sir Thorald, who lay moving his restless hands over the sheets and turning his head constantly from side to side.

"Go on," said Jack; "finish what you were saying."

"Will she come?"

"Yes--in time."

Sir Thorald relapsed into a rambling, monotonous account of some military movement near Wissembourg until Jack spoke again:

"Yes--I know; tell me about Alixe."

"Yes--Alixe," muttered Sir Thorald--"is she here? I was wrong; I saw her at Cologne; that was all, Jack--nothing more."

"There is more," said Jack; "tell me."

"Yes, there is more. I saw that--that she loved me. There was a scene--I am not always a beast--I tried not to be. Then--then I found that there was nothing left but to go away--somewhere--and live--without her. It was too late. She knew it--"

"Go on," said Jack.

Suddenly Sir Thorald's voice grew clear.

"Can't you understand?" he asked; "I damned both our souls. She is buying hers back with tears and blood--with the white cross on her heart and death in her eyes! And I am dying here--and she's to drag out the years afterwards--"

He choked; Jack watched him quietly.

Sir Thorald turned his head to him when the coughing ceased.

"She went with a field ambulance; I went, too. I was shot below that vineyard. They told her; that is all. Am I dying?"

Jack did not answer.

"Will you write to Molly?" asked Sir Thorald, drowsily.

"Yes. God help you, Sir Thorald."

"Who cares?" muttered Sir Thorald. "I'm a beast--a dying beast. May I see Alixe?"

"Yes."

"Then tell her to come--now. Soon I'll wish to be alone; that's the way beasts die--alone."

He rambled on again about a battle somewhere in the south, and Jack went to the door and called, "Alixe!"

She came, pallid and weeping, carrying a lighted candle.

Jack took it from her hand and blew out the flame.

"They won't let us have a light; they fear bombardment. Go in now."

"Is he dying?"

"God knows."

"God?" repeated Alixe.

Jack bent and touched the child's forehead with his lips.

"Pray for him," he said; "I shall write his wife to-night."

Alixe went in to the bedside to kneel again and buy back two souls with the agony of her child's heart.

"Pray," she said to Sir Thorald.

"Pray," he repeated.

Jack closed the door.

Up and down the dark hall he wandered, pausing at times to listen to some far rifle-shot and the answering fusillade along the picket-line. Once he stopped an officer on the stairway and asked for a priest, but, remembering that Sir Thorald was Protestant, turned away with a vague apology and resumed his objectless wandering.

At times he fancied he heard cannon, so far away that nothing of sound remained, only a faint jar on the night air. Twice he looked from the window over the vast black forest, thinking of the dead man lying there alone. And then he longed to go to Lorraine; he felt that he must touch her, that his hand on hers might help her somehow.

At last, deadly weary, he sat down on the stairs by her door to try to think out the problems that to-morrow would bring.

His aunt and uncle had gone on to Paris; Lorraine's father was dead and her home had been turned into a fort. Saint-Lys was heavily occupied by the Germans, and they held the railroad also in their possession. It seemed out of the question to stay in Morteyn with Lorraine, for an assault on the Château was imminent. How could he get her to Paris? That was the only place for her now.

He thought, too, of his own danger from the Uhlans. He had told Lorraine, partly because he wished her to understand their position, partly because the story of his capture, trial, and escape led up to the tragedy that he scarcely knew how to break to her. But he had done it, and she, pale as death, had gone silently to her room, motioning him away as he stood awkwardly at the door.

That last glimpse of the room remained in his mind, it obliterated everything else at moments--Lorraine sitting on her bedside, her blue eyes vacant, her face whiter than the pillows.

And so he sat there on the stairs, the dawn creeping into the hallway; and his eyes never left the panels of her door. There was not a sound from within. This for a while frightened him, and again and again he started impulsively towards the door, only to turn back again and watch there in the coming dawn. Presently he remembered that dawn might bring an attack on the Château, and he rose and hurried down-stairs to the terrace where a crowd of officers stood watching the woods through their night-glasses. The general impression among them was that there might be an attack. They yawned and smoked and studied the woods, but they were polite, and answered all his questions with a courteous light-heartedness that jarred on him. He glanced for a moment at the infantry, now moving across the meadow towards the river; he saw troops standing at ease along the park wall, troops sitting in long ranks in the vegetable garden, troops passing the stables, carrying pickaxes and wheeling wheelbarrows piled with empty canvas sacks.

Sleepy-eyed boyish soldiers of the artillery were harnessing the battery horses, rubbing them down, bathing wounded limbs or braiding the tails. The farrier was shoeing a great black horse, who turned its gentle eyes towards the hay-bales piled in front of the stable. One or two slim officers, in pale-blue fur-edged pelisses, strolled among the trampled flower-beds, smoking cigars and watching a line of men shovelling earth into canvas sacks. The odour of soup was in the air; the kitchen echoed with the din of pots and pans. Outside, too, the camp-kettles were steaming and the rattle of gammels came across the lawn.

"Who is in command here?" asked Jack, turning to a handsome dragoon officer who stood leaning on his sabre, the horse-hair crinière blowing about his helmet.

"Why, General Farron!" said the officer in surprise.

"Farron!" repeated Jack; "is he back from Africa, here in France--here at Morteyn?"

"He is at the Château de Nesville," said the officer, smiling. "You seem to know him, monsieur."

"Indeed I do," said Jack, warmly. "Do you think he will come here?"

"I suppose so. Shall I send you word when he arrives?"

Another officer came up, a general, white-haired and sombre.

"Is this the Vicomte de Morteyn?" he asked, looking at Jack.

"His nephew; the vicomte has gone to Paris. My name is Marche," said Jack.

The general saluted him; Jack bowed.

"I regret the military necessity of occupying the Château; the government will indemnify Monsieur le Vicomte--"

Jack held up his hand: "My uncle is an old soldier of France--the government is welcome; I bid you welcome in the name of the Vicomte de Morteyn."

The old general flushed and bowed deeply.

"I thank you in the name of the government. Blood will tell. It is easy, Monsieur Marche, to see that you are the nephew of the Vicomte de Morteyn."

"Monsieur Marche," said the young dragoon officer, respectfully, "is a friend of General Farron."

"I had the honour to be attached as correspondent to his staff--in Oran," said Jack.

The old general held out his hand with a gesture entirely charming.

"I envy General Farron your friendship," he said. "I had a son--perhaps your age. He died--yesterday." After a silence, he said: "There are ladies in the Château?"

"Yes," replied Jack, soberly.

The general turned with a gesture towards the woods. "It is too late to move them; we are, it appears, fairly well walled in. The cellar, in case of bombardment, is the best you can do for them. How many are there?"

"Two, general. One is a Sister of Mercy."

Other officers began to gather on the terrace, glasses persistently focussed on the nearer woods. Somebody called to an officer below the terrace to hurry the cannon.

Jack made his way through the throng of officers to the stairs, mounted them, and knocked at Lorraine's door.

"Is it you--Jack?"

"Yes."

"Come."

He went in.

Lorraine lay on the bed, quiet and pale; it startled him to see her so calm. For an instant he hesitated on the threshold, then went slowly to the bedside. She held out one hand; he took it.

"I cannot cry," she said; "I cannot. Sit beside me, Jack. Listen: I am wicked--I have not a single tear for my father. I have been here--so--all night long. I prayed to weep; I cannot. I understand he is dead--that I shall never again wait for him, watch at his door in the turret, dream he is calling me; I understand that he will never call me again--never again--never. And I cannot weep. Do you hate me? I am tired--so tired, like a child--very young."

She raised her other hand and laid it in his. "I need you," she said; "I am too tired, too young, to be so alone. It is myself I suffer for; think, Jack, myself, in such a moment. I am selfish, I know it. Oh, if I could weep now! Why can I not? I loved my father. And now I can only think of his little machines in the turret and his balloon, and--oh!--I only remember the long days of my life when I waited on the turret stairs hoping he would come out, dreaming he would come some day and take me in his arms and kiss me and hold me close, as I am to you. And now he never will. And I waited all my life!"

"Hush!" he whispered, touching her hair; "you are feverish."

Her head was pressed close to him; his arms held her tightly; she sighed like a restless child.

"Never again--never--for he is dead. And yet I could have lived forever, waiting for him on the turret stairs. Do you understand?"

Holding her strained to his breast he trembled at the fierce hopelessness in her voice. In a moment he recognized that a crisis was coming; that she was utterly irresponsible, utterly beyond reasoning. Like a spectre her loveless childhood had risen and confronted her; and now that there was no longer even hope, she had turned desperately upon herself with the blank despair of a wounded animal. End it all!--that was her one impulse. He felt it already taking shape; she shivered in his arms.

"But there is a God--" he began, fearfully.

She looked up at him with vacant eyes, hot and burning.

He tried again: "I love you, Lorraine--"

Her straight brows knitted and she struggled to free herself.

"Let me go!" she whispered. "I do not wish to live--I can't!--I can't!"

Then he played his last card, and, holding her close, looked straight into her eyes.

"France needs us all," he said.

She grew quiet. Suddenly the warm blood dyed her cheeks. Then, drop by drop, the tears came; her sweet face, wet and flushed, nestled quietly close to his own face.

"We will both live for that," he said; "we will do what we can."

For an hour she lay sobbing her heart out in his arms; and when she was quiet at last he told her how the land lay trembling under the invasion, how their armies had struggled and dwindled and lost ground, how France, humbled, drenched with blood and tears, still stood upright calling to her children. He spoke of the dead, the dying, the mutilated creatures gasping out their souls in the ditches.

"Life is worth living," he said. "If our place is not in the field with the wounded, not in the hospital, not in the prisons where these boys are herded like diseased cattle, then it is perhaps at the shrine's foot. Pray for France, Lorraine, pray and work, for there is work to do."

"There is work; we will go together," she whispered.

"Yes, together. Perhaps we can help a little. Your father, when he died, had the steel box with him. Lorraine, when he is found and is laid to rest, we will take that box to the French lines. The secret must belong to France!"

She was eager enough now; she sat up on the bed and listened with bright, wet eyes while he told her what they two might do for her land of France.

"Dear--dear Jack!" she cried, softly.

But he knew that it was not the love of a maid for a man that parted her lips; it was the love of the land, of her land of Lorraine, that fierce, passionate love of soil that had at last blazed up, purified in the long years of a loveless life. All that she had felt for her father turned to a burning thrill for her country. It is such moments that make children defenders of barricades, that make devils or saints of the innocent. The maid that rode in mail, crowned, holding aloft the banner of the fleur-de-lys, died at the stake; her ashes were the ashes of a saint. The maid who flung her bullets from the barricade, who carried a dagger to the Rue Haxo, who spat in the faces of the line when they shoved her to the wall in the Luxembourg, died too for France. Her soul is the soul of a martyr; but all martyrs are not saints.

For another hour they sat there, planning, devising, eager to begin their predestined work. They spoke of the dead, too, and Lorraine wept at last for her father.

"There was a Sister of Mercy here," she said; "I saw her. I could not speak to her. Later I knew it was Alixe. You called her?"

"Yes."

"Where is she?"

"Shall I speak to her?"

He went out into the hall and tapped at the door of the next room.

"Alixe?"

"Yes--Jack."

He entered.

Sir Thorald lay very still under the sheets, the crucifix on his breast. At first Jack thought he was dead, but the slight motion of the chest under the sheets reassured him. He turned to Alixe:

"Go for a minute and comfort Lorraine," he whispered. "Go, my child."

"I--I cannot--"

"Go," said Sir Thorald, in a distinct voice.

When she had gone, Jack bent over Sir Thorald. A great pity filled him, and he touched the half-opened hand with his own.

Sir Thorald looked up at him wistfully.

"I am not worth it," he said.

"Yes, we all are worth it."

"I am not," gasped Sir Thorald. "Jack, you are good. Do you believe, at least, that I loved her?"

"Yes, if you say so."

"I do--in the shadow of death."

Jack was silent.

"I never loved--before," said Sir Thorald.

In the stillness that followed Jack tried to comprehend the good or evil in this stricken man. He could not; he only knew that a great love that a man might bear a woman made necessary a great sacrifice if that love were unlawful. The greater the love the more certain the sacrifice--self-sacrifice on the altar of unselfish love, for there is no other kind of love that man may bear for woman.

It wearied Jack to try to think it out. He could not; he only knew that it was not his to judge or to condemn.

"Will you give me your hand?" asked Sir Thorald.

Jack laid his hand in the other's feverish one.

"Don't call her," he said, distinctly; "I am dying."

Presently he withdrew his hand and turned his face to the wall.

For a long time Jack sat there, waiting. At last he spoke: "Sir Thorald?"

But Sir Thorald had been dead for an hour.

When Alixe entered Jack took her slim, childish hands and looked into her eyes. She understood and went to her dead, laying down her tired little head on the sheeted breast.

XXII

A DOOR IS LOCKED

Lorraine stood on the terrace beside the brass gatling-gun, both hands holding to Jack's arm, watching the soldiers stuffing the windows of the Château with mattresses, quilts, and bedding of all kinds.

A stream of engineers was issuing from the hallway, carrying tables, chairs, barrels, and chests to the garden below, where other soldiers picked them up and bore them across the lawn to the rear of the house.

"They are piling all the furniture they can get against the gate in the park wall," said Jack; "come out to the kitchen-garden."

She went with him, still holding to his arm. Across the vegetable garden a barricade of furniture--sofas, chairs, and wardrobes--lay piled against the wooden gate of the high stone wall. Engineers were piercing the wall with crowbars and pickaxes, loosening the cement, dragging out huge blocks of stone to make embrasures for three cannon that stood with their limbers among the broken bell-glasses and cucumber-frames in the garden.

A ladder lay against the wall, and on it was perched an officer, who rested his field-glasses across the tiled top and stood studying the woods. Below him a general and half a dozen officers watched the engineers hacking at the wall; a long, double line of infantry crouched behind them, the bugler kneeling, glancing anxiously at his captain, who stood talking to a fat sub-officer in capote and boots.

Artillerymen were gathered about the ammunition-chests, opening the lids and carrying shell and shrapnel to the wall; the balconies of the Château were piled up with breastworks of rugs, boxes, and sacks of earth. Here and there a rifleman stood, his chassepot resting on the iron railing, his face turned towards the woods.

"They are coming," said a soldier, calling back to a comrade, who only laughed and passed on towards the kitchen, loaded down with sacks of flour.

A restless movement passed through the kneeling battalion of infantry.

"Fiche moi la paix, hein!" muttered a lieutenant, looking resentfully at a gossiping farrier. Another lieutenant drew his sword, and wiped it on the sleeve of his jacket.

"Are they coming?" asked Lorraine.

"I don't know. Watch that officer on the wall. He seems to see nothing yet. Don't you think you had better go to the rear of the house now?"

"No, not unless you do."

"I will, then."

"No, stay here. I am not afraid. Where is Alixe?"

"With the wounded men in the stable. They have hoisted the red cross over the barn; did you notice?"

Before she could answer, one of the soldiers on the balcony of the Château fired. Another rose from behind a mattress and fired also; then half a dozen shots rang out, and the smoke whirled up over the roof of the house. The officer on the ladder was motioning to the group of officers below; already the artillerymen were running the three cannon forward to the port-holes that had been pierced in the park wall.

"Come," said Jack.

"Not yet--I am not frightened."

A loud explosion enveloped the wall in sulphurous clouds, and a cannon jumped back in recoil. The cannoneers swarmed around it, there was a quick movement of a sponger, an order, a falling into place of rigid artillerymen, then bang! and another up-rush of smoke. And now the other cannon joined in--crash! bang!--and the garden swam in the swirling fog. Infantry, too, were firing all along the wall, and on the other side of the house the rippling crash of the gatling-gun rolled with the rolling volleys. Jack led Lorraine to the rear of the Château, but she refused to stay, and he reluctantly followed her into the house.

From every mattress-stuffed window the red-legged soldiers were firing out across the lawn towards the woods; the smoke drifted back into the house in thin shreds that soon filled the rooms with a blue haze.

Suddenly something struck the chandelier and shattered it to the gilt candle-sockets. Lorraine looked at it, startled, but another bullet whizzed into the room, starring the long mirror, and another knocked the plaster from the fireplace. Jack had her out of the room in a second, and presently they found themselves in the cellar, the very cement beneath their feet shaking under the tremendous shocks of the cannon.

"Wait for me. Do you promise, Lorraine?"

"Yes."

He hurried up to the terrace again, and out across the gravel drive to the stable.

"Alixe!" he called.

She came quietly to him, her arms full of linen bandages. There was nothing of fear or terror in her cheeks, nothing even of grief now, but her eyes transfigured her face, and he scarcely knew it.

"What can I do?" he asked.

"Nothing. The wounded are quiet. Is there water in the well?"

He brought her half a dozen buckets, one after another, and set them side by side in the harness-room, where three or four surgeons lounged around two kitchen-tables, on which sponges, basins, and cases of instruments lay. There was a sickly odour of ether in the air, mingled with the rank stench of carbolic acid.

"Lorraine is in the cellar. Do you need her? Surely not--when I am ready," he said.

"No; go and stay with her. If I need you I will send."

He could scarcely hear her in the tumult and din, but he understood and nodded, watching her busy with her lint and bandages. As he turned to go, the first of the wounded, a mere boy, was brought in on the shoulders of a comrade. Jack heard him scream as they laid him on the table; then he went soberly away to the cellar where Lorraine sat, her face in her hands.

"We are holding the Château," he said. "Will you stay quietly for a little while longer, if I go out again?"

"If you wish," she said.

He longed to take her in his arms. He did not; he merely said, "Wait for me," and went away again out into the smoke.

From the upper-story windows, where he had climbed, he could see to the edge of the forest. Already three columns of men had started out from the trees across the meadow towards the park wall. They advanced slowly and steadily, firing as they came on. Somewhere, in the smoke, a Prussian band was playing gayly, and Jack thought of the Bavarians at the Geisberg, and their bands playing as the men fell like leaves in the Château gardens.

He had his field-glasses with him, and he fixed them on the advancing columns. They were Bavarians, after all--there was no mistaking the light-blue uniforms and fur-crested helmets. And now he made out their band, plodding stolidly along, trombones and bass-drums wheezing and banging away in the rifle-smoke; he could even see the band-master swinging his halberd forward.

Suddenly the nearest column broke into a heavy run, cheering hoarsely. The other columns came on with a rush; the band halted, playing them in at the death with a rollicking quickstep; then all was blotted out in the pouring cannon-smoke. Flash on flash the explosions followed each other, lighting the gloom with a wavering yellow glare, and on the terrace the gatling whirred and spluttered its slender streams of flame, while the treble crash of the chassepots roared accompaniment.

Once or twice Jack thought he heard the rattle of their little harsh, flat drums, but he could see them no longer; they were in that smoke-pall somewhere, coming on towards the park wall.

Bugles began to sound--French bugles--clear and sonorous. Across the lawn by the river a battalion of French infantry were running, firing as they ran. He saw them settle at last like quail among the stubble, curling up and crouching in groups and bevies, alert heads raised. Then the firing rippled along the front, and the lawn became gray with smoke.

As he went down the stairs and into the garden he heard the soldiers saying that the charge had been checked. The wounded were being borne towards the barn, long lines of them, heads and limbs hanging limp. A horse in the garden was ending a death-struggle among the cucumber-frames, and the battery-men were cutting the traces to give him free play. Upon the roof a thin column of smoke and sparks rose, where a Prussian shell--the first as yet--had fallen and exploded in the garret. Some soldiers were knocking the sparks from the roof with the butts of their rifles.

When he went into the cellar again Lorraine was pacing restlessly along the wine-bins.

"I cannot stay here," she said. "Jack, get some bottles of brandy and come to the barn. The wounded will need them."

"You cannot go out. I will take them."

"No, I shall go."

"I ask you not to."

"Let me, Jack," she said, coming up to him--"with you."

He could not make her listen; she went with him, her slender arms loaded with bottles. The shells were falling in the garden now; one burst and flung a shower of earth and glass over them.

"Hurry!" he said. "Are you crazy, Lorraine, to come out into this?"

"Don't scold, Jack," she whispered.

When she entered the stable he breathed more freely. He watched her face narrowly, but she did not blanch at the sickening spectacle of the surgeons' tables.

They placed their bottles of brandy along the side of a box-stall, and stood together watching the file of wounded passing in at the door.

"They do not need us here, yet," he said. "I wonder where Alixe is?"

"There is a Sister of Mercy out on the skirmish-line across the lawn," said a soldier of the hospital corps, pointing with bloody hands towards the smoke-veiled river.

Jack looked at Lorraine in utter despair.

"I must go; she can't stay there," he muttered.

"Yes, you must go," repeated Lorraine. "She will be shot."

"Will you wait here?" he asked.

"Yes."

So he went away, thinking bitterly that she did not care whether he lived or died--that she let him leave her without a word of fear, of kindness. Then, for the first time, he realized that she had never, after all, been touched by his devotion; that she had never understood, nor cared to understand, his love for her. He walked out across the smoky lawn, the din of the rifles in his ears, the bitterness of death in his heart. He knew he was going into danger--that he was already in peril. Bullets whistled through the smoke as he advanced towards the firing-line, where, in the fog, dim figures were outlined here and there. He passed an officer, standing with bared sword, watching his men digging up the sod and piling it into low breastworks. He went on, passing others, sometimes two soldiers bearing a wounded man, now and then a maimed creature writhing on the grass or hobbling away to the rear. The battle-line lay close to him now--long open ranks of men, flat on their stomachs, firing into the smoke across the river-bank. Their officers loomed up in the gloom, some leaning quietly back on their sword-hilts, some pacing to and fro, smoking, or watchfully steadying the wearied men.

Almost at once he saw Alixe. She was standing beside a tall wounded officer, giving him something to drink from a tin cup.

"Alixe," said Jack, "this is not your place."

She looked at him tranquilly as the wounded man was led away by a soldier of the hospital corps.

"It is my place."

"No," he said, violently, "you are trying to find death here!"

"I seek nothing," she said, in a gentle, tired voice; "let me go."

"Come back. Alixe--your brother is alive."

She looked at him impassively.

"My brother?"

"Yes."

"I have no brother."

He understood and chafed inwardly.

"Come, Alixe," he urged; "for Heaven's sake, try to live and forget--"

"I have nothing to forget--everything to remember. Let me pass." She touched the blood-stained cross on her breast. "Do you not see? That was white once. So was my soul."

"It is now," he said, gently. "Come back."

A wounded man somewhere in the smoke called, "Water! water! In the name of God!--my sister--"

"I am coming!" called Alixe, clearly.

"To me first! Hasten, my sister!" groaned another.

"Patience, children--I come!" called Alixe.

With a gesture she passed Jack; a flurry of smoke hid her. The pungent powder-fog made his eyes dim; his ears seemed to split with the terrific volley firing.

He turned away and went back across the lawn, only to stop at the well in the garden, fill two buckets, and plod back to the firing-line again. He found plenty to do there; he helped Alixe, following her with his buckets where she passed among the wounded, the stained cross on her breast. Once a bullet struck a pail full of water, and he held his finger in the hole until the water was all used up. Twice he heard cheering and the splash of cavalry in the shallow river, but they seemed to be beaten off again, and he went about his business, listless, sombre, a dead weight at his heart.

He had been kneeling beside a wounded man for some minutes when he became conscious that the firing had almost ceased. Bugles were sounding near the Château; long files of troops passed him in the lifting smoke; officers shouted along the river-bank.

He rose to his feet and looked around for Alixe. She was not in sight. He walked towards the river-bank, watching for her, but he could not find her.

"Did you see a Sister of Mercy pass this way?" he asked an officer who sat on the grass, smoking and bandaging his foot.

A soldier passing, using his rifle as a crutch, said: "I saw a Sister of Mercy. She went towards the Château. I think she was hurt."

"Hurt!"

"I heard somebody say so." Jack turned and hastened towards the stables. He crossed the lawn, threaded his way among the low sod breastworks, where the infantry lay grimy and exhausted, and entered the garden. She was not there. He hurried to the stables; Lorraine met him, holding a basin and a sponge.

"Where is Alixe?" he asked.

"She is not here," said Lorraine. "Has she been hurt?"

"I don't know."

He looked at her a moment, then turned away, coldly. On the terrace the artillerymen were sponging the blood from the breech of their gatling where some wretch's brains had been spattered by a shell-fragment. They told him that a Sister of Mercy had passed into the house ten minutes before; that she walked as though very tired, but did not appear to have been hurt.

"She is up-stairs," he thought. "She must not stay there alone with Sir Thorald." And he climbed the stairs and knocked softly at the door of the death-chamber.

"Alixe," he said, gently, opening the door, "you must not stay here."

She was kneeling at the bedside, her face buried on the breast of the dead man.

"Alixe," he said, but his voice broke in spite of him, and he went to her and touched her.

Very tenderly he raised her head, looked into her eyes, then quietly turned away.

Outside the door he met Lorraine.

"Don't go in," he murmured.

She looked fearfully up into his face.

"Yes," he said, "she was shot through the body."

Then he closed the door and turned the key on the outside, leaving the dead to the dead.

XXIII

LORRAINE SLEEPS

The next day the rain fell in torrents; long, yellow streams of water gushed from pipe and culvert, turning the roads to lakes of amber and the trodden lawns to sargasso seas.

Not a shot had been fired since twilight of the day before, although on the distant hills Uhlans were seen racing about, gathering in groups, or sitting on their horses in solitary observation of the Château.

Out on the meadows, between the park wall and the fringe of nearer forest, the Bavarian dead lay, dotting the green pelouse with blots of pale blue; the wounded had been removed to the cover of the woods.

Around the Château the sallow-faced fantassins slopped through the mire, the artillery trains lay glistening under their waterproof coverings, the long, slim cannon in the breeches dripped with rain. Bright blotches of rust, like brilliant fungi, grew and spread from muzzle to vent. These were rubbed away at times by stiff-limbed soldiers, swathed to the eyes in blue overcoats.

The line of battle stretched from the Château Morteyn, parallel with the river and the park wall, to the Château de Nesville; and along this line the officers were riding all day, muffled to the chin in their great-coats, crimson caps soaked, rain-drops gathering in brilliant beads under the polished visors. That they expected a shelling was evident, for the engineers were at work excavating pits and burrows, and the infantry were filling sacks with earth, while in the Château itself preparations were in progress for the fighting of fire.

The white flag with the red-cross centre hung limp and drenched over the stables and barns. In the corn-field beyond, long trenches were being dug for the dead. Already two such trenches had been filled and covered over with dirt; and at the head of each soldier's grave a bayonet or sabre was driven into the ground for a head-stone.

Early that morning, while the rain drove into the ground in one sheeted downpour, they buried Sir Thorald and little Alixe, side by side, on the summit of a mound overlooking the river Lisse. Jack drove the tumbril; four soldiers of the line followed. It was soon over; the mellow bugle sounded a brief "lights out," the linesmen presented arms. Then Jack mounted the cart and drove back, his head on his breast, the rain driving coldly in his face. Some officers came later with a rough wooden cross and a few field flowers. They hammered the cross deep into the mud between Sir Thorald and little Alixe. Later still Jack returned with a spade and worked for an hour, shaping the twin mounds. Before he finished he saw Lorraine climbing the hill. Two wreaths of yellow gorse hung from one arm, interlaced like thorn crowns; and when she came up, Jack, leaning silently on his spade, saw that her fair hands were cut and bleeding from plaiting the thorn-covered blossoms.

They spoke briefly, almost coldly. Lorraine hung the two wreaths over the head-piece of the cross and, kneeling, signed herself.

When she rose Jack replaced his cap, but said nothing. They stood side by side, looking out across the woods, where, behind a curtain of mist and rain, the single turret of the Château de Nesville was hidden.

She seemed restless and preoccupied, and he, answering aloud her unasked question, said, "I am going to search the forest to-day. I cannot bear to leave you, but it must be done, for your sake and for the sake of France."

She answered: "Yes, it must be done. I shall go with you."

"You cannot," he said; "there is danger in the forest."

"You are going?"

"Yes."

They said nothing more for a moment or two. He was thinking of Alixe and her love for Sir Thorald. Who would have thought it could have turned out so? He looked down at the river Lisse, where, under the trees of the bank, they had all sat that day--a day that already seemed legendary, so far, so far in the mist-hung landscape of the past. He seemed to hear Molly Hesketh's voice, soft, ironical, upbraiding Sir Thorald; he seemed to see them all there in the sunshine--Dorothy, Rickerl, Cecil, Betty Castlemaine--he even saw himself strolling up to them, gun under arm, while Sir Thorald waved his wine-cup and bantered him.

He looked at the river. The green row-boat lay on the bank, keel up, shattered by a shell; the trees were covered with yellow, seared foliage that dropped continually into the water; the river itself was a canal of mud. And, as he looked, a dead man, face under water, sped past, caught on something, drifted, spun giddily in an eddy, washed to and fro, then floated on under the trees.

"You will catch cold here in the rain," he said, abruptly.

"You also, Jack."

They walked a few steps towards the house, then stopped and looked at each other.

"You are drenched," he said; "you must go to your room and lie down."

"I will--if you wish," she answered.

He drew her rain-cloak around her, buttoned the cape and high collar, and settled the hood on her head. She looked up under her pointed hood.

"Do you care so much for me?" she asked, listlessly.

"Will you give me the right--always--forever?"

"Do you mean that--that you love me?"

"I have always loved you."

Still she looked up at him from the shadow of her hood.

"I love you, Lorraine."

One arm was around her now, and with the other hand he held both of hers.

She spoke, her eyes on his.

"I loved you once. I did not know it then. It was the first night there on the terrace--when they were dancing. I loved you again--after our quarrel, when you found me by the river. Again I loved you, when we were alone in the Château and you came to see me in the library."

He drew her to him, but she resisted.