Lorraine Part 39

"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, pa.s.sionate 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 rea.s.sured 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 bra.s.s gatling-gun, both hands holding to Jack's arm, watching the soldiers stuffing the windows of the Chateau 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.