Lorraine Part 51

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. h.e.l.lo! 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 ragout 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 ragout, 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 Hotel 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 grat.i.tude 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 repet.i.tion 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, pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sed--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 fanta.s.sins 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 pa.s.s," 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.