Lorraine Part 54

The Sister started a little.

"I will stay," she murmured. "Send this despatch when you go out.

Can he live?"

They whispered together a moment, stepping softly to the door of the room where Lorraine lay.

"It can't be helped now," said the surgeon, looking at Lorraine; "she'll be well enough by to-morrow; she must stay with you. The chances are that he will die."

The trample of the White Cuira.s.siers in the street outside filled the room; the serried squadrons thundered past, steel ringing on steel, horses neighing, trumpets sounding the "Royal March."

Lorraine's eyes unclosed.

"Jack!"

There was no answer.

The surgeon whispered to the Sister of Mercy: "Don't forget to hang out the pest flag."

"Jack! Jack!" wailed Lorraine, sitting up in bed. Through the tangled ma.s.ses of her heavy hair, gilded by the morning sunshine, her eyes, bright with fever, roamed around the room, startled, despairing. Under the window the White Cuira.s.siers were singing as they rode:

"Flieg', Adler, flieg'! Wir sturmen nach, Ein einig Volk in Waffen, Wir sturmen nach ob tausendfach Des Todes Pforten Klaffen!

Und fallen wir, flieg', Adler, flieg'!

Aus unserm Blute machst der Sieg!

Vorwarts!

Flieg', Adler, flieg'!

Victoria!

Victoria!

Mit uns ist Gott!"

Terrified, turning her head from side to side, Lorraine stretched out her hands. She tried to speak, but her ears were filled with the deep voices shouting the splendid battle-hymn--

"Fly, Eagle! fly!

With us is G.o.d!"

She crept out of bed, her bare feet white with cold, her bare arms flushed and burning. Blinded by the blaze of the rising sun, she felt her way around the room, calling, "Jack! Jack!" The window was open; she crept to it. The street was a surging, scintillating torrent of steel.

"G.o.d with us!"

The White Cuira.s.siers shook their glittering sabres; the melancholy trumpet's blast swept skyward; the standards flapped.

Suddenly the stony street trembled with the outcrash of drums; the cuira.s.siers halted, the steel-mailed squadrons parted right and left; a carriage drove at a gallop through the opened ranks.

Lorraine leaned from the window; the officer in the carriage looked up.

As the fallen Emperor's eyes met Lorraine's, she stretched out both little bare arms and cried: "Vive la France!"--and he was gone to his captivity, the White Cuira.s.siers galloping on every side.

The Sister of Mercy opened the door behind, calling her.

"He is dying," she said. "He is in here. Come quickly!"

Lorraine turned her head. Her eyes were sweet and serene, her whole pale face transfigured.

"He will live," she said. "I am here."

"It is the pest!" muttered the Sister.

Lorraine glided into the hall and unclosed the door of the silent room.

He opened his eyes.

"There is no death!" she whispered, her face against his. "There is neither death nor sorrow nor dying."

The clamour in the street died out; the wind was still; the pest flag under the window hung motionless.

He sighed; his eyes closed.

She stretched out beside him, her body against his, her bare arms around his neck.

His heart fluttered; stopped; fluttered; was silent; moved once again; ceased.

"Jack!"

Again his heart stirred--or was it her own?

When the morning sun broke over the ramparts of Sedan she fell asleep in his arms, lulled by the pulsations of his heart.

x.x.xI

THE PROPHECY OF LORRAINE

When the Vicomte and Madame de Morteyn arrived in Sedan from Brussels the last of the French prisoners had been gone a week; the foul city was swept clean; the corpse-choked river no longer flung its dead across the shallows of the island of Glaires; the ca.n.a.l was untroubled by the ghastly freight of death that had collected like logs on a boom below the village of Iges.

All day the tramp of Prussian patrols echoed along the stony streets; all day the sinister outburst of the hoa.r.s.e Bavarian bugles woke the echoes behind the ramparts. Red Cross flags drooped in the sunshine from churches, from banks, from every barrack, every depot, every public building. The pest flags waved gaily over the Asylum and the little Museum. A few appeared along the Avenue Philippoteaux, others still fluttered on the Gothic church and the convent across the Viaduc de Torcy. Three miles away the ruins of the village of Bazeilles lay in the bright September sunshine. Bavarian soldiers in greasy corvee lumbered among the charred chaos searching for their dead.

The plain of Illy, the heights of La Moncelle, Daigny, Givonne, and Frenois were vast cemeteries. Dredging was going on along the river, whither the curious small boys of Sedan betook themselves and stayed from morning till night watching the recovering of rusty sabres, bayonets, rifles, cannon, and often more grewsome flotsam. It was probably the latter that drew the small boys like flies; neither the one nor the other are easily glutted with horrors.

The silver trumpets of the Saxon Riders were chorusing the noon call from the Porte de Paris when a long train crept into the Sedan station and pulled up in the sunshine, surrounded by a cordon of Hanover Riflemen. One by one the pa.s.sengers pa.s.sed into the station, where pa.s.sports were shown and apathetic commissaires took charge of the baggage.

There were no hacks, no conveyances of any kind, so the tall, white-bearded gentleman in black, who stood waiting anxiously for his pa.s.sport, gave his arm to an old lady, heavily veiled, and bowed down with the sudden age that great grief brings. Beside her walked a young girl, also in deep mourning.

A man on crutches directed them to the Place Turenne, hobbling after them to murmur his thanks for the piece of silver the girl slipped into his hands.

"The number on the house is 31," he repeated; "the pest flag is no longer outside."

"The pest?" murmured the old man under his breath.

At that moment a young girl came out of the crowded station, looking around her anxiously.