Lorraine

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."

CHAPTER 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.