Lorraine

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.