Lorraine Part 23

"No, miles away yet."

"Did you speak to papa? Did he send word to me? Does he want me?"

He found it hard to tell her what message her father had sent, but he did.

"I am to go to Morteyn? Oh, I cannot! I cannot! Papa will be alone here!" she said, aghast.

"Perhaps you had better see him," he said, almost bitterly.

She hurried away up the stairs; he heard her little eager feet on the stone steps that led to the turret; climbing up, up, up, until the sound was lost in the upper stories of the house. He went out to the stables and ordered the dog-cart and a wagon for her trunks. He did not fear that this order might be premature, for he thought he had not misjudged the Marquis de Nesville. And he had not, for, before the cart was ready, Lorraine, silent, pale, tearless, came noiselessly down the stairs holding her little cloak over one arm.

"I am to stay a week," she said; "he does not want me." She added, hastily, "He is so busy and worried, and there is much to be done, and if the Prussians should come he must hide the balloon and the box of plans and formula--"

"I know," said Jack, tenderly; "it will lift a weight from his mind when he knows you are safe with my aunt."

"He is so good, he thinks only of my safety," faltered Lorraine.

"Come," said Jack, in a voice that sounded husky; "the horse is waiting; I am to drive you. Your maid will follow with the trunks this evening. Are you ready? Give me your cloak. There--now, are you ready?"

"Yes."

He aided her to mount the dog-cart--her light touch was on his arm. He turned to the groom at the horse's head, sprang to the seat, and nodded. Lorraine leaned back and looked up at the turret where her father was.

"Allons! En route!" cried Jack, cheerily, snapping his ribbon-decked whip.

At the same instant a horseless cavalryman, gray with dust and dripping with blood and sweat, staggered out on the road from among the trees. He turned a deathly face to theirs, stopped, tottered, and called out--"Jack!"

"Georges!" cried Jack, amazed.

"Give me a horse, for G.o.d's sake!" he gasped. "I've just killed mine. I--I must get to Metz by midnight--"

XIII

AIDE-DE-CAMP

Lorraine and Jack sprang to the road from opposite sides of the vehicle; Georges' drawn face was stretched into an attempt at a smile which was ghastly, for the stiff, black blood that had caked in a dripping ridge from his forehead to his chin cracked and grew moist and scarlet, and his hollow cheeks whitened under the coat of dust. But he drew himself up by an effort and saluted Lorraine with a punctilious deference that still had a touch of jauntiness to it--the jauntiness of a youthful cavalry officer in the presence of a pretty woman.

Old Pierre, who had witnessed the episode from the butler's window, came limping down the path, holding a gla.s.s and a carafe of brandy.

"You are right, Pierre," said Jack. "Georges, drink it up, old fellow. There, now you can stand on those pins of yours. What's that--a sabre cut?"

"No, a scratch from an Uhlan's lance-tip. Cut like a razor, didn't it? I've just killed my horse, trying to get over a ditch.

Can you give me a mount, Jack?"

"There isn't a horse in the stable that can carry you to Metz,"

said Lorraine, quietly; "Diable is lame and Porthos is not shod.

I can give you my pony."

"Can't you get a train?" asked Jack, astonished.

"No, the Uhlans are in our rear, everywhere. The railroad is torn up, the viaducts smashed, the wires cut, and general deuce to pay. I ran into an Uhlan or two--you notice it perhaps," he added, with a grim smile. "Could you drive me to Morteyn? Do you think the vicomte would lend me a horse?"

"Of course he would," said Jack; "come, then--there is room for three," with an anxious glance at Lorraine.

"Indeed, there is always room for a soldier of France!" cried Lorraine. At the same moment she instinctively laid one hand lightly on Jack's arm. Their eyes spoke for an instant--the generous appeal that shone in hers was met and answered by a response that brought the delicate colour into her cheeks.

"Let me hang on behind," pleaded Georges--"I'm so dirty, you know." But they bundled him into the seat between them, and Jack touched his beribboned whip to the horse's ears, and away they went speeding over the soft forest road in the cool of the fading day; old Pierre, bottle and gla.s.s in hand, gaping after them and shaking his gray head.

Jack began to fire volleys of questions at the young hussar as soon as they entered the forest, and poor Georges replied as best he could.

"I don't know very much about it; I was detached yesterday and taken on General Douay's staff. We were at Wissembourg--you know that little town on the Lauter where the vineyards cover everything and the mountains are pretty steep to the north and west. All I know is this: about six o'clock this morning our outposts on the hills to the south began banging way in a great panic. They had been attacked, it seems, by the 4th Bavarian Division, Count Bothmer's, I believe. Our posts fell back to the town, where the 1st Turcos reinforced them at the railroad station. The artillery were at it on our left, too, and there was a most infernal racket. The next thing I saw was those crazy Bavarians, with their little flat drums beating, and their fur-crested helmets all bobbing, marching calmly up the Geisberg.

Jack, those fellows went through the vineyards like fiends astride a tempest. That was at two o'clock. The Prussian Crown-Prince rode into the town an hour before; we couldn't hold it--Heaven knows why. That's all I saw--except the death of our general."

"General Douay?" cried Lorraine, horrified.

"Yes, he was killed about ten o'clock in the morning. The town was stormed through the Hagenauer Thor by the Bavarians. After that we still held the Geisberg and the Chateau. You should have seen it when we left it. I'll say it was a butcher's shambles.

I'd say more if Mademoiselle de Nesville were not here." He was trying hard to bear up--to speak lightly of the frightful calamity that had overwhelmed General Abel Douay and his entire division.

"The fight at the Chateau was worth seeing," said Georges, airily. "They went at it with drums beating and flags flying. Oh, but they fell like leaves in the gardens, there--the paths and shrubbery were littered with them, dead, dying, gasping, crawling about, like singed flies under a lamp. We had them beaten, too, if it hadn't been for their General von Kirchbach. He stood in the garden--he'd been hit, too--and bawled for the artillery.

Then they came at us again in three divisions. Where they got all their regiments, I don't know, but their 7th Grenadier Guards were there, and their 47th, 58th, 59th, 80th, and 87th regiments of the line, not counting a Jager battalion and no end of artillery. They carried the Three Poplars--a hill--and they began devastating everything. We couldn't face their fire--I don't know why, Jack; it breaks my heart when I say it, but we couldn't hold them. Then they began howling for cannon, and, of course, that settled the Chateau. The town was in flames when I left."

After a silence, Jack asked him whether it was a rout or a retreat.

"We're falling back in very decent order," said Georges, eagerly--"really, we are. Of course, there were some troops that got into a sort of panic--the Uhlans are annoying us considerably.

The Turcos fought well. We fairly riddled the 58th Prussians--their king's regiment, you know. It was the 2d Bavarian Corps that did for us. We will meet them later."

"Where are you going--to Metz?" inquired Jack, soberly.

"Yes; I've a packet for Bazaine--I don't know what. They're trying to reach him by wire, but those confounded Uhlans are destroying everything. My dear fellow, you need not worry; we have been checked, that's all. Our promenade to Berlin is postponed in deference to King Wilhelm's earnest wishes."

They all tried to laugh a little, and Jack chirped to his horse, but even that sober animal seemed to feel the depression, for he responded in fits and starts and jerks that were unpleasant and jarring to Georges' aching head.

The sky had become covered with bands of wet-looking clouds, the leaves of the forest stirred noiselessly on their stems. Along the river willows quivered and aspens turned their leaves white side to the sky. In the querulous notes of the birds there was a prophecy of storms, the river muttered among its hollows of floods and tempests.

Suddenly a great sombre raven sailed to the road, alighted, sidled back, and sat fearlessly watching them.

Lorraine s.h.i.+vered and nestled closer to Jack.

"Oh," she murmured, "I never saw one before--except in pictures."

"They belong in the snow--they have no business here," said Jack; "they always make me think of those pictures of Russia--the retreat of the Grand Army, you know."

"Wolves and ravens," said Lorraine, in a low voice; "I know why they come to us here in France--Monsieur Marche, did I not tell you that day in the carrefour?"

"Yes," he answered; "do you really think you are a prophetess?"