Complete weird tales of.., p.58
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 58
“No.”
“Listen — ah, listen!”
“It is the noise of the river.”
“The river? How black it is! Hark!”
“The wind.”
“Hark!”
“The wind again—”
“Look!” She seized his arm frantically. “Look! Oh, what — what was that?”
The report of a gun, faint but clear, came to their ears. Something flashed from the lighted windows of the Château de Nesville — another flash broke out — another — then three dull reports sounded, and the night wind spread the echoes broadcast among the wooded hills.
For a second she stood beside him, white, rigid, speechless; then her little hand crushed his arm and she pushed him violently towards the horses.
“Mount!” she cried; “ride! ride!”
Scarcely conscious of what he did, he backed one of the horses, seized the gathered bridle and mane, and flung himself astride. The horse reared, backed again, and stood stamping. At the same instant he swung about in his saddle and cried, “Go back to the house!”
But she was already in the saddle, guiding the other horse, her silken skirts crushed, her hair flying, sawing at the bridle-bit with gloved fingers. The wind lifted the cloak on her shoulders, her little satin slipper sought one stirrup.
“Ride!” she gasped, and lashed her horse.
He saw her pass him in a whirl of silken draperies streaming in the wind; the swan’s-down cloak hid her body like a cloud. In a second he was galloping at her bridle-rein; and both horses, nose to nose and neck to neck, pounded across the gravel drive, wheeled, leaped forward, and plunged down the soft wood road, straight into the heart of the forest. The lace from her corsage fluttered in the air; the lilies at her breast fell one by one, strewing the road with white blossoms. The wind loosened her heavy hair to the neck, seized it, twisted it, and flung it out on the wind. Under the clusters of ribbon on her shoulders there was a gleam of ivory; her long gloves slipped to the wrists; her hair whipped the rounded arms, bare and white below the riotous ribbons, snapping and fluttering on her shoulders; her cloak unclasped at the throat and whirled to the ground, trampled into the forest mould.
They struck a man in the darkness; they heard him shriek; the horses staggered an instant, that was all, except a gasp from the girl, bending with whitened cheeks close to her horse’s mane.
“Look out! A lantern! — close ahead!” panted Marche.
The sharp crack of a revolver cut him short, his horse leaped forward, the blood spurting from its neck.
“Are you hit?” he cried.
“No! no! Ride!”
Again and again, but fainter and fainter, came the crack! crack! of the revolver, like a long whip snapped in the wind.
“Are you hit?” he asked again.
“Yes, it is nothing! Ride!”
In the darkness and confusion of the plunging horses he managed to lean over to her where she bent in her saddle; and, on one white, round shoulder, he saw the crimson welt of a bullet, from which the blood was welling up out of the satin skin.
And now, in the gloom, the park wall loomed up along the river, and he shouted for the lodge-keeper, rising in his stirrups; but the iron gate swung wide, and the broad, empty avenue stretched up to the Château.
They galloped up to the door; he slipped from his horse, swung Lorraine to the ground, and sprang up the low steps. The door was open, the long hall brilliantly lighted.
“It is I — Lorraine!” cried the girl. A tall, bearded man burst in from a room on the left, clutching a fowling-piece.
“Lorraine! They’ve got the box! The balloon secret was in it!” he groaned; “they are in the house yet—” He stared wildly at Marche, then at his daughter. His face was discoloured with bruises, his thick, blond hair fell in disorder across steel-blue eyes that gleamed with fury.
Almost at the same moment there came a crash of glass, a heavy fall from the porch, and then a shot.
In an instant Marche was at the door; he saw a game-keeper raise his gun and aim at him, and he shrank back as the report roared in his ears.
“You fool!” he shouted; “don’t shoot at me! drop your gun and follow!” He jumped to the ground and started across the garden where a dark figure was clutching the wall and trying to climb to the top. He was too late — the man was over; but he followed, jumped, caught the tiled top, and hurled himself headlong into the bushes below.
Close to him a man started from the thicket, and ran down the wet road — splash! splash! slop! slop! through the puddles; but Marche caught him and dragged him down into the mud, where they rolled and thrashed and spattered and struck each other. Twice the man tore away and struggled to his feet, and twice Marche fastened to his knees until the huge, lumbering body swayed and fell again. It might have gone hard with Jack, for the man suddenly dropped the steel box he was clutching to his breast and fell upon the young fellow with a sullen roar. His knotted, wiry fingers had already found Jack’s throat; he lifted the young fellow’s head and strove to break his neck. Then, in a flash, he leaped back and lifted a heavy stone from the wall; at the same instant somebody fired at him from the wall; he wheeled and sprang into the woods.
That was all Jack Marche knew until a lantern flared in his eyes, and he saw Lorraine’s father, bright-eyed, feverish, dishevelled, beside him.
“Raise him!” said a voice that he knew was Lorraine’s.
They lifted Jack to his knees; he stumbled to his feet, torn, bloody, filthy with mud, but in his arms, clasped tight, was the steel box, intact.
“Lorraine! — my box! — look!” cried her father, and the lantern shook in his hands as he clutched the casket.
But Lorraine stepped forward and flung both arms around Jack Marche’s neck.
Her face was deadly pale; the blood oozed from the wounded shoulder. For the first time her father saw that she had been shot. He stared at her, clutching the steel box in his nervous hands.
With all the strength she had left she crushed Jack to her and kissed him. Then, weak with the loss of blood, she leaned on her father.
“I am going to faint,” she whispered; “help me, father.”
CHAPTER VI
TRAINS EAST AND WEST
IT WAS DAWN when Jack Marche galloped into the court-yard of the Château Morteyn and wearily dismounted. People were already moving about the upper floors; servants stared at him as he climbed the steps to the terrace; his face was scratched, his clothes smeared with caked mud and blood.
He went straight to his chamber, tore off his clothes, took a hasty plunge in a cold tub, and rubbed his aching limbs until they glowed. Then he dressed rapidly, donned his riding breeches and boots, slipped a revolver into his pocket, and went down-stairs, where he could already hear the others at breakfast.
Very quietly and modestly he told his story between sips of café-au-lait.
“You see,” he ended, “that the country is full of spies, who hesitate at nothing. There were three or four of them who tried to rob the Château; they seem perfectly possessed to get at the secrets of the Marquis de Nesville’s balloons. There is no doubt but that for months past they have been making maps of the whole region in most minute detail; they have evidently been expecting this war for a long time. Incidentally, now that war is declared, they have opened hostilities on their own account.”
“You did for some of them?” asked Sir Thorald, who had been fidgeting and staring at Jack through a gold-edged monocle.
“No — I — we rode down and trampled a man in the dark; I should think it would have been enough to brain him, but when I galloped back just now he was gone, and I don’t know how badly he was hit.”
“But the fellow that started to smash you with a paving-stone — the Marquis de Nesville fired at him, didn’t he?” insisted Sir Thorald.
“Yes, I think he hit him, but it was a long shot. Lorraine was superb—”
He stopped, colouring up a little.
“She did it all,” he resumed— “she rode through the woods like a whirlwind! Good heavens! I never saw such a cyclone incarnate! And her pluck when she was hit! — and then very quietly she went to her father and fainted in his arms.”
Jack had not told all that had happened. The part that he had not told was the part that he thought of most — Lorraine’s white arms around his neck and the touch of her innocent lips on his forehead. In silent consternation the young people listened; Dorothy slipped out of her chair and came and rested her hands on her brother’s shoulder; Betty Castlemaine looked at Cecil with large, questioning eyes that asked, “Would you do something heroic for me?” and Cecil’s eyes replied, “Oh, for a chance to annihilate a couple of regiments!” This pleased Betty, and she ate a muffin with appreciation. The old vicomte leaned heavily on his elbow and looked at his wife, who sat opposite, pallid and eating nothing. He had decided to remain at Morteyn, but this episode disquieted him — not on his own account.
“Helen,” he said, “Jack and I will stay, but you must go with the children. There is no danger — there can be no invasion, for our troops will be passing here by night; I only wish to be sure that — that in case — in case things should go dreadfully wrong, you would not be compelled to witness anything unpleasant.”
Madame de Morteyn shook her head gently.
“Why speak of it?” she said; “you know I will not go.”
“I’ll stay, too,” said Sir Thorald, eagerly; “Cecil and Molly can take the children to Paris; Madame de Morteyn, you really should go also.”
She leaned back and shook her head decisively.
“Then you will both come, you and Madame de Morteyn?” urged Lady Hesketh of the vicomte.
The old man hesitated. His wife smiled. She knew he could not leave in the face of the enemy; she had been the wife of this old African campaigner for thirty years, and she knew what she knew.
“Helen—” he began.
“Yes, dear, we will both stay; the city is too hot in July,” she said; “Sir Thorald, some coffee? No more? Betty, you want another muffin? — they are there by Cecil. Children, I think I hear the carriages coming; you must not make Lady Hesketh wait.”
“I have half a mind to stay,” said Molly Hesketh. Sir Thorald said she might if she wanted to enlist, and they all tried to smile, but the sickly gray of early morning, sombre, threatening, fell on faces haggard with foreboding — young faces, too, lighted by the pale flames of the candles.
Alixe von Elster and Barbara Lisle went first; there were tears and embraces, and au revoirs and aufwiedersehens.
Little Alixe blanched and trembled when Sir Thorald bent over her, not entirely unconscious of the havoc his drooping mustache and cynical eyes had made in her credulous German bosom. Molly Hesketh kissed her, wishing that she could pinch her; and so they left, tearful, anxious, to be driven to Courtenay, and whirled from there across the Rhine to Cologne.
Sir Thorald and Lady Hesketh lingered on the terrace after the others had returned to the breakfast-room.
“Thorald,” she said, “you are a brute!”
“Eh?” cried Sir Thorald.
“You’re a brute!”
“Molly, what the deuce is the matter?”
“Nothing — if you ever see her again, I’ll tell Ricky.”
“I might say the same thing in regard to Ricky, my dear,” said Sir Thorald, mildly.
“It is not true,” she said; “I did no damage to him; and you know — you know down in the depths of your fickle soul that — that—”
“What, my dear?”
“Never mind!” said Molly, sharply; but she crimsoned when he kissed her, and held tightly to his sleeve.
“Good ged!” thought Sir Thorald; “what a devil I am with women!”
But now the carriages drove up — coupés, dog-carts, and a victoria.
“They say we ought not to miss this train,” said Cecil, coming from the stables and flourishing a whip; “they say the line may be seized for government use exclusively in a few hours.”
The old house-keeper, Madame Paillard, nodded and pointed to her son, the under-keeper.
“François says, Monsieur Page, that six trains loaded with troops passed through Saint-Lys between midnight and dawn; dis, François, c’est le Sieur Bosz qui t’a renseigné — pas?”
“Oui, mamam!”
“Then hurry,” said Lady Hesketh. “Thorald, call the others.”
“I,” said Cecil, “am going to drive Betty in the dog-cart.”
“She’ll probably take the reins,” said Sir Thorald, cynically.
Cecil brandished his whip and looked determined; but it was Betty who drove him to Saint-Lys station, after all.
The adieux were said, even more tearfully this time. Jack kissed his sister tenderly, and she wept a little on his shoulder — thinking of Rickerl.
One by one the vehicles rolled away down the gravel drive; and last of all came Molly Hesketh in the coupé with Jack Marche.
Molly was sad and a trifle distraite. Those periodical mental illuminations during which she discovered for the thousandth and odd time that she loved her husband usually left her fairly innocuous. But she was a born flirt; the virus was bred in the bone, and after the first half-mile she opened her batteries — her eyes — as a matter of course on Jack.
What she got for her pains was a little sermon ending, “See here, Molly — three years ago you played the devil with me until I kissed you, and then you were furious and threatened to tell Sir Thorald. The truth is, you’re in love with him, and there is no more harm in you than there is in a china kitten.”
“Jack!” she gasped.
“And,” he resumed, “you live in Paris, and you see lots of things and you hear lots of things that you don’t hear and see in Lincolnshire. But you’re British, Molly, and you are domestic, although you hate the idea, and there will never be a desolated hearth in the Hesketh household as long as you speak your mother-tongue and read Anthony Trollope.”
The rest of the road was traversed in silence. They rattled over the stones in the single street of Saint-Lys, rolled into the gravel oval behind the Gare, and drew up amid a hubbub of restless teams, market-wagons, and station-trucks.
“See the soldiers!” said Jack, lifting Lady Hesketh to the platform, where the others were already gathered in a circle. A train was just gliding out of the station, bound eastward, and from every window red caps projected and sunburned, boyish faces expanded into grins as they saw Lady Hesketh and her charges.
“Vive l’Angleterre!” they cried. “Vive Madame la Reine! Vive Johnbull et son rosbif!” the latter observation aimed at Sir Thorald.
Sir Thorald waved his eye-glass to them condescendingly; faster and faster moved the train; the red caps and fresh, tanned faces, the laughing eyes became a blur and then a streak; and far down the glistening track the faint cheers died away and were drowned in the roar of the wheels — little whirling wheels that were bearing them merrily to their graves at Wissembourg.
“Here comes our train,” said Cecil. “Jack, my boy, you’ll probably see some fun; take care of your hide, old chap!” He didn’t mean to be patronizing, but he had Betty demurely leaning on his arm, and — dear me! — how could he help patronizing the other poor devils in the world who had not Betty, and who never could have Betty?
“Montez, madame, s’il vous plait! — Montez, messieurs!” cried the Chef de Gare; “last train for Paris until Wednesday! All aboard!” and he slammed and locked the doors, while the engineer, leaning impatiently from his cab, looked back along the line of cars and blew his whistle warningly.
“Good-by, Dorrie!” cried Jack.
“Good-by, my darling Jack! Be careful; you will, won’t you?” But she was still thinking of Rickerl, bless her little heart!
Lady Hesketh waved him a demure adieu from the open window, relented, and gave his hand a hasty squeeze with her gloved fingers.
“Take care of Lorraine,” she said, solemnly; then laughed at his telltale eyes, and leaned back on her husband’s shoulder, still laughing.
The cars were gliding more swiftly past the platform now; he caught a glimpse of Betty kissing her hand to him, of Cecil bestowing a gracious adieu, of Sir Thorald’s eye-glass — then they were gone; and far up the tracks the diminishing end of the last car dwindled to a dark square, a spot, a dot, and was ingulfed in a flurry of dust. As he turned away and passed along the platform to the dog-cart, there came a roar, a shriek of a locomotive, a rush, and a train swept by towards the east, leaving a blear of scarlet in his eyes, and his ears ringing with the soldiers’ cheers: “Vive la France! Vive l’Empereur! À Berlin! À Berlin! À Berlin!” A furtive-eyed young peasant beside him shrugged his shoulders.
“Bismarck has called for the menu; his cannon are hungry,” he sneered; “there goes the bill of fare.”
“That’s very funny,” said a fierce little man with a gray mustache, “but the bill of fare isn’t complete — the class of ‘71 has just been called out!” and he pointed to a placard freshly pasted on the side of the station.
“The — the class of ‘71?” muttered the furtive-eyed peasant, turning livid.
“Exactly — the bill of fare needs the hors d’œuvres; you’ll go as an olive, and probably come back a sardine — in a box.”
And the fierce little man grinned, lighted a cigarette, and sauntered away, still grinning.
What did he care? He was a pompier and exempt.
CHAPTER VII
THE ROAD TO PARADISE
THE ROAD BETWEEN Saint-Lys and Morteyn was not a military road, but it was firm and smooth, and Jack drove back again towards the Château at a smart trot, flicking at leaves and twigs with Cecil’s whip.
The sun had brushed the veil of rain from the horizon; the leaves, fresh and tender, stirred and sparkled with dew in the morning breeze, and all the air was sweet-scented. In the stillness of the fields, where wheat stretched along the road like a green river tinged with gold, there was something that troubled him. Silence is oppressive to sinners and prophets. He concluded he was the former, and sighed restlessly, looking out across the fields, where, deep in the stalks of the wheat, blood-red poppies opened like raw wounds. At other times he had compared them to little fairy camp-fires; but his mood was pessimistic, and he saw, in the furrows that the plough had raised, the scars on the breast of a tortured earth; and he read sermons in bundles of fresh-cut fagots; and death was written where a sickle lay beside a pile of grass, crisping to hay in the splendid sun of Lorraine.
