Works of robert w chambe.., p.65
Works of Robert W Chambers, page 65
Georges rose painfully from his seat, stepped to the side, and climbed down into the road. He felt in the breast of his dolman for the packet, adjusted his sabre, and turned to Lorraine.
“There is a squadron of the Remount Cavalry over in that meadow — I can get a horse there,” he said. “Thank you, Jack. Good-by, Mademoiselle de Nesville, you have been more than generous.”
“You can have a horse from the Morteyn stables,” said Jack; “my dear fellow, I can’t bear to see you go — to think of your riding to Metz to-night.”
“It’s got to be done, you know,” said Georges. He bowed; Lorraine stretched out her hand and he gravely touched it with his fingers. Then he exchanged a nervous gripe with Jack, and turned away hurriedly, crowding between the passing dragoons, traversing the meadows until they lost him in the throng.
“We cannot get to the house by the road,” said Jack; “we must take the stable path;” and he lifted the reins and turned the horse’s head.
The stable road was narrow, and crossed with sprays of tender leaves. The leaves touched Lorraine’s eyes, they rubbed across her fair brow, robbing her of single threads of glittering hair, they brushed a single bright tear from her cheeks and held it, glimmering like a drop of dew.
“Behold the end of the world,” said Lorraine— “I am weeping.”
He turned and looked into her eyes.
“Is that strange?” he asked, gently.
“Yes; I have often wished to cry. I never could — except once before — and that was four days ago.”
The day of their quarrel! He thrilled from head to foot, but dared not speak.
“Four days ago,” said Lorraine again. She thought of herself gliding from her bed to seek the stable where Jack’s horse stood, she thought of her hot face pressed to the wounded creature’s neck. Then, suddenly aware of what she had confessed, she leaned back and covered her face with her hands.
“Lorraine!” he whispered, brokenly.
But they were already at the Château.
“Lorraine, my child!” cried Madame de Morteyn, leaning from the terrace. Her voice was drowned in the crash of drums rolling, rolling, from the lawn below, and the trumpets broke out in harsh chorus, shrill, discordant, terrible.
The Emperor had arrived at Morteyn.
CHAPTER XIV
THE MARQUIS MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE
The Emperor dined with the Vicomte and Madame de Morteyn that evening in the great dining-room. The Château, patrolled by doubled guards of the Cent Gardes, was surrounded by triple hedges of bayonets and a perfect pest of police spies, secret agents, and flunkys. In the breakfast-room General Frossard and his staff were also dining; and up-stairs, in a small gilded salon, Jack and Lorraine ate soberly, tenderly cared for by the old house-keeper.
Outside they could hear the steady tramp of passing infantry along the dark road, the clank of artillery, and the muffled trample of cavalry. Frossard’s Corps was moving rapidly, its back to the Rhine.
“I saw the Prince Imperial,” said Jack; “he was in the conservatory, writing to his mother, the Empress. Have you ever seen him, Mademoiselle de Nesville? He is young, really a mere child, but he looks very manly in his uniform. He has that same charm, that same delicate, winning courtesy that the Emperor is famous for. But he looks so pale and tired — like a school-boy in the Lycée.”
“It would have been unfortunate if the Emperor had stopped at the Château de Nesville,” said Lorraine, sipping her small glass of Moselle; “papa hates him.”
“Many Royalists do.”
“It is not that only; there is something else — something that I don’t know about. It concerns my brother who died many years ago, before I was born. Have I never spoken of my brother? Has papa never said anything?”
“No,” said Jack, gently.
“Well, when my brother was alive, our family lived in Paris. That is all I know, except that my brother died shortly before the empire was proclaimed, and papa and mamma came to our country-place here, where I was born. René’s — my brother’s — death had something to do with my father’s hatred of the empire, I know that. But papa will never speak of it to me, except to tell me that I must always remember that the Emperor has been the curse of the De Nesvilles. Hark! Hear the troops passing. Why do they never cheer their Emperor?”
“They cheered him at Saarbrück — I heard them. You are not eating; are you tired?”
“A little. I shall go with Marianne, I think; I am sleepy. Are you going to sit up? Do you think we can sleep with the noise of the horses passing? I should like to see the Emperor at table.”
“Wait,” said Jack; “I’ll go down and find out whether we can’t slip into the ballroom.”
“Then I’ll go too,” said Lorraine, rising. “Marianne, stay here; I will return in a moment;” and she slipped after Jack, down the broad staircase and out to the terrace, where a huge cuirassier officer stood in the moonlight, his straight sabre shimmering, his white mantle open over the silver breastplate.
The ballroom was brilliantly lighted, the gilded canapés and chairs were covered with officers in every conceivable uniform, lounging, sprawling, chatting, and gesticulating, or pulling papers and maps over the floor. A general traced routes across the map at his feet with the point of a naked sword; an officer of dragoons, squatting on his haunches, followed the movement of the sword-point and chewed an unlighted cigarette. Officers were coming and going constantly, entering by the hallway and leaving through the door-like windows that swung open to the floor. The sinister face of a police-spy peered into the conservatory at intervals, where a slender, pale-faced boy sat, clothed in a colonel’s uniform, writing on a carved table. It was the Prince Imperial, back from Saarbrück and his “baptism of fire,” back also from the Spicheren and the disaster of Wörth. He was writing to his mother, that unhappy, anxious woman who looked every day from the Tuileries into the streets of a city already clamorous, already sullenly suspicious of its Emperor and Empress.
The boy’s face was beautiful. He raised his head and sat silently biting his pen, eyes wandering. Perhaps he was listening to the retreat of Frossard’s Corps through the fair province of Lorraine — a province that he should never live to see again. A few months more, a few battles, a few villages in flames, a few cities ravaged, a few thousand corpses piled from the frontier to the Loire — and then, what? Why, an emperor the less and an emperor the more, and a new name for a province — that is all.
His delicate, high-bred face fell; he shaded his sad eyes with one thin hand and wrote again — all that a good son writes to a mother, all that a good soldier writes to a sovereign, all that a good prince writes to an empress.
“Oh, what sad eyes!” whispered Lorraine; “he is too young to see such things.”
“He may see worse,” said Jack. “Come, shall we walk around the lawn to the dining-room?”
They descended the dark steps, her arm resting lightly on his, and he guided her through a throng of gossiping cavalrymen and hurrying but polite officers towards the western wing of the Château, the trample of the passing army always in their ears.
As he was about to cross the drive, a figure stepped from the shadow of the porte-cochère — a man in a rough tweed suit, who lifted his wide-awake politely and asked Jack if he was not English.
“American,” said Jack, guardedly.
The man was apparently much relieved. He made a frank, manly apology for his intrusion, looked appealingly at Lorraine, and said, with a laugh: “The fact is, I’m astray in the wrong camp. I rode out from the Spicheren and got mixed in the roads, and first I knew I fell in with Frossard’s Corps, and I can’t get away. I thought you were an Englishman; you’re American, it seems, and really I may venture to feel that there is hope for me — may I not?”
“Why, yes,” said Jack; “whatever I can do, I’ll do gladly.”
“Then let me observe without hesitation,” continued the man, smiling under his crisp mustache, “that I’m in search of a modest dinner and a shelter of even more modest dimensions. I’m a war correspondent, unattached just at present, but following the German army. My name is Archibald Grahame.”
At the name of the great war correspondent Jack stared, then impulsively held out his hand.
“Aha!” said Grahame, “you must be a correspondent, too. Ha! I thought I was not wrong.”
He bowed again to Lorraine, who returned his manly salute very sweetly. “If,” she thought, “Jack is inclined to be nice to this sturdy young man in tweeds, I also will be as nice as I can.”
“My name is Marche — Jack Marche,” said Jack, in some trepidation. “I am not a correspondent — that is, not an active one.”
“You were at Sadowa, and you’ve been in Oran with Chanzy,” said Grahame, quickly.
Jack flushed with pleasure to find that the great Archibald Grahame had heard of him.
“We must take Mr. Grahame up-stairs at once — must we not? — if he is hungry,” suggested Lorraine, whose tender heart was touched at the thought of a hungry human being.
They all laughed, and Grahame thanked her with that whimsical but charming courtesy that endeared him to all who knew him.
“It is awkward, now, isn’t it, Mr. Marche? Here I am in France with the army I tried to keep away from, roofless, supperless, and rather expecting some of these sentinels or police agents may begin to inquire into my affairs. If they do they’ll take me for a spy. I was threatened by the villagers in a little hamlet west of Saint-Avold — and how I’m going to get back to my Hohenzollerns I haven’t the faintest notion.”
“There’ll surely be some way. My uncle will vouch for you and get you a safe-conduct,” said Jack. “Perhaps, Mr. Grahame, you had better come and dine in our salon up-stairs. Will you? The Emperor occupies the large dining-room, and General Frossard and his staff have the breakfast-room.”
Amused by the young fellow’s doubt that a simple salon on the first floor might not be commensurate with the hospitality of Morteyn, Archibald Grahame stepped pleasantly to the other side of the road; and so, with Lorraine between them, they climbed the terrace and scaled the stairs to the little gilt salon where Lorraine’s maid Marianne and the old house-keeper sat awaiting her return.
Lorraine was very wide-awake now — she was excited by the stir and the brilliant uniforms. She unconsciously took command, too, feeling that she should act the hostess in the absence of Madame de Morteyn. The old house-keeper, who adored her, supported her loyally; so, between Marianne and herself, a very delightful dinner was served to the hungry but patient Grahame when he returned with Jack from the latter’s chamber, where he had left most of the dust and travel stains of a long tramp across country.
And how the great war correspondent did eat and drink! It made Jack hungry again to watch him, so with a laughing apology to Lorraine he joined in with a will, enthusiastically applauded and encouraged by Grahame.
“I could tell you were a correspondent by your appetite,” said Grahame. “Dear me! it takes a campaign to make life worth living!”
“Life is not worth living, then, without an appetite?” inquired Lorraine, mischievously.
“No,” said Grahame, seriously; “and you also will be of that opinion some day, mademoiselle.”
His kindly, humourous eyes turned inquiringly from Jack to Lorraine and from Lorraine to Jack. He was puzzled, perhaps, but did not betray it.
They were not married, because Lorraine was Mademoiselle de Nesville and Jack was Monsieur Marche. Cousins? Probably. Engaged? Probably. So Grahame smiled benignly and emptied another bottle of Moselle with a frank abandon that fascinated the old house-keeper.
“And you don’t mean to say that you are going to put me up for the night, too?” he asked Jack. “You place me under eternal obligation, and I accept with that understanding. If you run into my Hohenzollerns, they’ll receive you as a brother.”
“I don’t think he will visit the Hohenzollern Regiment,” observed Lorraine, demurely.
“No — er — the fact is, I’m not doing much newspaper work now,” said Jack.
Grahame was puzzled but bland.
“Tell us, Monsieur Grahame, of what you saw in the Spicheren,” said Lorraine. “Is it a very bad defeat? I am sure it cannot be. Of course, France will win, sooner or later; nobody doubts that.”
Before Grahame could manufacture a suitable reply — and his wit was as quick as his courtesy — a door opened and Madame de Morteyn entered, sad-eyed but smiling.
Jack jumped up and asked leave to present Mr. Grahame, and the old lady received him very sweetly, insisting that he should make the Château his home as long as he stayed in the vicinity.
A few moments later she went away with Lorraine and her maid, and Jack and Archibald Grahame were left together to sip their Moselle and smoke some very excellent cigars that Jack found in the library.
“Mr. Grahame,” said Jack, diffidently, “if it would not be an impertinent question, who is going to run away in this campaign?”
Grahame’s face fell; his sombre glance swept the beautiful room and rested on a picture — the “Battle of Waterloo.”
“It will be worse than that,” he said, abruptly. “May I take one of these cigars? Oh, thank you.”
Jack’s heart sank, but he smiled and passed a lighted cigar-lamp to the other.
“My judgment has been otherwise,” he said, “and what you say troubles me.”
“It troubles me, too,” said Grahame, looking out of the dark window at the watery clouds, ragged, uncanny, whirling one by one like tattered witches across the disk of a misshapen moon.
After a silence Jack relighted his half-burned cigar.
“Then it is invasion?” he asked.
“Yes — invasion.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“Good heavens! the very stones in the fields will rise up!”
“If the people did so too it might be to better purpose,” observed Grahame, dryly. Then he emptied his glass, flicked the ashes from his cigar, and, sitting erect in his chair, said, “See here, Marche, you and I are accustomed to this sort of thing, we’ve seen campaigns and we have learned to judge dispassionately and, I think, fairly accurately; but, on my honour, I never before have seen the beginning of such a tempest — never! You say the very stones will rise up in the fields of France. You are right. For the fields will be ploughed with solid shot, and the shells will sow the earth with iron from the Rhine to the Loire. Good Lord, do these people know what is coming over the frontier?”
“Prussians,” said Jack.
“Yes, Prussians and a few others — Würtembergers, Saxons, Bavarians, men from Baden, from Hesse, from the Schwarzwald — from Hamburg to the Tyrol they are coming in three armies. I saw the Spicheren, I saw Wissembourg — I have seen and I know.”
Presently he opened a fresh bottle, and, with that whimsical smile and frank simplicity that won whom he chose to win, leaned towards Jack and began speaking as though the younger man were his peer in experience and age:
“Shall I tell you what I saw across the Rhine? I saw the machinery at work — the little wheels and cogs turning and grinding and setting in motion that stupendous machine that Gneisenau patented and Von Moltke improved — the great Mobilization Machine! How this machine does its work it is not easy to realize unless one has actually watched its operation. I saw it — and what I saw left me divided between admiration and — well, damn it all! — sadness.
“You know, Marche, that there are three strata of fighting men in Germany — the regular army, the ‘reserve,’ and the Landwehr. It is a mistake into which many fall to believe that the reserve is the rear of the regular army. The war strength of a regiment is just double its peace strength, and the increment is the reserve. The blending of the two in time of war is complete; the medalled men of 1866 and of the Holstein campaign, called up from the reserve, are welded into the same ranks with the young soldiers who are serving their first period of three years. It is an utter mistake to think of the Prussian army or the Prussian reserves as a militia like yours or ours. The Prussian reserve man has three years active service with his colours to point back to. Have ours? The mobilization machine grinds its grinding in this wise. The whole country is divided into districts, in the central city of each of which are the headquarters of the army corps recruited from that district. Thence is sent forth the edict for mobilization to the towns, the villages, and the quiet country parishes. From the forge, from the harvest, from the store, from the school-room, blacksmiths, farmers, clerks, school-masters drop everything at an hour’s notice.
“The contingent of a village is sent to headquarters. On the route it meets other contingents until the rendezvous is reached. And then — the transformation! A yokel enters — a soldier leaves. The slouch has gone from his shoulders, his chest is thrown forward, his legs straightened, his chin ‘well off the stock,’ his step brisk, his carriage military. They are tough as whip-cord, sober, docile, and terribly in earnest. They are orderly, decent, and reputable. They need no sentries, and none are placed; they never get drunk, they are not riotous, and the barrack gates are never infested by those hordes of soldiers’ women.”
He paused and puffed at his cigar thoughtfully.
“They are such soldiers as the world has not yet seen. Marching? I saw them striding steadily forward with the thermometer at eighty-five in the shade, with needle-gun, heavy knapsack, eighty rounds of ammunition, huge great-coat, camp-kettle, sword, spade, water-bottle, haversack, and lots of odds and ends dangling about them, with perhaps a loaf or two under one arm. Sunstroke? No. Why? Sobriety. No absinthe there, Mr. Marche.”
“We beat those men at Saarbrück,” said Jack.
Grahame laughed good-humouredly.
“At Saarbrück, when war was declared, the total German garrison consisted of a battalion of infantry and a regiment of Uhlans. Frossard and his whole corps were looking across at Saarbrück over the ridges of the Spicheren, and nobody had the means of knowing what everybody knows now, the reason, so discreditable to French organization, which prevented him from blowing out of his path the few pickets and patrols, and invading the territory which had its frontier only nominally guarded. I was in Saarbrück at the time, and I had the pleasure of dodging shells there, too. Why, we were all asking each other if it were possible that the Frenchmen did not know the weakness of the land. Our Uhlans and infantry were manipulated dexterously to make a battalion look like a brigade; but we had an army corps in front of us. We held the place by sheer impudence.”
