Complete weird tales of.., p.881
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 881
“Ethra,” he said, “would you care to be hospitable to a British officer who has been injured?”
“Certainly! Where is he?”
“At Sister Eila’s school. Is there anything left to harness up and send for him?”
“Yes; there is a donkey and a basket wagon. I’ll have a groom take it over at once. Is the officer badly hurt?”
“I don’t know. I think he merely needs bandaging and feeding. He’s the comrade of my friend, Captain Halkett. Gray is his name, and he’s a captain or something or other. May I tell him that you will receive him?”
“Of course, Jim. You need not have asked; you could have brought him here immediately.”
The military operator cut in:
“A thousand thanks to Madame la Comtesse for her kindness to our allies, the English! Madame, I regret, very much that I must switch off — —” click!
Warner smiled and turned to Sister Eila:
“Madame de Moidrey takes him!”
“I am so thankful! I will go up and make him ready.”
“What is the matter with him?”
“Think of it! He was coming on his motor cycle full speed toward Saïs through the night, when right ahead he saw a car drawn up beside the road, and four men standing in it with pistols aimed at him. Only one bullet hit him, making a deep furrow over his temple. He remembers losing control of the motor cycle, of being hurled through the air. Then, evidently some time afterward, he found himself struggling under a thin covering of dirt and sticks and lumps of sod — fighting for air, pushing, creeping, crawling out of the hasty and shallow grave where they had flung him beside his ruined motor cycle. He thinks that the frame of the motor cycle kept him from being suffocated by the sod and earth piled over him.
“It was early morning; a peasant was breaking ground in another field not far away, and Mr. Gray managed to crawl near enough to make the man hear. That is all he remembers until he regained consciousness once more in the man’s cottage.”
“Good heavens, what a ghastly experience!” muttered Warner.
“It is dreadful. If they knew that his heart still beat, it was inhuman of them to do such a thing as that. But perhaps they considered him dead. He may have appeared so. I have had to bandage both arms and both knees where he was hurled over the ground when he fell. He has a fracture of the left wrist which is doing nicely, and two broken ribs are mending without trouble. As for the scar on his temple, it is nearly closed now. I think all will be well with him. Now, I shall go and prepare him for his little journey.”
At the foot of the stairs she paused, turned slowly to Warner, and he thought her lovely face had become somewhat pale.
“I think you said over the telephone that you have had no word from Mr. Halkett?”
“Not a word, Sister Eila.”
“Thank you.”
CHAPTER XXVII
THE JOURNEY BACK along the Ausone road was a slow and stifling one. Warner, walking on the left, led the donkey by the head; Philippa moved beside the basket cart on the right. In the cart sat the wounded Englishman, his bandaged head lying on Sister Eila’s shoulder.
Through the heavy, suffocating cloud of dust, group after group of fugitives loomed up ahead, coming toward them, parting right and left to let the basket cart and the little, plodding donkey pass through. Sheep were driven aside for them; cattle swung out into the roadside ditches on either hand, halting there with stupid heads turned toward them while the basket cart took right of way.
Once, from the toiling procession behind them, distant shouts arose, and the ground began to quiver and shake; and Warner called out a sharp warning to Philippa and drew the donkey cart out among the dusty weeds of the ditch, while everywhere ahead of them people, cattle, vehicles, were being hurriedly turned out and crowded aside along the grassy roadside gullies.
Louder grew the clamour behind; heavier the jarring of the ground; a mounted gendarme — a maréchal de logis — appeared, alternately cantering and galloping his superb horse, and sweeping the crowds aside with vigorous gestures of his white-gloved hand.
Behind him trotted six more gendarmes, sabers sheathed, their single rank stretching the entire width of the road from ditch to ditch. And behind these, in a writhing storm of dust and flying gravel, came the field artillery on a swift, swinging trot, drivers erect in their saddles, képis strapped tight, sun-scorched faces sweating under masks of dust.
Tan-colored limbers, guns, caissons drawn by powerful, dust-whitened teams, rushed past thudding and clanking, escorted by galloping pelotons of artillerymen armed with saber and carbine, flanked by smart officers flashing all over cherry red and gold.
Battery after battery, with forges and wagons, passed; a fanion with trumpeters sped by; a squadron of remount cavalry in clearer blue jackets followed, then came two squadrons of galloping dragoon lancers, their steel helmets covered with brown holland slips, and the pennons streaming wildly from their lance heads. A gendarme or two galloped in the rear, mere ghosts in the driving dust. And the flying column had passed.
Sister Eila, covering Gray’s mouth and nose with her grey-blue sleeve, bowed her head and closed her eyes while the storm of dust and pebbles lasted; then Warner nodded to Philippa, and between them they led out the donkey cart once more and pushed slowly ahead into the oncoming torrent of vehicles — cattle, men, women, and children.
It was nearly noon when they arrived at the Château des Oiseaux. A footman aided him to carry Gray upstairs to the room prepared for him.
“Are you all right?” asked Warner doubtfully.
Gray opened his haggard eyes.
“All right, thanks.... May I have a little water, if it’s not too much trouble — —”
Sister Eila entered the room with a carafe and some lemons; and Warner withdrew.
In the hallway below he encountered Madame de Moidrey and Peggy Brooks in earnest consultation with the village physician — an old man crippled from 1870, and wearing the Legion and an empty sleeve.
Warner shook hands with Dr. Senlis and told him what he knew of Gray’s condition. Sister Eila came down presently and everybody greeted her with a warmth which unmistakably revealed her status in Saïs.
Presently she went upstairs again with Dr. Senlis. Later the Countess went up. Peggy and Philippa had gone out to the south terrace where the reverberation of the cannonade was now continually shaking the windows, and where, beyond, Ausone, a dark band of smoke stretched like a rampart across the northern sky.
As Warner stood thinking, listening to the dull shock of the concussions rolling in toward them on the wind from the north, the footman, Vilmar, approached him.
“Pardon, Monsieur Warner, but there is a frightful type hanging about whom it seems impossible to drive away — —”
“What!” said Warner angrily.
“Monsieur, I have hustled him from the terrace several times; I have summoned aid from my fellow domestics; the chauffeur, Vignier, chases him with frequency into the shrubbery; Maurice and the lad, Henri, pursue him with horsewhips — —”
“Is it that voyou who is all over bandages?” demanded Warner incredulously.
“It is, Monsieur — —”
Out of sheer contempt for the creature and for all his species, Warner had ordered him to be fed and turned loose. And here he was, back again, hanging around!
“Where is he?”
“He dodged into the shrubbery across the lawn.”
The effontery of Asticot amazed Warner. With an impatient gesture he turned on his heel to traverse the lawn. And at the same moment Asticot emerged from the bushes bordering it.
His bruised and ratty eyes blinked nervously; his battered casquette de marlou was in his hand; his knees, and his teeth also, seemed inclined to smite together. Plainly, he was terrified; and when Warner walked swiftly toward him across the lawn, the creature uttered a sort of stifled squeak.
“Asticot,” said Warner, in pleasant, even tones, “I told the servants to feed you and turn you loose. Also, I left word that I’d kill you the next time I caught you hanging around here. Did they give you that message?”
“M-m’sieu’ — —”
“Did they?”
“Alas!”
“Then why are you still prowling in this vicinity? Do you want to be killed?”
A suppressed howl escaped the bandaged ruffian.
“I do not desire to go away from M’sieu’! No! I desire to remain under his powerful protection — —”
“What!”
“I desire to serve M’sieu’ — to dedicate my life to the service of M’sieu’, my patron, powerful and terrible. I have need to render him homage — I, Asticot, grateful and affectionate — —” He blubbered sentimentally, squirming like a kicked and abject dog.
Warner, astonished, stared at the writhing ruffian for a few moments, then he burst into a laugh.
“Why, you Parisian sewer rat,” he said, “do you imagine that I could have any use for you?”
“M’sieu’! I ask as wages only a crust, a pallet of straw in some corner, and a few pennies which will enable me to ‘fry a cigarette’ when I am lonely — —”
“I don’t want you!” repeated Warner, disgusted, but much amused. “Why do you imagine that I have any employment to offer a cutthroat?”
“There is le Père Wildresse,” replied Asticot, naïvely.
“Do you imagine I expect to hire somebody to murder him?”
“M’sieu’ — it is but natural.”
Warner’s laughter died out and his expression altered.
“Come, Asticot, cut away,” he said quietly, “or I shall become angry!”
“M’sieu’! Don’t drive me away!” he whined. “I know how to wash brushes in black soap — —”
“What!”
“Also, I have learned how to stretch toiles and make chassis. I have served in Biribi. My lieutenant amused himself by painting pictures of camels and palms and the setting sun, very red and as full of rays as a porcupine — —”
“I don’t want you, Asticot! It is noon, now. I shall tell them at the stables to give you a crust and a bowl of soup. After you have sufficiently stuffed yourself, go quietly away wherever you belong, and don’t come back — —”
“M’sieu’! I entertain a deep affection for M’sieu’ — —”
“Go to the devil!” said Warner wearily, and walked back to the house. Here he gave the footman culinary instructions to transmit to the kitchen-maid, who, in turn, should see that something to eat was sent to the stables for Asticot.
Then he walked through the house to the northern terrace, where Philippa and Peggy sat sewing and looking out across the valley toward the smoky panorama in the north. His field glasses lay on the parapet, and he picked them up and adjusted them to his vision.
“Isly is burning, and Rosales, and the great farm of Le Pigeonnier,” remarked Peggy.
“Who says so?”
“Mathilde. The postman told her. He heard it in Ausone from the soldiers. That is where the fighting is, at Isly. The trains leaving Ausone are loaded with soldiers going north. It appears that matters are progressing very well for us.”
Warner said nothing. With two French towns burning on the horizon, the great farm of Le Pigeonnier on fire, and the cannonade steadily becoming more distinct, he was not at all certain that everything promised well for Ausone and Saïs and the valley of the Récollette.
Through his glasses he could see the beautiful spire of Sainte Cassilda in Ausone. Beyond, where the wooded, conical hill rose from the rolling plain as though it were an enormous artificial mound, nothing of the fort was visible.
But farther away, beyond the river, he could see trains crawling across the landscape — see smoke trailing from locomotives; farther still only the green and gold of woods and grain fields stretched away, growing vaguer and dimmer until the wall of smoke obscured them and blotted the earth from view.
Madame de Moidrey appeared at the doorway behind them.
“They have just telephoned from Ausone to ask whether we can take in wounded, if necessary,” she said calmly. “They are to send material for fifty beds this evening. Sister Eila and Dr. Senlis have offered to remain for the present. I think everybody will have to help.”
Philippa, who had risen, came toward her.
“I don’t mind where I sleep,” she said, “if I can only be of any use — —”
“You are not going to be disturbed, dear — not at present, anyway.” And to Peggy: “I have told them to open the east wing and air the gallery and the rooms on both the upper floors. There is room for two hundred beds in the east wing. Vignier has gone to turn on the water, and I shall have the parquet and windows thoroughly cleaned and the stair carpets taken out of storage and laid down.”
“Is there anything I can do?” asked Warner.
“Nothing for any of us to do so far. When the beds arrive, I shall have them set up and ready, that’s all. Peggy, if the servants require any further instructions, tell them what to do. Sister Eila is inspecting the east wing and I must return to Mr. Gray.”
“How is Gray?” asked Warner.
“Very much afraid that he is making us extra trouble. He is so patient, so considerate — really a most charming man.
“I have an idea that the cannonade is making him very restless. He tries not to show it. He lies there very quietly, asking for nothing, most grateful for the slightest attention. I have been giving him the medicine Dr. Senlis prescribed and reading the paper to him between doses.”
“Couldn’t I do that?” began Peggy, but Madame de Moidrey shook her pretty head hastily and went away to inspect her Englishman, for whom luncheon was being prepared on a tray.
Luncheon was served on the terrace for the others. It was a rather silent affair: they ate with the distant rumble of cannon in their ears and their eyes turning ever toward the north where that impenetrable wall of smoke masked the horizon from east to west.
“I think I shall go over to Ausone,” remarked Warner.
Philippa looked up in silence.
“Why?” inquired Peggy.
“Because,” he replied, “I have a couple of dozen pictures and sketches in storage at the Boule d’Argent, and I think I might as well get them and ship them to my Paris studio.”
“Do you really suppose there is any danger that — —”
“No,” he interrupted, smilingly, “but you know how finicky and panicky a painter is. I think I’ll take a stroll after luncheon and bring back my canvases—” he turned to Philippa— “if I may take your punt for the purpose?”
“Certainly. I’ll pole you up to Ausone — —”
“You will do nothing of the sort, thank you!” he retorted, laughing.
“Is there any danger?” asked Peggy.
“Not the slightest. But I had rather that Philippa remained here.”
Peggy passed her arm around Philippa’s shoulders.
“He doesn’t want you, darling, but I do! Remain where you’re appreciated and I’ll take you up presently to see that exceedingly nice-looking Englishman.”
Philippa’s smile was a little forced; she looked up at Warner every now and then, curiously, questioningly, even reproachfully.
When he had pretended long enough not to be aware of it, he turned and looked at her and laughed. And after Peggy had risen and entered the house, he said:
“Philippa, I don’t care to have you any nearer that wall of smoke out yonder than you are at present. That’s the only reason I don’t want you to go to Ausone in the punt with me.”
“You know,” she said, “that I might just as well be where you are all the time.”
“Why?”
“Is it necessary for me to tell you that if anything happens to you it might as well happen to me at the same time?”
“Nonsense, Philippa — —”
“You know it is so,” she said quietly.
He looked at the smoke, glanced at her, rose and walked to the door, and, turning abruptly, came back to where she was seated.
“That won’t do,” he said bluntly. “Nobody should be as vital to you as that. Life and happiness are beginning for you. Both must be independent of circumstances and individuals. Everything already lies before you, Philippa — youth, attainment, the serenity and the happiness of opportunity heretofore denied you. Fulfillment does not depend on others; the interest in living and the reason for living depends on personal faith, resolution, and endeavor, not on what accidents affect other lives around you. Life should be lived thoroughly and completely to the end, industriously, vigorously, and with a courage for enjoyment never faltering. Your life is yours. Live it! Find in it the sheer happiness of living. No matter what befalls others, no matter who these others may be, it is your business in life to go on living, to go on discovering reasons for living, to go on desiring to live, and to find in living the highest happiness in the world — the satisfaction of a duty thoroughly accomplished!”
He was smiling and rather flushed when he ended his emphatic sermon. The girl beside him had listened with drooping head, but her grey eyes were raised to his from time to time.
And now that he had finished expounding his strenuous and masculine logic, she turned away and leaned on the parapet looking down at the tops of the forest trees below.
He came over and rested on the stone balustrade beside her.
“Am I not right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then you understand that, whatever may happen to anybody else, life always presents the same noble challenge to you?”
“Yes.... A bird, shot through the breast, must go on fighting for breath as long as its heart beats.... I should do the same — if anything happened to you.”
The hot color suddenly burnt his face. He made no comment — found none to make. Her transparent candor had silenced him utterly; and he found himself troubled, mute, and profoundly moved by her innocent avowal of devotion.
She looked around at him after a while.
“That is what you meant, isn’t it?”
