At the porch she left him to change her gown, and slipped away up-stairs, while he found old Pierre and was dusted and fussed over until he couldn't stand it another moment. Luckily he heard Lorraine calling her maid on the porch, and he went to her at once.
"Papa says you may lunch here—I spoke to him through the key-hole. It is all ready; will you come?"
A serious-minded maid served them with salad and thin bread-and-butter.
"Tea!" exclaimed Jack.
"Isn't that very American?" asked Lorraine, timidly. "I thought you might like it; I understood that all Americans drank tea."
"They do," he said, gravely; "it is a terrible habit—a national vice—but they do."
"Now you are laughing at me!" she cried. "Marianne, please to remove that tea! No, no, I won't leave it—and you can suffer if you wish. And to think that I—"
They were both laughing so that the maid's face grew more serious, and she removed the teapot as though she were bearing some strange and poisonous creature to a deserved doom.
As they sat opposite each other, smiling, a little flurried at finding themselves alone at table together, but eating with the appetites of very young lovers, the warm summer wind, blowing through the open windows, bore to their ears the songs of forest birds. It bore another sound, too; Jack had heard it for the last two hours, or had imagined he heard it—a low, monotonous vibration, now almost distinct, now lost, now again discernible, but too vague, too indefinite to be anything but that faint summer harmony which comes from distant breezes, distant movements, mingling with the stir of drowsy field insects, half torpid in the heat of noon.
Still it was always there; and now, turning his ear to the window, he laid down knife and fork to listen.
"I have also noticed it," said Lorraine, answering his unasked question.
"Do you hear it now?"
"Yes—more distinctly now."
A few moments later Jack leaned back in his chair and listened again.
"Yes," said Lorraine, "it seems to come nearer. What is it?"
"It comes from the southeast. I don't know," he answered.
They rose and walked to the window. She was so near that he breathed the subtle fragrance of her hair, the fresh sweetness of her white gown, that rustled beside him.
"Hark!" whispered Lorraine; "I can almost hear voices in the breezes—the murmur of voices, as if millions of tiny people were calling us from the ends and outer edges of the earth."
"There is a throbbing, too. Do you notice it?"
"Yes—like one's heart at night. Ah, now it comes nearer—oh, nearer! nearer! Oh, what can it be?"
He knew now; he knew that indefinable battle—rumour that steals into the senses long before it is really audible. It is not a sound—not even a vibration; it is an immense foreboding that weights the air with prophecy.
"From the south and east," he repeated; "from the Landesgrenze."
"The frontier?"
"Yes. Hark!"
"I hear."
"From the frontier," he said again. "From the river Lauter and from Wissembourg."
"What is it?" she whispered, close beside him.
"Cannon!"
Yes, it was cannon—they knew it now—cannon throbbing, throbbing, throbbing along the horizon where the crags of the Geisberg echoed the dull thunder and shook it far out across the vineyards of Wissembourg, where the heights of Kapsweyer, resounding, hurled back the echoes to the mountains in the north.
"Why—why does it seem to come nearer?" asked Lorraine.
"Nearer?" He knew it had come nearer, but how could he tell her what that meant?
"It is a battle—is it not?" she asked again.
"Yes, a battle."
She said nothing more, but stood leaning along the wall, her white forehead pressed against the edge of the raised window-sash. Outside, the little birds had grown suddenly silent; there was a stillness that comes before a rain; the leaves on the shrubbery scarcely moved.
And now, nearer and nearer swelled the rumour of battle, undulating, quavering over forest and hill, and the muttering of the cannon grew to a rumble that jarred the air.
As currents in the upper atmosphere shift and settle north, south, east, west, so the tide of sound wavered and drifted, and set westward, flowing nearer and nearer and louder and louder, until the hoarse, crashing tumult, still vague and distant, was cut by the sharper notes of single cannon that spoke out, suddenly impetuous, in the dull din.
The whole Château was awake now; maids, grooms,valets, gardeners, and keepers were gathering outside the iron grille of the park, whispering together and looking out across the fields.
There was nothing to see except pastures and woods, and low-rounded hills crowned with vineyards. Nothing more except a single strangely shaped cloud, sombre, slender at the base, but spreading at the top like a palm.
"I am going up to speak to your father," said Jack, carelessly; "may I?"
Interrupt her father! Lorraine fairly gasped.
"Stay here," he added, with the faintest touch of authority in his tone; and, before she could protest, he had sped away up the staircase and round and round the long circular stairs that led to the single turret.
A little out of breath, he knocked at the door which faced the top step. There was no answer. He rapped again, impatiently. A voice startled him: "Lorraine, I am busy!"
"Open," called Jack; "I must see you!"
"I am busy!" replied the marquis. Irritation and surprise were in his tones.
"Open!" called Jack again; "there is no time to lose!"
Suddenly the door was jerked back and the marquis appeared, pale, handsome, his eyes cold and blue as icebergs.
"Monsieur Marche—" he began, almost discourteously.
"Pardon," interrupted Jack; "I am going into your room. I wish to look out of that turret window. Come also—you must know what to expect."
Astonished, almost angry, the Marquis de Nesville followed him to the turret window.
"Oh," said Jack, softly, staring out into the sunshine, "it is time, is it not, that we knew what was going on along the frontier? Look there!"
On the horizon vast shapeless clouds lay piled, gigantic coils and masses of vapour, dark, ominous, illuminated by faint, pallid lights that played under them incessantly; and over all towered one tall column of smoke, spreading above like an enormous palm-tree. But this was not all. The vast panorama of hill and valley and plain, cut by roads that undulated like narrow satin ribbons on a brocaded surface, was covered with moving objects, swarming, inundating the landscape. To the south a green hill grew black with the human tide, to the north long lines and oblongs and squares moved across the land, slowly, almost imperceptibly—but they were moving, always moving east.
"It is an army coming," said the marquis.
"It is a rout," said Jack, quietly.
The marquis moved suddenly, as though to avoid a blow.
"What troops are those?" he asked, after a silence.
"It is the French army," replied Jack. "Have you not heard the cannonade?"
"No—my machines make some noise when I'm working. I hear it now. What is that cloud—a fire?"
"It is the battle cloud."
"And the smoke on the horizon?"
"The smoke from the guns. They are fighting beyondSaarbrück—yes, beyond Pfalzburg and Wörth; they are fighting beyond the Lauter."
"Wissembourg?"
"I think so. They are nearer now. Monsieur de Nesville, the battle has gone against the French."
"How do you know?" demanded the marquis, harshly.
"I have seen battles. One need only listen and look at the army yonder. They will pass Morteyn; I think they will pass for miles through the country. It looks to me like a retreat towards Metz, but I am not sure. The throngs of troops below are fugitives, not the regular geometrical figures that you see to the north. Those are regiments and divisions moving towards the west in good order."
The two men stepped back into the room and faced each other.
"After the rain the flood, after the rout the invasion," said Jack, firmly. "You cannot know it too quickly. You know it now, and you can make your plans."
He was thinking of Lorraine's safety when he spoke, but the marquis turned instinctively to a mass of machinery and chemical paraphernalia behind him.
"You will have your hands full," said Jack, repressing an angry sneer; "if you wish, my aunt De Morteyn will charge herself with Mademoiselle de Nesville's safety."
"True, Lorraine might go to Morteyn," murmured the marquis, absently, examining a smoky retort half filled with a silvery heap of dust.
"Then, may I drive her over after dinner?"
"Yes," replied the other, indifferently.
Jack started towards the stairs, hesitated, and turned around.
"Your inventions are not safe, of course, if the German army comes. Do you need my help?"
"My inventions are my own affair," said the marquis, angrily.
Jack flushed scarlet, swung on his heels, and marched out of the room and down the stairs. On the lower steps he met Lorraine's maid, and told her briefly to pack her mistress's trunks for a visit to Morteyn.
Lorraine was waiting for him at the window where he had left her, a scared, uncertain little maid in truth.
"The battle is very near, isn't it?" she asked.
"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 God's sake!" he gasped. "I've just killed mine. I—I must get to Metz by midnight—"
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 glass 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 glass 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 thismorning 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 Château. 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 Château 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—andbawled 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 Jäger 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 Château. 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 startsand 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 shivered 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?"
"Did you see wolves here?" asked Georges.
"Yes; before war was declared. I told Monsieur Marche—it is a legend of our country. He, of course, laughed at it. I also do not believe everything I am told—but—I don't know—I have alway believed that, ever since I was, oh, very, very small—like that." She held one small gloved hand about twelve inches from the floor of the cart.
"At such a height and such an age it is naturalto believe anything," said Jack. "I, too, accepted many strange doctrines then."
"You are laughing again," said Lorraine.
So they passed through the forest, trying to be cheerful, even succeeding at times. But Georges' face grew paler every minute, and his smile was so painful that Lorraine could not bear it and turned her head away, her hand tightening on the box-rail alongside.
As they were about to turn out into the Morteyn road, where the forest ended, Jack suddenly checked the horse and rose to his feet.
"What is it?" asked Lorraine. "Oh, I see! Oh, look!"
The Morteyn road was filled with infantry, solid, plodding columns, pressing fast towards the west. The fields, too, were black with men, engineers, weighted down with their heavy equipments, resting in long double rows, eyes vacant, heads bent. Above the thickets of rifles sweeping past, mounted officers sat in their saddles, as though carried along on the surface of the serried tide. Standards fringed with gold slanted in the last rays of the sun, sabres glimmered, curving upward from the thronged rifles, and over all sounded the shuffle, shuffle of worn shoes in the dust, a mournful, monotonous cadence, a hopeless measure, whose burden was despair, whose beat was the rhythm of breaking hearts.
Oh, but it cut Lorraine to see their boyish faces, dusty, gaunt, hollow-eyed, turn to her and turn away without a change, without a shade of expression. The mask of blank apathy stamped on every visage almost terrified her. On they came, on, on, and stillon, under a forest of shining rifles. A convoy of munitions crowded in the rear of the column, surrounded by troopers of the train-des-equipages; then followed more infantry, then cavalry, dragoons, who sat listlessly in their high saddles, carbines bobbing on their broad backs, whalebone plumes matted with dust.
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.
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 stoodin 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 shelterof 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 barrackgates 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."
"I know it," said Jack; "it makes me ill to think of it."
"It ought to make Frossard ill! Had a French army of invasion pushed on through Saint-Johann on the 2d of August and marched rapidly into the interior, the Germans could not possibly have concentrated their scattered regiments, and it is my firm conviction that Napoleon would have seen the Rhine without having had to fight a pitched battle. Well, Marche, I drink to neither one side nor the other, but—here's to the men with backbones. Prosit!"
They laughed and clinked glasses. Grahame finished his bottle, rose, politely stifled a yawn, and looked humourously at Jack.
"There are two beds in my room; will you take one?" said the young fellow.
"Thank you, I will," said Grahame, "and as soon as you please, my dear fellow."
So Jack led the way and ushered the other into a huge room with two beds, seemingly lost in distant diagonal corners. Grahame promptly kicked off his boots, and sat down on his bed.
"I saw a funny thing in Saarbrück," he said. "It was right in the midst of a cannonade—the shells were smashing the chimneys on the Hotel Hagen and raising hell generally. And right in the midst of the whole blessed mess, cool as a cucumber, came sauntering a real live British swell with a coat adorned with field-glasses and girdle and a dozen pockets, an eye-glass, a dog that seemed dearer to him than life, and a drawl that had not been perceptibly quickened by the French cannon. He-aw-had been going eastward somewhere to-aw-Constantinople, or Saint-Petersburg, or-aw-somewhere, when he-aw-heard that it might be amusing at Saarbrück. A shell knocked acart-load of tiles around his head, and he looked at it through his eye-glass. Marche, I never laughed so in my life. He's a good fellow, though—he's trotting about with the Hohenzollern Regiment now, and, really, I miss him. His name is Hesketh—"
"Not Sir Thorald?" cried Jack.
"Eh?—yes, that's the man. Know him?"
"A little," said Jack, laughing, and went out, bidding Graham good-night, and promising to have him roused at dawn.
"Aren't you going to turn in?" called Grahame, fearful of having inconvenienced Jack in his own quarters.
"Yes," said the young fellow. "I won't wake you—I'll be back in an hour." And he closed the door, and went down-stairs.
For a few moments he stood on the cool terrace, listening to the movement of the host below; and always the tramp of feet, the snort of horses, and the metallic jingle of passing cannon filled his ears.
The big cuirassier sentinel had been joined by two more, all of the Hundred-Guards. Jack noticed their carbines, wondering a little to see cuirassiers so armed, and marvelling at the long, slender, lance-like bayonets that were attached to the muzzles.
Presently he went into the house, and, entering the smoking-room, met his aunt coming out.
"Jack," she said, "I am a little nervous—the Emperor is still in the dining-room with a crowd of officers, and he has just sent an aide-de-camp to the Château de Nesville to summon the marquis. It will be most awkward; your uncle and he are not friendly, and the Marquis de Nesville hates the Emperor."
"Why did the Emperor send for him?" asked Jack, wondering.
"I don't know—he wishes for a private interview with the marquis. He may refuse to come—he is a very strange man, you know."
"Then, if he is, he may come; that would be stranger still," said Jack.
"Your uncle is not well, Jack," continued Madame de Morteyn; "he is quite upset by being obliged to entertain the Emperor. You know how all the Royalists feel. But, Jack, dear, if you could have seen your uncle it would have been a lesson in chivalry to you which any young man could ill afford to miss—he was so perfectly simple, so proudly courteous—ah, Jack, your uncle is one in a nation!"
"He is—and so are you!" said Jack, kissing her faded cheek. "Are you going to retire now?"
"Yes; your uncle needs me. The lights are out everywhere. Lorraine, dear child, is asleep in the next room to mine. Is Mr. Grahame comfortable? I am glad. The Prince Imperial is sleeping too, poor child—sleeping like a worn-out baby."
Jack conducted his aunt to her chamber, and bade her good-night. Then he went softly back through the darkened house, and across the hall to the dining-room. The door was open, letting out a flood of lamp-light, and the generals and staff-officers were taking leave of the Emperor and filing out one by one, Frossard leading, his head bent on his breast. Some went away to rooms assigned them, guided by a flunky, some passed across the terrace with swords trailing and spurs ringing, and disappeared in the darkness. They had not all left the Emperor, when, suddenly,Jack heard behind him the voice of the Marquis de Nesville, cold, sneering, ironical.
"Oh," he said, seeing Jack standing by the door, "can you tell me where I may find the Emperor of the French? I am sent for." Turning on the aide-de-camp at his side: "This gentleman courteously notified me that the Emperor desired my presence. I am here, but I do not choose to go alone, and I shall demand, Monsieur Marche, that you accompany me and remain during the interview."
The aide-de-camp looked at him darkly, but the marquis sneered in his face.
"I want a witness," he said, insolently; "you can tell that to your Emperor."
The aide-de-camp, helmet under his arm, from which streamed a horse-hair plume, entered the dining-room as the last officer left it.
Jack looked uneasily at the marquis, and was about to speak when the aid returned and requested the marquis to enter.
"Monsieur Marche, remain here, I beg you," said the marquis, coolly; "I shall call you presently. It is a service I ask of you. Will you oblige me?"
"Yes," said Jack.
The door opened for a second.
Napoleon III. sat at the long table, his head drooping on his breast; he was picking absently at threads in the texture of the table-cloth. That was all Jack saw—a glimpse of a table covered with half-empty glasses and fruit, an old man picking at the cloth in the lamplight; then the door shut, and he was alone in the dark hall. Out on the terrace he heard the tramp of the cuirassier sentinels, and beyond that theuproar of artillery, passing, always passing. He stared about in the darkness, he peered up the staircase into the gloom. A bat was flying somewhere near—he felt the wind from its mousy wings.
Suddenly the door was flung open beside him, and the marquis called to him in a voice vibrating with passion. As he entered and bowed low to the Emperor, he saw the marquis, tall, white with anger, his blue eyes glittering, standing in the centre of the room. He paid no attention to Jack, but the Emperor raised his impassible face, haggard and gray, and acknowledged the young man's respectful salutation.
"You have asked me a question," said the marquis, harshly, "and I demanded to answer it in the presence of a witness. Is your majesty willing that this gentleman shall hear my reply?"
The Emperor looked at him with half-closed, inscrutable eyes, then, turning his heavy face to Jack's, smiled wearily and inclined his head.
"Good," said the marquis, apparently labouring under tremendous excitement. "You ask me to give you, or sell you, or loan you my secret for military balloons. My answer is, 'No!'"
The Emperor's face did not change as he said, "I ask it for your country, not for myself, monsieur."
"And I will give it to my country, not to you!" said the marquis, violently.
Jack looked at the Emperor. He noticed his unkempt hair brushed forward, his short thumbs pinching the table-cloth, his closed eyes.
The Marquis de Nesville took a step towards him.
"Does your majesty remember the night that Morny lay dying in the shadows? And that horriblecroak from the darkness when he raised himself on one elbow and gasped, 'Sire, prenez garde à la Prusse!' Then he died. That was all—a warning, a groan, the death-rattle in the shadows by the bed. Then he died."
The Emperor never moved.
"'Look out for Prussia!' That was Morny's last gasp. And now? Prussia is there, you are here! And you need aid, and you send for me, and I tell you that my secrets are for my country, not for you! No, not for you—you who said, 'It is easy to govern the French, they only need a war every four years!' Now—here is your war! Govern!"
The Emperor's slow eyes rested a moment on the man before him. But the man, trembling, pallid with passion, clenched his hands and hurled an insult at the Emperor through his set teeth: "Napoleon the Little! Listen! When you have gone down in the crash of a rotten throne and a blood-bought palace, then, when the country has shaken this—this thing—from her bent back, then I will give to my country all I have! But never to you, to save your name and your race and your throne—never!"
He fairly frothed at the lips as he spoke; his eyes blazed.
"Your coup-d'état made me childless! I had a son, fairer than yours, who lies asleep in there—brave, gentle, loving—a son of mine, a De Nesville! Your bribed troops killed him—shot him to death on the boulevards—him among the others—so that you could sit safely in the Tuileries! I saw them—those piled corpses! I saw little children stabbed to death with bayonets, I saw the heaped slain lying before Tortoni's,where the whole street was flooded crimson and the gutters rippled blood! And you? I saw you ride with your lancers into the Rue Saint-Honoré, and when you met the barricade you turned pale and rode back again! I saw you; I was sitting with my dead boy on my knees—I saw you—"
With a furious cry the marquis tore a revolver from his pocket and sprang on the Emperor, and at the same instant Jack seized the crazy man by the shoulders and hurled him violently to the floor.
Stunned, limp as a rag, the marquis lay at the Emperor's feet, his clenched hands slowly relaxing.
The Emperor had not moved.
Scarcely knowing what he did, Jack stooped, drew the revolver from the extended fingers, and laid it on the table. Then, with a fearful glance at the Emperor, he dragged the marquis to the door, opened it with a shove of his foot, and half closed it again.
The aide-de-camp stood there, staring at the prostrate man.
"Here, help me with him to his carriage; he is ill," panted Jack—"lift him!"
Together they carried him out to the terrace, and down the steps to a coupé that stood waiting.
"The marquis is ill," said Jack again; "put him to bed at once. Drive fast."
Before the sound of the wheels died away Jack hastened back to the dining-room. Through the half-opened door he peered, hesitated, turned away, and mounted the stairs slowly to his own chamber.
In the dining-room the lamp still burned dimly. Beside it sat the Emperor, head bent, picking absently at the table-cloth with short, shrunken thumbs.
It was not yet dawn. Jack, sleeping with his head on his elbow, shivered in his sleep, gasped, woke, and sat up in bed. There was a quiet footfall by his bed, the scrape of a spur, then silence.
"Is that you, Mr. Grahame?" he asked.
"Yes; I didn't mean to wake you. I'm off. I was going to leave a letter to thank you and Madame de Morteyn—"
"Are you dressed? What time is it?"
"Four o'clock—twenty minutes after. It's a shame to rouse you, my dear fellow."
"Oh, that's all right," said Jack. "Will you strike a light—there are candles on my dresser. Ah, that's better."
He sat blinking at Grahame, who, booted and spurred and buttoned to the chin, looked at him quizzically.
"You were not going off without your coffee, were you?" asked Jack. "Nonsense!—wait." He pulled a bell-rope dangling over his head. "Now that means coffee and hot rolls in twenty minutes."
When Jack had bathed and shaved, operations he executed with great rapidity, the coffee was brought, and he and Grahame fell to by candle-light.
"I thought you were afoot?" said Jack, glancing at the older man's spurs.
"I'm going to hunt up a horse; I'm tired of this eternal tramping," replied Grahame. "Hello, is this package for me?"
"Yes, there's a cold chicken and some things, and a flask to keep you until you find your Hohenzollern Regiment again."
Grahame rose and held out his hand. "Good-by. You've been very kind, Marche. Will you say, for me, all that should be said to Madame de Morteyn? Good-by once more, my dear fellow. Don't forget me—I shall never forget you!"
"Wait," said Jack; "you are going off without a safe-conduct."
"Don't need it; there's not a French soldier in Morteyn."
"Gone?" stammered Jack—"the Emperor, General Frossard, the army—"
"Every mother's son of them, and I must hurry—"
Their hands met again in a cordial grasp, then Grahame slipped noiselessly into the hallway, and Jack turned to finish dressing by the light of his clustered candles.
As he stood before the quaintly wrought mirror, fussing with studs and buttons, he thought with a shudder of the scene of the night before, the marquis and his murderous frenzy, the impassive Emperor, the frantic man hurled to the polished floor, stunned, white-cheeked, with hands slowly relaxing and fingers uncurling from the glittering revolver.
Lorraine's father! And he had laid hands on himand had flung him senseless at the feet of the Man of December! He could scarcely button his collar, his fingers trembled so. Perhaps he had killed the Marquis de Nesville. Sick at heart, he finished dressing, buttoned his coat, flung a cap on his head, and stole out into the darkness.
On the terrace below he saw a groom carrying a lantern, and he went out hastily.
"Saddle Faust at once," he said. "Have the troops all gone?"
"All, monsieur; the last of the cavalry passed three hours ago; the Emperor drove away half an hour later with Lulu—"
"Eh?"
"The prince—pardon, monsieur—they call him Lulu in Paris."
"Hurry," said Jack; "I want that horse at once."
Ten minutes later he was galloping furiously down the forest road towards the Château de Nesville. The darkness was impenetrable, so he let the horse find his own path, and gave himself up to a profound dejection that at times amounted to blind fear. Before his eyes he saw the pallid face of the Marquis de Nesville, he saw the man stretched on the floor, horribly still; that was the worst, the stillness of the body.
The sky was gray through the trees when he turned into the park and skirted the wall to the wicket. The wicket was locked. He rang repeatedly, he shook the grille and pounded on the iron escutcheon with the butt of his riding-crop; and at length a yawning servant appeared from the gate-lodge and sleepily dragged open the wicket.
"The marquis was ill, have you heard anything?" asked Jack.
"The marquis is there on the porch," said the servant, with a gesture towards the house.
Jack's heart leaped up. "Thank God!" he muttered, and dismounted, throwing his bridle to the porter, who now appeared in the doorway.
He could see the marquis walking to and fro, hands clasped behind his strong, athletic back; his head was turned in Jack's direction. "The marquis is crazy," thought Jack, hesitating. He was convinced now that long brooding over ancient wrongs had unsettled the man's mind. There had always been something in his dazzling blue eyes that troubled Jack, and now he knew it was the pale light of suppressed frenzy. Still, he would have to face him sooner or later, and he did not recoil now that the hour and the place and the man had come.
"I'll settle it once for all," he thought, and walked straight up the path to the house. The marquis came down the steps to meet him.
"I expected you," he said, without a trace of anger. "I have much to say to you. Will you come in or shall we sit in the arbour there? You will enter? Then come to the turret, Monsieur Marche."
Jack would have refused, but he had not the courage. He was not at all pleased at the idea of mounting to a turret with a man whom he had laid violent hands on the night before, a man whom he had seen succumb to an access of insane fury in the presence of the Emperor of France. But he went, cursing the cowardice that prevented him from being cautious; and in a few moments he entered the chamber whereretorts and bottles and steel machinery littered every corner, and the pale dawn broke through the window in ghastly streams of light, changing the candle-flames to sickly greenish blotches.
They sat opposite each other, neither speaking. Jack glanced at a heavy steel rod on the floor beside him. It was just as well to know it was there, in case of need.
"Monsieur," said the marquis, abruptly, "I owe you a great deal more than my life, which is nothing; I owe you my family honour."
This was a new way of looking at the situation; Jack fidgeted in his chair and eyed the marquis.
"Thanks to you," he continued, quietly, "I am not an assassin, I am not a butcher of dogs. The De Nesvilles were never public executioners—they left that to the Bonapartes and Monsieur de Paris."
He rose hastily from his chair and held out a hand. Jack took it warily and returned the nervous pressure. Then they both resumed their seats.
"Let us clear matters up," said the marquis in a wonderfully gentle voice, that would have been fascinating to more phlegmatic men than Jack—"let us clear up everything and understand each other. You, monsieur, dislike me; pardon—you dislike me for reasons of your own. I, on the contrary, like you; I like you better this moment than I ever did. Had you not come as I expected, had you not entered, had you refused to mount to the turret, I still should have liked you. Now I also respect you."
Jack twisted and turned in his chair, not knowing what to think or say.
"Why do you dislike me?" asked the marquis, quietly.
"Because you are not kind to your daughter," said Jack, bluntly.
To his horror the man's eyes filled with tears, big, glittering tears that rolled down his immovable face. Then a flush stained his forehead; the fever in his cheeks dried the tears.
"Jack," he said, calling the young fellow by his name with a peculiarly tender gesture, "I loved my son. My soul died within me when René died, there on the muddy pavement of the Paris boulevards. I sometimes think I am perhaps a little out of my mind; I brood on it too much. That is why I flung myself into this"—with a sweep of his arm towards the flasks and machinery piled around. "Lorraine is a girl, sweet, lovable, loyal. But she is not my daughter."
"Lorraine!" stammered Jack.
"Lorraine."
The young fellow sat up in his chair and studied the face of the pale man before him.
"Not—your child?"
"No."
"Whose?"
"I cannot tell."
After a silence the marquis stood up, and walked to the window. His face was haggard, his hair dishevelled.
"No," he said, "Lorraine is not my daughter. She is not even my heiress. She was—she was—found, eighteen years ago."
The room was becoming lighter; the sky grewfaintly luminous and the mist from the stagnant fen curled up along the turret like smoke.
Jack picked up his cap and riding-crop and rose; the marquis turned from the window to confront him. His face was no longer furrowed with pain, the cold light had crept back into his eyes.
"Monsieur," said Jack, "I ask your permission to address Lorraine. I love her."
The marquis stood silent, scarcely breathing.
"You know who and what I am; you probably know what I have. It is enough for me; it will be enough for us both. I shall work to make it enough. I do not expect or wish for anything from you for Lorraine; I do not give it a thought. Lorraine does not love me, but," and here he spoke with humility, "I believe that she might. If I win her, will you give her to me?"
"Win her?" repeated the marquis, with an ugly look. The man's face was changing now, darkening in the morning light.
"Monsieur," he said, violently, "you may say to her what you please!" and he opened the door and showed Jack the way out.
Dazed, completely mystified, Jack hurried away to find his horse at the gate where he had left him. The marquis was crazy, that was certain. These unaccountable moods and passions, following each other so abruptly, were nothing else but reactions from a life of silent suffering. All the way back to Morteyn he pondered on the strange scene in the turret, the repudiation of Lorraine, the sudden tenderness for himself, and then the apathy, the suppressed anger, the indifference coupled with unexplainable emotion.
"No sane man could act like that," he murmured, as he rode into the Morteyn gate, and, with a smart slap of his hand on Faust's withers, he sent that intelligent animal at a trot towards the stables, where a groom awaited him with sponge and bucket.
The gardeners were cleaning up the litter in the roads and paths left by the retreating army. The road by the gate was marked with hoof and wheel, but the macadam had not suffered very much, and already a roller was at work removing furrow and hoof-print.
He entered the dining-room. It was empty. So also was the breakfast-room, for breakfast had been served an hour before.
He sent for coffee and muffins and made a hasty breakfast, looking out of the window at times for signs of his aunt and Lorraine. The maid said that Madame de Morteyn had driven to Saint-Lys with the marquis, and that Mademoiselle de Nesville had gone to her room. So he finished his coffee, went to his room, changed his clothes, and sent a maid to inquire whether Lorraine would receive him in the small library at the head of the stairs. The maid returned presently, saying that Mademoiselle de Nesville would be down in a moment or two, so Jack strolled into the library and leaned out of the window to smoke.
When she came in he did not hear her until she spoke.
"Don't throw your cigarette away, monsieur; I permit you to smoke—indeed, I command it. How do you do?" This in very timid English. "I mean—good-morning—oh, dear, this terrible English language!Now you may sit there, in that large leather arm-chair, and you may tell me why you did not appear at breakfast. Is Monsieur Grahame still sleeping? Gone? Oh, dear! And you have been to the Château de Nesville? Is my father well? And contented? There, I knew he would miss me. Did you give him my dearest love? Thank you for remembering. Now tell me—"
"What?" laughed Jack.