With the French guns withdrawn from range, nothing interfered with the remorselessly steady tramp of the column of infantry passing the gate; and out on the main road an unending stream of men, guns, and transport flowed, eyes on the goal of Paris. The chateau and its grounds were an island in the green advancing tide planning to overflow the world.
The three had little appetite for dinner, which Jacqueline prepared earlier than usual. They had finished when one of the green units detached itself from the procession of armed power.
"We billet here to-night," he said in French to Phil, who met him at the door. "How many of you are there? Three? Keep to your bedrooms and leave the rest of the house to us. And you, are you English?"
"No, American."
"And what are you doing here?"
"I am here with my cousins," he answered. "We managed to get their mother away to Paris."
"Keep to your rooms!" was the warning.
A few minutes later a dozen dusty officers with baggage and orderlies arrived. Their guttural voices seemed to fill the rooms. When they wanted to occupy the kitchen Jacqueline was inclined to show fight, but Phil dissuaded her and after her first temperamental outburst she yielded to Cæsar and put her saucepans at the service of Cæsar's minions, who were already rummaging among the preserves and the wines. It was war, a matter of course. Jacqueline being bred of a military race accommodated herself to the fact, with a deadly hate in her heart.
By the wish of the two girls, who plainly preferred not to be alone, they all made Henriette's bedroom a sitting-room. There they sat, listening to the heavy footsteps below, the loud talk with references to Paris, the clinking of glasses and toasts of exultant militarism. Phil's anger was hard to control. He was not of a military race. These men were highwaymen and burglars to him, outraging a home.
A brigadier-general slept in Madame Ribot's room; captains had the sofas and lieutenants the floor. Not until there was silence below did the three separate. Before dawn they were aroused by the harsh gutturals and the noise of packing and hurried breakfasts, before the officers again took their places with their commands and the green river moved on after the few hours' rest which even German discipline had to concede to the limitations of the human machine. Half-empty preserve jars and wine bottles were on the tables and sausage grease had been ground into the floors. In the littered kitchen industrious Jacqueline had already begun putting things to rights and in due course prepared the morning coffee as usual.
"I feel as if the house had been tainted!" she said.
"They have taken what they wanted," said the curé, who came to tell them that the mayor was made hostage for the good behaviour of the villagers, which meant that all must remain indoors. "I fear, I fear!" he said, as he went away. "They are very strong, these barbarians!"
At breakfast the cousins spoke only in monosyllables. A pall was over their thoughts. They could hear the steady tramp of men or the creak of gun-carriages and caissons passing, like a march of fate that would never end. Something was gone from their hearts and minds, from the house, the garden, the air, the world—which was still with them as long as a French soldier stood between them and the enemy. There was nothing to do but stay indoors. The chateau and its grounds became a prison.
Helen took a chair out behind a bush by the gate, where she could look through an opening, and began sketching. Henriette tried to read a novel. Phil walked in the grounds. What were the old father and mother in Longfield thinking had become of him? How long should he be here? He had turned to go into the house when steps on the walk, with the jingle of spurs, arrested him and he looked around to see a young officer of distinctly Prussian pattern approaching.
Lieutenant von Eichborn, aide to Lieutenant-General von Stein, division commander, was probably four and twenty. From the peak of his helmet to his spurs he thought well of himself and poorly of everybody else in the world who was not Prussian and of his caste. This person in front of him was a civilian. Since August first civilians had been of no account on the continent of Europe. Besides, it was a nuisance to have the owner of a chateau about.
"Do you live here?" he asked.
"Yes, for the present," Phil replied.
"English?" von Eichborn shot at him and in English.
"American!" Phil politely gave monosyllable for monosyllable. He did not like von Eichborn.
"I am going to look over the chateau with a view to making it staff headquarters," said von Eichborn, starting toward the door past Phil.
"Evidently," said Phil.
Von Eichborn wheeled on him.
"Take care!" he said. "I am an officer."
"I judged that you were," Phil replied, with studied politeness.
Von Eichborn stared, frowned. Phil neither stared nor frowned; he smiled.
"What else am I to say?" he added. "I am not used to military customs."
Von Eichborn strolled on into the hall.
"Pleasant place. I think it will do—the best in this neighbourhood, anyway. But I'll go through it."
Henriette rose from her chair as he entered the sitting-room and the aide of General von Stein who thought so well of himself, startled, put up his eye-glass, dropped it, and made a low bow.
"The chateau belongs to Mademoiselle Ribot's mother," Phil explained.
"Most charming place, most charming!" said von Eichborn, speaking French now, while he was looking into Henriette's eyes and smiling.
"We think so," Henriette replied, and she smiled, partly in response to his admiration, perhaps, as well as for policy's sake.
"Madame, your mother is not here?"
"No. She succeeded in getting away on the last train to Paris."
"Perhaps I shall see her there," von Eichborn remarked.
"You are quite sure?" Henriette flashed.
Her spirit seemed to please him; at least, he smiled again. A straight, fine figure of militarism he made, his head inclined toward her; but the thickish lips, the rather outstanding ears with heavy lobes, and the straight line from neck to crown marked him as a brute.
"Then you are quite alone here?" he continued.
"My sister and Cousin Phil are here."
"Oh!" He glanced back at Phil casually.
"I hope that we may be disturbed as little as possible," she ventured.
"We are not such barbarians as you think," he said, with a laugh. "As a matter of fact, I do not see why you should be disturbed at all. There is another chateau on the list which belongs to the Count de la Grange, and as I have the say for my uncle, the General, I do not see why that will not serve as well."
"Yes, the Count is away!" put in Henriette quickly. "Thank you very much!" This with a gracious smile as a livelier expression of her acknowledgment of his courtesy.
"Done!" he answered promptly, smiling back at her. "I shall see that you are quite undisturbed, I promise you, unless some one has to billet here. We may be crowded and may be here some time if your scepticism about our taking of Paris is well-grounded." He made the bow of a Berlin salon, his heels clicking together, as he withdrew.
Phil went into the grounds with him.
"It's very good of you," he managed to say.
"Don't mention it!" replied von Eichborn. "A very charming cousin. She speaks French like a Frenchwoman and looks like one. And you are an American?"
"A distant cousin;" and Phil tried to explain a situation whose awkwardness von Eichborn only emphasised the more by one or two subtle remarks. Phil bit his lip and reminded himself that he was in the presence of Prussian force.
"A peculiar position for an American," von Eichborn observed. "I hope your papers are all right."
"Quite!"
"That is fortunate. You may be interrogated. The secret service is very watchful, you know. Good-morning!"
Phil watched the ramrod form to the tune of the jingling spurs disappear past the gate-post. He was disgusted and thoughtful.
"I am very glad that you are here with us," said Henriette soberly, when he returned to the house. She, too, had been thinking.
An hour later a Prussian sergeant and two privates marched into the grounds. The sergeant mounted the steps and having rung the bell proceeded to hammer on the door. Phil answered the call, and was not long in realising that he was under arrest. The sergeant could not say why, such details not being in his orbit of duty. His orders were to bring one young man from the chateau to headquarters. The only thing for Phil was to take the situation philosophically.
"I never did like melodrama," he said, as he stood by the steps under the guard of the two privates, while the sergeant was searching his room for incriminating evidence.
"Don't!" pleaded the girls together. "Don't joke about it!"
"And answer all their questions politely," added Helen. "If we don't hear anything by to-night we'll come to headquarters or get the curé to go there."
"I'll be as polite as pie," said Phil. "And don't you be too serious about it," he added warningly, in turn. "When I show my papers to some one in authority I'll be all right."
"It was I who got you into this!" Helen exclaimed, beset by a new thought. "If I hadn't stayed——"
Perhaps a better "if" would have referred to Henriette's beauty.
"Nonsense! It's all a mistake!" said Phil.
"Plot complete!" he added, as the sergeant appeared with the letters and papers that he had found in Phil's room carefully tied up and announced, with barrack-room gruffness that it was time to march.
Phil could only smile over his shoulder as he was faced about under the escort of the two privates. From Helen he had an encouraging smile in response; from Henriette a look of fright and appeal. Inwardly he was boiling. It was the first time that he or any Sanford for many generations had known the loss of liberty for five minutes. This callous old sergeant, these two men with fixed bayonets walking on either side of Phil, had no business in France. They were invaders.
On through the village street beside the gorge of transport he was conducted, then down the long avenue of trees to Count de la Grange's chateau. There he was halted and every scrap of paper in his pockets removed. He stood for a time, while officers and messengers passed up and down the steps, before he was taken indoors.
At the end of the long hall, its ceiling cracked and yellow from the neglect of impoverished nobility, its walls hung with family portraits, sat General Rousseau under guard, his aquiline nose and finely-moulded chin in bold relief. As Phil was directed along the hall, the sound of his steps on the marble flooring drew the General's attention. The glances of the two met. Phil was about to speak, when his impulse was stayed by the fact that he was looking at a profile which seemed oblivious of his presence.
"He is in trouble and does not want to recognise me lest he get me in trouble," Phil thought, "or I might get him into deeper trouble."
The General sat stiffly erect, a space between his coat back and the chair back, something distinguished and calm in his manner, with a smiling turn to his lips which completed an air of quiet triumph unaffected by his surroundings. Directly an officer came out from one of the rooms and motioned to the General to enter the open door in front of him. Phil was then moved up to the seat thus vacated, whence he could look into the salon, with its long French windows open on the garden. Before a table sat a German general of fifty-five or so, his bullet head close-cropped and his profile as set as if it were carved out of stone. On the wall at his back was a large map with blue pencil markings. In front of him stood old Rousseau, head up, his lips still having the turn of a faint smile.
Division Commander von Stein was reading from a paper, which stated that the General had given information to the enemy by means of carrier pigeons.
"What have you to say?" demanded von Stein.
"That I am not a lawyer; but, speaking as a soldier," replied General Rousseau in an even voice, "I am happy to say that my last pigeon went before you could intercept it."
"As a soldier you knew what to report," said von Stein rather affably. "It was clever of you and you must have sent some valuable information."
If he could learn the nature of the information it might enable him to counteract some of its results; but General Rousseau's smile broadened a little at this obvious bait of flattery.
"I'm even a good enough soldier not to tell you that," he replied. "Perhaps your soldiers are learning this moment," he added proudly.
"As you have confessed——" von Stein rapped out in irritation.
"Yes," replied the General calmly, almost sweetly.
"You know the penalty?"
"Yes. I expected it. I found a way to serve France and I am ready."
Without waiting on further instructions, closing the interview himself with a certain disdainful impatience, he saluted and turned toward his guard. The full light through the large windows limned his fine, aristocratic profile and his gaunt, tall form. He was victorious in that moment and a gentleman; and the man in the chair, conscious of some quality in the Frenchman lacking in himself but admiring as soldier to soldier, exclaimed, "It is war!" and rose to his feet, saluting the man whom he had condemned, in turn.
Phil had the call to disregard his own position and rush to General Rousseau's side in his tribute of admiration. It seemed horrible at first thought to see that gallant veteran go to his death without a friendly word. But two girls were waiting at the chateau for Phil's return. He imagined that the General preferred to be alone. Nothing could equal the knowledge of his deed for France in comforting him. Still disdainful of the Prussian, lips still turned in a smile, he was marched out into the grounds—which is the full explanation of why Madame Ribot had only the Count for an escort to Paris.
Since an old man had been caught releasing pigeons which carried information to the French as to the location of three divisions of German troops and might cost the Germans five thousand men, von Stein was taking a hand in the espionage problem himself. Phil was summoned and, standing on the same spot where General Rousseau had stood, he saw all his letters and his diary lying on the Commander's table. Two officers were standing on either side of him. One of them went out after the Commander had signed some papers, and through the open door Phil had a glimpse through other open doors of rooms with walls hung with maps and of telegraph instruments and officers writing and conferring. Here was the inner circle of a division command directing all the action of guns and men which he had seen from the terrace at Mervaux, with office routine in a secluded chateau; while von Stein, the man with the responsibility of decisions, sat aloof in the salon.
The remaining officer, a major, evidently had something to do with Phil's case. Phil recalled Helen's advice: Answer all their questions politely. This he would do; and, with the example of General Rousseau as an inspiration, he waited for the first move. Von Stein looked up slowly, raising his bushy eyebrows to see what sort of dirt this was in front of him, and then regarded Phil with a sweeping glance of ferocity. It was the very thing to give Phil smiling confidence.
"Old Frightfulness is going to try to scare me!" he thought.
Having been both in Germany and in the Southwest, he recognised that the tactics of a master hand in the world's greatest military machine might be humanly the same as those of a bandit leader across the Rio Grande.
"So you are the spy!" von Stein growled.
"Not at all, sir!" Phil replied.
"Be careful! You are on oath."
"So I understand."
"Are you English?" demanded von Stein, with an access of roaring emphasis.
From the frequency of this question and its venom Phil gathered that the English could not be popular in German military circles.
"No, American."
"Prove it!"
"As you have all my papers there, may I suggest that you have the proof?"
Von Stein mumbled an ejaculation through his moustache, while the corrugations between the bushy brows and the grey line of closely-clipped hair twitched.
"What are you in Europe for?"
"To see Europe—and I'm seeing more of it than I bargained for," answered Phil.
"Do not joke! War is war! What do you mean, you a foreigner, an American, you say, by being here when our army came?"
"Your army came so fast that I could not get away from it," said Phil drily, as he might on a hot day in cactus land.
"Hur-r-r!" or something like it, escaped through von Stein's moustache and he wiggled his lips in a way that might have meant an effort to control a grin. "Why are you in that chateau?"
Phil explained quite clearly, even telling how Helen had remained behind and he had returned to look after her and to find that it was impossible to get away before the army came.
"What is your business in America?"
Phil told this, too.
"As you say; but how can we tell that what you say is true?"
"As obviously neither my own statement nor appearance counts, by investigation of my references at home through my government, if my papers and letters are not sufficient."
"Hur-r-r!" again mumbled von Stein. Then he broke out with fearful frightfulness: "Don't you know that we can have you shot as a spy?" he thundered.
As Phil had previously remarked, he had never liked melodrama. It had quite gone out of fashion at home, except in motion pictures of the Southwest as shown in New York and of New York as shown in the Southwest.
"Considering the number of your soldiers, not to mention the number of your guns and that I am unarmed, I should venture, with all respect, to say that that is a safe statement," said Phil, and he was smiling pleasantly.
"Hur-r-r!" again through the moustache; but in von Stein's grey eyes appeared an irresistible twinkle and this time he actually grinned. He was not without a sense of humour. He read theFliegende Blatterevery week.
"It agrees with my examination of his papers," put in the Major, indicating the exhibit on the table. "One of these letters is from his employer, a big man on the other side," he added; and Phil, who knew German better than French, understood the remark.
The General took three or four minutes to run his eye over the letters and the diary, grumbling the while, and finally snorting with disgust as he picked them up and handed them to Phil.
"Who brought these charges?" he demanded of the Major. Up to that time he had read only the presentment of the case and the object of his questions had been to trip the accused.
"Lieutenant von Eichborn, sir."
Now Phil saw what Prussian rage was like; the rage against inefficiency, against disobedience and waste of time.
"Fool! Puppy dog! Pampered jackanapes!" he roared. "Tell that worthless nephew of mine to come here! I'll deal with him for the last time!"
"He is out, sir. He went to see about a billet for himself," said the Major very officially, but in his eyes was a satisfied gleam as the General literally choked with rage against not only all the un-Prussian crimes already mentioned, but worse.
"Out! A personal aide out without my permission in time of war! Billeting away from this chateau! If there are no beds, let him sleep on the floor at my door ready for my call! Out—when we are fighting a battle!"
"Possibly you will find him at Mervaux," Phil could not help saying, "engaged in persecuting my cousin—which accounts for my impatience at being here under false charges."
"Take care, sir!" said von Stein, turning his ferocity on Phil. "You are a civilian making accusations against a Prussian officer and gentleman!"
"A suggestion only. Am I acquitted? I am in haste to return."
Von Stein lowered his brows, with a searching look at Phil.
"Of course you think we are Huns," he said. "The English have told you so. Huns!" The very word irritated him, yet he seemed to like to repeat it. "Huns! We bring order wherever we go. We are fighting in our defence in a war that was forced upon us!"
There, Phil let his Southwestern sense of humour eclipse discretion.
"Yes, the English and the French secretly prepared against you! They made thousands of new guns and marched into Belgium and invaded Germany!" he said.
The Commander's eyes blazed. He stammered, Phil thought that he had done for himself; and then that old professional soldier grinned.
"Huns, are we? You go back to your chateau and stay there. Not a thing on the premises will be harmed. You will be as safe as you are at home. Everybody is. If you are not, let me know. And tell your friends in America that we are not Huns."
For after the orgy of Belgium orders had come from the Most High which had America in mind. Even the Most High realised the moral force of the hundred million people across the water. Even the Most High had found that there was a thing called world public opinion.
"Stood up to it, that young man!" muttered von Stein after Phil had gone. Having been used to ordering inferiors about all his life, he had had a diversion. "Now!" as another officer came into the room with a report.
He was the cool man of judgment and precision as he went to the map, drew some lines with his pencil, and gave some orders. After this officer had departed he was alone in the big room. Leaders out on the battle line had been told what to do and they must do it on his responsibility. He could give no further orders till he knew the result. Opening the door to the adjoining room he asked:
"How long will it take to run to the chateau of Mervaux?"
"Five minutes, sir!"
"Good! I'll be back in a quarter of an hour and I am to be found there or on the road."
He strode out to the powerful motor-car that was always in waiting for him.
Without any regard to melodrama, when Henriette looked out of the window after von Eichborn had rung the bell and saw him on the steps she was frightened. The look in his eyes as he left her had been burning in her recollection—the kind of look a woman never forgets. His smile as he bowed to her now was characteristic of his good opinion of himself.
"Having an idle moment I came to call," he said.
"Oh, thank you!" she answered wildly.
He waited for her to come to the door, but she stood still, pressing her fingers to her temples in blank quandary. Possibly a sense of self-accusation heightened her distraction. She had been polite to him; she had rather opened the way to this visit. How was she to escape? She looked around at her wits' end and saw that Helen was in the room.
"I can't see him, I can't!" she exclaimed. "You must get me out of it! I never want to speak to him again!"
She turned to the door opening onto the stairway and ran through it, leaving Helen looking after her in doubt as to what it all meant.
Von Eichborn, having formed the habit in a month of war of walking into chateaux without formality, waiting no longer for Henriette to come into the hall, entered the sitting-room. Helen's back was turned to him and he easily mistook her figure for Henriette's.
"I accepted the invitation from the window, which I found very charming," he said, "though from your present attitude I might be led to think that I am not welcome."
Rather slowly Helen turned, possibly in a certain cynical anticipation of his visible surprise when he saw her face instead of the one which had led him, an aide, to absent himself from the General's side. Even that martial self-possession of a darling of Berlin drawing-rooms was temporarily thrown off its balance.
"Oh!" gasped von Eichborn.
"Yes," said Helen, thoughtfully looking him over with a lift of her chin, "I'm Henriette's sister." Inwardly she was "fighting mad," but her eyes were coldly staring.
"Your voices are alike, but you do not look alike," von Eichborn managed to say. He screwed his eyeglass into his eye.
"Really! You have quick perceptions!" she remarked.
Von Eichborn dropped his eyeglass and flicked his gloves, which he was carrying in his hand, against the table.
"And the sister? I came to see her."
"She does not want to see you, and I'm sure I don't. You would be a dreadful bore." All quite judiciously as she looked him over; the Helen of impulses, when she ought to have been diplomatic for Phil's sake, according to melodramatic ethics.
"Bore!" That darling of Berlin salons a bore! "Look here, you shrewish, homely little brute, I've nothing to do with you!" he blurted. "Tell your sister I'm here—if she is your sister. I think you're only a servant."
Still Helen was looking him over with cool, superior eyes.
"Very bad-mannered, too!" she remarked.
"But perceptions correct. Shrewish and homely, yes!"
Nobody on earth had ever spoken to him in this fashion before. He did not think such disrespect was possible. He was red-faced and stuttering as he took a step toward her, raising his gloves as if he would strike her as he often had struck his soldier servant; but his hand dropped in face of her unflinching stare.
"Look here! Do you know that I am an officer on the staff of the army in possession of this village? I'm going to be billeted here and I propose to choose my room."
He moved toward the door that led to the stairs.
"Certainly!" she answered, passing through it ahead of him. He was dumbfounded at her compliance and suspicious of its promptness. "Henriette, the beast is going to billet himself here!" she shouted up the stairs. "You pass through the other way and I will meet you outside and we'll go to the curé, who will speak to the General in command about it. The General may be a decent, respectable man."
Von Eichborn drew back from the doorway. Again he tried to fasten his eyeglass in his eye; again it would not stick. As Helen looked around at him after her call to her sister, with that in her stare which made him appear the most ridiculous little puppy that ever left a kennel, he mumbled:
"Unnecessary!"
Then she saw Phil hurrying across the grounds. She only knew how glad she was to see him and that she felt limp in her relief as he appeared in the room, looking so strong and ready for any eventuality. It was another picture of him that she would never forget.
Von Eichborn, as he turned in surprise and stood there between the two, was sheepish and confused as a human being, before his sense of authority and position vented its truculence with a snarling irony of inference.
"You seem not to have been looking after your cousins," he said. "I judge that the pretty one is quite devoted to you and the shrew here keeps guard in your absence."
Something carried Phil a step nearer to von Eichborn involuntarily; and what came into his eyes was distilled of that old blood and tempered by three years in the Southwest.
"And you, I judge," he replied, "are a cowardly beast, going about sneaking into homes when no men are present and others in your uniform are under fire!"
Cowardly was the word that sent von Eichborn out of his head with anger. He struck at Phil's face with his gloves, but missed. The rest was very simple. Von Eichborn went sprawling. His descent was rapid and unexpected and the stunning effect of the impact was accentuated by the way his head hit the floor.
"Good! good!" Helen cried, clapping her hands. "It was never done better in the movies! Good! goo——" The word was unfinished, her jaw dropping aghast with the seriousness of the situation.
When von Eichborn came to and realised what had happened, that he had been brutally knocked down by a civilian, he reached for his revolver. There was murder in his little eyes. But Phil had already taken the revolver out of its holster.
"You have struck a Prussian officer on duty!" he stammered as he got to his feet. "That is death, as you will find out as soon as I can bring some men."
He was going past Phil out of the door; but Phil barred the way.
"Wait!"
And von Eichborn had to wait. The position was strange. Here was the darling of Berlin salons and the aide of the General who commanded a division of troops which possessed the land balked by a mere civilian, a mere tourist; neither being armed. It was humiliating, disgusting, shameful. Von Eichborn could not try to force his way to the door for fear that he might be knocked down again.
"Yes, wait and consider," Phil added. "Let's not do anything rash, but think it over. Now——"
"Phil, don't!" Helen broke in wildly. "You, an American, don't realise. He can have you shot for striking him."
"After he struck me?"
"That has nothing to do with it!" put in von Eichborn hoarsely. "I'm an officer!"
"It's all true what he says!" said Helen. There was no banter of melodrama about her now. The scene had become tensely real and horrible.
"But it does not stand to reason! It's——"
"Don't smile in that way!" she pleaded. "We'll lock him in a closet and I'll stand guard. That will give you time to run for it—or some other plan—anything so they will not get you—please, please!"
"Very moving picture-ish that, Helen," he said. "No. I'll go with von Eichborn to see his General and explain that an officer invading a private house struck me and I struck him back, that being a custom of my country and I being ignorant of the customs of foreign countries. Come!" As he led the way out of doors he added to von Eichborn: "Some men in your position might want to forget the whole experience."
"Not that you struck me when in uniform! Never!" von Eichborn said. "My uncle will punish that. You will be shot, as Belgians were for the same offence."
Helen followed them. Henriette was already in the grounds, having come down from her room by the other stairway. Thus von Stein, alighting from his car, had the whole group before him as he approached. At sight of him, von Eichborn murmured something under his breath and clicked his heels together as he saluted.
"So there you are, you scoundrel!" called out the General.
Von Eichborn knew how to deal with the rage of an uncle who had no son of his own.
"Yes, sir," he said humbly. "I came to interrogate these two young women about this man's case."
"Without leave!" put in von Stein sternly.
"Time was important. The Major said you would not need me. You were busy."
"No excuse!" blurted von Stein.
"Sorry, sir!" replied von Eichborn. "Then this man returned to the house and struck me with his fist!"
"You struck an officer!" Von Stein turned on Phil, Prussian indignation overwhelming every other idea. "Why didn't you shoot him?" he demanded of von Eichborn.
"He took away my revolver when I was down and stunned," explained von Eichborn.
"Baby!" roared von Stein. "And you—" to Phil, "you struck an officer! That is settled!"
"After he had struck at me!" replied Phil steadily.
"Yes, at his face with his gloves!" put in Helen, stepping forward and looking squarely at the General. "I saw it. And he was not here to interrogate us. He wanted to go upstairs where my sister was. Then our cousin came."
Von Stein gave the two girls a scrutinising look. There was truth in Helen's eyes as surely as Henriette was beautiful. He liked Helen, not having much use for beautiful women, being unhappily married to one. But aside from her evidence he knew that his nephew was lying, as he had before to get himself out of a scrape.
"Did you try to go upstairs? Answer!" he said to von Eichborn, who understood from experience that confession was best when his uncle spoke in that fashion.
"Yes, sir!"
"And you struck at him?"
"Yes, he insulted me."
"After his insult!" interrupted Phil. "I——"
"Silence!" von Stein roared to Phil. "I'll attend to your case later. Now, as for you," to von Eichborn, "first, aide of a division general absent without leave in time of action; second, billeting himself without consent of his superior; third, wasting his superior's time with a set of foolish charges against a civilian for a mean personal motive; fourth, an offence to two young women alone in a house. All entirely in keeping with previous reprehensible conduct, without the excuse of drunkenness this time."
Thus Prussian system established the case, while von Eichborn stood stock-still, heels together, and trembling.
"You have played on my sensibilities for the last time," continued von Stein. "No matter how your mother pleads, you go back to your regiment, where you will have the chance to die like a soldier if there's any good in you. Go to the car!"
Von Eichborn saluted and obeyed.
"You have seen Prussian justice done," von Stein said, turning to Phil. "But you—you struck a Prussian officer with your fist!" His anger grew as he thought of the offence against the military caste. "You—you go to the car, too!"
"The custom of my country!" said Phil, without moving. "We have our code of personal honour as well as you. I could not have done otherwise and ever looked my friends in the face. When they hear the story and your view, sir, well——"
"The barbarians will call us Huns!" von Stein interrupted savagely.
"Yes, I should think so!"
It seemed unreal, this situation. But there was the Foreign Office in Berlin and the instructions from the Most High since the whirlwind of American indignation about Belgium. And this young man acted as if he were somebody of importance.
"I'll show you what Prussian clemency is," said von Stein. "Because you are a foreigner and ignorant, I will overlook the offence. Keep to the grounds, as I told you, and nobody will interfere with you!"
After he had gone, sitting on the back seat of the car with the expression of one who was conscious of an act of noble toleration, with von Eichborn on the front seat beside the chauffeur, the three cousins stared at one another wonderingly, Henriette's eyes radiant of her appreciation.
"You saved my life, first, and this time——"
She did not need to finish the phrase except with her eyes.
Helen, whose relief had been so personal, rallied herself a little nervously with a return to banter.
"That was surely a bit from the movies, serio-comic!" she said. "Still another cartoon of our hero's progress in Europe! We'll call it, 'And he shot his strong right arm out and the villain bit the dust.'"
"Helen, one of these days I'll——" Phil fumbled for words in his embarrassment.
"Do something else grand and I'll make a cartoon of that, too!" she said as she went into the house. When she looked into the mirror again it was with smiling self-congratulation. "Plain face, you were of some use once, anyway!" she said.
A Prussian command had been given. The three would be undisturbed in their retreat as long as they remained within the grounds of the chateau. Of itself this was no great hardship; its irritation deep from the fact that it was by Prussian command.
Any sense of awkwardness in their personal situation had passed. It seemed quite natural that they should be there together with Jacqueline and her saucepans. Their story as a story halted, even as the heartbeats of mankind halted, while it waited for the result of the Marne.
How quiet the house! How quiet the shaded paths! The roads were empty now of all save transport feeding man and gun and of ambulances returning with German wounded. Quiet here and hell far away over the hills, where the destiny of France and the world was being settled in the toss with death. Be it the three, or the children and the women and the old men in the village, the personal thought had been submerged in straining inquiry of how the battle was going.
Sound was its barometer. Farther and farther the voice of the guns had travelled, but never out of hearing. It hovered at one point as the titanic struggle came to a decision. The three talked little; consciously or unconsciously, they were always listening for something from the distance. No newspapers; no letters; no telegrams! Only flagellating wonder and suspense! All the world behind dense curtains of secrecy, not knowing whether, when they were drawn, there would be sunlight or black night outside.
Helen went on with her sketching or pretended to, but found herself staring at the paper and listening and praying for France. Twice Henriette attempted to continue with the portrait, but she made no progress. All three read a good deal, Helen by herself, slipping away from the other two when they were together. They awakened and they went to sleep to the echo of low thunder, thunder marching in a treadmill. Then there were lapses when the guns were not heard, and something seemed to catch in their throats. Had the Germans won? When the wind changed and the rumble became distinct again, what relief!
Their steps seemed always to lead to the terrace, for there they could hear more plainly; and there they would walk up and down after dinner, the dew-moist air soft against their faces, Phil in the middle, with the voices of the two girls so alike that they seemed to express a delightful cousinship in one personality. He had ceased to think of the future. Everything waited on the result of the battle. At times he wished for action; that he, too, might be striking some kind of a blow.
Those strolls in the darkness and the voice in his ears, now Helen's, now Henriette's, seemed to have become a part of his life; something from which he would never be disassociated. It was the symbol for Henriette, frightened and helpless, as he carried her to the gully and for Helen emerging, with triumph shining in her eyes, from the dust and smoke of the shell that had exploded between them. Helen had a little prayer for France which she used to repeat, sometimes softly, again belligerently with hands clenched.
"As if prayers did any good!" she said. "Only killing counts! A butcher boy from Berlin could fire a shell that would destroy the Venus di Milo."
"France will win because there is still a God in heaven!" was the rallying judgment of Jacqueline, when everybody was blue.
Up at dawn, sweeping, dusting, and scouring, it was she who brought the first glorious word. She burst into Helen's room, awakening her with a cry of:
"It's nearer—nearer! Listen!"
Helen ran to Henriette's room and then she pounded on Phil's door. Could imagination be deceiving them again? Phil slipped into his clothes and hurried out to the terrace. He could see the burst of light smoke once more against the green of the hills which had hidden the battle, and transport going to the rear along the road was more numerous. Only ammunition trucks and ambulances were moving forward. He ran back to the house in schoolboy delight, shouting the news.
"They will dent my saucepans, will they," said Jacqueline, "and rub sausage grease into my floors!"
She, too, went to the terrace to watch that unfolding panorama of German retreat; of cavalry which was covering it caught in the hot breath of thesoixante-quinze; of guns which were covering it forced back from position to position.
Staggering through the village street came the conquerors of yesterday, their glazed eyes under heavy lids, keeping dogged step from force of long discipline—they who were not to see Paris! French shell-fire kept approaching till shrapnel began to break over the village. Again the three had to take to the cellar, where for a while they heard the rattle of rifle and machine-gun fire and an occasional cheer—a kind of cheer that sounded strangely familiar to Phil. When they came upstairs the figures passing in the village street were no longer in green, but in khaki. The remnants of the little British army which had retreated from Mons was tasting the joy of pursuit.
Everybody in the village was out, lining the road; everybody, from Mère Perigord to infants in arms, displaying the smiles they had been conserving while they had been glaring at the Germans. The children gathered flowers and tossed them toles Anglaisbefore their eyes in the life, looking just as they had looked in the picture papers.
"How do you like being a conquering hero, Bill?" oneAnglaiscalled to another, as he stuck a rose in his cap and relit the "fag" cigarette stump which he had been saving behind his ear in the midst of charges and shell-fire. Plodding stoically on, these regulars, taking the day's work as it came, and this was a day's work to their liking. "Are we down-hearted? No!" Every one of them looked at Phil. There was no mistaking him; he must speak English. The lean, tired officers waved their hands in greeting to the young man and two girls who were beaming the welcome of their hearts.
"Sorry we can't stay to tea!" one called merrily.
It was a suggestion. Afternoon tea for the English! An opportunity for the chateau to furnish an important British munition of war, as the battalion halted waiting orders from somebody up ahead! Jacqueline made a pail of tea, which the three passed out, along with slices of bread spread with jam as long as there was any left.
"Jolly good of you!" said the officers. "Such good tea, too—and jam! This takes a bit of beating. Thanks awfully!"
The battalion passed on with the tide of battle.
"This is the only time that I have not felt perfectly helpless," said Helen. "There is so little a woman can do when fighting is all that counts."
"I was thinking of that myself," said Phil. "How helpless I am, though an able-bodied man!"
"But you did knock a German down!" said Helen, with one of her mischievous glances.
From the terrace they could now see the French everywhere, in the ravines and on the roads, sweeping across the fields in the wonderfully ordered system of a great army which had had generations of training.
"It is good—good—good!" said Helen.
They had recovered something which they had lost: the sense of freedom. The chateau and the grounds were once more their own; their minds and their souls were their own. Jacqueline's exaltation expressed itself in an amazingly good dinner; Helen's in a series of fresh cartoons over their coffee, which included "our hero" from the Southwest knocking down the German.
A call from the curé brought word that trains would begin running to Paris on the morrow, which was a reminder to all that their period of isolation was over; and for Phil a strange and memorable holiday would be at an end. Helen went out with the curé and Phil and Henriette turned up the path. After they had watched the flashes of the guns in the distance for a while, they started walking slowly back and forth.
"I don't know what we should have done if you had not been here," she said.
"At least, I kept you in the cellar! Are you glad that you came?" he asked.
"I would not have missed it for worlds!" answered Henriette. "And I owe it to you."
"No, to Helen. But for her we should have been in Paris."
"Yes, that's true," she replied thoughtfully. "And what would have become of her if we had not come?"
"Gone on sketching until a shell hit her, I should say."
"Or until she saw a wounded man and fainted! But there is something that I do owe to you and to you alone," Henriette went on softly. "I am appalled when I think of it—of the obligation. I—well——" now one of her trickling, enchanting laughs. "There's the portrait to repay you! I think that we might have a sitting in the morning."
Here a white figure appeared around the corner of the path, and they were face to face with Helen. She drew back in the embarrassment of one conscious of more than a mere inadvertent intrusion.
"I was going to look at the gun-fire for a minute," she said. It might have been Henriette's voice suddenly changing the subject. She had on the simple gown whose cut was the same as Henriette's, who had dressed for dinner that evening with her usual care. Something in Helen's distraitness, a sense of her loneliness, aroused an impulse in Phil.
"Make it three!" said he. He went to her, took her hand and drew her arm into his. She seemed to resist slightly and then to yield almost tremblingly. Henriette also slipped her arm into his.
"Cousins!" she exclaimed, a happy thought in view of the situation in more ways than one.
They paced on together, two white slippers moving from under white skirts against the dark earth in unison with his own steps. Cousins! But any reason for his remaining at Mervaux was past.
"Now I shall go to Paris to-morrow," said Phil, "and inform your mother, wherever she is, that you are all right, and get off a cable to an old couple in Longfield which will stop their worrying."
"I think that we had better go with you," said Henriette. "Don't you, Helen?"
"Yes, to Paris!" said Helen, with such definiteness that it surprised her sister. Her mind was no less fixed than when she had decided to remain alone at Mervaux. She and her thousand francs and her sketches were going to America in the hazard of new fortunes. "I only ran up to see the gun-fire and I think I'll look in on Mère Perigord and get her views on the state of affairs in France," she added, starting to withdraw her hand; but Phil held it fast.
"Our last night together at Mervaux," he said. "Let Mère Perigord wait."
Something strong and irresistible in his grip made her yield; but he could not see the twinge in her features hidden by the darkness. It was torture for her, this promenade with the man to whom she had said "Yes." The desire for flight had never been so strong; flight from Mervaux and all old associations to new worlds.
They had ceased to talk as they kept on rhythmically pacing in the dark, each with his own thoughts. Phil, looking backward now when the strain had passed, saw the whole experience at Mervaux with a sense of personal incompetency; as a helpless spectator of action.
"I'm getting sleepy!" Helen pleaded at last.
"So am I," Phil replied. "Four more turns!"
He did not like to part with their companionship in the faint starlight this last evening at Mervaux.
"You will go straight to America?" Henriette asked, as they started toward the house.
"I think so, if I can catch a steamer. I imagine that not one-tenth of the homeward rush has been accommodated yet."
Not until they reached the door did the three unlink arms. Helen, blinking into the lamplight of the hall, bent her head. She was swallowing as if she would try her voice before she said "Good-night!" with the faintest smile, as for an instant her eyes looked into his and he saw something that reminded him of the brilliancy and fearlessness that had shone when she rose from the ground after the shell-burst, but now veiled.
Henriette paused and, as the door closed behind Helen, held out her hand to say her own good-night. After looking into Helen's eyes he was looking into Henriette's, which had the wondering gratitude of the moment when he had laid her on the turf in the gully, and her smile, as her eyelashes flickered, added the touch of exquisite charm to her appealing beauty. Involuntarily in answer to it he drew her hand toward him.
"Henriette!"
She turned her head, her profile with parted lips toward him, and her cheek so near that impulse pressed his lips to it. At this she drew away, not quickly but steadily, looking back into his eyes, and after a tightening of her fingers drew them free. Then in a flutter, her own eyes luminous with surprise, she precipitately turned toward the door. In her room, smiling into her mirror which smiled back, she was pleased with the way the thing had been done; but to Phil her figure, as it passed through the doorway, became unaccountably the figure of Helen.