A second whistle sounded, followed by a guttural shout. He was now within twenty yards of them and could hear them speak.
“I’ve got them, I’ve got them!” he repeated, with fierce delight.
And he made up his mind to strike one of them in the face with the barrel of his revolver and to spring at the other’s throat.
But, before they even reached the wall, the door was pushed open from the outside and a third man appeared and let them through.
Paul flung away the revolver; and his impetus was such and the effort which he made so great that he managed to seize the door and draw it to him.
The door gave way. And what he then saw scared him to such a degree that he started backwards and did not even dream of defending himself against this fresh attack. The third man — Oh, hideous nightmare! Could it moreover be anything but a nightmare? — the third ruffian was raising a knife against him; and Paul knew his face . . . it was a face resembling the one which he had seen before, a man’s face and not a woman’s, but the same sort of face, undoubtedly the same sort: a face marked by fifteen additional years and by an even harder and more wicked expression, but the same sort of face, the same sort!
And the man stabbed Paul, even as the woman of fifteen years ago, even as she who was since dead had stabbed Paul’s father.
Paul Delroze staggered, but rather as the result of the nervous shock caused by the sudden appearance of this ghost of the past; for the blade of the dagger, striking the button on the shoulder-strap of his shooting-jacket, broke into splinters. Dazed and misty-eyed, he heard the sound of the door closing, the grating of the key in the lock and lastly the hum of a motor car starting on the other side of the wall. When Paul recovered from his torpor there was nothing left for him to do. The man and his two confederates were out of reach.
Besides, for the moment he was utterly absorbed in the mystery of the likeness between the figure from the past and that which he had just seen. He could think of but one thing:
“The Comtesse d’Andeville is dead; and here she is revived under the aspect of a man whose face is the very face which she would have to-day. Is it the face of some relation, of a brother of whom I never heard, a twin perhaps?”
And he reflected:
“After all, am I not mistaken? Am I not the victim of an hallucination, which would be only natural in the crisis through which I am passing? How do I know for certain that there is any connection between the present and the past? I must have a proof.”
The proof was ready to his hand; and it was so strong that Paul was not able to doubt for much longer. He caught sight of the remains of the dagger in the grass and picked up the handle. On it four letters were engraved as with a red-hot iron: an H, an E, an R and an M.
H, E, R, M; the first four letters of Hermine! . . . At this moment, while he was staring at the letters which were to him so full of meaning, at this moment, a moment which Paul was never to forget, the bell of a church nearby began to ring in the most unusual manner: a regular, monotonous, uninterrupted ringing, which sounded at once brisk and unspeakably sinister.
“The tocsin,” he muttered to himself, without attaching the full sense to the word. And he added: “A fire somewhere, I expect.”
A few minutes later Paul had succeeded in climbing over the wall by means of the projecting branches of a tree. He found a further stretch of woods, crossed by a forest road. He followed the tracks of a motor car along this road and reached the frontier within an hour.
A squad of German constabulary were sitting round the foot of the frontier post; and he saw a white road with Uhlans trotting along it. At the end of it was a cluster of red roofs and gardens. Was this the little town where his father and he had hired their bicycles that day, the little town of Èbrecourt?
The melancholy bell never ceased. He noticed that the sound came from France; also that another bell was ringing somewhere, likewise in France, and a third from the direction of the Liseron; and all three on the same hurried note, as though sending forth a wild appeal around them.
He repeated, anxiously:
“The tocsin! . . . The alarm! . . . And it’s being passed on from church to church. . . . Can it mean that . . .”
But he drove away the terrifying thought. No, his ears were misleading him; or else it was the echo of a single bell thrown back in the hollow valleys and ringing over the plains.
Meanwhile he was gazing at the white road which issued from the little German town, and he observed that a constant stream of horsemen was arriving there and spreading across-country. Also a detachment of French dragoons appeared on the ridge of a hill. The officer in command scanned the horizon through his field-glasses and then trotted off with his men.
Thereupon, unable to go any farther, Paul walked back to the wall which he had climbed and found that the wall was prolonged around the whole of the estate, including the woods and the park. He learnt besides from an old peasant that it was built some twelve years ago, which explained why Paul had never found the chapel in the course of his explorations along the frontier. Once only, he now remembered, some one had told him of a chapel; but it was one situated inside a private estate; and his suspicions had not been aroused.
While thus following the road that skirted the property, he came nearer to the village of Ornequin, whose church suddenly rose at the end of a clearing in the wood. The bell, which he had not heard for the last moment or two, now rang out again with great distinctness. It was the bell of Ornequin. It was frail, shrill, poignant as a lament and more solemn than a passing-bell, for all its hurry and lightness.
Paul walked towards the sound. A charming village, all aflower with geraniums and Marguerites, stood gathered about its church. Silent groups were studying a white notice posted on the Mayor’s office. Paul stepped forward and read the heading:
“Mobilization Order.”
At any other period of his life these words would have struck him with all their gloomy and terrific meaning. But the crisis through which he was passing was too powerful to allow room for any great emotion within him. He scarcely even contemplated the unavoidable consequences of the proclamation. Very well, the country was mobilizing: the mobilization would begin at midnight. . . . Very well, every one must go; he would go. . . . And this assumed in his mind the form of so imperative an act, the proportions of a duty which so completely exceeded every minor obligation and every petty individual need that he felt, on the contrary, a sort of relief at thus receiving from the outside the order that dictated his conduct. There was no hesitation possible. His duty lay before him: he must go.
Go? In that case why not go at once? What was the use of returning to the house, seeing Élisabeth again, seeking a painful and futile explanation, granting or refusing a forgiveness which his wife did not ask of him, but which the daughter of Hermine d’Andeville did not deserve?
In front of the principal inn a diligence stood waiting, marked, “Corvigny-Ornequin Railway Service.” A few passengers were getting in. Without giving a further thought to a position which events were developing in their own way, he climbed into the diligence.
At the Corvigny railway station he was told that his train would not leave for half an hour and that it was the last, as the evening train, which connected with the night express on the main line, was not running. Paul took his ticket and then asked his way to the jobmaster of the village. He found that the man owned two motor cars and arranged with him to have the larger of the two sent at once to the Château d’Ornequin and placed at Mme. Paul Delroze’s disposal.
And he wrote a short note to his wife:
“Élisabeth:
“Circumstances are so serious that I must ask you to leave Ornequin. The trains have become very uncertain; and I am sending you a motor car which will take you to-night to your aunt at Chaumont. I suppose that the servants will go with you and that, if there should be war (which seems to me very unlikely, in spite of everything), Jérôme and Rosalie will shut up the house and go
to Corvigny.
“As for me, I am joining my regiment. Whatever the future may hold in store for us, Élisabeth, I shall never forget the woman who was my bride and who bears my name.
“Paul Delroze.”
CHAPTER IV. A LETTER FROM ÉLISABETH
IT WAS NINE o’clock; there was no holding the position; and the colonel was furious.
He had brought his regiment in the middle of the night — it was in the first month of the war, on the 22nd of August, 1914 — to the junction of those three roads one of which ran from Belgian Luxemburg. The Germans had taken possession of the lines of the frontier, seven or eight miles away, on the day before. The general commanding the division had expressly ordered that they were to hold the enemy in check until mid-day, that is to say, until the whole division was able to come up with them. The regiment was supported by a battery of seventy-fives.
The colonel had drawn up his men in a dip in the ground. The battery was likewise hidden. And yet, at the first gleams of dawn, both regiment and battery were located by the enemy and lustily shelled.
They moved a mile or more to the right. Five minutes later the shells fell and killed half a dozen men and two officers.
A fresh move was effected, followed in ten minutes by a fresh attack. The colonel pursued his tactics. In an hour there were thirty men killed or wounded. One of the guns was destroyed. And it was only nine o’clock.
“Damn it all!” cried the colonel. “How can they spot us like this? There’s witchcraft in it.”
He was hiding, with his majors, the captain of artillery and a few dispatch-riders, behind a bank from above which the eye took in a rather large stretch of undulating upland. At no great distance, on the left, was an abandoned village, with some scattered farms in front of it, and there was not an enemy to be seen in all that deserted extent of country. There was nothing to show where the hail of shells was coming from. The seventy-fives had “searched” one or two points with no result. The firing continued.
“Three more hours to hold out,” growled the colonel. “We shall do it; but we shall lose a quarter of the regiment.”
At that moment a shell whistled between the officers and the dispatch-riders and plumped down into the ground. All sprang back, awaiting the explosion. But one man, a corporal, ran forward, lifted the shell and examined it.
“You’re mad, corporal!” roared the colonel. “Drop that shell and be quick about it.”
The corporal replaced the projectile quietly in the hole which it had made; and then without hurrying, went up to the colonel, brought his heels together and saluted:
“Excuse me, sir, but I wanted to see by the fuse how far off the enemy’s guns are. It’s two miles and fifty yards. That may be worth knowing.”
“By Jove! And suppose it had gone off?”
“Ah, well, sir, nothing venture, nothing have!”
“True, but, all the same, it was a bit thick! What’s your name?”
“Paul Delroze, sir, corporal in the third company.”
“Well, Corporal Delroze, I congratulate you on your pluck and I dare say you’ll soon have your sergeant’s stripes. Meanwhile, take my advice and don’t do it again. . . .”
He was interrupted by the sudden bursting of a shrapnel-shell. One of the dispatch-riders standing near him fell, hit in the chest, and an officer staggered under the weight of the earth that spattered against him.
“Come,” said the colonel, when things had restored themselves, “there’s nothing to do but bow before the storm. Take the best shelter you can find; and let’s wait.”
Paul Delroze stepped forward once more.
“Forgive me, sir, for interfering in what’s not my business; but we might, I think, avoid . . .”
“Avoid the peppering? Of course, I have only to change our position again. But, as we should be located again at once. . . . There, my lad, go back to your place.”
Paul insisted:
“It might be a question, sir, not of changing our position, but of changing the enemy’s fire.”
“Really!” said the colonel, a little sarcastically, but nevertheless impressed by Paul’s coolness. “And do you know a way of doing it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“Give me twenty minutes, sir, and by that time the shells will be falling in another direction.”
The colonel could not help smiling:
“Capital! You’ll make them drop where you please, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir.”
“On that beet-field over there, fifteen hundred yards to the right?”
“Yes, sir.”
The artillery-captain, who had been listening to the conversation, made a jest in his turn:
“While you are about it, corporal, as you have already given me the distance and I know the direction more or less, couldn’t you give it to me exactly, so that I may lay my guns right and smash the German batteries?”
“That will be a longer job, sir, and much more difficult,” said Paul. “Still, I’ll try. If you don’t mind examining the horizon, at eleven o’clock precisely, towards the frontier, I’ll let off a signal.”
“What sort of signal?”
“I don’t know, sir. Three rockets, I expect.”
“But your signal will be no use unless you send it off immediately above the enemy’s position.”
“Just so, sir.”
“And, to do that, you’ll have to know it.”
“I shall, sir.”
“And to get there.”
“I shall get there, sir.”
Paul saluted, turned on his heel and, before the officers had time either to approve or to object, he slipped along the foot of the slope at a run, plunged on the left down a sort of hollow way, with bristling edges of brambles, and disappeared from sight.
“That’s a queer fellow,” said the colonel. “I wonder what he really means to do.”
The young soldier’s pluck and decision disposed the colonel in his favor; and, though he felt only a limited confidence in the result of the enterprise, he could not help looking at his watch, time after time, during the minutes which he spent with his officers, behind the feeble rampart of a hay-stack. They were terrible minutes, in which the commanding officer did not think for a moment of the danger that threatened himself, but only of the danger of the men in his charge, whom he looked upon as children.
He saw them around him, lying at full length on the stubble, with their knapsacks over their heads, or snugly ensconced in the copses, or squatting in the hollows in the ground. The iron hurricane increased in violence. It came rushing down like a furious hail bent upon hastily completing its work of destruction. Men suddenly leapt to their feet, spun on their heels and fell motionless, amid the yells of the wounded, the shouts of the soldiers exchanging remarks and even jokes and, over everything, the incessant thunder of the bursting bomb-shells.
And then, suddenly, silence! Total, definite silence, an infinite lull in the air and on the ground, giving a sort of ineffable relief!
The colonel expressed his delight by bursting into a laugh:
“By Jupiter, Corporal Delroze knows his way about! The crowning achievement would be for the beet-field to be shelled, as he promised.”
He had not finished speaking when a shell exploded fifteen hundred yards to the right, not in the beet-field, but a little in front of it. The second went too far. The third found the spot. And the bombardment began with a will.
There was something about the performance of the task which the corporal had set himself that was at once so astounding and so mathematically accurate that the colonel and his officers had hardly a doubt that he would carry it out to the end and that, notwithstanding the insurmountable obstacles, he would succeed in giving the signal agreed upon.
They never ceased sweeping the horizon with their field-glasses, while the enemy redoubled his efforts against the beet-field.
At five minutes past eleven, a red rocket went up.
It appeared a good deal farther to the right than they would have suspected. And it was followed by two others.
Through his telescope the artillery-captain soon discovered a church-steeple that just showed above a valley which was itself invisible among the rise and fall of the plateau; and the spire of the steeple protruded so very little that it might well have been taken for a tree standing by itself. A rapid glance at the map showed that it was the village of Brumoy.
Knowing, from the shell examined by the corporal, the exact distance of the German batteries, the captain telephoned his instructions to his lieutenant. Half an hour later the German batteries were silenced; and as a fourth rocket had gone up the seventy-fives continued to bombard the church as well as the village and its immediate neighborhood.
At a little before twelve, the regiment was joined by a cyclists company riding ahead of the division. The order was given to advance at all costs.
The regiment advanced, encountering no resistance, as it approached Brumoy, except a few rifle shots. The enemy’s rearguard was falling back.
The village was in ruins, with some of its houses still burning, and displayed a most incredible disorder of corpses, of wounded men, of dead horses, demolished guns and battered caissons and baggage-wagons. A whole brigade had been surprised at the moment, when, feeling certain that it had cleared the ground, it was about to march to the attack.
But a shout came from the top of the church, the front and nave of which had fallen in and presented an appearance of indescribable chaos. Only the tower, perforated by gun-fire and blackened by the smoke from some burning joists, still remained standing, bearing by some miracle of equilibrium, the slender stone spire with which it was crowned. With his body leaning out of this spire was a peasant, waving his arms and shouting to attract attention.
The officers recognized Paul Delroze.
Picking their way through the rubbish, our men climbed the staircase that led to the platform of the tower. Here, heaped up against the little door admitting to the spire, were the bodies of eight Germans; and the door, which was demolished and had dropped crosswise, barred the entrance in such a way that it had to be chopped to pieces before Paul could be released.
Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17) Page 167
