Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “No.”

  In the stillness the nightingale grew bolder; the woods seemed saturated with song.

  “My father is restless; I must return soon,” she said, with a little sigh. “I shall go in presently and make my adieux. I wish you might know my father. Will you? He would like you. He speaks to few people except me. I know all that he thinks, all that he dreams of. I know also all that he has done, all that he is doing, all that he will do — God willing. Why is it I tell you this? Ma foi, I do not know. And I am going to tell you more. Have you heard that my father has made a balloon?”

  “Yes — everybody speaks of it,” he answered, gravely.

  “But — ah, this is the wonderful part! — he has made a balloon that can be inflated in five seconds! Think! All other balloons require a long, long while, and many tubes; and one must take them to a usine de gaz. My father’s balloon needs no gas — that is, it needs no common illuminating gas.”

  “A montgolfier?” asked Marche, curiously.

  “Oh, pooh! The idea! No, it is like other balloons, except that — well — there is needed merely a handful of silvery dust — to which you touch a drop of water — piff! puff! c’est fini! The balloon is filled.”

  “And what is this silvery dust?” he asked, laughing.

  “Voilà! Do you not wish you knew? I — Lorraine de Nesville — I know! It is a secret. If the time ever should come — in case of war, for instance — my father will give the secret to France — freely — without recompense — a secret that all the nations of Europe could not buy! Now, don’t you wish you knew, monsieur?”

  “And you know?”

  “Yes,” she said, with a tantalizing toss of her head.

  “Then you’d better look out,” he laughed; “if European nations get wind of this they might kidnap you.”

  “They know it already,” she said, seriously. “Austria, Spain, Portugal, and Russia have sent agents to my father — as though he bought and sold the welfare of his country!”

  “And that map-making fellow this morning — do you suppose he might have been hanging about after that sort of thing — trying to pry and pick up some scrap of information?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, quietly; “I only saw him making maps. Listen! there are two secrets that my father possesses, and they are both in writing. I do not know where he keeps them, but I know what they are. Shall I tell you? Then listen — I shall whisper. One is the chemical formula for the silvery dust, the gas of which can fill a balloon in five seconds. The other is — you will be astonished — the plan for a navigable balloon!”

  “Has he tried it?”

  “A dozen times. I went up twice. It steers like a ship.”

  “Do people know this, too?”

  “Germany does. Once we sailed, papa and I, up over our forest and across the country to the German frontier. We were not very high; we could see the soldiers at the custom-house, and they saw us, and — would you believe it? — they fired their horrid guns at us — pop! pop! pop! But we were too quick; we simply sailed back again against the very air-currents that brought us. One bullet made a hole in the silk, but we didn’t come down. Papa says a dozen bullets cannot bring a balloon down, even when they pierce the silk, because the air-pressure is great enough to keep the gas in. But he says that if they fire a shell, that is what is to be dreaded, for the gas, once aflame! — that ends all. Dear me! we talk a great deal of war — you and I. It is time for me to go.”

  They rose in the moonlight; he gave her back her fan. For a full minute they stood silent, facing each other. She broke a lily from its stem, and drew it out of the cluster at her breast. She did not offer it, but he knew it was his, and he took it.

  “Symbol of France,” she whispered.

  “Symbol of Lorraine,” he said, aloud.

  A deep boom, sullen as summer thunder, shook the echoes awake among the shrouded hills, rolling, reverberating, resounding, until the echoes carried it on from valley to valley, off into the world of shadows.

  The utter silence that followed was broken by a call, a gallop of hoofs on the gravel drive, the clink of stirrups, the snorting of hard-run horses.

  Somebody cried, “A telegram for you, Ricky!” There was a patter of feet on the terrace, a chorus of voices: “What is it, Ricky?” “Must you go at once?” “Whatever is the matter?”

  The young German soldier, very pale, turned to the circle of lamp-lit faces.

  “France and Germany — I — I—”

  “What?” cried Sir Thorald, violently.

  “War was declared at noon to-day!”

  Lorraine gave a gasp and reached out one hand. Jack Marche took it in both of his.

  Inside the ballroom the orchestra was still playing the farandole.

  CHAPTER V

  COWARDS AND THEIR COURAGE

  Rickerl took the old vicomte’s withered hand; he could not speak; his sister Alixe was crying.

  “War? War? Allons donc!” muttered the old man. “Helen! Ricky says we are to have war. Helen, do you hear? War!”

  Then Rickerl hurried away to dress, for he was to ride to the Rhine, nor spare whip nor spur; and Barbara Lisle comforted little Alixe, who wept as she watched the maids throwing everything pell-mell into their trunks; for they, too, were to leave at daylight on the Moselle Express for Cologne.

  Below, a boy appeared, leading Rickerl’s horse from the stables; there were lanterns moving along the drive, and dark figures passing, clustering about the two steaming horses of the messengers, where a groom stood with a pail of water and a sponge. Everywhere the hum of voices rose and died away like the rumour of swarming bees. “War!” “War is declared!” “When?” “War was declared to-day!” “When?” “War was declared to-day at noon!” And always the burden of the busy voices was the same, menacing, incredulous, half-whispered, but always the same— “War! war! war!”

  Booted and spurred, square-shouldered and muscular in his corded riding-suit, Rickerl passed the terrace again after the last adieux. The last? No, for as his heavy horse stamped out across the drive a voice murmured his name, a hand fell on his arm.

  “Dorothy,” he whispered, bending from his saddle.

  “I love you, Ricky,” she gasped.

  And they say women are cowards!

  He lifted her to his breast, held her crushed and panting; she put both hands before her eyes.

  “There has never been any one but you; do you believe it?” he stammered.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you are mine!”

  “Yes. May God spare you!”

  And Rickerl, loyal in little things, swung her gently to the ground again, unkissed.

  There was a flurry of gravel, a glimpse of a horse rearing, plunging, springing into the darkness — that was all. And she crept back to the terrace with hot, tearless lids, that burned till all her body quivered with the fever in her aching eyes. She passed the orchestra, trudging back to Saint-Lys along the gravel drive, the two fat violinists stolidly smoking their Alsacian pipes, the harp-player muttering to the aged piper, the little biniou man from the Côte-d’Or, excited, mercurial, gesticulating at every step. War! war! war! The burden of the ghastly monotone was in her brain, her tired heart kept beating out the cadence that her little slippered feet echoed along the gravel — War! war!

  At the foot of the steps which skirted the terrace she met her brother and Lorraine watching the groom rubbing down the messengers’ horses. A lantern, glimmering on the ground, shed a sickly light under their eyes.

  “Dorrie,” said Jack, “Sir Thorald and Lady Hesketh think that we all should start for Paris by the early train. They have already sent some of our trunks to Saint-Lys; Mademoiselle de Nesville” — he turned with a gesture almost caressing to Lorraine— “Mademoiselle de Nesville has generously offered her carriage to help transport the luggage, and she is going to wait until it returns.”

  “And uncle — and our aunt De Morteyn?”

  “I shall stay at
Morteyn until they decide whether to close the house and go to Paris or to stay until October. Dorrie, dear, we are very near the frontier here.”

  “There will be no invasion,” said Lorraine, faintly.

  “The Rhine is very near,” repeated Dorothy. She was thinking of Rickerl.

  “So you and Betty and Cecil,” continued Jack, “are to go with the Heskeths to Paris. Poor little Alixe is crying her eyes out up-stairs. She and Barbara Lisle are going to Cologne, where Ricky will either find them or have his father meet them.”

  After a moment he added, “It seems incredible, this news. They say, in the village, that the King of Prussia insulted the French ambassador, Count Benedetti, on the public promenade of Ems. It’s all about that Hohenzollern business and the Spanish succession. Everybody thought it was settled, of course, because the Spanish ambassador said so, and Prince Leopold von Hohenzollern withdrew his claim. I can’t understand it; I can scarcely believe it.”

  Dorothy stood a moment, looking at the stars in the midnight sky. Then she turned with a sigh to Lorraine.

  “Good-night,” she said, and they kissed each other, these two young girls who an hour before had been strangers.

  “Shall I see you again? We leave by the early train,” whispered Dorothy.

  “No — I must return when my carriage comes back from the village. Good-by, dear — good-by, dear Dorothy.”

  A moment later, Dorothy, flinging her short ermine-edged cloak from her shoulders, entered the empty ballroom and threw herself upon the gilded canapé.

  One by one the candles spluttered, glimmered, flashed up, and went out, leaving a trail of smoke in the still air. Up-stairs little Alixe was sobbing herself to sleep in Barbara’s arms; in his own chamber the old vicomte paced to and fro, and to and fro, and his sweet-faced wife watched him in silence, her thin hand shading her eyes in the lamplight. In the next room Sir Thorald and Lady Hesketh sat close together, whispering. Only Betty Castlemaine and Cecil Page had lost little of their cheerfulness, perhaps because neither were French, and Cecil was not going to the war, and — after all, war promised to be an exciting thing, and well worth the absorbed attention of two very young lovers. Arm in arm, they promenaded the empty halls and galleries, meeting no one save here and there a pale-faced maid or scared flunky; and at length they entered the gilded ballroom where Dorothy lay, flung full length on the canapé.

  She submitted to Betty’s caresses, and went away to bed with her, saying good-night to Cecil in a tear-choked voice; and a moment later Cecil sought his own chamber, lighted a pipe, and gave himself up to delightful visions of Betty, protected from several Prussian army-corps by the single might of his strong right arm.

  At the foot of the terrace, Lorraine de Nesville stood with Jack, watching the dark drive for the lamps of the returning carriage. Her maid loitered near, exchanging whispered gossip with the groom, who now stood undecided, holding both horses and waiting for orders. Presently Jack asked him where the messengers were, and he said he didn’t know, but that they had perhaps gone to the kitchens for refreshments.

  “Go and find them, then; here, give me the bridles,” said Jack; “if they are eating, let them finish; I’ll hold their horses. Why doesn’t Mademoiselle de Nesville’s carriage come back from Saint-Lys? When you leave the kitchens, go down the road and look for it. Tell them to hurry.”

  The groom touched his cap and hastened away.

  “I wish the carriage would come — I wish the carriage would hurry,” repeated Lorraine, at intervals. “My father is alone; I am nervous, I don’t know why. What are you reading?”

  “My telegram from the New York Herald,” he answered, thoughtfully.

  “It is easy to understand now,” she said.

  “Yes, easy to understand. They want me for war correspondent.”

  “Are you going?”

  “I don’t know—” He hesitated, trying to see her eyes in the darkness. “I don’t know; shall you stay here in the Moselle Valley?”

  “Yes — I suppose so.”

  “You are very near the Rhine.”

  “There will be — there shall be no invasion,” she said, feverishly. “France also ends at the Rhine; let them look to their own!”

  She moved impatiently, stepped from the stones to the damp gravel, and walked slowly across the misty lawn. He followed, leading the horses behind him and holding his telegram open in his right hand. Presently she looked back over her shoulder, saw him following, and waited.

  “Why, will you go as war correspondent?” she asked when he came up, leading the saddled horses.

  “I don’t know; I was on the Herald staff in New York; they gave me a roving commission, which I enjoyed so much that I resigned and stayed in Paris. I had not dreamed that I should ever be needed — I did not think of anything like this.”

  “Have you never seen war?”

  “Nothing to speak of. I was the Herald’s representative at Sadowa, and before that I saw some Kabyles shot in Oran. Where are you going?”

  “To the river. We can hear the carriage when it comes, and I want to see the lights of the Château de Nesville.”

  “From the river? Can you?”

  “Yes — the trees are cut away north of the boat-house. Look! I told you so. My father is there alone.”

  Far away in the night the lights of the Château de Nesville glimmered between the trees, smaller, paler, yellower than the splendid stars that crowned the black vault above the forest.

  After a silence she reached out her hand abruptly and took the telegram from between his fingers. In the starlight she read it, once, twice; then raised her head and smiled at him.

  “Are you going?”

  “I don’t know. Yes.”

  “No,” she said, and tore the telegram into bits.

  One by one she tossed the pieces on to the bosom of the placid Lisse, where they sailed away towards the Moselle like dim, blue blossoms floating idly with the current.

  “Are you angry?” she whispered.

  He saw that she was trembling, and that her face had grown very pale.

  “What is the matter?” he asked, amazed.

  “The matter — the matter is this: I — I — Lorraine de Nesville — am afraid! I am afraid! It is fear — it is fear!”

  “Fear?” he asked, gently.

  “Yes!” she cried. “Yes, it is fear! I cannot help it — I never before knew it — that I — I could be afraid. Don’t — don’t leave us — my father and me!” she cried, passionately. “We are so alone there in the house — I fear the forest — I fear—”

  She trembled violently; a wolf howled on the distant hill.

  “I shall gallop back to the Château de Nesville with you,” he said; “I shall be close beside you, riding by your carriage-window. Don’t tremble so — Mademoiselle de Nesville.”

  “It is terrible,” she stammered; “I never knew I was a coward.”

  “You are anxious for your father,” he said, quietly; “you are no coward!”

  “I am — I tremble — see! I shiver.”

  “It was the wolf—”

  “Ah, yes — the wolf that warned us of war! and the men — that one who made maps; I never could do again what I did! Then I was afraid of nothing; now I fear everything — the howl of that beast on the hill, the wind in the trees, the ripple of the Lisse — C’est plus fort que moi — I am a coward. Listen! Can you hear the carriage?”

  “No.”

  “Listen — ah, listen!”

  “It is the noise of the river.”

  “The river? How black it is! Hark!”

  “The wind.”

  “Hark!”

  “The wind again—”

  “Look!” She seized his arm frantically. “Look! Oh, what — what was that?”

  The report of a gun, faint but clear, came to their ears. Something flashed from the lighted windows of the Château de Nesville — another flash broke out — another — then three dull reports sounded, and th
e night wind spread the echoes broadcast among the wooded hills.

  For a second she stood beside him, white, rigid, speechless; then her little hand crushed his arm and she pushed him violently towards the horses.

  “Mount!” she cried; “ride! ride!”

  Scarcely conscious of what he did, he backed one of the horses, seized the gathered bridle and mane, and flung himself astride. The horse reared, backed again, and stood stamping. At the same instant he swung about in his saddle and cried, “Go back to the house!”

  But she was already in the saddle, guiding the other horse, her silken skirts crushed, her hair flying, sawing at the bridle-bit with gloved fingers. The wind lifted the cloak on her shoulders, her little satin slipper sought one stirrup.

  “Ride!” she gasped, and lashed her horse.

  He saw her pass him in a whirl of silken draperies streaming in the wind; the swan’s-down cloak hid her body like a cloud. In a second he was galloping at her bridle-rein; and both horses, nose to nose and neck to neck, pounded across the gravel drive, wheeled, leaped forward, and plunged down the soft wood road, straight into the heart of the forest. The lace from her corsage fluttered in the air; the lilies at her breast fell one by one, strewing the road with white blossoms. The wind loosened her heavy hair to the neck, seized it, twisted it, and flung it out on the wind. Under the clusters of ribbon on her shoulders there was a gleam of ivory; her long gloves slipped to the wrists; her hair whipped the rounded arms, bare and white below the riotous ribbons, snapping and fluttering on her shoulders; her cloak unclasped at the throat and whirled to the ground, trampled into the forest mould.

  They struck a man in the darkness; they heard him shriek; the horses staggered an instant, that was all, except a gasp from the girl, bending with whitened cheeks close to her horse’s mane.

  “Look out! A lantern! — close ahead!” panted Marche.

  The sharp crack of a revolver cut him short, his horse leaped forward, the blood spurting from its neck.

  “Are you hit?” he cried.

  “No! no! Ride!”

  Again and again, but fainter and fainter, came the crack! crack! of the revolver, like a long whip snapped in the wind.