Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  He was passing through the woods now, the lovely oak and beech woods of Lorraine. An ancient dame, bending her crooked back beneath a load of fagots, gave him “God bless you!” and he drew rein and returned the gift — but his was in silver, with the head of his imperial majesty stamped on one side.

  As he drove, rabbits ran back into the woods, hoisting their white signals of conciliation. “Peace and good will” they seemed to read, “but a wise rabbit takes to the woods.” Pheasants, too, stepped daintily from under the filbert bushes, twisting their gorgeous necks curiously as he passed. Once, in the hollow of a gorge where a little stream trickled under layers of wet leaves, he saw a wild-boar standing hock-deep in the ooze, rooting under mosses and rotten branches, absorbed in his rooting. Twice deer leaped from the young growth on the edge of the fields and bounded lazily into denser cover, only to stop when half concealed and stare back at him with gentle, curious eyes. The horse pricked up his ears at such times and introduced a few waltz steps into his steady if monotonous repertoire, but Jack let him have his fling, thinking that the deer were as tame as the horse, and both were tamer than man.

  Excepting the black panther, man has learned his lesson slowest of all, the lesson of acquiescence in the inevitable.

  “I’ll never learn it,” said Jack, aloud. His voice startled him — it was trembling.

  Lorraine! Lorraine! Life has begun for a very young man. Teach him to see and bring him to accept existence in the innocence of your knowledge; for, if he and the world collide, he fears the result to the world.

  A few moments later he drove into Paradise, which is known to some as the Château de Nesville.

  CHAPTER VIII

  UNDER THE YOKE

  During the next two weeks Jack Marche drove into Paradise fourteen times, and fourteen times he drove out of Paradise, back to the Château Morteyn. Heaven is nearer than people suppose; it was three miles from the road shrine at Morteyn.

  Our Lady of Morteyn, sculptured in the cold stone above the shrine, had looked with her wide stone eyes on many lovers, and had known they were lovers because their piety was as sudden as it was fervid.

  Twice a day Jack’s riding-cap was reverently doffed as he drew bridle before the shrine, going and coming from Paradise.

  At evening, too, when the old vicomte slept on his pillow and the last light went out in the stables, Our Lady of Morteyn saw a very young man sitting, with his head in his hands, at her feet; and he took no harm from the cold stones, because Our Lady of Morteyn is gentle and gracious, and the summer nights were hot in the province of Lorraine.

  There had been little stir or excitement in Morteyn. Even in Saint-Lys, where all day and all night the troop-trains rushed by, the cheers of the war-bound soldiers leaning from the flying cars were becoming monotonous in the ears of the sober villagers. When the long, flat cars, piled with cannon, passed, the people stared at the slender guns, mute, canvas-covered, tilted skyward. They stared, too, at the barred cars, rolling past in interminable trains, loaded with horses and canvas-jacketed troopers who peered between the slats and shouted to the women in the street. Other trains came and went, trains weighted with bellowing cattle or huddled sheep, trains choked with small square boxes marked “Cartouches” or “Obus — 7^me”; trains piled high with grain or clothing, or folded tents packed between varnished poles and piles of tin basins. Once a little excitement came to Saint-Lys when a battalion of red-legged infantry tramped into the village square and stacked rifles and jeered at the mayor and drank many bottles of red wine to the health of the shy-eyed girls peeping at them from every lattice. But they were only waiting for the next train, and when it came their bugles echoed from the bridge to the square, and they went away — went where the others had gone — laughing, singing, cheering from the car-windows, where the sun beat down on their red caps, and set their buttons glittering like a million swarming fire-flies.

  The village life, the daily duties, the dull routine from the vineyard to the grain-field, and from the étang to the forest had not changed in Saint-Lys.

  There might be war somewhere; it would never come to Saint-Lys. There might be death, yonder towards the Rhine — probably beyond it, far beyond it. What of it? Death comes to all, but it comes slowly in Saint-Lys; and the days are long, and one must eat to live, and there is much to be done between the rising and the setting of a peasant’s sun.

  There, below in Paris, were wise heads and many soldiers. They, in Paris, knew what to do, and the war might begin and end with nothing but a soiled newspaper in the Café Saint-Lys to show for it — as far as the people of Saint-Lys knew.

  True, at the summons of the mayor, the National Guard of Saint-Lys mustered in the square, seven strong and a bugler. This was merely a display of force — it meant nothing — but let those across the Rhine beware!

  The fierce little man with the gray mustache, who was named Tricasse, and who commanded the Saint-Lys Pompiers, spoke gravely of Francs-corps, and drank too much eau-de-vie every evening. But these warlike ebullitions simmered away peacefully in the sunshine, and the tranquil current of life flowed as smoothly through Saint-Lys as the river Lisse itself, limpid, noiseless, under the village bridge.

  Only one man had left the village, and that was Brun, the furtive-eyed young peasant, the sole representative in Saint-Lys of the conscript class of 1871. And he would never have gone had not a gendarme pulled him from under his mother’s bed and hustled him on to the first Paris-bound train, which happened to be a cattle train, where Brun mingled his lamentations with the bleating of sheep and the desolate bellow of thirsty cows.

  Jack Marche heard of these things but saw little of them. The great war wave rolling through the provinces towards the Rhine skirted them at Saint-Lys, and scarcely disturbed them. They heard that Douay was marching through the country somewhere, some said towards Wissembourg, some said towards Saarbrück. But these towns were names to the peasants of Saint-Lys — tant pis for the two towns! And General Douay — who was he? Probably a fat man in red breeches and polished boots, wearing a cocked-hat and a cross on his breast. Anyway, they would chase the Prussians and kill a few, as they had chased the Russians in the Crimea, and the Italians in Rome, and the Kabyles in Oran. The result? Nothing but a few new colours for the ribbons in their sweethearts’ hair — like that pretty Magenta and Solferino and Sebastopol gray. “Fichtre! Faut-il gaspiller tout de même! mais, à la guerre comme à la guerre!” which meant nothing in Saint-Lys.

  It meant more to Jack Marche, riding one sultry afternoon through the woods, idly drumming on his spurred boots with a battered riding-crop.

  It was his daily afternoon ride to the Château de Nesville; the shy wood creatures were beginning to know him, even the younger rabbits of the most recent generation sat up and mumbled their prehensile lips, watching him with large, moist eyes. As for the red squirrels in the chestnut-trees, and the dappled deer in the carrefours, and the sulky boars that bristled at him from the overgrown sentiers, they accepted him on condition that he kept to the road. And he did, head bent, thoughtful eyes fixed on his saddle-bow, drumming absently with his riding-crop on his spurred boots, his bridle loose on his horse’s neck.

  There was little to break the monotony of the ride; a sudden gush of song from a spotted thrush, the rustle of a pheasant in the brake, perhaps the modest greeting of a rare keeper patrolling his beat — nothing more. He went armed; he carried a long Colt’s six-shooter in his holster, not because he feared for his own skin, but he thought it just as well to be ready in case of trouble at the Château de Nesville. However, he did not fear trouble again; the French armies were moving everywhere on the frontier, and the spies, of course, had long ago betaken themselves and their projects to the other bank of the Rhine.

  The Marquis de Nesville himself felt perfectly secure, now that the attempt had been made and had failed.

  He told Jack so on the few occasions when he descended from his room during the young fellow’s visits. He made
not the slightest objections to Jack’s seeing Lorraine when and where he pleased, and this very un-Gallic behaviour puzzled Jack until he began to comprehend the depths of the man’s selfish absorption in his balloons. It was more than absorption, it was mania pure and simple, an absolute inability to see or hear or think or understand anything except his own devices in the little bolted chamber above.

  He did care for Lorraine to the extent of providing for her every want — he did remember her existence when he wanted something himself. Also it was true that he would not have permitted a Frenchman to visit Lorraine as Jack did. He hated two persons; one of these was Jack’s uncle, the Vicomte de Morteyn. On the other hand, he admired him, too, because the vicomte, like himself, was a royalist and shunned the Tuileries as the devil shuns holy water. Therefore he was his equal, and he liked him because he could hate him without loss of self-respect. The reason he hated him was this — the Vicomte de Morteyn had pooh-poohed the balloons. That occurred years ago, but he never forgot it, and had never seen the old vicomte since. Whether or not Lorraine visited the old people at Morteyn, he had neither time nor inclination to inquire.

  This was the man, tall, gentle, clean-cut of limb and feature, and bearded like Jove — this was the man to whom Lorraine devoted her whole existence. Every heart-beat was for him, every thought, every prayer. And she was very devout.

  This also was why she came to Jack so confidently and laid her white hands in his when he sprang from his saddle, his heart in flames of adoration.

  He knew this, he knew that her undisguised pleasure in his company was, for her, only another link that welded her closer to her father. At night, often, when he had ridden back again, he thought of it, and paled with resentment. At times he almost hated her father. He could have borne it easier if the Marquis de Nesville had been a loving father, even a tyrannically solicitous father; but to see such love thrown before a marble-faced man, whose expression never changed except when speaking of his imbecile machines! “How can he! How can he!” muttered Jack, riding through the woods. His face was sombre, almost stern; and always he beat the devil’s tattoo on his boot with the battered riding-crop.

  But now he came to the park gate, and the keeper touched his cap and smiled, and dragged the heavy grille back till it creaked on its hinges.

  Lorraine came down the path to meet him; she had never before done that, and he brightened and sprang to the ground, radiant with happiness.

  She had brought some sugar for the horse; the beautiful creature followed her, thrusting its soft, satin muzzle into her hand, ears pricked forward, wise eyes fixed on her.

  “None for me?” asked Jack.

  “Sugar?”

  With a sudden gesture she held a lump out to him in the centre of her pink palm.

  Before she could withdraw the hand he had touched it with his lips, and, a little gravely, she withdrew it and walked on in silence by his side.

  Her shoulder had healed, and she no longer wore the silken support for her arm. She was dressed in black — the effect of her glistening hair and blond skin was dazzling. His eyes wandered from the white wrist, dainty and rounded, to the full curved neck — to the delicate throat and proud little head. Her body, supple as perfect Greek sculpture; her grace and gentle dignity; her innocence, sweet as the light in her blue eyes, set him dreaming again as he walked at her side, preoccupied, almost saddened, a little afraid that such happiness as was his should provoke the gods to end it.

  He need not have taken thought for the gods, for the gods take thought for themselves; and they were already busy at Saarbrück. Their mills are not always slow in grinding; nor, on the other hand, are they always sure. They may have been ages ago, but now the gods are so out of date that saints and sinners have a chance about equally.

  They traversed the lawn, skirted the tall wall of solid masonry that separated the chase from the park, and, passing a gate at the hedge, came to a little stone bridge, beneath which the Lisse ran dimpling. They watched the horse pursuing his own way tranquilly towards the stables, and, when they saw a groom come out and lead him in, they turned to each other, ready to begin another day of perfect contentment.

  First of all he asked about her shoulder, and she told him truthfully that it was well. Then she inquired about the old vicomte and Madame de Morteyn, and intrusted pretty little messages to him for them, which he, unlike most young men, usually remembered to deliver.

  “My father,” she said, “has not been to breakfast or dinner since the day before yesterday. I should have been alarmed, but I listened at the door and heard him moving about with his machinery. I sent him some very nice things to eat; I don’t know if he liked them, for he sent no message back. Do you suppose he is hungry?”

  “No,” said Jack; “if he were he would say so.” He was careful not to speak bitterly, and she noticed nothing.

  “I believe,” she said, “that he is about to make another ascension. He often stays a long time in his room, alone, before he is ready. Will it not be delightful? I shall perhaps be permitted to go up with him. Don’t you wish you might go with us?”

  “Yes,” said Jack, with a little more earnestness than he intended.

  “Oh! you do? If you are very good, perhaps — perhaps — but I dare not promise. If it were my balloon I would take you.”

  “Would you — really?”

  “Of course — you know it. But it isn’t my balloon, you know.” After a moment she went on: “I have been thinking all day how noble and good it is of my father to consecrate his life to a purpose that shall be of use to France. He has not said so, but I know that, if the next ascension proves that his discovery is beyond the chance of failure, he will notify the government and place his invention at their disposal. Monsieur Marche, when I think of his unselfish nobleness, the tears come — I cannot help it.”

  “You, too, are noble,” said Jack, resentfully.

  “I? Oh, if you knew! I — I am actually wicked! Would you believe it, I sometimes think and think and wish that my father could spend more time with me — with me! — a most silly and thoughtless girl who would sacrifice the welfare of France to her own caprice. Think of it! I pray — very often — that I may learn to be unselfish; but I must be very bad, for I often cry myself to sleep. Is it not wicked?”

  “Very,” said Jack, but his smile faded and there was a catch in his voice.

  “You see,” she said, with a gesture of despair, “even you feel it, too!”

  “Do you really wish to know what I do think — of you?” he asked, in a low voice.

  It was on the tip of her tongue to say “Yes.” She checked herself, lips apart, and her eyes became troubled.

  There was something about Jack Marche that she had not been able to understand. It occupied her — it took up a good share of her attention, but she did not know where to begin to philosophize, nor yet where to end. He was different from other men — that she understood. But where was that difference? — in his clear, brown eyes, sunny as brown streams in October? — in his serious young face? — in his mouth, clean cut and slightly smiling under his short, crisp mustache, burned blond by the sun? Where was the difference? — in his voice? — in his gestures? — in the turn of his head?

  Lorraine did not know, but as often as she gave the riddle up she recommenced it, idly sometimes, sometimes piqued that the solution seemed no nearer. Once, the evening she had met him after their first encounter in the forest carrefour — that evening on the terrace when she stood looking out into the dazzling Lorraine moonlight — she felt that the solution of the riddle had been very near. But now, two weeks later, it seemed further off than ever. And yet this problem, that occupied her so, must surely be worth the solving. What was it, then, in Jack Marche that made him what he was? — gentle, sweet-tempered, a delightful companion — yes, a companion that she would not now know how to do without.

  And yet, at times, there came into his eyes and into his voice something that troubled her — she could not
tell why — something that mystified and checked her, and set her thinking again on the old, old problem that had seemed so near solution that evening on the moonlit terrace.

  That was why she started to say “Yes” to his question, and did not, but stood with lips half parted and blue eyes troubled.

  He looked at her in silence for a moment, then, with a half-impatient gesture, turned to the river.

  “Shall we sit down on the moss?” she asked, vaguely conscious that his sympathies had, for a moment, lost touch with hers.

  He followed her down the trodden foot-path to the bank of the stream, and, when she had seated herself at the foot of a linden-tree, he threw himself at her feet.

  They were silent. He picked up a faded bunch of blue corn-flowers which they had left there, forgotten, the day before. One by one he broke the blossoms from the stalks and tossed them into the water.

  She, watching them floating away under the bridge, thought of the blue bits of paper — the telegram — that she had torn up and tossed upon the water two weeks before. He was thinking of the same thing, for, when she said, abruptly: “I should not have done that!” he knew what she meant, and replied: “Such things are always your right — if you care to use it.”

  She laughed. “Then you believe still in the feudal system? I do not; I am a good republican.”

  “It is easy,” he said, also laughing, “for a young lady with generations of counts and vicomtes behind her to be a republican. It is easier still for a man with generations of republicans behind him to turn royalist. It is the way of the world, mademoiselle.”

  “Then you shall say: ‘Long live the king!’” she said; “say it this instant!”

  “Long live — your king!”

  “My king?”

  “I’m his subject if you are; I’ll shout for no other king.”

  “Now, whatever is he talking about?” thought Lorraine, and the suspicion of a cloud gathered in her clear eyes again, but was dissipated at once when he said: “I have answered the Herald’s telegram.”