Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Artillery!” blurted out Rickerl, in amazement.

  “French artillery — look out! Here come the franc-tireurs over the wall! Give me that sabre and run for the French lines — if you don’t want to hang!” And, as Rickerl hesitated, with a scowl of hate at the franc-tireurs now swarming over the wall, Jack seized the sabre and jerked it violently from his hand.

  “You’re crazy!” he muttered. “Run for the batteries! — here, this way!”

  A franc-tireur fired at them point-blank, and the bullet whistled between them. “Leave me. Give me my sabre,” said Rickerl, in a low voice.

  “Then we’ll both stay.”

  “Leave me! I’ll not hang, I tell you.”

  “No.”

  The franc-tireurs were running towards them.

  “They’ll kill us both. Here they come!”

  “You stood by me—” said Jack, in a faint voice.

  Rickerl looked him in the eyes, hesitated, and cried, “I surrender! Come on! Hurry, Jack — for your sister’s sake!”

  CHAPTER XX

  SIR THORALD IS SILENT

  It was a long run to the foot of the vineyard hill, where, on the crest, deep hidden among the vines, three cannon clanged at regular intervals, stroke following stroke, like the thundering summons of a gigantic tocsin.

  Behind them they saw the franc-tireurs for a moment, thrashing waist-deep through the rank marsh weeds; then, as they plunged into a wheat-field, the landscape disappeared, and all around the yellow grain rustled, waving above their heads, dense, sun-heated, suffocating.

  Their shoes sank ankle-deep in the reddish-yellow soil; they panted, wet with perspiration as they ran. Jack still clutched Rickerl’s sabre, and the tall corn, brushing the blade, fell under the edge, keen as a scythe.

  “I can go no farther,” breathed Jack, at last. “Wait a moment, Ricky.”

  The hot air in the depths of the wheat was stifling, and they stretched their heads above the sea of golden grain, gasping like fishes in a bowl.

  “Perhaps I won’t have to surrender you, after all,” said Jack. “Do you see that old straw-stack on the slope? If we could reach the other slope—”

  He held out his hand to gauge the exact direction, then bent again and plodded towards it, Rickerl jogging in his footprints.

  As they pressed on under the rustling canopy, the sound of the cannon receded, for they were skirting the vineyard at the base of the hill, bearing always towards the south. And now they came to the edge of the long field, beyond which stretched another patch of stubble. The straw-stack stood half-way up the slope.

  “Here’s your sabre,” motioned Jack. He was exhausted and reeled about in the stubble, but Rickerl passed one arm about him, and, sabre clutched in the other hand, aided him to the straw-stack.

  The fresh wind strengthened them both; the sweat cooled and dried on their throbbing faces. They leaned against the stack, breathing heavily, the breeze blowing their wet hair, the solemn cannon-din thrilling their ears, stroke on stroke.

  “The thing is plain to me,” gasped Rickerl, pointing to the smoke-cloud eddying above the vineyard— “a brigade or two of Frossard’s corps have been cut off and hurled back towards Nancy. Their rear-guard is making a stand — that’s all. Jack, what on earth did you get into such a terrible scrape for?”

  Jack, panting full length in the shadow of the straw-stack, told Rickerl the whole wretched story, from the time of his leaving Forbach, after having sent the despatches to the Herald, up to the moment he had called to Rickerl there in the meadow, surrounded by Uhlans, a rope already choking him senseless.

  Rickerl listened impassively, playing with the sabre on his knees, glancing right and left across the country with his restless baby-blue eyes. When Jack finished he said nothing, but it was plain enough how seriously he viewed the matter.

  “As for your damned Uhlans,” ended Jack, “I have tried to keep out of their way. It’s a relief to me to know that I didn’t kill that trooper; but — confound him! — he shot at me so enthusiastically that I thought it time to join the party myself. Ricky, would they have hanged me if they had given me a fair court-martial?”

  “As a favour they might have shot you,” replied Rickerl, gloomily.

  “Then,” said Jack, “there are two things left for me to do — go to Paris, which I can’t unless Mademoiselle de Nesville goes, or join some franc-tireur corps and give the German army as good as they send. If you Uhlans think,” he continued, violently, “that you’re coming into France to hang and shoot and raise hell without getting hell in return, you’re a pack of idiots!”

  “The war is none of your affair,” said Rickerl, flushing. “You brought it on yourself — this hanging business. Good heavens! the whole thing makes me sick! I can’t believe that two weeks ago we were all there together at Morteyn—”

  “A pretty return you’re making for Morteyn hospitality!” blurted out Jack. Then, shocked at what he had said, he begged Rickerl’s pardon and bitterly took himself to task.

  “I am a fool, Ricky; I know you’ve got to follow your regiment, and I know it must cut you to the heart. Don’t mind what I say; I’m so miserable and bewildered, and I haven’t got the feeling of that rope off my neck yet.”

  Rickerl raised his hand gently, but his face was hard set.

  “Jack, you don’t begin to know what a hell I am living in, I who care so much for France and the French people, to know that all, all is ended forever, that I can never again—”

  His voice choked; he cleared it and went on: “The very name of Uhlan is held in horror in France now; the word Prussian is a curse when it falls from French lips. God knows why we are fighting! We Germans obey, that is all. I am a captain in a Prussian cavalry regiment; the call comes, that is all that I know. And here I am, riding through the land I love; I sit on my horse and see the torch touched to field and barn; I see railroads torn out of the ground, I see wretched peasants hung to the rafters of their own cottages.” He lowered his voice; his face grew paler. “I see the friend I care most for in all the world, a rope around his neck, my own troopers dragging him to the vilest death a man can die! That is war! Why? I am a Prussian, it is not necessary for me to know; but the regiment moves, and I move! it halts, I halt! it charges, retreats, burns, tramples, rends, devastates! I am always with it, unless some bullet settles me. For this war is nearly ended, Jack, nearly ended — a battle or two, a siege or two, nothing more. What can stand against us? Not this bewildered France.”

  Jack was silent.

  Rickerl’s blue eyes sought his; he rested his square chin on one hand and spoke again:

  “Jack, do you know that — that I love your sister?”

  “Her last letter said as much,” replied Jack, coldly.

  Rickerl watched his face.

  “You are sorry?”

  “I don’t know; I had hoped she would marry an American. Have you spoken?”

  “Yes.” This was a chivalrous falsehood; it was Dorothy who had spoken first, there in the gravel drive as he rode away from Morteyn.

  Jack glanced at him angrily.

  “It was not honourable,” he said; “my aunt’s permission should have been asked, as you know; also, incidentally, my own. Does — does Dorothy care for you? Oh, you need not answer that; I think she does. Well, this war may change things.”

  “Yes,” said Rickerl, sadly.

  “I don’t mean that,” cried Jack; “Heaven knows I wouldn’t have you hurt, Ricky; don’t think I meant that—”

  “I don’t,” said Rickerl, half smiling; “you risked your skin to save me half an hour ago.”

  “And you called off your bloody pack of hangmen for me,” said Jack; “I’m devilish grateful, Ricky — indeed I am — and you know I’d be glad to have you in the family if — if it wasn’t for this cursed war. Never mind, Dorothy generally has what she wants, even if it’s—”

  “Even if it’s an Uhlan?” suggested Rickerl, gravely.

  Jack sm
iled and laid his hand on Rickerl’s arm.

  “She ought to see you now, bareheaded, dusty, in your shirt-sleeves! You’re not much like the attaché at the Diplomatic ball — eh, Ricky? If you marry Dorothy I’ll punch your head. Come on, we’ve got to find out where we are.”

  “That’s my road,” observed Rickerl, quietly, pointing across the fields.

  “Where? Why?”

  “Don’t you see?”

  Jack searched the distant landscape in vain.

  “No, are the Germans there? Oh, now I see. Why, it’s a squadron of your cursed Uhlans!”

  “Yes,” said Rickerl, mildly.

  “Then they’ve been chased out of the Château de Nesville!”

  “Probably. They may come back. Jack, can’t you get out of this country?”

  “Perhaps,” replied Jack, soberly. He thought of Lorraine, of the marquis lying mangled and dead in the forest beside the fragments of his balloon.

  “Your Lieutenant von Steyr is a dirty butcher,” he said. “I hope you’ll finish him when you find him.”

  “He fired explosive bullets, which your franc-tireurs use on us,” retorted Rickerl, growing red.

  “Oh,” cried Jack in disgust, “the whole business makes me sick! Ricky, give me your hand — there! Don’t let this war end our friendship. Go to your Uhlans now. As for me, I must get back to Morteyn. What Lorraine will do, where she can go, how she will stand this ghastly news, I don’t know; and I wish there was somebody else to tell her. My uncle and aunt have already gone to Paris, they said they would not wait for me. Lorraine is at Morteyn, alone except for her maid, and she is probably frightened at my not returning as I promised. Do you think you can get to your Uhlans safely? They passed into the grove beyond the hills. What the mischief are those cannon shelling, anyway? Well, good-by! Better not come up the hill with me, or you’ll have to part with your sabre for good. We did lose our franc-tireur friends beautifully. I’ll write Dorothy; I’ll tell her that I captured you, sabre and all. Good-by! Good-by, old fellow! If you’ll promise not to get a bullet in your blond hide I’ll promise to be a brother-in-law to you!”

  Rickerl looked very manly as he stood there, booted, bareheaded, his thin shirt, soaked with sweat, outlining his muscular figure.

  They lingered a moment, hands closely clasped, looking gravely into each other’s faces. Then, with a gesture, half sad, half friendly, Rickerl started across the stubble towards the distant grove where his Uhlans had taken cover.

  Jack watched him until his white shirt became a speck, a dot, and finally vanished among the trees on the blue hill. When he was gone, Jack turned sharply away and climbed the furze-covered slope from whence he hoped to see the cannon, now firing only at five-minute intervals. As he toiled up the incline he carefully kept himself under cover, for he had no desire to meet any lurking franc-tireurs. It is true that, even when the franc-tireurs had been closest, there in the swamp among the rank marsh grasses, the distance was too great for them to have identified him with certainty. But he thought it best to keep out of their way until within hail of the regular troops, so he took advantage of bushes and inequalities of the slope to reconnoitre the landscape before he reached the summit of the ridge. There was a tufted thicket of yellow broom in flower on the crest of the ridge; behind this he lay and looked out across the plain.

  A little valley separated this hill from the vineyard, terraced up to the north, ridge upon ridge. The cannon smoke shot up from the thickets of vines, rose, and drifted to the west, blotting out the greater portion of the vineyard. The cannon themselves were invisible. At times Jack fancied he saw a human silhouette when the white smoke rushed outward, but the spectral vines loomed up everywhere through the dense cannon-fog and he could not be sure.

  However, there were plenty of troops below the hill now — infantry of the line trudging along the dusty road in fairly good order, and below the vineyard, among the uncut fields of flax, more infantry crouched, probably supporting the three-gun battery on the hill.

  At that distance he could not tell a franc-tireur from any regular foot-soldier except line-infantry; their red caps and trousers were never to be mistaken. As he looked, he wondered at a nation that clothed its troops in a colour that furnished such a fearfully distinct mark to the enemy. A French army, moving, cannot conceal itself; the red of trousers and caps, the mirror-like reflections of cuirass and casque and lance-tip, advertise the presence of French troops so persistently that an enemy need never fear any open landscape by daylight.

  Jack watched the cannonade, lying on his stomach, chin supported by both hands. He was perfectly cool now; he neither feared the Uhlans nor the franc-tireurs. For a while he vainly tried to comprehend the reason of the cannonade; the shells shot out across the valley in tall curves, dropping into a distant bit of hazy blue woodland, or exploded above the trees; the column of infantry below plodded doggedly southward; the infantry in the flax-field lay supine. Clearly something was interfering with the retreat of the troops — something that threatened them from those distant woods. And now he could see cavalry moving about the crest of the nearer hills, but, without his glass, it was not possible to tell what they were. Often he looked at the nearer forest that hid the Château de Nesville. Somewhere within those sombre woods lay the dead marquis.

  With a sigh he rose to his knees, shivered in the sunshine, passed one hand over his forehead, and finally stood up. Hunger had made him faint; his head grew dizzy.

  “It must be noon, at least,” he muttered, and started down the hill and across the fields towards the woods of Morteyn. As he walked he pulled the bearded wheat from ripening stems and chewed it to dull his hunger. The raw place on his neck, where the rope had chafed, stung when the perspiration started. He moved quickly but warily, keeping a sharp lookout on every side. Once he passed a miniature vineyard, heavy with white-wine grapes; and, as he threaded a silent path among the vines, he ate his fill and slaked his thirst with the cool amber fruit. He had reached the edge of the little vineyard, and was about to cross a tangle of briers and stubble, when something caught his eye in the thicket; it was a man’s face — and he stopped.

  For a minute they stared at each other, making no movement, no sound.

  “Sir Thorald!” — faltered Jack.

  But Sir Thorald Hesketh could not speak, for he had a bullet through his lungs.

  As Jack sprang into the brier tangle towards him, a slim figure in the black garments of the Sisters of Mercy rose from Sir Thorald’s side. He saw the white cross on her breast, he saw the white face above it and the whiter lips.

  It was Alixe von Elster.

  At the same instant the road in front was filled with French infantry, running.

  Alixe caught his arm, her head turned towards the road where the infantry were crowding past at double-quick, enveloped in a whirling torrent of red dust.

  “There is a cart there,” she said. “Oh, Jack, find it quickly! The driver is on the seat — and I can’t leave Sir Thorald.”

  In his amazement he stood hesitating, looking from the girl to Sir Thorald; but she drew him to the edge of the thicket and pointed to the road, crying, “Go! go!” and he stumbled down the pasture slope to the edge of the road.

  Past him plodded the red-legged infantry; he saw, through the whirlwind of dust, the vague outlines of a tumbril and horse standing below in the ditch, and he ran along the grassy depression towards the vehicle. And now he saw the driver, kneeling in the cart, his blue blouse a mass of blood, his discoloured face staring out at the passing troops.

  As he seized the horse’s head and started up the slope again, firing broke out among the thickets close at hand; the infantry swung out to the west in a long sagging line; the chassepots began banging right and left. For an instant he caught a glimpse of cavalry riding hard across a bit of stubble — Uhlans he saw at a glance — then the smoke hid them. But in that brief instant he had seen, among the galloping cavalrymen, a mounted figure, bareheaded, wearing a w
hite shirt, and he knew that Rickerl was riding for his life.

  Sick at heart he peered into the straight, low rampart of smoke; he watched the spirts of rifle-flame piercing it; he saw it turn blacker when a cannon bellowed in the increasing din. The infantry were lying down out there in the meadow; shadowy gray forms passed, repassed, reeled, ran, dropped, and rose again. Close at hand a long line of men lay flat on their bellies in the wheat stubble. When each rifle spoke the smoke rippled through the short wheat stalks or eddied and curled over the ground like the gray foam of an outrushing surf.

  He backed the horse and heavy cart, turned both, half blinded by the rifle-smoke, and started up the incline. Two bullets, speeding over the clover like singing bees, rang loudly on the iron-bound cartwheels; the horse plunged and swerved, dragging Jack with him, and the dead figure, kneeling in the cart, tumbled over the tail-board with a grotesque wave of its stiffening limbs. There it lay, sprawling in an impossible posture in the ditch. A startled grasshopper alighted on its face, turned around, crawled to the ear, and sat there.

  And now the volley firing grew to a sustained crackle, through which the single cannon boomed and boomed, hidden in the surging smoke that rolled in waves, sinking, rising, like the waves of a wind-whipped sea.

  “Where are you, Alixe?” he shouted.

  “Here! Hurry!”

  She stood on the edge of the brier tangle as he laboured up the slope with the horse and cart. Sir Thorald’s breathing was horrible to hear when they stooped and lifted him; Alixe was crying. They laid him on the blood-soaked straw; Alixe crept in beside him and took his head on her knees.

  “To Morteyn?” whispered Jack. “Perhaps we can find a surgeon nearer—”

  “Oh, hurry!” she sobbed; and he climbed heavily to the seat and started back towards the road.

  The road was empty where he turned in out of the fields, but, just above, he heard cannon thundering in the mist. As he drew in the reins, undecided, the cannonade suddenly redoubled in fury; the infantry fire blazed out with a new violence; above the terrific blast he heard trumpets sounding, and beneath it he felt the vibration of the earth; horses were neighing out beyond the smoke; a thousand voices rose in a far, hoarse shout: