Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Keep away from all windows,” he said. “Are you ready?”

  She placed her arm in his, and he led her down the stairs to the rear of the Château.

  “Have they gone — our soldiers?” faltered Lorraine. “Is it defeat? Jack, answer me!”

  “They are holding the Château to protect the retreat, I think. Hark! The gatling is roaring like a furnace! What has happened?”

  “I don’t know. The old general came to speak to me when I awoke. He was very good and kind. Then suddenly the sentinel on the stairs fell down and we ran out. He was dead; a bullet had entered from the window at the end of the hall. After that I went into my room to dress, and the general hurried down-stairs, telling me to wait until he called for me. He did not come back; the firing began, and some shells hit the house. All the troops in the garden began to leave, and I did not know what to do, so I waited for you.”

  Jack glanced right and left. The artillery were leaving by the stable road; from every side the infantry streamed past across the lawn, running when they came to the garden, where a shower of bullets fell among the shrubbery. A captain hastening towards the terrace looked at them in surprise.

  “What is it?” cried Jack. “Can’t you hold the Château?”

  “The other Château has been carried,” said the captain. “They are taking us on the left flank. Madame,” he added, “should go at once; this place will be untenable in a few moments.”

  Lorraine spoke breathlessly: “Are you to hold the Château with the gatling until the army is safe?”

  “Yes, madame,” said the captain. “We are obliged to.”

  There came a sudden lull in the firing. Lorraine caught Jack’s arm.

  “Come,” cried Jack, “we’ve got to go now!”

  “I shall stay!” she said; “I know my work is here!”

  The German rifle-flames began to sparkle and flicker along the river-bank; a bullet rang out against the granite façade behind them.

  “Come!” he cried, sharply, but she slipped from him and ran towards the house.

  Drums were beating somewhere in the distant forest — shrill, treble drums — and from every hill-side the hollow, harsh Prussian trumpets spoke. Then came a sound, deep, menacing — a far cry:

  “Hourra! Preussen!”

  “Why don’t you cheer?” faltered Lorraine, mounting the terrace. The artillerymen looked at her in surprise. Jack caught her arm; she shook him off impatiently.

  “Cheer!” she cried again. “Is France dumb?” She raised her hand.

  “Vive la France!” shouted the artillerymen, catching her ardour. “Vive la Patrie! Vive Lorraine!”

  Again the short, barking, Prussian cheer sounded, and again the artillerymen answered it, cheer on cheer, for France, for the Land, for the Province of Lorraine. Up in the windows of the Château the line soldiers were cheering, too; the engineers on the roof, stamping out the sparks and flames, swung their caps and echoed the shouts from terrace and window.

  In the sudden silence that followed they caught the vibration of hundreds of hoofs — there came a rush, a shout:

  “Hourra! Preussen! Hourra! Hourra!” and into the lawn dashed the German cavalry, banging away with carbine and revolver. At the same moment, over the park walls swarmed the Bavarians in a forest of bayonets. The Château vomited flame from every window; the gatling, pulled back into the front door, roared out in a hundred streaks of fire. Jack dragged Lorraine to the first floor; she was terribly excited. Almost at once she knelt down and began to load rifles, passing them to Jack, who passed them to the soldiers at the windows. Once, when a whole window was torn in and the mattress on fire, she quenched the flames with water from her pitcher; and when the soldiers hesitated at the breach, she started herself, but Jack held her back and led the cheering, and piled more mattresses into the shattered window.

  Below in the garden the Bavarians were running around the house, hammering with rifle-butts at the closed shutters, crouching, dodging from stable to garden, perfectly possessed to get into the house. Their officers bellowed orders and shook their sabres in the very teeth of the rifle blast; the cavalry capered and galloped, and flew from thicket to thicket.

  Suddenly they all gave way; the garden and lawns were emptied save for the writhing wounded and motionless dead.

  “Cheer!” gasped Lorraine; and the battered Château rang again with frenzied cries of triumph.

  The wounded were calling for water, and Jack and Lorraine brought it in bowls. Here and there the bedding and wood-work had caught fire, but the line soldiers knocked it out with their rifle-butts. Whenever Lorraine entered a room they cheered her — the young officers waved their caps, even a dying bugler raised himself and feebly sounded the salute to the colours.

  By the light of the candles Jack noticed for the first time that Lorraine wore the dress of the Province — that costume that he had first seen her in — the scarlet skirt, the velvet bodice, the chains of silver. And as she stood loading the rifles in the smoke-choked room, the soldiers saw more than that: they saw the Province itself in battle there — the Province of Lorraine. And they cheered and leaped to the windows, firing frenziedly, crying the old battle-cry of Lorraine: “Tiens ta Foy! Frappe! Pour le Roy!” while the child in the bodice and scarlet skirt stood up straight and snapped back the locks of the loaded chassepots, one by one.

  “Once again! For France!” cried Lorraine, as the clamour of the Prussian drums broke out on the hill-side, and the hoarse trumpets signalled from wood to wood.

  A thundering cry arose from the Château:

  “France!”

  The sullen boom of a Prussian cannon drowned it; the house shook with the impact of a shell, bursting in fury on the terrace.

  White faces turned to faces whiter still.

  “Cannon!”

  “Hold on! For France!” cried Lorraine, feverishly.

  “Cannon!” echoed the voices, one to another.

  Again the solid walls shook with the shock of a solid shot.

  Jack stuffed the steel box into his breast and turned to Lorraine.

  “It is ended, we cannot stay—” he began; but at that instant something struck him a violent blow on the chest, and he fell, striking the floor with his head.

  In a second Lorraine was at his side, lifting him with all the strength of her arms, calling to him: “Jack! Jack! Jack!”

  The soldiers were leaving the windows now; the house rocked and tottered under the blows of shell and solid shot. Down-stairs an officer cried: “Save yourselves!” There was a hurry of feet through the halls and on the stairs. A young soldier touched Lorraine timidly on the shoulder.

  “Give him to me; I will carry him down,” he said.

  She clung to Jack and turned a blank gaze on the soldier.

  “Give him to me,” he repeated; “the house is burning.” But she would not move nor relinquish her hold. Then the soldier seized Jack and threw him over his shoulder, running swiftly down the stairs, that rocked under his feet. Lorraine cried out and followed him into the darkness, where the crashing of tiles and thunder of the exploding shells dazed and stunned her; but the soldier ran on across the garden, calling to her, and she followed, stumbling to his side.

  “To the trees — yonder — the forest—” he gasped.

  They were already among the trees. Then Lorraine seized the man by the arm, her eyes wide with despair.

  “Give me my dead!” she panted. “He is mine! mine! mine!”

  “He is not dead,” faltered the soldier, laying Jack down against a tree. But she only crouched and took him in her arms, eyes closed, and lips for the first time crushed to his.

  CHAPTER XXV

  PRINCESS IMPERIAL

  The glare from the Château Morteyn, now wrapped in torrents of curling flame, threw long crimson shafts of light far into the forest. The sombre trees glimmered like live cinders; the wet moss crisped and bronzed as the red radiance played through the thickets. The bright, wavering fire-glow f
ell full on Jack’s body; his face was hidden in the shadow of Lorraine’s hair.

  Twice the timid young soldier drew her away, but she crept back, murmuring Jack’s name; and at last the soldier seized the body in both arms and stumbled on again, calling Lorraine to follow.

  Little by little the illumination faded out among the trees; the black woods crowded in on every side; the noise of the crackling flames, the shouting, the brazen rattle of drums grew fainter and fainter, and finally died out in the soft, thick blackness of the forest.

  When they halted the young soldier placed Jack on the moss, then held out his hands. Lorraine touched them. He guided her to the prostrate figure; she flung herself face down beside it.

  After a moment the soldier touched her again timidly on the shoulder:

  “Have I done well?”

  She sobbed her thanks, rising to her knees. The soldier, a boy of eighteen, straightened up; he noiselessly laid his knapsack and haversack on the ground, trembled, swayed, and sat down, muttering vaguely of God and the honour of France. Presently he went away, lurching in the darkness like a drunken man — on, on, deep into the forest, where nothing of light or sound penetrated. And when he could no longer stand he sat down, his young head in his hands, and waited. His body had been shot through and through. About midnight he died.

  When Jack came to his senses the gray mystery of dawn was passing through the silent forest aisles; the beeches, pallid, stark, loomed motionless on every side; the pale veil of sky-fog hung festooned from tree to tree. There was a sense of breathless waiting in the shadowy woods — no sound, no stir, nothing of life or palpitation — nothing but foreboding.

  Jack crawled to his knees; his chest ached, his mouth cracked with a terrible throbbing thirst. Dazed as yet, he did not even look around; he did not try to think; but that weight on his chest grew to a burning agony, and he tore at his coat and threw it open. The flat steel box, pierced by a bullet, fell on the ground before his knees. Then he remembered. He ripped open waistcoat and shirt and stared at his bare breast. It was discoloured — a mass of bruises, but there was no blood there. He looked listlessly at the box on the leaves under him, and touched his bruised body. Suddenly his mind grew clearer; he stumbled up, steadying himself against a tree. His lips moved “Lorraine!” but no sound came. Again, in terror, he tried to cry out. He could not speak. Then he saw her. She lay among the dead leaves, face downward in the moss.

  When at last he understood that she was alive he lay down beside her, one arm across her body, and sank into a profound sleep.

  She woke first. A burning thirst set her weeping in her sleep and then roused her. Tear-stained and ghastly pale, she leaned over the sleeping man beside her, listened to his breathing, touched his hair, then rose and looked fearfully about her. On the knapsack under the tree a tin cup was shining. She took it and crept down into a gulley, where, through the deep layers of dead leaves, water sparkled in a string of tiny iridescent puddles. The water, however, was sweet and cold, and, when she had satisfied her thirst and had dug into the black loam with the edge of the cup, more water, sparkling and pure, gushed up and spread out in the miniature basin. She waited for the mud and leaves to settle, and when the basin was clear she unbound her hair, loosened her bodice, and slipped it off. When she had rolled the wide, full sleeves of her chemise to the shoulder she bathed her face and breast and arms; they glistened like marble tinged with rose in the pale forest dawn. The little scrupulous ablutions finished, she dried her face on the fine cambric of the under-sleeve, she dried her little ears, her brightening eyes, the pink palms of her hand, and every polished finger separately from the delicate flushed tip to the wrist, blue-veined and slender. She shook out her heavy hair, heavy and gleaming with burnished threads, and bound it tighter. She mended the broken points of her bodice, then laced it firmly till it pressed and warmed her fragrant breast. Then she rose.

  There was nothing of fear or sorrow in her splendid eyes; her mouth was moist and scarlet, her curved cheeks pure as a child’s.

  For a moment she stood pensive, her face now grave, now sensitive, now touched with that mysterious exaltation that glows through the histories of the saints, that shines from tapestries, that hides in the dim faces carved on shrines.

  For the world was trembling and the land cried out under the scourge, and she was ready now for what must be. The land would call her where she was awaited; the time, the hour, the place had been decreed. She was ready — and where was the bitterness of death, when she could face it with the man she loved.

  Loved? At the thought her knees trembled under her with the weight of this love; faint with its mystery and sweetness, her soul turned in its innocence to God. And for the first time in her child’s life she understood that God lived.

  She understood now that the sadness of life was gone forever. There was no loneliness now for soul or heart; nothing to fear, nothing to regret. Her life was complete. Death seemed an incident. If it came to her or to the man she loved, they would wait for one another a little while — that was all.

  A pale sunbeam stole across the tree-tops. She looked up. A little bird sang, head tilted towards the blue. She moved softly up the slope, her hair glistening in the early sun, her blue eyes dreaming; and when she came to the sleeping man she bent beside him and held a cup of sweet water to his lips.

  About noon they spoke of hunger, timidly, lest either might think the other complained. Her head close against his, her warm arms tight around his neck, she told him of the boy soldier, the dreadful journey in the night, the terror, and the awakening. She told him of the birth of her love for him — how death no longer was to be feared or sought. She told him there was nothing to alarm him, nothing to make them despair. Sin could not touch them; death was God’s own gift.

  He listened, too happy to even try to understand. Perhaps he could not, being only a young man in love. But he knew that all she said must be true, perhaps too true for him to comprehend. He was satisfied; his life was complete. Something of the contentment of a school-boy exhausted with play lingered in his eyes.

  They had spoken of the box; she had taken it reverently in her hands and touched the broken key, snapped off short in the lock. Inside, the Prussian bullet rattled as she turned the box over and over, her eyes dim with love for the man who had done all for her.

  Jack found a loaf of bread in the knapsack. It was hard and dry, but they soaked it in the leaf-covered spring and ate it deliciously, cheek against cheek.

  Little by little their plans took shape. They were to go — Heaven knows how! — to find the Emperor. Into his hands they would give the box with its secrets, then turn again, always together, ready for their work, wherever it might be.

  Towards mid-afternoon Lorraine grew drowsy. There was a summer warmth in the air; the little forest birds came to the spring and preened their feathers in the pale sunshine. Two cicadas, high in the tree-tops, droned an endless harmony; hemlock cones dropped at intervals on the dead leaves.

  When Lorraine lay asleep, her curly head on Jack’s folded coat, her hands clasped under her cheek, Jack leaned back against the tree and picked up the box. He turned it softly, so that the bullet within should not rattle. After a moment he opened his penknife and touched the broken fragment of the key in the lock. Idly turning the knife-blade this way and that, but noiselessly, for fear of troubling Lorraine, he thought of the past, the present, and the future. Sir Thorald lay dead on the hillock above the river Lisse; Alixe slept beside him; Rickerl was somewhere in the country, riding with his Uhlan scourges; Molly Hesketh waited in Paris for her dead husband; the Marquis de Nesville’s bones were lying in the forest where he now sat, watching the sleeping child of the dead man. His child? Jack looked at her tenderly. No, not the child of the Marquis de Nesville, but a foundling, a lost waif in the Lorraine Hills, perhaps a child of chance. What of it? She would never know. The Château de Nesville was a smouldering mass of fire; the lands could revert to the country; she should never
again need them, never again see them, for he would take her to his own land when trouble of war had passed, and there she should forget pain and sorrow and her desolate, loveless childhood; she should only remember that in the Province of Lorraine she had met the man she loved. All else should be a memory of green trees and vineyards and rivers, growing vaguer and dimmer as the healing years passed on.

  The knife-blade in the box bent, sprang back — the box flew open.

  He did not realize it at first; he looked at the three folded papers lying within, curiously, indolently. Presently he took them and looked at the superscriptions written on the back, in the handwriting of the marquis. The three papers were inscribed as follows:

  “1. For the French Government after the fall of the Empire.

  “2. For the French Government on the death of Louis Bonaparte, falsely called Emperor.”

  “3. To whom it may concern!”

  “To whom it may concern!” he repeated, looking at the third paper. Presently he opened it and read it, and as he read his heart seemed to cease its beating.

  “TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN!

  “Grief has unsettled my mind, yet, what I now write is true, and, if there is a God, I solemnly call His curses on me and mine if I lie.

  “My only son, René Philip d’Harcourt de Nesville, was assassinated on the Grand Boulevard in Paris, on the 2d of December, 1851. His assassin was a monster named Louis Bonaparte, now known falsely as Napoleon III., Emperor of the French. His paid murderers shot my boy down, and stabbed him to death with their bayonets, in front of the Café Tortoni. I carried his body home; I sat at the window, with my dead boy on my knees, and I saw Louis Bonaparte ride into the Rue St. Honoré with his murderous Lancers, and I saw children spit at him and hurl curses at him from the barricade.

  “Now I, Gilbert, Marquis de Nesville, swore to strike. And I struck, not at his life — that can wait. I struck at the root of all his pride and honour — I struck at that which he held dearer than these — at his dynasty!