Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “You shall have everything,” cried Grahame; “you shall be driven where you wish. I’m looking for a battle, but I can’t seem to find one. I’ve been driving about this wreck of a country for the last three days; I missed Amonvillers on the 18th, and Rezonville two days before. I saw the battles of Reichshofen and Borney. The Germans lost three thousand five hundred men at Beaumont, and I was not there either. But there’s a bigger thing on the carpet, somewhere near the Meuse, and I’m trying to find out where and when. I’ve wasted a lot of time loafing about Metz. I want to see something on a larger scale, not that the Metz business isn’t large enough — two hundred thousand men, six hundred cannon — and the Red Prince — licking their chops and getting up an appetite for poor old Bazaine and his battered, diseased, starved, disheartened army, caged under the forts and citadel of a city scarcely provisioned for a regiment.”

  Lorraine, sitting on the edge of the bed, looked at him silently, but her eyes were full of a horror and anguish that Grahame could not help seeing.

  “The Emperor is with the army yet,” he said, cheerfully. “Who knows what may happen in the next twenty-four hours? Mademoiselle de Nesville, there are many shots to be fired yet for the honour of France.”

  “Yes,” said Lorraine.

  Instinctively Brocard and Grahame moved towards the door and out into the road. It was perhaps respect for the grief of this young French girl that sobered their faces and sent them off to discuss plans and ways and means of getting across the Luxembourg frontier without further delay. Jack, left alone with Lorraine in the dim, smoky room, rose and drew her to the fire.

  “Don’t be unhappy,” he said. “The tide of fortune must turn soon; this cannot go on. We will find the Emperor and do our part. Don’t look that way, Lorraine, my darling!” He took her in his arms. She put both arms around his neck, and hid her face.

  For a while he held her, watching the fire with troubled eyes. The room grew darker; a wind arose among the forest trees, stirring dried leaves on brittle stems; the ashes on the hearth drifted like gray snowflakes.

  Her stillness began to trouble him. He bent in the dusk to see her face. She was asleep. Terror, pity, anguish, the dreadful uncertainty, had strained her child’s nerves to the utmost; after that came the deep fatigue that follows torture, and she lay in his arms, limp, pallid, exhausted. Her sleep was almost the unconsciousness of coma; she scarcely breathed.

  The fire on the hearth went out; the smoking embers glimmered under feathery ashes. Grahame entered, carrying a lantern.

  “Come,” he whispered. “Poor little thing! — can’t I help you, Marche? Wait; here’s a rug. So — wrap it around her feet. Can you carry her? Then follow; here, touch my coat — I’m going to put out the light in my lantern. Now — gently. Here we are.”

  Jack climbed into the post-chaise; Grahame, holding Lorraine in his arms, leaned in, and Jack took her again. She had not awakened.

  “Brocard and I are going to sit in front,” whispered Grahame. “Is all right within?”

  “Yes,” nodded Jack.

  The chaise moved on for a moment, then suddenly stopped with a jerk.

  Jack heard Grahame whisper, “Sit still, you fool! I’ve got passes; sit still!”

  “Let go!” murmured Brocard.

  “Sit still!” repeated Grahame, in an angry whisper; “it’s all right, I tell you. Be silent!”

  There was a noiseless struggle, a curse half breathed, then a figure slipped from the chaise into the road.

  Grahame sank back. “Marche, that damned poacher will hang us all. What am I to do?”

  “What is it?” asked Jack, in a scarcely audible voice.

  “Can’t you hear? There’s an Uhlan in the road in front. That fool means to kill him.”

  Jack strained his eyes in the darkness; the road ahead was black and silent.

  “You can’t see him,” whispered Grahame. “Brocard caught the distant rattle of his lance in the stirrup. He’s gone to kill him, the bloodthirsty imbecile!”

  “To shoot him?” asked Jack, aghast.

  “No; he’s got his broad wood-knife — that’s the way these brutes kill. Hark! Good God!”

  A scream rang through the forest; something was coming towards them, too — a horse, galloping, galloping, pounding, thundering past — a frantic horse that tossed its head and tore on through the night, mane flying, bridle loose. And there, crouched on the saddle, two men swayed, locked in a death-clench — an Uhlan with ghostly face and bared teeth, and Brocard, the poacher, cramped and clinging like a panther to his prey, his broad knife flashing in the gloom.

  In a second they were gone; far away in the forest the hoof strokes echoed farther and farther, duller, duller, then ceased.

  “Drive on,” muttered Jack, with lips that could barely form the words.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  THE MESSAGE OF THE FLAG

  It was dawn when Lorraine awoke, stifling a cry of dismay. At the same moment she saw Jack, asleep, huddled into a corner of the post-chaise, his bloodless, sunken face smeared with the fine red dust that drifted in from the creaking wheels. Grahame, driving on the front seat, heard her move.

  “Are you better?” he asked, cheerfully.

  “Yes, thank you; I am better. Where are we?”

  Grahame’s face sobered.

  “I’ll tell you the truth,” he said; “I don’t know, and I can’t find out. One thing is certain — we’ve passed the last German post, that is all I know. We ought to be near the frontier.”

  He looked back at Jack, smiled again, and lowered his voice:

  “It’s fortunate we have passed the German lines, because that last cavalry outpost took all my papers and refused to return them. I haven’t an idea what to do now, except to go on as far as we can. I wish we could find a village; the horses are not exhausted, but they need rest.”

  Lorraine listened, scarcely conscious of what he said. She leaned over Jack, looking down into his face, brushing the dust from his brow with her finger-tips, smoothing his hair, with a timid, hesitating glance at Grahame, who understood and gravely turned his back.

  Jack slept. She nestled down, pressing her soft, cool cheek close to his; her eyes drooped; her lips parted. So they slept together, cheek to cheek.

  A mist drove across the meadows; from the plains, dotted with poplars, a damp wind blew in puffs, driving the fog before it until the blank vapour dulled the faint morning light and the dawn faded into a colourless twilight. Spectral poplars, rank on rank, loomed up in the mist, endless rows of them, fading from sight as the vapours crowded in, appearing again as the fog thinned in a current of cooler wind.

  Grahame, driving slowly, began to nod in the thickening fog. At moments he roused himself; the horses walked on and the wheels creaked in the red dust. Hour after hour passed, but it grew no lighter. Drowsy and listless-eyed the horses toiled up and down the little hills, and moved stiffly on along the interminable road, shrouded in a gray fog that hid the very road-side shrubbery from sight, choked thicket and grove, and blotted the grimy carriage windows.

  Jack was awakened with startling abruptness by Grahame, who shook his shoulders, leaning into the post-chaise from the driver’s seat.

  “There’s something in front, Marche,” he said. “We’ve fallen in with a baggage convoy, I fancy. Listen! Don’t you hear the camp-wagons? Confound this fog! I can’t see a rod ahead.”

  Lorraine, also now wide awake, leaned from the window. The blank vapour choked everything. Jack rubbed his eyes; his limbs ached; he could scarcely move. Somebody was running on the road in front — the sound of heavy boots in the dust came nearer and nearer.

  “Look out!” shouted Grahame, in French; “there’s a team here in the road! Passez au large!”

  At the sound of his voice phantoms surged up in the mist around them; from every side faces looked into the carriage windows, passing, repassing, disappearing, only to appear again — ghostly, shadowy, spectral.

  “Soldie
rs!” muttered Jack.

  At the same instant Grahame seized the lines and wheeled his horses just in time to avoid collision with a big wagon in front. As the post-chaise passed, more wagons loomed up in the fog, one behind another; soldiers took form around them, voices came to their ears, dulled by the mist.

  Suddenly a pale shaft of light streamed through the fog above; the restless, shifting vapours glimmered; a dazzling blot grew from the mist. It was the sun. Little by little the landscape became more distinct; the pallid, watery sky lightened; a streak of blue cut the zenith. Everywhere in the road great, lumbering wagons stood, loaded with straw; the sickly morning light fell on silent files of infantry, lining the road on either hand.

  “It’s a convoy of wounded,” said Grahame. “We’re in the middle of it. Shall we go back?”

  A wagon in front of them started on; at the first jolt a cry sounded from the straw, another, another — the deep sighs of the dying, the groans of the stricken, the muttered curses of teamsters — rose in one terrible plaint. Another wagon started — the wounded wailed; another started — another — another — and the long train creaked on, the air vibrating with the weak protestations of miserable, mangled creatures tossing their thin arms towards the sky. And now, too, the soldiers were moving out into the road-side bushes, unslinging rifles and fixing bayonets; a mounted officer galloped past, shouting something; other mounted officers followed; a bugle sounded persistently from the distant head of the column.

  Everywhere soldiers were running along the road now, grouping together under the poplar-trees, heads turned to the plain. Some teamsters pushed an empty wagon out beyond the line of trees and overturned it; others stood up in their wagons, reins gathered, long whips swinging. The wounded moaned incessantly; some sat up in the straw, heads turned also towards the dim, gray plain.

  “It’s an attack,” said Grahame, coolly. “Marche, we’re in for it now!”

  After a moment, he added, “What did I tell you? Look there!”

  Out on the plain, where the mist was clearing along the edge of a belt of trees, something was moving.

  “What is it?” asked Lorraine, in a scarcely audible voice.

  Before Grahame could speak a tumult of cries and groans burst out along the line of wagons; a bugle clanged furiously; the teamsters shouted and pointed with their whips.

  Out of the shadow of the grove two glittering double lines of horsemen trotted, halted, formed, extended right and left, and trotted on again. To the right another darker and more compact square of horsemen broke into a gallop, swinging a thicket of lances above their heads, from which fluttered a mass of black and white pennons.

  “Cuirassiers and Uhlans!” muttered Grahame, under his breath. He stood up in his seat; Jack rose also, straining his eyes, but Lorraine hid her face in her hands and crouched in the chaise, her head buried in the cushions.

  The silence was enervating; even the horses turned their gentle eyes wonderingly to that line of steel and lances; even the wounded, tremulous, haggard, held their breath between clenched teeth and stiff, swollen lips.

  “Nom de Dieu! Serrez les rangs, tas de bleus!” yelled an officer, riding along the edge of the road, revolver in one hand, naked sabre flashing in the other.

  A dozen artillerymen were pushing a mitrailleuse up behind the overturned wagon. It stuck in the ditch.

  “À nous, la ligne!” they shouted, dragging at the wheels until a handful of fantassins ran out and pulled the little death machine into place.

  “Du calme! Du calme! Ne tirez pas trop vite, ménagez vos cartouches! Tenez ferme, mes enfants!” said an old officer, dismounting and walking coolly out beyond the line of trees.

  “Oui! oui! comptez sur nous! Vive le Colonel!” shouted the soldiers, shaking their chassepots in the air.

  On came the long lines, distinct now — the blue and yellow of the Uhlans, the white and scarlet of the cuirassiers, plain against the gray trees and grayer pastures. Suddenly a level sheet of flame played around the stalled wagons; the smoke gushed out over the dark ground; the air split with the crash of rifles. In the uproar bugles blew furiously and the harsh German cavalry trumpets, peal on peal, nearer, nearer, nearer, answered their clangour.

  “Hourra! Preussen!”

  The deep, thundering shout rose hoarsely through the rifles’ roaring fusillade; horses reared; teamsters lashed and swore, and the rattle of harness and wheel broke out and was smothered in the sheeted crashing of the volleys and the shock of the coming charge.

  And now it burst like an ocean roller, smashing into the wagon lines, a turmoil of smoke and flashes, a chaos of maddened, plunging horses and bayonets, and the flashing downward strokes of heavy sabres. Grahame seized the reins, and lashed his horses; a cuirassier drove his bloody, foam-covered charger into the road in front and fell, butchered by a dozen bayonets.

  Three Uhlans followed, whirling their lances and crashing through the lines, their frantic horses crazed by blows and wounds. More cuirassiers galloped up; the crush became horrible. A horse and steel-clad rider were hurled bodily under the wagon-wheels — an Uhlan, transfixed by a bayonet, still clung to his shattered lance-butt, screaming, staggering in his stirrups. Suddenly the window of the post-chaise was smashed in and a horse and rider pitched under the wheels, almost overturning carriage and occupants.

  “Easy, Marche!” shouted Grahame. “Don’t try to get out!”

  Jack heard him, but sprang into the road. For an instant he reeled about in the crush and smoke, then, stooping, he seized a prostrate man, lifted him, and with one tremendous effort pitched him into the chaise.

  Grahame, standing up in the driver’s seat, watched him in amazement for a moment; but his horses demanded all his attention now, for they were backing under the pressure of the cart in front.

  As for Jack, once in the chaise again he pulled the unconscious man to the seat, calling Lorraine to hold him up. Then he tore the Uhlan’s helmet from the stunned man’s head and flung it out into the road; after it he threw sabre and revolver.

  “Give me that rug!” he cried to Lorraine, and he seized it and wrapped it around the Uhlan’s legs.

  Grahame had managed to get clear of the other wagon now and was driving out into the pasture, almost obscured by rifle smoke.

  “Oh, Jack!” faltered Lorraine— “it is Rickerl!”

  It was Rickerl, stunned by the fall from his horse, lying back between them.

  “They’d kill him if they saw his uniform!” muttered Jack. “Hark! the French are cheering! They’ve repulsed the charge! Grahame, do you hear? — do you hear?”

  “I hear!” shouted Grahame. “These horses are crazy; I can’t hold them.”

  The troops around them, hidden in the smoke, began to cheer frantically; the mitrailleuse whirred and rolled out its hail of death.

  “Vive la France! Mort aux Prussiens!” howled the soldiers. A mounted officer, his cap on the point of his sabre, his face laid open by a lance-thrust, stood shouting, “Vive la Nation! Vive la Nation!” while a boyish bugler shook his brass bugle in the air, speechless with joy.

  Grahame drove the terrified horses along the line of wagons for a few paces, then, wheeling, let them gallop straight out into the pasture on the left of the road, where a double line of trees in the distance marked the course of a parallel road.

  The chaise lurched and jolted; Rickerl, unconscious still, fell in a limp heap, but Jack and Lorraine held him up and watched the horses, now galloping under slackened reins.

  “There are houses there! Look!” cried Grahame. “By Jove, there’s a Luxembourg gendarme, too. I — I believe we’re in Luxembourg, Marche! Upon my soul, we are! See! There is a frontier post!”

  He tried to stop the horses; two strange-looking soldiers, wearing glossy shakos and white-and-blue aiguillettes, began to bawl at him; a group of peasants before the cottages fled, screaming.

  Grahame threw all his strength into his arms and dragged the horses to a stand-still.

&n
bsp; “Are we in Luxembourg?” he called to the gendarmes, who ran up, gesticulating violently. “Are we? Good! Hold those horses, if you please, gentlemen. There’s a wounded man here. Carry him to one of those houses. Marche, lift him, if you can. Hello! his arm is broken at the wrist. Go easy — you, I mean — Now!”

  Lorraine, aided by Jack, stepped from the post-chaise and stood shivering as two peasants came forward and lifted Rickerl. When they had taken him away to one of the stone houses she turned quietly to a gendarme and said: “Monsieur, can you tell me where the Emperor is?”

  “The Emperor?” repeated the gendarme. “The Emperor is with his army, below there along the Meuse. They are fighting — since four this morning — at Sedan.”

  He pointed to the southeast.

  She looked out across the wide plain.

  “That convoy is going to Sedan,” said the gendarme. “The army is near Sedan; there is a battle there.”

  “Thank you,” said Lorraine, quietly. “Jack, the Emperor is near Sedan.”

  “Yes,” he nodded; “we will go when you can stand it.”

  “I am ready. Oh, we must not wait, Jack; did you not see how they even attacked the wounded?”

  He turned and looked into her eyes.

  “It is the first French cheer I have heard,” she continued, feverishly. “They beat back those Prussians and cheered for France! Oh, Jack, there is time yet! France is rising now — France is resisting. We must do our part; we must not wait. Jack, I am ready!”

  “We can’t walk,” he muttered.

  “We will go with the convoy. They are on the way to Sedan, where the Emperor is. Jack, they are fighting at Sedan! Do you understand?”

  She came closer, looking up into his troubled eyes.

  “Show me the box,” she whispered.

  He drew the flat steel box from his coat.

  After a moment she said, “Nothing must stop us now. I am ready!”

  “You are not ready,” he replied, sullenly; “you need rest.”

  “‘Tiens ta Foy,’ Jack.”

  The colour dyed his pale cheeks and he straightened up. “Always, Lorraine.”