Lorraine Part 41

"They do not need us here, yet," he said. "I wonder where Alixe is?"

"There is a Sister of Mercy out on the skirmish-line across the lawn," said a soldier of the hospital corps, pointing with b.l.o.o.d.y hands towards the smoke-veiled river.

Jack looked at Lorraine in utter despair.

"I must go; she can't stay there," he muttered.

"Yes, you must go," repeated Lorraine. "She will be shot."

"Will you wait here?" he asked.

"Yes."

So he went away, thinking bitterly that she did not care whether he lived or died--that she let him leave her without a word of fear, of kindness. Then, for the first time, he realized that she had never, after all, been touched by his devotion; that she had never understood, nor cared to understand, his love for her. He walked out across the smoky lawn, the din of the rifles in his ears, the bitterness of death in his heart. He knew he was going into danger--that he was already in peril. Bullets whistled through the smoke as he advanced towards the firing-line, where, in the fog, dim figures were outlined here and there. He pa.s.sed an officer, standing with bared sword, watching his men digging up the sod and piling it into low breastworks. He went on, pa.s.sing others, sometimes two soldiers bearing a wounded man, now and then a maimed creature writhing on the gra.s.s or hobbling away to the rear. The battle-line lay close to him now--long open ranks of men, flat on their stomachs, firing into the smoke across the river-bank. Their officers loomed up in the gloom, some leaning quietly back on their sword-hilts, some pacing to and fro, smoking, or watchfully steadying the wearied men.

Almost at once he saw Alixe. She was standing beside a tall wounded officer, giving him something to drink from a tin cup.

"Alixe," said Jack, "this is not your place."

She looked at him tranquilly as the wounded man was led away by a soldier of the hospital corps.

"It is my place."

"No," he said, violently, "you are trying to find death here!"

"I seek nothing," she said, in a gentle, tired voice; "let me go."

"Come back. Alixe--your brother is alive."

She looked at him impa.s.sively.

"My brother?"

"Yes."

"I have no brother."

He understood and chafed inwardly.

"Come, Alixe," he urged; "for Heaven's sake, try to live and forget--"

"I have nothing to forget--everything to remember. Let me pa.s.s."

She touched the blood-stained cross on her breast. "Do you not see? That was white once. So was my soul."

"It is now," he said, gently. "Come back."

A wounded man somewhere in the smoke called, "Water! water! In the name of G.o.d!--my sister--"

"I am coming!" called Alixe, clearly.

"To me first! Hasten, my sister!" groaned another.

"Patience, children--I come!" called Alixe.

With a gesture she pa.s.sed Jack; a flurry of smoke hid her. The pungent powder-fog made his eyes dim; his ears seemed to split with the terrific volley firing.

He turned away and went back across the lawn, only to stop at the well in the garden, fill two buckets, and plod back to the firing-line again. He found plenty to do there; he helped Alixe, following her with his buckets where she pa.s.sed among the wounded, the stained cross on her breast. Once a bullet struck a pail full of water, and he held his finger in the hole until the water was all used up. Twice he heard cheering and the splash of cavalry in the shallow river, but they seemed to be beaten off again, and he went about his business, listless, sombre, a dead weight at his heart.

He had been kneeling beside a wounded man for some minutes when he became conscious that the firing had almost ceased. Bugles were sounding near the Chateau; long files of troops pa.s.sed him in the lifting smoke; officers shouted along the river-bank.

He rose to his feet and looked around for Alixe. She was not in sight. He walked towards the river-bank, watching for her, but he could not find her.

"Did you see a Sister of Mercy pa.s.s this way?" he asked an officer who sat on the gra.s.s, smoking and bandaging his foot.

A soldier pa.s.sing, using his rifle as a crutch, said: "I saw a Sister of Mercy. She went towards the Chateau. I think she was hurt."

"Hurt!"

"I heard somebody say so." Jack turned and hastened towards the stables. He crossed the lawn, threaded his way among the low sod breastworks, where the infantry lay grimy and exhausted, and entered the garden. She was not there. He hurried to the stables; Lorraine met him, holding a basin and a sponge.

"Where is Alixe?" he asked.

"She is not here," said Lorraine. "Has she been hurt?"

"I don't know."

He looked at her a moment, then turned away, coldly. On the terrace the artillerymen were sponging the blood from the breech of their gatling where some wretch's brains had been spattered by a sh.e.l.l-fragment. They told him that a Sister of Mercy had pa.s.sed into the house ten minutes before; that she walked as though very tired, but did not appear to have been hurt.

"She is up-stairs," he thought. "She must not stay there alone with Sir Thorald." And he climbed the stairs and knocked softly at the door of the death-chamber.

"Alixe," he said, gently, opening the door, "you must not stay here."

She was kneeling at the bedside, her face buried on the breast of the dead man.

"Alixe," he said, but his voice broke in spite of him, and he went to her and touched her.

Very tenderly he raised her head, looked into her eyes, then quietly turned away.

Outside the door he met Lorraine.

"Don't go in," he murmured.

She looked fearfully up into his face.

"Yes," he said, "she was shot through the body."

Then he closed the door and turned the key on the outside, leaving the dead to the dead.