Lorraine Part 8

"Germany does. Once we sailed, papa and I, up over our forest and across the country to the German frontier. We were not very high; we could see the soldiers at the custom-house, and they saw us, and--would you believe it?--they fired their horrid guns at us--pop! pop! pop! But we were too quick; we simply sailed back again against the very air-currents that brought us. One bullet made a hole in the silk, but we didn't come down. Papa says a dozen bullets cannot bring a balloon down, even when they pierce the silk, because the air-pressure is great enough to keep the gas in. But he says that if they fire a sh.e.l.l, that is what is to be dreaded, for the gas, once aflame!--that ends all. Dear me! we talk a great deal of war--you and I. It is time for me to go."

They rose in the moonlight; he gave her back her fan. For a full minute they stood silent, facing each other. She broke a lily from its stem, and drew it out of the cl.u.s.ter at her breast. She did not offer it, but he knew it was his, and he took it.

"Symbol of France," she whispered.

"Symbol of Lorraine," he said, aloud.

A deep boom, sullen as summer thunder, shook the echoes awake among the shrouded hills, rolling, reverberating, resounding, until the echoes carried it on from valley to valley, off into the world of shadows.

The utter silence that followed was broken by a call, a gallop of hoofs on the gravel drive, the clink of stirrups, the snorting of hard-run horses.

Somebody cried, "A telegram for you, Ricky!" There was a patter of feet on the terrace, a chorus of voices: "What is it, Ricky?"

"Must you go at once?" "Whatever is the matter?"

The young German soldier, very pale, turned to the circle of lamp-lit faces.

"France and Germany--I--I--"

"What?" cried Sir Thorald, violently.

"War was declared at noon to-day!"

Lorraine gave a gasp and reached out one hand. Jack Marche took it in both of his.

Inside the ballroom the orchestra was still playing the farandole.

V

COWARDS AND THEIR COURAGE

Rickerl took the old vicomte's withered hand; he could not speak; his sister Alixe was crying.

"War? War? Allons donc!" muttered the old man. "Helen! Ricky says we are to have war. Helen, do you hear? War!"

Then Rickerl hurried away to dress, for he was to ride to the Rhine, nor spare whip nor spur; and Barbara Lisle comforted little Alixe, who wept as she watched the maids throwing everything pell-mell into their trunks; for they, too, were to leave at daylight on the Moselle Express for Cologne.

Below, a boy appeared, leading Rickerl's horse from the stables; there were lanterns moving along the drive, and dark figures pa.s.sing, cl.u.s.tering about the two steaming horses of the messengers, where a groom stood with a pail of water and a sponge. Everywhere the hum of voices rose and died away like the rumour of swarming bees. "War!" "War is declared!" "When?" "War was declared to-day!" "When?" "War was declared to-day at noon!"

And always the burden of the busy voices was the same, menacing, incredulous, half-whispered, but always the same--"War! war!

war!"

Booted and spurred, square-shouldered and muscular in his corded riding-suit, Rickerl pa.s.sed the terrace again after the last adieux. The last? No, for as his heavy horse stamped out across the drive a voice murmured his name, a hand fell on his arm.

"Dorothy," he whispered, bending from his saddle.

"I love you, Ricky," she gasped.

And they say women are cowards!

He lifted her to his breast, held her crushed and panting; she put both hands before her eyes.

"There has never been any one but you; do you believe it?" he stammered.

"Yes."

"Then you are mine!"

"Yes. May G.o.d spare you!"

And Rickerl, loyal in little things, swung her gently to the ground again, unkissed.

There was a flurry of gravel, a glimpse of a horse rearing, plunging, springing into the darkness--that was all. And she crept back to the terrace with hot, tearless lids, that burned till all her body quivered with the fever in her aching eyes. She pa.s.sed the orchestra, trudging back to Saint-Lys along the gravel drive, the two fat violinists stolidly smoking their Alsacian pipes, the harp-player muttering to the aged piper, the little biniou man from the Cote-d'Or, excited, mercurial, gesticulating at every step. War! war! war! The burden of the ghastly monotone was in her brain, her tired heart kept beating out the cadence that her little slippered feet echoed along the gravel--War! war!

At the foot of the steps which skirted the terrace she met her brother and Lorraine watching the groom rubbing down the messengers' horses. A lantern, glimmering on the ground, shed a sickly light under their eyes.

"Dorrie," said Jack, "Sir Thorald and Lady Hesketh think that we all should start for Paris by the early train. They have already sent some of our trunks to Saint-Lys; Mademoiselle de Nesville"--he turned with a gesture almost caressing to Lorraine--"Mademoiselle de Nesville has generously offered her carriage to help transport the luggage, and she is going to wait until it returns."

"And uncle--and our aunt De Morteyn?"

"I shall stay at Morteyn until they decide whether to close the house and go to Paris or to stay until October. Dorrie, dear, we are very near the frontier here."

"There will be no invasion," said Lorraine, faintly.

"The Rhine is very near," repeated Dorothy. She was thinking of Rickerl.

"So you and Betty and Cecil," continued Jack, "are to go with the Heskeths to Paris. Poor little Alixe is crying her eyes out up-stairs. She and Barbara Lisle are going to Cologne, where Ricky will either find them or have his father meet them."

After a moment he added, "It seems incredible, this news. They say, in the village, that the King of Prussia insulted the French amba.s.sador, Count Benedetti, on the public promenade of Ems. It's all about that Hohenzollern business and the Spanish succession.

Everybody thought it was settled, of course, because the Spanish amba.s.sador said so, and Prince Leopold von Hohenzollern withdrew his claim. I can't understand it; I can scarcely believe it."

Dorothy stood a moment, looking at the stars in the midnight sky. Then she turned with a sigh to Lorraine.

"Good-night," she said, and they kissed each other, these two young girls who an hour before had been strangers.

"Shall I see you again? We leave by the early train," whispered Dorothy.

"No--I must return when my carriage comes back from the village.

Good-by, dear--good-by, dear Dorothy."

A moment later, Dorothy, flinging her short ermine-edged cloak from her shoulders, entered the empty ballroom and threw herself upon the gilded canape.

One by one the candles spluttered, glimmered, flashed up, and went out, leaving a trail of smoke in the still air. Up-stairs little Alixe was sobbing herself to sleep in Barbara's arms; in his own chamber the old vicomte paced to and fro, and to and fro, and his sweet-faced wife watched him in silence, her thin hand shading her eyes in the lamplight. In the next room Sir Thorald and Lady Hesketh sat close together, whispering. Only Betty Castlemaine and Cecil Page had lost little of their cheerfulness, perhaps because neither were French, and Cecil was not going to the war, and--after all, war promised to be an exciting thing, and well worth the absorbed attention of two very young lovers.

Arm in arm, they promenaded the empty halls and galleries, meeting no one save here and there a pale-faced maid or scared flunky; and at length they entered the gilded ballroom where Dorothy lay, flung full length on the canape.

She submitted to Betty's caresses, and went away to bed with her, saying good-night to Cecil in a tear-choked voice; and a moment later Cecil sought his own chamber, lighted a pipe, and gave himself up to delightful visions of Betty, protected from several Prussian army-corps by the single might of his strong right arm.