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Lorraine: A romance, a novel by Robert W. Chambers |
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Chapter 27. Ca Ira! |
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_ CHAPTER XXVII. CA IRA! "What do you want?" asked Jack, in a voice that vibrated unpleasantly. There was a dangerous light in his eyes; his lips grew thinner and whiter. One by one a dozen franc-tireurs stepped from behind the trees on every side, rifles shimmering in the subdued afternoon haze--wiry, gloomy-eyed men, their sleeveless sheepskin jackets belted in with leather, their sombre caps and trousers thinly banded with orange braid. They looked at him without speaking, almost without curiosity, fingering their gunlocks, bayoneted rifles unslung. "Your name?" said the man who had touched him on the shoulder. He did not reply at once. One of the men began to laugh. "He's the vicomte's nephew," said another; and, pointing at Lorraine, who, now aroused, sat up on the moss beside Jack, he continued: "And that is the little chatelaine of the Chateau de Nesville." He took off his straight-visored cap. The circle of gaunt, sallow faces grew friendly, and, as Lorraine stood up, looking questioningly from one to the other, caps were doffed, rifle-butts fell to the ground. "Why, it's Monsieur Tricasse of the Saint-Lys Pompiers!" she said. "Oh, and there is le Pere Passerat, and little Emile Brun! Emile, my son, why are you not with your regiment?" The dark faces lighted up; somebody snickered; Brun, the conscript of the class of '71 who had been hauled by the heels from under his mother's bed, looked confused and twiddled his thumbs. One by one the franc-tireurs came shambling up to pay their awkward respects to Lorraine and to Jack, while Tricasse pulled his bristling mustache and clattered his sabre in its sheath approvingly. When his men had acquitted themselves with all the awkward sincerity of Lorraine peasants, he advanced with a superb bow and flourish, lifting his cap from his gray head: "In my quality of ex-pompier and commandant of the 'Terrors of Morteyn'--my battalion"--here he made a sweeping gesture as though briefly reviewing an army corps instead of a dozen wolfish-eyed peasants--"I extend to our honoured and beloved Chatelaine de Nesville, and to our honoured guest, Monsieur Marche, the protection and safe-conduct of the 'Terrors of Morteyn.'" As he spoke his expression became exalted. He, Tricasse, ex-pompier and exempt, was posing as the saviour of his province, and he felt that, though German armies stretched in endless ranks from the Loire to the Meuse, he, Tricasse, was the man of destiny, the man of the place and the hour when beauty was in distress. Lorraine, her eyes dim with gentle tears, held out both slender hands; Tricasse bent low and touched them with his grizzled mustache. Then he straightened up, frowned at his men, and said "Attention!" in a very fierce voice. The half-starved fellows shuffled into a single rank; their faces were wreathed in sheepish smiles. Jack noticed that a Bavarian helmet and side-arm hung from the knapsack of one, a mere freckled lad, downy and dimpled. Tricasse drew his sabre, turned, marched solemnly along the front, wheeled again, and saluted. Jack lifted his cap; Lorraine, her arm in his, bowed and smiled tearfully. "The dear, brave fellows!" she cried, impulsively, whereat every man reddened, and Tricasse grew giddy with emotion. He tried to speak; his emotion was great. "In my capacity of ex-pompier," he gasped, then went to pieces, and hid his eyes in his hands. The "Terrors of Morteyn" wept with him to a man. Presently, with a gesture to Tricasse, Jack led Lorraine down the slope, past the spring, and on through the forest, three "Terrors" leading, rifles poised, Tricasse and the others following, alert and balancing their cocked rifles. "How far is your camp?" asked Jack. "We need food and the warmth of a fire. Tell me, Monsieur Tricasse, what is left of the two chateaux?" Lorraine bent nearer as the old man said: "The Chateau de Nesville is a mass of cinders; Morteyn, a stone skeleton. Pierre is dead. There are many dead there--many, many dead. The Prussians burned Saint-Lys yesterday; they shot Bosquet, the letter-carrier; they hung his boy to the railroad trestle, then shot him to pieces. The Cure is a prisoner; the Mayor of Saint-Lys and the Notary have been sent to the camp at Strassbourg. We, my 'Terrors of Morteyn' and I, are still facing the vandals; except for us, the Province of Lorraine is empty of Frenchmen in armed resistance." The old man, in his grotesque uniform, touched his bristling mustache and muttered: "Nom d'une pipe!" several times to steady his voice. Lorraine and Jack pressed on silently, sorrowfully, hand in hand, watching the scouts ahead, who were creeping on through the trees, heads turning from side to side, rifles raised. They passed along the back of a thickly wooded ridge for some distance, perhaps a mile, before the thin blue line of a smouldering camp-fire rose almost in their very faces. A low challenge from a clump of birch-trees was answered, there came the sound of rifles dropping, the noise of feet among the leaves, a whisper, and before they knew it they were standing at the mouth of a hole in the bank, from which came the odour of beef-broth simmering. Two or three franc-tireurs passed them, looking up curiously into their faces. Tricasse dragged a dilapidated cane-chair from the dirt-cave and placed it before Lorraine as though he were inviting her to an imperial throne. "Thank you," she said, sweetly, and seated herself, not relinquishing Jack's hand. Two tin basins of soup were brought to them; they ate it, soaking bits of crust in it. The men pretended not to watch them. With all their instinctive delicacy these clumsy peasants busied themselves in guard-mounting, weapon cleaning, and their cuisine, as though there was no such thing as a pretty woman within miles. But it tried their gallantry as Frenchmen and their tact as Lorraine peasants. Furtive glances, deprecatory and timid, were met by the sweetest of smiles from Lorraine or a kindly nod from Jack. Tricasse, utterly unbalanced by his new role of protector of beauty, gave orders in fierce, agitated whispers, and made sudden aimless promenades around the birch thicket. In one of these prowls he discovered a toad staring at the camp-fire, and he drew his sword with a furious gesture, as though no living toad were good enough to intrude on the Chatelaine of the Chateau de Nesville; but the toad hopped away, and Tricasse unbent his brows and resumed his agitated prowl. When Lorraine had finished her soup, Jack took both plates into the cave and gave them to a man who, squatted on his haunches, was washing dishes. Lorraine followed him and sat down on a blanket, leaning back against the side of the cave. "Wait for me," said Jack. She drew his head down to hers. They lingered there in the darkness a moment, unconscious of the amazed but humourous glances of the cook; then Jack went out and found Tricasse, and walked with him to the top of the tree-clad ridge. A road ran under the overhanging bank. "I didn't know we were so near a road," said Jack, startled. Tricasse laid his finger on his lips. "It is the high-road to Saint-Lys. We have settled more than one Uhlan dog on that curve there by the oak-tree. Look! Here comes one of our men. See! He's got something, too." Sure enough, around the bend in the road slunk a franc-tireur, loaded down with what appeared to be mail-sacks. Cautiously he reconnoitred the bank, the road, the forest on the other side, whistled softly, and, at Tricasse's answering whistle, came puffing and blowing up the slope, and flung a mail-bag, a rifle, a Bavarian helmet, and a German knapsack to the ground. "The big police officer?" inquired Tricasse, eagerly. "Yes, the big one with the red beard. He died hard. I used the bayonet only," said the franc-tireur, looking moodily at the dried blood on his hairy fists. "I got a Bavarian sentry, too; there's the proof." Jack looked at the helmet. Tricasse ripped up the mail-sack with his long clasp-knife. "They stole our mail; they will not steal it again," observed Tricasse, sorting the letters and shuffling them like cards. One by one he looked them over, sorted out two, stuffed the rest into the breast of his sheepskin coat, and stood up. "There are two letters for you, Monsieur Marche, that were going to be read by the Prussian police officials," he said, holding the letters out. "What do you think of our new system of mail delivery? German delivery, franc-tireur facteur, eh, Monsieur Marche?" "Give me the letters," said Jack, quietly. He sat down and read them both, again and again. Tricasse turned his back, and stirred the Bavarian helmet with his boot-toe; the franc-tireur gathered up his spoils, and, at a gesture from Tricasse, carried them down the slope towards the hidden camp. "Put out the fire, too," called Tricasse, softly. "I begin to smell it." When Jack had finished his reading, he looked up at Tricasse, folding the letters and placing them in his breast, where the flat steel box was. "Letters from Paris," he said. "The Uhlans have appeared in the Eure-et-Seine and at Melun. They are arming the forts and enceinte, and the city is being provisioned for a siege." "Paris!" blurted out Tricasse, aghast. Jack nodded, silently. After a moment he resumed: "The Emperor is said to be with the army near Mezieres on the south bank of the Meuse. We are going to find him, Mademoiselle de Nesville and I. Tell us what to do." Tricasse stared at him, incapable of speech. "Very well," said Jack, gently, "think it over. Tell me, at least, how we can avoid the German lines. We must start this evening." He turned and descended the bank rapidly, letting himself down by the trunks of the birch saplings, treading softly and cautiously over stones and dead leaves, for the road was so near that a careless footstep might perhaps be heard by passing Uhlans. In a few minutes he crossed the ridge, and descended into the hollow, where the odour of the extinguished fire lingered in the air. Lorraine was sitting quietly in the cave; Jack entered and sat down on the blankets beside her. "The franc-tireurs captured a mail-sack just now," he said. "In it were two letters for me; one from my sister Dorothy, and the other from Lady Hesketh. Dorothy writes in alarm, because my uncle and aunt arrived without me. They also are frightened because they have heard that Morteyn was again threatened. The Uhlans have been seen in neighbouring departments, and the city is preparing for a siege. My uncle will not allow his wife or Dorothy or Betty Castlemaine to stay in Paris, so they are all going to Brussels, and expect me to join them there. They know nothing of what has happened at your home or at Morteyn; they need not know it until we meet them. Listen, Lorraine: it is my duty to find the Emperor and deliver this box to him; but you must not go--it is not necessary. So I am going to get you to Brussels somehow, and from there I can pass on about my duty with a free heart." She placed both hands and then her lips over his mouth. "Hush," she said; "I am going with you; it is useless, Jack, to try to persuade me. Hush, my darling; there, be sensible; our path is very hard and cruel, but it does not separate us; we tread it together, always together, Jack." He struggled to speak; she held him close, and laid her head against his breast, contented, thoughtful, her eyes dreaming in the half-light of France reconquered, of noble deeds and sacrifices, of the great bells of churches thundering God's praise to a humble, thankful nation, proud in its faith, generous in its victory. As she lay dreaming close to the man she loved, a sudden tumult startled the sleeping echoes of the cave--the scuffling and thrashing of a shod horse among dead leaves and branches. There came a groan, a crash, the sound of a blow; then silence. Outside, the franc-tireurs, rifles slanting, were moving swiftly out into the hollow, stooping low among the trees. As they hurried from the cave another franc-tireur came up, leading a riderless cavalry horse by one hand; in the other he held his rifle, the butt dripping with blood. "Silence," he motioned to them, pointing to the wooded ridge beyond. Jack looked intently at the cavalry horse. The schabraque was blue, edged with yellow; the saddle-cloth bore the number "11." "Uhlan?" He formed the word with his lips. The franc-tireur nodded with a ghastly smile and glanced down at his dripping gunstock. Lorraine's hand closed on Jack's arm. "Come to the hill," she said; "I cannot stand that." On the crest of the wooded ridge crouched Tricasse, bared sabre stuck in the ground before him, a revolver in either fist. Around him lay his men, flat on the ground, eyes focussed on the turn in the road below. Their eyes glowed like the eyes of caged beasts, their sinewy fingers played continually with the rifle-hammers. Jack hesitated, his arm around Lorraine's body, his eyes fixed nervously on the bend in the road. Something was coming; there were cries, the trample of horses, the shuffle of footsteps. Suddenly an Uhlan rode cautiously around the bend, glanced right and left, looked back, signalled, and started on. Behind him crowded a dozen more Uhlans, lances glancing, pennants streaming in the wind. "They've got a woman!" whispered Lorraine. They had a man, too--a powerful, bearded peasant, with a great livid welt across his bloodless face. A rope hung around his neck, the end of which was attached to the saddle-bow of an Uhlan. But what made Jack's heart fairly leap into his mouth was to see Siurd von Steyr suddenly wheel in his saddle and lash the woman across the face with his doubled bridle. She cringed and fell to her knees, screaming and seizing his stirrup. "Get out, damn you!" roared Von Steyr. "Here--I'll settle this now. Shoot that French dog!" "My husband, O God!" screamed the woman, struggling in the dust. In a second she had fallen among the horses; a trooper spurred forward and raised his revolver, but the man with the rope around his neck sprang right at him, hanging to the saddle-bow, and tearing the rider with teeth and nails. Twice Von Steyr tried to pass his sabre through him; an Uhlan struck him with a lance-butt, another buried a lance-point in his back, but he clung like a wild-cat to his man, burying his teeth in the Uhlan's face, deeper, deeper, till the Uhlan reeled back and fell crashing into the road. "Fire!" shrieked Tricasse--"the woman's dead!" Through the crash and smoke they could see the Uhlans staggering, sinking, floundering about. A mounted figure passed like a flash through the mist, another plunged after, a third wheeled and flew back around the bend. But the rest were doomed. Already the franc-tireurs were among them, whining with ferocity; the scene was sickening. One by one the battered bodies of the Uhlans were torn from their frantic horses until only one remained--Von Steyr--drenched with blood, his sabre flashing above his head. They pulled him from his horse, but he still raged, his bloodshot eyes flaring, his teeth gleaming under shrunken lips. They beat him with musket-stocks, they hurled stones at him, they struck him terrible blows with clubbed lances, and he yelped like a mad cur and snapped at them, even when they had him down, even when they shot into his twisting body. And at last they exterminated the rabid thing that ran among them. But the butchery was not ended; around the bend of the road galloped more Uhlans, halted, wheeled, and galloped back with harsh cries. The cries were echoed from above and below; the franc-tireurs were surrounded. Then Tricasse raised his smeared sabre, and, bending, took the dead woman by the wrist, lifting her limp, trampled body from the dust. He began to mutter, holding his sabre above his head, and the men took up the savage chant, standing close together in the road: It was the horrible song of the Terror.
"'Du fer pour travailler,
"France!" So they died. _ |
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