Lorraine, A Romance

"Yes--in time."

Sir Thorald relapsed into a rambling, monotonous account of some military movement near Wissembourg until Jack spoke again: "Yes--I know; tell me about Alixe."

"Yes--Alixe," muttered Sir Thorald--"is she here? I was wrong; I saw her at Cologne; that was all, Jack--nothing more."

"There is more," said Jack; "tell me."

"Yes, there is more. I saw that--that she loved me. There was a scene--I am not always a beast--I tried not to be. Then--then I found that there was nothing left but to go away--somewhere--and live--without her. It was too late. She knew it--"

"Go on," said Jack.

Suddenly Sir Thorald's voice grew clear.

"Can't you understand?" he asked; "I damned both our souls. She is buying hers back with tears and blood--with the white cross on her heart and death in her eyes! And I am dying here--and she's to drag out the years afterwards--"

He choked; Jack watched him quietly.

Sir Thorald turned his head to him when the coughing ceased.

"She went with a field ambulance; I went, too. I was shot below that vineyard. They told her; that is all. Am I dying?"

Jack did not answer.

"Will you write to Molly?" asked Sir Thorald, drowsily.

"Yes. God help you, Sir Thorald."

"Who cares?" muttered Sir Thorald. "I'm a beast--a dying beast. May I see Alixe?"

"Yes."

"Then tell her to come--now. Soon I'll wish to be alone; that's the way beasts die--alone."

He rambled on again about a battle somewhere in the south, and Jack went to the door and called, "Alixe!"

She came, pallid and weeping, carrying a lighted candle.

Jack took it from her hand and blew out the flame.

"They won't let us have a light; they fear bombardment. Go in now."

"Is he dying?"

"God knows."

"God?" repeated Alixe.

Jack bent and touched the child's forehead with his lips.

"Pray for him," he said; "I shall write his wife to-night."

Alixe went in to the bedside to kneel again and buy back two souls with the agony of her child's heart.

"Pray," she said to Sir Thorald.

"Pray," he repeated.

Jack closed the door.

Up and down the dark hall he wandered, pausing at times to listen to some far rifle-shot and the answering fusillade along the picket-line. Once he stopped an officer on the stairway and asked for a priest, but, remembering that Sir Thorald was Protestant, turned away with a vague apology and resumed his objectless wandering.

At times he fancied he heard cannon, so far away that nothing of sound remained, only a faint jar on the night air. Twice he looked from the window over the vast black forest, thinking of the dead man lying there alone. And then he longed to go to Lorraine; he felt that he must touch her, that his hand on hers might help her somehow.