Lorraine, A Romance

Slowly, with weary, drooping heads, they walked across the road, past a wretched custom-house, where two painted sentry-boxes leaned, past a squalid barnyard full of amber-coloured, unsavoury puddles and gaunt poultry, up to the thatched stone house where Grahame stood waiting. Over the door hung a withered branch of mistletoe, above this swung a sign: ESTAMINET.

"Your Uhlan is in a bad way, I think," began Grahame; "he's got a broken arm and two broken ribs. This is a nasty little place to leave him in."

"Grahame," said Jack, earnestly, "I've got to leave him. I am forced to go to Sedan as soon as we can swallow a bit of bread and wine. The Uhlan is my comrade and friend; he may be more than that some day. What on earth am I to do?"

They followed Grahame into a room where a table stood covered by a moist, unpleasant cloth. The meal was simple--a half-bottle of sour red wine for each guest, a fragment of black bread, and a râgout made of something that had once been alive--possibly a chicken, possibly a sheep.

Grahame finished his wine, bolted a morsel or two of bread and râgout, and leaned back in his chair with a whimsical glance at Lorraine.

"Now, I'll tell you what I'll do, Marche," he said. "My horses need rest, so do I, so does our wounded Uhlan. I'll stay in this garden of Eden until noon, if you like, then I'll drive our wounded man to Diekirch, where the Hôtel des Ardennes is as good an inn as you can find in Luxembourg, or in Belgium either. Then I'll follow you to Sedan."

They all rose from the table; Lorraine came and held out her hand, thanking Grahame for his kindness to them and to Rickerl.

"Good-by," said Grahame, going with them to the door. "There's your dog-cart; it's paid for, and here's a little bag of French money--no thanks, my dear fellow; we can settle all that later. But what the deuce you two children are going to Sedan for is more than my old brains can comprehend."

He stood, with handsome head bared, and bent gravely over Lorraine's hands--impulsive little hands, now trembling, as the tears of gratitude trembled on her lashes.

And so they drove away in their dog-cart, down the flat, poplar-bordered road, silent, deeply moved, wondering what the end might be.

The repeated shocks, the dreadful experiences and encounters, the indelible impressions of desolation and grief and suffering had deadened in Lorraine all sense of personal suffering or grief. For her land and her people her heart had bled, drop by drop--her sensitive soul lay crushed within her. Nothing of selfish despair came over her, because France still stood. She had suffered too much to remember herself. Even her love for Jack had become merely a detail. She loved as she breathed--involuntarily. There was nothing new or strange or sweet in it--nothing was left of its freshness, its grace, its delicacy. The bloom was gone.