Lorraine, A Romance

Suddenly a great sombre raven sailed to the road, alighted, sidled back, and sat fearlessly watching them.

Lorraine shivered and nestled closer to Jack.

"Oh," she murmured, "I never saw one before--except in pictures."

"They belong in the snow--they have no business here," said Jack; "they always make me think of those pictures of Russia--the retreat of the Grand Army, you know."

"Wolves and ravens," said Lorraine, in a low voice; "I know why they come to us here in France--Monsieur Marche, did I not tell you that day in the carrefour?"

"Yes," he answered; "do you really think you are a prophetess?"

"Did you see wolves here?" asked Georges.

"Yes; before war was declared. I told Monsieur Marche--it is a legend of our country. He, of course, laughed at it. I also do not believe everything I am told--but--I don't know--I have alway believed that, ever since I was, oh, very, very small--like that." She held one small gloved hand about twelve inches from the floor of the cart.

"At such a height and such an age it is natural to believe anything," said Jack. "I, too, accepted many strange doctrines then."

"You are laughing again," said Lorraine.

So they passed through the forest, trying to be cheerful, even succeeding at times. But Georges' face grew paler every minute, and his smile was so painful that Lorraine could not bear it and turned her head away, her hand tightening on the box-rail alongside.

As they were about to turn out into the Morteyn road, where the forest ended, Jack suddenly checked the horse and rose to his feet.

"What is it?" asked Lorraine. "Oh, I see! Oh, look!"

The Morteyn road was filled with infantry, solid, plodding columns, pressing fast towards the west. The fields, too, were black with men, engineers, weighted down with their heavy equipments, resting in long double rows, eyes vacant, heads bent. Above the thickets of rifles sweeping past, mounted officers sat in their saddles, as though carried along on the surface of the serried tide. Standards fringed with gold slanted in the last rays of the sun, sabres glimmered, curving upward from the thronged rifles, and over all sounded the shuffle, shuffle of worn shoes in the dust, a mournful, monotonous cadence, a hopeless measure, whose burden was despair, whose beat was the rhythm of breaking hearts.

Oh, but it cut Lorraine to see their boyish faces, dusty, gaunt, hollow-eyed, turn to her and turn away without a change, without a shade of expression. The mask of blank apathy stamped on every visage almost terrified her. On they came, on, on, and still on, under a forest of shining rifles. A convoy of munitions crowded in the rear of the column, surrounded by troopers of the train-des-equipages; then followed more infantry, then cavalry, dragoons, who sat listlessly in their high saddles, carbines bobbing on their broad backs, whalebone plumes matted with dust.