the forest of sword 18
"And our young American has come back! Ah, my friend, let me shake your
hand!"
It was Captain de Rougemont, trim, erect and without a wound. John
gladly let him shake. Then in reply to de Rougemont's eager questions he
told briefly of all that had happened since they parted.
"The general has asked twice if we had any news of you," said de
Rougemont. "He does not forget. A great mind in a vast body."
"Could I speak to him?"
"Of a certainty, my friend; come."
They advanced toward the fire. General Vaugirard was walking up and
down, his hands clasped behind his back, and whistling softly. His huge
figure looked yet more huge outlined against the flames. He heard the
tread of the two young men and looking up recognized John instantly.
"Risen from the dead!" he exclaimed with warmth, clasping the young
man's hand in his own gigantic palm. "I had despaired of ever seeing you
again! There are so many more gallant lads whom I will certainly never
see! Ah, well, such is life! The roll of our brave young dead is long,
very long!"
He reclasped his hands behind his back and walking up and down began to
whistle again softly. His emotion over the holocaust had passed, and
once more he was the general planning for victory. But he stopped
presently and said to John:
"The Strangers, to whom you belong, have come under my command. You are
one of my children now. I have my eye on all of you. You are brave lads.
Go and seek rest with them while you can. You may not have another
chance in a month. We have driven the German, but he will turn, and then
we may fight weeks, months, no one knows how long. Ah, well, such is
life!"
John saluted respectfully, and withdrew to the little open glade in
which the Strangers were lying, sleeping a great sleep. Captain Colton
himself, wrapped in a blanket, was now a-slumber under a tree, and
Wharton and Carstairs near by, stretched on their sides, were deep in
slumber too. Fires were burning on the long line, but they were not
numerous, and in the distance they seemed mere pin points. At times bars
of intense white light, like flashes of lightning, would sweep along the
front, showing that the searchlights of either army still provided
illumination for the fighting. The note of the artillery came like a
distant and smothered groan, but it did not cease, and it would not
cease, since the searchlights would show it a way all through the night.
John sat down, looked at the faint flashes on the far horizon and
listened to that moaning which grew in volume as one paid close
attention to it. Europe or a great part of it had gone mad. He was
filled once more with wrath against kings and all their doings as he
looked upon the murderous aftermath of feudalism, the most gigantic of
all wars, made in a few hours by a few men sitting around a table. Then
he laughed at himself. What was he! A mere feather in a cyclone!
Certainly he had been blown about like one!
His nervous imagination now passed quickly and throwing himself upon the
ground he slept like those around him. All the Strangers were awakened
at early dawn by the signal of a trumpet, and when John opened his eyes
he found the air still quivering beneath the throb of the guns. As he
had foreseen they had never ceased in the darkness, and he could not
remember how many days and nights now they had been raining steel upon
human beings.
He was refreshed and strengthened by a night of good sleep, but his mind
was as sensitive as ever. In the morning no less bitterly than at night
he raged against the folly and ambition of the kings. But the others
paid no attention to the cannon. They were light of heart and easy of
tongue. They chaffed one another in the cool dawn, and cried to the
cooks for breakfast, which was soon brought to them, hot and plentiful.
"I suppose it's forward again," said Carstairs between drinks of coffee.
"I fancy you're right," said Wharton. "Since we've been put in the
brigade of that giant of a general, Vaugirard, we're always going
forward. He seems to have an uncommon love of fighting for a fat man."
"It's an illusion," said John, "that a fat man is more peaceful than a
thin one."
"How are you going to prove it?" asked Wharton.
"Look at Napoleon. When he was thin he was a great fighter, and when he
became stout he was just as great a fighter as ever. Fat didn't take
away his belligerency."
"I hear that the whole German army has been driven across the Marne,"
said Carstairs, "and that the force we hoped to cut off has either
escaped or is about to escape. If that's so they won't retreat much
further. The pride of the Germans is too great, and their army is too
powerful for them to yield much more ground to us."
"I think you're right, or about as near right as an Englishman can be,
Carstairs," said John. "What must be the feelings of the Emperor and the
kings and the princes and the grand dukes and the dukes and the martial
professors to know that the German army has been turned back from Paris,
just when the City of Light seemed ready to fall into their hands?"
"Pretty bitter, I think," said Carstairs, "but it's not pleasant to have
the capital of a country fall into the hands of hostile armies. I don't
read of such things with delight. It wouldn't give me any such
overwhelming joy for us to march into Berlin. To beat the Germans is
enough."
Another trumpet blew and the Strangers rose for battle again with an
invisible enemy. All the officers, like the men, were on foot, their
horses having been killed in the earlier fighting, and they advanced
slowly across the stubble of a wheat field. The morning was still cool,
although the sun was bright, and the air was full of vigor. The rumbling
of the artillery grew with the day, but the Strangers said little.
Battle had ceased to be a novelty. They would fight somewhere and with
somebody, but they would wait patiently and without curiosity until the
time came.
"I suppose Lannes didn't come back," said Carstairs. "I haven't heard
anyone speak of seeing him this morning."
"He may have returned before we awoke," said John. "The _Arrow_ flies
very fast. Like as not he delivered his message, whatever it was, and
was off again with another in a few minutes. He may be sixty or eighty
miles from here now."
"Odd fellow that Lannes," said Carstairs. "Do you know anything about
his people, Scott?"
"Not much except that he has a mother and sister. I spent a night with
them at their house in Paris. I've heard that French family ties are
strong, but they seemed to look upon him as the weak would regard a
great champion, a knight, in their own phrase, without fear and without
reproach."
"That speaks well for him."
John's mind traveled back to that modest house across the Seine. It had
done so often during all the days and nights of fighting, and he thought
of Julie Lannes in her simple white dress, Julie with the golden hair
and the bluest of blue eyes. She had not seemed at all foreign to him.
In her simplicity and openness she was like one of the young girls of
his own country. French custom might have compelled a difference at
other times, but war was a great leveler of manners. She and her mother
must have suffered agonies of suspense, when the guns were thundering
almost within hearing of Paris, suspense for Philip, suspense for their
country, and suspense in a less degree for themselves. Maybe Lannes had
gone back once in the _Arrow_ to show them that he was safe, and to tell
them that, for the time at least, the great German invasion had been
rolled back.
"A penny for your dream!" said Carstairs.
"Not for a penny, nor for a pound, nor for anything else," said John.
"This dream of mine had something brilliant and beautiful and pure at
the very core of it, and I'm not selling."
Carstairs looked curiously at him, and a light smile played across his
face. But the smile was sympathetic.
"I'll wager you that with two guesses I can tell the nature of your
dream," he said.
John shook his head, and he, too, smiled.
"As we say at home," he said, "you may guess right the very first time,
but I won't tell you whether you're right or wrong."
"I take only one guess. That coruscating core of your dream was a girl."
"I told you I wouldn't say whether you were right or wrong."
"Is she blonde or dark?"
"I repeat that I'm answering no questions."
"Does she live in one of your Northern or one of your Southern States?"
John smiled.
"I suppose you haven't heard from her in a long time, as mail from
across the water isn't coming with much regularity to this battle
field."
John smiled again.
"And now I'll conclude," said Carstairs, speaking very seriously. "If
it is a girl, and I know it is, I hope that she'll smile when she thinks
of you, as you've been smiling when you think of her. I hope, too, that
you'll go through this war without getting killed, although the chances
are three or four to one against it, and go back home and win her."
John smiled once more and was silent, but when Carstairs held out his
hand he could not keep from shaking it. Then Paris, the modest house
beyond the Seine, and the girl within it, floated away like an illusion,
driven from thought in an instant by a giant shell that struck within a
few hundred yards of them, exploding with a terrible crash and filling
the air with deadly bits of flying shell.
There was such a whistling in his ears that John thought at first he had
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기