The Woman of Mystery Part 12

"Go ahead."

"First, that my brother-in-law here, Bernard d'Andeville, may be at once transferred to my section as corporal. He's deserved it."

"Very well. And next?"

"My second request is that presently, when we move towards the frontier, my section may be sent to the Chateau d'Ornequin, which is on the direct route."

"You mean that it is to take part in the attack on the chateau?"

"The attack?" echoed Paul, in alarm. "Why, the enemy is concentrated along the frontier, four miles from the chateau!"

"So it was believed, yesterday. In reality, the concentration took place at the Chateau d'Ornequin, an excellent defensive position where the enemy is hanging desperately while waiting for his reinforcements to come up. The best proof is that he's answering our fire. Look at that sh.e.l.l bursting over there . . . and, farther off, that shrapnel . . .

two . . . three of them. Those are the guns which located the batteries which we have set up on the surrounding hills and which are now peppering them like mad. They must have twenty guns there."

"Then, in that case," stammered Paul, tortured by a horrible thought, "in that case, that fire of our batteries is directed at . . ."

"At them, of course. Our seventy-fives have been bombarding the Chateau d'Ornequin for the last hour."

Paul uttered an exclamation of horror:

"Do you mean to say, sir, that we're bombarding Ornequin? . . ."

And Bernard d'Andeville, standing beside him, repeated, in an anguish-stricken voice:

"Bombarding Ornequin? Oh, how awful!"

The colonel asked, in surprise:

"Do you know the place? Perhaps it belongs to you? Is that so? And are any of your people there?"

"Yes, sir, my wife."

Paul was very pale. Though he made an effort to stand stock-still, in order to master his emotion, his hands trembled a little and his chin quivered.

On the Grand Jonas, three pieces of heavy artillery began thundering, three Rimailho guns, which had been hoisted into position by traction engines. And this, added to the stubborn work of the seventy-fives, a.s.sumed a terrible significance after Paul Delroze's words. The colonel and the group of officers around him kept silence. The situation was one of those in which the fatalities of war run riot in all their tragic horror, stronger than the forces of nature themselves and, like them, blind, unjust and implacable. There was nothing to be done. Not one of those men would have dreamt of asking for the gun-fire to cease or to slacken its activity. And Paul did not dream of it, either. He merely said:

"It looks as if the enemy's fire was slowing down. Perhaps they are retreating. . . ."

Three sh.e.l.ls bursting at the far end of the town, behind the church, belied this hope. The colonel shook his head:

"Retreating? Not yet. The place is too important to them; they are waiting for reinforcements and they won't give way until our regiments take part in the game . . . which won't be long now."

In fact, the order to advance was brought to the colonel a few moments later. The regiment was to follow the road and deploy in the meadows on the right.

"Come along, gentlemen," he said to his officers. "Sergeant Delroze's section will march in front. His objective will be the Chateau d'Ornequin. There are two little short cuts. Take both of them."

"Very well, sir."

All Paul's sorrow and rage were intensified in a boundless need for action; when he marched off with his men, he felt an inexhaustible strength, felt capable of conquering the enemy's position all by himself. He moved from one to the other with the untiring hurry of a sheep-dog hustling his flock. He never ceased advising and encouraging his men:

"You're one of the plucky ones, old chap, I know, you're no s.h.i.+rker.

. . . Nor you either . . . Only you think too much about your skin, you keep grumbling, when you ought to be cheerful. . . . Who's downhearted, eh? There's a bit more collar-work to do and we're going to do it without looking behind us, what?"

Overhead, the sh.e.l.ls followed their march in the air, whistling and moaning and exploding till they formed a sort of canopy of steel and grape-shot.

"Duck your heads! Lie down flat!" cried Paul.

He himself remained standing, indifferent to the flight of the enemy's sh.e.l.ls. But with what terror he listened to our own, those coming from behind, from all the hills hard by, whizzing ahead of them to carry destruction and death. Where would this one fall? And that one, where would its murderous rain of bullets and splinters descend?

He was obsessed with the vision of his wife, wounded, dying, and kept on murmuring her name. For many days now, ever since the day when he learnt that elisabeth had refused to leave the Chateau d'Ornequin, he could not think of her without a loving emotion that was never spoilt by any impulse of revolt, any movement of anger. He no longer mingled the detestable memories of the past with the charming reality of his love.

When he thought of the hated mother, the image of the daughter no longer appeared before his mind. They were two creatures of a different race, having no connection one with the other. elisabeth, full of courage, risking her life to obey a duty to which she attached a value greater than her life, acquired in Paul's eyes a singular dignity. She was indeed the woman whom he had loved and cherished, the woman whom he loved still.

Paul stopped. He had ventured with his men into an open piece of ground, probably marked down in advance, which the enemy was now peppering with shrapnel. A number of men were hit.

"Halt!" he cried. "Flat on your stomachs, all of you!"

He caught hold of Bernard:

"Lie down, kid, can't you? Why expose yourself unnecessarily? . . . Stay there. Don't move."

He held him to the ground with a friendly pressure, keeping his arm round Bernard's neck and speaking to him with gentleness, as though he were trying to display to the brother all the affection that rose to his heart for his dear elisabeth. He forgot the harsh words which he had addressed to Bernard and uttered quite different words, throbbing with a fondness which he had denied the evening before:

"Don't move, youngster. You see, I had no business to bring you with me or to drag you into this hot place. I'm responsible for you and I'm not going to have you hurt."

The fire diminished in intensity. By crawling over the ground, the men reached a double row of poplars which led them, by a gentle ascent, towards a ridge intersected by a hollow road. Paul, on climbing the slope which overlooked the Ornequin plateau, saw the ruins of the village in the distance, with its shattered church, and, farther to the left, a wilderness of trees and stones whence rose the walls of a building. This was the chateau. On every side around were blazing farmhouses, haystacks and barns.

Behind the section, the French troops were scattering forward in all directions. A battery had taken up its position in the shelter of a wood close by and was firing incessantly. Paul could see the sh.e.l.ls bursting over the chateau and among the ruins.

Unable to bear the sight any longer, he resumed his march at the head of his section. The enemy's guns had ceased thundering, had doubtless been reduced to silence. But, when they were well within two miles of Ornequin, the bullets whistled around them and Paul saw a detachment of Germans falling back upon the village, firing as they went. And the seventy-fives and Rimailhos kept on growling. The din was terrible.

Paul gripped Bernard by the arm and, in a quivering voice, said:

"If anything happens to me, tell elisabeth that I beg her to forgive me.

Do you understand? I beg her to forgive me."

He was suddenly afraid that fate would not allow him to see his wife again; and he realized that he had behaved to her with unpardonable cruelty, deserting her as though she were guilty of a fault which she had not committed and abandoning her to every form of distress and torment. And he walked on briskly, followed at a distance by his men.

But, at the spot where the short cut joins the high road, in sight of the Liseron, a cyclist rode up to him. The colonel had ordered that the section should wait for the main body of the regiment in order to make an attack in full force.

This was the cruelest test of all. Paul, a victim to ever-increasing excitement, trembled with fever and rage.

"Come, Paul," said Bernard, "don't work yourself into such a state! We shall get there in time."

"In time for what?" he retorted. "To find her dead or wounded? Or not to find her at all? Oh, hang it, why can't our guns stop their d.a.m.ned row?

What are they sh.e.l.ling, now that the enemy's no longer replying? Dead bodies and demolished houses! . . ."

"What about the rearguard covering the German retreat?"