The Hosts of the Air Part 21

"Perhaps it will follow you," he said. "There is war everywhere now, or soon will be. I hear that it's spreading all over the world."

John shrugged his shoulders, and followed Jacques up a ladder into a loft over the horses. But it was not a bad room. It had two small iron beds and it was secure from wet and cold.

"You take that," said Jacques, pointing to the bed on the right. "It belonged to Fritz who was the hostler here with me. He went to the army at the first call and was killed at Longwy. Fritz was a German, a Saxon, but he and I were friends. We had worked together here three years. I'd have been glad if the bullets had spared him. The horses miss him, too.

He had a kind hand with them and they liked him. Poor Fritz! You sleep in the bed of a good man."

"My eyes are so heavy that I think I'll go to bed now."

"The bed is waiting for you. It's always welcome to one who has walked all day in the cold as you have. I have more work. I have the tasks of that poor Fritz and my own to do now. It may be an hour, two hours before I'm through, but if you sleep as soundly as I do I'll not wake you up."

John sank into deep slumber almost at once and knew nothing until the next morning.

CHAPTER VIII

INTO GERMANY

A frosty dawn was just beginning to show through the single window that lighted up the little room. It opened toward the east, where the light was pink over the hills, but the upper sky was yet in dusk. John sat up in bed and rubbed the last sleep out of his eyes. A steady moaning sound made him think he was hearing again the thunder of great guns, as he had heard it days and nights at the Battle of the Marne.

The low ominous mutter came from a point toward the north, and glancing that way, although he knew his eyes would meet a blank wall, he saw that it was only Jacques, snoring, not an ordinary common snore, but the loud resounding trumpet call that can only come from a mighty chest and a powerful throat through an eagle beak. Jacques was stretched flat upon his back and John knew that he must have worked extremely hard the night before to roar with so much energy through his nose while he slept.

Well, Jacques was a good fellow and a friend of France, the nation that was fighting for its existence, and if he wanted to do it he might snore until he raised the roof!

John sat up. He saw the pink on the eastern hills turning to blue and then spreading to the higher skies. The day was going to be clear and cold. He walked to the window and looked up at the skies, seeking for aeroplanes, after the habit that had now grown upon him. But the sky was speckless and no sounds came from the Gratz farmhouse. Doubtless the German officers quartered there were sleeping late, knowing that they had no need to hurry to the front, since the fighting in the hills and mountains was desultory.

But the crisp clear blue of the cold morning was wonderfully suitable to the hosts of the air and they were at work. Along a battle front of five hundred miles in the west and of seven or eight hundred in the east messages were flas.h.i.+ng, on wires by telephone and telegraph and then on nothing but the pulsating air.

John, who had been compelled to deal so much with these invisible agencies felt them now about him. He had a highly sensitive mind like a photographic plate that registered everything, and when he opened the window that he might see better and admit the fresh air, he did not have to reach out for knowledge. It came, and registered itself upon that delicate and imaginative mind. He had thought so much and he had striven so hard to see and to divine what lay before him that he felt almost able to send messages of his own through the air, messages of hope winging their way directly to Julie.

The mind of man is a strange thing. It may be a G.o.dlike instrument, the powers of which are yet but little known. John did not believe in the least in anything supernatural, but he did believe in the immense and unfathomed power of the natural. Alone, and in the early dawn with silence all about him it seemed that he heard Julie calling to him. Her voice traveled like the wireless on the pulsating air. She needed him and she turned to him alone for aid. She had divined in some manner that only he could help her and he would come, no matter what the risk. The cry was registered again and again upon his sensitive soul, and always he sent back the answer that he was coming. His mind, like hers, had become a wireless, and both were working.

He became unconscious of time and place. He no longer saw the blue sky, but he stretched out his arms and called:

"I am coming!"

"Coming? What do you mean by coming? Who is it you're telling?"

John came out of his dream, or the misty region between here and nowhere, and turned to Jacques, who in the process of awakening at that moment had heard his words which were spoken in French.

"I was just talking to the air," replied John a little uncertainly.

"Fine mornings appeal to me, and I was telling this one that I'd soon come out into it"

Jacques continued to awaken. He was a big man who worked hard and who slept heavily. Rousing from sleep was a task accomplished by degrees and it took some time. He had heard John with one ear and now he heard with the other. His right eye opened slowly and then the left. The blood became more active in his brain and in a minute or two he was awake all over.

"Telling the morning air that you're coming out into it, eh Castel?" he said as he put one foot on the floor. "You're a poet, I see. You don't look it, but being French, as you Lorrainers are, it makes you fond of poetry."

"I do believe you have it right, Jacques," said John, "but if I can get my breakfast now I mean to go upon the road at once."

"Oh, you can get it, Castel. The whole kitchen has fallen in love with you. I found that out last night after you had gone away. That little Annette told me so."

"It was to tease you," said John, who understood at once and who was willing to fib in a good cause. "I saw her watching through a window a fine big fellow, exactly your size, age and appearance, and with the same name. I said something about his being a hulking hostler and she turned upon me like a hawk."

"Now, did she?" exclaimed Jacques, a great smile spreading slowly across his face.

"She did. Told me it was a poor return for their kindness to criticize a better man."

"Ah, that Annette is bright and quick. She can see through a man at one look. Castel, I like you, and I hope you'll get to Metz without trouble.

But keep a civil and a slow tongue in your mouth. Don't speak until the Germans speak to you, and then tell the truth without stammering. I'll go to the kitchen with you, as my work begins early."

John knew that he had a friend, and the two left the stable together.

But he was not thinking much then of the Gratz farm or of anybody upon it. He had sent his soul on before, and he meant that his body should catch up with it.

Johanna, Annette and the master, Gratz himself, were in the kitchen. He ate a good breakfast with Jacques, paid Gratz for food and lodging, and putting his blankets and knapsack upon his back, took once more to the road. Jacques repeated his good advice to be polite to men to whom it paid to be polite, and Annette, standing by the side of the stalwart hostler, waved him farewell.

The slush, frozen the night before, had not yet melted, and John walked rapidly along the broad firm highway, elated and bold. Julie had called to him. He would not reason with himself, and ask how or why it had been done, but he felt it. He liked to believe that wireless signals had pa.s.sed between them. Anyway he was going to believe it, and hence his heart was light and his spirit strong.

He pa.s.sed sentinels posted along the road, but his pa.s.sport was always sufficient, and his pleasant manner bred a pleasant manner in return.

Soon there was nothing but a line of smoke to mark where the Gratz farm stood, but he carried with him good memories of it. He hoped that the romance of Jacques and Annette would end happily. In truth he was quite sure that it would, and he began to whistle softly to himself, a trick that he had caught from General Vaugirard.

John had no certainty that he would enter Metz, which must now be less of a city than a great fortress with a powerful garrison. But he felt sure that he could at least penetrate to the outskirts and there find more trace of Auersperg. A prince and man of his social importance could scarcely pa.s.s through the city without being noticed, and there would be gossip among the soldiers. Fortunately he had been in Metz twice and he knew the romantic old city at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille, dominated by its magnificent Gothic cathedral. After all he might overtake Auersperg there and in some manner achieve his task.

Chance took a wide range in so great a war and nothing was impossible.

He was now approaching the line between France and Germany, and Metz lay only eleven miles beyond. The beauty of the clear cold day endured.

There was snow on the hills, but the brilliant sun touched it with a luminous golden haze, and the crisp air was the breath of life.

He swung along at a great gait for one who walked. Life for months without a roof had been hard, but it had toughened wonderfully those whom it did not kill, and John with a magnificent const.i.tution was one of those who had profited most. He felt no weariness now although he had come many miles.

About one o'clock in the afternoon he sat on a stone by the roadside and ate with the appet.i.te of vigorous youth good food from his knapsack.

While he was there a German sergeant, with about twenty men in wagons going toward Metz, stopped and spoke to him.

"Hey, you on the stone, what are you doing?" asked the sergeant.

John cut off a fresh piece of sausage with his clasp knife and answered briefly and truthfully:

"Eating."

The sergeant had a broad, red and merry face, and facing a man of good humor he was not offended.

"So I see," he said, "but that wasn't what I meant."

John, without another word, took out his pa.s.sport, handed it to him and went on eating. The sergeant examined it, handed it back to him and said:

"Correct."

"I show it to everybody," said John. "When a man speaks to me I don't care who he is, or what he is, I hand it to him. I, Jean Castel, as you see by the name on the pa.s.sport, don't want trouble with anybody."

"And a wise fellow you are, Castel. I'm Otto Sch.e.l.ler, a sergeant in the service of his Imperial Majesty and the Fatherland."