Sister Eila had gone to the front door; Magda and Linette stood behind her. And they saw the aeroplane alight in the meadow and a hooded figure, masked in glass and leather, step out, turn its goblin head toward the inn, then start rapidly toward them across the fields.
He was a tall thin man, and as he crossed the highroad and came toward them, he lifted the glass and leather mask and drew it back above his closely-fitting hood.
When he saluted Sister Eila's habit, he came to a full halt and his heels clicked together. Then he spoke in French, pleasantly, perfectly:
"Mr. Halkett, if you please, Sister. Is he still residing here?"
"Monsieur Halkett has left."
"Oh, I am sorry. Was not Monsieur Halkett expecting a messenger?"
"Have you a message for Monsieur Halkett?"
The airman twisted his pointed, blond mustache:
"I expected that Monsieur Halkett would have a packet for me. Did he leave none?"
"He left a letter," said Sister Eila.
He bowed ceremoniously:
"Would you be kind enough?"
"Will you not enter?"
"I thank you. If I may be permitted to remain here----" He had kept continually glancing up and down the road while speaking; and it was evident that he preferred to remain where he could watch the highway both ways.
So Sister Eila brought the letter to him, and he bowed again with tight-waisted ceremony, pocketed it, and asked again for the packet.
"Wait, if you please," she said. "The letter was to be read in my presence."
"A thousand pardons! I had not understood----"
He drew the sheets of paper from the unsealed envelope, glanced sharply up and down the highroad, then unfolded the letter.
Sister Eila's eyes were fixed on his face, but his features exhibited no emotion whatever.
Every few moments he looked up and down the road, then bent his pleasantly expressionless face again over the sheets in his gloved hands.
Presently he looked up with a smile:
"I have read it and I understand it. Would you be kind enough to give me the packet which Monsieur Halkett writes that he has left for me?"
"Please read first what is written on the envelope of this letter," said Sister Eila very calmly.
He turned over the envelope, read the inscription in Latin, smiled as he read it.
"Rather an ominous message, is it not, Sister?"
"Do you think so?"
He glanced sharply to right and left, then, still smiling, he read aloud:
"Thou shalt go, thou shalt _not_ return, thou shalt die in battle----"
He turned his head with a jerk and gazed down the road as though suddenly startled; at the same instant Sister Eila snatched the letter from his fingers, sprang inside the house, and slammed the door.
As she bolted it, he threw his weight against it for a moment, then turned and ran for the meadow where the aeroplane stood.
From a window Sister Eila saw him climb aboard; saw the machine move, run over the ground like a great beetle, and rise from the grass, pointing upward and eastward as it took wing and soared low over the river.
And down the highway, pell-mell, galloped a dozen gendarmes in a storm of dust and flying pebbles, wheeled in front of the inn, put their superb horses to the ditch and the cattle gate beyond, and, clearing both, went tearing away across the fields after the rising aeroplane.
Over the river bank they galloped, straight into the water, their big, powerful horses wading, thrashing, swimming across; then they were up the opposite bank and over and away, racing after the ascending aeroplane.
From it was coming a redoubled rattle now; machine and machine gun were both spitting fiercely as the winged thing fought upward toward the blue zone of safety.
The gendarmes drew bridle now and began to shoot upward from their saddles, then spurred on across the fields, taking ditches and hedges as they came, until the strange chase was hidden by a distant rise of ground and the quarry alone remained visible, high winging, still rising, still pointed eastward toward the Rhine.
Then, far away across the hills, a heavier shot set the August air vibrating--another, another, others following.
Faster and faster cracked the high-angle guns on the Barrier Forts, strewing the sky with shrapnel; the aeroplane soared and soared, leaving behind it a wake dotted with clots of fleece which hung for a while quite motionless against the intense blue, then slowly dissolved and vanished in mid-air.
From the Ausone Fort the gunners could hear, far to the southeast, the sky-cannon banging away on the Barrier Forts; and the telescopes on their signal towers swung toward the sky line above the foothills of the Vosges.
But in the town below the fortressed hill no echo of the cannonade penetrated. Ausone, except in the neighborhood of the railroad and the office of the _Petit Journal d'Ausone_, lay still and almost deserted in the August sunshine: a few children played under the trees by the bridge; a few women sat knitting along the river quay; one or two old men nodded, half asleep, fishing the deeper pools below the bridge; the market square remained empty except for a stray dog, tongue lolling, padding stolidly up the street about his business.
But before the office of the _Petit Journal d'Ausone_ a crowd stood, covering the sidewalks and overflowing beyond the middle of the street. Young men and old, women and young girls, were clustered there quietly watching the bulletin boards.
There was no excitement apparent, no loud talking, no gesticulation: voices were calm, tones were low; there was almost no movement in the crowd except when people joined the throng or silently departed.
On one of these bulletin boards was nailed the order for general mobilization; on the other a terse paragraph announced that on Sunday, August 2, German soldiers had entered the city of Luxembourg, crossed the Grand Duchy, and were already skirmishing with Belgian cavalry around Liege and with French troops before Longwy. In other terms, the Teutonic invasion had begun; German troops were already on French soil; for Longwy is the most northern of the Republic's fortifications.
Another paragraph reported that King Albert of Belgium had appealed to England, and that Sir Edward Grey, in the House of Commons, had prepared his country for an immediate ultimatum to Germany.
Still a third paragraph informed the populace of Ausone that the British battle fleet had mobilized and sailed, and that the Empire's land forces were already preparing to cross the Channel.
And Germany had not yet declared war on either France or Belgium, nor had England declared war on Germany, nor had Austria, as yet, formally declared war on Russia, although Germany had.
But there seemed to be no doubt, no confusion in the minds of the inhabitants of Ausone, concerning what was happening, what had already happened, and what Fate still concealed behind a veil already growing transparent enough to see through--already lighted by the infernal flashes of German rifle fire before Longwy.
Everybody in Ausone knew; everybody in France understood. A great stillness settled over the Republic, as though the entire land had paused to kneel a moment before the long day of work began.
There was no effervescence, no voice raised, no raucous shout from boulevard orators of the psychological moment, no attitudes, no complaints.
Only, amid the vast silence, as the nation rose serenely from its knees, millions of flashing eyes were turned toward Alsace and Lorraine--eyes dimmed for an instant, then instantly clear again--clear and steady as the sound and logical minds controlling them.
There was no _sonnerie_ from the portcullis, no salvo from parapet or bastion, no fanfare blared at midday in square or stony street. No bands of _voyous_ went yelling through boulevards, no seething crowds choked the cafes or formed a sinister maelstrom around embassies or government offices.
Down at the Gare de Chalons another crowd had gathered to watch the young men of Ausone depart. They came alone, or two by two, or in groups--sticks, bundles, suitcases, valises swinging--with serious, unruffled features intent upon the business of the long, long business day that was beginning for them at last.
Some were accompanied by parents, some by wives and children, some by sweethearts: many had said good-by at home and were walking to the station with brother or friend, saluting acquaintances en route.
But the mobilizing youths were undemonstrative, chary of gesture--shy, serious young fellows preoccupied with the business on hand, conscious that their term of service had equipped them for it--and in their bearing was that modesty and self-respect which discounts self-consciousness and self-assertion.
For there was no longer any excuse for France to be either noisy or dramatic when she went about her business--no reason for posturing, for epigrams, for attitudes, or for the loud laugh and the louder boast to bolster faith with mutual and riotous reassurance in the face of an unknown business venture concerning the conduct of which the entire nation was excited, ignorant, and unprepared.
The Republic had been both instructed and prepared for the matter of the business on hand. And was going quietly about it.