"Were you in Ausone when the fort began firing? Didn't you know enough to come home?"
"Yes; I didn't realize it was the Fort d'Ausone. We were at tea in the Boule d'Argent when the Taube appeared. Then everything was in a mess, Ethra. I know a number of people have been killed. We saw a shop blown up across the street. After that the cupola guns on the fort opened and the town shook; and before we could cross the rue d'Auros to find our punt, where we had left it tied under the river wall, the big German shells began to fall all over the town. It was certainly a rotten deal----"
"Jim, I am furious at you for taking that child into such a place. I wish you to understand now, from this moment, that I love her dearly. She is adorable; and she's mine. You can't take her about with you without ceremony, anywhere and everywhere. Anyway, it's sheer madness to go roaming around the country in such times as these. Hereafter, you will please ask my permission and obtain my sanction when you are contemplating any further harebrained performances."
Warner took his rebuke very humbly, kissed the pretty hand that, figuratively, had chastised him, and went away to dress, considerably subdued.
"By the way," he asked, when halfway up the stairs, "how is that man, Reginald Gray?"
"I think he is better, Jim. Sister Eila is with him. Poor child, she has been superintending the placing of the cot beds which have arrived, and she is really very tired. If you are going to stop in and speak to Mr. Gray, please say to Sister Eila that I shall relieve her in a few moments."
He met Peggy with Philippa in the upper hall.
"You brute!" remarked Peggy, turning up her nose; and Philippa laughed and closed the girl's lips with her soft hand.
"You may chase me about and kick me, too," said Warner, contritely. "Anyway, I'm not to go anywhere with Philippa any more, it seems----"
"What!" exclaimed Philippa, then smiled and flushed as Peggy said scornfully:
"You couldn't keep away from her if you tried. But hereafter you'll include me on your charming excursions in quest of annihilation!" And she tightened her arm around Philippa's waist and swung her with her toward the further end of the hall.
Very conscious of his temporary unpopularity, he went in to see how Gray was feeling, and found him sitting up in bed and Sister Eila preparing his dose for him.
So Warner gave the Sister of Charity the message from Madame de Moidrey, and offered to sit beside Gray until the Countess arrived.
When Sister Eila had retired, Gray said, rather wistfully:
"I shan't know how to thank these people for taking me in. It's really a beastly imposition----"
"Nonsense, my dear fellow. They like it. All women adore a hero. How do you feel, anyway?"
"Much fitter, thanks. I don't know what medicine they're giving me, but it is evidently what I needed.... And do you know that the Countess de Moidrey has been kind enough to visit me and read to me, and even write a letter to Halkett for me? I sent it to London. They'll get into touch with him there." His sunken eyes rested on the window through which, far away over Ausone Fort, the flicker and flare of the guns lighted up the misty darkness, throwing a wavering red glare over the clouds.
Boom--boom--rumble--rumble--boom! came the dull thundering out of the north. Every window was shaking and humming.
"A devil of a row," remarked Gray, restlessly.
"You've heard that the German shells are already falling on Ausone, haven't you?"
"No. Are they?"
Warner drew a brief picture of what he had seen that afternoon in Ausone, and the Englishman listened, intensely interested.
"And I don't know," he ended, "what is to prevent the Germans from battering the Ausone Fort to pieces if they have silenced those big Belgian fortresses around Namur. In that case, we'll have their charming Uhlans here in another forty-eight hours----"
He checked himself as Madame de Moidrey knocked and entered, followed by a maid with Gray's dinner on a tray.
"Thank you, Jim; you may go and dress now. Mr. Gray, you are to dine a little earlier, if you don't mind--Suzanne, place the tray on this tabouret. Now, shall I help you, Mr. Gray?"
"Thanks, so much; but I am detaining you from dinner----"
"No, indeed. Let me help you a little----" arranging a napkin for him and uncovering his cup of fragrant broth.
Warner and the maid, Suzanne, lingered, looking on, thinking they might be needed.
But realizing presently that neither the Countess nor her patient was paying the slightest attention to them, they looked at each other very gravely and quietly walked out.
That night at dinner Sister Eila was absent.
Certain prescribed devotions made Sister Eila's attendance at any meal an uncertainty. The private chapel in the east wing had now become a retreat for her at intervals during the day; the kitchen knew her when Gray's broth was to be prepared; she gently directed the servants who had been setting up the hospital cots in the east wing, and she showed them how to equip the beds, how to place the tables, how to garnish the basins of running water with necessaries, where to pile towels, where to assemble the hospital stores which had arrived with the cots in cases and kegs and boxes.
Besides this she had not forgotten to give Gray his medicine and to change his bandages.
It had been a busy day for Sister Eila.
And now, in the little chapel whither she had crept on tired feet to her devotions, she had fallen asleep on her knees, the rosary still clinging to her fingers, her white-bonneted head resting against the pillar beside which she had knelt.
Warner, wandering at hazard after dinner, discovered her there and thought it best to awaken her.
As he touched her sleeve, she murmured drowsily:
"I have need of prayer, Mr. Halkett.... Let me pray--for us--both----"
For a long while Warner stood motionless, not daring to stir. Then, moving cautiously, he left her there asleep on her knees, her white cheek against the pillar, the wooden prayer beads hanging from her half-closed hand.
*CHAPTER XXIX*
The first streak of tarnished silver in the east aroused the sleeping batteries beyond Ausone. Warner, already dressed and out of doors, felt the dim world around him begin to shake again, as one by one the distant guns awoke and spoke to the ruined fort of doom. There was not a soul astir in the Chateau or about the grounds. Over shrubbery and woods thin films of night mist drooped, sagging like dew-laden spiders' webs; in the demi-light the great house loomed spectral and huge amid its phantom trees, and the wet lawns spread away and vanished under the pallid pall that bathed them.
Warner had slept badly. What might be transpiring in the north had haunted his troubled slumber, had broken it continually, and finally had driven him from his hot and tumbled pillows to dress and go out into the dark obscurity.
To see for himself, to try to form some conclusion concerning the approaching situation of the people in the Chateau des Oiseaux, was his object.
The first grey tint in the east woke up the guns; from the northern terrace he could see the fog all rosy over Ausone; pale flashes leaped and sparkled far beyond as the deep waves of sound came rolling and tumbling toward him, breaking in thunderous waves across the misty darkness.
Now and then a heavier concussion set the ground shaking, and a redder glare lighted the north and played shakily over the clouds. Ausone was still replying.
On the other side of the Recollette there was a hill terraced to the summit with vineyards. From its western slope he knew that part of Ausone town was visible, and from there he believed that with his field glasses he could see for himself how much of the town was really on fire; how near to it and to the fort were those paler flashes reflected on the clouds which ringed the northern sky.
Nobody was astir in the house as he left it; nobody in the roadway.
At the lodge he rapped on the dark window until the old man peered out at him through the diamond panes, yawning and blinking under his Yvetot nightcap, a candle trembling in his hand.
Outside the wall he crossed the road, climbed the hedge stile and struck across a field of stubble.
Over the darker eastern hills a wet sky lowered; the Recollette ran black under its ghostly cerements of vapor; lapwings were calling somewhere from the foggy sky, and their mournful and faint complaint seemed to harmonize sadly with the vague grey world around him.
A trodden path twisted through the grass down to the reedy shore where the punt lay. Peering about for it, his foot struck the pole, where it lay partly buried in the weeds; he picked it up and went down among the rushes. But until he laid his hand on the boat he did not notice the man asleep there. And not until the man sat up with a frightful yawn, rubbing his sleep-swollen lids, did he recognize Asticot.
"What the devil----" he began, but Asticot stumbled to his large, flat feet with a suppressed yelp of apprehension, as Warner's dreaded grasp fell on his collar.