following the road that skirted the property, he came nearer to the village of Ornequin, whose church suddenly rose at the end of a clearing in the wood. The bell, which he had not heard for the last moment or two, now rang out again with great distinctness. It was the bell of Ornequin. It was frail, shrill, poignant as a lament and more solemn than a passing-bell, for all its hurry and lightness.
Paul walked towards the sound. A charming village, all aflower with geraniums and Marguerites, stood gathered about its church. Silent groups were studying a white notice posted on the Mayor's office. Paul stepped forward and read the heading:
At any other period of his life these words would have struck him with all their gloomy and terrific meaning. But the crisis through which he was passing was too powerful to allow room for any great emotion within him. He scarcely even contemplated the unavoidable consequences of the proclamation. Very well, the country was mobilizing: the mobilization would begin at midnight… Very well, every one must go; he would go… And this assumed in his mind the form of so imperative an act, the proportions of a duty which so completely exceeded every minor obligation and every petty individual need that he felt, on the contrary, a sort of relief at thus receiving from the outside the order that dictated his conduct. There was no hesitation possible. His duty lay before him: he must go.
Go? In that case why not go at once? What was the use of returning to the house, seeing Élisabeth again, seeking a painful and futile explanation, granting or refusing a forgiveness which his wife did not ask of him, but which the daughter of Hermine d'Andeville did not deserve?
In front of the principal inn a diligence stood waiting, marked, "Corvigny-Ornequin Railway Service." A few passengers were getting in. Without giving a further thought to a position which events were developing in their own way, he climbed into the diligence.
At the Corvigny railway station he was told that his train would not leave for half an hour and that it was the last, as the evening train, which connected with the night express on the main line, was not running. Paul took his ticket and then asked his way to the jobmaster of the village. He found that the man owned two motor cars and arranged with him to have the larger of the two sent at once to the Château d'Ornequin and placed at Mme. Paul Delroze's disposal.
And he wrote a short note to his wife:
"Élisabeth:
"Circumstances are so serious that I must ask you to leave Ornequin. The trains have become very uncertain; and I am sending you a motor car which will take you to-night to your aunt at Chaumont. I suppose that the servants will go with you and that, if there should be war (which seems to me very unlikely, in spite of everything), Jérôme and Rosalie will shut up the house and go to Corvigny.
"As for me, I am joining my regiment. Whatever the future may hold in store for us, Élisabeth, I shall never forget the woman who was my bride and who bears my name.
CHAPTER IV
A LETTER FROM ÉLISABETH
It was nine o'clock; there was no holding the position; and the colonel was furious.
He had brought his regiment in the middle of the night – it was in the first month of the war, on the 22nd of August, 1914 – to the junction of those three roads one of which ran from Belgian Luxemburg. The Germans had taken possession of the lines of the frontier, seven or eight miles away, on the day before. The general commanding the division had expressly ordered that they were to hold the enemy in check until mid-day, that is to say, until the whole division was able to come up with them. The regiment was supported by a battery of seventy-fives.
The colonel had drawn up his men in a dip in the ground. The battery was likewise hidden. And yet, at the first gleams of dawn, both regiment and battery were located by the enemy and lustily shelled.
They moved a mile or more to the right. Five minutes later the shells fell and killed half a dozen men and two officers.
A fresh move was effected, followed in ten minutes by a fresh attack. The colonel pursued his tactics. In an hour there were thirty men killed or wounded. One of the guns was destroyed. And it was only nine o'clock.
"Damn it all!" cried the colonel. "How can they spot us like this? There's witchcraft in it."
He was hiding, with his majors, the captain of artillery and a few dispatch-riders, behind a bank from above which the eye took in a rather large stretch of undulating upland. At no great distance, on the left, was an abandoned village, with some scattered farms in front of it, and there was not an enemy to be seen in all that deserted extent of country. There was nothing to show where the hail of shells was coming from. The seventy-fives had "searched" one or two points with no result. The firing continued.
"Three more hours to hold out," growled the colonel. "We shall do it; but we shall lose a quarter of the regiment."
At that moment a shell whistled between the officers and the dispatch-riders and plumped down into the ground. All sprang back, awaiting the explosion. But one man, a corporal, ran forward, lifted the shell and examined it.
"You're mad, corporal!" roared the colonel. "Drop that shell and be quick about it."
The corporal replaced the projectile quietly in the hole which it had made; and then without hurrying, went up to the colonel, brought his heels together and saluted:
"Excuse me, sir, but I wanted to see by the fuse how far off the enemy's guns are. It's two miles and fifty yards. That may be worth knowing."
"By Jove! And suppose it had gone off?"
"Ah, well, sir, nothing venture, nothing have!"
"True, but, all the same, it was a bit thick! What's your name?"
"Paul Delroze, sir, corporal in the third company."
"Well, Corporal Delroze, I congratulate you on your pluck and I dare say you'll soon have your sergeant's stripes. Meanwhile, take my advice and don't do it again.."
He was interrupted by the sudden bursting of a shrapnel-shell. One of the dispatch-riders standing near him fell, hit in the chest, and an officer staggered under the weight of the earth that spattered against him.
"Come," said the colonel, when things had restored themselves, "there's nothing to do but bow before the storm. Take the best shelter you can find; and let's wait."
Paul Delroze stepped forward once more.
"Forgive me, sir, for interfering in what's not my business; but we might, I think, avoid."
"Avoid the peppering? Of course, I have only to change our position again. But, as we should be located again at once… There, my lad, go back to your place."
Paul insisted:
"It might be a question, sir, not of changing our position, but of changing the enemy's fire."
"Really!" said the colonel, a little sarcastically, but nevertheless impressed by Paul's coolness. "And do you know a way of doing it?"
"Yes, sir."
"What do you mean?"
"Give me twenty minutes, sir, and by that time the shells will be falling in another direction."
The colonel could not help smiling:
"Capital! You'll make them
