Warner, dressing for dinner, stood looking down from his window at the Saïs road. Halkett, in his smart but sober field uniform, sat sideways on the window sill, chatting with his friend and surveying the lively panorama below, where, through the fading light, endless columns of motor lorries rolled ponderously eastward.
In every direction bicycle and motor cycle messengers were speeding, north and south on the Saïs road, west toward Dreslin by the mill, eastward over cow-paths and sheepwalks, and across the pontoons, or by the school highway and quarry bridge, southeast toward a road crowded with motor lorries, and through that gap in the foothills which narrows into the Pass of the Falcons.
Warner, leisurely buttoning his waistcoat, stood looking out of the window at the scenes passing under the plateau, and listening with the greatest interest to Halkett's comments on these preliminaries for a campaign about to open.
"Then, in your opinion, it is invasion?" he said.
Halkett nodded:
"I can make nothing else of this movement, Warner. Our General, Pau, is at Nancy. What you see down there is part of a perfectly complete and coherent army, and it is certainly moving on the Vosges passes.
"Metz, Strassburg, Colmar, lie beyond; our alpinists are swarming around the Donon. Under it lie the lowlands of Alsace and Lorraine.
"Already we have seized the pass of Saales; Thann and Danemarie are menaced; the valley of the Bruche lies before us, Saarburg and the railroad to Metz invite us.
"Does it not all seem very logical, Warner?"
"It sounds so."
"It is good strategy. The logic is sound logic. If we carry it through, it will be applauded as brilliant strategy.
"The Germans want a decisive battle on French soil in the vicinity of Rheims. If they beat us there, they pivot on Verdun, half-circle on the Oise, and Paris lies before them. They have today a million men within striking distance of the French frontier."
"Are we fully mobilized?"
"Our concentration is slower; we are massing between Bar-le-Duc and Epinal. We have, so far, only seven corps d'armée concentrated, and twenty-one more on the march. But do you know what we have done already?
"Listen; this isn't generally known yet, but we have taken the passes of Bonhomme and Sainte Marie; we have taken Mülhausen——"
"What!"
"Yes, it's ours. More than that, we have entered Dinant. At Mangiennes, Moncel, Lagarde, we drove the Germans. Our line of battle stretches two hundred miles from a point opposite Tongres to Nancy. We smashed the Germans at Altkirch and left them minus thirty thousand men!
"And this great counter-offensive which our General is planning is already exercising such a pressure on their advance toward Brussels that they have begun to detach entire army corps and send them post haste into Alsace. What do you think of that, Warner?"
"Fine!" exclaimed the American. "It's simply splendid, Halkett. You see, we here in the valley couldn't know anything about it. All we had to go by was that the German guns were booming nearer and nearer, that Ausone is in ruins, that Uhlans were riding the country as impudently as though they were patrolling their own fatherland. I tell you, old chap, it's a wonderful relief to me to hear from you what is really going on."
He turned to his mirror, lighted a cigarette, and began to fuss with his tie.
Halkett said, grimly amused:
"Oh, yes, we all ought to feel immensely relieved by capturing a mountain and a couple of unfortified German towns, even if there are today in Europe seventeen million men under arms and seventeen million more in reserve, all preparing to blow each other's heads off."
Warner came back slowly to the windows:
"It is a ghastly situation, Halkett. The magnitude of the cataclysm means nothing to us, so far. Nobody yet has comprehended it. I don't think anybody ever really can—even when it's over and the whole continent is underplowcd and fertilized with dead men from the Channel to the Carpathians—no single mind of the twentieth century is ever going to be able to grasp this universal horror in all its details. In a hundred years, perhaps——" He shrugged, threw away his cigarette, and picked up his evening coat to inspect it before decorating his person with it.
Halkett said:
The scale of the whole business is paralyzing. Here's a single detail, for example: Germany is in process of launching six huge armies into France. The Crown Prince, the Grand Duke of Württemberg, Generals von Kluck, von Bülow, von Hausen, and von Heeringen command them.
"Three of them have not yet moved; three are on their juggernaut way already—the Army of the Meuse, based at Cologne, is marching through Belgium on a front thirty miles wide, its right flank brushing the Dutch border at Visé, its left on Stavelot, its center enveloping the Liége railroad.
"The Moselle army, based on Coblenz, has made a highway of the Grand Duchy and is in Belgium. The Rhine army has its bases at Strassburg and Mayence, and started very gayly to raise the devil on its own account, but we've stung it in the flank already and it's squirming in uncertainty.
"And that is the situation so far, old chap, as well as I can understand it. And I understand it fairly well because of my position with this French army. You don't quite understand how I happen to be here and what I am doing, do you?"
"Not exactly. I know you have a Bristol aëroplane here and that you are attached to the British Flying Corps."
"Oh, yes. In our service I am squadron commander, and Gray is wing commander. But I have a flight-lieutenant yonder at the sheds and a mechanic.
"As a matter of fact, Warner, I am the British Official Observer with General Pau's army, and Gray, when he can get about, is to act with me. That is what I am doing."
"You make no flights?"
"Oh, yes, we shall fly, Gray and I—not doing any range finding for the artillery and not making ordinary raids with bombs. Observation is to be our rôle. It's interesting, isn't it?"
"It's fascinating," said Warner, linking his arm in Halkett's as they left the room.
"As a matter of fact," he added, "in spite of the horrors in Belgium, the slaughter there and in Alsace, this war has not really begun."
Halkett turned a drawn and very grave face to him:
"Warner," he said, "this war will not really begin until next spring. And there will be a million dead men under ground by that time."
Dinner that evening at the Château des Oiseaux was a most cheerful function. The passing of an army for miles and miles through the country around them was a relief and a reassurance which brought with it a reaction of gayety slightly feverish at moments.
The Countess de Moidrey gave her arm to Gray, tall, slim, yellow-haired, and most romantically pale: Captain the Vicomte d'Aurès took out Peggy Brooks—they turned to each other with the same impulse, as naturally as two children coming together—and the words designating them to other partners remained unspoken on Ethra's lips.
Philippa, in an enchanting gown of turquoise, looked up at the Countess, flushed and expectant, but the elder woman, much amused, designated Halkett, and the girl took the arm he offered with a faint smile at Warner, as though to reassure him concerning matters temporarily beyond her own control.
The Countess saw it, stood watching Warner, who had drawn Sister Eila's arm through his own, and was taking her out—saw Halkett and Philippa halt and draw aside to let them pass; saw the expression in Sister Eila's face as her glance met Halkett's, wavered, and passed elsewhere.
Before she and Gray had moved to close the double file, the Curé of Dreslin was unexpectedly announced, and she turned to receive him, asking him to support Gray on the other side. Always Father Chalus was a welcome guest at the Château; every house, humble or great, from Dreslin to Saïs, was honored when this dim-eyed old priest set foot across the threshold.
The dinner was lively, gay at times, and always cheerful with the excitement lent by the arrival of the army—an arrival verging closely on the dramatic, with the echoes of the cannonade still heavy among the northern forests, the evening sky still ruddy above Ausone, and the August air tainted with the odor of burning.
Through the soft candlelight servants moved silently; the Countess, with the old Curé on her right, devoted herself to him and to Gray.
As though utterly alone in the center of some vast solitude peopled only by themselves, young D'Aurès and Peggy Brooks remained conspicuously absorbed in each other and equally oblivious to everything and everybody else on earth.
"How is Ariadne?" inquired Halkett of Philippa,
"Poor dear! I have not seen her since she soiled a whisker in Jim's ultramarine!"
Sister Eila's lowered eyes were lifted; she tried to smile at Halkett.
"I saw Ariadne the other day," she said. "The cat is quite comfortable in the garden of the Golden Peach."
Halkett said lightly:
"Ariadne introduced me to Sister Eila. Do you remember, Sister?"
But Sister Eila had already turned to Warner, and perhaps she did not hear.
Later Warner bent toward Philippa:
"You are enchanting in that filmy turquoise blue affair."
"Isn't it a darling? Peggy would make me wear it. It's hers, of course.... Do I please you?"
"Did you ever do anything else, Philippa?"
She colored, looked up at him confused, and laughed:
"Oh, yes," she said, "I have annoyed you too, sometimes. Do you remember when I ran away from Ausone and told you about it in the meadow by the river? Oh, you were very much annoyed! You need not deny it. I realize now how much annoyed you must have been——"
"Thank God you did what you did," he said under his breath.
"What else could I do?"
"Nothing.... I must have been blind, there in Ausone, not to understand you from the first moment. And I must have been crazy to have gone away and left you there.... When I think of it, it makes me actually ill——"
"Jim! You didn't know."
"I should have known. Any blockhead ought to have understood. That was the time I should have heard the knocking of opportunity! I was deaf. That was the time I should have caught a glimpse of that clean flame burning. I seemed to know it was there—words are cheap!—but my eyes were too dull to perceive a glimmer from it!"
"Jim! You saw a girl with painted lips and cheeks insulting the sunlight. How could you divine——"
"I couldn't; I didn't. I was not keen enough, not fine enough. Yet, that was the opportunity. That was the moment when I should have comprehended you—when I should have stood by you—taken you, held you against everybody, everything—— Good God! I went away, smug as any Pharisee, and with a self-satisfied smile left you on the edge of hell—smiling back at me out of those grey, undaunted eyes——"
"Please! You were wonderful every minute from the beginning—every minute—all through it, Jim——"
"You were! I know what I was. Halkett knows, too. I was not up to the opportunity; I did not measure up to the chance that was offered me; I was not broad enough, fine enough——"
"What are you saying!—When you know how I feel—how I regard you——"
"How can you regard me the way you say you do?"
"How can I help it?" She looked down at her glass, touched the slender stem absently.
"Out of all the world," she said under her breath, "you alone held out a comrade's hand. Does anything else matter? ... Think! You are forgetting. Remember! Picture me where I was—as I was—only yesterday! Look at me now—here, beside you.—here under this roof, among these people—and the taste of their salt still keen in my mouth! Now, do you understand what you have done for me—you alone? Now, do you understand what I—feel—for you?—For you who mean not only life to me, but who have made possible for me that life which follows death?"
Her cheeks flushed; she turned breathlessly toward him.
"I tell you," she whispered, "you have offered me Christ, as surely as He has ever been offered at any communion since the Last Supper! ... That is what you have done for me!"