Part 92

"Come to the window; it's worth seeing," said Halkett.

It was worth seeing. Through the still morning sunshine, from the southward came an immense sound wave; the rustle and clash of steel, the clink-clank of iron-shod hoofs.

Leaning from the window, Warner looked down the road. A high column of white dust stretched away into perspective as far as he could see. Under it, emerging from it, rode the French heavy cavalry, the morning sun a blinding sheet of fire on their armor.

On they came at a leisurely walk, helmets and breastplates blazing silvery fire under a perpendicular forest of lances canopied by the white dust.

They were terribly conspicuous; a cloudless sky exposed every detail of their uniforms--the gold epaulets of their officers, the crimson epaulets and breeches of the troopers, the orange-red whalebone plumes that flew like the manes of horses from the trumpeters' helmets.

On they came, riding at ease, accompanied by dust and by a vast and confused volume of assorted noises--the tintinnabulation of their armor, the subdued clash of sabers, the rattle and clash of equipments, the solidly melodious trample of thousands of horses.

But Warner looked down at them with anxious eyes and lips compressed.

"Good God!" he said under his breath to Halkett. "Are they going into battle dressed that way? I thought they had learned something since 1870!"

"War has caught France unprepared in that particular matter," said Halkett gravely.

"I didn't know it. I understood that Detaille had designed their campaign dress. It's a dreadful thing, Halkett, to send men into fire dressed in that way!"

"It is. But look, Warner. Is there anything more magnificent when in mass formation than a brigade of French cuirassiers?"

As they rode clanging under the windows of the inn, officers and troopers looked up curiously at the man in his bathrobe, in friendly surprise at the young man in the British field uniform; but when the upturned, sunburned faces caught sight of the next window beyond, a quick, gay smile flashed out, and dark blue sleeves shot up in laughing greeting and salute.

"It's Philippa," whispered Halkett. "Look!"

Warner turned: Philippa, wearing the scarlet and black peasant dress of a lost province, sat sideways on her window sill, knitting while she watched the passing cavalry below.

The velvet straps and silk laces of her bodice accented a full chemisette of finest lawn; a delicate little apron of the same was relieved by the scarlet skirt; the dainty, butterfly headdress of black silk crowned her hair, which hung in two heavy braids.

And, as the cavalry column passed, every big cuirassier, looking up from the shadow of his steel helmet, saw Alsace itself embodied in this slender girl who sat knitting and looking down upon France militant out of quiet, proud eyes.

There was no fanfare, no shouting, no boasting, nothing theatrical. The troopers looked up from their saddles and rode by, still looking; the girl knitted quietly, her steady eyes gazing gravely over the needles. And it was as though Alsace herself were speaking a silent language from those clear, grey eyes:

"I am waiting; I have been waiting for you more than forty years. Take what time you need, but come. You will always find me waiting."

Every officer understood it; every giant rider comprehended, as the squadrons trampled past through a thickening veil of dust which grew denser, dulling the sparkle of metal and subduing the raw, fierce colors to pastel tints.

The brigade passed up the valley leisurely, without halting; dust hung along the road for many minutes after the last cuirassier had walked his big horse out of view.

Philippa, who had been seated on the window sill with her back toward Warner's window, left her perch; and Warner turned back into his room to bathe and dress.

"How long have you been up?" he asked Halkett, who had dropped on a chair by the window.

"Since sunrise. Madame Arlon is back. She behaved very nicely about the damage. She doesn't wish me to pay for it, but I shall. Did you know that your Harem left in a body for Paris yesterday afternoon?"

"Very sensible of 'em," said Warner with a sigh of relief. "How about you, Halkett?"

"I don't know yet. I'm expecting orders at any moment now."

"How do you know that your country has gone into this war?"

"I learned it last night at the Boule d'Argent. The news had just come over the wire.

"That precious pair, Meier and Hoffman, whom I had followed to the Boule d'Argent, were seated there in the cafe reading the newspapers when the telegram was posted up.