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Page 110
The wind freshened and a few drops of rain struck his face. He stood
boldly erect now, unafraid of observation, and picked a way through the
mass of broken glass and overturned shrubbery toward the end of the
conservatory, seeing beyond it a gleam of water which must be the big
fishpond.
He turned to the left and reached the edge of the pond just as four
figures stepped from the dusk, their raised rifles pointing at him. The
shock was so great that, driven by some unknown but saving impulse, he
threw himself forward into the water just as the soldiers fired. He
heard the four rifles roaring together. Then he swam below water to the
far edge of the pond and came up under the shelter of its circling
shrubbery, raising above its surface only enough of his face for breath.
As his eyes cleared he saw the four soldiers standing at the far edge of
the pond, looking at the water. Doubtless they were waiting for his
body to reappear, as his action, half fall, half spring, and the roaring
of the rifles had been so close together that they seemed a blended
movement.
He was trembling all over from intense nervous exertion and excitement,
but his mind steadied enough for him to observe the soldiers.
Undoubtedly they were talking together, as he saw them making the
gestures of men who speak, but, even had he heard them, he could not
have understood their German. They were watching for his body, and as it
did not reappear they might make the circle of the pond looking for it.
He intended, in such an event, to leap out and run, but the elements
were intereceding in his favor. Thunder now preponderated greatly in
that rumble on the western horizon, and a blaze of yellow lightning
played across the surface of the pond. It was followed by a rush of rain
and the soldiers turned back toward the house, evidently sure that they
had not missed.
John drew himself out of the water and climbed up the bank. His knees
gave way under him and he sank to the ground. Excitement and emotion had
been so violent that he was robbed of strength, but the condition lasted
only a minute or two. Then he rose and began to pick a way.
The rain was driving hard, and it had grown so dark that one could not
see far. But he felt that the German sentinels now would seek a little
shelter from the wrath of the skies, and keeping in the shelter of a
hedge he passed by the stables, where many of the hussars and Uhlans
slept, through an orchard, the far side of which was packed with
automobiles, and thence into a wood, where he believed at last that he
was safe.
He stopped here a little while in the lee of a great oak to protect
himself from the driving rain, and he noticed then that it was but a
passing shower, sent, it seemed then to him, as a providential aid. The
part of the rumble that was real thunder was dying. The yellow flare of
the lightning stopped and the rain swept off to the east. The moon and
stars were coming out again.
John tried to see the ch�teau, but it was hidden from him by trees. They
would miss him there, and then they would know that it was he whom the
soldiers had fired upon at the edge of the pond. All of them would
believe that he was dead, and he remembered suddenly that Julie, who was
there among them, would believe it, too. Would she grieve? Or would he
merely be one of the human beings passing through her life, fleeting and
forgotten, like the shower that had just gone? It was true that he had
escaped, but he might be killed in some battle before she was rescued
from Auersperg--if she was rescued.
These thoughts were hateful, and turning into the road by which they had
come to the ch�teau he ran down it. He ran because he wanted motion,
because he wished to reach the French army as quickly as he could, and
help Lannes organize for the rescue of Julie.
He ran a long distance, because his excitement waned slowly, and because
the severe exercise made the blood course rapidly through his veins,
counteracting the effects of his cold and wetting. When he began to feel
weary he turned out of the road, knowing that it was safer in the
fields. He had the curious belief or impression now that the black
shower was all arranged for his benefit. Providence was merely making
things even. The soldiers had been brought upon him when the chances
were a hundred to one against him, and then the shower had been sent to
cover him, when the chances were a hundred to one against that, too.
He saw far to the south a sudden faint radiance and he knew that it was
the last of the lightning. The little feathery clouds, which looked so
friendly and pleasant against the blue of the sky, came back and the
moaning on the western horizon toward which he was traveling was wholly
that of the guns.
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