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Updated: June 18, 2025
Rickerl burst out violently. "There can be no compromise no adjustment. Is it Lieutenant von Steyr who seeks it? Then I tell him he is a hangman and a coward! He hangs a franc-tireur who fires on us with explosive bullets, but he himself does not hesitate to disgrace his uniform and regiment by firing explosive bullets at an escaping wretch in a balloon!"
"Where is your prisoner?" he cried. Von Steyr stared around him, right and left Jack was gone. "Let others prefer charges," said Rickerl, contemptuously "if you escape my sabre in the morning." "Let them," said Von Steyr, quietly, but his face worked convulsively. "Second platoon dismount to search for escaped prisoner!" he cried. "Open order! Forward!"
"She ought to see you now, bareheaded, dusty, in your shirt-sleeves! You're not much like the attaché at the Diplomatic ball eh, Ricky? If you marry Dorothy I'll punch your head. Come on, we've got to find out where we are." "That's my road," observed Rickerl, quietly, pointing across the fields. "Where? Why?" "Don't you see?" Jack searched the distant landscape in vain.
But, except for the chaperons, the unmarried people did well enough, as unmarried people usually do when let alone. So, on that cloudless day of July, 1870, Rickerl von Elster sat in the green row-boat and tugged at the oars while Sir Thorald smoked a cigar placidly and Lady Hesketh trailed her pointed fingers over the surface of the water.
Then he got his fingers between the noose and his neck; now the thing loosened and he pitched forward, but kept his feet. "Gott verdammt!" roared a voice above him; "Von Steyr! here! get back there! get back!" "Rickerl!" gasped Jack "tell tell them they must shoot not hang " He stood glaring at the soldiers before him, face bloody and distorted, the rope trailing from one clenched hand.
Dorothy waved her fan and looked at Rickerl, standing in the moonlight beside her. "Why won't you dance, Ricky?" she asked; "it is your last evening, if you are determined to leave to-morrow." He turned to her with an abrupt gesture; she thought he was going to speak, but he did not, and after a moment she said: "Do you know what that despatch from the New York Herald to my brother means?"
Rickerl listened impassively, playing with the sabre on his knees, glancing right and left across the country with his restless baby-blue eyes. When Jack finished he said nothing, but it was plain enough how seriously he viewed the matter. "As for your damned Uhlans," ended Jack, "I have tried to keep out of their way.
It's a relief to me to know that I didn't kill that trooper; but confound him! he shot at me so enthusiastically that I thought it time to join the party myself. Ricky, would they have hanged me if they had given me a fair court-martial?" "As a favour they might have shot you," replied Rickerl, gloomily.
He lies in his room all day, silent, ghastly white. He does not believe that Alixe did what she did and died there at Morteyn. Oh, I am glad you are here. Jack says you must tell Rickerl nothing about Sir Thorald; nobody is to know that now all is ended." "Yes," said Dorothy. When they came to the house, Archibald Grahame and Lady Hesketh met them at the door.
Lorraine gave a gasp and reached out one hand. Jack Marche took it in both of his. Inside the ballroom the orchestra was still playing the farandole. Rickerl took the old vicomte's withered hand; he could not speak; his sister Alixe was crying. "War? War? Allons donc!" muttered the old man. "Helen! Ricky says we are to have war. Helen, do you hear? War!"
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