Tan-colored limbers, guns, caissons drawn by powerful, dust-whitened teams, rushed past thudding and clanking, escorted by galloping pelotons of artillerymen armed with saber and carbine, flanked by smart officers flashing all over cherry red and gold.
Battery after battery, with forges and wagons, passed; a fanion with trumpeters sped by; a squadron of remount cavalry in clearer blue jackets followed, then came two squadrons of galloping dragoon lancers, their steel helmets covered with brown holland slips, and the pennons streaming wildly from their lance heads. A gendarme or two galloped in the rear, mere ghosts in the driving dust. And the flying column had passed.
Sister Eila, covering Gray’s mouth and nose with her grey-blue sleeve, bowed her head and closed her eyes while the storm of dust and pebbles lasted; then Warner nodded to Philippa, and between them they led out the donkey cart once more and pushed slowly ahead into the oncoming torrent of vehicles—cattle, men, women, and children.
It was nearly noon when they arrived at the Château des Oiseaux. A footman aided him to carry Gray upstairs to the room prepared for him.
"Are you all right?" asked Warner doubtfully.
"All right, thanks.... May I have a little water, if it’s not too much trouble——"
Sister Eila entered the room with a carafe and some lemons; and Warner withdrew.
In the hallway below he encountered Madame de Moidrey and Peggy Brooks in earnest consultation with the village physician—an old man crippled from 1870, and wearing the Legion and an empty sleeve.
Warner shook hands with Dr. Senlis and told him what he knew of Gray’s condition. Sister Eila came down presently and everybody greeted her with a warmth which unmistakably revealed her status in Saïs.
Presently she went upstairs again with Dr. Senlis. Later the Countess went up. Peggy and Philippa had gone out to the south terrace where the reverberation of the cannonade was now continually shaking the windows, and where, beyond, Ausone, a dark band of smoke stretched like a rampart across the northern sky.
As Warner stood thinking, listening to the dull shock of the concussions rolling in toward them on the wind from the north, the footman, Vilmar, approached him.