“Sorry, my dear,” said Elinor crisply, with a fine bright smile, “but there’ll be no turning back! We’re going on!”
“Frank can’t go on!” Ann cried angrily. “You know he can’t! I think it’s a rotten shame for you to insist on this when you see what shape he’s in.”
“Nevertheless, we’re going on,” said Elinor with grim cheerfulness. “And Mr. Starwick is going with us. He’ll see it through now to the bitter end. And if he dies upon the way, we’ll give him a soldier’s burial here upon the field of honour…. Allons, mes enfants! Avancez!” And humming gaily and lightly the tune of Malbrouck, she shifted gears and sent the car smoothly, swiftly forward again.
It was a horrible journey: one of those experiences which, by the grim and hopeless protraction of their suffering, leave their nightmare image indelibly upon the memories of everyone who has experienced them. The grey light of the short winter’s day was already waning rapidly when they drove out of Château-Thierry. As they approached Rheims dark had almost come, the lights of the town had begun to twinkle, sparsely, with provincial dismalness, in the distance. No one knew the purpose of their visit; no one knew what the trip was for, what they were coming to see—no one had enquired.
It was almost dark when they entered the town. Elinor drove immediately to the cathedral, halted the car, and got out.
“Voilà, mes amis!” she said ironically. “We are here!”
And she made a magnificent flourishing gesture towards the great ruined mass, which, in the last faint grey light of day, was dimly visible as a gigantic soaring monument of shattering arches and demolished buttresses, a lacework of terrific stone looped ruggedly with splinters of faint light, the demolished façades of old saints and kings and shell-torn towers—the twilight ruins of a twilight world.
“Magnificent!” cried Elinor enthusiastically. “Superb!—Frank! Frank! You must get out and feast your eyes upon this noble monument! I have heard you speak so often of its beauty…. But, my dear, you must!” she said, answering with fine persuasion his feeble and dispirited groan. “You’d never forgive yourself, or me either, if you knew you’d come the whole way to Rheims without a single look at its cathedral.”
And, despite his wearily mumbled protests, she took him by the arm and pulled him from the car. Then, for a moment, as he stared drunkenly,
