The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Outrage, by Annie Vivanti
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Title: The Outrage
Author: Annie Vivanti
Release Date: October 5, 2012 [EBook #40949]
Language: English
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_THE OUTRAGE_
_ANNIE VIVANTI CHARTRES_
_NEW YORK : ALFRED A. KNOPF : 1918_
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
A. VIVANTI CHARTRES
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
THE OUTRAGE
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
Chérie was ready first. She flung her striped bath-robe over her
shoulders and picked up Amour who was wriggling and barking at her pink
heels.
"_Au revoir dans l'eau_," she said to little Mireille and to the German
nursery governess, Frieda.
"Oh, Frieda, _vite, vite, dégrafez-moi_," cried Mireille, backing
towards the hard-faced young woman and indicating a jumble of knotted
tapes hanging down behind her.
"Speak English, please, both. This is our English day," said Frieda,
standing in her petticoat-bodice in front of the mirror and removing
what the girls called her "Wurst" from the top of her head. In the glass
she caught sight of Chérie making for the door and called her back
sharply. "Mademoiselle Chérie, you go not in the street without your
stockings and your hat."
"Nonsense, Frieda! In Westende every one goes to bathe like this," and
Chérie waved a bare shapely limb and flicked her pink toes at Amour, who
barked wildly at them.
"I do not care how every one goes. You go not," said Frieda Rothenstein,
hanging her sleek brown Wurst carefully on the mirror-stand.
"Then what have we come here for?" sulked Chérie, dropping Amour and
giving him a soft kick with her bare foot.
"We have come here," quoth Frieda, "not for marching our undressed legs
about the streets, but for the enjoyment both of the summer-freshness
and of the out-view." Whereupon Mireille gave a sudden shriek of
laughter and Amour bounded round her and barked.
Chérie crossed the room to the chair on which her walking clothes had
been hastily flung. "Won't sand-shoes do?"
"No. Sand-shoes and stockings," said Frieda. "And hat," she added,
glancing down at the comely bent head with its cascade of waving
red-brown locks.
Chérie hurriedly drew on her black stockings, glancing up occasionally
to smile at Mireille; and nothing could be sweeter than those shining
eyes seen through the veil of falling hair. Now she was ready, her
flapping _bergère_ hat crushed down on her careless curls, Amour hoisted
under her arm again, and with a nod of commiseration to Mireille she ran
down the narrow wooden staircase of Villa Esther, Madame Guillaume's
_appartements meublés_ and was down in the rue des Moulins with her
smiling face to the sea.
The street was a short one, half of it not yet built over, leading from
a new aeroplane-shed at the back to the wide asphalted promenade on the
sea-front. Chérie met some other bathers--a couple of men striding along
in their bathing suits, their bronzed limbs bare, a damp towel round
their necks, their wet hair plastered to their cheeks. They barely
glanced at the picturesque little figure in the brief red bathing-skirt
and flapping hat, for all along the sands--from Nieuport, twenty minutes
to the right, to Ostend half an hour to the left--there were hundreds of
just such charming school-girl figures darting about in the sunlight,
while all the fast and loose "daughters of joy" from Brussels, Namur,
and Spa, added their more poignant note of provocativeness to the blue
and gold beauty of the summer scene.
Chérie passed the bicycle shop and waved a friendly hand to Cyrille
Wibon, who was kneeling before his racing Petrolette and washing its
shining nose with the tenderness of a nurse and the pride of a father.
"Remember! the two bicycles at eleven, on the sands," cried Chérie in
Flemish, and Cyrille lifted a quick forefinger to his black hair, and
nodded. Chérie ran on, crossed the wide promenade, and skipped down the
shallow flight of steps leading to the sands, those vast sweeping sands
of Westende that begin and end in the wide, wild dunes. She dropped
Amour, who rolled over, righted himself, dug a few rapid holes with his
hind paws in the sand and then trotted off to lead his own wicked dog's
life with certain hated enemies of his--a supercilious leveret, a
scatter-brained Irish terrier, and a certain mean and shivering
black-and-tan, whose tastes and history would not bear investigation.
Chérie plunged through the quarter of a mile of dry, soft sand, into
which her feet sank at every step, and as she reached the smoother
surface that the outgoing tide left hard and level, she flung off her
bath-robe and her hat, her sand-shoes and her stockings; then she ran
out into the water.
Lithe and light she ran, skipping over the first shallow waves and on
until the water lapped her knees and the red skirt bulged out all round
her like a balloon--on she ran with little chilly gasps of delight,
raising her white arms above her head as the water rose and encircled
her with its cool, strong embrace. The sun cast a net of dancing
diamonds on the blue satin sea, and the girl felt the joy of life bound
within her like some wild, living thing. She joined her finger-tips and
dived into the dancing waters; then she emerged, pushing her wet hair
from her eyes with her wet hand. She swam on and on toward the azure
horizon, and dreamed of thus swimming on for ever and losing herself in
the blue beauty of the world.
An aeroplane passed above her with its angry whirr returning from
Blankenberghe to Nieuport, and she turned on her back and floated,
looking up at it and waving her small gleaming hand. She thought the
plane dipped suddenly as if it would fall upon her, and she watched it,
holding her breath for the pilot's safety till it was almost out of
sight. Then she turned and trod water awhile and blinked at the distant
shore for a sight of Mireille.
Yes, surely, there was the skimpy figure of Frieda, and beside it ran
and hopped the still skimpier figure of Mireille, whose thin legs had
only scampered through ten Aprils and whose treble voice cut the
distance with the shrill note of exceeding youth.
"Chéreee!... Chéreeee!... Come back. Come back and fetch me!"
So Chérie, with a sigh, turned and swam slowly landward.
Mireille came running out to meet her with little splashes and jumps and
shrieks, while Frieda stopped behind in a few inches of water and went
through a series of hygienic rites, first wetting her forehead, then her
chest, then her forehead again, and finally sitting down solemnly in the
water until she had counted a hundred. This concluded her bath, and she
went home to dress.
When, an hour later, she came down to the sands again neatly clothed in
her Reformkleid, with the Wurst reinstated high and dry on the top of
her otherwise damp head, she saw her two charges lying flat and
motionless in the sand, the broiling sunshine burning down on their
upturned faces and closed eyes. They were pretending to be dead; and
indeed, thought Frieda, as she saw them lying, so small and still on the
immensity of the sands, they looked like drowned morsels of humanity
tossed up by the sea.
Before Frieda could reach them, Cyrille, the bicycle teacher, passed
her--the monkey-man, as the girls called him--pedalling along on one
machine and guiding the other towards the two small recumbent figures.
They jumped up when they heard him, and by the time Frieda reached the
spot, Mireille was being hoisted on to a very rusty old machine, while
Chérie, a slim, scarlet figure, with auburn locks afloat and white limbs
gleaming, was skimming along in the distance on the smooth resilient
sands.
"I do not approve," panted Frieda, running alongside of the swaying
Mireille, while the monkey-man trotted behind and held the saddle,--"I
do not approve of this bicycle-riding in bathing costume."
"Oh, Frieda," gasped Mireille, "do stop scolding, you make me wobble--"
and with a sudden swerve the bicycle described a semicircle and ran
swiftly down into the sea.
Mireille was very angry with Frieda and with the bicycle and with the
monkey-man, who grinned with his very white teeth in his very dark face,
and hoisted her up again. Frieda soon tired of following them, and sat
down near an empty boat to read _Der Trompeter von Säkkingen_.
Säkkingen! As Frieda's eyes skimmed the neatly printed pages and
lingered on the woodcut of a church tower and a bridge, her soul went
back to the little town on the Rhine. For Frieda, like the famous
trumpeter, came from Säkkingen; her feet, in square German shoes, had
tottered and run and clattered and tripped at divers ages over its
famous covered bridge; she had leaned out of the small flower-filled
windows, and sent her girlish dreams floating down the sleepy waters of
the Rhine; she had passed Victor von Sheffel's small squat monument
every morning on her way to school, and every evening on her way home
she had looked up at the shuttered windows of the house that had been
his. Säkkingen!--with its clean white streets and its blue-and-white
Kaffee-Halle in the Square and its bakeries redolent of fresh _Kuchen_
and _Schnecken_.... Frieda raised eyes of rancour to the dancing North
Sea, to the smooth Belgian sands, to the distant silhouettes of Chérie,
Mireille, and the monkey-man, even to the bounding Amour and his
companions of iniquity. She hated it all. She hated them all. They were
all selfish and vulgar and flippant, with no poetry in their souls, and
no religion, and bad cooking.... Frieda shook her head bitterly: "_Das
Land das meine Sprache spricht_ ..." she murmured in nostalgic tones,
and sighed. Then she took up her book again and read what Hidigeigei,
tom-cat and philosopher, had to say about love and the Springtime.
Warum küssen sich die Menschen?
Warum meistens nur die Jungen?
Warum diese meist im Frühjahr?...
* * * * *
That evening Mireille opened the door to the postman and took two
letters from him. Then she went to the sitting-room where Frieda and
Chérie sat at their needlework; hiding one of the letters behind her
back she read out the superscription of the other with irritating
slowness:
"Mademoiselle--Chérie--Brandès--Villa--Esther--"
"Oh, give it to me!" cried Chérie, extending an impatient hand.
"It is from Loulou," said Mireille, giving up the letter and still
holding the other one behind her back.
"You may not call your mother Loulou," snapped Frieda. "I have never
heard of such a thing."
"She likes it," said Mireille. "Besides, Chérie calls her Loulou."
"Chérie is her sister-in-law, not her daughter," said Frieda; then
catching sight of the other letter in Mireille's hand: "Who is that
for?"
"Hochwohlgeborenes Fräulein--Frieda Rothenstein--" read Mireille, and
Frieda rose quickly and pulled the letter out of her hand. "Oh, Frieda,
you rude thing! Who is your letter from? It's on our letter-paper, and
is not from Loulou, and it is not from my father. Who calls you all that
twiddly-twaddly _hochwohlgeboren_ nonsense?"
Nobody answered. Both Fräulein and Chérie were reading their letters
with intent eyes. Mireille continued her monologue. "I believe it is
from Fritz. Fancy! Fritz, who is only papa's servant, writing to you! Do
you answer him? Fancy a _hochwohlgeboren_ getting letters from a
man-servant!"
Frieda did not deign to reply, nor did she raise her eyes from the
letter in her hand; yet as Mireille could see, it was only one line
long. Just four or five words. But Frieda sat staring at them as if they
had turned her to stone.
Now Chérie had finished reading the hastily scrawled page in her hand
and raised a face full of consternation.
"Frieda! Mireille! Do you know what has happened? We are to go home
tomorrow."
"Tomorrow!" exclaimed Mireille. "Why, papa said we were to stay here two
months, and we only arrived four days ago."
"Well, your mother writes that we are to go home at once. Do you hear,
Frieda?" But Frieda did not answer nor raise her eyes.
"But why--why?" cried Mireille. "Doesn't Loulou know we have arranged to
have your birthday party here, with Lucile and Jeannette and Cri-cri all
coming on purpose?"
"Yes, she knows," said Chérie, turning her sweet, perplexed eyes from
Mireille's disconcerted face to the impassive countenance of Frieda,
"but she says there is going to be war."
"War? What has that got to do with us?" exclaimed Mireille in injured
tones. "It really is too bad. Just as I had made up my mind that
tomorrow I would swim with both feet off the ground!..."
CHAPTER II
The next day's sun rose hot and angry. It was the 30th of July. By ten
o'clock Frieda had packed everything. Amour had been put into his
picnic-basket and his humped-up back coaxed and patted and finally
forcibly pressed down, and the lid shut over him. Then they awaited the
carriage ordered by telephone from Ostend the night before.
But no carriage arrived. At eleven Chérie ran across to the
telephone-office and spoke in her sternest tones to the livery stable in
Ostend.
"_Eh bien?_ Is this carriage coming? We ordered it for ten o'clock."
"No, Madame, it is not coming," replied a gruff voice from the other
end.
"Not coming?"
"No, Madame." Then in lower, almost confidential tones, "It has been
requisitioned."
"What is that? Then send another one," said Chérie. But Ostend had cut
off the communication and Chérie returned crestfallen and wondering to
the glum Frieda and the doleful Mireille sitting on the trunks in Madame
Guillaume's narrow hall.
"No carriage," she said.
"What?" exclaimed Frieda.
"Why not?" asked Mireille.
"I don't know; something is being done to it," Chérie said vaguely. "I
did not understand. Perhaps it is being re--re--covered, or something."
At noon Madame Guillaume found a porter for them who wheeled the luggage
on a hand-cart to the Westende tramway station. And the tramway carried
them and their luggage and Amour in his basket to Ostend, where another
man with a hand-cart was found to wheel the luggage and the basket to
the railway station.
They noticed at once that Ostend wore a strange and novel air. Crowds
filled the town, crowds that were not the customary sauntering
demi-mondaines and lounging viveurs. No; the streets were full of
hurrying people, of soldiers on foot and on horseback; long lines of
motor-cars, motor-cycles, carts and wagons blocked the roadways, and
behind them came peasants leading strings of unharnessed horses. Down
the rue Albert came, marching rapidly, a little band of Gardes Civiques
in their long coats and incongruous bowler-hats with straps under their
chins. Groups of officers, who had arrived a few days before for the
international tennis tournament, were assembled on the Avenue Leopold
and talked together in low, eager tones.
"What is the matter with everybody?" asked Mireille, as they hurried
through the Place St. Joseph and across the bridge after the man with
the luggage, who was already vanishing into the crowded station.
As if in answer to her question a couple of newspaper boys came
rushing past with shrill cries. "_Supplément ... supplément de
'l'Indépendance' ..., Mobilization Générale...._"
"Frieda, is there really going to be war?" asked Chérie, looking
anxiously at Frieda's sulky profile.
"Yes, I believe so," said Frieda. "Between Russia and Germany."
"Oh well; that is far away," said young Chérie, with a little laugh of
relief, and she ran to rescue the picnic-basket from the porter's
roughly swinging hand.
"Amour is whining," whispered Mireille, as they stood in the crush
waiting to pass the ticket-collector on the quai.
"Oh! he mustn't," said Chérie. "Officially he is sandwiches."
So Mireille thumped the basket with her small gloved hand and murmured,
"_Couche-toi, tais-toi, vilian scélérat_." And the official sandwiches
subsided in the basket and were silent.
They never had such a journey. The train was crowded to suffocation; the
whole world seemed to be going to Brussels; every few minutes their
train stopped to let other even more crowded trains dash past them
towards the capital.
"I have never seen so many soldiers," said Mireille. "I did not think
there were so many in the world."
Frieda Rothenstein smiled disdainfully with the corners of her mouth
turned down. "There are a few more than this in my country," she said.
"What? In Germany? But not such beautiful ones," cried Mireille, hanging
out of the window and waving her handkerchief as many others did to a
little company of Lancers cantering past on the winding road with lances
fixed and pennants fluttering.
Frieda glanced at them superciliously. "You should see our Uhlans," she
said. And added under her breath, "Who knows? Perhaps one day you may."
But the girls were not listening. The train was running into Brussels at
last. The journey had taken five hours instead of two.
An hour later they still sat in the motionless train in the Brussels
station.
"At this rate we shall never reach Bomal," said Chérie drearily, as they
watched train after train packed with soldiers leave the station before
theirs in the direction of Liège. Here all the world seemed to be
rushing out of Brussels towards the eastern frontier.
But all things end; and finally their train started too, panting and
puffing out of the Gare du Nord towards Louvain, Tirlemont, and Liège.
It was utterly dark by the time they reached Liège; and when they left
the Gare Guillemin the soft summer night had swathed the valley of the
Ourthe with tenebrous draperies. Little Mireille fell asleep with a pale
smudgy face resting against Frieda's arm. Chérie lay back in her corner
dozing and dreaming of Westende's blue sea; but Frieda's eyes were wide
open staring out into the darkness as the train rumbled in and out of
the tunnels, clattered over bridges following the gleaming blackness of
the river.
Where the Ourthe meets its younger brother the Aisne, the train slowed
down, trembled, hissed, and stopped.
"Bomal," announced the guard.
"Here we are! Mireille, wake up!" cried Chérie, looking out of the
window. Then she put Mireille's _bergère_ hat very crookedly on the
child's towzled head, while Frieda hurriedly collected the books, the
tennis-rackets and the parasols.
"Ah! there he is," and Chérie waved her hand out of the window to a tall
figure on the platform. "Claude! Claude! _Nous voici._"
Claude Brandès, a handsome man, fifteen years older than his sister
Chérie, opened the carriage door with an exclamation of relief. "Thank
goodness you are here," he said, lifting his dazed, weary little
daughter in his arms as if she were a baby and hoisting her on to his
shoulder. "Are you all right? Have you got everything? Come along!" And
he started down the platform, Chérie and Frieda trotting quickly after
him. "Mademoiselle," he said, turning to Frieda, "give the check for
your trunks to Fritz."
"_Oui, Monsieur le Docteur_," she replied, fumbling for it in her
hand-bag. Then she looked round for the man-servant, whom she had as yet
not caught sight of. Fritz Hollander ("Hollander by name and Hollander
by nationality," he always said of himself when making new
acquaintances) stepped out of the shadow and took the paper from
Frieda's hand. She murmured a greeting to him, but he did not reply nor
did he seem to notice her questioning glance. He turned on his heel, and
his massive figure was soon swallowed up in the shadows at the end of
the station.
The little party had just reached the exit and the train, with a parting
whistle, was curving away into the darkness, when Mireille suddenly
raised her face from her father's shoulder and gave a shriek. "Amour! We
have forgotten Amour!"
It was true. Amour, cramped and disgusted in his creaky luncheon basket,
was travelling away in the darkness to the heart of the Ardennes.
After the first moment of dismay everybody was cross with everybody
else.
"It's all his own fault," said Chérie, who was tired and hungry. "He
might have barked. He knew perfectly well that we were getting out."
"Haven't we taught him to pretend he is sandwiches when we're
travelling?" sobbed Mireille indignantly. "How can you be so unjust?"
"Never mind, Mirette," said her father; "don't cry. We will telegraph to
Marché to have him stopped and sent back. You will see him turn up safe
and tail-wagging in the morning."
And the telegram was sent.
As they walked through the silent, sleeping village of Bomal Chérie
inquired, "Why is Loulou not here? She might have come in the motor."
Her brother hesitated a moment. "I have sent away the car," he said.
"Sent it away? What for?" exclaimed Chérie.
"I have ... I have lent it," said Dr. Brandès.
"To whom?" inquired Mireille, trotting beside her father and hanging on
to his arm.
He gave a little laugh. "To the King," he said.
"Oh!" cried Mireille. "Not much of a car to lend to a king! Surely he
has better ones himself."
"We all give what we have in time of war," said her father. "Come, I
will carry you, my little bird," he said, and lifted her up again.
"What is the matter? Why are you so affectionate?" asked Mireille,
nestling comfortably in his arms and patting his broad back with her
small hand.
Chérie laughed and looked up adoringly at her big brother. "Is he not
always affectionate?" she asked.
"Not so dreadfully," replied Mireille, in her matter-of-fact tones; and
then they all three laughed.
Frieda, hurrying behind them in the dark with the books, the parasols,
and the tennis-rackets, hated them for their laughter.
* * * * *
Louise Brandès, a slim white figure in the moonlight, awaited them at
the door. She kissed Mireille and Chérie and greeted Frieda kindly; then
she made them all drink hot milk and sent them to bed.
"But I want to tell papa about how I can almost swim and nearly ride a
bicycle," said Mireille, sidling up to her father.
"You shall tell him tomorrow, my darling," said Louise.
But the morrow was not as they dreamed it.
When early next morning Frieda and the girls came down to the
breakfast-room they found Louise, still in her white dress of the
evening before, sitting on the sofa with red eyes and a pale face. In
answer to their anxious questioning she told them that Claude had been
called away. Two officers had come for him close upon midnight; he had
scarcely had time to pack a few things. He had taken his surgical
outfit; then they had hurried him away with short words and anxious
faces.
"But where--where has he gone to?" asked Chérie.
"I don't know," said her sister-in-law, and the tears gathered in her
dark eyes. "They said something about his being sent to a field
ambulance, or to ... to the Dépôt Central...."
"What is that?" asked Mireille; but as nobody knew, nobody answered.
Mariette the maid brought in the breakfast, followed by her mother,
Marie the cook; and they both had red eyes and were weeping. Marie said
that her two sons had come to the house at dawn to bid her and Mariette
good-bye; the eldest, Toinot, belonged to the 9th line regiment and had
been sent off to Stavelot; and Charles, the youngest, had volunteered
and was being sent off heaven knows where.
"Of course there is nothing to cry about," added Marie, with large round
tears rolling down her ruddy face. "There is no danger for our country.
But still--to see one's boys--going away like that--s-s-singing the
B-b-brabançonne--" she broke into sobs.
"Of course, my good Marie," echoed Louise, "there is nothing to cry
about...."
And then they all wept bitterly. Even Frieda, with her face in her
handkerchief, sobbed--on general principles, and also because
Weltschmerz gnawed at her treacherous, sentimental German heart.
At breakfast every one felt a little better. As nearly all the men had
left Bomal or were about to leave, it was a comfort to reflect that
Fritz Hollander, the doctor's confidential servant, being a Dutchman,
was not obliged to go. True, he was a somewhat sulky, taciturn person,
but he had been with them two years and, as Loulou remarked while she
poured out the coffee, one felt that one could trust him.
"I always trust people who are silent and look straight at you when you
speak," said the wise Louise, who was twenty-eight years old, and
admired Georges Ohnet.
"I don't like Fritz," remarked Mireille. "I hate the shape of his
head--and especially his ears," she added.
"Don't be silly," said Chérie.
Frieda, who was just dipping a fresh roll into her coffee, looked up.
"He has the ears God gave him," she remarked, with pinched and somewhat
tremulous lips.
Every one looked at her wonderingly, and she flushed scarlet as she bent
her head and dipped her roll into her cup again.
After breakfast Louise went to rest for a few hours; Frieda said she had
some letters to write, and the two girls went out to call on their
friends and make plans as to what they would do on Chérie's birthday,
the 4th of August.
They went to Madame Doré's house in the Place du Marché and found their
friends Cécile and Jeannette busy with their boy-scout brother, André;
they were sewing a band with S.M. on it, on the right sleeve of his
green shirt.
"What is S.M.?" inquired Mireille.
"That means Service Militaire," replied André proudly.
"Fancy!" exclaimed Mireille. "And you only fifteen!"
André passed his left hand carelessly over his fair hair. "Oh yes," he
said, with very superior nonchalance. "There are four thousand of us. We
shall have to take care of you women," he glanced with raised eyebrows
at the small, admiring Mireille, "now that the other men have gone."
"Keep your arm quiet," said Cécile, "or I shall prick you."
"Where is your father?" asked Chérie. "Has he left, too?"
"Yes," said André. "He has been called out for duty in the Garde
Civique. He is stationed on the Chaussée de Louvain, not far from
Brussels."
"Isn't it all exciting?" cried Jeannette, jumping up and down.
"But against whom are we going to fight?" asked Mireille.
"We don't know yet," declared André. "Perhaps against the French;
perhaps against the Germans."
"Perhaps against nobody," said Cécile, biting off the thread and patting
the neatly-sewn armlet on her brother's sleeve.
"Perhaps against nobody," echoed André, with a boyish touch of
ruefulness. "Nobody will dare to invade our land."
* * * * *
"Come, let us go into the garden," said Jeannette.
Thus it was in Belgium on the eve of her impending doom. Doubtless in
high places--in the Palais de la Nation and the Place Royale--there were
hearts filled with racking anxiety and feverish excitement; but
throughout the country there was merely a sense of resolute expectancy,
of not altogether unpleasant excitement. Every one knew that the
sacrosanct rights of the land would be respected, but it was just as
good, they said, to be ready for every event.
Nobody on that summer evening, from the remotest corner of Belgian
Luxembourg to the farthest homestead in Flanders, as they watched that
last July sun go down over the peaceful fields of grain, dreamed that
the Grey Wolves of War were already snarling at the gates, straining to
be let loose and overrun the world, panting to get to their work of
slaughter and destruction. No one dreamed that four days later massacre
and outrage and frenzied ferocity would rage through the shuddering
valleys of the Ardennes.
Thus while Chérie and Cécile, Jeannette and Mireille ran out into their
sunshiny garden, at that same hour, far away in the Wilhelmstrasse a man
with a grey beard stood on a balcony and spoke to a surging
crowd--promising blood to the wolves.
Thus while the four fair girls planned what they would do on the 4th of
August, on that balcony in Berlin their fate and the fate of Europe was
being pronounced.
"We shall invite Lucile, Cri-cri, and Verveine," said Chérie.
"We shall dash those aside who stand in our way," said the man on the
balcony.
"We shall dance," said Mireille.
"We shall grind our heel upon their necks," said von Bethmann-Hollweg.
And the Grey Wolves roared.
CHAPTER III
CHÉRIE'S DIARY
This is August the 1st. In three days I shall be eighteen. At eighteen
one is grown up; one pins up one's hair, and one may use perfume on
one's handkerchief and think of whom one is going to love.
The weather is very hot.
Cécile tells me that she saw Florian Audet ride past this morning; he
was at the head of his company of Lancers, and looked very straight and
handsome and stern; like Lohengrin, she said. I do not suppose he will
remember my birthday with all this excitement about manoeuvres and
mobilizing.
There is no news at all about Amour. We are very unhappy about him.
_Later._--Claude has written to say that he is ordered to Mons and that
there may be an invasion, and that whatever happens we are all to be
brave. We were not at all frightened until we read that; but now of
course we are terrified out of our wits. Every time the bell rings we
think it is the enemy and we scream. (Motto--to remember. It is better
never to tell any one to be brave because it makes them frightened.)
_August 2nd._--It is very hot again today. We wished we were in
Westende. How nice it was there, bicycling on the sand in one's bathing
dress! One day I rode all the way to the Yser and back. The Yser is a
pretty blue canal and a man with a boat ferries you across for ten
centimes to Nieuport. Of course that day I did not want to go to
Nieuport because I was in my bathing dress; besides, I had no pocket and
therefore no money.
I do not seem to write very important things in this diary; my brother
Claude gave it me and said I was not to fill it with futile nonsense.
But nothing really important ever happens.
There is no news of Amour.
Germany has declared war upon Russia; of course that is important, but I
do not write about it as it is more for newspapers than for a diary.
Louise says Germany is quite in the wrong, but as we are neutral we are
not to say so.
_Later._--We are going out for an excursion this afternoon as it is
Sunday. We are going with Frieda to Roche-à-Frêne, to ramble about in
the rocks, and Fritz is to follow us with a hamper of sandwiches, milk
and fruit. Loulou is coming too. It was Mireille who suggested it. She
said she thought we had been quite miserable enough. Mireille is very
intelligent and also pretty, except that her hair does not curl.
_Evening, late._--As nothing important has happened today--except one
thing--I will write in this diary about the excursion.
(The important thing is that I saw Florian, and that he says he will
come to my birthday party.) But now about the excursion. We were almost
cheerful after being so wretched and frightened and unhappy all the
morning about the war.
Even Loulou said that it was difficult to think that anything dreadful
would happen with such a bright sun shining and the sky so blue. Frieda
was sulky and silent, and kept dropping behind to be near Fritz. Loulou
said that perhaps if Germany does not behave properly all the Germans
will be sent away from Belgium. That means that Frieda would have to go.
We should not be sorry if she did. She is so changed of late. When we
speak to her she does not answer; when we laugh or say anything funny
she looks at us with round, staring eyes that Mireille says are like
those of a crazy cat that stalks about in the evening. I suggested that
perhaps Frieda is in love, as I am told that it is love that makes those
evening cats so crazy. It would be quite romantic and interesting if
Frieda were in love. Perhaps if Fritz Hollander were not just a
servant--Frieda is more of a _demoiselle de compagnie_--I should say
that she might be in love with him. But he never looks at her except to
scowl.
Today on our excursion I saw him do a funny thing. We came upon a spring
of water hidden among the rocks, and while the others went on I stayed
behind and clambered about, picking ferns. Fritz had also left the road,
and was coming along behind us. As he caught sight of the water he
stopped. He took a little notebook from his pocket, tore out a sheet,
and having looked round as if he feared some one might be watching him,
he scribbled something on the paper. Then he hurried back to the road
and stuck the paper on the trunk of a tree. I thought it must be a
love-letter or some message, so I slipped down the rocks and went to
look at it. There were only two words written on the scrap of paper:
"_Trinkwasser_--_rechts_."
I found that very strange. We never thought he knew German. I
wondered why he did it and was going to ask him, but when he saw me
he looked so cross that I did not dare. Later on, as we rambled about
in the wood we came upon another piece of paper stuck on a tree.
"_Trinkwasser_--_links_," was written on it. I told Loulou what I had
seen, and she went straight to Fritz and asked him what it meant. He
said he had done it for Frieda, so that she should know where to find
water.
"She is a thirsty soul," he added, and he laughed, showing a lot of
small, rabbity teeth. I do not think I have ever seen Fritz laugh all
the time he has been with us; he does not look very nice when he does.
But--as Frieda says of his ears--I suppose he has the laugh God gave
him.
The walk about Roche-à-Frêne was fantastic and beautiful.
After eating our sandwiches we lay on the grass and looked at the sky.
Perhaps I dozed, for suddenly I thought I was in Westende the day that
the aeroplane passed above me as I swam far out in the sea. I heard the
angry whirr of the engine, but this time it seemed to sound much louder
than any I had ever heard.
I opened my eyes and there it was, above us, flying very high and
looking for all the world like a beetle. It was all white except for a
panel of sky-blue painted across the centre of each wing. I noticed that
its wings were not straight as all the others I have seen, but sweeping
backwards like those of a bird. I called out to the others, and Mireille
said--
"How lovely it is! Like a white beetle with blue under its wings!"
Then an extraordinary thing happened. Fritz, who had been sitting some
distance off looking at a paper, leaped to his feet as if he had been
shot. He is short-sighted, and his glasses dropped off his nose into the
grass.
"My glasses, my glasses!" he cried out, as if he were quite off his
head. And Frieda actually ran to look for them, just as if she were his
servant. "What did she say?" Fritz was crying; "like a beetle? white?
with blue under its wings?" Frieda kept looking up and saying, "_Ja! ja!
ja!_" and Fritz was calling for his glasses. They both seemed demented.
The scarab-like aeroplane whirred out of sight.
Loulou had got up and was very pale. She made us go home at once and
never spoke all the way.
It was when we were passing through Suzaine that we met Florian. He was
on horseback. I did not think he looked like Lohengrin, but more like
Charles le Téméraire, or the Cid, el Campeador.
He told us--and his horse kept prancing and dancing about while he
spoke--that his regiment was encamped on the banks of the Meuse awaiting
orders. They might be sent to the frontier at any moment. But, unless
that happened, he said he would make a point of coming to see us on the
4th--even if he could only get an hour's leave. I reminded him that he
had never missed coming to see us on that day since the very first
birthday I had in Claude's house, when I was eight years old and my
father and mother had just died in Namur.
Loulou always tells me that I was like a little wild thing, shrinking
and trembling and weeping in my black dress, and afraid of everybody. On
that particular birthday I wept so much that my brother Claude had the
idea of sending for Florian--who is his godson--and asking him to try
and make friends with me. I remember Florian coming into the room--this
very room that I am writing in now--a boy of fourteen with short curly
hair and very clear steely-blue eyes. A little like André but
better-looking. He was what Loulou calls "_tres-crâne_." "_Bonjour_," he
said to me in his firm, clear voice. "My name is Florian. I hate girls."
I thought that rather a funny thing to say, so I stopped crying and gave
a little laugh. "Girls," Florian continued, looking at me with
disapproval, "are always either moping or giggling."
I stopped giggling at once; and I also left off moping so as not to be
hated by Florian.
All these thoughts passed through my head as I watched him bending down
and talking to Loulou very quickly and earnestly, while his horse was
dancing about sideways all over the road. He certainly looked like a
very young Charles le Téméraire or like the knight who went to waken la
Belle au Bois dormant.
_August 3rd._--We are very happy. Amour is safe! He is in the care of
the station-master at Marché and André is going very early tomorrow
morning to fetch him. André says that fetching dogs is not exactly a
Service Militaire, but it is in the line of a Scout's work to sally
forth in subservience to ladies' wishes, and obey their behests. He
said he would wear Mireille's colours, and she gave him the crumpled
Scotch ribbon from the bottom of her plait.
We have invited Lucile, Jeannette, Cécile and Cri-cri, to come tomorrow
evening. It will not be a real birthday party with dancing as it was
last year, because everything is uncomfortable and unsettled owing to
the Germans behaving so badly. However neutral one may be, one cannot
help being very disgusted with them. Even Frieda had a hang-dog air
today when Loulou read out loud that the Germans had actually sent a
note to our King proposing that he should let them march through our
country to get at France! Of course our King has said No. And we all
went out to the Place de l'Église to cheer for him this afternoon. It
was André who came to tell us that all Bomal was going.
It was beautiful and every one was very enthusiastic. The Bourgmestre
made a speech; then we sang la Brabançonne and the dear old Curé invoked
a blessing on our land and on our King. We all waved handkerchiefs and
some people wept. Marie and Mariette came too, but Frieda hid in the
house, being ashamed of her country, as she may well be.
Fritz was there, and Mariette remarked that he seemed to be the only
young man left in Bomal. It is true. All the others have either been
called to military service or have gone as volunteers. The Square today
was full of girls and children and quite old people.
I felt rather pleased that Fritz belongs to us. "A man in the house
gives one a sense of security," said Loulou the other day. I reminded
her of it as we were coming home, but she seemed worried and unhappy.
"Since your brother has left," she said, "Fritz is very much changed. He
does not behave like a servant; he never asks for my orders. Yesterday
at Roche-à-Frêne he was like a lunatic. And so was Frieda." Poor Loulou
looked very white as she said this, and added that she wished Claude
would come back.
There is certainly something curious about Fritz. This evening he
brought us the paper and stood looking at us while we opened it. I read
over Loulou's shoulder that the Germans had marched into the Grand-duchy
of Luxembourg and taken possession of the railways as if the place
belonged to them. When I raised my eyes I saw Fritz staring at us and he
had his hands in his pockets. He took them out when Loulou looked up and
spoke to him.
She said, "Fritz, this is dreadful news"; and he said, "Yes, madam," and
smiled that curious rabbity smile of his.
"Tell me," said Loulou, "did the master say anything to you when you saw
him to the train the other night?"
"Yes, madam," said Fritz.
"What--what did he say?" asked Loulou very anxiously.
Fritz waited a long time before he answered. "The master said"--and he
smiled that horrible smile again,--"the master said I was to protect you
in case _those dogs_ came here. That's what he said--those dogs! Those
dogs--" he repeated, glaring at Loulou and at me until we felt quite
strange and sick.
Little Mireille had just come into the room, and she asked somewhat
anxiously, "What dogs are you talking about?"
Fritz wheeled round on her with a savage look. "German dogs," said he.
"And they bite."
Nobody spoke for a moment. Then Loulou sighed. "Who would have conceived
it possible a month ago!" she murmured. "Why, even ten days ago, no one
dreamed of war."
Fritz took a step forward. "Some of us have been dreaming of war," he
said--and there was something in his tone that made Loulou look up at
him with startled eyes,--"dreaming of war, not for the past ten days,
but for the past ten years." He rolled his eyes at us; then he turned on
his heel and strode out of the room.
Loulou has written a long letter to Claude. But will it reach him?
CHAPTER IV
MIREILLE'S DIARY
This is an important day, August the 4th--Chérie's birthday. Loulou has
given her a gold watch and a sky-blue chiffon scarf; and I gave her a
box of chocolates--almost full!--and a rubber face that makes grimaces
according to how you squeeze it, and also a money-box in the shape of an
elephant that bobs its head when you put money in it and keeps on
bobbing for quite a long time afterwards; Cécile and Jeannette sent
roses, Lucile and Cri-cri a box of fondants, and Verveine Mellot, from
whom we never expected anything, sent a parasol. We had not invited
Verveine for tonight because she lives so far away, quite out of the
village; but we shall do so now because of the parasol.
We nearly had no party at all, Maman and Chérie being worried about the
Germans. But I cried, and they hate to see me cry, so they said that
just those five girls whom we see every day were not really a party at
all and they might come.
The great event of today has been that Amour has arrived in his basket,
with 14 francs to pay on him; we were very glad, and Chérie said it was
just like receiving a new dog as a birthday present. André was not able
to bring Amour himself because he had been sent on some other Service
Militaire in a great hurry on his motorcycle. The one drawback about
Amour has been that he took the rubber face in his mouth and would not
drop it and hid with it. We found it afterwards under the bed, but most
of the colours had been licked off and Mariette says it is permanently
distorted.
Mariette and Marie are going away today. They are taking only a few
things and are going to Liège, where they say they will feel safer.
Marie said we ought to go too, and Maman answered that if things went on
like this we certainly should. Maman has cried a good deal today; and
Frieda is shamming sick and has locked herself in her room. We have not
seen Fritz since last night. Altogether everything is very fearful and
exciting. Dinner is going to be like a picnic with nothing much to eat;
but there are cakes and sweets and little curly sandwiches, all
beautifully arranged with flowers, on the long table for this evening;
and we shall drink orangeade and grenadine. We were to have had ices as
well, but the pâtissier has joined the army and his wife has too many
children and is so miserable that she will not make ices. She told us
that her husband and other soldiers were digging ditches all round
Belgium to prevent the Germans from coming in.
Now I am going to dress. I shall wear pink, and Chérie will be all in
white like a bride. She will have her hair up for the first time, done
all in curls and whirligigs, to look like that cake Frieda calls
_Kugelhopf_.
Maman is going to make herself pretty too. She has promised not to think
of war or of the Germans until tomorrow morning because, as Chérie said,
one is eighteen only once in one's life. Now I come to think of it, one
is also eleven only once in one's life. I shall remember to say that
when my next birthday comes....
* * * * *
While Mireille sat in the little study writing her diary with exceeding
care, her head very much on one side and the tip of her tongue moving
slowly from one side of her half-open mouth to the other, the door was
opened and Fritz looked into the room. He shut the door again, and
having listened for a moment on the landing to the soft-murmuring voices
of Louise and Chérie, he went upstairs to the second floor and turned
the handle of Frieda's door. It was locked.
"Open the door," he said.
Frieda obeyed. It was not the first time that she opened her door to
Fritz.
"How loud you speak," she murmured, locking and bolting the door again,
"they may hear you."
"I don't care if they do," said Fritz, sitting down and lighting a
cigarette. "For two years I have played the servant. Tomorrow I shall be
the master."
"Tomorrow!" gasped Frieda. "Is it--as near as all that?"
"Nearer, perhaps," murmured Fritz looking out of the window at the
crimsoning western sky. The round red August sun had set, but the day
still lingered, as if loth to end. Where the sky was lightest it bore on
its breast the colourless crescent of the moon, like a pale wound by
which the day must die.
"Nearer, perhaps," repeated Fritz. "Be ready to leave."
* * * * *
That day the storm had already broken over Europe. The Grey Wolves were
pouring into Belgium from the south-east. At Dohain, at Francorchamps,
at Stavelot the grey line rolled in, wave on wave, and in their wake
came violence and death.
But the guns were not speaking yet. In the village of Bomal, a bare
twenty miles away, nobody knew of it; and Louise, fastening a rose in
Chérie's shining tresses said, "We will think of the war tomorrow."
Chérie kissed her and smiled. She smiled somewhat wistfully, and gazed
at her own lovely reflection in the mirror. The hot blue day had faded
into a gentle blue evening and Florian Audet had not kept his promise.
Perhaps, thought Chérie, his regiment has received orders to leave their
encampment on the Meuse; perhaps he has been sent to the frontier, but
still--and she sighed--she would have loved to have seen him and bidden
him good-bye....
But now little Mireille in her pink frock, looking like a blossom blown
from a peach-tree, came running in to call her. The door-bell had rung
and there was no one to answer it, since Marie and Mariette had gone and
Frieda was locked in her room and Fritz had vanished. So the two ran
lightly downstairs and opened the door to Lucile and Cri-cri, radiant in
pale blue muslin; and soon Cécile and Jeannette and Verveine arrived
too, and they all tripped into the drawing-room with light skirts
swinging and buoyant curls afloat.
Verveine sat at the piano and the others danced and sang.
Sur le pont
D'Avignon
On y danse
On y danse,
Sur le pont
D'Avignon
On y danse
Tout en rond!
The laughing treble voices could be heard through the windows, thrown
wide open to the mild evening air, and a young soldier on horseback
galloping through the quiet village heard the song before he pulled up
at Dr. Brandès's door. It was Florian Audet keeping his promise.
He slipped his bridle over the little iron gate and rang the bell.
Louise herself came down and opened the door to him.
"Ah, Florian! How glad Chérie will be!" she exclaimed. Then, as the
light from the hall beat full on his set face, "Why, how pale you are!"
she cried.
"I must speak to you," said Florian drawing her into the doctor's
surgery and shutting the door.
Louise felt her heart drop like a stone within her. "Is there worse
news?"
"The worst possible," said Florian. Then his eyes wandered over the
pretty, helpless figure before him. "Why are you dressed up like this?"
he asked harshly.
"Why, Florian ..." stammered Louise, "it is Chérie's birthday ...
and...."
Sur le pont
D'Avignon
On y danse
On y danse,
sang the girlish voices upstairs.
Florian turned away with a groan. "What shall I do?" he muttered. "What
will be the end of it?" Turning he saw Louise's stricken eyes gazing at
him, and he took her hand. "Marraine," he said, "you will be very
brave--it is best that I should tell you----"
"Yes, Florian," said Louise, and the colour ebbed slowly from her face,
leaving it as white as milk.
"The country is invaded at all points. There has been fighting at
Verviers...."
"At Verviers!" gasped Louise, and her large eyes were like inkblots in
her colourless face.
"Yes, and at Fleron."
There was silence. Then Louise spoke. "What--what will happen to us?
What does it mean ... to our country?"
"It means ruin and butchery," muttered Florian through his clenched
teeth; "it means violence, carnage, and devastation." Then he walked up
and down the room. "We are holding Visé," he muttered, "we are holding
it against Von Emmich's hell-hounds. And when we cannot hold it any
longer we will blow up the bridge on the Meuse."
Louise had sunk into a chair. For a few moments neither spoke. Then
Louise looked up.
"Will they--is it likely that they will come here?"
"They may," said Florian gravely, and as he looked at her and thought
of her alone in the house with Chérie and Mireille a spasm crossed his
face and tightened his lips.
"Will you be with us?" asked Louise, gazing at his stalwart figure and
strong clenched hands. "How long can you stay here?"
"Forty minutes," replied Florian bitterly.
Again there was silence. Then he said, "What about that
Dutchman--Claude's servant? Where is he?"
"Fritz?" said Louise, trembling. Then she told him what had taken place
the night before, and also the events at Roche-à-Frêne. Florian listened
to her with grim face. Then he strode up and down the room again in
silence.
"Well," he said at last, "you have promised to be brave. You must listen
to what I tell you and obey me."
He gave her brief, precise instructions. They were to pack their few
most valuable possessions at once, and leave for Bomal early next
morning for Brussels, via Marché and Namur--not Liège. "Remember," he
added, "not Liège." If no trains were available they must hire a
carriage, or a cart, or anything they could get. If no vehicle could be
found, then they must go on foot to Huy and thence to Namur. "Do you
understand?"
Yes, Louise understood.
Why not start now,--this evening? he suggested. They could go through
the wood to Tervagne----
Through the wood to Tervagne!... in the dark! Louise looked so terrified
that he did not insist. Besides, he reflected, there might be Uhlans
scouting in the woods tonight. No. They must leave at dawn. At three or
four o'clock in the morning. Was that understood?
Yes, it was understood.
"And--and----" asked Louise, "what are we to do with Frieda?"
"Don't trust her. But take her with you if she wants to go. Otherwise
leave her alone. Keep your doors locked."
"Yes."
"And have you got money?"
Yes, they had plenty of money.
"And now," said Florian, looking at his watch, which told him that
twenty of the forty minutes had passed, "I should like to see Chérie."
"I will call her," said Louise; then, at the door she turned to question
him with her fear-stricken eyes, "Shall I tell them--shall I tell the
children of the danger that threatens us?"
"Yes, you must tell them," said Florian. "And send them to their homes
at once."
"Oh, what will Mireille do?" gasped Louise. "What if she were to cry?
What if she were to fall ill with fear?"
"Little Mireille is braver than we are," he said, smiling and putting
his arm around her drooping shoulders. "Courage, _petite marraine_" and
he bent over her with fraternal tenderness and kissed her cheek.
He was left alone for a few moments; he heard the singing overhead stop
suddenly. Light fluttering footsteps came running down the stairs; the
door opened and Chérie stood on the threshold.
He caught his breath. Was this vision of beauty in the floating silken
draperies his little friend Chérie? How had she been transformed without
his noticing it from the awkward little school-girl he had known into
this enchanting flower-like loveliness? She noticed his wonder and stood
still, smiling and drawing a diaphanous scarf that floated mistily about
her somewhat closer over her pearly shoulders. Her limpid eyes gazed up
at him with blue and heavenly innocence.
A shudder passed through the man as he looked at her--a shudder of
prescient horror. Were not the wolves on the way already? Were not the
blood-drunken hordes already tearing and slashing their way towards this
virginal flower? Must he leave her to the mercy of their foul and
furious lust?
Again the fearful shudder passed through him. And still those limpid,
childish eyes gazed up at him and smiled.
"Chérie!" he said. "Chérie!" and with his hand he raised the delicate
face to his, and gazed into the azure wonder of her eyes.
She did not speak. Nor did her lashes flutter. She let him look deeply
into the translucent profundity of her soul.
"Chérie!" he said again. And no other word was spoken or needed.
* * * * *
The forty minutes had passed. There was a hurried leave-taking, a few
eager words of warning and admonition; then Florian had run downstairs,
spurs clinking, and swung himself into his saddle.
As he turned the prancing horse's head to the north he looked up at the
windows. Yes; they were all there, waving their hands, clustered
together, the blonde heads and the brown, the blue eyes and the dark
eyes following him.
"Remember," he cried to Louise, "remember--at dawn tomorrow! You will
leave tomorrow at dawn." And even as he spoke the unspeakable shudder
thrilled him again. Was it a foreboding of what the morrow might bring?
Was it a vision of what the tragic and sanguinary dawn had in store for
those he was leaving, alone in their defenceless beauty and youth?...
At the end of the street he turned again and saw that Chérie had run out
on to the terrace and stood white as a lily in the moonlight, gazing
after him.
He raised his hand high in the air in token of salute. Then he rode
away. He rode away into the night--away towards the thunderous guns of
Liège, the blood-drenched fields of Visé. And he carried with him that
vision of delicate loveliness. He had spoken no word of love to her nor
had his lips dared to touch hers. Her ethereal purity had strangely awed
and enthralled him. It seemed to him that the halo of her virginal youth
was around her like an armour of snow.
Thus he left her, fragile and sweet--white as a lily in a moonlit
garden.
He left her and rode away into the night.
CHAPTER V
The young girls in their muslin frocks and satin shoes sped homeward
like a flight of startled butterflies. Did they dream it, or was there
really, as they ran over the bridge, a booming, rumbling sound like
distant thunder? They stopped and listened. Yes.... There it was again,
the deep booming noise reverberating through the starlit night.
"_Jésus, Marie, St. Joseph, ayez pitié de nous_," whispered Jeannette,
and the others repeated the invocation. Then they ran over the bridge
and reached their homes.
Louise, Chérie, and Mireille were left alone in the deserted house.
Frieda's room, when they went upstairs to look for her, was empty. Her
clothes were gone. There were only a few of her books--"Deutscher
Dichterschatz," "Der Trompeter von Säkkingen," and Freiligrath's
"Ausgewählte Lieder"--lying on the table; and the plaster bust of Mozart
was still in its place on the mantelpiece.
"She must have slipped out while we were talking with Florian," said
Chérie, turning a pale face to Loulou, who gazed in stupefaction round
the vacant room.
"She was a snake," said Mireille, slipping her hand through her mother's
arm and keeping very close to her. "And so was Fritz."
At the mention of Fritz, Louise shivered. "I do not suppose Fritz has
come back," she said, dropping her voice and glancing through the open
window at the darkened outbuilding across the courtyard. "He is surely
not in his room."
There was a moment's silence, and they all looked at those lightless
windows over the garage. The thought of Fritz lurking there, waiting
perhaps in the dark to do some fiendish work, was very disquieting.
"We must go and look," said Chérie. So holding each other very close and
carrying a lantern high above their heads they went across the quiet
courtyard up the creaky wooden stairs to Fritz's room.
Fritz was not there. But his trunk was in its place and all his
belongings were scattered about.
"It looks as if he intended to come back," said Chérie; and they
trembled at the thought. Then they went downstairs across the yard and
into the house again. They were careful to slam the heavy front door
which thus locked itself; but when they tried to push the bolt they
found it had been taken away. It was at this moment that the distant
booming sound fell also on their ears.
"What was that?" asked Mireille.
Chérie put her arm round the child. "Nothing," she said. "Let us go up
and pack our things." And as Louise still stood like a statue staring at
the door with the lantern in her hand she cried, "Loulou, go up to your
room and collect what you will take with you in the morning."
And Loulou slowly, walking like a somnambulist, obeyed.
How difficult to choose, from all the things we live among, just what we
can take away in our two hands! How these inanimate things grow round
the heart and become through the years an integral part of one's life!
What? Must one take only money and a few jewels, and not this picture?
Not these letters? Not this precious gift from one who is dead? Not the
massive silver that has been ours for generations? Not the veil one was
married in? Not the little torn prayer-book of one's first communion?
Not one's father's campaign-medals, or the packet of documents that
prove who we are and what is ours?
What! And the bird-cage with the fluffy canaries asleep in it? Are they
to be left to die? And the dog----
"Of course we must take Amour," said Chérie.
"Of course," said Loulou, going through the rooms like a wandering
spirit, picking things up and putting them down in a bewildered manner.
A clock struck eleven. Mireille, still in her pink frock, had clambered
upon her mother's bed and was nearly asleep.
_Boom!_ Again that low, long sound, rumbling and grumbling and dying
away.
"It is nearer," breathed Louise. And even while she said it the sound
was repeated, and it was nearer indeed and deeper, and the windows
shook. Mireille sat up with wide, shining eyes.
"Is that a thunderstorm?... Or the Germans?"
"It is our guns firing to keep the Germans away," said Louise, bending
over her and kissing her. "Try to sleep for an hour, my darling."
Mireille lay back with her silken hair tossed on the pillow.
"Are the Germans trying to come here?" she asked.
There was silence. Then Chérie said, "I don't think so," and Louise
added, "Of course not."
"But--might they want to come?" insisted Mireille, blinking to keep her
eyes open.
"Why should they come here?" said her mother. "What would they want in
this little out-of-the-way village?"
"What indeed?" said Chérie.
Mireille shut her eyes and thought about the Germans. She knew a great
deal about them. Frieda had taught her--with the aid of a weekly paper
from Munich called _Fliegende Blätter_--all the characteristics of the
nation. The Germans, Mireille had gathered, were divided into two
categories--Professors and Lieutenants. The Professors were old men,
bald and funny; the Lieutenants were young men, aristocratic and
beautiful. The Professors were so absent-minded that they never knew
where they were, and the Lieutenants were so fascinating that girls
fainted away and went into consumption for love of them. Frieda admitted
that there were a few other Germans--poets, who were mostly dead; and
housewives, who made jam; and waiters, who were sent to England. But
obviously the Germans that had got into Belgium this evening were the
Lieutenants and the Professors. Mireille nestled into her pillow and
went to sleep. She dreamed that they had arrived and were very amiable
and much impressed by her pink dress.
She was awakened by a deafening roar, a noise of splintering wood and
falling glass. With a cry of terror she started up; then a flash blinded
her, another roar filled the air, and it seemed as if the world were
crashing to pieces.
"Mireille!" Her mother's arms were around her and Chérie had rushed in
from her room with an ashen face.
"Loulou, let us go at once--let us go to the Bourgmestre or to the Curé!
We cannot stay here alone!"
"Yes ... let us go ..." stammered Louise. "But who will carry our
things?"
"What things? We take no things. We are fugitives, Loulou! Fugitives!...
Quickly--quickly. Take your money and your jewels--nothing else."
"Quickly, quickly," echoed the whimpering Mireille.
"If we are fugitives," sobbed Louise, looking down at her floating
chiffon gown, "we cannot go out into the world dressed like this."
"We cannot stop to change our clothes ... we must take our cloaks and
dark dresses with us," cried Chérie. "Only make haste, make haste!"
But Louise seemed paralysed with fear. "They will come, they will come,"
she gasped, gazing at the shattered window; the throbbing darkness
beyond seemed to mutter the words Florian had spoken: "Outrage,
violence, and slaughter ... outrage, violence, and slaughter...."
Suddenly a sheaf of flame rose up into the sky, illuminating the room in
which they stood with a fantastic yellow glare. Then a terrific
explosion shook the foundations of the house.
Louise catching Mireille in her arms stumbled down the stairs followed
by Chérie. They knew not where they were going. Another explosion roared
and shattered the coloured staircase window above them to atoms, driving
them gasping and panic-stricken into the entrance-room.
Did hours or moments pass? They never knew.
Now there were voices, loud hoarse voices, in the street; short guttural
commands and a clatter of hoofs, a clanking of sabres and spurred heels.
"Let me look--let me look out of the window," gasped Chérie, tearing
herself free from Louise's convulsive grasp. She stumbled to the window,
then turned a haggard face: "They are here."
Mireille shrieked, but her piping voice was drowned by the noise
outside.
"They will murder us," sobbed Louise.
"Don't cry! don't cry," wailed Chérie. "The gate is open but the door is
locked. They may not be able to get in." But even as she spoke she knew
the fallacy of that hope.
"Wait," she whispered. "They are trying the door." Louise had followed
her to the window, clutching at the curtains lest she should fall.
"Look, some one is trying to open the door...."
Louise bent forward and looked out. "It is Fritz...." she shrieked, and
staggered back. "Fritz! He has opened the door to them!"
Now there was the tramp of many feet on the stairs, and loud voices and
the clanking of spurs and sword.
As if the imminence of their fate had suddenly invested her with new
strength and dignity, Louise stood up, tall and tragic, between the two
trembling girls. She crossed herself slowly and devoutly; slowly and
devoutly she traced the sign of the cross on Chérie's forehead and on
Mireille's. Then with arms entwined they stood motionless. They were
ready to die.
The door was kicked open; military figures in grey uniforms thronged the
passage and crowded noisily forward.
They stopped as they caught sight of the three entwined figures, and
there was an instant's silence; then an officer--a lean man with a
grizzled moustache--stepped forward into the room.
Those behind him drew up stiff and straight on the threshhold, evidently
awaiting orders.
"_Tiens, tiens, tiens!_" said the officer, looking the three feminine
figures up and down, from glossy head to dainty feet, and his grey eyes
twinkled. "A charming tableau. You have made yourselves beautiful to
receive us?" His French was perfect; his tone, though slightly
contemptuous, was neither rude nor unkind; his eyes were intelligent and
humorous. He did not look like a hell-hound. He did not evoke the idea
of violence, outrage, and slaughter.
In a sudden reaction from the supreme tension of terror a wave of
faintness overwhelmed Louise. Her soul seemed to melt away. With a
mighty throb of thankfulness and relief she felt the refluent blood
stream to her heart once more.
The man had turned to the soldiers behind him--two seemed to be junior
officers, the other six were men--and gave them a short, sharp order in
German. They drew themselves up and saluted. The two younger officers
stepped forward and stood beside him.
One of them--a tall young man with very light eyes--held a paper in his
hand, and at the request of his superior officer read it aloud. The
older man while he listened seemed to be surveying the apartment,
looking round first at one door, then at the other, then at the upper
floors.
Chérie and Mireille were amazed. They who had learnt German with Frieda
understood what was being read.
It was a brief, precise description of the house and its occupants. This
was the house of Claude Leopold Brandès, doctor, and reserve officer,
age thirty-eight, married. His wife, his child--a daughter--and his
sister lived with him. There were twelve rooms, three attics, a
basement; kitchen, scullery, wash-house, harness-room, stable. There was
a landaulet, a small motor-car, and two horses; all requisitioned.
"_Das ist alles, Herr Kapitän._"
"No other adult males?" asked the Herr Kapitän.
No. Nothing but these women.
Where had the man Brandès gone to?
He had left on the night of July 31st.
For the frontier?
No, for the capital, it was believed. "But," added the young officer
casting a fleeting glance at the three women, "that will be easy to
ascertain."
"Any one of ours here?" asked the older man.
"Yes. A certain Fritz Müller, of Löhrrach."
Chérie quivered and tightened her grasp on Louise's hand.
"Where is this Fritz Müller?" asked the captain, looking about him.
"Downstairs," answered the lieutenant. "He was the man who opened the
door for us."
"Well, put him in charge of the billets and see that he provides for
twenty men," said the captain. "Now, as for us----" he took the paper
from the other's hand. He turned it round and looked at the plan of the
house roughly drawn on the back of the sheet. "Let me see ... three
rooms on this floor ... four on the next ... Glotz?" to the other and
youngest officer standing silent and erect before him. "Come with me,
Glotz. And bring an orderly with you." Then he glanced at Louise and
Chérie. "Von Wedel"--the light-eyed officer stood at attention--"you
stay here." The captain turned on his heel and marched up the stairs,
followed by the second lieutenant whom he had called Glotz and two of
the soldiers. The other four stood in the hall drawn up in a row, stiff
and motionless as automatons.
Von Wedel shut the door in their faces; then he turned his gaze on the
three women left in his charge. He moved slowly, deliberately towards
them and they backed away from him, still holding each other's hands and
looking up at him with starry, startled eyes. He was very tall and
broad, and towered above them. He gazed at them a long time, his very
light eyes roving from Louise to Chérie, from Chérie to Mireille and
back to Chérie again.
"Well, turtle-doves," he said, at last, and laughed, "did you expect
us?" The three pairs of startled eyes still looked up at him. "Is it
really in our honour that you put on all this finery?"
He moved a step nearer, and again all three drew back. "Well, why don't
you answer?"
Louise stepped a little in front of the other two as if to shield them;
then she spoke in low and quavering tones--
"Monsieur.... I hope ... that you and your friends ... will be good
enough to leave this house very soon.... We are alone here----"
"Permit us then to keep you company," said Von Wedel, and added, in a
tone of amiable interrogation, "Your husband is not here?"
"No," said Louise, and at the thought of Claude her underlip trembled;
she looked like a child who is about to cry.
"Too bad," said Von Wedel, putting one foot in its muddy boot on a chair
and leaning forward with his elbow resting on his upraised knee. "Too
bad. Well; we must await his return."
"But," stammered Louise, "he will not return tonight."
"Won't he?" His insolent light eyes that had been fixed on Chérie during
this conversation now wandered with effrontery over the charming
trepidant figure of Louise. "Why, what an ungallant husband to be sure!
And may I ask where he has gone to?" He tossed the question at her
carelessly while he drew a gold coroneted cigarette-case from his pocket
and took from it the solitary cigarette it contained. "Your man told me
he had been ordered to Namur."
"No--to Mons," said Louise.
"Ah yes, Mons. Interesting town"--he tapped one end of his cigarette on
the palm of his hand, "fine old Cathedral of St. Waudru ... four railway
lines ... yes. Did he go alone?"
Mireille pinched her mother's arm.
"Don't say," she whispered.
The officer heard it and laughed. He took hold of the child's arm and
drew her gently away from her mother's side. "_Na! sieh doch einmal!_"
he said. "Are we not sly? Are we not knowing? Are we not diplomatic?
Eh?" Holding her by her small arm he backed her away across the room,
then giving her a little push he left her and turned his attention to
the other two again. Louise had turned deathly pale, but Mireille,
unharmed and undaunted, signalled to her from the other end of the room,
signifying defiance by shrugging her shoulders and sticking her tongue
out at the spruce, straight back of the enemy.
He now stared at Chérie again, and under his insistent insolent gaze she
trembled like an aspen leaf.
"Why do you tremble?" he asked. "Are you afraid of me?"
"Yes," murmured the girl, drooping her head.
He laughed. "Why? I'm not a wild beast, am I? Do I look like a wild
beast?" And he moved a step nearer.
Louise stepped in front of Chérie. "My sister-in-law is very young," she
said, "and is not used to the attention of strangers."
"My good woman," replied Von Wedel with easy insolence, "go and find
some cigarettes for me." And as Louise stared at him with an air of
dazed stupefaction he spoke a little louder. "Cigarettes, I said. Surely
in your husband's study you will find some. Preferably Turkish. Quick,
my good soul. _Eins, zwei, drei_--go."
After a moment's hesitation Louise turned and left the room; Mireille
ran after her. Chérie darted forward to follow them, but Von Wedel took
one long stride and caught her by the arm. "_Halt, halt!_" he said,
laughing. "You stay here, my little turtle-dove, and talk to me."
The girl flushed and paled and trembled. "What a shy dove!" he said,
bending over her. "What is your name?"
"Chérie," she murmured almost inaudibly.
"What? _'Chérie'?_" he laughed. "Did you say that to me? The same to
you, Herzchen!" He sat down on a corner of the table quite close to her.
"Now tell me what you are afraid of. And whom you are afraid of.... Is
it of Captain Fischer? Or of me? Or of the soldiers?"
"Of everybody," stammered Chérie.
"Why, we are such good people," he said, blowing the cigarette-smoke in
a long whiff before him, then throwing the cigarette on the carpet and
stamping it out with his foot. "We would not hurt a cat--nor a dog," he
added, catching sight of Amour, who came hopping down the stairs limping
and yelping, "let alone such an adorable little angel as you."
The dog came whining piteously and crouched at Chérie's feet; she bent
down and lifted him up in her arms. He was evidently hurt. Von Wedel
said "Good dog!" and attempted to pat him, but Amour gave a long, low
growl and the officer quickly withdrew his hand.
Louise reappeared bringing boxes of cigars and cigarettes, which she
placed on the table. Mireille, who followed her, caught sight of Amour
in Chérie's arms and heard him whine.
"What have you done to him?" she said, turning fiercely on Von Wedel.
He laughed. "Well, well, what a little vixen!" he said. Then he added,
"You can take the dog away. I don't like dogs." Chérie moved at once
towards the staircase, but he stopped her again. "No, no; give the dog
to the vixen. You stay here."
Chérie obeyed, shrinking away from him to Louise's side, while Mireille
ran upstairs with Amour and took him to Chérie's room. She kissed him on
his rough black head and patted his poor paws and put him down on a
cushion in a corner. Then she ran down again to see what was going on.
Amour left alone whined and howled in hideous long-drawn tones of
indignation and suffering. When a few minutes later Captain Fischer,
followed by Lieutenant Glotz and the two soldiers on his round of
inspection, came downstairs, he stopped on the landing.
"What is that noise? Who is crying?" he asked.
"The dog, sir," said Glotz, "whom you kicked downstairs before."
"Hideous sound!" said Captain Fischer; "stop it."
And one of the soldiers went in and stopped it.
Captain Fischer went downstairs, followed by Glotz. When they entered
the room Von Wedel turned away from Chérie and stood at attention.
Outside the boom of the cannon had ceased, but there were loud bursts of
firing in the distance, sudden volleys which ceased as abruptly as they
began. The three officers seemed to pay no heed to these sounds; they
stood speaking together, the captain issuing brief orders, Von Wedel
asking a question or two, and Glotz saying "_Ja, Herr Kapitän--ja, Herr
Leutnant_" at brief intervals, like a mechanical toy. Glotz was
round-faced and solemn. He never once looked at Louise, Chérie, or
Mireille, who stood in a corner of the room watching the men with
anxious eyes.
"What are they saying?" asked Louise in an undertone.
Chérie listened. So far as she could understand they were making
arrangements as to where they should sleep.
"Eight men are to stay here," she translated in a whisper, "four in the
attics and four downstairs. They themselves are going somewhere
else--wait! They are talking of the Cheval Blanc--wait ... wait ...
they are saying"--and her eyes dilated--"that they can't go there
because the inn is burning...."
At this point Von Wedel gave a loud laugh and Fischer smiled. Only
Glotz's chubby countenance remained solemn, like the face of an anxious
baby.
"What are they saying now?" asked Louise.
Mireille whispered, "They are talking about the _Pfarrer_--that means
the priest."
"About Monsieur le Curé? What are they saying about him?"
At this point Von Wedel laughed again. "_Der alte Esel!... Seine eigene
Schuld...._"
"What is that? what is that?" asked Louise.
"The old donkey ... his own fault," translated Mireille.
"And now what?" The captain was bending down and looking at his boots.
Chérie interpreted. "He says he will be glad to get the mud and blood
off his feet...."
"Mud and blood?" echoed Louise in a horrified whisper. "Surely not."
Mireille nodded. "_Koth und Blut_--that is what he said."
A wave of sickness came over Louise; she felt the ground heave under
her.
Now Von Wedel was helping the captain to take off his tunic, drawing the
left sleeve down with great precaution.
"He says he is wounded," whispered Mireille.
"But he says it is nothing; that his arm is only grazed," supplemented
Chérie.
The coat was off and Captain Fischer was carefully turning up his
shirt-sleeve. Yes; the forearm was grazed and bleeding.
The captain examined it very carefully, and so did Von Wedel, bending
over it and shaking his head with an air of great concern. The captain
looked across at Louise and beckoned to her with his finger.
"Come here, _Gnädige_, please;" and as she approached him he said, "Your
husband is a doctor, is he not? Then you will have some antiseptic in
the house. Lysoform? Sublimate? Have you?" Louise nodded assent. "Bring
me some," he said. "And a little boiled water if you have it."
Louise turned without a word and left the room.
"She is very stupid," said Von Wedel looking after her.
"She is very pretty," said the captain.
Louise passed the soldiers who stood in the hall talking together in low
voices. She went down the stairs feeling dizzy and bewildered. Would
these men stay in the house all night? Would they sleep and eat here?
Would they order her about, and ogle Chérie, and bully little Mireille?
How long would they stay, she wondered. A week? a month?... She entered
her husband's surgery and turned on the light. The sight of his room,
of his chair, of his book, open on the desk as he had left it, seemed to
wring her heart in a vice of pain. "Claude! Claude!" she sobbed. "Come
back! Come back and take care of us!"
But Claude was far away.
She found the little blue phial of pastilles of corrosive sublimate; she
poured some distilled water into a small basin and found cotton and a
packet of lint for a bandage. Then she went upstairs again, past the
soldiers in grey, and entered the sitting-room. It was empty.
Where had they all gone to? Where had they taken Chérie and Mireille?
She stumbled blindly up the short flight of stairs leading to the
drawing-room. There she heard their voices, and went in.
Captain Fischer was reclining on the sofa, still in his shirt-sleeves,
with his boots off. Von Wedel and Glotz were at the flower-adorned
supper-table prepared for Chérie's birthday party, and were eating
sandwiches in large mouthfuls. Their grey helmets were on the piano;
their belts on a chair. Chérie stood cowering in a corner near the door.
"Where is Mireille?" cried Louise; and Chérie replied, "She is all
right. He"--indicating the captain on the sofa--"has sent her to fetch
him some slippers." Her lips quivered. "I wanted to go with her but they
would not let me."
"I feel as if we were in a dream," murmured Louise.
"Ah," cried the man on the sofa, catching sight of Louise, "here is my
good Samaritan." He crossed the room in his stockinged feet and took the
basin out of her hands. He looked round a moment uncertain where to put
it; then he drew up a satin chair and placed the basin of water on it.
"_Gut_," he said. "And what have we here?" He took the little bottle
from her hand. "'Perchlor. of mercury, 1.0 gramme.' That is right." He
shook one of the little pink tablets out on his palm and dropped it in
the water. "Now, charming lady, will you be a sister of mercy to a poor
wounded man?" He bared his arm and sat down on the sofa again, making
room for her beside him; but she stood in front of him, and dipping some
pieces of cotton in the water she bathed the injured arm.
The door opened and Mireille came in with a pair of her father's
slippers in her hand. When she saw her mother stooping over the man's
arm her small face flushed scarlet. She flung the slippers down and,
running to the corner where Chérie was standing, she hid her face on
Chérie's arm.
"_Ei, ei, the_ vixen!" laughed Von Wedel, taking another sandwich. "Now
we want something to drink. Not these syrups," he added, pushing the
grenadine and orangeade aside. "Let us have some champagne. Eh, Glotz?
What do you say to that?"
"And some brandy," said Fischer. "This scratch is deucedly painful."
There was a moment's silence. Then Chérie, taking a step towards the
door, said, "I will fetch some brandy."
"I'll come too," said Mireille.
"No, no, no, no," cried Von Wedel, catching hold of them each by one
arm. "You two want to run away. I know your tricks! No. The vixen stays
here; and the angel"--bending to gaze into Chérie's face--"comes with me
and shows me where the brandy is kept."
"She shan't! she shan't!" screamed Mireille, clinging to Chérie's arm.
"_Donner und Blitz!_" exclaimed Von Wedel, "what a little demon. You
just catch hold of her, Glotz, and keep her quiet."
Glotz, who had been sitting at the table eating silently, rose and dried
his mouth on one of the beflowered tissue-paper serviettes. "I know
where the cellar is," said he, "I saw it on my round with the Herr
Kapitän. If the Herr Kapitän permits, I will fetch the brandy myself."
And he left the room quickly, paying no heed to Von Wedel's murmured
remark that he was a confounded interfering head of a sheep.
Louise had burst into tears when Von Wedel had told Glotz to hold
Mireille, and although the captain patted her hand and told her not to
cry she went on weeping bitterly while she bandaged his arm.
Von Wedel looked at her a moment and then turned to Chérie. "What
relation are you to that weeping Niobe? I forget."
"Sister-in-law," murmured Chérie inaudibly.
"What? Speak louder. I can't hear," said Von Wedel, seating himself on a
corner of the table and lighting one of Dr. Brandès's cigars.
"Sister-in-law," repeated Chérie faintly.
"Sister-in-law? Good." He puffed at the cigar. "And I'll be your
brother-in-law, shall I? Ah, here is the wine!" he exclaimed as the door
was thrown open.
But it was not the wine. It was another officer, dressed like the others
in a grey uniform bereft of all insignia; he was very red and covered
with dust and mud. He saluted the captain and nodded to the lieutenant,
loosened his belt and flung his grey helmet on the piano where the
others lay.
"Ah, Feldmann," cried Captain Fischer. "What have you done?"
"My duty," said the new-comer in a curious hoarse voice.
"_Der Pfarrer?_" ... questioned Von Wedel.
The man nodded and made a grimace. "And that idiot of a scout-boy too.
It was he who fired at you," he said turning to Fischer.
"It was not," said the captain. "It was an old man, from a window. Near
the church."
"Oh well, I didn't see any old man," said Captain Feldmann. "And these
civilians must be taught their lesson.... What have we here?" he added,
surveying the table. "I am famished." And he took two or three
sandwiches, placed them one on the other and ate them. "Beastly hole,
this," he remarked, with his mouth full. "We needn't have come here at
all."
"Oh yes, we need," declared Fischer very sternly.
"Well, we won't discuss that," said Feldmann. "And anyhow we are going
on in the morning. I should like something to drink."
Chérie had flushed to the roots of her hair. She had grasped the one
thing only--they were going on in the morning! At any cost she must tell
Louise that wonderful news. And she did so rapidly, in low tones, in
Flemish.
Louise, who had finished bandaging the officer's wounded arm, burst into
tears again; this time they were tears of joy.
"What are these women?" inquired Feldmann, glancing around with his
mouth full. "They look like ballet-dancers."
"That one," said Von Wedel, with a coarse laugh, pointing at Louise,
"is the weeping Niobe; and that" indicating Mireille--"is the demon
child. And this"--taking Chérie's wrist and drawing her towards him--"is
my sister-in-law and an angel."
"And this is Veuve Clicquot '85," said Glotz entering with some bottles
in his hand and stepping as if casually between Chérie and her
tormentor.
The men turned all their attention to the wines, and sent Glotz to the
cellar three or four times to fetch some more.
They wanted Martel; they wanted Kirsch; they wanted Pernod. Then they
wanted more champagne. Then they wanted more sandwiches, which Louise
went to make. Then they wanted coffee, which Feldmann insisted upon
making himself on a spirit-lamp. They set fire to the tablecloth and to
the tissue-paper serviettes, which they threw down and stamped out on
the carpet.
Von Wedel sat down at the piano and sang "Traum durch die Dämmerung,"
and Feldmann wailed a chorus. Then Feldmann recited a poem. He was very
tipsy and had to put one arm around Glotz's neck and lean heavily on
Glotz's shoulder in order to be able to stand up and gesticulate.
"Liebe Mutter, der Mann mit dem Kocks ist da!"
"Schweig still, mein Junge, das weiss ich ja.
"Hab'ich kein Geld, hast du kein Geld,
"Wer hat denn den Mann mit dem Kocks bestellt?"
Great laughter and applause from Captain Fischer and Von Wedel greeted
this; only Glotz remained impassive; with Feldmann's arm around his
neck, his chubby countenance unmoved, his expression vacant.
For some time they paid no heed to the three women clustered together in
the furthest corner of the room, except to stretch out a detaining hand
whenever they tried to move towards the door.
"No," declared Von Wedel, leering at them through his light, vague eyes.
"No. You don't leave this room. Not all three together. Only one at a
time; then we're sure she'll come back."
So they clung together with pale bewildered faces, whispering to each
other every now and then the comforting words, "They will go away in the
morning."
But the morning was not yet.
When Captain Fischer suggested that it was time to go to bed, the others
called him an old screech-owl; whereupon Captain Fischer explained to
them at great length that military discipline did not permit them to
call him a screech-owl. And he called Louise to witness that he had been
called a screech-owl.
But now Feldmann was singing "Gaudeamus igitur," so the captain joined
in too.
"Come along," said Von Wedel, lurching towards Chérie with two glasses
in his hand; "come, turtle-dove, _Brüdershaft trinken_!" He forced one
of the glasses into her hand. "You must drink the pledge of brotherhood
with us. Like this"--and he made her stand face to face with him,
pushing his left arm through hers and raising his glass in his right
hand.
Chérie shrank back, seeking refuge behind Louise. But he dragged her
forward and caught her by the arm again.
"Obedience!" he roared, scowling at her. "Now sing; '_Lebe, liebe,
trinke, schwärme_'--and when I get to the words '_froh mit mir_,' we
clink our glasses together."
"Please not! please not!" implored Chérie.
"_Froh mit mir_"--repeated he, glaring at her through his heavy lids.
And he sang:
Lebe, liebe, trinke schwärme
Und erfreue dich mit mir.
Härme dich wenn ich mich härme
Und sei weider
froh
mit
mir!
At the last three words he clinked his glass against Chérie's. "Drink!"
he commanded in a terrible voice. "If you do not drink, it is an insult
which must be punished."
With a sob Chérie raised the glass to her lips.
Louise was wringing her hands. "The brute! the brute!" she cried, while
Mireille holding her mother's skirts stared wide-eyed at the scene.
Captain Fischer looked across at Louise. "My Samaritan," ... he mumbled.
"My sister of mercy...." He rose and approached her with a stupefied
smile.
Mireille rushed at him like a little fury. "Go away," she screamed, "go
away!"
The Herr Kapitän took her not unkindly by the shoulders. "Little girls
should be in bed," he said thickly. "My little girls are in bed long
ago."
Louise clasped her hands. "I beg you, sir, have pity on us; let us go
away.... The house is yours, but let us go away."
"Where do you want to go?" he asked dully.
"To our rooms," said Louise.
"You have no rooms; they are ours," he said, and bending forward he
widened his eyes at her significantly.
Louise looked about her like a trapped animal. She saw Von Wedel and
Feldmann who had Chérie between them and were forcing her to drink out
of their glasses; she saw Glotz seated on the piano-stool looking on
with fat, impassive face; she saw the man before her bending forward and
leering suggestively, so close that she could feel his hot, acrid breath
on her face. The enemy! The man with mud and blood on his feet ... he
was putting out his hand and touching her----
She fell on her knees and dragged Mireille down beside her! she lifted
up her hands and raised her weeping face to him. "Your children ... you
have children at home ... your little girls are in bed and asleep ...
they are safe ... safe, locked in their house.... As God may guard them
for you, oh protect us! spare us! Take care of us!... Be kind--be kind!"
She dropped forward with her head on his feet--on Claude's slippers--and
little Mireille with quick tears rolling down her face looked up at him
and touched his sleeve with a trembling hand.
He looked down and frowned. His mouth worked. Yes. He had three
yellow-headed little girls in Stuttgart. It was good that they were in
Stuttgart and not in Belgium. But they were little German girls, while
these were enemies. These were belligerents. Civilians if you will, but
still belligerents....
He looked down at the woman's bowed head and fragile heaving shoulders,
and he looked at the white, frightened child-face lifted to his.
"Belligerents" ... he growled, and cleared his throat and frowned. Then
his chin quivered. "Get away," he said thickly. "Get away, both of you.
Quick. Hide in the cellar--no--not in the cellar, in the stable--in the
garden--anywhere. Don't go in the streets. The streets are full of
drunken soldiers. Go."
Louise kissed his feet, kissed Claude's slippers, and wept, while
Mireille smiled up at him with the smile of a seraph, and thanked and
thanked him, not knowing what she thanked him for.
"But--what of Chérie?" gasped Louise, looking round at the frightened
wild-rose figure in its white dress, trembling and weeping between the
two ribald men.
"You shall take her with you," said Fischer, and he went resolutely
across the room and took Chérie by the arm.
"What? What? You old reprobate," roared Feldmann, digging him in the
ribs, with peals of coarse laughter. "You have two of them! What more do
you want, you hedgehog, you? Leave this one alone."
"You leave her alone, too. I order her to go away." Fischer frowned and
cleared his throat and tried to draw Chérie from Feldmann's and Von
Wedel's grasp.
"What do you mean?" asked Von Wedel, going close up to Fischer and
looking him up and down with provocative and menacing air.
"I mean that you leave her alone," puffed the captain. "Those are my
orders, Lieutenant--and if they are not obeyed you shall answer for it."
"You old woman! you old head of a sheep," shouted Von Wedel; "answer for
it, shall I? You are drunk; and I'm drunk; and I don't care a snap
about your orders." And dragging Chérie's arm from Fischer's grasp he
pushed him back and glowered at him.
"Your orders ..." stuttered the intoxicated Feldmann, placing his hand
on Fischer's shoulder to steady himself, "your orders ... direct
contradiction with other orders ... higher orders ..." He wagged his head
at Fischer. "The German seal must be set upon the enemy's country.... Go
away. Don't be a screeching owl."
"And don't be a head of a sheep," added Von Wedel. "_Vae victis!_ If it
isn't you, it'll be somebody else. It'll be old Glotz--look at him ...
sitting there, all agog, _arrectis auribus_! Or it will be our drunken
men downstairs. Just listen to them!..."
The drunken men downstairs were roaring "Die Wacht am Rhein." Von
Wedel's argument seemed to carry conviction.
"_Vae victis!_" sighed Fischer, swallowing another glass of brandy and
looking across the room at the trembling Louise. "If it isn't I ... then
Glotz ... or somebody else ... drunken soldiers...."
He went unsteadily towards Louise, who stood clutching at the locked
door. "Woe to the vanquished, my poor woman ... seal of Germany ...
higher orders.... Why should I be a head of a sheep?..."
BOOK II
CHAPTER VI
It is pleasant to sit in a quiet English garden on a mild September
afternoon, sipping tea and talking about the war and weather, while
venturesome sparrows hop on the velvety lawn and a light breeze dances
over the flower-beds stealing the breath of the mignonette to carry back
at nightfall to the sea.
Thus mused the gentle sisters, Miss Jane and Julia Cony, as they gazed
round with serene and satisfied blue eyes on the lawn, the sparrows, the
silver tea-set, the buttered toast, and their best friend, Miss Lorena
Marshall, who had dropped in to have tea with them and whose gentle
brown eyes now smiled back into theirs with the self-same serenity and
satisfaction. All three had youthful faces under their soft white hair;
all three had tender hearts in their somewhat rigid breasts; all three
had walked slender and tall through an unblemished life of undeviating
conventionality. They were sublimely guileless, divinely charitable and
inflexibly austere.
"It is pleasant indeed," repeated Julia in her rather querulous treble
voice. Julia had been delicate in her teens and still retained some of
the capricious ways of the petted child. She was the youngest,
too--scarcely forty-five--and was considered very modern by her sister
and her friend. "Of course the Continent is all very well in its way,"
she went on. "Switzerland in summer, and Monte Carlo in winter----"
"Oh, Julia," interrupted Miss Jane quickly, "why do you talk about Monte
Carlo? We only stayed there forty-five minutes."
"Well, I'm sure I wish we could have stayed there longer," laughed the
naughty Julia. "The sea was a dream, and the women's clothes were
revelations. But, as I was saying, England is, after all----"
We all know what England is, after all. Still, it is always good to say
it and to hear it said. Thus, in the enumeration of England's advantages
and privileges a restful hour passed, until the neat maid, Barratt, came
to announce the arrival of other visitors. Mrs. Mulholland and her
daughter Kitty had driven round from Widford and came rustling across
the lawn in beflowered hats and lace veils. Fresh tea was made for them
and they brought a new note into the conversation.
"Are you not thinking of taking a refugee?" asked Mrs. Mulholland. "The
Davidsons have got one."
"The Davidsons have got one?" exclaimed Miss Marshall.
"The Davidsons have got one?" echoed Miss Jane and Miss Julia Corry.
"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Mulholland somewhat acidly. "And I am sure if
they can have one in their small house, you can; and we can."
"Refugees are all the rage just now," remarked Kitty. "Everybody who is
anybody has them."
"Yes, but the Davidsons ..." said Miss Marshall. "Surely they cannot
afford it."
"They have dismissed their maid," explained Mrs. Mulholland, "and this
poor Belgian woman has to do all their housework."
"Yes; and Molly Davidson says that she is really a countess," added
Kitty, "and that she makes the beds very badly."
"Poor soul!" said Miss Jane.
"I certainly think," continued Mrs. Mulholland, "that the Davidsons of
all people should not be putting on side with a foreign countess to make
their beds for them, while others who have good houses and decent
incomes simply look on. In fact," she added, "I have already written to
the Committee in Kingsway offering hospitality to a family of two or
three."
"That is very generous of you," said Miss Jane; and Miss Julia shyly
patted the complacent white-gloved hands reposing in Mrs. Mulholland's
lap.
"We had not thought of it ourselves, so far," said Miss Jane. "But if
it is our duty to help these unfortunates, we shall certainly do so."
"Of course you will. You are such angels," exclaimed the impulsive
Kitty, throwing a muscular arm around Miss Jane's prim shoulders and
kissing her cheek. And Miss Jane liked it.
"How does one set about it?" asked Miss Marshall; "I might find room for
one, too. In fact I should rather like it. The evenings are so lonely
and I used to love to speak French."
Mrs. Mulholland, to whom she had turned, did not answer at once. Then
she replied drily: "You can write to the Refugee Committee or the
Belgian Consulate. The Davidsons got theirs from the Woman's Suffrage
League."
Then there was a brief pause.
"But I hear that the committee is frightfully particular," she went on.
"They don't send them just to any one who asks. One must give all sorts
of references. In fact," she added, with a chilly little laugh, "it is
almost as if one were asking for a situation oneself. They want to know
all about you."
There was another brief silence, and then Mrs. Mulholland and Kitty took
their leave.
To Miss Julia, who accompanied them to the gate, Mrs. Mulholland
remarked, "The idea! Miss Marshall wanting a refugee! With her past!"
"What past?" inquired Miss Julia, wide-eyed and wondering.
"Oh," snapped Mrs. Mulholland, tossing her head, and the white lace veil
floating round her sailor-hat waved playfully in the breeze, "when
people live abroad so long, there is always something behind it."
She stepped into her motor, followed by the pink-faced, smiling Kitty,
and they drove away to pay some other calls.
Miss Julia returned to the lawn with a puckered brow and a perturbed
heart. Neither she nor her sister had ever thought of Miss Lorena
Marshall's past; Miss Marshall did not convey the impression of having a
past--especially not a foreign past, which was associated in Jessie's
mind with ideas of the Moulin Rouge and Bal Tabarin. The neat black hat
sitting firmly on Miss Marshall's smooth pepper-and-salt hair could
never be a descendant of those naughty French _petits bonnets_ which are
flung over the mills in moments of youthful folly. Her sensible
square-toed boots firmly repelled the idea that the feet they encased
could ever have danced adown the flowery slopes of sin.
"I do not believe a word of it," said Miss Julia to herself, and later
on to her sister. Miss Jane was indignant at the suggestion. "This
village is a hotbed of cats," she said cryptically; and when the vicar
looked in after dinner to discuss arrangements for a Church concert
they confided in him and asked his opinion. Had he known Miss Lorena
Marshall before she came to Maylands? Did he think she had a past--a
Continental past?
The vicar thought the suggestions ridiculous and uncharitable.
"Of course," said Miss Jane, toying with her favourite angora cat's ear
as he lay purring comfortably in her lap, "we are narrow-minded old
maids." The vicar made a deprecating gesture. "Yes, yes, we are. And we
like to be sure that our friendships are not misplaced."
"We are narrow-minded old maids," echoed Miss Julia. The two Miss Corrys
always said that, partly in order to be contradicted and partly in that
curious spirit of humility which in the English heart so closely borders
on pride. For is not the acknowledgment of a certain kind of inferiority
a sign of unmistakable superiority?
When we say we are a humdrum nation, when we say we are a dull and slow
and stodgy nation, do we not in our heart of hearts think that it would
be a good thing if other nations took an example from our very faults?
Even so when Miss Corry said, "We are narrow-minded old maids"--she felt
with a little twinge of remorse that the statement was not altogether
sincere. Did she really, in her heart of hearts, think it narrow-minded
to abhor vulgarity, to shun coarseness, to shrink from all that might be
considered indecorous or unseemly? Then surely to be narrow-minded was
better than to be broad-minded, and she for one would certainly refuse
to change her views. Was narrow-mindedness mindedness nowadays not
almost a synonym for pure-mindedness?
And--"old maids"! Did she really consider herself and her younger sister
old maids? Had they--just because they had chosen to remain
unmarried--any of the crotchety notions, the fantastic, ineradicable
habits that old maids usually get into? Did they go about with a parrot
on their shoulder like Miss Davis? Or dose themselves all day with
patent medicines, like the Honourable Harriet Fyle? Did they fret and
fuss over their food, or live in constant terror of draughts and
burglars? Certainly not. And--come now--did they really feel a day older
than when they were twenty-two and twenty-five respectively? Or did they
look any older?--except for their hair which, had they chosen, they
could easily have touched up with henné or Inecto? Were they not able to
do anything, to go anywhere? Were their hearts not as young, and fresh,
and ready for love if it happened to come their way, as Kitty
Mulholland's or Dolly Davidson's? Did not their elder brothers--the
parson and the Judge--always speak of them still as "the girls"?
No. Miss Jane and Miss Julia Corry were not quite sincere when they
called themselves "narrow-minded old maids," and accordingly they had
qualms and conscience-pricks when they did so.
* * * * *
A week later the two sisters returned Mrs. Mulholland's call. They
fluttered into the large drawing room full of the subdued murmur of many
voices, and were greeted absent-mindedly by the busy hostess and
effusively by Kitty. The Davidsons were there, quite unsuitably attired
(remarked Miss Jane to Miss Julia; nobody wore satin at tea), and they
were explaining volubly to a group of ladies how it happened that their
Belgian countess-refugee had suddenly left them.
"First of all, she was not a countess at all," explained Dolly Davidson.
"And she was not even a Belgian," Mrs. Davidson added, in aggrieved
tones. "I cannot understand the W.S.L. sending her to us. Why she
confessed before she went away that she was a variety artist from Linz
and could only speak German and Czech. We always thought the language
she spoke was Flemish. It has been a most unpleasant affair."
Every one was tacitly delighted. Mrs. Davidson had been giving herself
such airs of importance with her countess, and now it turned out that
she had been playing Lady Bountiful to an alien enemy from a Bohemian
Café Chantant. One would have to be super-human not to rejoice. "How did
you get rid of her?" asked one of the ladies, discreetly repressing her
smiles.
"A villainous-looking man came to fetch her, late in the evening," said
poor Mrs. Davidson, blushing. "They made a frightful noise in the hall,
quarrelling or something."
"Then they both went upstairs," piped up Dolly Davidson; and pointing to
her brother, a lumpish youth who at that moment had his mouth full of
cake. "We sent Reggy upstairs to tell them to go away at once. But Reggy
only looked through the keyhole and wouldn't come down again until
mother fetched him."
"It isn't true," mumbled Reggy.
"Finally we had to send for the police," said Mrs. Davidson, with tears
of mortification in her eyes.
Mrs. Mulholland confessed that she felt rather nervous about her own
refugees who were expected at any moment. "I wish I could countermand
them," she said; but her sympathizing friends all agreed that having
asked for them she must keep them when they came.
They arrived the following day--an uninteresting woman, with two torpid
boys and a thin girl of fifteen.
The boys ate a great deal, and the girl was uncannily intelligent.
Since landing in England they had had it drummed into them that they
were heroes; they had been acclaimed with their compatriots as the
saviours of Europe; they had had speeches made to them apprising them of
the fact that the gratitude of all the world could never repay the debt
that civilization owed them. They therefore accepted as their due the
attentions and kindness shown them. They ate jam at all their meals and
asked for butter with their dinner; they drank red wine and put a great
deal of sugar in it; they complained that the coffee was not good. They
borrowed Mrs. Mulholland's seal-skin coat and Kitty's silk scarves when
they felt chilly, and they sat in the drawing-room writing letters or
looking at illustrated papers all day long. They spoke French in
undertones among themselves and accepted everything that was provided
for them without any undue display of gratitude. Had they not saved
Europe? Would Mrs. Mulholland still have a seal-skin coat to her back
but for Belgium? Had it not been for King Albert, would not the Uhlans
and the Death's Head hussars be sprawling on the Mulholland sofa, eating
the Mulholland jam, criticizing the Mulholland coffee? _Comment donc!_
And had they not themselves, in order to save Europe, given up their
home and their business--a stuffy little restaurant (_Au Boeuf à la
Mode, Épicerie, Commestibles_) down a dingy Brussels street?
The restaurant soon became a Grand Hotel in their fond reminiscences.
_Le souvenir, cet embellisseur_, swept the sardine-tins, the candles,
the lemons, and the flies from its windows, built up a colonnaded front,
added three or four stories and filled them with rich and titled guests.
"What was the name of your hotel?" inquired Mrs. Mulholland. "We stopped
in Brussels once on our way to Spa, and I remember that we stayed in a
most excellent hotel--The Britannique, or The Metropole, or something."
"Tell them," said Mme. Pitou to her daughter Toinon who acted as
interpreter,--"tell them the name of our hotel--in English."
"Restaurant to the Fashionable Beef," said Mademoiselle Pitou; and
Madame Pitou sighed and shook her head despondently. "Hotel," she
corrected, "not Restaurant. 'Hotel to the Fashionable Beef.' Toinon,"
she added, "do ask these people to give us _potage aux poireaux_ this
evening, for I cannot and will not eat that black broth of false turtle
any more."
CHAPTER VII
The craze for refugees cooled slightly in the neighbourhood after that.
The first rush of enthusiastic generosity abated, and when friends met
at knitting-parties and compared refugees there was a certain ægritude
on the part of those who had them, and a certain smiling superiority on
the part of those who had not. They were spoken of as if they were a
disease, like measles or mumps.
"I hear that Lady Osmond has them," said Mrs. Mellon.
"Has she really?"
"Yes. And poor Mrs. Whitaker, too."
"Mrs. Whitaker? You don't say so."
"Yes, indeed. Mrs. Whitaker has them. And she feels it badly."
"I will run over to see her," said the sympathetic Mrs. Mulholland. "I
am so fond of the dear soul."
But that very afternoon Mrs. Whitaker herself called on Mrs. Mulholland,
at Park House.
"How do you do, my poor dear Theresa?" began Mrs. Mulholland, taking
Mrs. Whitaker's hand and pressing it. "I hear----"
"Yes, yes," said Mrs. Whitaker rather fretfully, drawing her hand away.
"Of course you have heard that I have them." There was a brief silence.
"I must confess I did not expect quite such dreary ones."
"Dreary, are they?" exclaimed Mrs. Mulholland. "Is that all?"
"It's bad enough," sighed Mrs. Whitaker. "You have no idea what they are
like. Three creatures that look as if they had stepped out of a
nightmare."
But Mrs. Mulholland overflowed with her own grievances. "Do they borrow
your clothes and use all your letter-paper and order your dinners?"
asked Mrs. Mulholland, quivering with indignation. Her cook had just
given notice on account of Madame Pitou going into the kitchen and
making herself a _timbale de riz aux champignons_.
"No. They don't do that. But they sit about and never speak and look
like ghosts," said Mrs. Whitaker. "When you have time you might drop in
and see them."
"I think I'll run over with you now," said Mrs. Mulholland; "though I
don't for a moment believe they can be as bad as mine."
She put on her garden-hat and her macintosh, told Kitty not to let the
Pitous do any cooking in the drawing-room, and went out with Mrs.
Whitaker. They took the short cut across the fields to Acacia Lodge.
"What language do they speak?" asked Mrs. Mulholland, as she proceeded
with Mrs. Whitaker through the green garden-gate and down the drive.
"They never speak at all," replied Mrs. Whitaker; "and I must say I had
looked forward to a little French conversation for Eva and Tom. That is
really what I got them for."
They walked on under the chestnut-trees towards the house. Eva in trim
tennis attire and George in khaki came to meet them, running across the
lawn.
"I've beaten George by six four," cried Eva, waving her racket.
"That's because I let you," said her brother, shaking hands with Mrs.
Mulholland and allowing his mother to pat his brown cheek.
"Handsome lad," murmured Mrs. Mulholland, and wished she had brought
Kitty with her, even though the Pitous should profit by her absence to
prepare their _tête-de-veau en poulette_ on the drawing-room fire.
"Where are ... _they_?" she added, dropping her voice and looking round.
"I don't know," said Eva. "I have not seen them all the afternoon."
"I have," said George. "They are in the shrubbery."
"You might call them, dear boy," said his fond mother.
"Not I," said George.
"I will," said Eva, and ran down the flower-bordered path swinging her
racket.
"Sweet girl," said Mrs. Mulholland, following Eva's slim silhouette with
benevolent eyes, and then gazing even more benevolently at George
Whitaker's stalwart figure. "She and my Kitty should really see
something more of each other."
Mrs. Whitaker threw a penetrating glance at her friend's profile.
"Schemer," she murmured to herself. "Certainly," she said aloud. "As
soon as George goes to Aldershot I hope your dear daughter will often
come here."
"Cat," reflected Mrs. Mulholland. And aloud she said, "How delightful
for both the dear girls!"
George had sauntered with his long khaki limbs towards the shrubbery,
but Eva reappeared alone.
"They won't come," she said.
"What!" exclaimed Mrs. Mulholland.
"Why not?" asked Mrs. Whitaker.
"They don't want to," said Eva. "The tall one shook her head and said,
'_Merci_.'"
"I am not surprised," laughed George, "considering they have been
exhibited to half the county within the last three days."
"I'll fetch them myself," said Mrs. Whitaker sternly. Then she turned to
her son. "George, you who are half a Frenchman after your visit to
Montreux, do tell me--how do I say in French, 'I desire you all three
to come and be introduced to a very dear friend of mine?'"
There was a brief silence; then George translated. "_Venny_," he said.
"Is that all?"
"Yes," said George.
His mother was about to go when Mrs. Mulholland suggested: "Had we not
both of us better take a turn round the garden, and casually saunter
into the shrubbery?"
"Perhaps so," said Mrs. Whitaker.
And so they did. George followed them slowly, with Eva hanging on his
arm. She was very fond and proud of her soldier brother.
They entered the shrubbery and saw seated upon a bench three figures
dressed in black, who rose to their feet at their hostess's approach.
"Goodness gracious! how uncanny they look!" whispered Mrs. Mulholland,
and added, with a smile of half-incredulous pleasure, "I believe they
really are worse than mine."
The three black figures stood silent and motionless, and Mrs. Mulholland
found herself gazing as if fascinated into the depths of three pairs of
startled, almost hallucinated eyes, fixed gloomily upon her.
Mrs. Whitaker addressed them in English, speaking very loud with an idea
of making them understand her better. They seemed not to hear, they
certainly made no attempt to answer her amiable platitudes.
Mrs. Mulholland, moved to something like pity by their stricken
appearance, put out her hand saying, "How do you do?" and two of them
laid their limp fingers in hers--the third, whom she now noticed was a
child although she wore a long black skirt, neither stirred nor removed
her stony gaze from her face. There was an embarrassing pause. Then Mrs.
Mulholland asked with a bright society smile--
"How do you like England?"
No answer.
"George, dear, ask them in French," said his mother.
George stepped forward blushing through his tan. "Um ... er ..." he
cleared his throat. "_S'il vous plaît Londres?_" he inquired timidly.
He addressed the tallest, but she gazed at him vacantly, not
understanding. The little girl stood next to her--the large tragic eyes
in her small pale face still fixed on the unknown countenance of Mrs.
Mulholland. She conveyed the impression that she had not heard any one
speak.
George, blushing deeper, turned towards the third ghost standing before
him, coughed again and repeated his question, "_S'il vous plaît
Londres?_"
Then a strange thing happened. The third ghost smiled. It was a real
smile, a gleaming smile, a smile with dimples. The ghost was suddenly
transformed into a girl. "_Merci. L'Angleterre nous plaît beaucoup._"
That was in order not to hurt the "half Frenchman's" feelings. Then she
added in English, "London is very nice."
"Oh," snapped the astonished Mrs. Whitaker, "you speak English?" and her
tone conveyed the impression that something belonging exclusively to her
had been taken and used without her permission.
"A little," was the murmured reply. The smile had quickly died away; the
dimples had vanished. Under Mrs. Whitaker's scrutiny the girl faded into
a ghost again. The two ladies nodded and moved away. George and Eva,
after a moment's hesitation and embarrassment, followed them.
"What strange, underhand behaviour!" commented Mrs. Whitaker; "never to
have told me she understood English until today."
"I suppose they were trying to find out all your family concerns," said
Mrs. Mulholland.
A word that sounded like "Bosh" proceeded from George, who had turned
his back and was walking into the house.
"I think they were just dazed," explained Eva. "They look almost as if
they were walking in their sleep. I never even noticed until today that
they were all so young. Why, the little one is a mere kiddy;" she
twisted round on her heel. "I think I shall go back and talk to them,"
she added.
"No," said her mother. "You will stay here."
That evening when Mr. Whitaker came back from the City his daughter had
much to tell him, and even the somewhat supercilious George took an
interest and joined in the conversation.
"The ghosts have spoken, papa!" cried Eva, dancing round him in the
hall. Then as soon as he was in the drawing-room she made him sit down
in his armchair and kissed him on the top of his benevolent bald head.
"And--do you know?--they are really not ghosts at all; are they,
mother?"
Mrs. Whitaker did not look up from her knitting. But her husband spoke.
"They are the wife, the sister, and the daughter of a doctor," he said.
"At the Belgian Consulate I was told they were quite decent people. My
dear Theresa," he added, looking at his wife, "I think we ought to have
asked them to take their meals with us."
"I did so," said Mrs. Whitaker, with some asperity. "I did so, although
they do look like scarecrows. But they say they prefer having their
meals by themselves."
"Then you must respect their wishes," said Mr. Whitaker, opening a
commercial review.
"Just fancy, Pops," said Eva, perching herself on the arm of her
father's chair, "the youngest one--the poor little creature with the
uncanny eyes--is deaf and dumb."
"How sad!" said her father, caressing his daughter's soft hair.
"Did her mother tell you so?" asked Mrs. Whitaker, looking up from the
grey scarf she was knitting.
"No, not her mother," explained Eva; "the other one told me. The one
with the dimples, who speaks English. She is sweet!" cried the impulsive
Eva, and her father patted her hair again and smiled.
"Her name is Sherry," remarked George.
"Oh, George, you silly," exclaimed Eva. "You mean Chérie."
"How do you know her name?" snapped Mrs. Whitaker, laying down her
knitting in her lap and fixing stern inquisitorial eyes upon her son.
"She told me," said George, with a nonchalant air.
"She told you!" said his mother. "I never knew you had any conversation
with those women."
"It wasn't conversation," said George. "I met her in the garden and I
stopped her and said, 'What is your name?' and she answered, 'Sherry.'
That's all."
"Queer name," said his father.
"My dear Anselm, that is really not the point--" began Mrs. Whitaker,
but the dressing-gong sounded and they all promptly dispersed to their
rooms, so Anselm never knew what the point really was.
After dinner Eva, as usual, went to the piano, opened it and lit the
candles, while her father sat in the dining-room with the folding-doors
thrown wide open, as he declared he could not enjoy his port or his pipe
without Eva's music.
"What shall it be tonight, Paterkins?" Eva called out in her birdlike
voice. "Rachmaninoff?"
"No. The thing you played yesterday," said her father, settling himself
comfortably in his armchair, while the neat maid quietly cleared the
table.
"Why, that _was_ Rachmaninoff, my angel-dad," laughed Eva, and twisted
the music-stool to suit her height.
George came close to her and bending down said something in an
undertone.
"Good idea," said Eva. "Ask the mater."
"You ask her," said George, sauntering into the adjoining room, where he
sat down beside his father and lit a cigarette.
Eva went to her mother, and coaxed her into consenting to what she
asked. Then she ran out of the room and reappeared soon after, bringing
with her the three figures in black. As they hesitated on the threshold,
she slipped her arm through the arm of the reluctant "Sherry" and drew
her forward. "Do come!--_Venny!_" she said, and the three entered the
room.
They were quite like ghosts again, with pale faces and staring eyes and
the rigid gait of sleep-walkers.
They sat down silently in a row near the wall, and Eva went to the piano
and played. She played the Rachmaninoff "Prelude," and when she had
finished they neither moved nor spoke. She wandered off into the gentle
sadness of Godard's "Barcarole," and the three ghosts sat motionless.
Schumann's "Carnaval" did not cheer them, nor did the "Moonlight Sonata"
move them. When Eva at last closed the piano they rose, and the two
eldest, having silently bowed their thanks, they left the room,
conducting between them the little one, whose pallor seemed more
spectral and whose silence seemed even deeper than theirs.
"Poor souls! poor souls!" growled Mr. Whitaker, clearing his throat and
knitting his brows. "Theresa, my dear," to his wife, "see that they lack
for nothing. And I hope the children are always very kind and
considerate in their behaviour to them. George," he added, turning what
he believed to be a beetling brow upon his handsome son, "I noticed that
you stared at them. Do not do so again. Grief is sensitive and prefers
to remain unnoticed."
George mumbled that he hadn't stared and marched out of the room. Eva
put her arms round her father's neck and pressed on his cheek the loud,
childish kisses that he loved.
"May I go and talk to them a little?" she asked, in a coaxing whisper.
"Of course you may," said her father, and Eva ran out quickly, just as
her mother looked up to say, "What is it?"
"I have sent Eva to talk to those unhappy creatures," said Mr. Whitaker.
"We must try and cheer them a little. It is nothing less than a duty.
Poor souls!" he repeated, "I have never seen anything so dismal."
"I think we fulfil our duty in providing them with shelter and food,"
said Mrs. Whitaker.
"You think nothing of the kind, Theresa," said Mr. Whitaker.
"I do," asserted his wife. "And as for Eva, she is already inclined to
be exaggeratedly sentimental in regard to these people. She is
constantly running after them with flowers and cups of tea."
"Nice child," said her father, with a little tightening in his throat.
"She is not a child, Anselm. She is nineteen. And I do not wish her to
have anything to do with those women."
"Theresa?" said her husband, in a high questioning voice. "Theresa. Come
here."
Mrs. Whitaker did not move. "Come here," he repeated in the threatening
and terrible tone that he sometimes used to the children and to his old
retriever Raven--a tone which frightened neither child nor beast. "Come
here."
Mrs. Whitaker approached. "Sit down," he said, indicating a footstool
in front of him; and Mrs. Whitaker obeyed. "Now, wife," he said, "are
you growing hard and sour in your old age? Are you?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Whitaker. "I am."
"Ah," said Mr. Whitaker, "that's right. I knew you weren't." And he
laughed, and patted her cheek.
This was not the answer Mrs. Whitaker was prepared for and she had
nothing ready to say. So the wily Mr. Whitaker went on, "I have noticed
lately in you certain assumed asperities, a certain simulated
acrimony.... Now, Theresa, tell me; what does this make-believe bad
temper mean?"
Mrs. Whitaker felt that she could weep with rage. What is the good of
having a bad temper when it is not believed in? Of what use is it to be
sore and sour, to feel bitter and hard, in the face of smiling
incredulity?
"With other people, my dear," continued Mr. Whitaker, "you may pretend
that you are disagreeable and irascible, but not with me. I know
better."
This simple strategy had proved perfectly successful for twenty years
and it answered today, as it always did.
"I _am_ disagreeable, I _am_ irascible, I _am_ bitter, and hard, and
cross," said Mrs. Whitaker, whereupon Mr. Whitaker closed his eyes,
smiled and shook his head.
"Don't keep on shaking your head like a Chinese toy," she added.
"Anselm, you really are the stupidest man I have ever seen." And then
she laughed. "It is dreadful," she added, putting aside the hand he had
laid on her shoulder, "not to be believed when one is cross, not to be
feared when one is angry. It makes one feel so helpless."
"You may be helpless," he said; "womanly women mostly are. But you are
never cross and you are never angry. So don't pretend to be."
Now Mrs. Whitaker was tall and large and square; she was strong-minded
and strong-featured; she was what you would call a "capable woman"--and
none but her own inmost soul knew the melting joy that overcame her at
being told that she was helpless. She raised her hand to the hand that
lay on her shoulder again, and patted it. She bent her head sideways and
laid her cheek upon it.
"Now, what's the trouble?" said her husband.
"The trouble ... I can hardly express it," she spoke hesitantly, "either
to myself or to you. Anselm!" she turned her eyes to him suddenly, the
eyes full of blueness and temper and courage he had fallen in love with
in Dublin long ago. "I hate those three miserable women," she said. "I
hate them."
"What!" cried her husband, drawing his hand away from hers.
"I fear them, and I hate them!" she repeated.
"What have they done?"
"They have done nothing," said his wife, with drooping head and downcast
eyes. "But I cannot help it. I hate and fear them ... for the children's
sake."
"What do you mean?" Mr. Whitaker was sitting very straight. The thin
soft hair still crowning his brow was ruffled.
"The mystery that surrounds them frightens me," said Mrs. Whitaker. "I
don't know where they come from, what they have seen, what they have
lived through. I should like to be kind to them, I should like to
encourage the children to cheer them and speak to them. But there is
something ... something in their eyes that repels me, something that
makes me want to draw Eva away from them. I cannot express it. I don't
know what it is."
There was a brief silence. Then her husband spoke. "A woman's instinct
in these things is right, I suppose. But to me it sounds uncharitable
and cruel."
Mrs. Whitaker rose to her feet, her face flushing painfully. "Are we
called upon to sacrifice our daughter's purity of mind, her ignorance of
evil, to these strangers? Is it our duty to encourage an intercourse
which will tear the veil of innocence from her eyes?"
"I am afraid so," said Mr. Whitaker gravely. "How can our daughter have
pity on human suffering while she does not know its meaning? True
charity, Theresa, cannot be blind; compassion must know the ills it
tries to heal. My dear, we are face to face with one of the
problems--one of the minor problems perhaps, but still a very real
problem--which this ghastly war has raised. Think for a moment, Theresa;
how can our girls, who are called upon to nurse the wounded in body, and
comfort the stricken in soul, live in the midst of puerile ignorance any
longer? Painful though it may be, the veil you speak of, the white veil
that hides from a maiden's eyes the sins and sorrows of life, must be
rent asunder."
"It is cruel! it is cruel!" cried the mother.
"Yes. War is cruel. And life is cruel. But do not let us--you and I--add
to the cruelty of the world. If our daughter must learn to know evil in
order to be merciful, then let innocence die in her young heart, in
order that pity which is nobler, may be born." There was a long silence.
Then Mrs. Whitaker raised her husband's hand to her lips and kissed it.
CHAPTER VIII
Eva had gone upstairs to the schoolroom, now transformed into a
sitting-room for the refugees, and had knocked softly at the door.
No one answered and she stood for a moment irresolute. Then the sound of
a sobbing voice fell on her ear, "Mireille! Mireille!" ... The despair
of it wrung her heart. With sudden resolve she turned the handle and
went in.
Under the green-shaded electric light a picture almost biblical in its
poetic tragedy presented itself to her eyes. The youngest of the
refugees, the child, with her long hair loosened--and it fell like
golden water on either side of her white face--stood motionless as a
statue under the lamp-shine, gazing straight before her, straight,
indeed, into the eyes of Eva as she halted spell-bound on the threshold.
Kneeling at the child's feet, with her back to the door, was the eldest
one of the three, her long black garments spreading round her, her arms
stretched upwards in a despairing embrace of that motionless childish
figure; her head was thrown forward on her arm and it was her sobbing
voice that Eva had heard. Standing beside her holding a little golden
crucifix in her clasped and upraised hands, stood the other girl--the
girl who had smiled--and she was praying: "_Sainte Vierge, aidez-nous!
Mère de Dieu, faites le miracle!_" Unmoved, unseeing, unhearing the
little girl they were praying for stood like a statue, her wide,
unseeing eyes fixed before her as in a trance.
With sorrow and pity throbbing in her heart Eva slipped back into the
passage again, closing the door softly behind her. After a moment's
uncertainty she knocked at the door once more, this time more loudly. A
voice answered timidly, "_Entrez_."
They were all three standing now, but the tears still fell down the
cheeks of the eldest one, who had quickly risen from her knees.
"May I come in?" asked Eva timidly. "I thought I should like to come and
talk with you a little."
The second one, who understood English, came forward at once with a wan
and grateful smile. "Thank you. Please come," she said. And Eva entered
and closed the door.
There was a pause; then Eva put out her hand shyly and stiffly to the
eldest one; "Don't cry," she said.
Surely no other words so effectively open the flood-gates of tears! Even
though they were spoken in a tongue foreign to her, the stricken woman
understood them and her tears flowed anew.
"_Loulou, Loulou, ne pleure pas!_" cried the younger girl, and turning
to Eva she explained: "She cries because of her child"--she pointed to
the little spectre--"who will not speak to her."
"Is she really dumb?" asked Eva, in awed tones, gazing at the seraphic
little face, dazed and colourless as a washed-out fresco of Frate
Angelico.
"We do not know. She has not spoken for more than a month." The girl's
gentle voice broke in a sob. "She does not seem to know us or to hear
us." She went over to the child and caressed her cheek. "_Mireille,
petite Mireille! dis bonsoir à la jolie dame!_"
But Mireille was silent, staring with her vacant eyes at what no one
could see.
Eva stepped forward, trembling a little, and took the child's limp hand
in hers. "Mireille," she said. The blue eyes were turned full upon her
for an instant, then they wavered and wandered away. "What has happened
to her? What made her like this?" asked Eva, in a low voice.
"Fear," replied the girl, her lips tightening. And she said no more.
"Fear of what?" insisted Eva, with the unconscious cruelty of youth and
kindness.
"The Germans came to our house," faltered the girl; "they ... they
frightened her." Again her quivering lips closed tightly; a wave of
crimson flooded her delicate face. Then the colour faded quickly,
leaving behind it a waxen pallor and a deep shadow round her eyes.
"Were they unkind to her? Did they hurt her?" gasped Eva, and for the
first time, as she gazed at that motionless child figure, her startled
soul seemed to realize the meaning of war.
"No; they did not hurt her. They did nothing to her. But she was
frightened" ... her arm went round the child's drooping shoulders, "and
because she cried they ... they bound her ... to an iron railing...."
"They bound her to an iron railing!... How cruel, how wicked!" cried
Eva.
"Yes, they were cruel," said the girl, and a terrified look came into
her eyes. She moved back a little, nearer to the other woman, the tall
black figure that stood silent, looking down at the glowing embers of
the fire. She had neither moved nor spoken since Eva had entered the
room.
Eva continued her questioning.
"And were you frightened, too?"
"Yes. I was frightened."
"What did you do? Did you run away?"
"I don't know. I don't remember. I don't remember anything."
Such terror and anguish was there in the lovely girlish face, that Eva
dared to ask no more.
"Forgive me," she stammered; "I ought not to have made you speak about
it. Forgive me--Mademoiselle." She placed her hand timidly on the girl's
arm. "Or may I call you 'Chérie'?"
CHAPTER IX
The mild September days swung past; the peaceful English atmosphere and
the wholesome English food, added to the unobtrusive English
kindness--which consists mainly in leaving people alone and pretending
not to notice their existence--wrought gentle miracles on the three
stricken creatures.
Not that Mireille found speech again, but Louise watched day by day with
beating heart the return of the tender wild-rose colour to her child's
thin cheeks, and saw the strange fixed expression of terror gradually
fade out of her eyes.
Mireille never wept and never smiled; she seemed to wander in the shadow
of life, mute, quiet, and at peace.
But life and joy came throbbing back to Chérie's young heart, in
fluttering smiles and little trills of laughter, in soft flushes and
quick, light-running steps. Louise, seated by Mireille at the schoolroom
window, would let her work sink on her lap to watch the girlish slender
figure of her sister-in-law darting to and fro on the tennis-lawn; she
would listen amazed to the sweet voice that had so quickly attuned
itself to English words and English laughter. And her soul was filled
with wonder. How--how had Chérie so quickly forgotten? Had she no
thought for brother and lover fighting on the blood-drenched plains of
Ypres? How could she play and talk and laugh while there was no news
from Claude or from Florian? While they might even now be lying
dead--dead with upturned faces, under the distant Belgian sky! And how,
ah! how could she have forgotten what befell, on that night of horror
but a few short weeks ago?
As if some subtle heart-throb warned her, Chérie would turn suddenly and
gaze up at the two pale faces framed in the window beneath the red and
gold leaves of the autumnal creeper. Then she would fling down her
racket and, leaving Eva and Kitty Mulholland and George--who were often
her partners in the game--without a word, she would run into the house
and up to the schoolroom and fling herself at Louise's feet in a storm
of tears.
"Mireille!... Florian!... Claude!" The beloved names were sobbed out in
accents of despair, and Louise must needs comfort her as best she could,
smoothing the tumbled locks, kissing the flushed, wet face, and finally
herself leading her out into the garden again. Mireille went lightly and
silently beside them, like a pale seraph walking in her sleep.
It was not only to console Chérie that Louise smiled in those first
days of exile. Hope, like a shy bird, had entered into her heart.
There was better news from the Continent; all Europe had taken up arms
and was fighting for them and with them. There had been the glorious
tidings of the battle of the Marne. Then one day Florian had sent a
message.
It appeared on the front page of _The Times_, and Mr. Whitaker himself
went up with it to the schoolroom, followed by Mrs. Whitaker, Eva and
George. Florian said he was safe, and was in touch with Claude. He gave
an address for them to write to if this message caught their eye.
Louise and Chérie embraced each other with tears of joy. Claude and
Florian were safe! Safe! And would one day come over to England to fetch
them. Perhaps in a month or two the war would be over.
Louise dreamt every night of Claude's return. She pictured his arrival,
the sound of his footsteps in the garden, his voice in the hall--then
his strong arms around her.... Ah! but then he would see Mireille! He
would ask what had happened--he would have to be told....
No! No! Mireille must be healed before he arrives. He must never
know--Never! She need not tell him. She must not tell him.
Or must she?
It became an obsession. Must she tell him? Why, why must she tell him?
Why break his heart? No; he need never know--never! Mireille must be
healed before he arrives. Mireille must be taught to speak and smile
again. Mireille must find again the dear shrill voice of her childhood,
the sweet piercing treble laughter with which to welcome his return. The
laughter and the voice of Mireille! Where were they?
Had the Holy Saints got them in their keeping?
Louise fell on her knees a hundred times a day and prayed to God and to
the Virgin Mary and to the Saints to give back to Mireille her voice.
Perhaps Saint Agnes would help her? Or little Saint Philomena, who both
were martyred in their thirteenth year. Or if not, surely there was
Saint Anthony of Padua who would restore Mireille's voice to her. He was
the Saint who found and gave back what one had lost. And to Saint
Anthony she prayed, in hope and faith for many days; in anguish and
despair for many weeks.... Then, suddenly, she prayed no more.
From one day to another her gentle face changed. The soft lines seemed
suddenly to be carved out of stone. When she sat alone face to face with
Mireille their eyes would gaze into each other with the same fixity and
stupefaction; but while the gaze of the child was clear and vacant, the
eyes of the mother were wild and wide with some dark horror and
despair. Fear--fear--the mad affrightment of a lost spirit haunted her,
and with the dawn of each new day seemed to take deeper root in her
being, seemed to rise from ever profounder depths of woe and horror.
"Loulou! dearest! What is the matter? Are you ill?" Chérie asked her one
morning, noting her lagging footsteps and her deathly pallor.
"No, darling, no," said Louise. "But--you?" She asked the question
suddenly, turning and fixing her burning eyes on the girl's face.
"I? Why do you ask me?" smiled Chérie, surprised.
"Are you well?" insisted Louise. "The English boy told me"--Louise
seemed hardly able to speak--"that the other day--you fainted."
"Oh!" Chérie laughed and shrugged her shoulders. "How silly of him to
tell you. It was nothing. They were teaching me to play hockey ... and
suddenly I was giddy and I stumbled and fell. I am often giddy and sick.
It is nothing. I believe I am a little anæmic. But I really am quite
well. Really, really!" she repeated laughing and embracing Loulou. "I am
always as hungry as a wolf!"
And she danced away to find "Monsieur George" and scold him for telling
tales.
Louise's eyes followed her with a deep and questioning gaze.
CHAPTER X
The Curate of Lindfield had arranged a Benefit Concert for the refugees.
It was to be held in the schoolhouse on the last Saturday in September,
and the proceeds were to be divided among the Belgian refugees of the
neighbourhood, to whom also complimentary tickets were sent. The two
front rows of seats were reserved exclusively for them.
For weeks past the excitement among the amateur performers who had
offered their services had been intense. Miss Snelgrove, the Whitakers'
nearest neighbour, who was going to sing "Pur dicesti" and "Little Grey
Home in the West," had been alternately gargling and practising all day,
until it was often hard to make out which of the two she was actually
doing.
Finally her throat became so sore that Mrs. Mellon, of "The Grange," had
to be asked to sing in her stead.
Mrs. Mellon, stout and good-tempered, said she would do anything for
charity; so the "Habanera" from "Carmen" was put on the program instead
of "Pur dicesti" and the "Little Grey Home"; and Mrs. Mellon heroically
untrimmed her best hat, so as to have the red velvet rose which adorned
it to wear in her hair.
"But surely," said Miss Snelgrove, who had magnanimously gone to see her
on the eve of the concert to ask how her throat felt--she herself spoke
in a hoarse whisper--"surely you are not going to sing Carmen in
costume, are you?"
"No, not exactly in costume," said Mrs. Mellon, trying the rose first
over the left temple and then under her right ear, "but I think the
dress ought to be suited to the song; don't you? I have had my black
lace shortened, and have added a touch of colour ... here and there...."
Mrs. Mellon indicated her ample bosom and her portly hips. "A scarlet
sash, and the red rose in my hair will be quite effective. I _had_
thought of having a cigarette in my hand--as Carmen, you know--but Mr.
Mellon and the vicar thought better not.
"L'amour est enfant de Bohêm-ah,
"See tew ne maim pah, je t'aim-ah"....
she warbled in her rich padded contralto, and the envious Miss Snelgrove
felt her own small, scratchy soprano contract painfully in her
overworked throat.
George Whitaker was to perform a few conjuring tricks which he had
learned from a book called _Magic in the Home_. He had performed them
innumerable times in the family circle, with great adroitness and
success; but when the evening of the concert came round he vowed he
would not be able to do anything.
"I know I shall make an ass of myself," he said repeatedly to every one,
and nobody had time to contradict him. About an hour before they were to
start he stood with Chérie in the hall, waiting for the others.
Chérie was wearing a white muslin gown of Eva's, which George knew very
well, and which made him feel almost brotherly towards her. Mrs.
Whitaker and Eva were still upstairs dressing, and Loulou had gone to
put Mireille to bed, telling the maid in anxious maternal English to
"wake on her, is it not?"
"I know I shall make an ass of myself," repeated George. "My hands are
quite clammy."
"What a pity!" sighed Chérie sympathetically, shaking her comely head.
"Most awfully clammy. Just feel them," said George, stretching out to
her a large brown hand.
"I can see that they are," said Chérie.
"Oh, but just feel," said George.
Chérie cautiously touched his palm with the tip of one finger. "Most
clammy indeed," she said; and George laughed; and Chérie laughed too.
"Besides," said the conjuror, "I am nervous. I positively am. Heart
thumping and all that kind of thing."
"Dear, dear," said Chérie.
George sighed deeply and repeated, "I know I shall make a hash of
things."
He did.
His was the first number of the program, and when he appeared he was
greeted with prolonged and enthusiastic applause. Things bulged in his
back and things dropped out of his sleeves; objects he should not have
had popped out of his pocket and rolled under the piano; flags appeared
and unfurled themselves long before they should have done so and in
parts of his person where flags are not usually seen.
His mother sat bathed in a cold sweat as he fumbled and bungled, and Eva
kept her eyes tightly shut and prayed that it might finish soon. But it
did not. The flags, which should have been the crowning patriotic finale
of his performance, having appeared in the beginning of it, there seemed
to the agonized George to be nothing to finish with and no way of
finishing. He went on and on, stammering and swallowing with a dry
palate, clutching a hat, a handkerchief, and an egg, and wondering what
on earth he was going to do with them.
Chérie had watched him solemnly enough in the beginning, but when he
caught her eye and dropped the egg something seemed to leap into her
throat and strangle her. When a tennis-ball dropped from his sleeve and
he had to crawl after it under the grand piano while the Union Jack
hidden up his back slowly unfurled itself behind him, she felt that she
must laugh or die.
She laughed; she laughed, hiding her face in her hands, her forehead and
neck crimson, her slim shoulders heaving, while Loulou nudged her
fiercely and whispered, "_Ne ris pas!_"
George, returning from under the piano caught sight of that small,
shaking figure in the front row; his hands grew clammier, his throat
drier.
At last the curate, to end the painful performance, started applauding
in the wings, and the abashed conjurer turned and walked quickly
away--with a rabbit peering out of his coat-tail pocket.
In the wings he met the curate, who tried to comfort him. "Don't you
mind. It wasn't so bad!" he said genially, clapping George on the back.
"That silly girl laughing in the front row put you out."
"Not at all, not at all," declared George. "It was that beastly egg.
Besides," he added, "everybody ought to have laughed. I wanted them to
laugh. It was intended to be a funny number."
"Oh, was it?" said the curate, somewhat sourly. "You should have
announced that on the program. Nobody would have thought it to look at
you."
But the next number was already beginning. Mrs. Mellon was on the
platform clasping a fan in her gloved hands. The gloves were tight and
white and short, and so were her sleeves, and between the two a portion
of red and powerful elbow was disclosed. The rose was in her hair, the
sash round her waist, her eyes flashed with impassioned Spanish
vivacity. At the piano the timid, short-sighted Mr. Mellon took his
seat, after a good deal of adjustment of the creaky piano-stool.
No sooner had he nervously started the first notes of the introductory
bars than Mrs. Mellon's loud contralto burst from her, and with hand on
hip, she informed the audience in French that love was a rebellious
bird.
Mr. Mellon, who still had three bars of introduction to play, floundered
on awhile, then turned a bewildered face to his wife and stopped
playing. There followed a brief low-voiced discussion as to who was
wrong--she asking him angrily why he did not go on, and he murmuring
that she ought to have waited four bars. Then they began again; and once
more Mrs. Mellon told every one that love was a rebellious bird. With
Latin fervour, with much heaving of breast and flashing of eye, she
declared, "_Si tew ne m'aim-ah pas--je t'aim-ah_," and the warning, "_Si
je t'aim-ah prends garde a toe-ah_" seemed to acquire a real and very
terrifying significance.
Again Chérie, who had listened with becoming seriousness to the opening
bars, was seized with a fit of spasmodic laughter. The agitated Mrs.
Mellon telling every one to beware of her love seemed to her to be the
most ludicrous thing she had ever heard; and she bowed her face in her
hands and rocked to and fro with little gasps of hysterical laughter.
Louise glanced at her and then at Mrs. Mellon; and then she, too, was
caught by the horrible infection. Biting her lips and with quivering
nostrils, she sat rigid and upright, staring at the platform, but her
shoulders shook and the tears rolled down her face, which was crimson
with silent laughter.
Mrs. Mellon must have seen it--were the culprits not in the first
row?--and she looked disdainfully away from them; but her song grew
fiercer and fiercer, her notes grew louder and higher as she soared away
from the pitch and left poor Mr. Mellon tinkling away in the original
key, about three semitones below.
The other refugees, sitting on either side of Chérie and Louise, turned
and looked at them; the Pitou children began to giggle but were quickly
pinched back into seriousness by their mother.
The next number on the program was a dance; a somewhat modified Salomé
dance, performed by Miss Price.
When Miss Price ran coyly in with bare legs and feet, and a few Oriental
jewels jingling round her scantily draped form, even Madame Pitou gave
way completely, and had to let the little Pitous laugh as they would,
while she, with her face hid behind her handkerchief, gasped and choked
and gurgled. The convulsive hilarity soon gained all the refugees. Every
posture of Miss Price, her every gesture, every waggle of her limbs,
every glimpse of the soles of her feet--somewhat soiled by contact with
the stage carpet--made all the occupants of the two front rows rock and
moan with laughter. Those immediately behind them noticed it. Then
others; it was whispered through the hall that the refugees were
laughing. Soon the entire audience was craning its neck to look at the
unworthy, thankless foreigners for whose benefit the entertainment had
been arranged, and who were rudely and stupidly laughing like two rows
of lunatics.
The unwitting Miss Price was just rising from an attitude of genuflexion
with a rapturous smile and two black marks on her knees, when she caught
sight of the Pitou boy writhing with silent merriment at the end of the
first row. Her eye wandered along that row and the next one and she saw
all the bowed and quivering figures, the flushed faces hidden in
handkerchiefs, and the heaving shoulders.
Casting upon them a glance of ineffable disdain she walked haughtily
with her bare legs into the wings. Mr. Mellon rippled on at the piano
for a little while, then he, too, stopped and hurried off the stage at
the nearest exit.
Behind the scenes the artists were assembled in an indignation-meeting.
There were eleven numbers still to come, but no one would go on. It was
proposed that the curate should go out and make a short but cutting
speech; and he went half-way out and then came back again, not having
anything ready to say. Besides the sight of the refugees still convulsed
with laughter upset him. For their part his appearance and disappearance
did nothing to allay their condition, now bordering on collective
hysteria.
Finally, after rapid consultation in the wings, the good-natured Miss
Johnson was prevailed upon to go out and sing the "Merry Pipes of Pan."
She was not nervous and did not care whether the silly refugees laughed
or not.
When she stepped out she saw that Mr. Mellon was not there to accompany
her, so after a long wait she went off into the wings on one side, just
as Mr. Mellon--wiping his mouth after a hasty refreshment--came hurrying
in on the other.
Miss Johnson had to be coaxed and driven and pushed out again, and this
so flustered her that she forgot most of her words and had to make a
series of inarticulate sounds until she came to the refrain.
Here she felt safe.
"Then follow the mipes,"
she warbled,
"The perry mipes----"
There seemed to be something wrong with the words, but she could not get
them right
"Yet, the perry perry mipes of Pan!"
"Gracious goodness," murmured the husky Miss Snelgrove to Mrs. Whitaker,
who sat near her, "what a strident voice!"
"Yes," assented Mrs. Whitaker. "And what _are_ the 'perrimipes,' I
wonder?"
* * * * *
There was no denying it. The concert was a fiasco. Owing to the
execrable behaviour of the refugees and the contagion of their senseless
laughter, a kind of hysteria gained the hall and half the audience was
soon in a condition of brainless and uncontrollable hilarity.
Every new number was greeted with suffocated giggles, sometimes even
with screams of laughter from the younger portion of the audience.
The curate--who had himself been found holding both his sides in one of
the empty schoolrooms--made a caustic speech at the close of the
performance about "our well-meant efforts, our perchance too modest
talents," having appealed mainly to the risible faculties of their
foreign guests, and he had pleasure in stating that the sum collected
was eighteen pounds seven shillings and sixpence.
The refugees slunk home and were treated like pariahs for many weeks
afterwards; while the word "Concert" was not pronounced for months in
the homes of Mrs. Mellon, of Miss Johnson, or of Miss Price.
CHAPTER XI
CHÉRIE'S DIARY
Loulou is ill, and I am very anxious about her. It must be the English
climate perhaps, for I also do not feel as I used to feel in Bomal. I
often am deathly sick, and faint and giddy; I cannot bear the sight of
things and of people that before I did not mind, or even liked. Certain
puddings, for instance, and all kinds of dishes which I thought so
extraordinarily nice to eat when we first came here, now I cannot bear
to see them when they are brought on the table. Something makes me grind
my teeth and I feel as if I must get up and run out of the room. And I
have the same inexplicable aversion to people; for instance the nice
kind Monsieur George Whitaker--I cannot say what I feel when he comes
near to me; a sort of shuddering terror that makes me turn away so as
not to see him. I cannot bear to look at his strong brown hands with the
little short fair hairs on his wrist. I cannot look at his clear grey
eyes, or at his mouth which always laughs, or at his broad shoulders, or
anything.... There is something in me that shrinks and shudders away
from the sight of him. Have the sorrows and troubles we have passed
through unhinged my reason?...
But to return to Louise. I thought that what made her look so pale and
wild was the anxiety of not hearing from Claude; but since his first
dear letter ten days ago telling us that he is safe, she seems even
worse than before. It is true he has been wounded; but that is almost a
blessing, for the wound is not serious and yet it will keep him safely
in the hospital at Dunkirk for months to come. He may remain slightly
lame as he has been shot in the knee, but that does not matter, and he
says his health is perfect.
Of course I thought Loulou would start at once to go and visit him, as
she can get permission to see him and he has sent her plenty of money
for the journey; but she will not hear of it. She only weeps and raves
when I speak of it; and I do not think she ever sleeps at night. I can
hear her in her room, which is next to mine, moaning and whispering and
praying whenever I wake up. I have asked her why, why she will not go to
see Claude--ah, if only I knew where to find Florian, how I should fly
to his side!--but she shakes her head and weeps and her eyes are full of
terror and madness. I ask her, "Is it because of Mireille? Are you
afraid of telling him about her?" "Yes, yes, yes," she cries. "I am
afraid, afraid of telling him what has made her as she is."
"But, Loulou, dearest, what do you mean? Was it not her fear that the
Germans would kill us that took away her speech? Why should you not tell
Claude? He would comfort you. He knows the Germans were in Bomal! He
knows that they ransacked our house, that they killed Monsieur le Curé
and poor André...."
"Yes, he knows that," answers Louise slowly with her eyes fixed on mine.
"But he does not know----"
Then she is silent.
"What does he not know?"
She grasps my shoulders. "Chérie, Chérie. Are you demented? Have you
forgotten--have you forgotten?"
Forgotten!... In truth, I have forgotten many things. There are gaps in
my memory, wide blank spaces that, no matter how I try to remember, I
cannot fill. Now and then something flashes into those blank spaces, a
fleeting recollection, a transient vision, then the blankness closes
down again and when I try to remember what I have remembered, it is
gone.
I ask Louise to tell me what she means, to tell me what I have
forgotten; but she only stares at me with those horror-haunted eyes and
whispers, "Hush! hush, my poor Chérie!" Then she places her cold hand on
my lips as if to close them.
I will try to remember. I will write down in this book all that remains
in my memory of those terrible days and nights when we fled from home;
when we hid starving and trembling in the woods, and saw through the
trees our church-tower burn like a torch, saw it list over and crash
down in a cloud of smoke and flame; when, crouching in a ditch, we heard
the Uhlans gallop past us and saw them drag two little boys, César and
Émile Duroc, out of their hiding-places in the bushes only a few yards
from us.
We saw them--we saw them!--crush the children's feet with the butts of
their rifles, and then taunt them, telling them to "run away!" I can see
them now--two of the men standing behind the children, holding them
upright by their small shoulders, while a third beat and crunched and
ground their feet into the earth....
* * * * *
But stay ... the wide blank spaces in my brain go back much further than
that.
What is it that Louise says I have forgotten? Let me try to remember.
Let me try to remember.
I will go back to the evening of my birthday. August the fourth. Our
friends come. We dance.
Sur le pont
D'Avignon
On y danse, on y danse....
Then Florian arrives--and goes. The last thing I see clearly--distinct
and clear-cut as a haut-relief carved upon my brain--is Florian,
turning at the end of the road to wave his hand to me. Then he is gone.
I remain standing on the verandah, alone; I can see the row of pink and
white carnations in their pots at my feet; Louise's favourite malmaisons
fill the air with perfume, and the large white daisies among them gleam
like stars in the grey-green twilight; I am wearing my white dress and
the sea-blue scarf Louise has given me that morning. Then little
Mireille's laughing voice calls me; they all come running out to fetch
me, Lucile and Cri-cri, Verveine, Cécile and Jeannette....
Then, suddenly--the gun! the thud and roll of that first distant gun!...
The children have fled, pale, trembling, whispering to their homes, and
we are left alone in the house; alone, Louise, Mireille and I, because
Frieda and Fritz--wait! what do I remember about Fritz? That he is
throwing our gate open to the enemy--no; it is something else ...
something that frightens me more than that--but I cannot remember. I see
Fritz laughing. Whenever I remember Fritz I see him laughing. He is
leaning against a door ... there is a curtain.... I seem to see a red
curtain swaying beside him and he is laughing with his head thrown back.
What is he laughing at?... At me? What is happening that he should laugh
at me? The blank closes round Fritz. He has vanished. I cannot hold
him. It is as if he were made of mist.
But--before that; what do I remember before that?...
The guns are thundering, the windows shake ... a huge sheaf of flame
rises up into the sky. There is a roar, an explosion; it is as if the
world were crashing to pieces.
Then soldiers fill the house; officers take possession of our
rooms--their coats and belts are on our chairs, their helmets are flung
on the piano. There is a tall man with very light eyes....
A tall man with very light eyes....
Let me try to remember.
They order us about; they make Louise cry. One of them is wounded in the
arm--I see it bleeding on the wet cotton-wool that Louise is binding
round it--Now the blank comes.... I feel it coming down like a white
cloud on my brain. Lift it, oh, holy Mother, lift it and let me
remember!
There are two of the men near me; they blow their cigarette-smoke in my
face; they want me to drink out of their glasses.... I weep ... I will
not. They laugh and force me to drink. _Eins, zwei, drei!_--they
threaten me with I know not what--the light eyes of one of them are
close to mine ... impelling me, forcing me.... I am frightened, and I
drink. Then they sing and clink their glasses together. I stand between
them, and they make me drink again--cool frothing champagne and hot
burning brandy--until I am so giddy that the floor heaves under my feet.
I cry and cry. I call Louise ... she is gone from the room. I see
Mireille crouching in a corner staring at me, white and terrified. I
call her--"Mireille! Mireille!" She springs up and rushes to me, she
screams like a maddened animal, and the light-eyed man catches her by
the wrists and laughs. The other man--one of the other men, I don't know
how many there are--one who has red hair and has been reciting something
in German, lies down on the sofa and goes to sleep. But another one--I
remember his round face, I remember that the others were angry with him
and called him names--he comes near to me and says something quickly in
my ear. I am not afraid of him ... I know he is trying to help me ...
but I am so sick and giddy that I do not understand what he says. He
pushes me towards the door. He says in German: "_Geh! Geh! Mach' dass du
fort kommst!_" and again he pushes me toward the door. But I turn to see
what is being done to Mireille. She has a broken glass in her hand and
she is trying to strike the tall officer in the face with it, as if she
were trying to strike at his light eyes and put them out. There is a
streak of blood on his chin but he is still laughing. He snatches up my
blue scarf which is lying on the floor and he ties Mireille's hands
behind her back with it. Then he winds it round and round her until she
cannot move. Wait--wait--let me remember!... Then he takes one of the
leather belts that are on the chair and he straps her to the
railing--the wrought-iron railing that ends the short flight of steps
that lead to the drawing-room. I see him lifting her up those three
shallow steps, I see him kick over the china flower-pot on the top step
in order to get nearer to the iron banister, I see him fasten her to it
with the leather strap.... Her little wild face is turned towards me,
her hands are tied behind her back. I hear what he says in German--he is
laughing and laughing--"_Da bleibst du ... und schaust zu!_" Is he going
to kill her? "_Schau nur zu! Schau nur zu_," he repeats. What does he
mean? Is he going to kill me--to kill me before her eyes?
He comes toward me ... (the white cloud is coming over my brain again).
I see the other officer--the one with the round face, the one who had
tried to push me to the door--Glotz! yes, Glotz, that was his name--I
see him dart forward and catch hold of the other man's arms--stopping
him--keeping him away from me. I rush to Mireille and try to drag her
away from the railing, to free her ... I cannot. My fingers have no
strength. She is crying and moaning. I hear Glotz shouting again to me
in German--"Get away--get away!" He is struggling with the tall man to
give me time to escape. I stumble up the stairs screaming, "Louise!
Louise!" I fall, again and again, at almost every step, but I stumble on
and reach her door--it is locked. Locked from the inside. But I hear
sounds in the room--a man's hoarse agitated voice....
I stagger blindly on. I will go to my room, I will lock myself in there,
and open the window and call for help....
I turn the handle and open my door. On the threshold I stop.... There is
something lying there--a black heap, with blood trickling from it.
Amour! It is Amour, with his skull crushed in.
As I stand looking down at it I hear a man's footsteps running up the
stairs--I know it is the tall man--he is coming to find me! I stagger
blindly forward, my feet slipping in Amour's blood. I draw the door
after me. I rush forward and hide behind the curtained alcove where my
dresses hang. The man stops at the door and looks in. He sees the dead
dog on the threshold; he says "_Pfui_" and tries to push it aside with
his foot. He glances round the apparently empty room, then he turns away
and I hear him going down the passage, opening other doors, thumping at
Louise's door, where the voice of a man answers him.... Then I hear him
running upstairs to the top floor in search of me.
I slip from my hiding-place, I stumble again over the horrible thing
that was Amour, and I rush down the stairs and into the drawing-room.
Mireille is still there, tied to the banister, her face thrown back, the
tears streaming from her eyes. She is alone, but for the red-haired
officer asleep and snoring on the sofa. A thought has come to me. I
cross the room, which swims round me, and I go to the sideboard--I take
the bottle of corrosive sublimate from the shelf where Louise had put
it--I open it and shake some of the little pink tablets into my
hand--then I run to the table where the wine-glasses stand. One of them
is still half-filled with champagne. I drop the tablets into it. Even as
I do so I hear the man coming downstairs. He appears on the top of the
short flight, near Mireille, and laughs as he sees me. "Ha, ha! the
dovelet who tried to escape!"
I smile up at him. I smile, moving back towards that side of the table
where his wine-glass stands. He passes his hand over his forehead and
hair; his face is hot; I know he is going to drink again. Then he
lurches towards me; he puts one hand round my waist and with the other
grasps the glass on the table.... Now this again I see, clear-cut in my
memory as if carved into it with a knife; the tall man standing beside
me raising the wine-glass to his lips....
He stops--he looks down into the glass. His face is motionless,
expressionless. He merely stares at the little bright pink heap at the
bottom of the glass from which spiral streaks of colour slowly curl up
and tint the pale-gold wine.
For what seems to me hours or eternities he stares at the glass; then
his light eyes turn slowly upon me. And this is the last thing I see.
I carry the gaze of those light eyes with me as I slip suddenly into
unconsciousness. I hear a crash--is it the glass that has fallen?... I
feel the grasp of two strong hot hands on my arms--is he holding me, or
crushing me down? I hear Mireille shriek as I try madly to beat back the
enveloping darkness. Mireille's piercing voice follows me into oblivion.
Then nothing more....
Nothing more.
* * * * *
The cloud that blots out consciousness lifts for an instant--is it a
moment later? or hours later? Or years later?... I have no idea.
I feel that I am being lifted ... carried along ... then flung down. I
feel my head thrown far back, my hair dragged from my forehead.... The
world is full of rushing horrors, of tearing, racking pain.... Then
again nothing more.
Fritz?... Is it then that I see him laughing as he looks at me? He is
standing near a red curtain--he is speaking to some one, but his eyes
are upon me and he laughs....
Once more unconsciousness like a black velvet tunnel engulfs me.
* * * * *
Out of the darkness comes Louise's voice calling me softly ... then
louder ... then screaming my name. I open my eyes. She is bending over
me. She lifts me up ... she wraps a shawl round my head, she drags me
along ... drags me down the steps and out of the house and down a stony
road that leads to the woods.
It is not day and it is not night; it is dawn perhaps.
Thirst and a deathly sickness are upon me.... I can go no farther. I
lean my head against a tree, the rough bark of it wounds my forehead as
I slip to the ground and fall on the damp leaves and moss.
I moan and cry.
"Hush! for the love of heaven! Hush!" ... It is Louise's voice. "Hide,
hide, lie down!"
And she drags me into a deep ditch overgrown with brambles. We hear
horses gallop past and men's voices, full guttural voices that we know
and dread. They ride on. They are gone. No--they stop.
They have found widow Duroc's two little boys hiding in the bushes....
Little César is shouldering a wooden gun and points it at them. In a
moment three of the men are off their horses.... The children must be
punished.
The children are punished.
... Then the men ride on. But the torture of those children has reminded
me of Mireille. "Mireille--" I cry. "We must go back and fetch
Mireille!"
"Hush! Mireille is here."
Mireille is here! She is not dead? Then who is dead?
"No one, no one is dead," says Louise, "we are all three here."
No--no--no! Somebody is dead. Somebody has been killed, I know it. I
know it. Who is it? Is it I--is it Chérie who is dead? Louise's arms are
about me, her tears fall on my face.
Then once again the velvet mist falls, and the world is blotted out.
* * * * *
We are on board a ship, dipping and rising on green-grey waters....
Many people are around us; derelicts like ourselves....
Soon the white cliffs of England shine and welcome us.
CHAPTER XII
CHÉRIE'S DIARY
November 2nd (_All Souls_).--It is strange, but even yet the feeling
comes over me now and again that somebody was murdered on that night.
And, strangest of all, I cannot free myself of the thought that it was
I--I, who was killed, I, who am no more. I cannot describe the feeling.
Doubtless it is folly. It is weakness and shock. It is what the good
English doctor who has been called in to see us all--especially to try
and cure Mireille--calls "psychic trauma." He says Mireille is suffering
from psychic trauma; that means that her soul has been wounded.
Sometimes I feel as if my soul had not only been wounded but that it had
been killed--murdered while I was unconscious. I feel as if it were only
a ghost, a spectre that resembles me and bears my name, but not the real
Chérie, that wanders in this English garden, that speaks and smiles,
kisses and comforts Louise, prays for Claude and for Florian.
Florian! Florian! Where are you? Are you dead, too? Is this sense of
annihilation, of unreality in me but an omen, a warning of your real
death? My brave young lover, blue-eyed and gay, have you gone from
life? If I wander through all the world, if I journey to the ends of the
earth, shall I never meet you again?
Oh God! I wish we were all safely dead, Louise and I and poor little
Mireille; all lying silent and at peace, with closed eyes and quiet
folded hands. I often think how good it would be if we could all three
escape from life, as we escaped from the foe-haunted wood that night; if
we could silently slip away, out of the long days and the dark nights;
out of the hot summers and the dreary winters; out of feverish youth and
desolate old age; out of hunger and thirst, out of exile and
home-sickness, out of the past and out of the future, out of love and
out of hate. Oh! to lie in peace under the waving trees of the little
cemetery in Bomal, all with quiet heart and closed eyes. And by our side
like a marble hero, Florian, Florian as I have known and loved him,
Florian faithful and brave and true.
... But what of Claude? What would he do alone in the world, poor lame
Claude, whose country is ravaged, whose home is devastated, whose wife
fears him, whose child cannot speak to him ... and whose sister, though
she lives, has been murdered in her sleep?
* * * * *
_November 15th._--Doctor Reynolds called today. Louise said she wanted
him. Then when he came she would not see him. She locked herself in her
room, and nobody could persuade her to come down.
So it was I who took Mireille into the drawing-room where Mrs. Whitaker
and the doctor were waiting for us. They were talking rather excitedly
when I knocked at the door--at least Mrs. Whitaker was--but when we
entered she did not say a word.
She looked me up and down and I felt sorry that I had Louise's old black
frock on instead of the new navy suit they had made for me a month ago.
But I cannot fasten it, it is so tight round my throat and waist. That
reminds me that when Mrs. Whitaker said the other day that she wished
Doctor Reynolds to see me, I laughed and told her about my dresses being
so tight, assuring her therefore that there could not be much wrong with
me. She did not laugh, however; on the contrary, she stared at me very
strangely and fixedly, and did not answer.
I don't know what is wrong in the house, but everybody seems silent and
constrained and not so kind as they used to be. Eva has been sent away
to stay with friends in Hastings, and George, who is at Aldershot, comes
home for a day or so every now and then, but hardly ever speaks to us.
He wanders about the roads near the house, or goes into the garden, the
sad rainy garden, flicking the wet grasses and flowerless plants with
his riding-stick. He often glances up at the window where I sit as if he
would like to speak to us; but if I nod and smile at him he looks at me
for an instant and then turns away. I have an idea that his mother
objects to his talking with us much. He wanted Louise or me to read
French with him, but after the first day his mother had a long talk with
him and he did not come to our sitting-room again.
Perhaps they are tired of having us in the house. I am not surprised. We
are doleful creatures, and we all have something the matter with us. I
myself sometimes imagine I am going into consumption; I feel so strange
and faint, I feel so sick when I eat, and I have the most terrible pains
in my chest. Also I am anæmic, I know. But still I don't cough. So
perhaps I am all right.
When we went into the drawing-room today the kindly old doctor felt
Mireille's pulse and spoke to her, but all the time he was looking at
me, and so was Mrs. Whitaker. He asked me several questions and when I
told him what I felt, he coughed and said, "Hm.... Yes. Quite so." At
last he glanced at Mrs. Whitaker, who at once got up and left the room
with Mireille.
The doctor then beckoned to me and took my hand.
"My poor girl," he said, "have you anything to tell me?"
I was frightened. "What do you mean? Am I going to die? Am I very ill?"
He shook his head. "No. Why should you die? People don't die--" he
commenced, and stopped.
"What about Mireille?" I asked, feeling terrified, I knew not why.
"Now we are speaking of you," he said, quite sternly.
Again he stopped as if expecting me to say something. I was bewildered.
Perhaps the old man was a little strange in his head.
He coughed once more and his face flushed. Then he said: "I am an old
man, my dear. I am a father--" He stopped again. "And I know all the
sadness and wickednesses of the world. You may confide in me."
I said: "Thank you very much. I am sure I can."
There was another long silence. He seemed to be waiting. Then he got up
and his face was a little hard. "Well," he said, "perhaps you prefer
speaking to Mrs. Whitaker."
"Oh no!" I exclaimed. "Why--not at all."
Again he waited. Then he took his hat and gloves. "Well--as you like,"
he said abruptly. "I cannot compel you to speak. You must go your own
way. I suppose you have your reasons." And he left the room.
I stood petrified with wonder. What did he mean about my going my own
way? Why did he seem displeased with me? As I opened the door to go back
to my room, I heard him in the hall speaking to Mrs. Whitaker.
"No," he was saying. "I feel sure I am not mistaken. But she would not
approach the subject at all."
What a queer nightmare world we are living in!
* * * * *
_Later._--I am expected to say something, I know not what. Everybody
looks at me with an air of expectation--that is to say, Mrs. Whitaker
does. But strangest thing of all, I sometimes think that Loulou does
too. There are long silences between us, and when I raise my eyes I find
her looking at me with a sort of breathless eagerness, an expression of
anxiety and suspense of which I cannot grasp the meaning.
* * * * *
_Late at night._--Mrs. Whitaker was very strange this evening. She came
into my bedroom without warning, and found me on my knees. I was weeping
and saying my prayers. She suddenly came towards me with an impulsive
gesture of kindness and took me in her arms.
"Poor little girl!" she said, and she kissed me. She added, as if she
were echoing the sentiments of the kind old doctor, "Chérie, I am a
mother--" Then she stopped. "And I am not such a sour, hard person as I
look." The tears stood in her eyes so I took her hand and kissed it. She
sat down on a low chair and drew me to a footstool beside her. "Tell
me," she said. "Tell me everything. I shall understand."
So I told her. I told her how unhappy I was about Louise and Mireille, I
told her about Claude in the hospital. She said, "I know all that. Go
on." Then I told her about Florian, how brave and handsome he was, and
that we were betrothed. Then I wept bitterly and told her I thought that
he was dead.
She raised my face with her hand and looked into my eyes. "Is it he?"
she said.
I did not understand. She repeated her question. "Is it he? Did he--"
she hesitated as if looking for a word--"did he wrong you?"
"Why? How wrong me?" I asked.
She gazed deeply into my eyes and I gazed back as steadfastly at her,
wondering what she meant.
"Did he betray you?"
"Betray me? Never!" I cried. "He could never betray. He is true and
faithful as a saint."
I was hurt that she should have asked such a question. Florian, who has
never looked at or thought of any woman but me! Betray me!
"Well," she said rising to her feet suddenly--her expression of rather
cold dignity again reminded me of the doctor. "If it had been the
outrage of an enemy I know you would have told me. However, let it be
as you wish. I will say only this: where I could have pitied disgrace, I
cannot condone deceit."
* * * * *
And she left me.
Am I dreaming, or are people in this country incomprehensible and
demented?
CHAPTER XIII
Louise looked her doom in the face with steady eyes. No more hope, no
more doubt was possible. This was November. The third month had passed.
What she had dreaded more than death had come to pass. From the first
hour the fear of it had haunted her. Now she knew. She knew that the
outrage to which she had been subjected would endure; she knew that her
shame would live.
In the middle of the night after tossing sleeplessly for hours, the full
realization of this struck her heart like a blow. She sat up with
clenched teeth in the darkness, her hands pressed to her temples.
After a while she slid from her bed and stood motionless in the middle
of the room. Around her the world was asleep. She was alone with her
despair and her horror.
How should she elude her fate? How should she flee from herself and the
horror within her?
She turned on the light and went with quick steps to the mirror. There
she stood with bare feet in her long white nightdress, staring at
herself. Yes. She nodded and nodded like a demented creature at the
reflection she saw before her. She recognized the aspect of it; the
dragged features, the restless eyes, the face that seemed already too
small for her body, the hunted anxious look. That was maternity. To
violence nature had conceded what had been withheld from love. What she
and Claude had longed for, had prayed for--another child--behold, now it
was vouchsafed to her.
With teeth clenched she gazed at her white-draped reflection, she gazed
at the hated fragile frame in which the eternal mystery of life was
being accomplished. With the groan of a tortured animal she hid her face
in her hands. What should she do? Oh God! what should she do?
* * * * *
Then began for Louise the heartbreaking pursuit of liberation, the
nightmare, the obsession of deliverance.
All was vain. Nature pursued its inexorable course.
Then she determined that she must die. There was no help for it--she
must die. She dreaded death; she was tied to life by a two-fold
instinct--her own and that of the unborn being within her. How tenacious
was its hold on life! It would not die and free her. It clung with all
its tendrils to its own abhorred existence. Every night as she lay awake
she pictured what it would be if it were born--this creature conceived
in savagery and debauch, this child that she loathed and dreaded. She
could imagine it living--a demon, a monster, a thing to shriek at, to
make one's blood run cold. Waking and in her dreams she saw it; she saw
it crawling like a reptile, she saw it stained with the colour of blood,
she saw it babbling and mouthing at her, frenzied and insane.... That is
what she would give life to, that is what she would have to nurse and to
nourish; carrying that in her arms she would go to meet her husband when
he came limping back from the war on his crutches.
She pictured that meeting with Claude in a hundred different ways, all
horrible, all dreadful beyond words. Claude staring at her, not
believing, not understanding.... Claude going mad.... Claude lifting his
crutch and crushing the child's skull with it, as Amour's skull had been
crushed--ah! the dead horrible Amour that she had seen when she
staggered out of the room at dawn that day!... That was the first thing
she had seen--that gruesome animal with its brains beaten out and its
gleaming teeth uncovered. She could see it now, she could always see it
when she closed her eyes! What if this sight had impressed itself so
deeply upon her.... Hush! this was insanity; she knew that she was going
mad.
So she must die.
How should she die? And when she was dead, what would happen to
Mireille? And to Chérie?
_Chérie!_ At the thought of Chérie a new rush of ideas overwhelmed
Louise's wandering brain. Chérie! What was the matter with Chérie?
Had not she also that tense look, those pinched features, all those
unmistakable signs that Louise well knew how to interpret? Was it
possible that the same doom had overtaken her?
Then Louise forced herself to remember what she would have given her
life to forget. With eyes closed, with shuddering soul, she compelled
herself to live over again the darkest hours of her life.
... Before daybreak on the 5th of August. The house was silent. The
invaders had gone. Louise, a livid spectre in the pale grey dawn, had
staggered from her room--passing the dead Amour on Chérie's
threshold--and had stumbled down the stairs. There at the foot of the
wrought-iron banister lay Mireille, her mouth open, her breath coming in
gasps, like a little dying bird.
Louise had raised her, had unwound the long scarf that bound her, had
sprinkled water on her face and poured brandy down her throat ... until
Mireille had opened her eyes. Then Louise had seen that they were not
Mireille's eyes. There was frenzy and vacancy in the pale orbs that
wandered round the room, wandered and wandered--until they stopped and
were fixed, suddenly wild, hallucinated and intent. On what were they
fixed with such an expression of unearthly terror? The mother turned to
see.
Mireille's wild gaze was fixed upon a door, the red-curtained door of a
bedroom. It was a spare room, seldom used; sometimes a guest or one of
Claude's patients had slept there.
It was on this door--now flung wide open and with the red drapery torn
down--that Mireille's wild, meaningless gaze was fixed. Louise looked.
Then she looked again, without moving. She could see that the electric
lights were burning in the room; a chair was overturned in the doorway,
and there, there on the bed, lay a figure--Chérie! Chérie still in her
white muslin dress all torn and bloodstained, Chérie with her two hands
stretched upwards and tied to the bedpost above her head. A wide pink
ribbon had been torn from her hair and used to tie her hands to the
brass bedstead. Her face was scratched and bleeding. She was quite
unconscious. Louise thought she was dead.
Ah! how had she found the strength to lift her, to call her, to drag her
back to life, weeping over her and Mireille, gazing with maddened
despair from one unconscious figure to the other?... She had dressed
them, she had dragged and carried them down the stairs at the back of
the house. Should she call for help? Should she go crying their shame
and despair down the village street? No! no! Let no one see them. Let no
one know what had befallen them....
And--listen! Was that not the clatter of Uhlans galloping down the road?
Moaning, staggering, stumbling, she dragged and carried her two helpless
burdens into the woods....
There, the next evening a party of Belgian Guides had found them.
CHAPTER XIV
The Vicar of Maylands, the Reverend Ambrose Yule, was in his study
writing his monthly contribution to the _Northern Ecclesiastical
Review_. He was interested in his subject--"Our Sinful Sundays"--and his
thoughts flowed smoothly on the topic of drink, frivolous talk and open
kinematograph theatres. He wrote quickly and fluently in his neat small
handwriting. A knock at the door interrupted him.
"Yes? What is it?" he asked somewhat impatiently.
"A lady to see you, sir," said Parrot, the comely maid.
"A lady? Who is it? I thought every one knew that I do not receive
today."
"It is one of the foreign ladies staying with Mrs. Whitaker, sir."
"Oh, well. Show her into the drawing-room, and tell your mistress."
"I beg your pardon, sir, but----" a smile flickered over Parrot's mild
face--"she asked specially for you. She said she wished to speak to 'Mr.
the Clergyman' himself. First she said, 'Mr. the Cury' and then she
said, 'Mr. the Clergyman.'"
"Well," sighed the vicar, "show her in." He placed a paper-weight on his
neatly written sheets, rose and awaited his visitor standing on the
hearthrug with his back to the fire.
Parrot ushered in a tall figure in black and then withdrew. The vicar
stepped forward and found himself gazing into the depths of two
resplendent dark eyes set in a very white face.
"Pray sit down," he said, "and tell me in what way I can be of service
to you."
"May I speak French?" asked the lady in a low voice.
"_Mais certainement, Madame_," said the courtly clergyman, who twenty or
thirty years ago had studied Sinful Sundays abroad with intelligence and
attention.
The lady sat down and was silent. She wore black cotton gloves and held
in her hands a small handkerchief, which she clutched and crumpled
nervously into a little ball.
The kindly vicar with his head on one side waited a little while and
then spoke. "You are staying in Maylands? In Mrs. Whitaker's house, I
believe? Have I not seen you, with two young girls?"
"Yes. My daughter and my sister-in-law." Louise's voice was so low that
he had to bend forward to catch her words.
"Indeed. Yes." The vicar joined his finger-tips together, then
disjoined them, then clapped them lightly together, waiting for further
enlightenment. As it was not forthcoming he inquired: "May I know your
name, Madame?"
"Louise Brandès."
"And ... er--monsieur your husband----?" the vicar's face was
interrogative and prepared for sympathy.
"He is wounded, in hospital, at Dunkirk."
"Sad, sad," said the vicar, gently shaking his handsome grey head.
"And ... you wish me to help you to go and see him?"
"No!" Louise uttered the word like a cry. Sudden tears welled up into
her eyes, rolled rapidly down her cheeks and dropped upon her folded
hands in their black cotton gloves.
"_Alors?_ ..." interrogated the vicar, with his head still more on one
side.
Louise raised her dark lashes and looked at the kind handsome face
before her, looked at the narrow benevolent forehead, the firm straight
lips, the beautiful hands (the vicar knew they were beautiful hands)
with the finger-tips lightly pressed together. Instinctively she felt
that here she would find no help. She knew that if she asked for pity,
for protection, for money, it would be given her. But she also knew that
what she was about to crave would meet with a stern repulse.
She had made up her mind that this was to be her last appeal for help,
her last effort to obtain release. He was the priest, he was the
representative of the All-Merciful....
She made the sign of the cross, she dropped on her knees and grasped his
hand. "_Mon pere_," she said--thus she used to address the Curé of
Bomal, butchered on that never-to-be-forgotten night. "I will tell
you----"
The vicar withdrew his hand from her grasp. "I beg you, madam, not to
address me in that way. Also pray rise from your knees and take a seat."
Ah me! how melodramatic were the Latin races! Poor woman! as if all this
were necessary in order, probably, to ask for a few pounds, or to say
that she could not get on with the peppery Mrs. Whitaker.
Louise had blushed crimson and risen quickly to her feet. "I am sorry,"
she said.
And then the kind vicar blushed too and felt that he had behaved like a
brute.
At that moment the door opened and Mrs. Yule entered the room. With her
was Dr. Reynolds, carrying a black leather bag.
"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Yule, catching sight of Louise. "I am sorry,
Ambrose. I did not know you had a visitor."
"All right, dear," said the vicar; "this is Madame Brandès, who is
staying with the Whitakers. She wants to consult me on some personal
matter." Then he turned to Dr. Reynolds. "Well, doctor; how do you find
our boy?"
"Quite all right. Quite all right," said the doctor. "We shall have him
up and playing football again in no time. It is nothing but a strained
tendon. Absolutely nothing at all."
Mrs. Yule had gone towards Louise with outstretched hand. "How do you
do? I am glad to meet you," she said cordially. "You will stay for tea
with us, I hope. My daughter, too, will be so pleased to see you.
Not"--she added, with a little break in her voice--"that she really can
see you. Perhaps you have heard that my dear daughter is blind."
"Blind!" Like a tidal wave the sorrow of the world seemed to overwhelm
Louise. She felt that the sadness of life was too great to be borne.
"Blind," she said. Then she covered her face and burst into tears.
Mrs. Yule's maternal heart melted; her maternal eyes noted the broken
attitude, the tell-tale line of the figure! she stepped quickly forward,
holding out both her hands.
"Come, my dear; sit down. Will you let me take your hat off? This
English weather is so trying if one is not used to it," murmured Mrs.
Yule with Anglo-Saxon shyness before the stranger's unexpected display
of feeling, while the two men turned away and talked together near the
window. Mrs. Yule pressed Louise's black-gloved hand in hers. What
though this outburst were due, as it probably was, to the woman's
condition, to her overwrought nerves, or to who knows what grief and
misery of her own? The fact remained--and Mrs. Yule never forgot
it--that this storm of tears was evoked by the news of her dear child's
affliction. Mrs. Yule's heart was touched.
"You are Belgian, I know," she said in French, sitting down beside
Louise and taking one of the black-gloved hands in her own. "I myself
was at school in Brussels." And indeed her French was perfect, with just
a little touch of Walloon closing the vowels in some of her words. "I
would have called on you long ago--I would have asked you to make
friends with my daughter whose affliction has so distressed your kind
heart; but as you may have heard, my boy met with an accident, and I
have not left the house for many days.... Do wait a moment, Dr.
Reynolds," she added as the doctor approached to bid her good-bye. And
turning to Louise she introduced him to her as "the kindest of friends
and the best of doctors."
"We have met," said Dr. Reynolds, shaking hands with Louise and looking
keenly into her face with his piercing, short-sighted eyes. "Madame
Brandès's little daughter," he added, turning to Mrs. Yule, "is a
patient of mine." There was a moment's silence; then the doctor,
turning to the vicar, added in a lower voice: "It seems that their home
was invaded, and the child terribly frightened. It is a very sad case.
She has lost her reason and her power of speech."
Mrs. Yule in her turn was deeply moved and quick tears of sympathy
gathered in her eyes. With an impulse of tenderest pity she bent
suddenly forward and kissed the exile's pale cheek.
Like a flash of lightning in the night, it was revealed to Louise that
now or never she must make her confession, now or never attempt a
supreme, ultimate effort. This must be her last struggle for life. As
she looked from Mrs. Yule's kind, tear-filled eyes to the calm, keen
face of the physician hope bounded within her like a living thing. The
blood rushed to her cheeks and she rose to her feet.
"Doctor!..." she gasped. Then she turned to Mrs. Yule again, it seemed
almost easier to say what must be said, to a woman. "I want to say
something.... I must speak...." And again turning to the doctor--"Do you
understand me if I speak French?"
Doctor Reynolds looked rather like a timid schoolboy, notwithstanding
his spectacles and his red beard, as he replied: "Oh ... _oui, Madame.
Je comprong._"
The vicar stepped forward. Looking from Louise to his wife and to the
doctor he said: "Perhaps I had better leave you...."
But Louise quickly extended a trembling hand. "No! Please stay," she
pleaded. "You are a priest. You are the doctor of the soul. And my soul
is sick unto death."
The vicar took her extended hand. "I shall be honoured by your
confidence," he said in courtly fashion, and seating himself beside her
waited for her to speak.
Nor did he wait in vain. In eloquent passionate words, in the burning
accents of her own language, the story of her martyrdom was revealed,
her torn and outraged soul laid bare.
In that quiet room in the old-fashioned English vicarage the ghastly
scenes of butchery and debauch were enacted again; the foul violence of
the enemy, the treason, the drunkenness, the ribaldry of the men who
with "mud and blood" on their feet, had trampled on these women's
souls--all lived before the horrified listeners, and the martyrdom of
the three helpless victims wrung their honest British hearts.
Louise had risen to her feet--a long black figure with a spectral face.
She was Tragedy itself; she was the Spirit of Womanhood crushed and
ruined by the war; she was the Grief of the World.
And now she flung herself at the doctor's feet, her arms outstretched,
her eyes starting from their orbits, imploring him, in a paroxysm of
agony and despair, to release and save her.
She fell face-downwards at his feet, shaken with spasmodic sobs,
writhing and quaking as if in the throes of an epileptic fit. Mrs. Yule
and the doctor raised her and placed her tenderly on the couch. Water
and vinegar were brought, and wet cloths laid on her forehead.
There followed a prolonged silence.
"Unhappy woman!" murmured the vicar, aghast. "Her mind is quite
unhinged."
"Yes," said the doctor; but he said it in a different tone, his
experienced eye taking in every detail of the tense figure still
thrilled and shaken at intervals by a convulsive tremor. "Yes,
undoubtedly. She is on the verge of insanity." He paused. Then he looked
the vicar full in the face. "And unless she is promptly assisted she
will probably become hopelessly and incurably insane."
A low cry escaped Mrs. Yule's lips. "Oh, hush!" she said, bending over
the pallid woman on the couch, fearful lest the appalling verdict might
have reached her. But Louise's weary spirit had slipped away into
unconsciousness.
"A sad case--a terribly sad case," said the vicar, thoughtfully pushing
up his clipped grey moustache with his finger-tips and avoiding the
doctor's resolute gaze. "She shall have our earnest prayers."
"And our very best assistance," said the doctor.
As if the words of comfort had reached her, Louise sighed and opened her
eyes.
Mrs. Yule's protecting arm went round her.
"Of course, of course," said Mr. Yule to the doctor. Then he crossed the
room and stood by the couch, looking down at Louise. "You will be brave,
will you not? You must not give way to despair. We are all here to help
and comfort you."
Louise raised herself on her elbow and looked up at him. A dazzling
light of hope illuminated her face. Mr. Yule continued gravely and
kindly.
"You can rely upon our friendship--nay, more--upon our tenderest
affection. Our home is open to you if, as is most probable, Mrs.
Whitaker desires you to leave her house. My wife and daughter will nurse
and comfort you, will honour and respect you----" Louise broke into low
sobs of gratitude as she grasped Mrs. Yule's hand and raised it to her
lips. "And in the hour----" the vicar drew himself up to his full height
and spoke in louder, more impressive tones--"and in the hour of your
supreme ordeal, you shall not be forsaken."
Louise rose, vacillating, to her feet. "What ... what do you mean?" she
gasped. Her countenance was distorted; her eyes burned like black
torches in her ashen face.
"I mean," declared the clergyman, his stern eyes fixed relentlessly,
almost threateningly, upon the trembling woman, "I mean that whatever
you may have suffered at the hands of the iniquitous, you have no
right"--he raised his hand and his resonant voice shook with the
vehemence of his feeling--"no right yourself to contemplate a crime."
A deep silence held the room. The sacerdotal authority wielded its
powerful sway.
"A crime! a crime!" gasped Louise, and the convulsive tremor seized her
anew. "Surely it is a greater crime to drive me to my death."
"The laws of nature are sacred," said the vicar, his brow flushing, a
diagonal vein starting out upon it; "they may not be set aside. All you
can do is humbly to submit to the Divine law."
Louise raised her wild white face and gazed at him helplessly, but Dr.
Reynolds stepped forward and stood beside her. "My dear Yule," he said
gravely, "do not let us talk about Divine law in connection with this
unhappy woman's plight. We all know that every law, both human and
Divine, has been violated and trampled upon by the foul fiends that this
war has let loose."
The vicar turned upon him a face flushed with indignation. "Do you mean
to say that this would justify an act which is nothing less than
murder?"
The doctor made no reply and the vicar looked at him, aghast.
"Reynolds, my good friend! You do not mean to tell me that you would
dare to intervene?"
Still the doctor was silent. Louise, her ashen lips parted, her wild
eyes fixed upon the two men, awaited her sentence.
"I can come to no hasty decision," said the man of science at last. "But
if on further thought I decide that it is my duty--as a man and a
physician--to interrupt the course of events, I shall do so." He paused
an instant while his eye studied the haggard face and trembling figure
of Louise. "_A priori_," he added, "this woman's mental and physical
condition would seem to justify me in fulfilling her wish."
"Ah!" It was a cry of delirious joy from Louise. She was tearing her
dress from her throat, gasping, catching her breath, shaken with
frenzied sobs in a renewed spasm of hysteria.
They had to lift her to the couch again. The doctor hurriedly dissolved
two or three tablets of some sedative drug and forced the beverage
through Louise's clenched teeth. Then he sat down beside her, holding
her thin wrist in his fingers. Soon he felt the disordered intermittent
pulse beat more rhythmically; he felt the tense muscles slacken, the
quivering nerves relax.
Then he turned to the vicar, who stood with his back to the room looking
out of the window at the dreary rain-swept garden.
"Yule," he said, "I shall be sorry if in following the dictates of my
conscience I lose a life-long friendship--a friendship which has been
very precious to me." The vicar neither answered nor moved; but Mrs.
Yule came softly across the room and stood beside the doctor--the man
who had healed and watched over her and those she loved, who fifteen
years before had so tenderly laid her little blind daughter in her arms.
She remained at his side with flushed cheeks, and her lips moved
silently as if in prayer. Her husband stood motionless, looking out at
the misty November twilight.
"Still more does it grieve me," continued the doctor, "to think that any
act of mine should wound your feelings on a point of conscience which
evidently touches you so deeply. But be that as it may, I must obey the
dictates of common humanity which, in this case, coincide exactly with
the teachings of science. Given the condition in which I find this
woman, I feel that I must try my best to save her reason and her life.
The chances are a hundred to one that if the child lived it would be
abnormal; a degenerate, an epileptic." The doctor stepped near the couch
and looked down at the unconscious Louise. "And as for the mother," he
added, pointing to the pitiful death-like face, "look at her. Can you
not see that she is well on her way to the graveyard or the madhouse?"
There was no reply. In the silence that followed Mrs. Yule drew near to
her husband; but he kept his face resolutely turned away and stared out
of the window.
She touched his arm tremulously. "Think, dear," she murmured, "think
that she has a husband--whom she loves, who is fighting in the trenches
for her and for his home. When he returns, will it not be terrible
enough for her to tell him that his own daughter has lost her reason?
Must she also go to meet him carrying the child of an enemy in her
arms?"
The vicar did not answer. He turned his pale set face away without a
word, and left the room.
CHAPTER XV
Dusk, the dreary November dusk, had fallen as Louise hurried homeward
across the damp fields and deserted country roads. She had refused Mrs.
Yule's urgent offer to accompany her or to send some one with her. She
wanted to be alone--alone to look her happiness in the face, alone with
her new heaven-sent ecstasy of gratitude. After the nightmare-days of
hopelessness and despair, behold! life was to be renewed, retrieved,
redeemed. Like a grey cloak of misery her anguish fell away from her;
she stepped forth blissful and entranced into the pathway of her
reflowering youth.
And with the certainty of this deliverance came the faith and hope in
all other joys. Claude would return to her; Belgium would be liberated
and redeemed. Mireille would find her speech again! Yes, Mireille would
find her sweet, soft smile and her sweet shrill laughter. Might it not
be Louise's own gloom that had plunged the sensitive soul of her child
into darkness? Surely now that the storm-cloud was to be lifted from
her, also the over-shadowed child-spirit would flutter back again into
the golden springlight of its day. Surely all joys were possible in this
most beautiful and joyous world. And Louise went with quick, light
steps through the gloaming, half-expecting to see Mireille, already
healed, come dancing towards her, gay and garrulous, calling her as she
used to do by her pet name, "Loulou!"
Or it might be Chérie who would run to meet her, waving her hand to tell
her that the miracle had come to pass!
Chérie! The name, the thought of Chérie struck at Louise's heart like a
sudden blow. Her quick footsteps halted. As if a gust of the November
wind had blown out the light of her happiness, she stood suddenly still
in the middle of the road and felt that around her there was darkness
again.
Chérie!... What was it that the doctor had said to her as he came with
her to the gate of the Vicarage, as he held her hand in his firm, strong
grasp, promising to save her from the deep waters of despair? What were
the words she had then neither understood nor answered, borne away as
she was on the wave of her own tumultuous joy? They suddenly came back
to her now; they suddenly reached her hearing and comprehension. He had
said, looking her full in the face with a meaning gaze, "What about your
sister?"
"What about your sister?" Your sister. Of course he had meant Chérie.
What about her? What about her? Again Louise felt that dull thud in her
heart as if some one had struck it, for she knew, she knew what he
meant--she knew what there was about Chérie.
There was the same abomination, the same impending horror and disgrace.
Had not Chérie herself come and told her, in bewilderment and
simplicity, of the strange questionings, the obscure warnings Mrs.
Whitaker and the doctor had subjected her to? Ah, Louise knew but too
well what it all meant; Louise knew but too well what there was about
Chérie that even to strangers was manifest and unmistakable. Yes, Louise
had dreaded it, had felt it, had known it--though Chérie herself had
not. But until now her own torment of body and soul had hidden all else
from her gaze, had made all that was not her own misery as unreal and
unimportant as a dream. Vaguely, in the background of her thoughts, she
had known that there was still another disaster to face, another fiery
ordeal to encounter, but swept along in the vortex of her own doom she
had flung those thoughts aside; in her own life-and-death struggle she
had not stopped to ask, What of that other soul driving to shipwreck
beside her, broken and submerged by the self-same storm?
But now it must be faced. She must tell the unwitting Chérie what the
future held for her. She must stun her with the revelation of her shame.
For Louise understood--however incredible it might seem to others--that
Chérie was wholly unaware of what had befallen her on that night when
terror, inebriety, and violence had plunged her into unconsciousness.
Not a glimmer of the truth had dawned on her simplicity, not a breath of
knowledge had touched her inexperience. Sullied and yet immaculate,
violated and yet undefiled--of her could it indeed be said that she had
conceived without sin.
Louise went on in the falling darkness with lagging footsteps. Deep down
in her heart her happiness hid its face for the sorrow and shame she
must bring to another.
Then she remembered--with what deep thankfulness!--that though she must
inflict this hideous hurt on Chérie, yet she could also speak to her of
help, she could promise her release and the hope of ultimate peace and
oblivion.
She hurried forward through the darkening lanes, and soon joy awoke
again and sang within her. Yes! There they stood at the open gate, the
two beloved waiting figures--the taller, Chérie, with her arm round the
slender form of Mireille. Louise ran towards them with buoyant step.
"Louise!" cried Chérie. "Where have you been? How quickly you walk! How
bright and happy you look! Why, I could see your smile shining from far
off in the darkness!"
Louise kissed the soft, cold cheeks of both; she took Chérie's warm
hand and the chilly little hand of Mireille and went with them towards
the house. How cheerful were the lighted windows seen through the trees!
How sheltered and peaceful was this refuge! How gracious and generous
were the strangers who had housed and nourished them!
How kind and good and beautiful was life!
* * * * *
"Tell me the truth, Louise," said Chérie that evening, when, having seen
little Mireille safely asleep, Louise returned to the cheerful
sitting-room, where the dancing firelight gleamed on the pink walls and
cosy drawn curtains. "Tell me the truth. You have heard
something--something from Claude ... something----" Chérie flushed to
the lovely low line of the growth of her auburn curls--"from Florian!
You have, you have! I can read it in your face. You have had news of
some kind."
Yes--Louise had had news.
"Good news----"
Yes. Good news. She sat down on a low armchair near the fire and
beckoned with her finger. "Chérie!"
The girl came quickly to her side and sat down on the rug at her feet.
The fire danced and flickered on her red-gold hair and milkwhite oval
face.
"Chérie." ... Louise's voice was low, her eyes cast down. She felt like
a torturer, she felt as if she were murdering a flower, tearing asunder
the closed petals of this girlish soul and filling its cup with poison.
Chérie was looking up into her face with a radiant, expectant smile.
How should she tell her? How should she tell her?...
Louise bent forward and covered the shining, questioning eyes with her
hand. "Tomorrow, Chérie! Tomorrow."
CHAPTER XVI
On the morrow Chérie awoke early. She could not say what had startled
her out of a deep restful slumber, but suddenly she was wide awake,
every nerve tense in a kind of strained expectancy, waiting she knew not
for what. Something had occurred, something had awakened her; and she
was waiting for it to repeat itself; waiting to hear or feel it again.
But whatever it was, sound or sensation, it was not repeated.
Chérie rose quickly, slid her feet into her slippers, and went across
the room to the window. She leaned out with her bare elbows on the
window-sill and looked at the garden--at the glistening lawn, at the
stripped trees, dark and clear-cut against the early sky. It was a
rose-grey dawn, as softly luminous as if it were the month of February
instead of November. There seemed to be a promise of spring in the pale
radiance of the morning.
She knew she could not sleep any more; so she dressed quietly and
quickly, wrapped a scarf round her slim shoulders, and went down into
the garden.
George Whitaker also had awakened early. These were his last few days at
home before leaving for the front, and his spirit was full of feverish
restlessness. His sister Eva was expected back from Hastings that
morning and they would spend two or three happy days together before he
left for the wonderful, and awful adventure of war. He had obeyed his
mother's desire, and had not seen or spoken to their Belgian guests for
many days. Indeed, it was easy--too easy, thought George with a sigh--to
avoid them, for they seemed day by day to grow more shy of strangers and
of friends. George only caught fleeting glimpses of them as they passed
their windows; sometimes he saw a gleam of auburn hair where Chérie sat
with bent head near the schoolroom balcony, reading or at work.
This morning, as he stood vigorously plying his brushes on his bright
hair and gazing absent-mindedly at the garden, he caught sight of
Chérie, with a scarf round her shoulders and a book in her hand, walking
down the gravel pathway towards the summer-house. He flung down his
brushes, finished dressing very quickly, and ran downstairs. After all,
he was leaving in forty-eight hours or so--leaving to go who knows
where, to return who knows when. He might never have such another chance
of seeing her and saying good-bye. True, it was rather soon to say
good-bye. He would probably be meeting her every moment during the next
two days. Eva was coming back, and would be sure to want her little
foreign friend always beside her. Eva had a way of slipping her arm
through Chérie's and drawing her along, saying: "_Allons, Chérie!_"
which was very pleasant in George's recollection. He also would have
liked to slip his arm through the slim white arm of the girl and say,
"_Allons, Chérie!_" He could imagine the flush, or the frown, or the
fleeting marvel of her smile....
In a few moments he was downstairs, out of the house, and running
towards the summer-house. But she was not there.
He found her walking slowly beside the little artificial lake in the
shrubbery, reading her book.
"Good-morning," he said in tones exaggerately casual, as she looked up
in surprise.
"Good-morning, Monsieur George," she said, and the softness of the "g's"
in her French accent was sweet to his ear.
"What are you doing, up so early?"
"_Et vous?_" she retorted, with her brief vivid smile.
"I ... I ... have come to say good-bye," he said.
"Good-bye? Why, I thought you were not going away until the day after
tomorrow."
"Right-o," said George. "No more I am. But you know what a time I take
over things; the mater always calls me a slow-coach. I--I like beginning
to pack up and say good-bye days and weeks before it is time to go."
Again he watched the little half-moon smile that turned up the corners
of her mouth and dimpled her rounded cheek.
"Well then--good-bye," she said, looking up at him for an instant and
realizing that she would be sorry when he had left.
"Good-bye." He took her book from her and held out his hand. She placed
her own soft small hand in his, and he found not another word to say. So
he said "Good-bye" again, and she repeated it softly.
"But now you must go away," she said. "You cannot keep on saying
good-bye and staying here."
"Of course not," said George. "I'll go in a minute." Then he cleared his
throat. "I wonder if you will be here when I come back. I suppose you
would hate to live in England altogether, wouldn't you?"
"I don't know. I have never thought of it," said Chérie.
"Well--but do you like England? Or don't you?"
"_S'il vous plaît Londres?_" quoted Chérie, glancing up at him and
laughing. Surely, thought George, no other eyelashes in the world gave
such a starry look to two such sea-blue eyes.
"In some ways I do not like England," she remarked, thoughtfully. "I do
not like--I mean I do not understand the English women. They seem
so--how shall I say?--so hard ... so arid...." She plucked a little
branch from a bush of winter-berries and toyed with it absently as she
walked beside him. "They all seem afraid of appearing too friendly or
too kind."
"Perhaps so," said George.
"When we first came here your sister warned me about it. She said, 'You
must never show an English woman that you like her; it is not customary,
and would be misunderstood.'"
"That's so. We don't approve of gush," said George.
"If you call nice things by horrid names they become horrid things,"
said Chérie sternly and sententiously. "Natural impulses of friendliness
are not 'gush.' When I first meet strangers I always feel that I like
them; and I go on liking them until I find out that they are not nice."
"You go the wrong way round," said George. "In England we always dislike
people until we know they are all right. Besides, if you were to start
by being sweet and amiable to strangers, they would probably think you
wanted to borrow money from them, or ask them favours."
"How mean-minded!" exclaimed Chérie.
George laughed. "You should see the mater," he said, "how villainously
rude she is to people she meets for the first time. That is what makes
her such a social success."
Chérie looked bewildered. George was silent a moment; then he spoke
again.
"And what do you think about the English men? Do you dislike them too?"
"I don't really know them," said Chérie; "but they--they _look_ very
nice," and she turned her blue eyes full upon him, taking a quick survey
of his handsome figure and fair, frank face.
George felt himself blush, and hated himself for it.
"You--you would never think of marrying an Englishman, would you?"
Chérie shook her head, and the long lashes drooped over the sea-blue
stars. "I am affianced to be married," she said with her pretty foreign
accent, "to a soldier of Belgium."
"Oh, I see," said George rather huskily and hurriedly. "Of course. Quite
so."
They walked along in silence for a little while. Then he opened her
book, which he still held in his hand. "What were you reading? Poetry?"
He glanced at the fly-leaf, on which were written the words "_Florian
Audet, à Chérie_," and he quickly turned the page. "Poetry" ... he said
again, "by Victor Hugo." Then he added, "Why, this sounds as if it were
written for you: '_Elle était pâle et pourtant rose...._' That is just
what you are."
Chérie did not answer. What was this strange flutter at her heart again?
It frightened her. Could it be angina pectoris, or some other strange
and terrible disease? Not that it hurt her; but it thrilled her from
head to foot.
"You are quite _pâle et pourtant rose_ at this very moment," repeated
George, looking at her. Then he added rather bitterly as he handed her
back the book, "I suppose you are thinking of the day when you will
marry your soldier-lover."
"Perhaps I shall not live to marry anybody," said Chérie in a low voice.
"What an idea!" exclaimed George.
"And as for him," she continued, "he will probably be killed long before
that."
"Oh no," said George, "I'm sure he won't. And I'm sure you will.... And
I'm sure you're both going to be awfully happy. As for me," he added
quickly, "I am going to have no end of a good time. I believe I am to be
sent to the Dardanelles. Doesn't the word sound jolly! 'The
Dardanelles!' It has a ring and a lilt to it...." He laughed and pushed
his hair back from his clear young forehead.
"Good luck to you," said Chérie, looking up at him with a sudden feeling
of kindness and regret.
They had turned back, and were now passing the summer-house in full view
of the windows of the house. On the schoolroom balcony they saw Louise.
She beckoned, and Chérie hurried forward and stood under the balcony,
looking up at her.
"Oh, Chérie! I wondered where you were," said Louise, bending over the
ledge. "I was anxious. Come up, dear! I want to speak to you."
"Oh yes!" exclaimed Chérie eagerly, remembering Louise's promise of the
night before. Then she turned to George. "I must go. So now we must
really say good-bye." She laughed. "Or shall we say _au revoir_?"
"Let us say _au revoir_," said George, looking her full in the face.
"_Au revoir_, Monsieur George! _Au revoir!_"
Then she went indoors.
* * * * *
Two days later George Whitaker went away.
They sent him to the Dardanelles.
And in this world there was never an _au revoir_ for Monsieur George.
CHAPTER XVII
Louise stood in the doorway waiting for Chérie, and watched her coming
up the stairs rather slowly with fluttering breath. She drew her into
the room and shut the door.
Mireille sat quietly in her usual armchair by the window, with her small
face lifted to the sky.
"Chérie," said Louise, drawing the girl down beside her on the wide old
divan on which the little Whitakers had sprawled to learn their lessons
in years gone by. "I have something to say to you."
"I knew you had," exclaimed Chérie, flushing. "I knew it yesterday when
I saw you. It is good news!"
Louise hesitated. "Yes ... for me," she said falteringly, "it is good
news. For you, my dear little sister, for you ... unless you realize
what has befallen us--it may be very terrible news."
Chérie looked at her with startled eyes. "What do you mean?" she asked
under her breath.
Louise put her hand to her neck as if something were choking her. Her
throat was dry; she could find neither words nor voice in which to give
to the waiting girl her message of two-fold shame.
"Chérie ... my darling ... I must speak to you about that night ... your
birthday-night----"
Chérie started back. "No!" she cried. "You said when we came here that
we were to forget it--that it was a dream! Why--why should you speak of
it again?"
"Chérie," said Louise in a low voice, "perhaps for you." ... She
faltered, "for you it may have been a dream. But not for me."
The girl sat straight upright, tense and alert. "What do you mean,
Louise?"
"I mean that for me that night has borne its evil fruit. Chérie! I
thought of killing myself. But yesterday ... I spoke to Dr. Reynolds. He
has promised to save me."
"To save you!" gasped Chérie. "Louise! Louise! Are you so ill?"
"My darling, my own dear child, I am worse than ill. But there is help
for me; I shall be saved--saved from dishonour and despair." She lowered
her voice. "Chérie!"--her voice fell so low that it could hardly be
heard by the trembling girl beside her--"can you not understand? The
shame I am called upon to face--the doom that awaits me--is maternity."
_Maternity!_ Slowly, as if an unseen force uplifted her, Chérie had
risen to her feet. Maternity!... The veil of the mystery was rent, the
wonder was revealed! Maternity! That was the key to all her own strange
and marvellous sensations, to the throb and the thrill within her!
Maternity.
She stood motionless, amazed. A shaft of sunlight from the open window
beat upon her, turning her hair to gold and her wide eyes to pools of
wondering light. Such wonder and such light were about her that Louise
gazed in awed silence at the ethereal figure, standing with pale hands
extended and virginal face upturned.
She seemed to be listening.... To what voice? What annunciation did she
harken to with those rapt eyes?
Louise called her by her name. But Chérie did not answer. Her lips were
mute, her eyes were distant and unseeing. She heard no other voice but a
child-voice asking from her the gift of life.
And to that voice her trembling spirit answered.
CHAPTER XVIII
Dr. Reynolds kept his promise to Louise.
In a private nursing-home in London the deed of mercy and of
ruthlessness was accomplished. The pitiable spark of life was quenched.
Out of the depths of darkness and despair Louise, after wavering for
many days on the threshold of death, came slowly back to life once more.
During the many weeks she was in the nursing-home she saw neither Chérie
nor Mireille; but Mrs. Yule came nearly every day and brought good news
of them both, saying how happy she and her husband were to have them at
the Vicarage.
For Mr. Yule himself had gone to the Whitakers' house, an hour after
Louise had left it with Dr. Reynolds, and had taken the two forlorn
young creatures away. Their stricken youth found shelter in his house,
where Mireille's affliction and Chérie's tragic condition were alike
sacred to his generous heart.
The little blind girl, Lilian, adored them both. She used to sit between
them--often resting her face against Mireille's arm, or holding the
child's hand in hers--listening to Chérie's tales of their childhood in
Belgium. She was never tired of hearing about Chérie's school-days at
Mademoiselle Thibaut's _pensionnat_; of her trips to Brussels and
Antwerp, and the horrors of the dungeons of Château Steen; of her
bicycle-lessons on the sands of Westende under the instruction of the
monkey-man; and above all of her visits to Braine l'Alleude and the
battle-field of Waterloo, where she had actually drunk coffee in
Wellington's sitting-room, and rested in his very own armchair....
Lilian, with her closed eyes and intent face--always turned slightly
upward as if yearning towards the light--listened eagerly, exclaiming
every now and then with a little excited laugh, "I see ... I see...."
And those words and the sweet expression of the small ecstatic face made
Chérie's voice falter and the tears suffuse her eyes.
One day a letter came. It was from Claude. He had almost completely
recovered from his wound and was leaving the hospital in Dunkirk to go
to the front again. He sent all his love and all God's blessings to
Louise and to his little Mireille and to Chérie. They would meet again
in the happier days soon to come. Had they news of Florian? The last he
had heard of him was a card from the trenches at Loos....
And that same day--a snowy day in December--Louise at length returned
from her ordeal and stood, a pale and ghostly figure, at the Vicarage
door. To her also it opened wide, and her faltering footsteps were led
with love and tenderness to the firelight of the hospitable hearth.
There in the vicar's leather armchair, with the vicar's favourite collie
curled at her feet, sat Mireille; her soft hair parted in the middle and
tied with a blue ribbon by Mrs. Yule; a gold bangle, given her by
Lilian, on her slim wrist. With a cry of joy and gratitude Louise knelt
before her, kissing the soft chill hands, the silent mouth, the eyes
that did not recognize her.
"Mireille, Mireille! Can you not say a word to me? Not a word? Say,
'Welcome, mother!' Say it, darling! Say, '_Maman, bonjour_.'"
But the child's lips remained closed; the singing fountain of her voice
was sealed.
The door opened, and Chérie entered the room--a Chérie altered and
strange in her new and tragic dignity.
Louise involuntarily drew back, gazing in amazement at the significant
change of form and feature; then with a sob of passionate pity she went
to her and folded her in her arms.
Chérie, with a smile and a sigh, bowed her head upon Louise's breast.
CHAPTER XIX
To see Christmas in an English vicarage is to see Christmas indeed; and
the love and charity and beauty of it sank deeply into the exiles'
wounded hearts.
But one day came the summons to return to Belgium. It was a peremptory
order from the German Governor of Brussels to all owners of house or
property to return to their country with the least possible delay. The
penalty of disregarding this summons would be the confiscation of all
and any property owned by them in Belgium.
Louise stood in Chérie's room with the open letter in her hand, aghast
and trembling.
"To return to Belgium? They ask us to return to Belgium?" Louise could
scarcely pronounce the words. "Do you realize what it means, Chérie?"
"It means--going home," whispered the girl, with downcast eyes and a
delicate flush mounting to her pale cheeks.
"Home! Do you remember what that home was when we left it?" cried
Louise, her eyes blazing at the recollection.
"No," said Chérie, "I do not remember."
"Home! Home without Claude--without Florian! with half our friends
killed or lost ..." cried Louise, and the easy tears of weakness flowed
down her thin cheeks. "Home--with Mireille a silent ghost, and you--and
you--" Her dark passionate eyes lit for an instant on the figure of her
sister-in-law, and horror and shame seemed to grip at her throat. "Let
us never speak of it again."
And she flung the paper into the fire.
But the memory of it she could not fling away. The possibility of
returning to Belgium, which before had seemed so remote, the idea of
seeing their home again which they had deemed lost to them for ever, now
filled her mind and Chérie's to the exclusion of every other thought.
That harsh call to return rang in their hearts by day and by night,
awakening home-sickness and desire.
At night Louise would dream a thousand times of that return, a thousand
times putting the idea from her with indignation and with fear. Every
night she would imagine herself arriving at Bomal, hurrying through the
village streets to the gate of her house, entering it, going up the
stairs, opening the door to Claude's study....
Little by little home-sickness wound itself like a serpent about her
heart, crushing her in its strong spirals, poisoning with its virulent
fang every hour of her day. Little by little the nostalgic yearning,
the unutterable longing to hear her own language, to be among her own
people--though tortured, though oppressed, though crushed by the
invader's heel--grew in her heart until she felt that she could bear it
no longer. The sense of exile became intolerable; the sound of English
voices, the sight of English faces, hurt and oppressed her; the thought
of the wild English waters separating her from her woeful land seemed to
freeze and drown her heart.
A week after she had told Chérie never to speak about it any more she
thought of nothing else, she dreamed of nothing else, but to return to
her home, her wrecked and devastated home, there to await Claude in
hope, in patience, and in prayer.
She would feel nearer to him when once the icy, tumbling waves of
the Channel separated them no more. She would be ready for him when
the day of deliverance came, the day of Belgium's freedom and
redemption--surely, surely now it could not be far off! Claude would
find her there, in her place, waiting for him. She would see him from
afar off, she would be at the door to meet him as she always was when he
had gone away even for a few days or hours. His little Mireille, alas!
was stricken, but might she not before then recover? His sister--ah! His
sister!... Louise wrung her hands and wept.
Late one night she went to Chérie's room. She opened the door very
gently so as not to wake her if she were asleep. But Chérie was sitting
near the fire bending over some needlework and singing softly to
herself. She jumped up, blushing deeply, as Louise entered, and she
attempted to hide her work in her lap. It was an infant's white cape she
was embroidering, and as Louise saw it her own pale cheeks flushed too.
"Chérie," she faltered, "I have been thinking ... what if we went home?"
"Yes," said Chérie quietly, with the chastened calmness of those whose
mission it is to wait.
"Let us go, let us go," said Louise. "We will make our house ready and
beautiful for those who will return."
"Yes," said Chérie, again.
"They will return and find us there ... waiting for them ... even though
the storm has passed over us...." Her voice broke in a sob. "Mireille
will recover, I know it, I feel it! And you--oh, Chérie!"--she dropped
on her knees before the trembling girl--"you, you will be brave," she
cried passionately, "before it is too late ... Chérie, Chérie, I implore
you...."
Chérie was silent. It was as if she did not hear. It was as if she did
not understand.
In vain Louise spoke of the shame of the past, of the woe and misery of
the future. To all her wild words, to her caresses and entreaties,
Chérie gave no reply. Her lips seemed mute, her eyes seemed distant and
unseeing as those of the mindless, wandering Mireille.
At last she rose, and stood facing Louise, her face grave, inexorable,
unflinching.
"Louise, say no more. No human reasoning, no human law, no human
sanction or prohibition can influence me. No one may judge between a
woman and the depths of her own body and soul; in so grave a matter each
must decide according to her own conscience. What to the one is shame,
hatred, and horror, to the other is joy, wonder, and love. To me,
Louise, this suffering--tragic and terrible though it be--is joy,
wonder, and love. I do not explain it, I do not justify it; I do not
think I even understand it. But this I feel, that I would sooner tear
out my living heart than voluntarily destroy the life which is within
me, and which I feel is part of my very soul."
Louise was silent. She felt herself face to face with the great primeval
instinct of maternity; and words failed her. Then the thought of their
return to Belgium clutched at her heart again.
"But if we go home! Think, think of the shame of it! What will they say,
those who have known us? Think--what will they say?"
Chérie sighed. "I cannot help what they say."
"And when Claude returns, Chérie! When Claude returns...."
Chérie bowed her head and did not answer.
Louise moved nearer to her. "And have you forgotten Florian? Florian,
who loves you, and hoped to make you his wife?..."
The tears welled up into Chérie's eyes, but she was silent.
Louise's voice rose to a bitter cry. "Chérie! Think of the brutal hands
that bound you, of the infamous enemy that outraged you. Think, think
that you, a Belgian, will be the mother of a German child!"
But Chérie cared nothing, remembered nothing, heard nothing. She heard
no other voice but that child-voice asking from her the gift of life,
telling her that in the land of the unborn there are no Germans and no
Belgians, no victors and no vanquished, but only the innocent flowers of
futurity--the white-winged doves of Jesus, and the snowy lambs of God.
BOOK III
CHAPTER XX
Feldwebel Karl Sigismund Schwarz lay on the internal slope of a crater
under a red sunset sky. His eyes were shut. But he was not asleep. He
was making up his mind that he must move his left arm. Something heavy
seemed to be pressing it down, crushing and crunching it. He would move
it, he would lift it up in the air and feel the circulation return to it
and the breezes of heaven blow on it. Never was there such a hot and
heavy arm.... Yes. He would certainly lift it in a moment.
After this great mental exertion, Feldwebel Schwarz went to sleep for a
few moments; then he woke up again, more than ever determined to move
his arm. What did one do when one wanted to move one's arm? And where
was his arm? Where was everything? Where was he, Karl Sigismund
Schwarz?... There was evidently a 'cello playing somewhere quite close
to him; he could hear it right in his head: "Zoom ... zoom-zoom ...
zoom-zoom."
He said to himself that he knew where he was. He was in Charlottenburg,
in the Café des Westens, and the Hungarian, Makowsky, was playing on
the _Bassgeige_. Zoom ... zoom-zoom.... The rest of the orchestra would
join in presently. Meanwhile, what was the matter with his arm? He
groaned aloud and tried to raise himself on his right elbow. He could
not do so; but in turning his head he caught sight of a man lying close
beside him, a man in Belgian uniform lying flat on the ground with his
profile turned to the sky. This convinced Schwarz that he was not in
Charlottenburg after all. He was somewhere in Flanders near a rotten old
city called Ypres; and he was lying in a hole made by a shell. He
glanced sideways at the Belgian again. Then he cried out loud, "See
here, what is the matter with my arm?" But the man did not answer, and
Schwarz realized that he probably did not understand German. Probably,
also, he was dead.
So Karl Schwarz lay back again, and listened to the 'cello buzzing in
his brain.
The red sunset had faded into a drab twilight when in his turn the
Belgian opened his eyes, sighed and sat up. He saw the wounded German
lying beside him with limp legs outstretched, a mangled arm and a face
caked with blood. The man's eyes were open, so the Belgian nodded to him
and said, "_Ca va, mon vieux?_"
"_Verfluchter Schweinehund_," replied Karl Schwarz; and Florian Audet,
who did not understand that he was being called a damned swine-hound,
nodded back again in a friendly way. Then each was silent with his
thoughts.
Florian tried to realize what had happened. He tentatively moved one
arm; then the other; then his feet and legs. He moved his shoulders a
little; they seemed all right. He felt nothing but a pain in the back of
his neck, like a violent cramp; otherwise there seemed nothing much the
matter with him. Why was he lying there? Let him remember. There had
been an order to attack ... a dash over the white Ypres road and across
the fields to the south ... then an explosion--yes. That was it. He had
been blown up. This was shock or something. He wondered where the
remains of his company was and how things had turned out. There were
sounds of firing not far away, the spluttering of rifles and the booming
of the gun.
He tried to rise to his feet, but it was as if the earth rose with him.
He could not get his hands off the ground--earth and sky whirled round
him, and he had to lie down again.
Soon darkness came up out of the thundering east and blew out the
twilight.
Meanwhile Feldwebel Schwarz was again in the Café des Westens; the
orchestra of ten thousand _Bassgeigen_ was booming like mad, and he was
beating on the table with his heavy arm, calling for the waiter Max to
bring him something cold to drink. Max came hurrying up and stood before
him carrying a tray laden with glasses--huge cool Schoppen of Münchner
and Lager, and tall glasses of lemonade with ice clinking in it. Which
would he have? He could not make up his mind which he would have. His
throat burned him, his stomach was on fire with thirst, and he could not
say which of the cool drinks he wanted. He felt that he must drink them
all--the iced Münchner, the chilly Lager, the biting lemonade--he must
drink them all together, or die. Suddenly he noticed that the
_Wasserleiche_--you know the _Wasserleiche_, the "Water-corpse" of the
Café des Westens--the cadaverous-looking woman whose face is of such a
peculiar hue that you would vow she had been drowned and left lying in
the water for a couple of days before they fished her out again--well,
she had come up to the waiter and was embracing him, and all the glasses
were slipping off his tray. Ping!--pang!--down they crashed!
Ping!--pang! smashing and crashing all around. You never heard glasses
make such a noise. There was nothing left to drink--nothing in the wide
world.
Then Feldwebel Schwarz began to cry. He heard himself moaning and
crying, until Max the waiter looked at him and then he saw that it was
not Max the waiter at all that the Water-corpse was embracing. She never
did embrace men. It was her friend Mélanie, who stood there laughing
with her mouth wide open, showing the pink roof of her mouth and her
tiny wolfish teeth--the two eye-teeth slightly longer than the others
and very pointed.
Karl Schwarz knew that if he wanted anything to drink he must be amiable
to Mélanie. He would sing her the song about "Gräfin Mélanie," beginning
"_Nur für Natur_...."
But he could not remember it. He could only remember the Ueberbrettel
song--
"Die Flundern
"Werden sich wundern...."
He sang this a great many times, and the waiter Max, who was lying on
the floor among the broken glasses, applauded loudly. You never heard
such clapping; it went right through one's head. But Mélanie did not
give him anything to drink, and the Water-corpse--he suddenly remembered
that she never allowed any one to speak to Mélanie--turned on him
furiously and bit him in the arm. He howled with pain, and then Mélanie
bent forward showing all her wolfish teeth, and she also bit him in the
arm. They were tearing and mangling him. He could not get his arm away
from the two dreadful creatures. "_Verdammte Sauweiber!_" he shouted at
them, and his voice was so loud that it woke him.
He saw the star-strewn sky above him, and beside him the prostrate
figure of the Belgian as he had seen him before. Probably, he said to
himself, Mélanie and the Water-corpse had been at this man too. To keep
them away he had to go on singing with his parched throat--
"Die Flundern
"Werden sich wundern...."
* * * * *
"Die Flundern
"Werden sich wundern...."
He imagined that these words possessed some occult power which must keep
the two horrible women away from him.
So he continued to repeat them all night long.
Between two and three o'clock Florian Audet opened his eyes and turned
his head to look round. The wounded German's voice had roused him from
sleep--or from unconsciousness--and he lay there vaguely wondering what
that continually repeated cry might mean.
"_Die Flundern werden sich wundern...._" The words sank into his brain
and remained there. Perhaps, he mused, it was some kind of national
war-cry, a shout of victory or defiance ... "Death or liberty!..." or
"In the name of the Kaiser," or something like that.
From where he was he could see the outstretched figure lying to the
left of him, the limp legs, the helpless, upturned feet in their thick
muddy boots; and he heard the sound of the rattling breath still
repeating brokenly, "_Die Flundern werden sich wundern_...."
An overwhelming sense of pity came over him; pity for the broken figure
beside him, pity for himself, pity for the world. With an immense
effort, for he felt as if every bone were broken, he turned on his side
and, struggling slowly along the ground, dragged himself towards the
dying man. When he reached him and could touch him with his outstretched
hand he rested awhile; then he fumbled for his brandy-flask, found it,
unscrewed it and held it near the man's face.
"_Tiens! bois_," he said. But the German did not move to take it; and
soon the rattling breath stopped.
Florian wriggled a little closer, slipped his right arm under the man's
head and raised it. Then by the grey April starlight he saw something
bubble and gush over the man's face from a wound in his forehead. The
German opened his eyes. What were those fiendish women doing to him now?
Pouring warm wine over his head.... Through the tepid scarlet veil his
wild eyes blinked up at Florian in childish terror and bewilderment. A
wave of sickening faintness overcame Florian; his arm slackened, and his
enemy's ghastly crimson face fell back upon it as Florian himself sank
beside him in a swoon.
There they lay all through the night, side by side, like brothers, the
living and the dead; the German soldier with his head on the Belgian
officer's arm. And thus two German Red Cross men found them in the
chilly dawn as they slid down the crater-side, carrying a folded
stretcher between them. They were very young, the two Red Cross men;
they had not finished studying philosophy in the Bonn University when
the war had broken out, and they had left Kant and Hebel for a quick
course of surgery. The youngest one, who had very fair hair, wrote
foolish Latin poems, said to be after the style of Lucretius.
They dropped the stretcher and stood silently looking down at those two
motionless figures in their fraternal embrace, whose attitude told their
tale. Florian's hand, holding the open brandy-flask, lay on the dead
German's breast; the ghastly dead face of their comrade was pillowed
easily on the enemy's encircling arm.
Something rose in the throat of the two who gazed, and the younger
one--the one who wrote Latin verse--bent down and laid his hand lightly,
as if invoking a blessing on Florian's pale forehead. Then he turned
with a start to his companion. "He is alive!"
The other in his turn touched the man's brow, then lifted the limp hand
to feel his pulse. They knelt beside him and poured brandy down his
throat. Then they worked over him for a long while, until a breath of
life fluttered through the ashen lips, and the vague blue eyes opened
and looked into theirs.
The Germans rose to their feet. The Belgian, when he had lain
unconscious with his arm around their fallen comrade, had been to them a
hero and a friend. Now, alive, with open eyes, he was their foe and
their prisoner.
They spoke to him at first, not unkindly, in German; then, somewhat
brusquely, in French; but he gave them no reply. His brain was benumbed
and stupefied. He could not speak and he could not stand. So they lifted
him and placed him on the stretcher.
"Poor devil!" murmured the younger man as he extended the two limp arms
along the recumbent body and pointed out to his companion the right
sleeve of the Belgian uniform sodden and stiff with the German soldier's
blood.
"Poor devil! What have we saved him for? To send him to the hell of
Wittemberg!..."
"Hard lines," murmured the other one.
"_Gerechter Gott!_" exclaimed the foolish fair-haired poet, "I wish we
could give him a chance."
* * * * *
They gave him a chance.
Florian never knew how it was that he found himself lying on a blanket
on the stone floor of a half-demolished farm building, a sort of
dilapidated cow-house.
As he raised his aching head he saw that milk, bread, and brandy had
been left on the floor beside him; also a packet of cigarettes, some
matches, and a tablet of chocolate. He drank greedily of the milk; then
he took a sip of brandy and staggered to his feet. Though giddy and
trembling, he found he could stand. And as he stood he noticed that he
was stripped to the skin. There was not a stitch of clothing on him, nor
was there a vestige of his own uniform anywhere to be seen. There was
nothing but a pair of muddy yellow boots standing in the middle of the
floor--boots that reminded him of those he had seen on the dying German
on the hill-side. These and the grey blanket he had lain on were all
that one could possibly clothe oneself in. Nothing that had been his was
there. Even the brandy was not in his own flask.
Florian looked round the deserted place, the crumbling walls which bomb
and shell had battered. There was a rusty, broken plough in a corner, a
few tools and some odd pots and pans. After brief reflection Florian put
on the boots; then he finished the bread, the milk, and the brandy.
Finally, having knotted in one corner of the blanket the chocolate, the
cigarettes, and the matches, he wound the rough grey covering round his
body and stepped out to face the world.
It was an empty, desolate world; a dead horse lay not far off on the
muddy road leading across the plain. By the sun, Florian judged it to
be about seven o'clock in the morning. He seemed to recognize the
locality; it might be a mile or two from the fighting ground of the
preceding day. Yes. There to the left was the straight white road from
Poperinghe to Ypres; he recognized the double line of trees ... where
was he to go? In what direction were the Belgian lines, he wondered. He
still felt weak, and his knees trembled; his mind was vacant except for
a jumble of meaningless sounds. The words the dying German had repeated
through the night rang in his head continually. He found himself
murmuring over and over again, "_Die Flundern werden sich wundern_...."
He also had to make a strenuous mental effort to realize that he
actually was wandering about the world in nothing but a pair of boots
and a blanket. Everything seemed like an insensate dream. Perhaps he was
still suffering from shock and dreaming all this? Perhaps he was really
lying in hospital with concussion of the brain.... Who on earth could
have stolen all his clothes and left him in exchange the milk, the
chocolate, and the cigarettes?
There was something base and treacherous in robbing an unconscious man,
he said to himself. On the other hand, there was a touch of friendliness
and kindness in the chocolate and the cigarettes. The whole thing was
absurd and fantastic.
"Either," reasoned Florian, stumbling along in his blanket in the
direction of a distant wood, "either I have been the prey of some
demented creature, or I am at this very moment light-headed myself...."
"_Die Flundern werden sich wundern._" He had to make an effort not to
say those crazy words aloud. He felt he would go mad if he did so. As
long as he kept them shut up in his brain he was their master; but if he
let them out he felt they would get the better of him, and he would go
on saying them over and over and over again like the delirious German.
Decidedly he was weak in his head, and must try to keep a firm hold on
his brain. "_Die Flundern ... werden sich wundern._"
A few moments later he saw some mounted soldiers riding out of the wood;
he saw at once that it was a German patrol. He thought of turning back
and hiding in the shed again, but it was too late. They had caught sight
of him, and were riding down towards him at full speed.
Well, the game was up, said Florian to himself; he would be taken. He
could neither kill others nor himself with a piece of chocolate and a
packet of Josetti.
So he stood stock-still, folded his arms, and awaited their arrival.
("_Die Flundern werden sich wundern...._")
As the eight or ten men galloped up, Florian noted from afar their
looks of amazement at the sight of him. They hailed him in German, and
he did not reply. He stood like a statue; he said to himself that he
would meet his fate with dignity. But he had not reckoned with the
ludicrous effect of his attire. Two of the men dismounted, and one of
them addressed him in German with a broad grin on his face; but the
other--a young officer--silenced the first one abruptly, and turning a
grim countenance to Florian, asked him in French why he was in that
array.
"What have you done with your uniform?" he asked, scowling.
Florian scowled back at him, and gave no reply. He had made up his mind
that he would not speak. ("_Die Flundern werden sich wundern._")
The officer gave an order, and two soldiers took him by the arms and
dragged his blanket from him. He stood there in his muddy boots, bare in
the sunshine, his face and hands and hair caked with mud. But he was a
fine and handsome figure for all that.
The officer and the men had turned their attention to the knot in the
blanket. They undid it and took out the contents of the improvised
pocket.
Then they looked at the figure before them and at each other. The
chocolate was German; the cigarettes were German; the boots were German.
What was the man?
"_Meschugge_," murmured the lieutenant in explanation, not of Florian's
nationality, but of his condition of mind.
"_Meschugge! Meschugge!_" repeated the others, laughing.
The officer seemed uncertain. He turned and spoke in a low voice to the
others. Florian knew they were discussing him. Would they arrest him as
a cunning Belgian who had discarded his uniform, stolen the boots and
the blanket, and was shamming to be insane and dumb? Or would they think
him a German gone daft and send him to an infirmary? He hoped so. It
would be easier to make one's escape from an infirmary than from a
German prison. A German prison! Florian clenched his teeth. He saw that
the officer seemed inclined to adopt this course.
"_Die Flundern werden_--" He almost said it aloud. The sound of these
guttural German voices round him seemed to drag the words out of him. He
felt his lips moving and he saw them watching him closely.... Suddenly
the crazy words ran out of his mouth. "_Die Flundern werden sich
wundern!_"
He was not prepared for the effect of those words. The soldiers burst
into loud laughter; even the officer's hard face relaxed and he smiled
broadly. The others repeated it with comments. "Did you hear? '_Die
Flundern_'!... He has the Ueberbrettel on the brain!" And they roared
with laughter and clapped him on the bare shoulders and asked him in
what _Kabarett_ he had left his heart and his senses.
Florian understood not a word, but he knew he was safe. At least, for
the present.
Whatever the words were, they had saved him, and he made up his mind
that for the time being he would use no others. A little later he added
one other word to his repertoire, and that was _Meschugge_, which is
Berlin dialect for mad. He himself had no faint idea of what it meant,
but he heard it pronounced, evidently in regard to himself, by the
Prussian Lieutenant in whose charge he was conducted back to the German
lines.
"_Die Flundern werden sich wundern_," and "_Meschugge_." With those six
words, murmured at intervals once or twice in a day, he got through the
rear lines of the German army, and through a brief stay in a camp
hospital, and finally into a Liège infirmary. Those who heard him knew
there could be no mistake. He was no Belgian and no Frenchman. Of all
words in the rich German vocabulary, of all lines of German verse or
song, no foreigner in the world could ever have hit on just these. None
but a true son of the Fatherland--indeed none but a pure-blooded
_Berliner_--would have even known what they meant.
"_Ein famoser Kerl_," was this young Adonis, who had turned up from
heaven knows where in a blanket and a pair of boots. "_Ein ganz famoser
Kerl!_" And they clapped him on the shoulders. "_Er lebe hoch!_"
Thus it came about that the Water-corpse and Mélanie of the Café des
Westens unwittingly saved the life of a gallant Belgian soldier. And as
this is the only good deed they are ever likely to perform, may it stand
to their credit on the Day of Judgment when they are summoned to account
for their wretched and unprofitable lives.
CHAPTER XXI
On the 1st of May the Ourthe and the Aisne, each with a crisp Spring
wave to its waters, came together at Bomal. "Here I am, as fresh as
ever," said the frisky little Aisne.
"Oh, come off the rocks," grumbled the Ourthe, elbowing her way towards
the bridge, "and don't be so gushing."
"There's a stork passing over us with a May-baby in his beak," bubbled
the Aisne.
"A good thing if he dropped it. Here I am very deep," quoth the Ourthe.
The Aisne, who was not deep at all, did not understand the quibble. "How
very blue you are!" she gurgled. "What is the matter? Is it going to
rain?"
"If it does, mind you keep to your bed," retorted the Ourthe
sarcastically.
"I won't. I am coming into yours," plashed the Aisne; and did so.
"Oh! The Meuse take you!" grumbled the Ourthe foaming and swelling.
And they went on together, quarrelling all the way to Liège, where the
Meuse took them both.
The stork flew across the bridge, and stopped over Dr. Brandès's house.
"Open your eyes, little human child," said the stork. "This is where you
are born."
* * * * *
"Rockaby, lullaby, bees in the clover...." sang Nurse Elliot, of the
American Red Cross, rocking the cradle with her foot and looking
dreamily out of the window. From where she sat she could catch a glimpse
of the Bomal church steeple and the swaying tops of the trees in the
cemetery.
"Perhaps this poor lamb would be better off if it were already asleep
over there under those trees," reflected Nurse Caroline Elliot. And as
if in assent, the infant in the cradle uttered a melancholy wail.
Nurse Elliot immediately began to sing Bliss Carman's May-song:
Day comes, May comes,
One who was away comes,
All the world is fair again,
Fair and kind to me.
Day comes, May comes,
One who was away comes,
Set his place at hearth and board
As it used to be.
May comes, day comes,
One who was away comes,
Higher are the hills of home,
Bluer is the sea.
The baby soon gave up all attempt to compete with the powerful American
contralto, and with puckered brow and tiny clenched fist went mournfully
to sleep again. He had been in the world just seven days and had not
found much to rejoice over. Life seemed to consist of a good deal of
noise and discomfort and bumping about. There seemed to be not much
food, a great deal of singing, and a variety of aches. "I wish I were
back in the land of Neverness," wept the baby, "lying in the cup of a
lotus-flower in the blue morning of inexistence."
The stork, still standing on one leg on the roof resting from its
journey, heard this and said: "Never mind. Cheer up. It is not for
long."
"For how long is it?" asked the baby anxiously.
"Oh, less than a hundred years," said the stork, combing the feathers of
its breast with its beak.
Then the baby wept even more bitterly. "Why? Why, for so short a time?"
it cried.
"You bother me," said the stork; and flew away.
And the cradle rocked and the baby wept and Miss Caroline Elliot sang.
* * * * *
They had arrived in Bomal ten days before--Louise, Chérie and
Mireille--after a nightmare journey, through Holland and Flanders. At
the station in Liège, Chérie, who was very ill, aroused the
compassionate attention of the American Red Cross nurses and they
obtained permission to bring her in a motor ambulance to Bomal. Nurse
Elliot, a tall kind woman, accompanied her, and was permitted to remain
with her and assist her during the ordeal of the ensuing days.
On their arrival Louise had not come straight to the house. She had not
dared to bring Mireille to her home. She feared she knew not what. Would
the child recognize the place? Would the unconscious eyes perceive and
recognize the surroundings that had witnessed her martyrdom? What effect
might such a shock have on that stricken, sensitive soul?... Louise felt
unable to face any new emotions after the fatigue and misery of the
journey and the hourly anxiety in regard to Chérie.
So she accompanied Mireille to the home of their old friend, Madame
Doré.
Doubtful of the welcome she would receive, fearful of the changes she
might find, Louise knocked with trembling hand at the door of her old
friend's house.
Madame Doré herself opened the door to her. But--was this Madame Doré?
This haggard, white-haired woman, who stared at her with such startled
eyes?
"Madame Doré! It is I--Louise and little Mireille! Do you not recognize
us?"
"Hush! Come in." The woman drew them quickly into the passage and locked
the door. Her eyes had a roving, frightened look, and every now and
then a nervous spasm contracted her face.
"Oh my dear, my dear," said Louise, embracing her with tears.
Locked in Madame Doré's bedroom--for the terrorized woman had the
obsession of being constantly watched and spied upon--Louise heard her
friend's tragic story and recounted her own. With pitying tears Madame
Doré caressed Mireille's soft hair and assured Louise that it would be a
joy for her and for Jeannette to keep her with them.
"Dear little Jeannette!" exclaimed Louise. "How glad I shall be to see
her again. Is she well?"
Yes. Jeannette was well.
"And Cécile--? You say she is in England?"
"Yes. She went with four or five other women from Bomal and Hamoir. She
could not live here any longer; her heart was broken. She never got over
the murder of her brother André"--the painful spasm distorted the
careworn face again--"you knew that he was shot by the side of the poor
old Curé that night in the Place de l'Église?"
Yes. Louise knew. And she pressed the hand of her old friend with
compassionate tenderness. They talked of all their friends and
acquaintances. The storm had swept over them, wrecking, ruining and
scattering them far and wide.
"Hush, listen!" whispered Madame Doré, suddenly grasping Louise's arm.
Outside they could hear the measured tread of feet and the sound of loud
voices, the loathed and dreaded German voices raised in talk and
laughter.
"Our masters!" whispered Madame Doré. "They enter our houses when they
choose, they come in the middle of the night and rummage through our
things. They take away our money and our jewels. They read our letters,
they order us about and insult us. We cannot speak or think or breathe
without their knowledge and permission. They are constantly threatening
us with imprisonment or with deportation. We are slaves and
half-starved. Ah!" cried the unhappy woman, "why did I not have the
courage to go with Cécile to England? I don't know ... I felt old, old
and frightened.... And now Jeannette and I are here as in a prison, and
Cécile is far away and alone."
Louise soothed her as best she could with caresses and consoling words.
But Madame Doré was heart-stricken and desolate, and the fact that they
had never met Cécile when they were in London caused her bitter
disappointment. Perhaps some evil had befallen Cécile? Did Louise think
she was safe? The English were kind, were they not?
Yes, Louise was sure Cécile was safe. And yes, the English were very
kind.
Even as she spoke a rush of longing came over her; a feeling that
resembled home-sickness in its tenderness and yearning. England!--ah,
England! How safe, indeed, how safe and kind and cool in its girdle of
grey water!...
Perhaps, mused Louise, as she hurried home alone, meeting the
inquisitive glance of strangers and the insolent stare of German
soldiers in the familiar village-streets, perhaps it would have been
better after all if they had remained safely in England, if they had
disregarded the warning of the invader and allowed him to confiscate
their home. Thus at least they would have remained beyond the reach of
his intrusions, his insults and his cruelty.
Meanwhile, in Dr. Brandès's house the energetic and capable Miss Elliot
had not been idle. A quick survey of the ransacked abode had shown her
that, although most of the valuables and all the silver and pictures had
been stolen, the necessary household utensils, and even the linen, were
left. Briskly and cheerfully she settled Chérie in a snow-white bed,
brushed and braided her shining hair in two long plaits, gave her a cup
of bread-and-milk and set resolutely to work to clear away some of the
litter and confusion before Louise should arrive.
There were dirty plates and glasses, and empty bottles everywhere; there
were muddy mattresses on the floor. People seemed to have slept and
eaten in every room in the house. Tables, carpets and beds were strewn
with cigar and cigarette-stumps; drawers and wardrobes had been emptied
and their contents scattered on the floor; basins of dirty water stood
on cabinets, sideboard and chairs.
Caroline Elliot brushed and emptied and cleared and cleaned, and drew in
the shutters, and opened the windows, and lit the fires; and by the time
she heard Louise's hurrying footsteps, was able to stand aside with a
little smile of satisfaction and watch Louise's pale face light up with
emotion and pleasure.
It was home, home after all!
And Louise, looking round the familiar rooms, felt a tremor of hope--the
timid hope of better days to come--stir in the depths of her thankful
heart.
CHAPTER XXII
The child was three weeks old and still Chérie had not seen either
friend or acquaintance, nor had she dared to go out of the house. She
felt too shy to show herself in the day-time, and after nightfall the
inhabitants of Bomal were forbidden to leave their homes. Chérie dreaded
meeting any of her acquaintances; true, there were not many left in the
village, for some had taken refuge abroad and others had gone to live in
the larger cities, Liège and Brussels, where, rightly or wrongly, they
hoped to feel less bitterly their state of subservience and slavery.
It was a sunny afternoon towards the end of May that Nurse Elliot at
last packed her neat bag and made ready to leave them.
"I cannot possibly stay a day longer," she said, caressing Chérie, who
clung to her in tears. "I must go back to my post in Liège. Besides, you
do not need me any more."
"Oh, I need you. I need you!" cried Chérie. "I shall be so lonely and
forlorn."
"Lonely? With your child? And with your sister-in-law? Nonsense," said
the nurse briskly.
"But Louise hardly speaks to me," said Chérie miserably. "She hates the
child, and she hates me."
"Nonsense," said the nurse again; but she felt that there was some truth
in Chérie's words.
Indeed, it was impossible not to notice the almost morbid aversion
Louise felt towards the poor little intruder. Louise herself, strive as
she would to hide or conquer her feeling, could not do so. Every line
and feature of the tiny face, every tendril of its silky pale-gold hair,
its small, pouting mouth, its strange, very light grey eyes--all, all
was hateful and horrible to her. When she saw Chérie lift it up and kiss
it she felt herself turn pale and sick. When she saw it at Chérie's
breast, saw the small head moving, the tiny hands searching and
pressing, she shuddered with horror and repugnance. Though she said to
herself that this was unreasonable, that it was cruel and wrong, still
the feeling was unconquerable; it seemed to spring from the innermost
depths of her Belgian soul. Her hatred was as much a primitive
ingenerate instinct, as was the passionate maternal love an essence of
the soul of Chérie.
"She hates us, Nurse Elliot, she hates us," asseverated Chérie, pressing
her clasped hands to her breast in a pitiful gesture of despair.
"Sometimes if for a moment I forget how miserable I am, and I lift the
little one up in my arms, and laugh at him and caress him, suddenly I
feel Louise's eyes fixed upon us, cold, hostile, implacable. Yes. She
hates us! And I suppose every one will hate us. Every one will turn from
the child and from me in loathing and disgust. Where shall we go? Where
shall we hide, I and this poor little baby of mine?" She turned a
tearful glance toward the red-curtained door that hid her little one,
awake and cooing in his cot. Nurse Elliot had finished packing and
locking her bag, had rolled and strapped her cloak, tied on her bonnet
and was ready to go to the station.
"Chérie," she said gravely, placing both her hands on the girl's frail
shoulders, "whatever is in store for you, you will have to face it. And
now," she added, kissing her on both cheeks, "if you love me a little,
if I have really been of any help or comfort to you during these sad
days, the moment has come for you to repay me."
"Oh, how--how can I ever repay you?" cried Chérie.
"By putting on your hat, taking your baby in your arms and accompanying
me to the station."
"To the station! I! with--Oh, I could not, I could not!" She shrank back
and a burning flush rose to her brow.
At that moment Louise entered the room dressed to go out.
"You will accompany me to the station," repeated Nurse Elliot firmly to
Chérie. "You, and your sister-in-law, and the baby will all come to see
me off and wish me luck."
"Don't--don't ask that," murmured Chérie.
"I do ask it," said Caroline Elliot. "And you cannot refuse. I have
given you many days and many nights out of my life, and much love and
tender anxiety. And this is the only thanks I shall ever ask." She
stepped close to Chérie and placed her arms around her. "Can you not
see, my dear, that sooner or later you will be forced to meet the ordeal
you dread? You cannot imprison yourself and the child for ever between
these four walls. Then take your courage and face the world today; now,
while I am still with you."
Chérie stood pale and hesitant; then she turned to Louise. "Would
you--would you go with me?"
There was so much humility and misery in her voice that Louise was
touched.
"Of course I will," she said; "go quickly and get ready."
Chérie ran to her room. She put on the modest black frock she had worn
on the journey from England, but she dressed the baby in all his
prettiest clothes--the white cape she had embroidered for him, and the
lace cap with blue ribbons and the smartest of his blue silk socks. She
lifted him in her arms and stepped before the mirror. After all it was a
very sweet baby, was it not? People might hate him when they heard of
him, but when they saw him....
Trembling, blushing and smiling she appeared at the gate where Miss
Elliot and Louise stood waiting for her. She stepped timidly out of
doors between them, and very young and very pathetic did she look with
her flushed cheeks and shining, diffident eyes. Whom would they meet?
Would they see any one they knew?
Yes. They met Mademoiselle Veraender, the school-mistress, who looked at
them, started, looked again and then, blushing crimson, crossed to the
other side of the road. They met Madame Linkaerts and her daughter
Marie. The girl recognized them with a cry of delight, but her mother
took her brusquely by the arm and turned her brusquely down a
side-street. They met four German soldiers strolling along who stared
first at the American nurse, then at Louise, then at Chérie with the
baby in her arms.
One of them made a remark and the others laughed. They stood still to
let the three women pass, and the one who had spoken waved his fingers
at Chérie. "_Ein Vaterlandskindlein?--nicht wahr?_" And he threw a kiss
to the child.
Three or four street-urchins who had been following the soldiers,
imitating their strutting gait and sticking their tongues out at them,
noticed the greeting and interpreted it with the sharpness which
characterizes the gutter-snipe all the world over. They also began to
throw kisses to Chérie and to the baby, shouting, "_Petit boche? Quoi?_"
A lame elderly man passed and taking in the situation at a glance, ran
after the boys with his stick. Others passed, and stopped. Many of them
recognized the women, and some looked pityingly, others contemptuously
at the flushed and miserable Chérie. But no one came to speak to her, no
one greeted her, no one smiled at the child in its embroidered cape and
its cap with the blue ribbons. A few idlers making rude remarks,
followed them to the station.
Nurse Elliot left them. It was a sad leave-taking. Then they returned
home in silence, going far out of their way to choose the least
frequented streets.
As they came down the shady lane behind their house Louise glanced at
Chérie, and her heart melted with pity. What a child she looked for her
nineteen years! And how sad and frightened and ashamed? What could
Louise do to help her? What consolation could she offer? What hope could
she hold out?
None. None. Except that the child should die. And why should it die? Was
it not the child of puissant youth, of brutal vitality? Did it not drink
its sustenance from the purest source of life? Why should it die?
No; the child would live; live to do harm and hurt; to bring sorrow and
shame on them all. Live to keep the flame of hatred alight in their
hearts, to remind them for ever of the foul wrong they had suffered....
Chérie had felt Louise's eyes upon her and turned to her quickly. Had
not her sensitive soul perceived a passing breath of pity and of
tenderness? Surely Louise would turn to her now with a word of
consolation and compassion? Perhaps the sight of her helpless infant had
touched Louise's heart at last....
No, no. Again she caught that look of resentment, that terrible look of
anger and shame in Louise's eyes; and bending her head lower over her
child she hurried into the house.
CHAPTER XXIII
The house seemed very empty without Nurse Elliot. Chérie seldom spoke,
for she had nothing to speak about but her baby, and she knew that to
such talk Louise would neither wish to listen nor reply.
Other mothers, reflected Chérie bitterly, could speak all day about
their children, and she, also, would have loved to tell of all the
wonderful things she discovered in her baby day by day. For instance, he
always laughed in his dreams, which meant that the angels still spoke to
him; and the soles of his tiny feet were quite pink; and he had a dimple
in his left cheek, and a quantity of silky golden hair on the nape of
his neck--all things that Louise had never noticed, and Chérie did not
dare to speak about them. There was silence, pitiless silence, round
that woeful cradle.
In order that the child should not disturb Louise, Chérie had given up
her own bedroom and chosen for the nursery the spare room on the floor
below--the room with the red curtains--which, strangely enough, seemed
for her to hold no memories. One afternoon as she sat there nursing her
child, Louise, who hardly ever crossed that threshold, opened the door
and came in.
Chérie looked up with a welcoming smile of surprise and joy. But Louise
turned her eyes away from her and from the slumbering babe.
"I have come to tell you," she said, "that Mireille is coming home. I am
going to fetch her this evening."
Chérie drew a quick breath of alarm. "Mireille!... Mireille is coming
here?" she exclaimed.
"Surely you did not expect the poor child to stay away for ever?" said
Louise, her eyes filling with tears. "I have missed her very much," she
added bitterly.
"Of course ... of course," stammered Chérie, "I am sorry!... But what
is ... what is to become of me? I mean, what shall we do, the baby and
I?"
"What _can_ you do?" said Louise bitterly.
Chérie bent over her child. "I wish we could hide" ... she said in a low
voice, "hide ourselves away where nobody would ever see us."
Louise made no reply. She sat down, turning away from Chérie, and tried
not to feel pitiless. "Harden not your hearts ... harden not your
hearts ..." she repeated to herself, striving to stifle the sense of
implacable rancour, of bitter hatred which hurt her own heart, but which
she could not overcome.
"Mireille will come here!" Chérie repeated under her breath. "She will
see the child! What will she say? What will she say?"
Louise raised her sombre eyes and drew a deep breath of pain.
"Alas! She will say nothing, poor little Mireille! She will say
nothing." And the bitter thought of Mireille's affliction overwhelmed
her mother's soul.
No; whatever happened Mireille, once such a joyous, laughter-loving
sprite, would say nothing. She would see Chérie with a baby in her arms,
and would say nothing. She would see her mother kneeling at her feet
beseeching for a word, and would say nothing. Her father might return,
and she would be silent; or he might die--and she would not open her
lips. This other child, this child of shame and sorrow, would grow up
and learn to speak, would smile and laugh and call Chérie by the
sweet-sounding name by which Louise would never be called again, but
Mireille would be for ever silent.
Chérie had risen with her baby in her arms. Shy and trembling she went
to Louise and knelt at her feet.
"Louise! Louise! Can you not love us and forgive us? What have we done?
What has this poor little creature done to you that you should hate it
so? Louise, it is not for me that I implore your pity and your love; I
can live without them if I must; I can live despised and hated because I
know and understand. But for him I implore you! For this poor innocent
who has done no harm, who has come into life branded and ill-fated, and
does not know that he may not be loved as other children are--one word
of tenderness, Louise, one word of blessing!"
She caught at Louise's dress with her trembling hand. "Louise, lay your
hand on his forehead and say 'God bless you.' Just those three little
words that every one says to the poorest and the most wretched. Just say
that shortest of all prayers for him!"
There was silence.
"Louise!" sobbed Chérie, "if you were to say that, I think it would help
him and me to live through all the days of misery to come. It is so sad,
Louise, that no one, no one should ever have invoked a benediction upon
so poor and helpless a child."
Louise's eyes filled with tears. She looked down at the tiny face and
the strange light eyes blinked up at her. They were cruel eyes. They
were the eyes she had seen glaring at her across the room, mocking and
taunting her, at that supreme instant when her prayers and little
Mireille's had at last succeeded in touching their oppressor's heart.
Those eyes, those light grey eyes in the ruthless face had lit upon
her, hard as flint, cruel as a blade of steel: "The seal of Germany must
be set upon the enemy's country----"
Those eyes had condemned her to her doom.
"I cannot, I cannot," she said, and turned away.
CHAPTER XXIV
Dusk was falling and a thin grey mist crept up from the two rivers as
Louise, with a black scarf over her head, hurried out of the house to
fetch Mireille. She was about to turn down the narrow rue de la Pompe
which led straight to the house of Madame Doré without passing the Place
de l'Église, where at this hour all the German soldiers were assembled,
when she noticed the hunched-up figure of a Flemish peasant coming
slowly along the small alley. He seemed to be mumbling to himself, and
looked such a strange figure with his slouch hat and limping gait that
in order to avoid him she turned back and went through the Square where
the soldiers lounged and smoked. They paid no heed to her and she
hurried on.
In her heart a wild new hope had sprung. She was going to bring Mireille
home. For the first time since that terrible morning of their flight,
Mireille would find herself once more in the surroundings that had
witnessed her martyrdom.
What if the shock of entering that house again, of being face to face
with all that must remind her of the struggle in which her agonized
child-spirit had been wrecked, what if that shock--Louise scarcely dared
to formulate the wild hope even in her own mind--were to heal her? Such
things had happened. Louise had heard and read of them; of people who
were mad and had suddenly been restored to reason, of people who were
dumb and had recovered their speech through some sudden powerful
emotion.
With beating heart Louise went faster through the silent streets.
The man she had seen in the rue de la Pompe had limped on; then turning
to the right he had found himself in front of Dr. Brandès's house.
He stopped and looked up at the windows. They were open, wide open to
the cool evening air, and at the sight, joy rushed into his heart. The
house was certainly inhabited. By whom? By whom?... Had they reached
Bomal after all? He had heard from Claude that they had left England to
return to their home. Had they arrived safely? Were they here?
The hope of seeing them again had inspired him to attempt and achieve
his daring flight from the Infirmary at Liège, and his temerarious
almost incredible journey across miles of closely-guarded country. The
vision of Chérie had been before him when at dead of night, with
bleeding hands, he had worked for hours to loosen the meshes of wire
nets and entanglements that surrounded the hospital grounds, where--half
patient, half prisoner--he had been held under strict surveillance for
nearly a month. It was Chérie's white hand that had beckoned to him and
upheld him through the long hungry days and the dreary nights, when he
was hiding in woods, crouching in ditches, plunging into rivers,
scrambling over walls and rocks until he had reached the valley of the
Aisne--passing indeed, quite near to Roche-à-Frêne where, he remembered,
she had gone for an excursion on her last birthday.... It was the
thought of Chérie that had inspired and guided him through untold risks
and dangers. And now, perhaps, she was here, here in this house before
him, within reach of his voice, within sight of his eyes, just beyond
those joyous open windows....
He remembered how on her birthday-night less than a year ago he had
clattered up on horseback through the quiet streets and had seen these
windows wide open as they were now.--Ah, what destruction had swept over
the world since then!
He remembered the sound of those laughing, girlish voices:
Sur le pont
D'Avignon
On y danse
On y danse....
He glanced quickly round, then he raised his head and softly whistled
the well-known tune.
Chérie had remained alone. She had heard Louise leave the house, closing
the outer door, and the sound of her quick footsteps had reached her for
a while from the street. Then silence had fallen.
Louise was going to fetch Mireille. Soon they would come back together,
and Chérie must decide what she would do. How should she face Mireille?
No; she must hide, hide with her child, so that Mireille should not see
him. For what would Mireille say when she saw the child? True, as Louise
said, she would say nothing--nothing that ears could hear. But what
would her soul say? How could any one know what Mireille saw and what
she did not see? Who could tell but what she might not see and remember
and hate, even as Louise hated? And that silent hatred would be still
more terrible to bear. Yes; Mireille would surely know when she saw
those very light eyes that opened so widely in the tiny face; she would
remember the man who had tortured her, who had bound her to the iron
banisters with her face turned to the bedroom door--this very door,
close by, draped with the red curtains--Yes. The memory and the horror
of it all would come back to her wandering spirit every time she saw
those strange light eyes, now half-closed as the small head nestled
sleepily at its mother's breast.
Chérie bent over her child and kissed the fair hair and the drowsy eyes
and the sweet half-open mouth. What if every one hated him? She loved
him. She loved him with the love of all mothers and with the greater
love of her sorrow and despair and shame.
"Child of mine," she whispered, "why did they not let us both drift away
into eternity on that May morning when you had not yet crossed the
threshold of life, and I was so near to the open doors of death? We
could have floated peacefully away together, you and I, out of all this
trouble and sorrow. How simple and restful it would have been."
But her baby slept and it was dusk and bed-time; so she rose and carried
him to his cradle in the adjoining room, pushing the red curtains aside
with her elbow as she entered.
While she did so she found herself vaguely thinking of her
birthday-night, of the dance with Jeannette, Cri-cri, Cécile. Like a
bright disconnected thread that memory seemed to run through her dark
thoughts. What had brought it into her mind? Why was she suddenly living
over again that brief happy hour before the storm broke over her and
wrecked her life?
The gay senseless words of the old dance kept ringing in her mind.
Sur le pont
D'Avignon
On y danse
Tout en rond....
A thrill passed through her as she realized that some passer-by was
whistling it in the street. Tears gathered in her eyes at the memories
which that puerile tune evoked.
Sur le pont
D'Avignon
On y danse
On y danse,
Sur le pont
D'Avignon
On y danse
Tout en rond.
Soft and clear the whistling still persisted. Chérie placed the baby in
its cradle, stooped over him and kissed him. Then she went to the window
and stood on tiptoe to look out--for the window was high and round, like
a ship's porthole.
The whistling stopped. Somebody standing in the shadow of the wall
stepped forward.
And Chérie's heart stood still.
CHAPTER XXV
She staggered back from the window and looked wildly round her. It was
Florian. It was Florian! What should she do? The child--where could she
hide the child?
The low whistle outside was repeated, there was a note of haste, of
urgency in it. She must let him in. How had he got here? Surely he was
in danger, there in the open street....
Chérie looked at herself, looked down at her loose white gown still
unfastened at neck and breast--the child's warm white resting-place.
Louise's black shawl lay across a chair. She took it and flung it
hastily round her shoulders; holding it tightly about her as she ran
down the stairs and opened the door.
Florian stepped quickly into the passage, closing the door behind him.
He looked strange in his oil-skin coat and slouch hat. The glimpse
Chérie caught of his face as he entered showed it hard and thin and
dark. Now in the shadowy passage she could not distinguish his features.
He caught her hand and pressed it tightly in his own. "Chérie!...
Chérie!" His voice was hoarse with emotion. "Who is here with you?" he
whispered.
"Nobody," she replied.
"What? Are you alone in the house?"
"Yes," faltered Chérie, withdrawing her hand from his. "I mean...." and
she stopped.
"Surely," he whispered anxiously, "you are not living here alone? Where
are the others? Where is Louise?"
"She is here--she has gone out. She will soon come back."
Florian drew a sigh of relief. "Let us go upstairs," he said; and
stretched out his hand to take hers again. "What a cold little hand! And
how you tremble!" He bent down and looked closely into her face. "Did I
frighten you?"
"Yes," said Chérie.
"You look like a ghost." Suddenly a different note came into his voice,
a note of anxiety and alarm. "What is the matter, have you been ill?"
"Yes," breathed Chérie.
He asked nothing more but put his arm round her, helping and hurrying
her up the two flights of stone stairs. He threw open the sitting-room
door and looked round the familiar place. "The Saints be praised," he
murmured, and drew her into the room.
He flung down his torn felt hat and threw off the long oil-skin coat.
Under it he was dressed in a dark linen suit, such as she had seen some
of the wounded Germans wear. He drew her to the window seat; the soft
May twilight fell on her pale face and glittering hair.
"Tell me, Chérie, tell me all the news; quickly. I cannot stay long," he
added, "it would be dangerous for you and for me. I have escaped from
the Infirmary at Liège; they will be hunting all over the place for
me--and for the ploughman's clothes," he added with a smile that for a
moment made him look like the Florian of old.
"The Infirmary? Have you been wounded?"
"No. I have been blown up. The Germans found me; they think me a Boche,
and _meschugge_--that is Berlinese for crazy. They have kept me with
ice-bags on my head for three weeks," he laughed again. "Perhaps I was
really off my head at first--but tell me, tell me about you. How are
you? How is Louise?"
"She is well."
"Is the little girl here too?"
"Mireille?" There was a pause. "Yes, Mireille is here."
Something in her voice startled him. "What is wrong? Has anything
happened?"
She was silent. His steel-blue eyes tried to pierce through the pallor
of her face, through the black-fringed, drooping eyelids, to read in her
soul. He suddenly felt that this shrinking figure in its white gown and
black shawl was aloof from him and draped in mystery. "What is it?" he
repeated. "What is wrong? Where has Louise gone to?" and he looked round
the familiar room with a sense of misgiving.
"She has gone ... to ... to fetch Mireille...." Chérie stammered. Then
she suddenly raised her wild blue eyes to his. "Mireille is not as she
used to be."
"What do you mean?" Florian suddenly felt sick and dizzy.
"She does not know any one. And she does not speak."
"Not speak?" echoed Florian, and the sense of sickness and dread
increased. "What has happened to her?"
"She was frightened...." Chérie's voice was toneless and he had to bend
close to her to catch her words. "She was frightened ... that night you
left ... my birthday night." ... There was a silence. She could say no
more. And suddenly Florian was silent too.
His silence seemed to fall on her heart like a heavy stone. At last she
raised her eyes to his face.
"Speak," he said, "speak quickly."
"That night ... they ... they came here...."
"I know. I know _they_ came through Bomal." The cold sweat stood on his
brow. "Did they--come to this house?"
"Yes," said Chérie.
Again there was silence--heavy and portentous.
Then he rose to his feet and stood a little away from her.
"They were in this house," he repeated. His lips and throat were arid;
he had the sensation that his voice came from afar off. "What--what
happened to Mireille? Did they hurt her?"
"No. She was afraid ... she screamed ... and they tied her to that
railing. There"--she pointed with her trembling hand to the wrought-iron
banister.
And again Florian's silence fell upon her heart like a rock and lay
there, heavily, crushing the life out of her.
After a long while he moved. He stepped back still further from her, and
his lips stirred once or twice before the words came.
"And you? Did they--harm you?"
Silence.
He waited a long time, then he repeated the question; and again he felt
as if his voice came from miles away.
Chérie suddenly dropped her face in her hands. He was answered. He
sprang forward and seized her wrists, dragging them away from her face.
"It is not true," he cried; "swear that it is not true!" And even as he
spoke he felt and hated the soft limp wrists, the feminine weakness, all
the delicate yielding frailty of her. He would have liked to feel her of
steel and adamant, that he might break and shatter her, that he might
crush and destroy.
Now she was at his feet, sobbing and crying; and he had clenched his
fists so tightly in order not to strike her that his nails dug deep into
his palms. He looked down at her shimmering hair, at the white nape of
her neck, at her fragile, heaving shoulders. The enemy had had her. The
enemy had had her and held her. She whom he had deemed too sacred for
his touch, she whom he had never dared to kiss on cheek or hair or lips
had quenched the brutish desire of the invader!... The foul,
blood-drunken soldiers had had their will of her--and there she lay
sullied, ruined, and defiled.
With a cry like the cry of a wounded animal he raised his clenched fists
to heaven, and the blood from his lacerated palms ran down his wrists,
and the tears, the hot searing tears that corrode a man's soul, rolled
down his gaunt, agonized face.
There she lay, the broken, helpless creature, there she lay--the symbol
of his country, his wrecked and ruined country!
Lost, lost both of them--broken, outraged and defiled.
Not all his blood, not all his prayers, could ever undo the wrong that
had been done to them, could ever raise them in their pristine glory and
purity--the sullied soul of the woman, the outraged heart of his land.
In the grey gloaming that fell around them, veiling with its shadows the
shame of her face, she told him what was still left to tell.
He said never a word. He sat with bowed head, his eyes hidden in his
hands. He felt as if he were dead in a dead world. All the flames of his
anger and despair were spent. His soul was turned to ashes. Nothing was
left. Nothing was left to live for, to fight for, to pray for.
For a long time he seemed to hear none of the stricken woman's words, as
she knelt sobbing at his feet. Then one word, constantly recurring, beat
on his brain like a hammer on red-hot iron.
"The child ... the child"--every other word that fell from her lips
seemed to be "the child."
"If only I could die," she was crying, "I should love to die were it not
for the child. It is such a forlorn and desolate little child. Nobody
ever looks at it, nobody ever smiles at it or wishes it well.... Not
even Louise, who is so kind.... No, she is cruel, she is like a fury
when she looks at the child. Oh, God! what will our life be in the midst
of so much scorn and hatred? Not that I care about myself; but what will
become of the little child? Perhaps I should have done as Louise
did.... I should have torn it from me before it came to life."
A deep shudder ran through Florian.
"But I seemed to hear a voice in my soul--the very voice of God, calling
aloud to me: '_Thou shall not kill._'"
Florian rose to his feet and looked down at the bowed figure. This was
Chérie, the laughing, dimpling, blushing Chérie--his betrothed!... He
bent over her and laid his hand on her shoulder, but she paid no heed.
"Ah, if only we could slip out of life together, the child and I! But
how? How? When he looks up at me and touches my face with his tiny
hands, how can I hurt him?" Her tear-flooded eyes looked up at Florian
without seeing him. "Should I strangle the little tender throat with my
hands? Or stifle the soft breath of his mouth?... Why should he not live
like other children, and laugh and play and be happy like every other
child? What has he done, poor innocent, that he should be accursed,
among children, an outcast, hated and despised?"
"Chérie!" he said, but she did not hear or heed him. Nor did she heed
the braggart peal of trumpet and clarionet passing under the windows
with the din of the "Wacht am Rhein." She heard nothing, she cared for
nothing but her own and the enemy's child.
The soldier's blood rose within him.
"And is this all you have to say to me when I come to you out of the
very jaws of death? Is this all you can think of when our land is wrung
and wracked by the enemy, torn to pieces by the foul fiends that have
violated her and you? A thousand curses on them and on----"
"No--no--no!" she screamed, springing to her feet and covering his mouth
with her hands. "No--no--not on him, not on him!"
"In the name of Belgium," roared the maddened Florian, "in the name of
our outraged women, our perishing children, our murdered men, I curse
the child you have borne! In the name of our broken hearts, in the name
of our burned and ravaged homesteads--Louvain, Lierre, Berlaer, Mortsel,
Waehlen, Weerde, Hofstade, Herselt, Diest----" The names fell from his
lips, fanning his heart to fury; but the woman closed her ears with her
hands so as not to hear the tragic enumeration of those sacred and
familiar names--Belgium's rosary of martyrdom and fire.
She held her hands over her ears and wept: "May God not hear you!... May
God not hear you!"
But he raised his voice and continued the appalling litany: "Malines,
Fleron, Wavre, Notre Dame, Rosbeck, Muysen----" Suddenly he stopped. A
sound had struck his ear--what was it?
It was a cry--the short, shrill cry of an infant.
The man stood still as if turned to stone; his blood-shot eyes,
starting from their sockets, stared at the red-draped door from which
the sound had come.
Chérie was at his feet, sobbing and wailing, her arms flung round his
knees. "Have pity, have pity!" she sobbed, shaking with terror of him,
blind with the fear of his violence. "Do no harm, do no harm! Kill me,
trample upon me, but do no harm to the child."
And still Florian stood motionless, as if turned to stone. He heard none
of the wild words that fell from the terrified woman's lips; he heard
nothing but that querulous cry, the cry of the newly-born. The world
seemed to ring with it. Above the wailing voice of the woman, above the
din of soldiery, the clash of arms, the roar of warfare, rose that
shrill cry of life, the cry of humanity. And that cry pierced his heart
like a sword. In it was all the helplessness and misery of the world. It
seemed to tell him of the uselessness and hopelessness and sadness of
all things.
Anger, grief and despair, the passion of vengeance and the desire to
kill, all dropped out of his soul and left it silent and empty. The
terrified woman before him saw those fierce eyes soften, saw the stern
lips tremble.
He bent forward and raised her to her feet. "Poor Chérie!" he said.
"Poor little Chérie!" He took her pale, disfigured face between his two
hands and looked into her eyes. "Say good-bye to me. Say good-bye. And
may the Saints protect you."
"Where are you going? What will you do?" she sobbed as she saw him
turning away from her, making ready to go out into the darkness--out of
her life for ever.
"There is much for me to do," he said and his eyes wandered to the
window whence the sound of the German bugles could still be heard.
And as she looked at him she saw that Florian, the comrade and lover of
her youth, had vanished--only the soldier stood before her, the soldier
aloof from her, detached from her, the soldier alone with his stern
great task to do.
But in her the woman, the eternal, helpless woman, was born again, and
she clung to him and wept, for passion and love returned to her soul and
overwhelmed her.
"You will leave me! You will leave me! Florian, oh, my love! What will
become of me? What shall I do? What shall I do?"
As if in answer, the feeble cry of the infant rose again.
The man said not a word. He raised his hand and pointed silently to the
red-draped door. Then he turned from her and went out into the night.
Chérie stood still, gazing at the empty doorway through which he had
passed.
* * * * *
Then as the child still wept, she went to him.
Humbly she went, and took her woman's place beside the cradle.
CHAPTER XXVI
The bugle bidding the inhabitants of Bomal to enter their homes and lock
their doors blew shrilly as Louise hurried through the darkening,
deserted streets, holding Mireille's chilly hand in hers. She spoke in
soft, hurried tones, as if the child could hear her, as if she could
understand. "You shall see, Mireille, you shall see when you enter your
home--you will recognize it and remember. When I open the door and you
step suddenly into the familiar place, I shall see the light break in
your eyes like a sudden dawn. You will turn to me and you will smile--or
weep! I do not know which will give me the greater joy--your tears or
your smile. Then you will open your sweet lips--and speak...."
"What will your first words be, Mireille? Will you say, 'Mother'? Will
you greet me as one who returns from a long journey, as one who wakens
from a long dream?... Or, even though your voice be given back to you,
will you be silent awhile, able yet not daring to speak?... Or will the
first sound from your lips be a cry of terror when you remember what you
saw that night?... Mireille, Mireille, whatever it be, I know that this
evening I shall hear your voice. It is as if God had told me so."
They went more quickly through the sombre streets.
Far away over the hills of the Ardennes the great May moon arose. As
soon as Louise caught sight of the house she saw that the gate to the
courtyard was open. Could any one have entered during her absence? She
glanced up at the windows. They were open, but dark. The sense of panic
that was never far from her heart since their return to Belgium clutched
at her like a cold hand. Could anything have happened? Why had Chérie
not lit the lights? Who had left the gate unclosed?
Then the thought of Mireille, the hope, the wild prescience of her
recovery which had suddenly grown into a delirious certainty flamed up
in her heart again, and all else was forgotten. She and Mireille were
alone in the world.
She and Mireille were alone.
She kept her eyes fixed on the small vacant face as she led her past the
gate--that gate through which the child's dancing feet had twinkled
throughout the care-free seasons of her infancy.
But not a quiver rippled over the childish countenance, not a gleam of
light flickered in the dreamy eyes, and with a low sob Louise grasped
the small passive hand more tightly and drew her across the courtyard to
the hall-door.
That door also was ajar, as if some one had hurriedly left it so,
regardless of the invader's orders that at sunset all doors should be
locked. One moment Louise thought of calling to Chérie to make sure that
she was in the house; but again the need to be alone, face to face with
Mireille's awakening soul, restrained her. She drew Mireille into the
hall and turned on the light.
"Mireille ... Mireille...." she whispered breathlessly. "Look,
darling ... don't you remember? Don't you remember?"
The girl's pale eyes roved from the tapestried archway to the panelled
doors, from the ornamental panoply to the Van de Welde winter landscapes
hanging on the wall before her. No ray of recognition lit the unmoved
face, which was fair and still as a closed flower. With beating heart
Louise placed her arm around the girl's narrow shoulders and guided her
light, uncertain footsteps up the stairs. The door to the sitting-room
was open; Louise stretched out her hand, and the brilliancy of the
electric light lit up the room.
With a gasp Louise felt Mireille falter on the threshold ... she stood
breathless and watched her. Surely, surely she must recognize this
scene: there to the right, the large Flemish fireplace; there beyond it
the old-fashioned oak settee; and there the shallow flight of stairs,
with the wrought-iron banisters running right down into the room, facing
the door with the red-tapestried curtains.... Surely, with this scene
of her martyrdom brought suddenly before her, the veil of
unconsciousness would be rent from her soul. Louise felt it. Louise knew
it. Already she could almost hear the cry with which her child would
turn to her and fall into her arms....
Nothing. Nothing happened.
For an instant a vague expression, a pale light as of dread, had
flickered over the tranquil countenance. She had faltered, and stood
still, with her eyes fixed on the red drapery of the closed door. Then
the pale flicker of emotion had faded from her face as if blown out by a
gust of wind.
Nothing more. With limp, pendant hands and vacant eyes she stood before
Louise in her usual drooping posture--pale, ethereal and unreal, like a
little weary seraph walking in its dreams.
The flaming torch of hope in the mother's heart was dashed to the
ground.
And all was dark.
CHAPTER XXVII
Chérie, kneeling beside her child's cradle, had heard them enter the
adjoining room. She rose slowly. She must go and meet them; she must
greet Mireille and tell Louise that Florian had come; had come ... and
gone!
The profound silence in the adjoining room struck her. She wondered, as
she hesitated at the door, why Louise did not speak. For did she not
always talk to Mireille in that low, tender voice of hers, as if the
child could understand? Now there was not a sound. It was if the room
were empty.
Suddenly she understood. Louise was waiting, hoping that the miracle
might be accomplished--that Mireille might speak. Then Chérie also stood
motionless with clasped hands, and waited, waited for a sound, a word, a
cry.
But the silence remained unbroken.
At last she heard the sound of Louise's weeping; and, soon after, their
soft, retreating footsteps on the carpeted stairs. Then utter silence.
And Chérie still stood at the closed door, leaning her forehead against
its panels.
They had gone. Louise was taking Mireille to bed. She had not called
Chérie. She had not said good-night, nor asked her to come and see
Mireille. No. Chérie was not needed. Louise, even in her great sorrow,
did not think of coming to Chérie. She had gone with Mireille to her
room, and she would stay there and weep all alone, and sleep at last,
never knowing that Florian had been, never knowing that he had gone away
for ever, never knowing that Chérie's heart was broken!... With a rush
of passionate grief Chérie drew back from the door and fell on her knees
beside the cradle.
And there the great May moon, rising like a golden disc over the hills
of the Ardennes, found her and shone down through the round window, upon
her and her sleeping babe.
* * * * *
Louise, lying awake in the dark, heard the church clock strike eleven.
She lay quite still in the silent room, listening to Mireille's soft
breathing. Then she thought of Claude, and prayed for his safety; but
not for his return.
At last, exhausted, she slept.
But Mireille, though her soft breathing never varied, was not asleep.
She lay motionless in the dark, with her eyes wide open. She was
listening to something that had awakened within her--Memory!...
The church clock struck half-past eleven. Louise still slept, with the
occasional catch in her breath of those who have cried themselves to
sleep.
Mireille sat up. The room was quite dark, the shutters closed and the
curtains drawn. But Mireille slipped from her bed, a slim, white-robed
spectre, and her bare feet crossed the room without a sound. She found
the door and opened it noiselessly; she crossed the landing, and her
small feet trod the carpeted staircase as lightly and silently as the
falling petals of a flower.
Where was she going to? What drew her through the dark and silent house?
Terror--and the memory of a red-draped door. Nothing else did her
haunted eyes perceive, nothing else did her stricken soul realize, but
that red curtain draped over a door. She remembered it with a vague,
horrible sense of fear. She must see it again.... Had she not once stood
before that draped door for hours and years and eternities?... Yes. She
must see it again. And if that door were to open--she must die!...
She went on, drawn by her terror as by an unseen force, until she
reached the last shallow flight of stairs--three steps skirted by a
wrought-iron banister--and there she stopped suddenly, as if fettered to
the spot. For though the room was plunged in darkness she knew that
there, opposite her, was the door with the red curtain....
And thus she stood, in the self-same attitude of her past martyrdom,
feeling that she was pinioned there, feeling that she must stand for
ever with her eyes fixed in the darkness on that part of the room where
she knew was the door--the door with the red curtain....
* * * * *
Chérie heard the clock strike eleven; then the quarter; then the
half-hour. And still she lay on the floor with her face hidden in her
arms.
For her all was at an end. Her resolve was taken. Her mind was clear.
Now she had seen Florian there was nothing left to wait for. What good
would she or the child ever do in the world? Nobody wanted them. Nobody
ever wanted to see them or speak to them. They were outcasts. Not even
Louise could look without loathing at the hapless little child. Not even
Louise could invoke a benediction upon him. He was ill-omened, hated and
accursed.
Chérie rose to her feet and went to the window--the old-fashioned
circular window like a ship's porthole--and opened it wide.
The level rays of the moon poured in, flooding the room with light.
"Good-night, moon," said Chérie. "Good-night, sky. Good-night, world."
Then she turned away and went to the cradle. She bent over it, and
lifted her sleeping infant in her arms. How warm he was! How warm and
soft and tender!... He must not catch cold.... Instinctively Chérie
caught up her wide blue silk scarf and wrapped it round herself and the
child. They were going out into the night air, out into the chilly
moonlight; they were going to cross the bridge over the Ourthe, and then
go up the lower bank of the river, up through the dank grasses, past the
old mill.... There, where the bank shelved down so steeply she would run
into the water.
She knew what it would feel like. Last year, had she not run into the
rippling waves at Westende every morning? She remembered it well.
Yes; she would feel the cool chill embrace of the water rising from her
feet to her knees ... to her waist ... to her breast ... to her
throat.... Then she would clasp her arms tightly round her child,
putting her lips close to his so as not to hear him cry, and her last
breath would be exhaled on the sweet warmth of that little mouth, the
dear little open mouth that seemed always to be asking for the balm of
milk and kisses.
She raised her eyes once more to the open window. "Good-bye," she said
again to the sky, to the world, and to life. Then she resolutely turned
away from the shining circle of light.
She drew the long blue scarf over her own head and shoulders, crossing
it over her arms and wrapping the infant in its azure folds as she held
him to her breast. Then she opened the door.
The red curtain fell in a straight line before her, and she pushed it
softly aside; it slid smoothly back on its rings.
Clasping her infant in the shimmering folds of blue, she took a step
forward--then stopped and stood transfixed in the doorway.
Some one was there! Some one was standing silent, there in the dark.
Who was it?
_Mireille!_
* * * * *
Mireille had stood motionless, almost cataleptic, with her fear-maddened
eyes fixed upon the dark spot which was the door. Now--now it was
opening! it was opening! A white light had streamed suddenly under the
curtain.
Yes. The door was opening.... Now Mireille would die! She knew it! What
she was going to see would kill her, as it had killed her soul before.
Gasping, with open mouth, with clenched hands, she saw the gap of light
widen beneath the moving curtain.... Now ... now.... The curtain had
slid back. There was a dazzling square of light....
And in that light stood a Vision.
Bathed in the rays of the moon, swathed in shimmering azure stood a
Mother with her Child. Behind her head glowed a luminous silver circle.
Ah! Well did Mireille know her! Well did Mireille remember her. All fear
was gone, all darkness swept away in the rapture of that dazzling
presence.
Mireille stretched out her clasped hands towards that effulgent vision.
What were the words of greeting she must say? She knew them well ...
they were rising in her throat.... What were they? What were they?
She wrung her clasped hands, with a spasm in her throat, but the words
would not come. She knew them. They seemed to burst open like flowers of
light in her brain, to peal like the notes of an organ in her soul, yet
her lips were locked and could not frame them.
The vision moved, seemed to waver and tremble.... Ah! Would she fade
away and vanish and be lost? Would Mireille fall back again into eternal
silence and darkness?
Something seemed to break in Mireille's throat. A cry--a cry, thrilling
and articulate--escaped her. The sealed fountain of her voice was opened
and the words of the immortal salutation gushed from her lips:
"_Ave Maria!..._"
Did not the shimmering figure smile and move towards her with extended
hand?... Fainting with ecstasy, Mireille sank at her feet.
Louise had started from her sleep at the sound of a cry.... Whose voice
had uttered it?
Though the room was dark, she felt that it was empty; she knew that
Mireille was not there. Yes, the door was open, showing a pale glimmer
of light.
Swift as an arrow Louise sped down the stairs, then--on the landing of
the last flight--she stopped, dazzled and spell-bound by what she saw
before her.
There in the moonlight stood the eternal vision of Maternity; and before
it knelt Mireille.
And Mireille was speaking.
"_Benedicta tu...._"
Clear, frail and silvern the words fell from Mireille's lips.
"_Benedicta tu!_"
The blessing that Louise and all others had withheld, now fell like a
solemn prophecy from the innocent's lips, rang like a divine decree in
that pure voice that had been hushed so long.
Mireille was healed! Healed through Chérie and her child of sorrow and
shame.
A wave of exalted emotion overwhelmed Louise, and she sank on her knees
beside Mireille, repeating the hallowed benediction.
With flowing tears Chérie, clasping her baby in her arms, wavered and
trembled like a holy picture seen in moonlit waters....
* * * * *
And so farewell--farewell to Mireille, Chérie, Louise.
They are still in their Belgian village awaiting the dawn of their
deliverance.
Around them the fury of War still rages, and the end of their sorrow is
not yet.
But upon them has descended the Peace of God which passeth all
understanding.
THE END
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