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diff --git a/40949-0.txt b/40949-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..694fc43 --- /dev/null +++ b/40949-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6713 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40949 *** + + _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 + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Outrage, by Annie Vivanti + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40949 *** |