CHAPTER XIXHONOUR

CHAPTER XIXHONOURFor a moment the airman stood watching and listening. The whir of the receding car died away in the night.Then, carrying his bundle and his bomber's sack, heavy with latent death, he went into the inn and through the café, where the sleeping innkeeper sat huddled, and felt his way cautiously to the little dining room.The wooden shutters had been closed; a candle flared on the table. Maryette sat beside it, her arms extended across the cloth, her head bowed.He thought she was asleep, but she looked up as his footfall sounded on the bare floor.She was so pale that he asked her if she felt ill.[pg 227]"No. I have been thinking of my friend," she replied in a low but steady voice."He may live," said the airman. "He was alive when we lifted him."The girl nodded as though preoccupied—an odd, mysterious little nod, as though assenting to some intimate, inward suggestion of her own mind.Then she raised her dark blue eyes to the airman, who was still standing beside the table, the sack of bombs hanging from his left shoulder, the bundle under his arm."Here is supper," she said, looking around absently at the few dishes. Then she folded her hands on the table's edge and sat silent, as though lost in thought.He placed the sack carefully on a cane chair beside him, the bundle on the floor, and seated himself opposite her. There was bread, meat, and a bottle of red wine. The girl declined to eat, saying that she had supped."Your friend Jack," he said again, after a long silence, "—I have seen worse cases. He may live, mademoiselle.""That," she said musingly, in her low, even[pg 228]voice, "is now in God's hands." She gave the slightest movement to her shoulders, as though easing them a trifle of that burden. "I have prayed. You saw me weep. That is ended—so much. Now—" and across her eyes shot a blue gleam, "—now I am ready to listen toyou! In the cart—out on the road there—you said that anybody can weep, but that few dare avenge.""Yes," he drawled, "I said that.""Very well, then; tell mehow!""What doyouwant to avenge? Your friend?""His country's honour, and mine! If he had been slain—otherwise—I should have perhaps mourned him, confident in the law of France. But—I have seen the Rhenish swine on French soil—I saw the Boches do this thing in France. It is not merely my friend I desire to avenge; it is the triple crime against his life, against the honour of his country and of mine." She had not raised her voice; had not stirred in her chair.The airman, who had stopped eating, sat[pg 229]with fork in hand, listening, regarding her intently."Yes," he said, resuming his meal, "I understand quite well what you mean. Some such philosophy sent my elder brother and me over here from New York—the wild hogs trampling through Belgium—the ferocious herds from the Rhine defacing, defiling, rending, obliterating all that civilized man has reverenced for centuries.... That's the idea—the world-wide menace of these unclean hordes—and the murderous filth of them!... They got my brother."He shrugged, realizing that his face had flushed with the heat of inner fires."Coolness does it," he added, almost apologetically, "—method and coolness. The world must keep its head clear: yellow fever and smallpox have been nearly stamped out; the Hun can be eliminated—with intelligence and clear thinking.... And I'm only an American airman who has been shot down like a winged heron whose comrades have lingered a little to comfort him and have gone on.... Yes, but a winged heron can still stab, little[pg 230]mistress of the bells.... And every blow counts.... Listen attentively—for Jack's sake ... and for the sake of France. For I am going to explain to you how you can strike—if you want to.""I am listening," said Maryette serenely."We may not live through it. Even my orders do not send me to do this thing; they merely permit it. Are you contented to go with me?"She nodded, the shadow of a smile on her lips."Very well. You play the carillon?""Yes.""You can play 'La Brabançonne'?""Yes.""On the bells?""Yes."He rose, went around the table, carrying his chair with him, and seated himself beside her. She inclined her pale, pretty head; he placed his lips close to her ear, speaking very slowly and distinctly, explaining his plan in every minute detail.While he was still speaking in a whisper,[pg 231]the street outside filled with the trample of arriving cavalry. The Spahis were leaving the environs of Sainte Lesse;chasseurs à chevalfollowed from still farther afield, escorting ambulances from the Nivelle hospitals now being abandoned."The trenches at Nivelle are being emptied," said the airman."And do you mean that you and I are to go there, to Nivelle?" she asked."That is exactly what I mean. In an hour I shall be in the Nivelle belfry. Will you be there with me?""Yes.""Excellent!" he exclaimed. "You can play 'La Brabançonne' on the bells while I blow hell out of them in the redoubt below us!"The infantry from the Nivelle trenches began to pass. There were a few wagons, a battery of seventy-fives, a soup kitchen or two and a long column of mules from Fontanes.Two American muleteers knocked at the inn door and came stamping into the hallway, asking for a loaf and a bottle of red wine. Maryette rose from the table to find pro[pg 232]visions; the airman got up also, saying in English:"Where do you come from, boys?""From Fontanes corral," they replied, surprised to hear their own tongue spoken."Do you know Jack Burley, one of your people?""Sure. He's just been winged bad.""The Huns done him up something fierce," added the other."Very bad?"Maryette came back with a loaf and two bottles."I seen him at Fontanes," replied the muleteer, taking the provisions from the girl. "He's all shot to pieces, but they say he'll pull through."The airman turned to Maryette:"Jack will get well," he translated bluntly.The girl, who had just refused the money offered by the American muleteer, turned sharply, became deadly white for a second, then her face flamed with a hot and splendid colour.One of the muleteers said:[pg 233]"Is this here his girl?""Yes," nodded the airman.The muleteer became voluble, patting Maryette on one arm and then on the other:"J'ai vue Jack Burley, mamzelle, toot a l'heure! Il est bien, savvy voo! Il est tray, tray bien! Bocoo de trou! N'importe!Ilva tray bien! Savvy voo? Jack Burley, l'ami de voo! Comprenny? On va le guerir toot sweet! Wee! Wee! Wee!——"The girl flung her arms around the amazed muleteer's neck and kissed him impetuously on both cheeks. The muleteer blushed and his comrade fidgeted. Only the girl remained unembarrassed.Half laughing, half crying, terribly excited, and very lovely to look upon, she caught both muleteers by their sleeves and poured out a torrent of questions. With the airman's aid she extracted what information they had to offer; and they went their way, flustered, still blushing, clasping bread and bottles to their agitated breasts.The airman looked her keenly in the eyes as she came back from the door, still intensely[pg 234]excited, adorably transfigured. She opened her lips to speak—the happy exclamation on her lips, already half uttered, died there."Well?" inquired the airman quietly.Dumb, still breathing rapidly, she returned his gaze in silence."Now that your friend Jack is going to live—what next?" asked the airman pleasantly.For a full minute she continued to stare at him without a word."No need to avenge him now," added the airman, watching her."No." She turned, gazed vaguely into space. After a moment she said, as though to herself: "But his country's honour—and mine? That reckoning still remains! Is it not true?"The airman said, with a trace of pity in his voice, for the girl seemed very young:"You need not go with me to Nivelle just because you promised.""Oh," she said simply, "I must go, of course—it being a question of our country's honour.""I do not ask it. Nor would Jack, your[pg 235]friend. Nor would your own country ask it of you, Maryette Courtray."She replied serenely:"ButIask it—ofmyself. Do you understand, monsieur?""Perfectly." He glanced mechanically at his useless wrist watch, then inquired the time. She went to her room, returned, wearing a little jacket and carrying a pair of big, wooden gloves."It is after eleven o'clock," she said. "I brought my jacket because it is cold in all belfries. It will be cold in Nivelle, up there in the tower under Clovis.""You really mean to go with me?"She did not even trouble to reply to the question. So he picked up his packet and his sack of bombs, and they went out, side by side, under the tunnelled wall.Infantry from Nivelle trenches were still plodding along the dark street under the trees; dull gleams came from their helmets and bayonets in the obscure light of the stars.The girl stood watching them for a few[pg 236]moments, then her hand sought the airman's arm:"If there is to be a battle in the street here, my father cannot remain."The airman nodded, went out into the street and spoke to a passing officer. He, in turn, signalled the driver of a motor omnibus to halt.The little bell-mistress entered the tavern, followed by two soldiers. In a few moments they came out bearing, chair-fashion between them, the crippled innkeeper.The old man was much alarmed, but his daughter followed beside him to the omnibus, in which were several lamed soldiers."Et toi?" he quavered as they lifted him in. "What of thee, Maryette?""I follow," she called out cheerily. "I rejoin thee—" the bus moved on—"God knows when or where!" she added under her breath.The airman was whispering to a fat staff officer when she rejoined him. All three looked up in silence at the belfry of Sainte Lesse, looming above them, a monstrous shadow athwart the stars. A moment later[pg 237]an automobile, arriving from the south, drew up in front of the inn."Bonne chance," said the fat officer abruptly; he turned and waddled swiftly away in the darkness. They saw him mount his horse. His legs stuck out sideways."Now," whispered the airman, with a nod to the chauffeur.The little bell-mistress entered the car, her wooden gloves tucked under one arm. The airman followed with his packet and his sack of bombs. The chauffeur started his engine.The middle of the road was free to him; the edges were occupied by the retreating infantry. As the car started, very slowly, cautiously feeling its way out of Sainte Lesse, the fat staff officer turned his horse and trotted up alongside. The car stopped, the engine still running."It's understood?" asked the officer in a low voice. "It's to be when we hear 'La Brabançonne'?""When you hear 'La Brabançonne.'""Understood," said the staff officer crisply, saluted and drew bridle. And the car moved[pg 238]out into the starlit night along an endless column of retreating soldiers, who were laughing, smoking, and chatting as though not in the least depressed by their withdrawal from the dry and cosy trenches of Nivelle which they were abandoning.[pg 239]CHAPTER XX"LA BRABANÇONNE"No shells were falling in Nivelle as they left the car on the outskirts of the town and entered the long main street. That was all of Nivelle, a long, treeless main street from which branched a few alleys.Smouldering débris of what had been houses illuminated the street. There were no other lights. Nothing stirred except a gaunt cat flitting like a shadow along the gutter. There was not a sound save the faint stirring of the cinders over which pale flames played fitfully.Abandoned trenches ditched the little town in every direction; temporary shelters made of boughs, sheds, and broken-down wagons stood along the street. Otherwise, all impedimenta, materials, and stores had appar[pg 240]ently been removed by the retreating columns. There was little wreckage except the burning débris of the few shell-struck houses—a few rags, a few piles of firewood, a bundle of straw and hay here and there.High, mounting toward the stars, the ancient tower with its gilded hippogriff dominated the place—a vast, vague shape brooding over the single mile-long street and grimy alleys branching from it.Nobody guarded the portal; the ancient doors stood wide open; pitch darkness reigned within."Do you know the way?" whispered the airman."Yes. Take hold of my hand."He dared not use his flash. Carrying bundle and bombsack under one arm, he sought for her hand and encountered it. Cool, slim fingers closed over his.After a few moments' stealthy advance, she whispered:"Here are the stairs. Be careful; they twist."She started upward, feeling with her feet[pg 241]for every stone step. The ascent appeared to be interminable; the narrowing stone spiral seemed to have no end. Her hand grew warm within his own.But at last they felt a fresh wind blowing and caught a glimpse of stars above them.Then, tier on tier, the bells of the carillon, fixed to their great beams, appeared above them—a shadowy, bewildering wilderness of bells, rising, rank above rank, until they vanished in the darkness overhead. Beside them, almost touching them, loomed the great bell Clovis, a gigantic mass bulking enormously in that shadowy place.A sonorous wind flowed through the open tower, eddying among the bells—a strong, keen night wind blowing from the north.The airman walked to the south parapet and looked down. Below him in the starlight, like an indistinct map spread out, lay the Nivelle redoubt and the trench with its gabions, its sand bags, its timbers, its dugouts.Very far away to the southeast they could see the glare of rockets and exploding shells, but the sound of the bombardment did not[pg 242]reach them. North, a single searchlight played and switched across the clouds; west, all was dark."They'll arrive just before dawn," said the airman, placing his sack of bombs on the pavement under the parapet. "Come, little bell-mistress, take me to see your keyboard.""It is below—a few steps. This way—if you will follow me——"She turned to the stone stairs again, descended a dozen steps, opened a door on a narrow landing.And there, in the starlight, he saw the keyboard and the bewildering maze of wires running up and branching like a huge web toward the tiers of bells above.He looked at the keyboard curiously. The little mistress of the bells displayed the two wooden gloves with which she encased her hands when she played the carillon."It would be impossible for one to play unless one's hands are armoured," she explained."It is almost a lost art," he mused aloud, "—this playing the carillon—this wonderful[pg 243]bell-music of the middle ages. There are few great bell-masters in this day.""Few," she said dreamily."And"—he turned and stared at her—"few mistresses of the bells, I imagine.""I think I am the only one in France or in Flanders.... And there are few carillons left. The Huns are battering them down. Towers of the ancient ages are falling everywhere in Flanders and in France under their shell fire. Very soon there will be no more of the old carillons left; no more bell-music in the world." She sighed heavily. "It is a pity."She seated herself at the keyboard."Dare I play?" she asked, looking up over her shoulder."No; it would only mean a shell from the Huns."She nodded, laid the wooden gloves beside her and let her delicate hands wander over the mute keys.Leaning beside her the airman quietly explained the plan they were to follow."With dawn they will come creeping into[pg 244]Nivelle—the Huns," he said. "I have one of their officers' uniforms in that bundle above. I shall try to pass as a general officer. You see, I speak German. My education was partly ruined in Germany. So I'll get on very well, I expect."And directly under us is the trench and the main redoubt. They'll occupy that first thing. They'll swarm there—the whole trench will be crawling with them. They'll install their gas cylinders at once, this wind being their wind."But with sunrise the wind changes—and whether it changes or not, I don't care," he added. "I've got them at last where I want them."The girl looked up at him. He smiled that terrifying smile of his:"With the explosion of my first bomb among their gas cylinders you are to start these bells above us. Are you afraid?""No.""You are to play 'La Brabançonne.' That is the signal to our trenches.""I have often played it," she said coolly.[pg 245]"Not in the teeth of a barbarian army. Not in the faces of a murderous soldiery."The girl sat quite still for a few moments; then looking up at him, and very pale in the starlight:"Do you think they will tear me to pieces, monsieur?"He said:"I mean to hold those stairs with my sack of bombs until our people enter the trenches. If they can do it in an hour we will be all right.""Yes.""It is only a half-hour affair from our salient. I allow our people an hour.""Yes.""But if, even now, you had rather go back——""No!""There is no disgrace in going back.""You said once, 'anybody can weep for friend and country. Few avenge either.' I am—happy—to be among the few."He nodded. After a moment he said:"I'll bet you something. My country is all[pg 246]right, but it's sick. It'sgot a nauseous dose of verbiage to spew up—something it's swallowed—something about being too proud to fight.... My brother and I couldn't stand it, so we came to France.... He was in the photo air service. He was in mufti—and about two miles up, I believe. Six Huns went for him.... And winged him. He had to land behind their lines.... In mufti.... Well—I've never found courage to hear the details. I can't stand them—yet.""Your brother—is dead, monsieur?" she asked timidly."Oh, yes. With—circumstances. Well, then—after that, from an ordinary, commonplace man I became a machine for the extermination of vermin. That's all I am—an animated magazine of Persian powder—or I do it in any handy way. It's not a sporting proposition, you see, just get rid of them any old way. You don't understand, do you?""A—little.""But it's slow work—slow work," he muttered vaguely, "—and the world is crawling—crawling with them. But if God guides my[pg 247]bomb this time and if I hit one of their gas cylinders—thatought to be worth while."In the starlight his features became tense and terrible; she shivered in her threadbare jacket.After a few moments' silence he went away up the steps to put on his German uniform. When he descended again she had a troubled question for him to answer:"But how shall you account for me, a French girl, monsieur, if they come to the belfry?"A heavy flush darkened his face:"Little mistress of the bells, I shall pretend to be what the Huns are. Do you know how they treat French women?""I have heard," she said faintly."Then if they come and find you here as my—prisoner—they will think they understand."The colour flamed in her face and she bowed it, resting her elbows on the keyboard."Come," he said, "don't be distressed. Does it matter what a Hun thinks? Come; let's be cheerful. Can you hum for me 'La Brabançonne'?"[pg 248]She did not reply."Well, never mind," he said. "But it's a grand battle anthem.... We Americans have one.... It's out of fashion. And after all, I had rather hear 'La Brabançonne' when the time comes.... What a terrible admission! But what Americans have done to my country is far more terrible. The nation's sick—sick!... I prefer 'La Brabançonne' for the time being."The Prussians entered Nivelle a little before dawn. The airman had been watching the street below. Down there in the slight glow from the cinders of what once had been a cottage a cat had been squatting, staring at the bed of coals, as though she were once more installed upon the family hearthstone.Then something unseen as yet by the airman attracted the animal's attention. Alert, crouching, she stared down the vista of dark, deserted houses, then turned and fled like a ghost.For a long while the airman perceived nothing. Suddenly close to the house façades[pg 249]on either side of the street, shadowy forms came gliding forward.They passed the glowing embers and went on toward Sainte-Lesse; jägers, with knapsacks on back and rifles trailing; and on their heads oddly shaped pot helmets with battered looking visors.One or two motorcyclists followed, whizzing through the desolate street and into the country beyond.After a few minutes, out of the throat of the darkness emerged a solid column of infantry. In a moment, beneath the bell tower, the ground was swarming with Huns; every inch of the earth became infested with them; fields, hedges, alleys crawled alive with Germans. They overran every road, every street, every inch of open country; their wagons choked the main thoroughfare, they were already establishing themselves in the redoubt below, in the trench, running in and out of dugouts and all over scarp, counter-scarp, parades and parapet, ant-like in energy, busy with machine gun, trench mortar, installing telephones, searchlights, periscopes, machine guns.[pg 250]Automobiles arrived—two armoured cars and grey passenger machines in which there were officers.The airman laid his hand on Maryette's arm."Little bell-mistress," he said, "German officers are coming into the tower. I want them to find you in my arms when they come up into this belfry. Understand me, and forgive me.""I—understand," she whispered."Play your part bravely. Will you?""Yes."He put his arms around her; they stood rigid, listening."Now!" he whispered, and drew her close, kissing her.Spurred boots clattered on the stone floor:"Herr Je!" exclaimed an astonished voice. Somebody laughed. But the airman coolly pushed the girl aside, and as the faint grey light of dawn fell on his field uniform bearing the ribbon of the iron cross, two pairs of spurred heels hastily clinked together and two hands flew to the oddly shaped helmet visors."Also!" exclaimed the airman in a mincing[pg 251]Berlin accent. "When I require a corps of observers I usually send my aide. That being now quite perfectly understood, you gentlemen will give yourselves the trouble to descend as you have come. Further, you will place a sentry at the tower door, and inform enquirers that General Count von Gierdorff and his staff are occupying the Nivelle belfry for purposes of observation."The astounded officers saluted steadily; and if they imagined that the mythical staff of this general officer was clustered aloft somewhere up there where the bells hung it was impossible to tell by the strained expressions on their wooden countenances.However, it was evidently perfectly plain to them what the high Excellenz was about in this vaulted room where wires led aloft to an unseen carillon on the landing in the belfry above.The airman nodded; they went. And when their clattering steps echoed far below on the spiral stone stairs, the airman motioned to the little bell-mistress. She followed him up the short flight to where the bells hung.[pg 252]"We're in for it now," he said. "If High Command comes into this place to investigate then I shall have to hold those stairs.... It's growing quite light in the east. Which way is the wind?""North," she said in a steady voice. She was terribly pale.He went to the parapet and looked over, half wondering, perhaps, whether he would receive a rifle shot through the head.Far below at the foot of the bell-tower the dimly discerned Nivelle redoubt, swarming with men, was being armed; and, to the south, wired he thought, but could not see distinctly.Then, as the dusk of early dawn grew greyer, the first rifle shots rattled out in the west. The French salient was saluting the wire-stringers.Back under shelter they tumbled; whistles sounded distantly; a trench mortar crashed; then the accentless tattoo of machine guns broke from every emplacement."The east is turning a little yellow," he said calmly. "I believe this matter is going through.[pg 253]Toss some dust into the air. Which way?""North," said the girl."Good. I think they're placing their cylinders. I think I can see them laying their coils. I'm certain of it. What luck!"The airman was becoming excited and his voice trembled a little with the effort to control it."It's growing pink in the east. Try a handful of dust again," he suggested almost gaily."North," she said briefly, watching the dust aloft."Luck's with us! Look at the east! If their High Command keeps his nose out of this place!—if hedoes!—Look at the east, little bell-mistress! It's all gold! There's pink up higher. I can see a faint tinge of blue, too. Can you?""I think so."A minute dragged like a year in prison. Then:"Try the wind again," he said in a strained voice."North.""Oh, luck! Luck!" he muttered, slinging his[pg 254]sack of bombs over his shoulder. "We've got them! We've certainly got them! What's that! An airplane! Look, little girl—one of our planes is up. There's another! Which way is the wind?""North.""Got 'em!" he snapped between his teeth. "Run over to the stairs. Listen! Is anybody coming up?""I can hear nothing.""Stand there and listen. Never mind the row the guns are making; listen for somebody on the stairs. Look how light it's getting! The sun will push up before many minutes. We've got 'em!Got 'em!Wet your finger and try the wind!""North.""North here, too. What do you know about that! Luck! Luck's with us! And we've got 'em—!" he lifted his clenched hand and laughed at her. "Like that!" he said, his blue eyes blazing. "They're getting ready to gas below. Look at 'em! Glory to God! I can see two cylinders directly under me. They're manning the nozzles! Every man is masking[pg 255]at his post! Anybody on the stairs! Any sound?""None.""Are you certain?""It is as still as death below.""Try the dust. The wind's changing, I think. Quick! Which way?""West.""Oh, glory! Glory to God! They feel it below! They know. The wind has changed. Off came their respirators. No gas this morning, eh? Yes, by God, there will be gas enough for all——!"He caught up a bomb, leaned over the parapet, held it aloft, poised, aiming steadily for one second of concentrated coördination of mind and muscle. Then straight down he launched it. The cylinder beneath him was shattered and a green geyser of gas burst from it deluging the trench.Already a second bomb followed the first, then another, and then a third; and with the last report another cylinder in the trench below burst into thick green billows of death and flowed over the ground,west.[pg 256]Two more bombs whirled down, bursting on a machine gun; then the airman turned with a cry of triumph, and at the same instant the sun rose above the hills and flung a golden ray straight across his face.To Maryette the man stood transfigured, like the Blazing Guardian of the Flaming Sword."Ring out your Brabançonne!" he cried. "Let the Huns hear the war song of the land they've trampled! Now! Little bell-mistress, arm your white hands with your wooden gloves and make this old carillon speak in brass and iron!"He caught her by the arm; they ran down the short flight of steps; she drew on her wooden gloves and sprang to the keyboard."I'll hold the stairs!" he cried. "I can hold these stairs for an hour against the whole world in arms. Now, then! The Brabançonne!"Above the roaring confusion and the explosions far below, from high up in the sky a clear bell note floated as though out of Heaven itself—another, others, crystalline[pg 257]clear, imperious, filling all the sky with their amazing and terrible beauty.The mistress of the bells struck the keyboard with armoured hands—beautiful, slender, avenging hands; the bells above her crashed out into the battle-song of Flanders, filling sky and earth with its splendid defiance of the Hun.The airman, bomb in hand, stood at the head of the stone stairs; the ancient tower rocked with the fiercely magnificent anthem of revolt—the war cry of a devastated land—the land that died to save the world—the martyr, Belgium, still prone in the deathly trance awaiting her certain resurrection.The rising sun struck the tower where three score ancient bells poured from metal throats their heavenly summons to battle!The Hun heard it, tumbling, clawing, strangling below in the hellish vapours of his own death-fog; and now, from the rear his sky-guns hurled shrapnel at the carillon in the belfry of Nivelle.Clouds possessed the tower—soft, white, fleecy clouds rolling, unfolding, floating about[pg 258]the ancient buttresses and gargoyles. An iron hail rained on slate and parapet and resounding bell-metal. But the bells pealed and pealed in clear-voiced beauty, and Clovis, the great iron giant, hung, scarcely sonorous under the shrapnel rain.Suddenly there were bayonets on the stairs—the clatter of heavy feet—alien faces on the threshold. Then a bomb flew, and the terrible crash cleared the stairs.Twice more the clatter came with the clank of bayonets and guttural cries; but both died out in the infernal roar of the grenades exploding inside that stony spiral. And no more bayonets flickered on the stairs.The airman, frozen to a statue, listened. Again and again he thought he could hear bugles, but the roar from below blotted out the distant call."Little bell-mistress!"She turned her head, her hands still striking the keyboard. He spoke through the confusion of the place:"Sound the tocsin!"Then Clovis thundered from the belfry like[pg 259]a great gun fired, booming out over the world. Around the iron colossus shrapnel swept in gusts; Clovis thundered on, annihilating all sound except his own tremendous voice, heedless of shell and bullet, disdainful of the hell's shambles below, where masked French infantry were already leaping the parapets of Nivelle Redoubt into the squirming masses below.The airman shouted at her through the tumult:"They murdered my brother. Did I tell you? They hacked him to slivers with their bayonets. I've settled the reckoning down in the gas there—their own green gas, damn them! You don't understand what I say, do you? He was my brother——"A frightful explosion blew in the oubliette; the room rattled and clattered with shrapnel.The airman swayed where he stood in the swirling smoke, lurched up against the stone coping, slid down to his knees.When his eyes opened the little bell-mistress was bending over him."They got me," he gasped. All the front of his tunic was sopping red.[pg 260]"They said it meant the cross—if I made good.... Are you hurt?""Oh, no!" she whispered. "But you——""Go on and play!" he whispered with a terrible effort."But you——""The Brabançonne! Quick!"She went, whimpering. Standing before the keyboard she pulled on her wooden gloves and struck the keys.Out over the infernal uproar below pealed the bells; the morning sky rang with the noble summons to all brave men. Once more the ancient tower trembled with the mighty out-crash of the battle hymn.With the last note she turned and looked down at him where he lay against the wall. He opened his glazing eyes and tried to smile at her."Bully," he whispered. "Could you recite—the words—to me—just so I could hear them on my way—West?"She left the keyboard, came and dropped on her knees beside him; and closing her eyes to check the tears sang in a low, tremulous,[pg 261]girlish voice, De Lonlay's words, to the battle anthem of revolution."Bully," he sighed. And spoke no more on earth.But the little mistress of the bells did not know his soul had passed.And the French officer who came leaping up the stairs, pistol lifted, halted in astonishment to see a dead man lying beside a sack of bombs and a young girl on her knees beside him, weeping and tremblingly intoning "La Brabançonne."[pg 262]CHAPTER XXITHE GARDENERA week later, toward noon, as usual, the two American, muleteers, Smith and Glenn, sauntered over from their corral to the White Doe Tavern where, it being a meatless day, they ate largely of potato soup and of a tench, smoking hot.The tench had been caught that morning off the back doorstep, which was an ancient and mossy slab of limestone let into the coping of the river wall.Jean Courtray, the crippled inn-keeper, caught it. All that morning he had sat there in the sun on the river wall, half dozing, opening his dim eyes at intervals to gaze at his painted quill afloat among the water weeds of the little river Lesse. At intervals, too, he turned his head with that peculiar movement[pg 263]of the old, and peered at his daughter, Maryette, and the Belgian gardener who were working among the potatoes in the garden.And at last he had hooked his fish and the emaciated young Belgian dropped his hoe and came over and released it from the hook where it lay flopping and quivering and glittering among the wild grasses on the river bank. And that was how Kid Glenn and Sticky Smith, American muleteers on duty at Saint Lesse, came to lunch on freshly caught tench at the Inn of the White Doe.After luncheon, agreeably satiated, they rose from the table in the little dining room and strolled out to the garden in the rear of the inn, their Mexican spurs clanking. Maryette heard them; they tipped their caps to her; she acknowledged their salute gravely and continued to cultivate her garden with a hoe, the blond, consumptive Belgian trundling a rickety cultivator at her heels."Look, Stick," drawled Glenn. "Maryette's got her decoration on."From where they lounged by the river wall[pg 264]they could see the cross of the Legion pinned to the girl's blouse.Both muleteers had been present at the investment the day before, when a general officer arrived from Paris and the entire garrison of Sainte Lesse had been paraded—an impressive total of three dozen men—six gendarmes and a brigadier; one remount sub-lieutenant and twenty troopers; a veterinary, two white American muleteers, and five American negro hostlers from Baton Rouge.The girl had nearly died of shyness during the ceremony, had endured the accolade with crimson cheeks, had stammered a whispered response to the congratulations of neighbors who had gathered to see the little bell-mistress of Sainte Lesse honoured by the country which she had served in the belfry of Nivelle.As she came past Smith and Glenn, trailing her hoe, the latter now sufficiently proficient in French, said gaily:"Have you heard from Jack again, Mamzelle Maryette?"The girl blushed:[pg 265]"I hear from Djack by every mail," she said, with all the transparent honesty that characterized her.Smith grinned:"Just like that! Well, tell him from me to quit fooling away his time in a hospital and come and get you or somebody is going to steal you."The girl was very happy; she stood there in the September sunshine leaning on her hoe and gazing half shyly, half humorously down the river where a string of American mules was being watered.Mellow Ethiopian laughter sounded from the distance as the Baton Rouge negroes exchanged pleasantries in limited French with a couple of gendarmes on the bank above them. And there, in the sunshine of the little garden by the river, war and death seemed very far away. Only at intervals the veering breeze brought to Sainte Lesse the immense vibration of the cannonade; only at intervals the high sky-clatter of an airplane reminded the village that the front was only a little north[pg 266]of Nivelle, and that what had been Nivelle was not so very far away."If you weremygirl, Maryette," remarked Smith, "I'd die of worry in that hospital.""Youmight have reason to, Monsieur," retorted the girl demurely. "But you see it's Djack who is convalescing, not you."She had become accustomed to the ceaseless banter of Burley's two comrades—a banter entirely American, and which at first she was unable to understand. But now all things American, including accent and odd, perverted humour, had become very dear to her. The clink-clank of the muleteer's big spurs always set her heart beating; the sight of an arriving convoy from the Channel port thrilled her, and to her the trample of mules, the shouts of foreign negroes, the drawling, broken French spoken by the white muleteers made heavenly real to her the dream which love had so suddenly invaded, and into which, as suddenly, strode Death, clutching at Love.She had beaten him off—she had—or God had—routed Death, driven him from the dream.[pg 267]For it was a dream to her still, and she thought she could never be able to comprehend the magic reality of it, even when at last her man, "Djack," came back to prove the blessed miracle which held her in the magic of its thrall."Who's the guy with the wheelbarrow?" inquired Sticky Smith, rolling a cigarette."Karl, his name is," she answered; "—a Belgian refugee.""He looks like a Hun to me," remarked Glenn, bluntly."He has his papers," said the girl.Glenn shrugged."With his little pink eyes of a pig and his whitish hair and eyebrows—well, maybe they make 'em like that in Belgium.""Papers," added Smith, "canbe swiped."The girl shook her head:"He's an invalid student from Ypres. He looks quite ill, I think.""He looks the lunger, all right. But Huns have it, too. What does he do—wander about town at will?"[pg 268]"He works for us, monsieur. Your suspicions are harsh. Karl is quite harmless, poor boy.""What does he do after hours?" demanded Sticky Smith, watching the manœuvres of the sickly blond youth and the wheelbarrow."Monsieur Smith, if you knew how innocent is his pastime!" she exclaimed, laughing. "He collects and studies moths and butterflies. Is there, if you please, a mania more harmless in the world?... And now I must return to my work, messieurs."As the two muleteers strode clanking away toward the canal in the meadow, the blond youth turned his head and looked after them out of eyes which were naturally pale and small, and which, as he watched the two Americans, seemed to grow paler and smaller yet.That afternoon old Courtray, swathed in a shawl, sat on the mossy doorstep and fished among the water weeds of the river. The sun was low; work in the garden had ended.Maryette had gone up into her belfry to play the sunset hymn on the noble old carillon. Through the sunset sky the lovely bell-notes[pg 269]floated far and wide, exquisitely chaste and aloof as the high-showering ecstasy of a skylark.As always the little village looked upward and listened, pausing in its humble duties as long as their little bell-mistress remained in her tower.After the hymn she played "Myn hart is vol verlangen" and "Het Lied der Vlamingen," and ended with the delicate, bewitching little folk-song, "Myn Vryer," by Hasselt.Then in the red glow of the setting sun the girl laid aside her wooden gloves, rose from the ancient keyboard, wound up the drum, and, her duty done for the evening, came down out of the tower among the transparent evening shadows of the tree-lined village street.The sun hung over Nivelle hills, which had turned to amethyst. Sunbeams laced the little river in a red net through which old Courtray's quill stemmed the ripples. He still clutched his fishing pole, but his eyes were closed, his chin resting on his chest.Maryette came silently into the garden and looked at her father—looked at the blond Karl[pg 270]seated on the river wall beside the dozing angler. The blond youth had a box on his knees into which he was intently peering.The girl came to the river wall and seated herself at her father's feet. The Belgian refugee student had already risen to attention, his heels together, but Maryette signed him to be seated again."What have you found now, Karl?" she inquired in a cautiously modulated voice."Ah, mademoiselle, fancy! I haff by chance with my cultivator among your potatoes already twenty pupæ of the magnificent moth, Sphinx Atropos, upturned! See! Regard them, mademoiselle! What lucky chance! What fortune for me, an entomologist, this wonderful sphinx moth to discover encased within its chrysalis!"The girl smiled at his enthusiasm:"But, Karl, those funny, smooth brown things which resemble little polished evergreen-cones are not rare in my garden. Often, when spading or hoeing among the potato vines, I uncover them.""Mademoiselle, the caterpillar which makes this chrysalis feeds by night on the leaves of[pg 271]the potato, and, when ready to transform, burrows into the earth to become achrysalisor pupa, as we call it. That iss why mademoiselle has often disinterred the pupæ of this largest and strangest of our native sphinx-moths."Maryette leaned over and looked into the wooden box, where lay the chrysalides."What kind of moth do they make?" she asked.He blinked his small, pale eyes:"The Death's Head," he said, complacently.The girl recoiled involuntarily:"Oh!" she exclaimed under her breath, "—thatcreature!"For everywhere in France the great moth, with its strange and ominous markings, is perfectly well known. To the superstitious it is a creature of evil omen in its fulvous, black and lead-coloured livery of death. For the broad, furry thorax bears a skull, and the big, mousy body the yellow ribs of a skeleton.Measuring often more than five inches across the expanded wings, its formidable size alone might be sufficient to inspire alarm, but in addition it possesses a horrid attribute unknown[pg 272]among other moths and butterflies; it can utter a cry—a tiny shrill, shuddering complaint. Small wonder, perhaps, that the peasant holds it in horror—this sleek, furry, powerfully winged creature marked with skull and bones, which whirrs through the night and comes thudding against the window, and shrieks horridly when touched by a human hand."Sothatis what turns into the Death's Head moth," said the girl in a low voice as though to herself. "I never knew it. I thought those things were legless cock-chafers when I dug them out of potato hills. Karl, why do you keep them?""Ah, mademoiselle! To study them. To breed from them the moth. The Death's Head is magnificent.""God made it," admitted the girl with a faint shudder, "but I am afraid I could not love it. When do they hatch out?""It is time now. It is not like others of the sphinx family. Incubation requires but a few weeks. These are nearly ready to emerge, mademoiselle."[pg 273]"Oh. And then what do they do?""They mate."She was silent."The males seek the females," he said in his pedantic, monotonous voice. "And so ardent are the lovers that although there be no female moth within five, eight, perhaps ten miles, yet will her lover surely search through the night for her and find her."Maryette shuddered again in spite of herself. The thought of this creature marked with the emblems of death and possessed of ardour, too, was distasteful."Amour macabre—what an unpleasant thought, Karl. I do not care for your Death's Head and for the history of their amours."She turned and gently laid her head on her father's knees. The young man regarded her with a pallid sneer.Addressing her back, still holding his boxful of pupæ on his bony knees, he said with the sneer quite audible in his voice:"Your famous savant, Fabre, first inspired me to study the sex habits of the Death's Head."[pg 274]She made no reply, her cheek resting on her father's knees."It was because of his wonderful experiments with the Great Peacock moth and with others of the genus that I have studied to acquaint myself concerning the amours of the Death's Head.And I have discovered that he will find the female even if she be miles and miles away."The man was grinning now in the dusk—grinning like a skull; but the girl's back was still turned and she merely found something in his voice not quite agreeable."I think," she said in a low, quiet voice, "that I have now heard sufficient about the Death's Head moth.""Ah—have I offended mademoiselle? I ask a thousand pardons——"Old Courtray awoke in the dusk."My quill, Maryette," he muttered, "—see if it floats yet?"The girl bent over the water and strained her eyes. Her father tested the line with shaky hands. There was no fish on the hook."Voyons!Theasticotalso is gone. Some[pg 275]robber fish has been nibbling!" exclaimed the girl cheerfully, reeling in the line. "Father, one cannot fish and doze at the same time.""Eternal vigilance is the price of success—in peace as well as in war," said Karl, the student, as he aided Maryette to raise her father from the chair."Vigilance," repeated the girl. "Yes, always now in France. Because always the enemy is listening." ... Her strong young arm around her father, she traversed the garden slowly toward the house. A pleasant odour came from the kitchen of the White Doe, where an old peasant woman was cooking.[pg 276]

CHAPTER XIXHONOURFor a moment the airman stood watching and listening. The whir of the receding car died away in the night.Then, carrying his bundle and his bomber's sack, heavy with latent death, he went into the inn and through the café, where the sleeping innkeeper sat huddled, and felt his way cautiously to the little dining room.The wooden shutters had been closed; a candle flared on the table. Maryette sat beside it, her arms extended across the cloth, her head bowed.He thought she was asleep, but she looked up as his footfall sounded on the bare floor.She was so pale that he asked her if she felt ill.[pg 227]"No. I have been thinking of my friend," she replied in a low but steady voice."He may live," said the airman. "He was alive when we lifted him."The girl nodded as though preoccupied—an odd, mysterious little nod, as though assenting to some intimate, inward suggestion of her own mind.Then she raised her dark blue eyes to the airman, who was still standing beside the table, the sack of bombs hanging from his left shoulder, the bundle under his arm."Here is supper," she said, looking around absently at the few dishes. Then she folded her hands on the table's edge and sat silent, as though lost in thought.He placed the sack carefully on a cane chair beside him, the bundle on the floor, and seated himself opposite her. There was bread, meat, and a bottle of red wine. The girl declined to eat, saying that she had supped."Your friend Jack," he said again, after a long silence, "—I have seen worse cases. He may live, mademoiselle.""That," she said musingly, in her low, even[pg 228]voice, "is now in God's hands." She gave the slightest movement to her shoulders, as though easing them a trifle of that burden. "I have prayed. You saw me weep. That is ended—so much. Now—" and across her eyes shot a blue gleam, "—now I am ready to listen toyou! In the cart—out on the road there—you said that anybody can weep, but that few dare avenge.""Yes," he drawled, "I said that.""Very well, then; tell mehow!""What doyouwant to avenge? Your friend?""His country's honour, and mine! If he had been slain—otherwise—I should have perhaps mourned him, confident in the law of France. But—I have seen the Rhenish swine on French soil—I saw the Boches do this thing in France. It is not merely my friend I desire to avenge; it is the triple crime against his life, against the honour of his country and of mine." She had not raised her voice; had not stirred in her chair.The airman, who had stopped eating, sat[pg 229]with fork in hand, listening, regarding her intently."Yes," he said, resuming his meal, "I understand quite well what you mean. Some such philosophy sent my elder brother and me over here from New York—the wild hogs trampling through Belgium—the ferocious herds from the Rhine defacing, defiling, rending, obliterating all that civilized man has reverenced for centuries.... That's the idea—the world-wide menace of these unclean hordes—and the murderous filth of them!... They got my brother."He shrugged, realizing that his face had flushed with the heat of inner fires."Coolness does it," he added, almost apologetically, "—method and coolness. The world must keep its head clear: yellow fever and smallpox have been nearly stamped out; the Hun can be eliminated—with intelligence and clear thinking.... And I'm only an American airman who has been shot down like a winged heron whose comrades have lingered a little to comfort him and have gone on.... Yes, but a winged heron can still stab, little[pg 230]mistress of the bells.... And every blow counts.... Listen attentively—for Jack's sake ... and for the sake of France. For I am going to explain to you how you can strike—if you want to.""I am listening," said Maryette serenely."We may not live through it. Even my orders do not send me to do this thing; they merely permit it. Are you contented to go with me?"She nodded, the shadow of a smile on her lips."Very well. You play the carillon?""Yes.""You can play 'La Brabançonne'?""Yes.""On the bells?""Yes."He rose, went around the table, carrying his chair with him, and seated himself beside her. She inclined her pale, pretty head; he placed his lips close to her ear, speaking very slowly and distinctly, explaining his plan in every minute detail.While he was still speaking in a whisper,[pg 231]the street outside filled with the trample of arriving cavalry. The Spahis were leaving the environs of Sainte Lesse;chasseurs à chevalfollowed from still farther afield, escorting ambulances from the Nivelle hospitals now being abandoned."The trenches at Nivelle are being emptied," said the airman."And do you mean that you and I are to go there, to Nivelle?" she asked."That is exactly what I mean. In an hour I shall be in the Nivelle belfry. Will you be there with me?""Yes.""Excellent!" he exclaimed. "You can play 'La Brabançonne' on the bells while I blow hell out of them in the redoubt below us!"The infantry from the Nivelle trenches began to pass. There were a few wagons, a battery of seventy-fives, a soup kitchen or two and a long column of mules from Fontanes.Two American muleteers knocked at the inn door and came stamping into the hallway, asking for a loaf and a bottle of red wine. Maryette rose from the table to find pro[pg 232]visions; the airman got up also, saying in English:"Where do you come from, boys?""From Fontanes corral," they replied, surprised to hear their own tongue spoken."Do you know Jack Burley, one of your people?""Sure. He's just been winged bad.""The Huns done him up something fierce," added the other."Very bad?"Maryette came back with a loaf and two bottles."I seen him at Fontanes," replied the muleteer, taking the provisions from the girl. "He's all shot to pieces, but they say he'll pull through."The airman turned to Maryette:"Jack will get well," he translated bluntly.The girl, who had just refused the money offered by the American muleteer, turned sharply, became deadly white for a second, then her face flamed with a hot and splendid colour.One of the muleteers said:[pg 233]"Is this here his girl?""Yes," nodded the airman.The muleteer became voluble, patting Maryette on one arm and then on the other:"J'ai vue Jack Burley, mamzelle, toot a l'heure! Il est bien, savvy voo! Il est tray, tray bien! Bocoo de trou! N'importe!Ilva tray bien! Savvy voo? Jack Burley, l'ami de voo! Comprenny? On va le guerir toot sweet! Wee! Wee! Wee!——"The girl flung her arms around the amazed muleteer's neck and kissed him impetuously on both cheeks. The muleteer blushed and his comrade fidgeted. Only the girl remained unembarrassed.Half laughing, half crying, terribly excited, and very lovely to look upon, she caught both muleteers by their sleeves and poured out a torrent of questions. With the airman's aid she extracted what information they had to offer; and they went their way, flustered, still blushing, clasping bread and bottles to their agitated breasts.The airman looked her keenly in the eyes as she came back from the door, still intensely[pg 234]excited, adorably transfigured. She opened her lips to speak—the happy exclamation on her lips, already half uttered, died there."Well?" inquired the airman quietly.Dumb, still breathing rapidly, she returned his gaze in silence."Now that your friend Jack is going to live—what next?" asked the airman pleasantly.For a full minute she continued to stare at him without a word."No need to avenge him now," added the airman, watching her."No." She turned, gazed vaguely into space. After a moment she said, as though to herself: "But his country's honour—and mine? That reckoning still remains! Is it not true?"The airman said, with a trace of pity in his voice, for the girl seemed very young:"You need not go with me to Nivelle just because you promised.""Oh," she said simply, "I must go, of course—it being a question of our country's honour.""I do not ask it. Nor would Jack, your[pg 235]friend. Nor would your own country ask it of you, Maryette Courtray."She replied serenely:"ButIask it—ofmyself. Do you understand, monsieur?""Perfectly." He glanced mechanically at his useless wrist watch, then inquired the time. She went to her room, returned, wearing a little jacket and carrying a pair of big, wooden gloves."It is after eleven o'clock," she said. "I brought my jacket because it is cold in all belfries. It will be cold in Nivelle, up there in the tower under Clovis.""You really mean to go with me?"She did not even trouble to reply to the question. So he picked up his packet and his sack of bombs, and they went out, side by side, under the tunnelled wall.Infantry from Nivelle trenches were still plodding along the dark street under the trees; dull gleams came from their helmets and bayonets in the obscure light of the stars.The girl stood watching them for a few[pg 236]moments, then her hand sought the airman's arm:"If there is to be a battle in the street here, my father cannot remain."The airman nodded, went out into the street and spoke to a passing officer. He, in turn, signalled the driver of a motor omnibus to halt.The little bell-mistress entered the tavern, followed by two soldiers. In a few moments they came out bearing, chair-fashion between them, the crippled innkeeper.The old man was much alarmed, but his daughter followed beside him to the omnibus, in which were several lamed soldiers."Et toi?" he quavered as they lifted him in. "What of thee, Maryette?""I follow," she called out cheerily. "I rejoin thee—" the bus moved on—"God knows when or where!" she added under her breath.The airman was whispering to a fat staff officer when she rejoined him. All three looked up in silence at the belfry of Sainte Lesse, looming above them, a monstrous shadow athwart the stars. A moment later[pg 237]an automobile, arriving from the south, drew up in front of the inn."Bonne chance," said the fat officer abruptly; he turned and waddled swiftly away in the darkness. They saw him mount his horse. His legs stuck out sideways."Now," whispered the airman, with a nod to the chauffeur.The little bell-mistress entered the car, her wooden gloves tucked under one arm. The airman followed with his packet and his sack of bombs. The chauffeur started his engine.The middle of the road was free to him; the edges were occupied by the retreating infantry. As the car started, very slowly, cautiously feeling its way out of Sainte Lesse, the fat staff officer turned his horse and trotted up alongside. The car stopped, the engine still running."It's understood?" asked the officer in a low voice. "It's to be when we hear 'La Brabançonne'?""When you hear 'La Brabançonne.'""Understood," said the staff officer crisply, saluted and drew bridle. And the car moved[pg 238]out into the starlit night along an endless column of retreating soldiers, who were laughing, smoking, and chatting as though not in the least depressed by their withdrawal from the dry and cosy trenches of Nivelle which they were abandoning.[pg 239]CHAPTER XX"LA BRABANÇONNE"No shells were falling in Nivelle as they left the car on the outskirts of the town and entered the long main street. That was all of Nivelle, a long, treeless main street from which branched a few alleys.Smouldering débris of what had been houses illuminated the street. There were no other lights. Nothing stirred except a gaunt cat flitting like a shadow along the gutter. There was not a sound save the faint stirring of the cinders over which pale flames played fitfully.Abandoned trenches ditched the little town in every direction; temporary shelters made of boughs, sheds, and broken-down wagons stood along the street. Otherwise, all impedimenta, materials, and stores had appar[pg 240]ently been removed by the retreating columns. There was little wreckage except the burning débris of the few shell-struck houses—a few rags, a few piles of firewood, a bundle of straw and hay here and there.High, mounting toward the stars, the ancient tower with its gilded hippogriff dominated the place—a vast, vague shape brooding over the single mile-long street and grimy alleys branching from it.Nobody guarded the portal; the ancient doors stood wide open; pitch darkness reigned within."Do you know the way?" whispered the airman."Yes. Take hold of my hand."He dared not use his flash. Carrying bundle and bombsack under one arm, he sought for her hand and encountered it. Cool, slim fingers closed over his.After a few moments' stealthy advance, she whispered:"Here are the stairs. Be careful; they twist."She started upward, feeling with her feet[pg 241]for every stone step. The ascent appeared to be interminable; the narrowing stone spiral seemed to have no end. Her hand grew warm within his own.But at last they felt a fresh wind blowing and caught a glimpse of stars above them.Then, tier on tier, the bells of the carillon, fixed to their great beams, appeared above them—a shadowy, bewildering wilderness of bells, rising, rank above rank, until they vanished in the darkness overhead. Beside them, almost touching them, loomed the great bell Clovis, a gigantic mass bulking enormously in that shadowy place.A sonorous wind flowed through the open tower, eddying among the bells—a strong, keen night wind blowing from the north.The airman walked to the south parapet and looked down. Below him in the starlight, like an indistinct map spread out, lay the Nivelle redoubt and the trench with its gabions, its sand bags, its timbers, its dugouts.Very far away to the southeast they could see the glare of rockets and exploding shells, but the sound of the bombardment did not[pg 242]reach them. North, a single searchlight played and switched across the clouds; west, all was dark."They'll arrive just before dawn," said the airman, placing his sack of bombs on the pavement under the parapet. "Come, little bell-mistress, take me to see your keyboard.""It is below—a few steps. This way—if you will follow me——"She turned to the stone stairs again, descended a dozen steps, opened a door on a narrow landing.And there, in the starlight, he saw the keyboard and the bewildering maze of wires running up and branching like a huge web toward the tiers of bells above.He looked at the keyboard curiously. The little mistress of the bells displayed the two wooden gloves with which she encased her hands when she played the carillon."It would be impossible for one to play unless one's hands are armoured," she explained."It is almost a lost art," he mused aloud, "—this playing the carillon—this wonderful[pg 243]bell-music of the middle ages. There are few great bell-masters in this day.""Few," she said dreamily."And"—he turned and stared at her—"few mistresses of the bells, I imagine.""I think I am the only one in France or in Flanders.... And there are few carillons left. The Huns are battering them down. Towers of the ancient ages are falling everywhere in Flanders and in France under their shell fire. Very soon there will be no more of the old carillons left; no more bell-music in the world." She sighed heavily. "It is a pity."She seated herself at the keyboard."Dare I play?" she asked, looking up over her shoulder."No; it would only mean a shell from the Huns."She nodded, laid the wooden gloves beside her and let her delicate hands wander over the mute keys.Leaning beside her the airman quietly explained the plan they were to follow."With dawn they will come creeping into[pg 244]Nivelle—the Huns," he said. "I have one of their officers' uniforms in that bundle above. I shall try to pass as a general officer. You see, I speak German. My education was partly ruined in Germany. So I'll get on very well, I expect."And directly under us is the trench and the main redoubt. They'll occupy that first thing. They'll swarm there—the whole trench will be crawling with them. They'll install their gas cylinders at once, this wind being their wind."But with sunrise the wind changes—and whether it changes or not, I don't care," he added. "I've got them at last where I want them."The girl looked up at him. He smiled that terrifying smile of his:"With the explosion of my first bomb among their gas cylinders you are to start these bells above us. Are you afraid?""No.""You are to play 'La Brabançonne.' That is the signal to our trenches.""I have often played it," she said coolly.[pg 245]"Not in the teeth of a barbarian army. Not in the faces of a murderous soldiery."The girl sat quite still for a few moments; then looking up at him, and very pale in the starlight:"Do you think they will tear me to pieces, monsieur?"He said:"I mean to hold those stairs with my sack of bombs until our people enter the trenches. If they can do it in an hour we will be all right.""Yes.""It is only a half-hour affair from our salient. I allow our people an hour.""Yes.""But if, even now, you had rather go back——""No!""There is no disgrace in going back.""You said once, 'anybody can weep for friend and country. Few avenge either.' I am—happy—to be among the few."He nodded. After a moment he said:"I'll bet you something. My country is all[pg 246]right, but it's sick. It'sgot a nauseous dose of verbiage to spew up—something it's swallowed—something about being too proud to fight.... My brother and I couldn't stand it, so we came to France.... He was in the photo air service. He was in mufti—and about two miles up, I believe. Six Huns went for him.... And winged him. He had to land behind their lines.... In mufti.... Well—I've never found courage to hear the details. I can't stand them—yet.""Your brother—is dead, monsieur?" she asked timidly."Oh, yes. With—circumstances. Well, then—after that, from an ordinary, commonplace man I became a machine for the extermination of vermin. That's all I am—an animated magazine of Persian powder—or I do it in any handy way. It's not a sporting proposition, you see, just get rid of them any old way. You don't understand, do you?""A—little.""But it's slow work—slow work," he muttered vaguely, "—and the world is crawling—crawling with them. But if God guides my[pg 247]bomb this time and if I hit one of their gas cylinders—thatought to be worth while."In the starlight his features became tense and terrible; she shivered in her threadbare jacket.After a few moments' silence he went away up the steps to put on his German uniform. When he descended again she had a troubled question for him to answer:"But how shall you account for me, a French girl, monsieur, if they come to the belfry?"A heavy flush darkened his face:"Little mistress of the bells, I shall pretend to be what the Huns are. Do you know how they treat French women?""I have heard," she said faintly."Then if they come and find you here as my—prisoner—they will think they understand."The colour flamed in her face and she bowed it, resting her elbows on the keyboard."Come," he said, "don't be distressed. Does it matter what a Hun thinks? Come; let's be cheerful. Can you hum for me 'La Brabançonne'?"[pg 248]She did not reply."Well, never mind," he said. "But it's a grand battle anthem.... We Americans have one.... It's out of fashion. And after all, I had rather hear 'La Brabançonne' when the time comes.... What a terrible admission! But what Americans have done to my country is far more terrible. The nation's sick—sick!... I prefer 'La Brabançonne' for the time being."The Prussians entered Nivelle a little before dawn. The airman had been watching the street below. Down there in the slight glow from the cinders of what once had been a cottage a cat had been squatting, staring at the bed of coals, as though she were once more installed upon the family hearthstone.Then something unseen as yet by the airman attracted the animal's attention. Alert, crouching, she stared down the vista of dark, deserted houses, then turned and fled like a ghost.For a long while the airman perceived nothing. Suddenly close to the house façades[pg 249]on either side of the street, shadowy forms came gliding forward.They passed the glowing embers and went on toward Sainte-Lesse; jägers, with knapsacks on back and rifles trailing; and on their heads oddly shaped pot helmets with battered looking visors.One or two motorcyclists followed, whizzing through the desolate street and into the country beyond.After a few minutes, out of the throat of the darkness emerged a solid column of infantry. In a moment, beneath the bell tower, the ground was swarming with Huns; every inch of the earth became infested with them; fields, hedges, alleys crawled alive with Germans. They overran every road, every street, every inch of open country; their wagons choked the main thoroughfare, they were already establishing themselves in the redoubt below, in the trench, running in and out of dugouts and all over scarp, counter-scarp, parades and parapet, ant-like in energy, busy with machine gun, trench mortar, installing telephones, searchlights, periscopes, machine guns.[pg 250]Automobiles arrived—two armoured cars and grey passenger machines in which there were officers.The airman laid his hand on Maryette's arm."Little bell-mistress," he said, "German officers are coming into the tower. I want them to find you in my arms when they come up into this belfry. Understand me, and forgive me.""I—understand," she whispered."Play your part bravely. Will you?""Yes."He put his arms around her; they stood rigid, listening."Now!" he whispered, and drew her close, kissing her.Spurred boots clattered on the stone floor:"Herr Je!" exclaimed an astonished voice. Somebody laughed. But the airman coolly pushed the girl aside, and as the faint grey light of dawn fell on his field uniform bearing the ribbon of the iron cross, two pairs of spurred heels hastily clinked together and two hands flew to the oddly shaped helmet visors."Also!" exclaimed the airman in a mincing[pg 251]Berlin accent. "When I require a corps of observers I usually send my aide. That being now quite perfectly understood, you gentlemen will give yourselves the trouble to descend as you have come. Further, you will place a sentry at the tower door, and inform enquirers that General Count von Gierdorff and his staff are occupying the Nivelle belfry for purposes of observation."The astounded officers saluted steadily; and if they imagined that the mythical staff of this general officer was clustered aloft somewhere up there where the bells hung it was impossible to tell by the strained expressions on their wooden countenances.However, it was evidently perfectly plain to them what the high Excellenz was about in this vaulted room where wires led aloft to an unseen carillon on the landing in the belfry above.The airman nodded; they went. And when their clattering steps echoed far below on the spiral stone stairs, the airman motioned to the little bell-mistress. She followed him up the short flight to where the bells hung.[pg 252]"We're in for it now," he said. "If High Command comes into this place to investigate then I shall have to hold those stairs.... It's growing quite light in the east. Which way is the wind?""North," she said in a steady voice. She was terribly pale.He went to the parapet and looked over, half wondering, perhaps, whether he would receive a rifle shot through the head.Far below at the foot of the bell-tower the dimly discerned Nivelle redoubt, swarming with men, was being armed; and, to the south, wired he thought, but could not see distinctly.Then, as the dusk of early dawn grew greyer, the first rifle shots rattled out in the west. The French salient was saluting the wire-stringers.Back under shelter they tumbled; whistles sounded distantly; a trench mortar crashed; then the accentless tattoo of machine guns broke from every emplacement."The east is turning a little yellow," he said calmly. "I believe this matter is going through.[pg 253]Toss some dust into the air. Which way?""North," said the girl."Good. I think they're placing their cylinders. I think I can see them laying their coils. I'm certain of it. What luck!"The airman was becoming excited and his voice trembled a little with the effort to control it."It's growing pink in the east. Try a handful of dust again," he suggested almost gaily."North," she said briefly, watching the dust aloft."Luck's with us! Look at the east! If their High Command keeps his nose out of this place!—if hedoes!—Look at the east, little bell-mistress! It's all gold! There's pink up higher. I can see a faint tinge of blue, too. Can you?""I think so."A minute dragged like a year in prison. Then:"Try the wind again," he said in a strained voice."North.""Oh, luck! Luck!" he muttered, slinging his[pg 254]sack of bombs over his shoulder. "We've got them! We've certainly got them! What's that! An airplane! Look, little girl—one of our planes is up. There's another! Which way is the wind?""North.""Got 'em!" he snapped between his teeth. "Run over to the stairs. Listen! Is anybody coming up?""I can hear nothing.""Stand there and listen. Never mind the row the guns are making; listen for somebody on the stairs. Look how light it's getting! The sun will push up before many minutes. We've got 'em!Got 'em!Wet your finger and try the wind!""North.""North here, too. What do you know about that! Luck! Luck's with us! And we've got 'em—!" he lifted his clenched hand and laughed at her. "Like that!" he said, his blue eyes blazing. "They're getting ready to gas below. Look at 'em! Glory to God! I can see two cylinders directly under me. They're manning the nozzles! Every man is masking[pg 255]at his post! Anybody on the stairs! Any sound?""None.""Are you certain?""It is as still as death below.""Try the dust. The wind's changing, I think. Quick! Which way?""West.""Oh, glory! Glory to God! They feel it below! They know. The wind has changed. Off came their respirators. No gas this morning, eh? Yes, by God, there will be gas enough for all——!"He caught up a bomb, leaned over the parapet, held it aloft, poised, aiming steadily for one second of concentrated coördination of mind and muscle. Then straight down he launched it. The cylinder beneath him was shattered and a green geyser of gas burst from it deluging the trench.Already a second bomb followed the first, then another, and then a third; and with the last report another cylinder in the trench below burst into thick green billows of death and flowed over the ground,west.[pg 256]Two more bombs whirled down, bursting on a machine gun; then the airman turned with a cry of triumph, and at the same instant the sun rose above the hills and flung a golden ray straight across his face.To Maryette the man stood transfigured, like the Blazing Guardian of the Flaming Sword."Ring out your Brabançonne!" he cried. "Let the Huns hear the war song of the land they've trampled! Now! Little bell-mistress, arm your white hands with your wooden gloves and make this old carillon speak in brass and iron!"He caught her by the arm; they ran down the short flight of steps; she drew on her wooden gloves and sprang to the keyboard."I'll hold the stairs!" he cried. "I can hold these stairs for an hour against the whole world in arms. Now, then! The Brabançonne!"Above the roaring confusion and the explosions far below, from high up in the sky a clear bell note floated as though out of Heaven itself—another, others, crystalline[pg 257]clear, imperious, filling all the sky with their amazing and terrible beauty.The mistress of the bells struck the keyboard with armoured hands—beautiful, slender, avenging hands; the bells above her crashed out into the battle-song of Flanders, filling sky and earth with its splendid defiance of the Hun.The airman, bomb in hand, stood at the head of the stone stairs; the ancient tower rocked with the fiercely magnificent anthem of revolt—the war cry of a devastated land—the land that died to save the world—the martyr, Belgium, still prone in the deathly trance awaiting her certain resurrection.The rising sun struck the tower where three score ancient bells poured from metal throats their heavenly summons to battle!The Hun heard it, tumbling, clawing, strangling below in the hellish vapours of his own death-fog; and now, from the rear his sky-guns hurled shrapnel at the carillon in the belfry of Nivelle.Clouds possessed the tower—soft, white, fleecy clouds rolling, unfolding, floating about[pg 258]the ancient buttresses and gargoyles. An iron hail rained on slate and parapet and resounding bell-metal. But the bells pealed and pealed in clear-voiced beauty, and Clovis, the great iron giant, hung, scarcely sonorous under the shrapnel rain.Suddenly there were bayonets on the stairs—the clatter of heavy feet—alien faces on the threshold. Then a bomb flew, and the terrible crash cleared the stairs.Twice more the clatter came with the clank of bayonets and guttural cries; but both died out in the infernal roar of the grenades exploding inside that stony spiral. And no more bayonets flickered on the stairs.The airman, frozen to a statue, listened. Again and again he thought he could hear bugles, but the roar from below blotted out the distant call."Little bell-mistress!"She turned her head, her hands still striking the keyboard. He spoke through the confusion of the place:"Sound the tocsin!"Then Clovis thundered from the belfry like[pg 259]a great gun fired, booming out over the world. Around the iron colossus shrapnel swept in gusts; Clovis thundered on, annihilating all sound except his own tremendous voice, heedless of shell and bullet, disdainful of the hell's shambles below, where masked French infantry were already leaping the parapets of Nivelle Redoubt into the squirming masses below.The airman shouted at her through the tumult:"They murdered my brother. Did I tell you? They hacked him to slivers with their bayonets. I've settled the reckoning down in the gas there—their own green gas, damn them! You don't understand what I say, do you? He was my brother——"A frightful explosion blew in the oubliette; the room rattled and clattered with shrapnel.The airman swayed where he stood in the swirling smoke, lurched up against the stone coping, slid down to his knees.When his eyes opened the little bell-mistress was bending over him."They got me," he gasped. All the front of his tunic was sopping red.[pg 260]"They said it meant the cross—if I made good.... Are you hurt?""Oh, no!" she whispered. "But you——""Go on and play!" he whispered with a terrible effort."But you——""The Brabançonne! Quick!"She went, whimpering. Standing before the keyboard she pulled on her wooden gloves and struck the keys.Out over the infernal uproar below pealed the bells; the morning sky rang with the noble summons to all brave men. Once more the ancient tower trembled with the mighty out-crash of the battle hymn.With the last note she turned and looked down at him where he lay against the wall. He opened his glazing eyes and tried to smile at her."Bully," he whispered. "Could you recite—the words—to me—just so I could hear them on my way—West?"She left the keyboard, came and dropped on her knees beside him; and closing her eyes to check the tears sang in a low, tremulous,[pg 261]girlish voice, De Lonlay's words, to the battle anthem of revolution."Bully," he sighed. And spoke no more on earth.But the little mistress of the bells did not know his soul had passed.And the French officer who came leaping up the stairs, pistol lifted, halted in astonishment to see a dead man lying beside a sack of bombs and a young girl on her knees beside him, weeping and tremblingly intoning "La Brabançonne."[pg 262]CHAPTER XXITHE GARDENERA week later, toward noon, as usual, the two American, muleteers, Smith and Glenn, sauntered over from their corral to the White Doe Tavern where, it being a meatless day, they ate largely of potato soup and of a tench, smoking hot.The tench had been caught that morning off the back doorstep, which was an ancient and mossy slab of limestone let into the coping of the river wall.Jean Courtray, the crippled inn-keeper, caught it. All that morning he had sat there in the sun on the river wall, half dozing, opening his dim eyes at intervals to gaze at his painted quill afloat among the water weeds of the little river Lesse. At intervals, too, he turned his head with that peculiar movement[pg 263]of the old, and peered at his daughter, Maryette, and the Belgian gardener who were working among the potatoes in the garden.And at last he had hooked his fish and the emaciated young Belgian dropped his hoe and came over and released it from the hook where it lay flopping and quivering and glittering among the wild grasses on the river bank. And that was how Kid Glenn and Sticky Smith, American muleteers on duty at Saint Lesse, came to lunch on freshly caught tench at the Inn of the White Doe.After luncheon, agreeably satiated, they rose from the table in the little dining room and strolled out to the garden in the rear of the inn, their Mexican spurs clanking. Maryette heard them; they tipped their caps to her; she acknowledged their salute gravely and continued to cultivate her garden with a hoe, the blond, consumptive Belgian trundling a rickety cultivator at her heels."Look, Stick," drawled Glenn. "Maryette's got her decoration on."From where they lounged by the river wall[pg 264]they could see the cross of the Legion pinned to the girl's blouse.Both muleteers had been present at the investment the day before, when a general officer arrived from Paris and the entire garrison of Sainte Lesse had been paraded—an impressive total of three dozen men—six gendarmes and a brigadier; one remount sub-lieutenant and twenty troopers; a veterinary, two white American muleteers, and five American negro hostlers from Baton Rouge.The girl had nearly died of shyness during the ceremony, had endured the accolade with crimson cheeks, had stammered a whispered response to the congratulations of neighbors who had gathered to see the little bell-mistress of Sainte Lesse honoured by the country which she had served in the belfry of Nivelle.As she came past Smith and Glenn, trailing her hoe, the latter now sufficiently proficient in French, said gaily:"Have you heard from Jack again, Mamzelle Maryette?"The girl blushed:[pg 265]"I hear from Djack by every mail," she said, with all the transparent honesty that characterized her.Smith grinned:"Just like that! Well, tell him from me to quit fooling away his time in a hospital and come and get you or somebody is going to steal you."The girl was very happy; she stood there in the September sunshine leaning on her hoe and gazing half shyly, half humorously down the river where a string of American mules was being watered.Mellow Ethiopian laughter sounded from the distance as the Baton Rouge negroes exchanged pleasantries in limited French with a couple of gendarmes on the bank above them. And there, in the sunshine of the little garden by the river, war and death seemed very far away. Only at intervals the veering breeze brought to Sainte Lesse the immense vibration of the cannonade; only at intervals the high sky-clatter of an airplane reminded the village that the front was only a little north[pg 266]of Nivelle, and that what had been Nivelle was not so very far away."If you weremygirl, Maryette," remarked Smith, "I'd die of worry in that hospital.""Youmight have reason to, Monsieur," retorted the girl demurely. "But you see it's Djack who is convalescing, not you."She had become accustomed to the ceaseless banter of Burley's two comrades—a banter entirely American, and which at first she was unable to understand. But now all things American, including accent and odd, perverted humour, had become very dear to her. The clink-clank of the muleteer's big spurs always set her heart beating; the sight of an arriving convoy from the Channel port thrilled her, and to her the trample of mules, the shouts of foreign negroes, the drawling, broken French spoken by the white muleteers made heavenly real to her the dream which love had so suddenly invaded, and into which, as suddenly, strode Death, clutching at Love.She had beaten him off—she had—or God had—routed Death, driven him from the dream.[pg 267]For it was a dream to her still, and she thought she could never be able to comprehend the magic reality of it, even when at last her man, "Djack," came back to prove the blessed miracle which held her in the magic of its thrall."Who's the guy with the wheelbarrow?" inquired Sticky Smith, rolling a cigarette."Karl, his name is," she answered; "—a Belgian refugee.""He looks like a Hun to me," remarked Glenn, bluntly."He has his papers," said the girl.Glenn shrugged."With his little pink eyes of a pig and his whitish hair and eyebrows—well, maybe they make 'em like that in Belgium.""Papers," added Smith, "canbe swiped."The girl shook her head:"He's an invalid student from Ypres. He looks quite ill, I think.""He looks the lunger, all right. But Huns have it, too. What does he do—wander about town at will?"[pg 268]"He works for us, monsieur. Your suspicions are harsh. Karl is quite harmless, poor boy.""What does he do after hours?" demanded Sticky Smith, watching the manœuvres of the sickly blond youth and the wheelbarrow."Monsieur Smith, if you knew how innocent is his pastime!" she exclaimed, laughing. "He collects and studies moths and butterflies. Is there, if you please, a mania more harmless in the world?... And now I must return to my work, messieurs."As the two muleteers strode clanking away toward the canal in the meadow, the blond youth turned his head and looked after them out of eyes which were naturally pale and small, and which, as he watched the two Americans, seemed to grow paler and smaller yet.That afternoon old Courtray, swathed in a shawl, sat on the mossy doorstep and fished among the water weeds of the river. The sun was low; work in the garden had ended.Maryette had gone up into her belfry to play the sunset hymn on the noble old carillon. Through the sunset sky the lovely bell-notes[pg 269]floated far and wide, exquisitely chaste and aloof as the high-showering ecstasy of a skylark.As always the little village looked upward and listened, pausing in its humble duties as long as their little bell-mistress remained in her tower.After the hymn she played "Myn hart is vol verlangen" and "Het Lied der Vlamingen," and ended with the delicate, bewitching little folk-song, "Myn Vryer," by Hasselt.Then in the red glow of the setting sun the girl laid aside her wooden gloves, rose from the ancient keyboard, wound up the drum, and, her duty done for the evening, came down out of the tower among the transparent evening shadows of the tree-lined village street.The sun hung over Nivelle hills, which had turned to amethyst. Sunbeams laced the little river in a red net through which old Courtray's quill stemmed the ripples. He still clutched his fishing pole, but his eyes were closed, his chin resting on his chest.Maryette came silently into the garden and looked at her father—looked at the blond Karl[pg 270]seated on the river wall beside the dozing angler. The blond youth had a box on his knees into which he was intently peering.The girl came to the river wall and seated herself at her father's feet. The Belgian refugee student had already risen to attention, his heels together, but Maryette signed him to be seated again."What have you found now, Karl?" she inquired in a cautiously modulated voice."Ah, mademoiselle, fancy! I haff by chance with my cultivator among your potatoes already twenty pupæ of the magnificent moth, Sphinx Atropos, upturned! See! Regard them, mademoiselle! What lucky chance! What fortune for me, an entomologist, this wonderful sphinx moth to discover encased within its chrysalis!"The girl smiled at his enthusiasm:"But, Karl, those funny, smooth brown things which resemble little polished evergreen-cones are not rare in my garden. Often, when spading or hoeing among the potato vines, I uncover them.""Mademoiselle, the caterpillar which makes this chrysalis feeds by night on the leaves of[pg 271]the potato, and, when ready to transform, burrows into the earth to become achrysalisor pupa, as we call it. That iss why mademoiselle has often disinterred the pupæ of this largest and strangest of our native sphinx-moths."Maryette leaned over and looked into the wooden box, where lay the chrysalides."What kind of moth do they make?" she asked.He blinked his small, pale eyes:"The Death's Head," he said, complacently.The girl recoiled involuntarily:"Oh!" she exclaimed under her breath, "—thatcreature!"For everywhere in France the great moth, with its strange and ominous markings, is perfectly well known. To the superstitious it is a creature of evil omen in its fulvous, black and lead-coloured livery of death. For the broad, furry thorax bears a skull, and the big, mousy body the yellow ribs of a skeleton.Measuring often more than five inches across the expanded wings, its formidable size alone might be sufficient to inspire alarm, but in addition it possesses a horrid attribute unknown[pg 272]among other moths and butterflies; it can utter a cry—a tiny shrill, shuddering complaint. Small wonder, perhaps, that the peasant holds it in horror—this sleek, furry, powerfully winged creature marked with skull and bones, which whirrs through the night and comes thudding against the window, and shrieks horridly when touched by a human hand."Sothatis what turns into the Death's Head moth," said the girl in a low voice as though to herself. "I never knew it. I thought those things were legless cock-chafers when I dug them out of potato hills. Karl, why do you keep them?""Ah, mademoiselle! To study them. To breed from them the moth. The Death's Head is magnificent.""God made it," admitted the girl with a faint shudder, "but I am afraid I could not love it. When do they hatch out?""It is time now. It is not like others of the sphinx family. Incubation requires but a few weeks. These are nearly ready to emerge, mademoiselle."[pg 273]"Oh. And then what do they do?""They mate."She was silent."The males seek the females," he said in his pedantic, monotonous voice. "And so ardent are the lovers that although there be no female moth within five, eight, perhaps ten miles, yet will her lover surely search through the night for her and find her."Maryette shuddered again in spite of herself. The thought of this creature marked with the emblems of death and possessed of ardour, too, was distasteful."Amour macabre—what an unpleasant thought, Karl. I do not care for your Death's Head and for the history of their amours."She turned and gently laid her head on her father's knees. The young man regarded her with a pallid sneer.Addressing her back, still holding his boxful of pupæ on his bony knees, he said with the sneer quite audible in his voice:"Your famous savant, Fabre, first inspired me to study the sex habits of the Death's Head."[pg 274]She made no reply, her cheek resting on her father's knees."It was because of his wonderful experiments with the Great Peacock moth and with others of the genus that I have studied to acquaint myself concerning the amours of the Death's Head.And I have discovered that he will find the female even if she be miles and miles away."The man was grinning now in the dusk—grinning like a skull; but the girl's back was still turned and she merely found something in his voice not quite agreeable."I think," she said in a low, quiet voice, "that I have now heard sufficient about the Death's Head moth.""Ah—have I offended mademoiselle? I ask a thousand pardons——"Old Courtray awoke in the dusk."My quill, Maryette," he muttered, "—see if it floats yet?"The girl bent over the water and strained her eyes. Her father tested the line with shaky hands. There was no fish on the hook."Voyons!Theasticotalso is gone. Some[pg 275]robber fish has been nibbling!" exclaimed the girl cheerfully, reeling in the line. "Father, one cannot fish and doze at the same time.""Eternal vigilance is the price of success—in peace as well as in war," said Karl, the student, as he aided Maryette to raise her father from the chair."Vigilance," repeated the girl. "Yes, always now in France. Because always the enemy is listening." ... Her strong young arm around her father, she traversed the garden slowly toward the house. A pleasant odour came from the kitchen of the White Doe, where an old peasant woman was cooking.[pg 276]

CHAPTER XIXHONOURFor a moment the airman stood watching and listening. The whir of the receding car died away in the night.Then, carrying his bundle and his bomber's sack, heavy with latent death, he went into the inn and through the café, where the sleeping innkeeper sat huddled, and felt his way cautiously to the little dining room.The wooden shutters had been closed; a candle flared on the table. Maryette sat beside it, her arms extended across the cloth, her head bowed.He thought she was asleep, but she looked up as his footfall sounded on the bare floor.She was so pale that he asked her if she felt ill.[pg 227]"No. I have been thinking of my friend," she replied in a low but steady voice."He may live," said the airman. "He was alive when we lifted him."The girl nodded as though preoccupied—an odd, mysterious little nod, as though assenting to some intimate, inward suggestion of her own mind.Then she raised her dark blue eyes to the airman, who was still standing beside the table, the sack of bombs hanging from his left shoulder, the bundle under his arm."Here is supper," she said, looking around absently at the few dishes. Then she folded her hands on the table's edge and sat silent, as though lost in thought.He placed the sack carefully on a cane chair beside him, the bundle on the floor, and seated himself opposite her. There was bread, meat, and a bottle of red wine. The girl declined to eat, saying that she had supped."Your friend Jack," he said again, after a long silence, "—I have seen worse cases. He may live, mademoiselle.""That," she said musingly, in her low, even[pg 228]voice, "is now in God's hands." She gave the slightest movement to her shoulders, as though easing them a trifle of that burden. "I have prayed. You saw me weep. That is ended—so much. Now—" and across her eyes shot a blue gleam, "—now I am ready to listen toyou! In the cart—out on the road there—you said that anybody can weep, but that few dare avenge.""Yes," he drawled, "I said that.""Very well, then; tell mehow!""What doyouwant to avenge? Your friend?""His country's honour, and mine! If he had been slain—otherwise—I should have perhaps mourned him, confident in the law of France. But—I have seen the Rhenish swine on French soil—I saw the Boches do this thing in France. It is not merely my friend I desire to avenge; it is the triple crime against his life, against the honour of his country and of mine." She had not raised her voice; had not stirred in her chair.The airman, who had stopped eating, sat[pg 229]with fork in hand, listening, regarding her intently."Yes," he said, resuming his meal, "I understand quite well what you mean. Some such philosophy sent my elder brother and me over here from New York—the wild hogs trampling through Belgium—the ferocious herds from the Rhine defacing, defiling, rending, obliterating all that civilized man has reverenced for centuries.... That's the idea—the world-wide menace of these unclean hordes—and the murderous filth of them!... They got my brother."He shrugged, realizing that his face had flushed with the heat of inner fires."Coolness does it," he added, almost apologetically, "—method and coolness. The world must keep its head clear: yellow fever and smallpox have been nearly stamped out; the Hun can be eliminated—with intelligence and clear thinking.... And I'm only an American airman who has been shot down like a winged heron whose comrades have lingered a little to comfort him and have gone on.... Yes, but a winged heron can still stab, little[pg 230]mistress of the bells.... And every blow counts.... Listen attentively—for Jack's sake ... and for the sake of France. For I am going to explain to you how you can strike—if you want to.""I am listening," said Maryette serenely."We may not live through it. Even my orders do not send me to do this thing; they merely permit it. Are you contented to go with me?"She nodded, the shadow of a smile on her lips."Very well. You play the carillon?""Yes.""You can play 'La Brabançonne'?""Yes.""On the bells?""Yes."He rose, went around the table, carrying his chair with him, and seated himself beside her. She inclined her pale, pretty head; he placed his lips close to her ear, speaking very slowly and distinctly, explaining his plan in every minute detail.While he was still speaking in a whisper,[pg 231]the street outside filled with the trample of arriving cavalry. The Spahis were leaving the environs of Sainte Lesse;chasseurs à chevalfollowed from still farther afield, escorting ambulances from the Nivelle hospitals now being abandoned."The trenches at Nivelle are being emptied," said the airman."And do you mean that you and I are to go there, to Nivelle?" she asked."That is exactly what I mean. In an hour I shall be in the Nivelle belfry. Will you be there with me?""Yes.""Excellent!" he exclaimed. "You can play 'La Brabançonne' on the bells while I blow hell out of them in the redoubt below us!"The infantry from the Nivelle trenches began to pass. There were a few wagons, a battery of seventy-fives, a soup kitchen or two and a long column of mules from Fontanes.Two American muleteers knocked at the inn door and came stamping into the hallway, asking for a loaf and a bottle of red wine. Maryette rose from the table to find pro[pg 232]visions; the airman got up also, saying in English:"Where do you come from, boys?""From Fontanes corral," they replied, surprised to hear their own tongue spoken."Do you know Jack Burley, one of your people?""Sure. He's just been winged bad.""The Huns done him up something fierce," added the other."Very bad?"Maryette came back with a loaf and two bottles."I seen him at Fontanes," replied the muleteer, taking the provisions from the girl. "He's all shot to pieces, but they say he'll pull through."The airman turned to Maryette:"Jack will get well," he translated bluntly.The girl, who had just refused the money offered by the American muleteer, turned sharply, became deadly white for a second, then her face flamed with a hot and splendid colour.One of the muleteers said:[pg 233]"Is this here his girl?""Yes," nodded the airman.The muleteer became voluble, patting Maryette on one arm and then on the other:"J'ai vue Jack Burley, mamzelle, toot a l'heure! Il est bien, savvy voo! Il est tray, tray bien! Bocoo de trou! N'importe!Ilva tray bien! Savvy voo? Jack Burley, l'ami de voo! Comprenny? On va le guerir toot sweet! Wee! Wee! Wee!——"The girl flung her arms around the amazed muleteer's neck and kissed him impetuously on both cheeks. The muleteer blushed and his comrade fidgeted. Only the girl remained unembarrassed.Half laughing, half crying, terribly excited, and very lovely to look upon, she caught both muleteers by their sleeves and poured out a torrent of questions. With the airman's aid she extracted what information they had to offer; and they went their way, flustered, still blushing, clasping bread and bottles to their agitated breasts.The airman looked her keenly in the eyes as she came back from the door, still intensely[pg 234]excited, adorably transfigured. She opened her lips to speak—the happy exclamation on her lips, already half uttered, died there."Well?" inquired the airman quietly.Dumb, still breathing rapidly, she returned his gaze in silence."Now that your friend Jack is going to live—what next?" asked the airman pleasantly.For a full minute she continued to stare at him without a word."No need to avenge him now," added the airman, watching her."No." She turned, gazed vaguely into space. After a moment she said, as though to herself: "But his country's honour—and mine? That reckoning still remains! Is it not true?"The airman said, with a trace of pity in his voice, for the girl seemed very young:"You need not go with me to Nivelle just because you promised.""Oh," she said simply, "I must go, of course—it being a question of our country's honour.""I do not ask it. Nor would Jack, your[pg 235]friend. Nor would your own country ask it of you, Maryette Courtray."She replied serenely:"ButIask it—ofmyself. Do you understand, monsieur?""Perfectly." He glanced mechanically at his useless wrist watch, then inquired the time. She went to her room, returned, wearing a little jacket and carrying a pair of big, wooden gloves."It is after eleven o'clock," she said. "I brought my jacket because it is cold in all belfries. It will be cold in Nivelle, up there in the tower under Clovis.""You really mean to go with me?"She did not even trouble to reply to the question. So he picked up his packet and his sack of bombs, and they went out, side by side, under the tunnelled wall.Infantry from Nivelle trenches were still plodding along the dark street under the trees; dull gleams came from their helmets and bayonets in the obscure light of the stars.The girl stood watching them for a few[pg 236]moments, then her hand sought the airman's arm:"If there is to be a battle in the street here, my father cannot remain."The airman nodded, went out into the street and spoke to a passing officer. He, in turn, signalled the driver of a motor omnibus to halt.The little bell-mistress entered the tavern, followed by two soldiers. In a few moments they came out bearing, chair-fashion between them, the crippled innkeeper.The old man was much alarmed, but his daughter followed beside him to the omnibus, in which were several lamed soldiers."Et toi?" he quavered as they lifted him in. "What of thee, Maryette?""I follow," she called out cheerily. "I rejoin thee—" the bus moved on—"God knows when or where!" she added under her breath.The airman was whispering to a fat staff officer when she rejoined him. All three looked up in silence at the belfry of Sainte Lesse, looming above them, a monstrous shadow athwart the stars. A moment later[pg 237]an automobile, arriving from the south, drew up in front of the inn."Bonne chance," said the fat officer abruptly; he turned and waddled swiftly away in the darkness. They saw him mount his horse. His legs stuck out sideways."Now," whispered the airman, with a nod to the chauffeur.The little bell-mistress entered the car, her wooden gloves tucked under one arm. The airman followed with his packet and his sack of bombs. The chauffeur started his engine.The middle of the road was free to him; the edges were occupied by the retreating infantry. As the car started, very slowly, cautiously feeling its way out of Sainte Lesse, the fat staff officer turned his horse and trotted up alongside. The car stopped, the engine still running."It's understood?" asked the officer in a low voice. "It's to be when we hear 'La Brabançonne'?""When you hear 'La Brabançonne.'""Understood," said the staff officer crisply, saluted and drew bridle. And the car moved[pg 238]out into the starlit night along an endless column of retreating soldiers, who were laughing, smoking, and chatting as though not in the least depressed by their withdrawal from the dry and cosy trenches of Nivelle which they were abandoning.

For a moment the airman stood watching and listening. The whir of the receding car died away in the night.

Then, carrying his bundle and his bomber's sack, heavy with latent death, he went into the inn and through the café, where the sleeping innkeeper sat huddled, and felt his way cautiously to the little dining room.

The wooden shutters had been closed; a candle flared on the table. Maryette sat beside it, her arms extended across the cloth, her head bowed.

He thought she was asleep, but she looked up as his footfall sounded on the bare floor.

She was so pale that he asked her if she felt ill.[pg 227]

"No. I have been thinking of my friend," she replied in a low but steady voice.

"He may live," said the airman. "He was alive when we lifted him."

The girl nodded as though preoccupied—an odd, mysterious little nod, as though assenting to some intimate, inward suggestion of her own mind.

Then she raised her dark blue eyes to the airman, who was still standing beside the table, the sack of bombs hanging from his left shoulder, the bundle under his arm.

"Here is supper," she said, looking around absently at the few dishes. Then she folded her hands on the table's edge and sat silent, as though lost in thought.

He placed the sack carefully on a cane chair beside him, the bundle on the floor, and seated himself opposite her. There was bread, meat, and a bottle of red wine. The girl declined to eat, saying that she had supped.

"Your friend Jack," he said again, after a long silence, "—I have seen worse cases. He may live, mademoiselle."

"That," she said musingly, in her low, even[pg 228]voice, "is now in God's hands." She gave the slightest movement to her shoulders, as though easing them a trifle of that burden. "I have prayed. You saw me weep. That is ended—so much. Now—" and across her eyes shot a blue gleam, "—now I am ready to listen toyou! In the cart—out on the road there—you said that anybody can weep, but that few dare avenge."

"Yes," he drawled, "I said that."

"Very well, then; tell mehow!"

"What doyouwant to avenge? Your friend?"

"His country's honour, and mine! If he had been slain—otherwise—I should have perhaps mourned him, confident in the law of France. But—I have seen the Rhenish swine on French soil—I saw the Boches do this thing in France. It is not merely my friend I desire to avenge; it is the triple crime against his life, against the honour of his country and of mine." She had not raised her voice; had not stirred in her chair.

The airman, who had stopped eating, sat[pg 229]with fork in hand, listening, regarding her intently.

"Yes," he said, resuming his meal, "I understand quite well what you mean. Some such philosophy sent my elder brother and me over here from New York—the wild hogs trampling through Belgium—the ferocious herds from the Rhine defacing, defiling, rending, obliterating all that civilized man has reverenced for centuries.... That's the idea—the world-wide menace of these unclean hordes—and the murderous filth of them!... They got my brother."

He shrugged, realizing that his face had flushed with the heat of inner fires.

"Coolness does it," he added, almost apologetically, "—method and coolness. The world must keep its head clear: yellow fever and smallpox have been nearly stamped out; the Hun can be eliminated—with intelligence and clear thinking.... And I'm only an American airman who has been shot down like a winged heron whose comrades have lingered a little to comfort him and have gone on.... Yes, but a winged heron can still stab, little[pg 230]mistress of the bells.... And every blow counts.... Listen attentively—for Jack's sake ... and for the sake of France. For I am going to explain to you how you can strike—if you want to."

"I am listening," said Maryette serenely.

"We may not live through it. Even my orders do not send me to do this thing; they merely permit it. Are you contented to go with me?"

She nodded, the shadow of a smile on her lips.

"Very well. You play the carillon?"

"Yes."

"You can play 'La Brabançonne'?"

"Yes."

"On the bells?"

"Yes."

He rose, went around the table, carrying his chair with him, and seated himself beside her. She inclined her pale, pretty head; he placed his lips close to her ear, speaking very slowly and distinctly, explaining his plan in every minute detail.

While he was still speaking in a whisper,[pg 231]the street outside filled with the trample of arriving cavalry. The Spahis were leaving the environs of Sainte Lesse;chasseurs à chevalfollowed from still farther afield, escorting ambulances from the Nivelle hospitals now being abandoned.

"The trenches at Nivelle are being emptied," said the airman.

"And do you mean that you and I are to go there, to Nivelle?" she asked.

"That is exactly what I mean. In an hour I shall be in the Nivelle belfry. Will you be there with me?"

"Yes."

"Excellent!" he exclaimed. "You can play 'La Brabançonne' on the bells while I blow hell out of them in the redoubt below us!"

The infantry from the Nivelle trenches began to pass. There were a few wagons, a battery of seventy-fives, a soup kitchen or two and a long column of mules from Fontanes.

Two American muleteers knocked at the inn door and came stamping into the hallway, asking for a loaf and a bottle of red wine. Maryette rose from the table to find pro[pg 232]visions; the airman got up also, saying in English:

"Where do you come from, boys?"

"From Fontanes corral," they replied, surprised to hear their own tongue spoken.

"Do you know Jack Burley, one of your people?"

"Sure. He's just been winged bad."

"The Huns done him up something fierce," added the other.

"Very bad?"

Maryette came back with a loaf and two bottles.

"I seen him at Fontanes," replied the muleteer, taking the provisions from the girl. "He's all shot to pieces, but they say he'll pull through."

The airman turned to Maryette:

"Jack will get well," he translated bluntly.

The girl, who had just refused the money offered by the American muleteer, turned sharply, became deadly white for a second, then her face flamed with a hot and splendid colour.

One of the muleteers said:[pg 233]

"Is this here his girl?"

"Yes," nodded the airman.

The muleteer became voluble, patting Maryette on one arm and then on the other:

"J'ai vue Jack Burley, mamzelle, toot a l'heure! Il est bien, savvy voo! Il est tray, tray bien! Bocoo de trou! N'importe!Ilva tray bien! Savvy voo? Jack Burley, l'ami de voo! Comprenny? On va le guerir toot sweet! Wee! Wee! Wee!——"

The girl flung her arms around the amazed muleteer's neck and kissed him impetuously on both cheeks. The muleteer blushed and his comrade fidgeted. Only the girl remained unembarrassed.

Half laughing, half crying, terribly excited, and very lovely to look upon, she caught both muleteers by their sleeves and poured out a torrent of questions. With the airman's aid she extracted what information they had to offer; and they went their way, flustered, still blushing, clasping bread and bottles to their agitated breasts.

The airman looked her keenly in the eyes as she came back from the door, still intensely[pg 234]excited, adorably transfigured. She opened her lips to speak—the happy exclamation on her lips, already half uttered, died there.

"Well?" inquired the airman quietly.

Dumb, still breathing rapidly, she returned his gaze in silence.

"Now that your friend Jack is going to live—what next?" asked the airman pleasantly.

For a full minute she continued to stare at him without a word.

"No need to avenge him now," added the airman, watching her.

"No." She turned, gazed vaguely into space. After a moment she said, as though to herself: "But his country's honour—and mine? That reckoning still remains! Is it not true?"

The airman said, with a trace of pity in his voice, for the girl seemed very young:

"You need not go with me to Nivelle just because you promised."

"Oh," she said simply, "I must go, of course—it being a question of our country's honour."

"I do not ask it. Nor would Jack, your[pg 235]friend. Nor would your own country ask it of you, Maryette Courtray."

She replied serenely:

"ButIask it—ofmyself. Do you understand, monsieur?"

"Perfectly." He glanced mechanically at his useless wrist watch, then inquired the time. She went to her room, returned, wearing a little jacket and carrying a pair of big, wooden gloves.

"It is after eleven o'clock," she said. "I brought my jacket because it is cold in all belfries. It will be cold in Nivelle, up there in the tower under Clovis."

"You really mean to go with me?"

She did not even trouble to reply to the question. So he picked up his packet and his sack of bombs, and they went out, side by side, under the tunnelled wall.

Infantry from Nivelle trenches were still plodding along the dark street under the trees; dull gleams came from their helmets and bayonets in the obscure light of the stars.

The girl stood watching them for a few[pg 236]moments, then her hand sought the airman's arm:

"If there is to be a battle in the street here, my father cannot remain."

The airman nodded, went out into the street and spoke to a passing officer. He, in turn, signalled the driver of a motor omnibus to halt.

The little bell-mistress entered the tavern, followed by two soldiers. In a few moments they came out bearing, chair-fashion between them, the crippled innkeeper.

The old man was much alarmed, but his daughter followed beside him to the omnibus, in which were several lamed soldiers.

"Et toi?" he quavered as they lifted him in. "What of thee, Maryette?"

"I follow," she called out cheerily. "I rejoin thee—" the bus moved on—"God knows when or where!" she added under her breath.

The airman was whispering to a fat staff officer when she rejoined him. All three looked up in silence at the belfry of Sainte Lesse, looming above them, a monstrous shadow athwart the stars. A moment later[pg 237]an automobile, arriving from the south, drew up in front of the inn.

"Bonne chance," said the fat officer abruptly; he turned and waddled swiftly away in the darkness. They saw him mount his horse. His legs stuck out sideways.

"Now," whispered the airman, with a nod to the chauffeur.

The little bell-mistress entered the car, her wooden gloves tucked under one arm. The airman followed with his packet and his sack of bombs. The chauffeur started his engine.

The middle of the road was free to him; the edges were occupied by the retreating infantry. As the car started, very slowly, cautiously feeling its way out of Sainte Lesse, the fat staff officer turned his horse and trotted up alongside. The car stopped, the engine still running.

"It's understood?" asked the officer in a low voice. "It's to be when we hear 'La Brabançonne'?"

"When you hear 'La Brabançonne.'"

"Understood," said the staff officer crisply, saluted and drew bridle. And the car moved[pg 238]out into the starlit night along an endless column of retreating soldiers, who were laughing, smoking, and chatting as though not in the least depressed by their withdrawal from the dry and cosy trenches of Nivelle which they were abandoning.

CHAPTER XX"LA BRABANÇONNE"No shells were falling in Nivelle as they left the car on the outskirts of the town and entered the long main street. That was all of Nivelle, a long, treeless main street from which branched a few alleys.Smouldering débris of what had been houses illuminated the street. There were no other lights. Nothing stirred except a gaunt cat flitting like a shadow along the gutter. There was not a sound save the faint stirring of the cinders over which pale flames played fitfully.Abandoned trenches ditched the little town in every direction; temporary shelters made of boughs, sheds, and broken-down wagons stood along the street. Otherwise, all impedimenta, materials, and stores had appar[pg 240]ently been removed by the retreating columns. There was little wreckage except the burning débris of the few shell-struck houses—a few rags, a few piles of firewood, a bundle of straw and hay here and there.High, mounting toward the stars, the ancient tower with its gilded hippogriff dominated the place—a vast, vague shape brooding over the single mile-long street and grimy alleys branching from it.Nobody guarded the portal; the ancient doors stood wide open; pitch darkness reigned within."Do you know the way?" whispered the airman."Yes. Take hold of my hand."He dared not use his flash. Carrying bundle and bombsack under one arm, he sought for her hand and encountered it. Cool, slim fingers closed over his.After a few moments' stealthy advance, she whispered:"Here are the stairs. Be careful; they twist."She started upward, feeling with her feet[pg 241]for every stone step. The ascent appeared to be interminable; the narrowing stone spiral seemed to have no end. Her hand grew warm within his own.But at last they felt a fresh wind blowing and caught a glimpse of stars above them.Then, tier on tier, the bells of the carillon, fixed to their great beams, appeared above them—a shadowy, bewildering wilderness of bells, rising, rank above rank, until they vanished in the darkness overhead. Beside them, almost touching them, loomed the great bell Clovis, a gigantic mass bulking enormously in that shadowy place.A sonorous wind flowed through the open tower, eddying among the bells—a strong, keen night wind blowing from the north.The airman walked to the south parapet and looked down. Below him in the starlight, like an indistinct map spread out, lay the Nivelle redoubt and the trench with its gabions, its sand bags, its timbers, its dugouts.Very far away to the southeast they could see the glare of rockets and exploding shells, but the sound of the bombardment did not[pg 242]reach them. North, a single searchlight played and switched across the clouds; west, all was dark."They'll arrive just before dawn," said the airman, placing his sack of bombs on the pavement under the parapet. "Come, little bell-mistress, take me to see your keyboard.""It is below—a few steps. This way—if you will follow me——"She turned to the stone stairs again, descended a dozen steps, opened a door on a narrow landing.And there, in the starlight, he saw the keyboard and the bewildering maze of wires running up and branching like a huge web toward the tiers of bells above.He looked at the keyboard curiously. The little mistress of the bells displayed the two wooden gloves with which she encased her hands when she played the carillon."It would be impossible for one to play unless one's hands are armoured," she explained."It is almost a lost art," he mused aloud, "—this playing the carillon—this wonderful[pg 243]bell-music of the middle ages. There are few great bell-masters in this day.""Few," she said dreamily."And"—he turned and stared at her—"few mistresses of the bells, I imagine.""I think I am the only one in France or in Flanders.... And there are few carillons left. The Huns are battering them down. Towers of the ancient ages are falling everywhere in Flanders and in France under their shell fire. Very soon there will be no more of the old carillons left; no more bell-music in the world." She sighed heavily. "It is a pity."She seated herself at the keyboard."Dare I play?" she asked, looking up over her shoulder."No; it would only mean a shell from the Huns."She nodded, laid the wooden gloves beside her and let her delicate hands wander over the mute keys.Leaning beside her the airman quietly explained the plan they were to follow."With dawn they will come creeping into[pg 244]Nivelle—the Huns," he said. "I have one of their officers' uniforms in that bundle above. I shall try to pass as a general officer. You see, I speak German. My education was partly ruined in Germany. So I'll get on very well, I expect."And directly under us is the trench and the main redoubt. They'll occupy that first thing. They'll swarm there—the whole trench will be crawling with them. They'll install their gas cylinders at once, this wind being their wind."But with sunrise the wind changes—and whether it changes or not, I don't care," he added. "I've got them at last where I want them."The girl looked up at him. He smiled that terrifying smile of his:"With the explosion of my first bomb among their gas cylinders you are to start these bells above us. Are you afraid?""No.""You are to play 'La Brabançonne.' That is the signal to our trenches.""I have often played it," she said coolly.[pg 245]"Not in the teeth of a barbarian army. Not in the faces of a murderous soldiery."The girl sat quite still for a few moments; then looking up at him, and very pale in the starlight:"Do you think they will tear me to pieces, monsieur?"He said:"I mean to hold those stairs with my sack of bombs until our people enter the trenches. If they can do it in an hour we will be all right.""Yes.""It is only a half-hour affair from our salient. I allow our people an hour.""Yes.""But if, even now, you had rather go back——""No!""There is no disgrace in going back.""You said once, 'anybody can weep for friend and country. Few avenge either.' I am—happy—to be among the few."He nodded. After a moment he said:"I'll bet you something. My country is all[pg 246]right, but it's sick. It'sgot a nauseous dose of verbiage to spew up—something it's swallowed—something about being too proud to fight.... My brother and I couldn't stand it, so we came to France.... He was in the photo air service. He was in mufti—and about two miles up, I believe. Six Huns went for him.... And winged him. He had to land behind their lines.... In mufti.... Well—I've never found courage to hear the details. I can't stand them—yet.""Your brother—is dead, monsieur?" she asked timidly."Oh, yes. With—circumstances. Well, then—after that, from an ordinary, commonplace man I became a machine for the extermination of vermin. That's all I am—an animated magazine of Persian powder—or I do it in any handy way. It's not a sporting proposition, you see, just get rid of them any old way. You don't understand, do you?""A—little.""But it's slow work—slow work," he muttered vaguely, "—and the world is crawling—crawling with them. But if God guides my[pg 247]bomb this time and if I hit one of their gas cylinders—thatought to be worth while."In the starlight his features became tense and terrible; she shivered in her threadbare jacket.After a few moments' silence he went away up the steps to put on his German uniform. When he descended again she had a troubled question for him to answer:"But how shall you account for me, a French girl, monsieur, if they come to the belfry?"A heavy flush darkened his face:"Little mistress of the bells, I shall pretend to be what the Huns are. Do you know how they treat French women?""I have heard," she said faintly."Then if they come and find you here as my—prisoner—they will think they understand."The colour flamed in her face and she bowed it, resting her elbows on the keyboard."Come," he said, "don't be distressed. Does it matter what a Hun thinks? Come; let's be cheerful. Can you hum for me 'La Brabançonne'?"[pg 248]She did not reply."Well, never mind," he said. "But it's a grand battle anthem.... We Americans have one.... It's out of fashion. And after all, I had rather hear 'La Brabançonne' when the time comes.... What a terrible admission! But what Americans have done to my country is far more terrible. The nation's sick—sick!... I prefer 'La Brabançonne' for the time being."The Prussians entered Nivelle a little before dawn. The airman had been watching the street below. Down there in the slight glow from the cinders of what once had been a cottage a cat had been squatting, staring at the bed of coals, as though she were once more installed upon the family hearthstone.Then something unseen as yet by the airman attracted the animal's attention. Alert, crouching, she stared down the vista of dark, deserted houses, then turned and fled like a ghost.For a long while the airman perceived nothing. Suddenly close to the house façades[pg 249]on either side of the street, shadowy forms came gliding forward.They passed the glowing embers and went on toward Sainte-Lesse; jägers, with knapsacks on back and rifles trailing; and on their heads oddly shaped pot helmets with battered looking visors.One or two motorcyclists followed, whizzing through the desolate street and into the country beyond.After a few minutes, out of the throat of the darkness emerged a solid column of infantry. In a moment, beneath the bell tower, the ground was swarming with Huns; every inch of the earth became infested with them; fields, hedges, alleys crawled alive with Germans. They overran every road, every street, every inch of open country; their wagons choked the main thoroughfare, they were already establishing themselves in the redoubt below, in the trench, running in and out of dugouts and all over scarp, counter-scarp, parades and parapet, ant-like in energy, busy with machine gun, trench mortar, installing telephones, searchlights, periscopes, machine guns.[pg 250]Automobiles arrived—two armoured cars and grey passenger machines in which there were officers.The airman laid his hand on Maryette's arm."Little bell-mistress," he said, "German officers are coming into the tower. I want them to find you in my arms when they come up into this belfry. Understand me, and forgive me.""I—understand," she whispered."Play your part bravely. Will you?""Yes."He put his arms around her; they stood rigid, listening."Now!" he whispered, and drew her close, kissing her.Spurred boots clattered on the stone floor:"Herr Je!" exclaimed an astonished voice. Somebody laughed. But the airman coolly pushed the girl aside, and as the faint grey light of dawn fell on his field uniform bearing the ribbon of the iron cross, two pairs of spurred heels hastily clinked together and two hands flew to the oddly shaped helmet visors."Also!" exclaimed the airman in a mincing[pg 251]Berlin accent. "When I require a corps of observers I usually send my aide. That being now quite perfectly understood, you gentlemen will give yourselves the trouble to descend as you have come. Further, you will place a sentry at the tower door, and inform enquirers that General Count von Gierdorff and his staff are occupying the Nivelle belfry for purposes of observation."The astounded officers saluted steadily; and if they imagined that the mythical staff of this general officer was clustered aloft somewhere up there where the bells hung it was impossible to tell by the strained expressions on their wooden countenances.However, it was evidently perfectly plain to them what the high Excellenz was about in this vaulted room where wires led aloft to an unseen carillon on the landing in the belfry above.The airman nodded; they went. And when their clattering steps echoed far below on the spiral stone stairs, the airman motioned to the little bell-mistress. She followed him up the short flight to where the bells hung.[pg 252]"We're in for it now," he said. "If High Command comes into this place to investigate then I shall have to hold those stairs.... It's growing quite light in the east. Which way is the wind?""North," she said in a steady voice. She was terribly pale.He went to the parapet and looked over, half wondering, perhaps, whether he would receive a rifle shot through the head.Far below at the foot of the bell-tower the dimly discerned Nivelle redoubt, swarming with men, was being armed; and, to the south, wired he thought, but could not see distinctly.Then, as the dusk of early dawn grew greyer, the first rifle shots rattled out in the west. The French salient was saluting the wire-stringers.Back under shelter they tumbled; whistles sounded distantly; a trench mortar crashed; then the accentless tattoo of machine guns broke from every emplacement."The east is turning a little yellow," he said calmly. "I believe this matter is going through.[pg 253]Toss some dust into the air. Which way?""North," said the girl."Good. I think they're placing their cylinders. I think I can see them laying their coils. I'm certain of it. What luck!"The airman was becoming excited and his voice trembled a little with the effort to control it."It's growing pink in the east. Try a handful of dust again," he suggested almost gaily."North," she said briefly, watching the dust aloft."Luck's with us! Look at the east! If their High Command keeps his nose out of this place!—if hedoes!—Look at the east, little bell-mistress! It's all gold! There's pink up higher. I can see a faint tinge of blue, too. Can you?""I think so."A minute dragged like a year in prison. Then:"Try the wind again," he said in a strained voice."North.""Oh, luck! Luck!" he muttered, slinging his[pg 254]sack of bombs over his shoulder. "We've got them! We've certainly got them! What's that! An airplane! Look, little girl—one of our planes is up. There's another! Which way is the wind?""North.""Got 'em!" he snapped between his teeth. "Run over to the stairs. Listen! Is anybody coming up?""I can hear nothing.""Stand there and listen. Never mind the row the guns are making; listen for somebody on the stairs. Look how light it's getting! The sun will push up before many minutes. We've got 'em!Got 'em!Wet your finger and try the wind!""North.""North here, too. What do you know about that! Luck! Luck's with us! And we've got 'em—!" he lifted his clenched hand and laughed at her. "Like that!" he said, his blue eyes blazing. "They're getting ready to gas below. Look at 'em! Glory to God! I can see two cylinders directly under me. They're manning the nozzles! Every man is masking[pg 255]at his post! Anybody on the stairs! Any sound?""None.""Are you certain?""It is as still as death below.""Try the dust. The wind's changing, I think. Quick! Which way?""West.""Oh, glory! Glory to God! They feel it below! They know. The wind has changed. Off came their respirators. No gas this morning, eh? Yes, by God, there will be gas enough for all——!"He caught up a bomb, leaned over the parapet, held it aloft, poised, aiming steadily for one second of concentrated coördination of mind and muscle. Then straight down he launched it. The cylinder beneath him was shattered and a green geyser of gas burst from it deluging the trench.Already a second bomb followed the first, then another, and then a third; and with the last report another cylinder in the trench below burst into thick green billows of death and flowed over the ground,west.[pg 256]Two more bombs whirled down, bursting on a machine gun; then the airman turned with a cry of triumph, and at the same instant the sun rose above the hills and flung a golden ray straight across his face.To Maryette the man stood transfigured, like the Blazing Guardian of the Flaming Sword."Ring out your Brabançonne!" he cried. "Let the Huns hear the war song of the land they've trampled! Now! Little bell-mistress, arm your white hands with your wooden gloves and make this old carillon speak in brass and iron!"He caught her by the arm; they ran down the short flight of steps; she drew on her wooden gloves and sprang to the keyboard."I'll hold the stairs!" he cried. "I can hold these stairs for an hour against the whole world in arms. Now, then! The Brabançonne!"Above the roaring confusion and the explosions far below, from high up in the sky a clear bell note floated as though out of Heaven itself—another, others, crystalline[pg 257]clear, imperious, filling all the sky with their amazing and terrible beauty.The mistress of the bells struck the keyboard with armoured hands—beautiful, slender, avenging hands; the bells above her crashed out into the battle-song of Flanders, filling sky and earth with its splendid defiance of the Hun.The airman, bomb in hand, stood at the head of the stone stairs; the ancient tower rocked with the fiercely magnificent anthem of revolt—the war cry of a devastated land—the land that died to save the world—the martyr, Belgium, still prone in the deathly trance awaiting her certain resurrection.The rising sun struck the tower where three score ancient bells poured from metal throats their heavenly summons to battle!The Hun heard it, tumbling, clawing, strangling below in the hellish vapours of his own death-fog; and now, from the rear his sky-guns hurled shrapnel at the carillon in the belfry of Nivelle.Clouds possessed the tower—soft, white, fleecy clouds rolling, unfolding, floating about[pg 258]the ancient buttresses and gargoyles. An iron hail rained on slate and parapet and resounding bell-metal. But the bells pealed and pealed in clear-voiced beauty, and Clovis, the great iron giant, hung, scarcely sonorous under the shrapnel rain.Suddenly there were bayonets on the stairs—the clatter of heavy feet—alien faces on the threshold. Then a bomb flew, and the terrible crash cleared the stairs.Twice more the clatter came with the clank of bayonets and guttural cries; but both died out in the infernal roar of the grenades exploding inside that stony spiral. And no more bayonets flickered on the stairs.The airman, frozen to a statue, listened. Again and again he thought he could hear bugles, but the roar from below blotted out the distant call."Little bell-mistress!"She turned her head, her hands still striking the keyboard. He spoke through the confusion of the place:"Sound the tocsin!"Then Clovis thundered from the belfry like[pg 259]a great gun fired, booming out over the world. Around the iron colossus shrapnel swept in gusts; Clovis thundered on, annihilating all sound except his own tremendous voice, heedless of shell and bullet, disdainful of the hell's shambles below, where masked French infantry were already leaping the parapets of Nivelle Redoubt into the squirming masses below.The airman shouted at her through the tumult:"They murdered my brother. Did I tell you? They hacked him to slivers with their bayonets. I've settled the reckoning down in the gas there—their own green gas, damn them! You don't understand what I say, do you? He was my brother——"A frightful explosion blew in the oubliette; the room rattled and clattered with shrapnel.The airman swayed where he stood in the swirling smoke, lurched up against the stone coping, slid down to his knees.When his eyes opened the little bell-mistress was bending over him."They got me," he gasped. All the front of his tunic was sopping red.[pg 260]"They said it meant the cross—if I made good.... Are you hurt?""Oh, no!" she whispered. "But you——""Go on and play!" he whispered with a terrible effort."But you——""The Brabançonne! Quick!"She went, whimpering. Standing before the keyboard she pulled on her wooden gloves and struck the keys.Out over the infernal uproar below pealed the bells; the morning sky rang with the noble summons to all brave men. Once more the ancient tower trembled with the mighty out-crash of the battle hymn.With the last note she turned and looked down at him where he lay against the wall. He opened his glazing eyes and tried to smile at her."Bully," he whispered. "Could you recite—the words—to me—just so I could hear them on my way—West?"She left the keyboard, came and dropped on her knees beside him; and closing her eyes to check the tears sang in a low, tremulous,[pg 261]girlish voice, De Lonlay's words, to the battle anthem of revolution."Bully," he sighed. And spoke no more on earth.But the little mistress of the bells did not know his soul had passed.And the French officer who came leaping up the stairs, pistol lifted, halted in astonishment to see a dead man lying beside a sack of bombs and a young girl on her knees beside him, weeping and tremblingly intoning "La Brabançonne."

No shells were falling in Nivelle as they left the car on the outskirts of the town and entered the long main street. That was all of Nivelle, a long, treeless main street from which branched a few alleys.

Smouldering débris of what had been houses illuminated the street. There were no other lights. Nothing stirred except a gaunt cat flitting like a shadow along the gutter. There was not a sound save the faint stirring of the cinders over which pale flames played fitfully.

Abandoned trenches ditched the little town in every direction; temporary shelters made of boughs, sheds, and broken-down wagons stood along the street. Otherwise, all impedimenta, materials, and stores had appar[pg 240]ently been removed by the retreating columns. There was little wreckage except the burning débris of the few shell-struck houses—a few rags, a few piles of firewood, a bundle of straw and hay here and there.

High, mounting toward the stars, the ancient tower with its gilded hippogriff dominated the place—a vast, vague shape brooding over the single mile-long street and grimy alleys branching from it.

Nobody guarded the portal; the ancient doors stood wide open; pitch darkness reigned within.

"Do you know the way?" whispered the airman.

"Yes. Take hold of my hand."

He dared not use his flash. Carrying bundle and bombsack under one arm, he sought for her hand and encountered it. Cool, slim fingers closed over his.

After a few moments' stealthy advance, she whispered:

"Here are the stairs. Be careful; they twist."

She started upward, feeling with her feet[pg 241]for every stone step. The ascent appeared to be interminable; the narrowing stone spiral seemed to have no end. Her hand grew warm within his own.

But at last they felt a fresh wind blowing and caught a glimpse of stars above them.

Then, tier on tier, the bells of the carillon, fixed to their great beams, appeared above them—a shadowy, bewildering wilderness of bells, rising, rank above rank, until they vanished in the darkness overhead. Beside them, almost touching them, loomed the great bell Clovis, a gigantic mass bulking enormously in that shadowy place.

A sonorous wind flowed through the open tower, eddying among the bells—a strong, keen night wind blowing from the north.

The airman walked to the south parapet and looked down. Below him in the starlight, like an indistinct map spread out, lay the Nivelle redoubt and the trench with its gabions, its sand bags, its timbers, its dugouts.

Very far away to the southeast they could see the glare of rockets and exploding shells, but the sound of the bombardment did not[pg 242]reach them. North, a single searchlight played and switched across the clouds; west, all was dark.

"They'll arrive just before dawn," said the airman, placing his sack of bombs on the pavement under the parapet. "Come, little bell-mistress, take me to see your keyboard."

"It is below—a few steps. This way—if you will follow me——"

She turned to the stone stairs again, descended a dozen steps, opened a door on a narrow landing.

And there, in the starlight, he saw the keyboard and the bewildering maze of wires running up and branching like a huge web toward the tiers of bells above.

He looked at the keyboard curiously. The little mistress of the bells displayed the two wooden gloves with which she encased her hands when she played the carillon.

"It would be impossible for one to play unless one's hands are armoured," she explained.

"It is almost a lost art," he mused aloud, "—this playing the carillon—this wonderful[pg 243]bell-music of the middle ages. There are few great bell-masters in this day."

"Few," she said dreamily.

"And"—he turned and stared at her—"few mistresses of the bells, I imagine."

"I think I am the only one in France or in Flanders.... And there are few carillons left. The Huns are battering them down. Towers of the ancient ages are falling everywhere in Flanders and in France under their shell fire. Very soon there will be no more of the old carillons left; no more bell-music in the world." She sighed heavily. "It is a pity."

She seated herself at the keyboard.

"Dare I play?" she asked, looking up over her shoulder.

"No; it would only mean a shell from the Huns."

She nodded, laid the wooden gloves beside her and let her delicate hands wander over the mute keys.

Leaning beside her the airman quietly explained the plan they were to follow.

"With dawn they will come creeping into[pg 244]Nivelle—the Huns," he said. "I have one of their officers' uniforms in that bundle above. I shall try to pass as a general officer. You see, I speak German. My education was partly ruined in Germany. So I'll get on very well, I expect.

"And directly under us is the trench and the main redoubt. They'll occupy that first thing. They'll swarm there—the whole trench will be crawling with them. They'll install their gas cylinders at once, this wind being their wind.

"But with sunrise the wind changes—and whether it changes or not, I don't care," he added. "I've got them at last where I want them."

The girl looked up at him. He smiled that terrifying smile of his:

"With the explosion of my first bomb among their gas cylinders you are to start these bells above us. Are you afraid?"

"No."

"You are to play 'La Brabançonne.' That is the signal to our trenches."

"I have often played it," she said coolly.[pg 245]

"Not in the teeth of a barbarian army. Not in the faces of a murderous soldiery."

The girl sat quite still for a few moments; then looking up at him, and very pale in the starlight:

"Do you think they will tear me to pieces, monsieur?"

He said:

"I mean to hold those stairs with my sack of bombs until our people enter the trenches. If they can do it in an hour we will be all right."

"Yes."

"It is only a half-hour affair from our salient. I allow our people an hour."

"Yes."

"But if, even now, you had rather go back——"

"No!"

"There is no disgrace in going back."

"You said once, 'anybody can weep for friend and country. Few avenge either.' I am—happy—to be among the few."

He nodded. After a moment he said:

"I'll bet you something. My country is all[pg 246]right, but it's sick. It'sgot a nauseous dose of verbiage to spew up—something it's swallowed—something about being too proud to fight.... My brother and I couldn't stand it, so we came to France.... He was in the photo air service. He was in mufti—and about two miles up, I believe. Six Huns went for him.... And winged him. He had to land behind their lines.... In mufti.... Well—I've never found courage to hear the details. I can't stand them—yet."

"Your brother—is dead, monsieur?" she asked timidly.

"Oh, yes. With—circumstances. Well, then—after that, from an ordinary, commonplace man I became a machine for the extermination of vermin. That's all I am—an animated magazine of Persian powder—or I do it in any handy way. It's not a sporting proposition, you see, just get rid of them any old way. You don't understand, do you?"

"A—little."

"But it's slow work—slow work," he muttered vaguely, "—and the world is crawling—crawling with them. But if God guides my[pg 247]bomb this time and if I hit one of their gas cylinders—thatought to be worth while."

In the starlight his features became tense and terrible; she shivered in her threadbare jacket.

After a few moments' silence he went away up the steps to put on his German uniform. When he descended again she had a troubled question for him to answer:

"But how shall you account for me, a French girl, monsieur, if they come to the belfry?"

A heavy flush darkened his face:

"Little mistress of the bells, I shall pretend to be what the Huns are. Do you know how they treat French women?"

"I have heard," she said faintly.

"Then if they come and find you here as my—prisoner—they will think they understand."

The colour flamed in her face and she bowed it, resting her elbows on the keyboard.

"Come," he said, "don't be distressed. Does it matter what a Hun thinks? Come; let's be cheerful. Can you hum for me 'La Brabançonne'?"[pg 248]

She did not reply.

"Well, never mind," he said. "But it's a grand battle anthem.... We Americans have one.... It's out of fashion. And after all, I had rather hear 'La Brabançonne' when the time comes.... What a terrible admission! But what Americans have done to my country is far more terrible. The nation's sick—sick!... I prefer 'La Brabançonne' for the time being."

The Prussians entered Nivelle a little before dawn. The airman had been watching the street below. Down there in the slight glow from the cinders of what once had been a cottage a cat had been squatting, staring at the bed of coals, as though she were once more installed upon the family hearthstone.

Then something unseen as yet by the airman attracted the animal's attention. Alert, crouching, she stared down the vista of dark, deserted houses, then turned and fled like a ghost.

For a long while the airman perceived nothing. Suddenly close to the house façades[pg 249]on either side of the street, shadowy forms came gliding forward.

They passed the glowing embers and went on toward Sainte-Lesse; jägers, with knapsacks on back and rifles trailing; and on their heads oddly shaped pot helmets with battered looking visors.

One or two motorcyclists followed, whizzing through the desolate street and into the country beyond.

After a few minutes, out of the throat of the darkness emerged a solid column of infantry. In a moment, beneath the bell tower, the ground was swarming with Huns; every inch of the earth became infested with them; fields, hedges, alleys crawled alive with Germans. They overran every road, every street, every inch of open country; their wagons choked the main thoroughfare, they were already establishing themselves in the redoubt below, in the trench, running in and out of dugouts and all over scarp, counter-scarp, parades and parapet, ant-like in energy, busy with machine gun, trench mortar, installing telephones, searchlights, periscopes, machine guns.[pg 250]

Automobiles arrived—two armoured cars and grey passenger machines in which there were officers.

The airman laid his hand on Maryette's arm.

"Little bell-mistress," he said, "German officers are coming into the tower. I want them to find you in my arms when they come up into this belfry. Understand me, and forgive me."

"I—understand," she whispered.

"Play your part bravely. Will you?"

"Yes."

He put his arms around her; they stood rigid, listening.

"Now!" he whispered, and drew her close, kissing her.

Spurred boots clattered on the stone floor:

"Herr Je!" exclaimed an astonished voice. Somebody laughed. But the airman coolly pushed the girl aside, and as the faint grey light of dawn fell on his field uniform bearing the ribbon of the iron cross, two pairs of spurred heels hastily clinked together and two hands flew to the oddly shaped helmet visors.

"Also!" exclaimed the airman in a mincing[pg 251]Berlin accent. "When I require a corps of observers I usually send my aide. That being now quite perfectly understood, you gentlemen will give yourselves the trouble to descend as you have come. Further, you will place a sentry at the tower door, and inform enquirers that General Count von Gierdorff and his staff are occupying the Nivelle belfry for purposes of observation."

The astounded officers saluted steadily; and if they imagined that the mythical staff of this general officer was clustered aloft somewhere up there where the bells hung it was impossible to tell by the strained expressions on their wooden countenances.

However, it was evidently perfectly plain to them what the high Excellenz was about in this vaulted room where wires led aloft to an unseen carillon on the landing in the belfry above.

The airman nodded; they went. And when their clattering steps echoed far below on the spiral stone stairs, the airman motioned to the little bell-mistress. She followed him up the short flight to where the bells hung.[pg 252]

"We're in for it now," he said. "If High Command comes into this place to investigate then I shall have to hold those stairs.... It's growing quite light in the east. Which way is the wind?"

"North," she said in a steady voice. She was terribly pale.

He went to the parapet and looked over, half wondering, perhaps, whether he would receive a rifle shot through the head.

Far below at the foot of the bell-tower the dimly discerned Nivelle redoubt, swarming with men, was being armed; and, to the south, wired he thought, but could not see distinctly.

Then, as the dusk of early dawn grew greyer, the first rifle shots rattled out in the west. The French salient was saluting the wire-stringers.

Back under shelter they tumbled; whistles sounded distantly; a trench mortar crashed; then the accentless tattoo of machine guns broke from every emplacement.

"The east is turning a little yellow," he said calmly. "I believe this matter is going through.[pg 253]Toss some dust into the air. Which way?"

"North," said the girl.

"Good. I think they're placing their cylinders. I think I can see them laying their coils. I'm certain of it. What luck!"

The airman was becoming excited and his voice trembled a little with the effort to control it.

"It's growing pink in the east. Try a handful of dust again," he suggested almost gaily.

"North," she said briefly, watching the dust aloft.

"Luck's with us! Look at the east! If their High Command keeps his nose out of this place!—if hedoes!—Look at the east, little bell-mistress! It's all gold! There's pink up higher. I can see a faint tinge of blue, too. Can you?"

"I think so."

A minute dragged like a year in prison. Then:

"Try the wind again," he said in a strained voice.

"North."

"Oh, luck! Luck!" he muttered, slinging his[pg 254]sack of bombs over his shoulder. "We've got them! We've certainly got them! What's that! An airplane! Look, little girl—one of our planes is up. There's another! Which way is the wind?"

"North."

"Got 'em!" he snapped between his teeth. "Run over to the stairs. Listen! Is anybody coming up?"

"I can hear nothing."

"Stand there and listen. Never mind the row the guns are making; listen for somebody on the stairs. Look how light it's getting! The sun will push up before many minutes. We've got 'em!Got 'em!Wet your finger and try the wind!"

"North."

"North here, too. What do you know about that! Luck! Luck's with us! And we've got 'em—!" he lifted his clenched hand and laughed at her. "Like that!" he said, his blue eyes blazing. "They're getting ready to gas below. Look at 'em! Glory to God! I can see two cylinders directly under me. They're manning the nozzles! Every man is masking[pg 255]at his post! Anybody on the stairs! Any sound?"

"None."

"Are you certain?"

"It is as still as death below."

"Try the dust. The wind's changing, I think. Quick! Which way?"

"West."

"Oh, glory! Glory to God! They feel it below! They know. The wind has changed. Off came their respirators. No gas this morning, eh? Yes, by God, there will be gas enough for all——!"

He caught up a bomb, leaned over the parapet, held it aloft, poised, aiming steadily for one second of concentrated coördination of mind and muscle. Then straight down he launched it. The cylinder beneath him was shattered and a green geyser of gas burst from it deluging the trench.

Already a second bomb followed the first, then another, and then a third; and with the last report another cylinder in the trench below burst into thick green billows of death and flowed over the ground,west.[pg 256]

Two more bombs whirled down, bursting on a machine gun; then the airman turned with a cry of triumph, and at the same instant the sun rose above the hills and flung a golden ray straight across his face.

To Maryette the man stood transfigured, like the Blazing Guardian of the Flaming Sword.

"Ring out your Brabançonne!" he cried. "Let the Huns hear the war song of the land they've trampled! Now! Little bell-mistress, arm your white hands with your wooden gloves and make this old carillon speak in brass and iron!"

He caught her by the arm; they ran down the short flight of steps; she drew on her wooden gloves and sprang to the keyboard.

"I'll hold the stairs!" he cried. "I can hold these stairs for an hour against the whole world in arms. Now, then! The Brabançonne!"

Above the roaring confusion and the explosions far below, from high up in the sky a clear bell note floated as though out of Heaven itself—another, others, crystalline[pg 257]clear, imperious, filling all the sky with their amazing and terrible beauty.

The mistress of the bells struck the keyboard with armoured hands—beautiful, slender, avenging hands; the bells above her crashed out into the battle-song of Flanders, filling sky and earth with its splendid defiance of the Hun.

The airman, bomb in hand, stood at the head of the stone stairs; the ancient tower rocked with the fiercely magnificent anthem of revolt—the war cry of a devastated land—the land that died to save the world—the martyr, Belgium, still prone in the deathly trance awaiting her certain resurrection.

The rising sun struck the tower where three score ancient bells poured from metal throats their heavenly summons to battle!

The Hun heard it, tumbling, clawing, strangling below in the hellish vapours of his own death-fog; and now, from the rear his sky-guns hurled shrapnel at the carillon in the belfry of Nivelle.

Clouds possessed the tower—soft, white, fleecy clouds rolling, unfolding, floating about[pg 258]the ancient buttresses and gargoyles. An iron hail rained on slate and parapet and resounding bell-metal. But the bells pealed and pealed in clear-voiced beauty, and Clovis, the great iron giant, hung, scarcely sonorous under the shrapnel rain.

Suddenly there were bayonets on the stairs—the clatter of heavy feet—alien faces on the threshold. Then a bomb flew, and the terrible crash cleared the stairs.

Twice more the clatter came with the clank of bayonets and guttural cries; but both died out in the infernal roar of the grenades exploding inside that stony spiral. And no more bayonets flickered on the stairs.

The airman, frozen to a statue, listened. Again and again he thought he could hear bugles, but the roar from below blotted out the distant call.

"Little bell-mistress!"

She turned her head, her hands still striking the keyboard. He spoke through the confusion of the place:

"Sound the tocsin!"

Then Clovis thundered from the belfry like[pg 259]a great gun fired, booming out over the world. Around the iron colossus shrapnel swept in gusts; Clovis thundered on, annihilating all sound except his own tremendous voice, heedless of shell and bullet, disdainful of the hell's shambles below, where masked French infantry were already leaping the parapets of Nivelle Redoubt into the squirming masses below.

The airman shouted at her through the tumult:

"They murdered my brother. Did I tell you? They hacked him to slivers with their bayonets. I've settled the reckoning down in the gas there—their own green gas, damn them! You don't understand what I say, do you? He was my brother——"

A frightful explosion blew in the oubliette; the room rattled and clattered with shrapnel.

The airman swayed where he stood in the swirling smoke, lurched up against the stone coping, slid down to his knees.

When his eyes opened the little bell-mistress was bending over him.

"They got me," he gasped. All the front of his tunic was sopping red.[pg 260]

"They said it meant the cross—if I made good.... Are you hurt?"

"Oh, no!" she whispered. "But you——"

"Go on and play!" he whispered with a terrible effort.

"But you——"

"The Brabançonne! Quick!"

She went, whimpering. Standing before the keyboard she pulled on her wooden gloves and struck the keys.

Out over the infernal uproar below pealed the bells; the morning sky rang with the noble summons to all brave men. Once more the ancient tower trembled with the mighty out-crash of the battle hymn.

With the last note she turned and looked down at him where he lay against the wall. He opened his glazing eyes and tried to smile at her.

"Bully," he whispered. "Could you recite—the words—to me—just so I could hear them on my way—West?"

She left the keyboard, came and dropped on her knees beside him; and closing her eyes to check the tears sang in a low, tremulous,[pg 261]girlish voice, De Lonlay's words, to the battle anthem of revolution.

"Bully," he sighed. And spoke no more on earth.

But the little mistress of the bells did not know his soul had passed.

And the French officer who came leaping up the stairs, pistol lifted, halted in astonishment to see a dead man lying beside a sack of bombs and a young girl on her knees beside him, weeping and tremblingly intoning "La Brabançonne."

CHAPTER XXITHE GARDENERA week later, toward noon, as usual, the two American, muleteers, Smith and Glenn, sauntered over from their corral to the White Doe Tavern where, it being a meatless day, they ate largely of potato soup and of a tench, smoking hot.The tench had been caught that morning off the back doorstep, which was an ancient and mossy slab of limestone let into the coping of the river wall.Jean Courtray, the crippled inn-keeper, caught it. All that morning he had sat there in the sun on the river wall, half dozing, opening his dim eyes at intervals to gaze at his painted quill afloat among the water weeds of the little river Lesse. At intervals, too, he turned his head with that peculiar movement[pg 263]of the old, and peered at his daughter, Maryette, and the Belgian gardener who were working among the potatoes in the garden.And at last he had hooked his fish and the emaciated young Belgian dropped his hoe and came over and released it from the hook where it lay flopping and quivering and glittering among the wild grasses on the river bank. And that was how Kid Glenn and Sticky Smith, American muleteers on duty at Saint Lesse, came to lunch on freshly caught tench at the Inn of the White Doe.After luncheon, agreeably satiated, they rose from the table in the little dining room and strolled out to the garden in the rear of the inn, their Mexican spurs clanking. Maryette heard them; they tipped their caps to her; she acknowledged their salute gravely and continued to cultivate her garden with a hoe, the blond, consumptive Belgian trundling a rickety cultivator at her heels."Look, Stick," drawled Glenn. "Maryette's got her decoration on."From where they lounged by the river wall[pg 264]they could see the cross of the Legion pinned to the girl's blouse.Both muleteers had been present at the investment the day before, when a general officer arrived from Paris and the entire garrison of Sainte Lesse had been paraded—an impressive total of three dozen men—six gendarmes and a brigadier; one remount sub-lieutenant and twenty troopers; a veterinary, two white American muleteers, and five American negro hostlers from Baton Rouge.The girl had nearly died of shyness during the ceremony, had endured the accolade with crimson cheeks, had stammered a whispered response to the congratulations of neighbors who had gathered to see the little bell-mistress of Sainte Lesse honoured by the country which she had served in the belfry of Nivelle.As she came past Smith and Glenn, trailing her hoe, the latter now sufficiently proficient in French, said gaily:"Have you heard from Jack again, Mamzelle Maryette?"The girl blushed:[pg 265]"I hear from Djack by every mail," she said, with all the transparent honesty that characterized her.Smith grinned:"Just like that! Well, tell him from me to quit fooling away his time in a hospital and come and get you or somebody is going to steal you."The girl was very happy; she stood there in the September sunshine leaning on her hoe and gazing half shyly, half humorously down the river where a string of American mules was being watered.Mellow Ethiopian laughter sounded from the distance as the Baton Rouge negroes exchanged pleasantries in limited French with a couple of gendarmes on the bank above them. And there, in the sunshine of the little garden by the river, war and death seemed very far away. Only at intervals the veering breeze brought to Sainte Lesse the immense vibration of the cannonade; only at intervals the high sky-clatter of an airplane reminded the village that the front was only a little north[pg 266]of Nivelle, and that what had been Nivelle was not so very far away."If you weremygirl, Maryette," remarked Smith, "I'd die of worry in that hospital.""Youmight have reason to, Monsieur," retorted the girl demurely. "But you see it's Djack who is convalescing, not you."She had become accustomed to the ceaseless banter of Burley's two comrades—a banter entirely American, and which at first she was unable to understand. But now all things American, including accent and odd, perverted humour, had become very dear to her. The clink-clank of the muleteer's big spurs always set her heart beating; the sight of an arriving convoy from the Channel port thrilled her, and to her the trample of mules, the shouts of foreign negroes, the drawling, broken French spoken by the white muleteers made heavenly real to her the dream which love had so suddenly invaded, and into which, as suddenly, strode Death, clutching at Love.She had beaten him off—she had—or God had—routed Death, driven him from the dream.[pg 267]For it was a dream to her still, and she thought she could never be able to comprehend the magic reality of it, even when at last her man, "Djack," came back to prove the blessed miracle which held her in the magic of its thrall."Who's the guy with the wheelbarrow?" inquired Sticky Smith, rolling a cigarette."Karl, his name is," she answered; "—a Belgian refugee.""He looks like a Hun to me," remarked Glenn, bluntly."He has his papers," said the girl.Glenn shrugged."With his little pink eyes of a pig and his whitish hair and eyebrows—well, maybe they make 'em like that in Belgium.""Papers," added Smith, "canbe swiped."The girl shook her head:"He's an invalid student from Ypres. He looks quite ill, I think.""He looks the lunger, all right. But Huns have it, too. What does he do—wander about town at will?"[pg 268]"He works for us, monsieur. Your suspicions are harsh. Karl is quite harmless, poor boy.""What does he do after hours?" demanded Sticky Smith, watching the manœuvres of the sickly blond youth and the wheelbarrow."Monsieur Smith, if you knew how innocent is his pastime!" she exclaimed, laughing. "He collects and studies moths and butterflies. Is there, if you please, a mania more harmless in the world?... And now I must return to my work, messieurs."As the two muleteers strode clanking away toward the canal in the meadow, the blond youth turned his head and looked after them out of eyes which were naturally pale and small, and which, as he watched the two Americans, seemed to grow paler and smaller yet.That afternoon old Courtray, swathed in a shawl, sat on the mossy doorstep and fished among the water weeds of the river. The sun was low; work in the garden had ended.Maryette had gone up into her belfry to play the sunset hymn on the noble old carillon. Through the sunset sky the lovely bell-notes[pg 269]floated far and wide, exquisitely chaste and aloof as the high-showering ecstasy of a skylark.As always the little village looked upward and listened, pausing in its humble duties as long as their little bell-mistress remained in her tower.After the hymn she played "Myn hart is vol verlangen" and "Het Lied der Vlamingen," and ended with the delicate, bewitching little folk-song, "Myn Vryer," by Hasselt.Then in the red glow of the setting sun the girl laid aside her wooden gloves, rose from the ancient keyboard, wound up the drum, and, her duty done for the evening, came down out of the tower among the transparent evening shadows of the tree-lined village street.The sun hung over Nivelle hills, which had turned to amethyst. Sunbeams laced the little river in a red net through which old Courtray's quill stemmed the ripples. He still clutched his fishing pole, but his eyes were closed, his chin resting on his chest.Maryette came silently into the garden and looked at her father—looked at the blond Karl[pg 270]seated on the river wall beside the dozing angler. The blond youth had a box on his knees into which he was intently peering.The girl came to the river wall and seated herself at her father's feet. The Belgian refugee student had already risen to attention, his heels together, but Maryette signed him to be seated again."What have you found now, Karl?" she inquired in a cautiously modulated voice."Ah, mademoiselle, fancy! I haff by chance with my cultivator among your potatoes already twenty pupæ of the magnificent moth, Sphinx Atropos, upturned! See! Regard them, mademoiselle! What lucky chance! What fortune for me, an entomologist, this wonderful sphinx moth to discover encased within its chrysalis!"The girl smiled at his enthusiasm:"But, Karl, those funny, smooth brown things which resemble little polished evergreen-cones are not rare in my garden. Often, when spading or hoeing among the potato vines, I uncover them.""Mademoiselle, the caterpillar which makes this chrysalis feeds by night on the leaves of[pg 271]the potato, and, when ready to transform, burrows into the earth to become achrysalisor pupa, as we call it. That iss why mademoiselle has often disinterred the pupæ of this largest and strangest of our native sphinx-moths."Maryette leaned over and looked into the wooden box, where lay the chrysalides."What kind of moth do they make?" she asked.He blinked his small, pale eyes:"The Death's Head," he said, complacently.The girl recoiled involuntarily:"Oh!" she exclaimed under her breath, "—thatcreature!"For everywhere in France the great moth, with its strange and ominous markings, is perfectly well known. To the superstitious it is a creature of evil omen in its fulvous, black and lead-coloured livery of death. For the broad, furry thorax bears a skull, and the big, mousy body the yellow ribs of a skeleton.Measuring often more than five inches across the expanded wings, its formidable size alone might be sufficient to inspire alarm, but in addition it possesses a horrid attribute unknown[pg 272]among other moths and butterflies; it can utter a cry—a tiny shrill, shuddering complaint. Small wonder, perhaps, that the peasant holds it in horror—this sleek, furry, powerfully winged creature marked with skull and bones, which whirrs through the night and comes thudding against the window, and shrieks horridly when touched by a human hand."Sothatis what turns into the Death's Head moth," said the girl in a low voice as though to herself. "I never knew it. I thought those things were legless cock-chafers when I dug them out of potato hills. Karl, why do you keep them?""Ah, mademoiselle! To study them. To breed from them the moth. The Death's Head is magnificent.""God made it," admitted the girl with a faint shudder, "but I am afraid I could not love it. When do they hatch out?""It is time now. It is not like others of the sphinx family. Incubation requires but a few weeks. These are nearly ready to emerge, mademoiselle."[pg 273]"Oh. And then what do they do?""They mate."She was silent."The males seek the females," he said in his pedantic, monotonous voice. "And so ardent are the lovers that although there be no female moth within five, eight, perhaps ten miles, yet will her lover surely search through the night for her and find her."Maryette shuddered again in spite of herself. The thought of this creature marked with the emblems of death and possessed of ardour, too, was distasteful."Amour macabre—what an unpleasant thought, Karl. I do not care for your Death's Head and for the history of their amours."She turned and gently laid her head on her father's knees. The young man regarded her with a pallid sneer.Addressing her back, still holding his boxful of pupæ on his bony knees, he said with the sneer quite audible in his voice:"Your famous savant, Fabre, first inspired me to study the sex habits of the Death's Head."[pg 274]She made no reply, her cheek resting on her father's knees."It was because of his wonderful experiments with the Great Peacock moth and with others of the genus that I have studied to acquaint myself concerning the amours of the Death's Head.And I have discovered that he will find the female even if she be miles and miles away."The man was grinning now in the dusk—grinning like a skull; but the girl's back was still turned and she merely found something in his voice not quite agreeable."I think," she said in a low, quiet voice, "that I have now heard sufficient about the Death's Head moth.""Ah—have I offended mademoiselle? I ask a thousand pardons——"Old Courtray awoke in the dusk."My quill, Maryette," he muttered, "—see if it floats yet?"The girl bent over the water and strained her eyes. Her father tested the line with shaky hands. There was no fish on the hook."Voyons!Theasticotalso is gone. Some[pg 275]robber fish has been nibbling!" exclaimed the girl cheerfully, reeling in the line. "Father, one cannot fish and doze at the same time.""Eternal vigilance is the price of success—in peace as well as in war," said Karl, the student, as he aided Maryette to raise her father from the chair."Vigilance," repeated the girl. "Yes, always now in France. Because always the enemy is listening." ... Her strong young arm around her father, she traversed the garden slowly toward the house. A pleasant odour came from the kitchen of the White Doe, where an old peasant woman was cooking.

A week later, toward noon, as usual, the two American, muleteers, Smith and Glenn, sauntered over from their corral to the White Doe Tavern where, it being a meatless day, they ate largely of potato soup and of a tench, smoking hot.

The tench had been caught that morning off the back doorstep, which was an ancient and mossy slab of limestone let into the coping of the river wall.

Jean Courtray, the crippled inn-keeper, caught it. All that morning he had sat there in the sun on the river wall, half dozing, opening his dim eyes at intervals to gaze at his painted quill afloat among the water weeds of the little river Lesse. At intervals, too, he turned his head with that peculiar movement[pg 263]of the old, and peered at his daughter, Maryette, and the Belgian gardener who were working among the potatoes in the garden.

And at last he had hooked his fish and the emaciated young Belgian dropped his hoe and came over and released it from the hook where it lay flopping and quivering and glittering among the wild grasses on the river bank. And that was how Kid Glenn and Sticky Smith, American muleteers on duty at Saint Lesse, came to lunch on freshly caught tench at the Inn of the White Doe.

After luncheon, agreeably satiated, they rose from the table in the little dining room and strolled out to the garden in the rear of the inn, their Mexican spurs clanking. Maryette heard them; they tipped their caps to her; she acknowledged their salute gravely and continued to cultivate her garden with a hoe, the blond, consumptive Belgian trundling a rickety cultivator at her heels.

"Look, Stick," drawled Glenn. "Maryette's got her decoration on."

From where they lounged by the river wall[pg 264]they could see the cross of the Legion pinned to the girl's blouse.

Both muleteers had been present at the investment the day before, when a general officer arrived from Paris and the entire garrison of Sainte Lesse had been paraded—an impressive total of three dozen men—six gendarmes and a brigadier; one remount sub-lieutenant and twenty troopers; a veterinary, two white American muleteers, and five American negro hostlers from Baton Rouge.

The girl had nearly died of shyness during the ceremony, had endured the accolade with crimson cheeks, had stammered a whispered response to the congratulations of neighbors who had gathered to see the little bell-mistress of Sainte Lesse honoured by the country which she had served in the belfry of Nivelle.

As she came past Smith and Glenn, trailing her hoe, the latter now sufficiently proficient in French, said gaily:

"Have you heard from Jack again, Mamzelle Maryette?"

The girl blushed:[pg 265]

"I hear from Djack by every mail," she said, with all the transparent honesty that characterized her.

Smith grinned:

"Just like that! Well, tell him from me to quit fooling away his time in a hospital and come and get you or somebody is going to steal you."

The girl was very happy; she stood there in the September sunshine leaning on her hoe and gazing half shyly, half humorously down the river where a string of American mules was being watered.

Mellow Ethiopian laughter sounded from the distance as the Baton Rouge negroes exchanged pleasantries in limited French with a couple of gendarmes on the bank above them. And there, in the sunshine of the little garden by the river, war and death seemed very far away. Only at intervals the veering breeze brought to Sainte Lesse the immense vibration of the cannonade; only at intervals the high sky-clatter of an airplane reminded the village that the front was only a little north[pg 266]of Nivelle, and that what had been Nivelle was not so very far away.

"If you weremygirl, Maryette," remarked Smith, "I'd die of worry in that hospital."

"Youmight have reason to, Monsieur," retorted the girl demurely. "But you see it's Djack who is convalescing, not you."

She had become accustomed to the ceaseless banter of Burley's two comrades—a banter entirely American, and which at first she was unable to understand. But now all things American, including accent and odd, perverted humour, had become very dear to her. The clink-clank of the muleteer's big spurs always set her heart beating; the sight of an arriving convoy from the Channel port thrilled her, and to her the trample of mules, the shouts of foreign negroes, the drawling, broken French spoken by the white muleteers made heavenly real to her the dream which love had so suddenly invaded, and into which, as suddenly, strode Death, clutching at Love.

She had beaten him off—she had—or God had—routed Death, driven him from the dream.[pg 267]For it was a dream to her still, and she thought she could never be able to comprehend the magic reality of it, even when at last her man, "Djack," came back to prove the blessed miracle which held her in the magic of its thrall.

"Who's the guy with the wheelbarrow?" inquired Sticky Smith, rolling a cigarette.

"Karl, his name is," she answered; "—a Belgian refugee."

"He looks like a Hun to me," remarked Glenn, bluntly.

"He has his papers," said the girl.

Glenn shrugged.

"With his little pink eyes of a pig and his whitish hair and eyebrows—well, maybe they make 'em like that in Belgium."

"Papers," added Smith, "canbe swiped."

The girl shook her head:

"He's an invalid student from Ypres. He looks quite ill, I think."

"He looks the lunger, all right. But Huns have it, too. What does he do—wander about town at will?"[pg 268]

"He works for us, monsieur. Your suspicions are harsh. Karl is quite harmless, poor boy."

"What does he do after hours?" demanded Sticky Smith, watching the manœuvres of the sickly blond youth and the wheelbarrow.

"Monsieur Smith, if you knew how innocent is his pastime!" she exclaimed, laughing. "He collects and studies moths and butterflies. Is there, if you please, a mania more harmless in the world?... And now I must return to my work, messieurs."

As the two muleteers strode clanking away toward the canal in the meadow, the blond youth turned his head and looked after them out of eyes which were naturally pale and small, and which, as he watched the two Americans, seemed to grow paler and smaller yet.

That afternoon old Courtray, swathed in a shawl, sat on the mossy doorstep and fished among the water weeds of the river. The sun was low; work in the garden had ended.

Maryette had gone up into her belfry to play the sunset hymn on the noble old carillon. Through the sunset sky the lovely bell-notes[pg 269]floated far and wide, exquisitely chaste and aloof as the high-showering ecstasy of a skylark.

As always the little village looked upward and listened, pausing in its humble duties as long as their little bell-mistress remained in her tower.

After the hymn she played "Myn hart is vol verlangen" and "Het Lied der Vlamingen," and ended with the delicate, bewitching little folk-song, "Myn Vryer," by Hasselt.

Then in the red glow of the setting sun the girl laid aside her wooden gloves, rose from the ancient keyboard, wound up the drum, and, her duty done for the evening, came down out of the tower among the transparent evening shadows of the tree-lined village street.

The sun hung over Nivelle hills, which had turned to amethyst. Sunbeams laced the little river in a red net through which old Courtray's quill stemmed the ripples. He still clutched his fishing pole, but his eyes were closed, his chin resting on his chest.

Maryette came silently into the garden and looked at her father—looked at the blond Karl[pg 270]seated on the river wall beside the dozing angler. The blond youth had a box on his knees into which he was intently peering.

The girl came to the river wall and seated herself at her father's feet. The Belgian refugee student had already risen to attention, his heels together, but Maryette signed him to be seated again.

"What have you found now, Karl?" she inquired in a cautiously modulated voice.

"Ah, mademoiselle, fancy! I haff by chance with my cultivator among your potatoes already twenty pupæ of the magnificent moth, Sphinx Atropos, upturned! See! Regard them, mademoiselle! What lucky chance! What fortune for me, an entomologist, this wonderful sphinx moth to discover encased within its chrysalis!"

The girl smiled at his enthusiasm:

"But, Karl, those funny, smooth brown things which resemble little polished evergreen-cones are not rare in my garden. Often, when spading or hoeing among the potato vines, I uncover them."

"Mademoiselle, the caterpillar which makes this chrysalis feeds by night on the leaves of[pg 271]the potato, and, when ready to transform, burrows into the earth to become achrysalisor pupa, as we call it. That iss why mademoiselle has often disinterred the pupæ of this largest and strangest of our native sphinx-moths."

Maryette leaned over and looked into the wooden box, where lay the chrysalides.

"What kind of moth do they make?" she asked.

He blinked his small, pale eyes:

"The Death's Head," he said, complacently.

The girl recoiled involuntarily:

"Oh!" she exclaimed under her breath, "—thatcreature!"

For everywhere in France the great moth, with its strange and ominous markings, is perfectly well known. To the superstitious it is a creature of evil omen in its fulvous, black and lead-coloured livery of death. For the broad, furry thorax bears a skull, and the big, mousy body the yellow ribs of a skeleton.

Measuring often more than five inches across the expanded wings, its formidable size alone might be sufficient to inspire alarm, but in addition it possesses a horrid attribute unknown[pg 272]among other moths and butterflies; it can utter a cry—a tiny shrill, shuddering complaint. Small wonder, perhaps, that the peasant holds it in horror—this sleek, furry, powerfully winged creature marked with skull and bones, which whirrs through the night and comes thudding against the window, and shrieks horridly when touched by a human hand.

"Sothatis what turns into the Death's Head moth," said the girl in a low voice as though to herself. "I never knew it. I thought those things were legless cock-chafers when I dug them out of potato hills. Karl, why do you keep them?"

"Ah, mademoiselle! To study them. To breed from them the moth. The Death's Head is magnificent."

"God made it," admitted the girl with a faint shudder, "but I am afraid I could not love it. When do they hatch out?"

"It is time now. It is not like others of the sphinx family. Incubation requires but a few weeks. These are nearly ready to emerge, mademoiselle."[pg 273]

"Oh. And then what do they do?"

"They mate."

She was silent.

"The males seek the females," he said in his pedantic, monotonous voice. "And so ardent are the lovers that although there be no female moth within five, eight, perhaps ten miles, yet will her lover surely search through the night for her and find her."

Maryette shuddered again in spite of herself. The thought of this creature marked with the emblems of death and possessed of ardour, too, was distasteful.

"Amour macabre—what an unpleasant thought, Karl. I do not care for your Death's Head and for the history of their amours."

She turned and gently laid her head on her father's knees. The young man regarded her with a pallid sneer.

Addressing her back, still holding his boxful of pupæ on his bony knees, he said with the sneer quite audible in his voice:

"Your famous savant, Fabre, first inspired me to study the sex habits of the Death's Head."[pg 274]

She made no reply, her cheek resting on her father's knees.

"It was because of his wonderful experiments with the Great Peacock moth and with others of the genus that I have studied to acquaint myself concerning the amours of the Death's Head.And I have discovered that he will find the female even if she be miles and miles away."

The man was grinning now in the dusk—grinning like a skull; but the girl's back was still turned and she merely found something in his voice not quite agreeable.

"I think," she said in a low, quiet voice, "that I have now heard sufficient about the Death's Head moth."

"Ah—have I offended mademoiselle? I ask a thousand pardons——"

Old Courtray awoke in the dusk.

"My quill, Maryette," he muttered, "—see if it floats yet?"

The girl bent over the water and strained her eyes. Her father tested the line with shaky hands. There was no fish on the hook.

"Voyons!Theasticotalso is gone. Some[pg 275]robber fish has been nibbling!" exclaimed the girl cheerfully, reeling in the line. "Father, one cannot fish and doze at the same time."

"Eternal vigilance is the price of success—in peace as well as in war," said Karl, the student, as he aided Maryette to raise her father from the chair.

"Vigilance," repeated the girl. "Yes, always now in France. Because always the enemy is listening." ... Her strong young arm around her father, she traversed the garden slowly toward the house. A pleasant odour came from the kitchen of the White Doe, where an old peasant woman was cooking.

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