MARTHA OF DRANVOORDE
Martha Beduys, in Belgium, was considered pretty, even handsome. Of that sturdy Flemish build so characteristic of Belgian women, in whom the soil seems to induce embonpoint, she was plump to stoutness. She was no mere girl; twenty-seven years had passed over her head when the war broke out, and she saw for the first time English soldiers in the little village that had always been her home. There was a great deal of excitement. As the oldest of seven sisters, Martha was the least excited, but the most calculating.
The little baker’s shop behind the dull old church had always been a source of income, but never a means to the attainment of wealth. Martha had the soul of a shop-keeper, a thing which, in her father’s eyes, made her the pride of his household.
Old Hans Beduys was a man of some strength of mind. His features were sharp and keen, his small, blue eyes had a glitterin them which seemed to accentuate their closeness to each other, and his hands—lean, knotted, claw-like—betokened his chief desire in life. Born of a German mother and a Belgian father, he had no particular love for the English.
When the first British Tommy entered his shop and asked for bread, old Beduys looked him over as a butcher eyes a lamb led to the slaughter. He was calculating the weight in sous and francs.
That night Beduys laid down the law to his family.
“The girls will all buy new clothes,” he said, “for which I shall pay. They will make themselves agreeable to the English mercenaries, but”—with a snap of his blue eyes—“nothing more. The good God has sent us a harvest to reap; I say we shall reap it.”
During the six months that followed the little shop behind the church teemed with life. The Beduys girls were glad enough to find men to talk to for the linguistic difficulty was soon overcome—to flirt with mildly, and in front of whom to show off their newly-acquired finery. From morn till dewy evethe shop was crowded, and occasionally an officer or two would dine in the back parlour, kiss Martha if they felt like it, and not worry much over a few sous change.
In the meantime old Hans waxed financially fat, bought a new Sunday suit, worked the life out of his girls, and prayed nightly that the Canadians would arrive in the vicinity of his particular “Somewhere in Belgium.”
In a little while they came.
Blossoming forth like a vine well fertilised at the roots, the little shop became more and more pretentious as the weekly turnover increased. Any day that the receipts fell below a certain level old Beduys raised such a storm that his bevy of daughters redoubled their efforts.
Martha had become an enthusiastic business woman. Her fair head with its golden curls was bent for many hours in the day over a crude kind of ledger, and she thought in terms of pickles, canned fruits, chocolate, and cigarettes. The spirit of commerce had bitten deep into Martha’s soul.
More and more officers held impromptu dinners in the back parlour. Martha knewmost of them, but only one interested her. Had he not shown her the system of double entry, and how to balance her accounts? He was a commercial asset.
As for Jefferson, it was a relief to him, after a tour in the trenches, to have an occasional chat with a moderately pretty girl.
One rain-sodden, murky January night, very weary, wet, and muddy, Jefferson dropped in to see, as he would have put it, “the baker’s daughter.”
Martha happened to be alone, and welcomed “Monsieur Jeff” beamingly.
Perhaps the dim light of the one small lamp, perhaps his utter war weariness, induced Jefferson to overlook the coarseness of the girl’s skin, her ugly hands, and large feet. Perhaps Martha was looking unusually pretty.
At all events he suddenly decided that she was desirable. Putting his arm around her waist as she brought him his coffee, he drew her, unresisting, on to his knee. Then he kissed her.
Heaven knows what possessed Martha that evening. She not only allowed his kisses, but returned them, stroking his curly hair with atenderness that surprised herself as much as it surprised him.
Thereafter Martha had two souls. A soul for business and a soul for Jefferson.
The bleak winter rolled on and spring came.
About the beginning of April old Beduys received, secretly, a letter from a relative in Frankfurt. The contents of the letter were such that the small pupils of the old man’s eyes dilated with fear. He hid the document away, and his temper for that day was execrable. That night he slept but little. Beduys lay in bed and pictured the sails of a windmill—HISwindmill—and he thought also of ten thousand francs and his own safety. He thought of the distance to the mill—a full two kilometres—and of the martial law which dictated, among other things, that he be in his home after a certain hour at night, and that his mill’s sails be set at a certain angle when at rest. Then he thought of Martha. Martha of the commercial mind. Martha the obedient. Yes! That was it, obedient! Hans Beduys rose from his bed softly, without disturbing his heavily-sleepingwife, and read and re-read his brother’s letter. One page he kept, and the rest he tore to shreds, and burned, bit by bit, in the candle flame.
High up on the hill stood the windmill—the Beduys windmill. Far over in the German lines an Intelligence Officer peered at it in the gathering dusk through a night-glass. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the sails of the mill turned, and stopped for a full minute. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, they turned again, and stopped again. This happened perhaps twenty times. The German made some notes and went to the nearest signalling station.
Five minutes later a salvo of great shells trundled, with a noise like distant express trains, over to the left of the mill.
There were heavy casualties in a newly-arrived battalion bivouacked not half a mile from the baker’s shop. The inhabitants of the village awoke and trembled. “Hurrumph-umph!” Again the big shells trundled over the village, and again. There was confusion, and death and wounding.
In his bed lay Hans Beduys, sweating from head to foot, while his brain hammered outwith ever-increasing force: “Ten thousand francs—Ten Thousand Francs.”
In the small hours a shadow disengaged itself from the old mill, cautiously. Then it began to run, and resolved itself into a woman. By little paths, by ditches, by side-tracks, Martha reached home. She panted heavily, her face was white and haggard. When she reached her room she flung herself on her bed, and lay there wide-eyed, dumb, horror-stricken, until the dawn broke.
Jefferson’s Battalion finished a tour in the trenches on the following night. Jefferson marched back to billet with a resolve in his mind. He had happened to notice the windmill moving the night before, as he stood outside Company head-quarters in the trenches. He had heard the shells go over—away back—and had seen the sails move again. The two things connected themselves instantly in his mind. Perhaps he should have reported the matter at once, but Jefferson did not do so. He meant to investigate for himself.
Two days later Jefferson got leave to spend the day in the nearest town. He returned early in the afternoon, put his revolver in thepocket of his British warm coat, and set out for the windmill. He did not know to whom the mill belonged, nor did that trouble him.
An Artillery Brigade had parked near the village that morning. Jefferson got inside the mill without difficulty. It was a creaky, rat-haunted old place, and no one lived within half a mile of it. Poking about, he discovered nothing until his eyes happened to fall on a little medallion stuck between two boards on the floor.
Picking it up, Jefferson recognised it as one of those little “miraculous medals” which he had seen strung on a light chain around Martha’s neck. He frowned thoughtfully, and put it in his pocket.
He hid himself in a corner and waited. He waited so long that he fell asleep. The opening of the little wooden door of the mill roused him with a start. There was a long pause, and then the sound of footsteps coming up the wooden stairway which led to where Jefferson lay. The window in the mill-face reflected the dying glow of a perfect sunset, and the light in the mill was faint. He couldhear the hum of a biplane’s engines as it hurried homeward, the day’s work done.
A peaked cap rose above the level of the floor, followed by a stout, rubicund face. A Belgian gendarme.
Jefferson fingered his revolver, and waited. The gendarme looked around, grunted, and disappeared down the steps again, closing the door that led into the mill with a bang. Jefferson sat up and rubbed his head.
He did not quite understand.
Perhaps ten minutes had passed when for the third time that night the door below was opened softly, closed as softly, and some one hurried up the steps.
It was Martha. She had a shawl over her head and shoulders, and she was breathing quickly, with parted lips.
Jefferson noiselessly dropped his revolver into his pocket again.
With swift, sure movements, the girl began to set the machinery of the mill in motion. By glancing over to the window, Jefferson could see the sails move slowly—very, very slowly. Martha fumbled for a paper in her bosom, and, drawing it forth, scrutinised ittensely. Then she set the machinery in motion again. She had her back to him. Jefferson rose stealthily and took a step towards her. A board creaked and, starting nervously, the girl looked round.
For a moment the two gazed at each other in dead silence.
“Martha,” said Jefferson, “Martha!”
There was a mixture of rage and reproach in his voice. Even as he spoke they heard the whine of shells overhead, and then four dull explosions.
“Your work,” cried Jefferson thickly, taking a stride forward and seizing the speechless woman by the arm.
Martha looked at him with a kind of dull terror in her eyes, with utter hopelessness, and the man paused a second. He had not known he cared for her so much. Then, in a flash, he pictured the horrors for which this woman, a mere common spy, was responsible.
He made to grasp her more firmly, but she twisted herself from his hold. Darting to the device which freed the mill-sails, she wrenched at it madly. The sails caught in the breeze, and began to circle round, swiftly and moreswiftly, until the old wooden building shook with the vibration.
From his observation post a German officer took in the new situation at a glance. A few guttural sounds he muttered, and then turning angrily to an orderly he gave him a curt message. “They shall not use it if we cannot,” he said to himself, shaking his fist in the direction of the whirring sails.
In the little village part of the church and the baker’s shop lay in ruins. Martha had sent but a part of her signal, and it had been acted upon with characteristic German promptitude.
In the windmill on the hill, which shook crazily as the sails tore their way through the air, a man and a woman struggled desperately, the woman with almost superhuman strength.
Suddenly the earth shook, a great explosion rent the air, and the mill on the hill was rent timber from timber and the great sails doubled up like tin-foil.
“Good shooting,” said the German Forward Observation Officer, as he tucked his glass under his arm and went “home” to dinner.