Louise stood in the doorway waiting for Chérie, and watched her coming up the stairs rather slowly with fluttering breath. She drew her into the room and shut the door.
Mireille sat quietly in her usual armchair by the window, with her small face lifted to the sky.
"Chérie," said Louise, drawing the girl down beside her on the wide old divan on which the little Whitakers had sprawled to learn their lessons in years gone by. "I have something to say to you."
"I knew you had," exclaimed Chérie, flushing. "I knew it yesterday when I saw you. It is good news!"
Louise hesitated. "Yes ... for me," she said falteringly, "it is good news. For you, my dear little sister, for you ... unless you realize what has befallen us—it may be very terrible news."
Chérie looked at her with startled eyes. "What do you mean?" she asked under her breath.
Louise put her hand to her neck as if something were choking her. Her throat was dry; she could find neither words nor voice in which to give to the waiting girl her message of two-fold shame.
"Chérie ... my darling ... I must speak to you about that night ... your birthday-night——"
Chérie started back. "No!" she cried. "You said when we came here that we were to forget it—that it was a dream! Why—why should you speak of it again?"
"Chérie," said Louise in a low voice, "perhaps for you." ... She faltered, "for you it may have been a dream. But not for me."
The girl sat straight upright, tense and alert. "What do you mean, Louise?"
"I mean that for me that night has borne its evil fruit. Chérie! I thought of killing myself. But yesterday ... I spoke to Dr. Reynolds. He has promised to save me."
"To save you!" gasped Chérie. "Louise! Louise! Are you so ill?"
"My darling, my own dear child, I am worse than ill. But there is help for me; I shall be saved—saved from dishonour and despair." She lowered her voice. "Chérie!"—her voice fell so low that it could hardly be heard by the trembling girl beside her—"can you not understand? The shame I am called upon to face—the doom that awaits me—is maternity."
Maternity!Slowly, as if an unseen force uplifted her, Chérie had risen to her feet. Maternity!... The veil of the mystery was rent, the wonder was revealed! Maternity! That was the key to all her own strange and marvellous sensations, to the throb and the thrill within her! Maternity.
She stood motionless, amazed. A shaft of sunlight from the open window beat upon her, turning her hair to gold and her wide eyes to pools of wondering light. Such wonder and such light were about her that Louise gazed in awed silence at the ethereal figure, standing with pale hands extended and virginal face upturned.
She seemed to be listening.... To what voice? What annunciation did she harken to with those rapt eyes?
Louise called her by her name. But Chérie did not answer. Her lips were mute, her eyes were distant and unseeing. She heard no other voice but a child-voice asking from her the gift of life.
And to that voice her trembling spirit answered.
Dr. Reynolds kept his promise to Louise.
In a private nursing-home in London the deed of mercy and of ruthlessness was accomplished. The pitiable spark of life was quenched.
Out of the depths of darkness and despair Louise, after wavering for many days on the threshold of death, came slowly back to life once more.
During the many weeks she was in the nursing-home she saw neither Chérie nor Mireille; but Mrs. Yule came nearly every day and brought good news of them both, saying how happy she and her husband were to have them at the Vicarage.
For Mr. Yule himself had gone to the Whitakers' house, an hour after Louise had left it with Dr. Reynolds, and had taken the two forlorn young creatures away. Their stricken youth found shelter in his house, where Mireille's affliction and Chérie's tragic condition were alike sacred to his generous heart.
The little blind girl, Lilian, adored them both. She used to sit between them—often resting her face against Mireille's arm, or holding the child's hand in hers—listening to Chérie's tales of their childhood in Belgium. She was never tired of hearing about Chérie's school-days at Mademoiselle Thibaut'spensionnat; of her trips to Brussels and Antwerp, and the horrors of the dungeons of Château Steen; of her bicycle-lessons on the sands of Westende under the instruction of the monkey-man; and above all of her visits to Braine l'Alleude and the battle-field of Waterloo, where she had actually drunk coffee in Wellington's sitting-room, and rested in his very own armchair....
Lilian, with her closed eyes and intent face—always turned slightly upward as if yearning towards the light—listened eagerly, exclaiming every now and then with a little excited laugh, "I see ... I see...." And those words and the sweet expression of the small ecstatic face made Chérie's voice falter and the tears suffuse her eyes.
One day a letter came. It was from Claude. He had almost completely recovered from his wound and was leaving the hospital in Dunkirk to go to the front again. He sent all his love and all God's blessings to Louise and to his little Mireille and to Chérie. They would meet again in the happier days soon to come. Had they news of Florian? The last he had heard of him was a card from the trenches at Loos....
And that same day—a snowy day in December—Louise at length returned from her ordeal and stood, a pale and ghostly figure, at the Vicarage door. To her also it opened wide, and her faltering footsteps were led with love and tenderness to the firelight of the hospitable hearth.
There in the vicar's leather armchair, with the vicar's favourite collie curled at her feet, sat Mireille; her soft hair parted in the middle and tied with a blue ribbon by Mrs. Yule; a gold bangle, given her by Lilian, on her slim wrist. With a cry of joy and gratitude Louise knelt before her, kissing the soft chill hands, the silent mouth, the eyes that did not recognize her.
"Mireille, Mireille! Can you not say a word to me? Not a word? Say, 'Welcome, mother!' Say it, darling! Say, 'Maman, bonjour.'"
But the child's lips remained closed; the singing fountain of her voice was sealed.
The door opened, and Chérie entered the room—a Chérie altered and strange in her new and tragic dignity.
Louise involuntarily drew back, gazing in amazement at the significant change of form and feature; then with a sob of passionate pity she went to her and folded her in her arms.
Chérie, with a smile and a sigh, bowed her head upon Louise's breast.
To see Christmas in an English vicarage is to see Christmas indeed; and the love and charity and beauty of it sank deeply into the exiles' wounded hearts.
But one day came the summons to return to Belgium. It was a peremptory order from the German Governor of Brussels to all owners of house or property to return to their country with the least possible delay. The penalty of disregarding this summons would be the confiscation of all and any property owned by them in Belgium.
Louise stood in Chérie's room with the open letter in her hand, aghast and trembling.
"To return to Belgium? They ask us to return to Belgium?" Louise could scarcely pronounce the words. "Do you realize what it means, Chérie?"
"It means—going home," whispered the girl, with downcast eyes and a delicate flush mounting to her pale cheeks.
"Home! Do you remember what that home was when we left it?" cried Louise, her eyes blazing at the recollection.
"No," said Chérie, "I do not remember."
"Home! Home without Claude—without Florian! with half our friends killed or lost ..." cried Louise, and the easy tears of weakness flowed down her thin cheeks. "Home—with Mireille a silent ghost, and you—and you—" Her dark passionate eyes lit for an instant on the figure of her sister-in-law, and horror and shame seemed to grip at her throat. "Let us never speak of it again."
And she flung the paper into the fire.
But the memory of it she could not fling away. The possibility of returning to Belgium, which before had seemed so remote, the idea of seeing their home again which they had deemed lost to them for ever, now filled her mind and Chérie's to the exclusion of every other thought. That harsh call to return rang in their hearts by day and by night, awakening home-sickness and desire.
At night Louise would dream a thousand times of that return, a thousand times putting the idea from her with indignation and with fear. Every night she would imagine herself arriving at Bomal, hurrying through the village streets to the gate of her house, entering it, going up the stairs, opening the door to Claude's study....
Little by little home-sickness wound itself like a serpent about her heart, crushing her in its strong spirals, poisoning with its virulent fang every hour of her day. Little by little the nostalgic yearning, the unutterable longing to hear her own language, to be among her own people—though tortured, though oppressed, though crushed by the invader's heel—grew in her heart until she felt that she could bear it no longer. The sense of exile became intolerable; the sound of English voices, the sight of English faces, hurt and oppressed her; the thought of the wild English waters separating her from her woeful land seemed to freeze and drown her heart.
A week after she had told Chérie never to speak about it any more she thought of nothing else, she dreamed of nothing else, but to return to her home, her wrecked and devastated home, there to await Claude in hope, in patience, and in prayer.
She would feel nearer to him when once the icy, tumbling waves of the Channel separated them no more. She would be ready for him when the day of deliverance came, the day of Belgium's freedom and redemption—surely, surely now it could not be far off! Claude would find her there, in her place, waiting for him. She would see him from afar off, she would be at the door to meet him as she always was when he had gone away even for a few days or hours. His little Mireille, alas! was stricken, but might she not before then recover? His sister—ah! His sister!... Louise wrung her hands and wept.
Late one night she went to Chérie's room. She opened the door very gently so as not to wake her if she were asleep. But Chérie was sitting near the fire bending over some needlework and singing softly to herself. She jumped up, blushing deeply, as Louise entered, and she attempted to hide her work in her lap. It was an infant's white cape she was embroidering, and as Louise saw it her own pale cheeks flushed too.
"Chérie," she faltered, "I have been thinking ... what if we went home?"
"Yes," said Chérie quietly, with the chastened calmness of those whose mission it is to wait.
"Let us go, let us go," said Louise. "We will make our house ready and beautiful for those who will return."
"Yes," said Chérie, again.
"They will return and find us there ... waiting for them ... even though the storm has passed over us...." Her voice broke in a sob. "Mireille will recover, I know it, I feel it! And you—oh, Chérie!"—she dropped on her knees before the trembling girl—"you, you will be brave," she cried passionately, "before it is too late ... Chérie, Chérie, I implore you...."
Chérie was silent. It was as if she did not hear. It was as if she did not understand.
In vain Louise spoke of the shame of the past, of the woe and misery of the future. To all her wild words, to her caresses and entreaties, Chérie gave no reply. Her lips seemed mute, her eyes seemed distant and unseeing as those of the mindless, wandering Mireille.
At last she rose, and stood facing Louise, her face grave, inexorable, unflinching.
"Louise, say no more. No human reasoning, no human law, no human sanction or prohibition can influence me. No one may judge between a woman and the depths of her own body and soul; in so grave a matter each must decide according to her own conscience. What to the one is shame, hatred, and horror, to the other is joy, wonder, and love. To me, Louise, this suffering—tragic and terrible though it be—is joy, wonder, and love. I do not explain it, I do not justify it; I do not think I even understand it. But this I feel, that I would sooner tear out my living heart than voluntarily destroy the life which is within me, and which I feel is part of my very soul."
Louise was silent. She felt herself face to face with the great primeval instinct of maternity; and words failed her. Then the thought of their return to Belgium clutched at her heart again.
"But if we go home! Think, think of the shame of it! What will they say, those who have known us? Think—what will they say?"
Chérie sighed. "I cannot help what they say."
"And when Claude returns, Chérie! When Claude returns...."
Chérie bowed her head and did not answer.
Louise moved nearer to her. "And have you forgotten Florian? Florian, who loves you, and hoped to make you his wife?..."
The tears welled up into Chérie's eyes, but she was silent.
Louise's voice rose to a bitter cry. "Chérie! Think of the brutal hands that bound you, of the infamous enemy that outraged you. Think, think that you, a Belgian, will be the mother of a German child!"
But Chérie cared nothing, remembered nothing, heard nothing. She heard no other voice but that child-voice asking from her the gift of life, telling her that in the land of the unborn there are no Germans and no Belgians, no victors and no vanquished, but only the innocent flowers of futurity—the white-winged doves of Jesus, and the snowy lambs of God.
Feldwebel Karl Sigismund Schwarz lay on the internal slope of a crater under a red sunset sky. His eyes were shut. But he was not asleep. He was making up his mind that he must move his left arm. Something heavy seemed to be pressing it down, crushing and crunching it. He would move it, he would lift it up in the air and feel the circulation return to it and the breezes of heaven blow on it. Never was there such a hot and heavy arm.... Yes. He would certainly lift it in a moment.
After this great mental exertion, Feldwebel Schwarz went to sleep for a few moments; then he woke up again, more than ever determined to move his arm. What did one do when one wanted to move one's arm? And where was his arm? Where was everything? Where was he, Karl Sigismund Schwarz?... There was evidently a 'cello playing somewhere quite close to him; he could hear it right in his head: "Zoom ... zoom-zoom ... zoom-zoom."
He said to himself that he knew where he was. He was in Charlottenburg, in the Café des Westens, and the Hungarian, Makowsky, was playing on theBassgeige. Zoom ... zoom-zoom.... The rest of the orchestra would join in presently. Meanwhile, what was the matter with his arm? He groaned aloud and tried to raise himself on his right elbow. He could not do so; but in turning his head he caught sight of a man lying close beside him, a man in Belgian uniform lying flat on the ground with his profile turned to the sky. This convinced Schwarz that he was not in Charlottenburg after all. He was somewhere in Flanders near a rotten old city called Ypres; and he was lying in a hole made by a shell. He glanced sideways at the Belgian again. Then he cried out loud, "See here, what is the matter with my arm?" But the man did not answer, and Schwarz realized that he probably did not understand German. Probably, also, he was dead.
So Karl Schwarz lay back again, and listened to the 'cello buzzing in his brain.
The red sunset had faded into a drab twilight when in his turn the Belgian opened his eyes, sighed and sat up. He saw the wounded German lying beside him with limp legs outstretched, a mangled arm and a face caked with blood. The man's eyes were open, so the Belgian nodded to him and said, "Ca va, mon vieux?"
"Verfluchter Schweinehund," replied Karl Schwarz; and Florian Audet, who did not understand that he was being called a damned swine-hound, nodded back again in a friendly way. Then each was silent with his thoughts.
Florian tried to realize what had happened. He tentatively moved one arm; then the other; then his feet and legs. He moved his shoulders a little; they seemed all right. He felt nothing but a pain in the back of his neck, like a violent cramp; otherwise there seemed nothing much the matter with him. Why was he lying there? Let him remember. There had been an order to attack ... a dash over the white Ypres road and across the fields to the south ... then an explosion—yes. That was it. He had been blown up. This was shock or something. He wondered where the remains of his company was and how things had turned out. There were sounds of firing not far away, the spluttering of rifles and the booming of the gun.
He tried to rise to his feet, but it was as if the earth rose with him. He could not get his hands off the ground—earth and sky whirled round him, and he had to lie down again.
Soon darkness came up out of the thundering east and blew out the twilight.
Meanwhile Feldwebel Schwarz was again in the Café des Westens; the orchestra of ten thousandBassgeigenwas booming like mad, and he was beating on the table with his heavy arm, calling for the waiter Max to bring him something cold to drink. Max came hurrying up and stood before him carrying a tray laden with glasses—huge cool Schoppen of Münchner and Lager, and tall glasses of lemonade with ice clinking in it. Which would he have? He could not make up his mind which he would have. His throat burned him, his stomach was on fire with thirst, and he could not say which of the cool drinks he wanted. He felt that he must drink them all—the iced Münchner, the chilly Lager, the biting lemonade—he must drink them all together, or die. Suddenly he noticed that theWasserleiche—you know theWasserleiche, the "Water-corpse" of the Café des Westens—the cadaverous-looking woman whose face is of such a peculiar hue that you would vow she had been drowned and left lying in the water for a couple of days before they fished her out again—well, she had come up to the waiter and was embracing him, and all the glasses were slipping off his tray. Ping!—pang!—down they crashed! Ping!—pang! smashing and crashing all around. You never heard glasses make such a noise. There was nothing left to drink—nothing in the wide world.
Then Feldwebel Schwarz began to cry. He heard himself moaning and crying, until Max the waiter looked at him and then he saw that it was not Max the waiter at all that the Water-corpse was embracing. She never did embrace men. It was her friend Mélanie, who stood there laughing with her mouth wide open, showing the pink roof of her mouth and her tiny wolfish teeth—the two eye-teeth slightly longer than the others and very pointed.
Karl Schwarz knew that if he wanted anything to drink he must be amiable to Mélanie. He would sing her the song about "Gräfin Mélanie," beginning "Nur für Natur...."
But he could not remember it. He could only remember the Ueberbrettel song—
"Die Flundern"Werden sich wundern...."
"Die Flundern"Werden sich wundern...."
He sang this a great many times, and the waiter Max, who was lying on the floor among the broken glasses, applauded loudly. You never heard such clapping; it went right through one's head. But Mélanie did not give him anything to drink, and the Water-corpse—he suddenly remembered that she never allowed any one to speak to Mélanie—turned on him furiously and bit him in the arm. He howled with pain, and then Mélanie bent forward showing all her wolfish teeth, and she also bit him in the arm. They were tearing and mangling him. He could not get his arm away from the two dreadful creatures. "Verdammte Sauweiber!" he shouted at them, and his voice was so loud that it woke him.
He saw the star-strewn sky above him, and beside him the prostrate figure of the Belgian as he had seen him before. Probably, he said to himself, Mélanie and the Water-corpse had been at this man too. To keep them away he had to go on singing with his parched throat—
"Die Flundern"Werden sich wundern...."* * * *"Die Flundern"Werden sich wundern...."
"Die Flundern"Werden sich wundern...."* * * *"Die Flundern"Werden sich wundern...."
He imagined that these words possessed some occult power which must keep the two horrible women away from him.
So he continued to repeat them all night long.
Between two and three o'clock Florian Audet opened his eyes and turned his head to look round. The wounded German's voice had roused him from sleep—or from unconsciousness—and he lay there vaguely wondering what that continually repeated cry might mean.
"Die Flundern werden sich wundern...." The words sank into his brain and remained there. Perhaps, he mused, it was some kind of national war-cry, a shout of victory or defiance ... "Death or liberty!..." or "In the name of the Kaiser," or something like that.
From where he was he could see the outstretched figure lying to the left of him, the limp legs, the helpless, upturned feet in their thick muddy boots; and he heard the sound of the rattling breath still repeating brokenly, "Die Flundern werden sich wundern...."
An overwhelming sense of pity came over him; pity for the broken figure beside him, pity for himself, pity for the world. With an immense effort, for he felt as if every bone were broken, he turned on his side and, struggling slowly along the ground, dragged himself towards the dying man. When he reached him and could touch him with his outstretched hand he rested awhile; then he fumbled for his brandy-flask, found it, unscrewed it and held it near the man's face.
"Tiens! bois," he said. But the German did not move to take it; and soon the rattling breath stopped.
Florian wriggled a little closer, slipped his right arm under the man's head and raised it. Then by the grey April starlight he saw something bubble and gush over the man's face from a wound in his forehead. The German opened his eyes. What were those fiendish women doing to him now? Pouring warm wine over his head.... Through the tepid scarlet veil his wild eyes blinked up at Florian in childish terror and bewilderment. A wave of sickening faintness overcame Florian; his arm slackened, and his enemy's ghastly crimson face fell back upon it as Florian himself sank beside him in a swoon.
There they lay all through the night, side by side, like brothers, the living and the dead; the German soldier with his head on the Belgian officer's arm. And thus two German Red Cross men found them in the chilly dawn as they slid down the crater-side, carrying a folded stretcher between them. They were very young, the two Red Cross men; they had not finished studying philosophy in the Bonn University when the war had broken out, and they had left Kant and Hebel for a quick course of surgery. The youngest one, who had very fair hair, wrote foolish Latin poems, said to be after the style of Lucretius.
They dropped the stretcher and stood silently looking down at those two motionless figures in their fraternal embrace, whose attitude told their tale. Florian's hand, holding the open brandy-flask, lay on the dead German's breast; the ghastly dead face of their comrade was pillowed easily on the enemy's encircling arm.
Something rose in the throat of the two who gazed, and the younger one—the one who wrote Latin verse—bent down and laid his hand lightly, as if invoking a blessing on Florian's pale forehead. Then he turned with a start to his companion. "He is alive!"
The other in his turn touched the man's brow, then lifted the limp hand to feel his pulse. They knelt beside him and poured brandy down his throat. Then they worked over him for a long while, until a breath of life fluttered through the ashen lips, and the vague blue eyes opened and looked into theirs.
The Germans rose to their feet. The Belgian, when he had lain unconscious with his arm around their fallen comrade, had been to them a hero and a friend. Now, alive, with open eyes, he was their foe and their prisoner.
They spoke to him at first, not unkindly, in German; then, somewhat brusquely, in French; but he gave them no reply. His brain was benumbed and stupefied. He could not speak and he could not stand. So they lifted him and placed him on the stretcher.
"Poor devil!" murmured the younger man as he extended the two limp arms along the recumbent body and pointed out to his companion the right sleeve of the Belgian uniform sodden and stiff with the German soldier's blood.
"Poor devil! What have we saved him for? To send him to the hell of Wittemberg!..."
"Hard lines," murmured the other one.
"Gerechter Gott!" exclaimed the foolish fair-haired poet, "I wish we could give him a chance."
They gave him a chance.
Florian never knew how it was that he found himself lying on a blanket on the stone floor of a half-demolished farm building, a sort of dilapidated cow-house.
As he raised his aching head he saw that milk, bread, and brandy had been left on the floor beside him; also a packet of cigarettes, some matches, and a tablet of chocolate. He drank greedily of the milk; then he took a sip of brandy and staggered to his feet. Though giddy and trembling, he found he could stand. And as he stood he noticed that he was stripped to the skin. There was not a stitch of clothing on him, nor was there a vestige of his own uniform anywhere to be seen. There was nothing but a pair of muddy yellow boots standing in the middle of the floor—boots that reminded him of those he had seen on the dying German on the hill-side. These and the grey blanket he had lain on were all that one could possibly clothe oneself in. Nothing that had been his was there. Even the brandy was not in his own flask.
Florian looked round the deserted place, the crumbling walls which bomb and shell had battered. There was a rusty, broken plough in a corner, a few tools and some odd pots and pans. After brief reflection Florian put on the boots; then he finished the bread, the milk, and the brandy. Finally, having knotted in one corner of the blanket the chocolate, the cigarettes, and the matches, he wound the rough grey covering round his body and stepped out to face the world.
It was an empty, desolate world; a dead horse lay not far off on the muddy road leading across the plain. By the sun, Florian judged it to be about seven o'clock in the morning. He seemed to recognize the locality; it might be a mile or two from the fighting ground of the preceding day. Yes. There to the left was the straight white road from Poperinghe to Ypres; he recognized the double line of trees ... where was he to go? In what direction were the Belgian lines, he wondered. He still felt weak, and his knees trembled; his mind was vacant except for a jumble of meaningless sounds. The words the dying German had repeated through the night rang in his head continually. He found himself murmuring over and over again, "Die Flundern werden sich wundern...."
He also had to make a strenuous mental effort to realize that he actually was wandering about the world in nothing but a pair of boots and a blanket. Everything seemed like an insensate dream. Perhaps he was still suffering from shock and dreaming all this? Perhaps he was really lying in hospital with concussion of the brain.... Who on earth could have stolen all his clothes and left him in exchange the milk, the chocolate, and the cigarettes?
There was something base and treacherous in robbing an unconscious man, he said to himself. On the other hand, there was a touch of friendliness and kindness in the chocolate and the cigarettes. The whole thing was absurd and fantastic.
"Either," reasoned Florian, stumbling along in his blanket in the direction of a distant wood, "either I have been the prey of some demented creature, or I am at this very moment light-headed myself...." "Die Flundern werden sich wundern." He had to make an effort not to say those crazy words aloud. He felt he would go mad if he did so. As long as he kept them shut up in his brain he was their master; but if he let them out he felt they would get the better of him, and he would go on saying them over and over and over again like the delirious German. Decidedly he was weak in his head, and must try to keep a firm hold on his brain. "Die Flundern ... werden sich wundern."
A few moments later he saw some mounted soldiers riding out of the wood; he saw at once that it was a German patrol. He thought of turning back and hiding in the shed again, but it was too late. They had caught sight of him, and were riding down towards him at full speed.
Well, the game was up, said Florian to himself; he would be taken. He could neither kill others nor himself with a piece of chocolate and a packet of Josetti.
So he stood stock-still, folded his arms, and awaited their arrival. ("Die Flundern werden sich wundern....")
As the eight or ten men galloped up, Florian noted from afar their looks of amazement at the sight of him. They hailed him in German, and he did not reply. He stood like a statue; he said to himself that he would meet his fate with dignity. But he had not reckoned with the ludicrous effect of his attire. Two of the men dismounted, and one of them addressed him in German with a broad grin on his face; but the other—a young officer—silenced the first one abruptly, and turning a grim countenance to Florian, asked him in French why he was in that array.
"What have you done with your uniform?" he asked, scowling.
Florian scowled back at him, and gave no reply. He had made up his mind that he would not speak. ("Die Flundern werden sich wundern.")
The officer gave an order, and two soldiers took him by the arms and dragged his blanket from him. He stood there in his muddy boots, bare in the sunshine, his face and hands and hair caked with mud. But he was a fine and handsome figure for all that.
The officer and the men had turned their attention to the knot in the blanket. They undid it and took out the contents of the improvised pocket.
Then they looked at the figure before them and at each other. The chocolate was German; the cigarettes were German; the boots were German. What was the man?
"Meschugge," murmured the lieutenant in explanation, not of Florian's nationality, but of his condition of mind.
"Meschugge! Meschugge!" repeated the others, laughing.
The officer seemed uncertain. He turned and spoke in a low voice to the others. Florian knew they were discussing him. Would they arrest him as a cunning Belgian who had discarded his uniform, stolen the boots and the blanket, and was shamming to be insane and dumb? Or would they think him a German gone daft and send him to an infirmary? He hoped so. It would be easier to make one's escape from an infirmary than from a German prison. A German prison! Florian clenched his teeth. He saw that the officer seemed inclined to adopt this course.
"Die Flundern werden—" He almost said it aloud. The sound of these guttural German voices round him seemed to drag the words out of him. He felt his lips moving and he saw them watching him closely.... Suddenly the crazy words ran out of his mouth. "Die Flundern werden sich wundern!"
He was not prepared for the effect of those words. The soldiers burst into loud laughter; even the officer's hard face relaxed and he smiled broadly. The others repeated it with comments. "Did you hear? 'Die Flundern'!... He has the Ueberbrettel on the brain!" And they roared with laughter and clapped him on the bare shoulders and asked him in whatKabaretthe had left his heart and his senses.
Florian understood not a word, but he knew he was safe. At least, for the present.
Whatever the words were, they had saved him, and he made up his mind that for the time being he would use no others. A little later he added one other word to his repertoire, and that wasMeschugge, which is Berlin dialect for mad. He himself had no faint idea of what it meant, but he heard it pronounced, evidently in regard to himself, by the Prussian Lieutenant in whose charge he was conducted back to the German lines.
"Die Flundern werden sich wundern," and "Meschugge." With those six words, murmured at intervals once or twice in a day, he got through the rear lines of the German army, and through a brief stay in a camp hospital, and finally into a Liège infirmary. Those who heard him knew there could be no mistake. He was no Belgian and no Frenchman. Of all words in the rich German vocabulary, of all lines of German verse or song, no foreigner in the world could ever have hit on just these. None but a true son of the Fatherland—indeed none but a pure-bloodedBerliner—would have even known what they meant.
"Ein famoser Kerl," was this young Adonis, who had turned up from heaven knows where in a blanket and a pair of boots. "Ein ganz famoser Kerl!" And they clapped him on the shoulders. "Er lebe hoch!"
Thus it came about that the Water-corpse and Mélanie of the Café des Westens unwittingly saved the life of a gallant Belgian soldier. And as this is the only good deed they are ever likely to perform, may it stand to their credit on the Day of Judgment when they are summoned to account for their wretched and unprofitable lives.
On the 1st of May the Ourthe and the Aisne, each with a crisp Spring wave to its waters, came together at Bomal. "Here I am, as fresh as ever," said the frisky little Aisne.
"Oh, come off the rocks," grumbled the Ourthe, elbowing her way towards the bridge, "and don't be so gushing."
"There's a stork passing over us with a May-baby in his beak," bubbled the Aisne.
"A good thing if he dropped it. Here I am very deep," quoth the Ourthe.
The Aisne, who was not deep at all, did not understand the quibble. "How very blue you are!" she gurgled. "What is the matter? Is it going to rain?"
"If it does, mind you keep to your bed," retorted the Ourthe sarcastically.
"I won't. I am coming into yours," plashed the Aisne; and did so.
"Oh! The Meuse take you!" grumbled the Ourthe foaming and swelling.
And they went on together, quarrelling all the way to Liège, where the Meuse took them both.
The stork flew across the bridge, and stopped over Dr. Brandès's house.
"Open your eyes, little human child," said the stork. "This is where you are born."
"Rockaby, lullaby, bees in the clover...." sang Nurse Elliot, of the American Red Cross, rocking the cradle with her foot and looking dreamily out of the window. From where she sat she could catch a glimpse of the Bomal church steeple and the swaying tops of the trees in the cemetery.
"Perhaps this poor lamb would be better off if it were already asleep over there under those trees," reflected Nurse Caroline Elliot. And as if in assent, the infant in the cradle uttered a melancholy wail.
Nurse Elliot immediately began to sing Bliss Carman's May-song:
Day comes, May comes,One who was away comes,All the world is fair again,Fair and kind to me.Day comes, May comes,One who was away comes,Set his place at hearth and boardAs it used to be.May comes, day comes,One who was away comes,Higher are the hills of home,Bluer is the sea.
Day comes, May comes,One who was away comes,All the world is fair again,Fair and kind to me.
Day comes, May comes,One who was away comes,Set his place at hearth and boardAs it used to be.
May comes, day comes,One who was away comes,Higher are the hills of home,Bluer is the sea.
The baby soon gave up all attempt to compete with the powerful American contralto, and with puckered brow and tiny clenched fist went mournfully to sleep again. He had been in the world just seven days and had not found much to rejoice over. Life seemed to consist of a good deal of noise and discomfort and bumping about. There seemed to be not much food, a great deal of singing, and a variety of aches. "I wish I were back in the land of Neverness," wept the baby, "lying in the cup of a lotus-flower in the blue morning of inexistence."
The stork, still standing on one leg on the roof resting from its journey, heard this and said: "Never mind. Cheer up. It is not for long."
"For how long is it?" asked the baby anxiously.
"Oh, less than a hundred years," said the stork, combing the feathers of its breast with its beak.
Then the baby wept even more bitterly. "Why? Why, for so short a time?" it cried.
"You bother me," said the stork; and flew away.
And the cradle rocked and the baby wept and Miss Caroline Elliot sang.
They had arrived in Bomal ten days before—Louise, Chérie and Mireille—after a nightmare journey, through Holland and Flanders. At the station in Liège, Chérie, who was very ill, aroused the compassionate attention of the American Red Cross nurses and they obtained permission to bring her in a motor ambulance to Bomal. Nurse Elliot, a tall kind woman, accompanied her, and was permitted to remain with her and assist her during the ordeal of the ensuing days.
On their arrival Louise had not come straight to the house. She had not dared to bring Mireille to her home. She feared she knew not what. Would the child recognize the place? Would the unconscious eyes perceive and recognize the surroundings that had witnessed her martyrdom? What effect might such a shock have on that stricken, sensitive soul?... Louise felt unable to face any new emotions after the fatigue and misery of the journey and the hourly anxiety in regard to Chérie.
So she accompanied Mireille to the home of their old friend, Madame Doré.
Doubtful of the welcome she would receive, fearful of the changes she might find, Louise knocked with trembling hand at the door of her old friend's house.
Madame Doré herself opened the door to her. But—was this Madame Doré? This haggard, white-haired woman, who stared at her with such startled eyes?
"Madame Doré! It is I—Louise and little Mireille! Do you not recognize us?"
"Hush! Come in." The woman drew them quickly into the passage and locked the door. Her eyes had a roving, frightened look, and every now and then a nervous spasm contracted her face.
"Oh my dear, my dear," said Louise, embracing her with tears.
Locked in Madame Doré's bedroom—for the terrorized woman had the obsession of being constantly watched and spied upon—Louise heard her friend's tragic story and recounted her own. With pitying tears Madame Doré caressed Mireille's soft hair and assured Louise that it would be a joy for her and for Jeannette to keep her with them.
"Dear little Jeannette!" exclaimed Louise. "How glad I shall be to see her again. Is she well?"
Yes. Jeannette was well.
"And Cécile—? You say she is in England?"
"Yes. She went with four or five other women from Bomal and Hamoir. She could not live here any longer; her heart was broken. She never got over the murder of her brother André"—the painful spasm distorted the careworn face again—"you knew that he was shot by the side of the poor old Curé that night in the Place de l'Église?"
Yes. Louise knew. And she pressed the hand of her old friend with compassionate tenderness. They talked of all their friends and acquaintances. The storm had swept over them, wrecking, ruining and scattering them far and wide.
"Hush, listen!" whispered Madame Doré, suddenly grasping Louise's arm. Outside they could hear the measured tread of feet and the sound of loud voices, the loathed and dreaded German voices raised in talk and laughter.
"Our masters!" whispered Madame Doré. "They enter our houses when they choose, they come in the middle of the night and rummage through our things. They take away our money and our jewels. They read our letters, they order us about and insult us. We cannot speak or think or breathe without their knowledge and permission. They are constantly threatening us with imprisonment or with deportation. We are slaves and half-starved. Ah!" cried the unhappy woman, "why did I not have the courage to go with Cécile to England? I don't know ... I felt old, old and frightened.... And now Jeannette and I are here as in a prison, and Cécile is far away and alone."
Louise soothed her as best she could with caresses and consoling words. But Madame Doré was heart-stricken and desolate, and the fact that they had never met Cécile when they were in London caused her bitter disappointment. Perhaps some evil had befallen Cécile? Did Louise think she was safe? The English were kind, were they not?
Yes, Louise was sure Cécile was safe. And yes, the English were very kind.
Even as she spoke a rush of longing came over her; a feeling that resembled home-sickness in its tenderness and yearning. England!—ah, England! How safe, indeed, how safe and kind and cool in its girdle of grey water!...
Perhaps, mused Louise, as she hurried home alone, meeting the inquisitive glance of strangers and the insolent stare of German soldiers in the familiar village-streets, perhaps it would have been better after all if they had remained safely in England, if they had disregarded the warning of the invader and allowed him to confiscate their home. Thus at least they would have remained beyond the reach of his intrusions, his insults and his cruelty.
Meanwhile, in Dr. Brandès's house the energetic and capable Miss Elliot had not been idle. A quick survey of the ransacked abode had shown her that, although most of the valuables and all the silver and pictures had been stolen, the necessary household utensils, and even the linen, were left. Briskly and cheerfully she settled Chérie in a snow-white bed, brushed and braided her shining hair in two long plaits, gave her a cup of bread-and-milk and set resolutely to work to clear away some of the litter and confusion before Louise should arrive.
There were dirty plates and glasses, and empty bottles everywhere; there were muddy mattresses on the floor. People seemed to have slept and eaten in every room in the house. Tables, carpets and beds were strewn with cigar and cigarette-stumps; drawers and wardrobes had been emptied and their contents scattered on the floor; basins of dirty water stood on cabinets, sideboard and chairs.
Caroline Elliot brushed and emptied and cleared and cleaned, and drew in the shutters, and opened the windows, and lit the fires; and by the time she heard Louise's hurrying footsteps, was able to stand aside with a little smile of satisfaction and watch Louise's pale face light up with emotion and pleasure.
It was home, home after all!
And Louise, looking round the familiar rooms, felt a tremor of hope—the timid hope of better days to come—stir in the depths of her thankful heart.
The child was three weeks old and still Chérie had not seen either friend or acquaintance, nor had she dared to go out of the house. She felt too shy to show herself in the day-time, and after nightfall the inhabitants of Bomal were forbidden to leave their homes. Chérie dreaded meeting any of her acquaintances; true, there were not many left in the village, for some had taken refuge abroad and others had gone to live in the larger cities, Liège and Brussels, where, rightly or wrongly, they hoped to feel less bitterly their state of subservience and slavery.
It was a sunny afternoon towards the end of May that Nurse Elliot at last packed her neat bag and made ready to leave them.
"I cannot possibly stay a day longer," she said, caressing Chérie, who clung to her in tears. "I must go back to my post in Liège. Besides, you do not need me any more."
"Oh, I need you. I need you!" cried Chérie. "I shall be so lonely and forlorn."
"Lonely? With your child? And with your sister-in-law? Nonsense," said the nurse briskly.
"But Louise hardly speaks to me," said Chérie miserably. "She hates the child, and she hates me."
"Nonsense," said the nurse again; but she felt that there was some truth in Chérie's words.
Indeed, it was impossible not to notice the almost morbid aversion Louise felt towards the poor little intruder. Louise herself, strive as she would to hide or conquer her feeling, could not do so. Every line and feature of the tiny face, every tendril of its silky pale-gold hair, its small, pouting mouth, its strange, very light grey eyes—all, all was hateful and horrible to her. When she saw Chérie lift it up and kiss it she felt herself turn pale and sick. When she saw it at Chérie's breast, saw the small head moving, the tiny hands searching and pressing, she shuddered with horror and repugnance. Though she said to herself that this was unreasonable, that it was cruel and wrong, still the feeling was unconquerable; it seemed to spring from the innermost depths of her Belgian soul. Her hatred was as much a primitive ingenerate instinct, as was the passionate maternal love an essence of the soul of Chérie.
"She hates us, Nurse Elliot, she hates us," asseverated Chérie, pressing her clasped hands to her breast in a pitiful gesture of despair. "Sometimes if for a moment I forget how miserable I am, and I lift the little one up in my arms, and laugh at him and caress him, suddenly I feel Louise's eyes fixed upon us, cold, hostile, implacable. Yes. She hates us! And I suppose every one will hate us. Every one will turn from the child and from me in loathing and disgust. Where shall we go? Where shall we hide, I and this poor little baby of mine?" She turned a tearful glance toward the red-curtained door that hid her little one, awake and cooing in his cot. Nurse Elliot had finished packing and locking her bag, had rolled and strapped her cloak, tied on her bonnet and was ready to go to the station.
"Chérie," she said gravely, placing both her hands on the girl's frail shoulders, "whatever is in store for you, you will have to face it. And now," she added, kissing her on both cheeks, "if you love me a little, if I have really been of any help or comfort to you during these sad days, the moment has come for you to repay me."
"Oh, how—how can I ever repay you?" cried Chérie.
"By putting on your hat, taking your baby in your arms and accompanying me to the station."
"To the station! I! with—Oh, I could not, I could not!" She shrank back and a burning flush rose to her brow.
At that moment Louise entered the room dressed to go out.
"You will accompany me to the station," repeated Nurse Elliot firmly to Chérie. "You, and your sister-in-law, and the baby will all come to see me off and wish me luck."
"Don't—don't ask that," murmured Chérie.
"I do ask it," said Caroline Elliot. "And you cannot refuse. I have given you many days and many nights out of my life, and much love and tender anxiety. And this is the only thanks I shall ever ask." She stepped close to Chérie and placed her arms around her. "Can you not see, my dear, that sooner or later you will be forced to meet the ordeal you dread? You cannot imprison yourself and the child for ever between these four walls. Then take your courage and face the world today; now, while I am still with you."
Chérie stood pale and hesitant; then she turned to Louise. "Would you—would you go with me?"
There was so much humility and misery in her voice that Louise was touched.
"Of course I will," she said; "go quickly and get ready."
Chérie ran to her room. She put on the modest black frock she had worn on the journey from England, but she dressed the baby in all his prettiest clothes—the white cape she had embroidered for him, and the lace cap with blue ribbons and the smartest of his blue silk socks. She lifted him in her arms and stepped before the mirror. After all it was a very sweet baby, was it not? People might hate him when they heard of him, but when they saw him....
Trembling, blushing and smiling she appeared at the gate where Miss Elliot and Louise stood waiting for her. She stepped timidly out of doors between them, and very young and very pathetic did she look with her flushed cheeks and shining, diffident eyes. Whom would they meet? Would they see any one they knew?
Yes. They met Mademoiselle Veraender, the school-mistress, who looked at them, started, looked again and then, blushing crimson, crossed to the other side of the road. They met Madame Linkaerts and her daughter Marie. The girl recognized them with a cry of delight, but her mother took her brusquely by the arm and turned her brusquely down a side-street. They met four German soldiers strolling along who stared first at the American nurse, then at Louise, then at Chérie with the baby in her arms.
One of them made a remark and the others laughed. They stood still to let the three women pass, and the one who had spoken waved his fingers at Chérie. "Ein Vaterlandskindlein?—nicht wahr?" And he threw a kiss to the child.
Three or four street-urchins who had been following the soldiers, imitating their strutting gait and sticking their tongues out at them, noticed the greeting and interpreted it with the sharpness which characterizes the gutter-snipe all the world over. They also began to throw kisses to Chérie and to the baby, shouting, "Petit boche? Quoi?" A lame elderly man passed and taking in the situation at a glance, ran after the boys with his stick. Others passed, and stopped. Many of them recognized the women, and some looked pityingly, others contemptuously at the flushed and miserable Chérie. But no one came to speak to her, no one greeted her, no one smiled at the child in its embroidered cape and its cap with the blue ribbons. A few idlers making rude remarks, followed them to the station.
Nurse Elliot left them. It was a sad leave-taking. Then they returned home in silence, going far out of their way to choose the least frequented streets.
As they came down the shady lane behind their house Louise glanced at Chérie, and her heart melted with pity. What a child she looked for her nineteen years! And how sad and frightened and ashamed? What could Louise do to help her? What consolation could she offer? What hope could she hold out?
None. None. Except that the child should die. And why should it die? Was it not the child of puissant youth, of brutal vitality? Did it not drink its sustenance from the purest source of life? Why should it die?
No; the child would live; live to do harm and hurt; to bring sorrow and shame on them all. Live to keep the flame of hatred alight in their hearts, to remind them for ever of the foul wrong they had suffered....
Chérie had felt Louise's eyes upon her and turned to her quickly. Had not her sensitive soul perceived a passing breath of pity and of tenderness? Surely Louise would turn to her now with a word of consolation and compassion? Perhaps the sight of her helpless infant had touched Louise's heart at last....
No, no. Again she caught that look of resentment, that terrible look of anger and shame in Louise's eyes; and bending her head lower over her child she hurried into the house.
The house seemed very empty without Nurse Elliot. Chérie seldom spoke, for she had nothing to speak about but her baby, and she knew that to such talk Louise would neither wish to listen nor reply.
Other mothers, reflected Chérie bitterly, could speak all day about their children, and she, also, would have loved to tell of all the wonderful things she discovered in her baby day by day. For instance, he always laughed in his dreams, which meant that the angels still spoke to him; and the soles of his tiny feet were quite pink; and he had a dimple in his left cheek, and a quantity of silky golden hair on the nape of his neck—all things that Louise had never noticed, and Chérie did not dare to speak about them. There was silence, pitiless silence, round that woeful cradle.
In order that the child should not disturb Louise, Chérie had given up her own bedroom and chosen for the nursery the spare room on the floor below—the room with the red curtains—which, strangely enough, seemed for her to hold no memories. One afternoon as she sat there nursing her child, Louise, who hardly ever crossed that threshold, opened the door and came in.
Chérie looked up with a welcoming smile of surprise and joy. But Louise turned her eyes away from her and from the slumbering babe.
"I have come to tell you," she said, "that Mireille is coming home. I am going to fetch her this evening."
Chérie drew a quick breath of alarm. "Mireille!... Mireille is coming here?" she exclaimed.
"Surely you did not expect the poor child to stay away for ever?" said Louise, her eyes filling with tears. "I have missed her very much," she added bitterly.
"Of course ... of course," stammered Chérie, "I am sorry!... But what is ... what is to become of me? I mean, what shall we do, the baby and I?"
"Whatcanyou do?" said Louise bitterly.
Chérie bent over her child. "I wish we could hide" ... she said in a low voice, "hide ourselves away where nobody would ever see us."
Louise made no reply. She sat down, turning away from Chérie, and tried not to feel pitiless. "Harden not your hearts ... harden not your hearts ..." she repeated to herself, striving to stifle the sense of implacable rancour, of bitter hatred which hurt her own heart, but which she could not overcome.
"Mireille will come here!" Chérie repeated under her breath. "She will see the child! What will she say? What will she say?"
Louise raised her sombre eyes and drew a deep breath of pain.
"Alas! She will say nothing, poor little Mireille! She will say nothing." And the bitter thought of Mireille's affliction overwhelmed her mother's soul.
No; whatever happened Mireille, once such a joyous, laughter-loving sprite, would say nothing. She would see Chérie with a baby in her arms, and would say nothing. She would see her mother kneeling at her feet beseeching for a word, and would say nothing. Her father might return, and she would be silent; or he might die—and she would not open her lips. This other child, this child of shame and sorrow, would grow up and learn to speak, would smile and laugh and call Chérie by the sweet-sounding name by which Louise would never be called again, but Mireille would be for ever silent.
Chérie had risen with her baby in her arms. Shy and trembling she went to Louise and knelt at her feet.
"Louise! Louise! Can you not love us and forgive us? What have we done? What has this poor little creature done to you that you should hate it so? Louise, it is not for me that I implore your pity and your love; I can live without them if I must; I can live despised and hated because I know and understand. But for him I implore you! For this poor innocent who has done no harm, who has come into life branded and ill-fated, and does not know that he may not be loved as other children are—one word of tenderness, Louise, one word of blessing!"
She caught at Louise's dress with her trembling hand. "Louise, lay your hand on his forehead and say 'God bless you.' Just those three little words that every one says to the poorest and the most wretched. Just say that shortest of all prayers for him!"
There was silence.
"Louise!" sobbed Chérie, "if you were to say that, I think it would help him and me to live through all the days of misery to come. It is so sad, Louise, that no one, no one should ever have invoked a benediction upon so poor and helpless a child."
Louise's eyes filled with tears. She looked down at the tiny face and the strange light eyes blinked up at her. They were cruel eyes. They were the eyes she had seen glaring at her across the room, mocking and taunting her, at that supreme instant when her prayers and little Mireille's had at last succeeded in touching their oppressor's heart. Those eyes, those light grey eyes in the ruthless face had lit upon her, hard as flint, cruel as a blade of steel: "The seal of Germany must be set upon the enemy's country——"
Those eyes had condemned her to her doom.
"I cannot, I cannot," she said, and turned away.
Dusk was falling and a thin grey mist crept up from the two rivers as Louise, with a black scarf over her head, hurried out of the house to fetch Mireille. She was about to turn down the narrow rue de la Pompe which led straight to the house of Madame Doré without passing the Place de l'Église, where at this hour all the German soldiers were assembled, when she noticed the hunched-up figure of a Flemish peasant coming slowly along the small alley. He seemed to be mumbling to himself, and looked such a strange figure with his slouch hat and limping gait that in order to avoid him she turned back and went through the Square where the soldiers lounged and smoked. They paid no heed to her and she hurried on.
In her heart a wild new hope had sprung. She was going to bring Mireille home. For the first time since that terrible morning of their flight, Mireille would find herself once more in the surroundings that had witnessed her martyrdom.
What if the shock of entering that house again, of being face to face with all that must remind her of the struggle in which her agonized child-spirit had been wrecked, what if that shock—Louise scarcely dared to formulate the wild hope even in her own mind—were to heal her? Such things had happened. Louise had heard and read of them; of people who were mad and had suddenly been restored to reason, of people who were dumb and had recovered their speech through some sudden powerful emotion.
With beating heart Louise went faster through the silent streets.
The man she had seen in the rue de la Pompe had limped on; then turning to the right he had found himself in front of Dr. Brandès's house.
He stopped and looked up at the windows. They were open, wide open to the cool evening air, and at the sight, joy rushed into his heart. The house was certainly inhabited. By whom? By whom?... Had they reached Bomal after all? He had heard from Claude that they had left England to return to their home. Had they arrived safely? Were they here?
The hope of seeing them again had inspired him to attempt and achieve his daring flight from the Infirmary at Liège, and his temerarious almost incredible journey across miles of closely-guarded country. The vision of Chérie had been before him when at dead of night, with bleeding hands, he had worked for hours to loosen the meshes of wire nets and entanglements that surrounded the hospital grounds, where—half patient, half prisoner—he had been held under strict surveillance for nearly a month. It was Chérie's white hand that had beckoned to him and upheld him through the long hungry days and the dreary nights, when he was hiding in woods, crouching in ditches, plunging into rivers, scrambling over walls and rocks until he had reached the valley of the Aisne—passing indeed, quite near to Roche-à-Frêne where, he remembered, she had gone for an excursion on her last birthday.... It was the thought of Chérie that had inspired and guided him through untold risks and dangers. And now, perhaps, she was here, here in this house before him, within reach of his voice, within sight of his eyes, just beyond those joyous open windows....
He remembered how on her birthday-night less than a year ago he had clattered up on horseback through the quiet streets and had seen these windows wide open as they were now.—Ah, what destruction had swept over the world since then!
He remembered the sound of those laughing, girlish voices: