Mona knows that this is the beginning of the end. She finds herself thinking of Oskar constantly, and especially when she is dropping off to sleep at night and awakening in the morning. With a hot and quivering heart she asks herself what is to come of it all. She does not know. She dare not think. A feeling of shame and dread seems to clutch her by the throat.
One day the neighbouring farmer who comes to visit her father blurts out another of his shocking stories. It is about a mid-day raid over London.
Towards noon on a beautiful summer day, in an infant school in East London, a hundred little children, ranging in age from three years to six, had been singing their hymn before the time came to scamper home in childish glee to dinner, when out of the sunshine of the sky two bombs had fallen from a German air-machine and killed ten of them and wounded fifty. The scene had been afrightful shambles. Some of the children had been destroyed beyond all recognition, their sweet limbs being splashed like a bloody avalanche against the broken walls. And when, a moment later, their mothers had come breathless, bare-headed and with wild eyes to the schoolhouse door, they saw the mangled bodies of their little ones brought out in a stream of blood.
Mona enters her father’s bedroom just as the babbler is finishing his story. The old man, who is quivering with rage, has struggled to his feet and is stamping his stick on the floor and swearing—nobody ever having heard an oath from his lips before.
“They’ll pay for it, though—these damned madmen and their masters—they’ll pay for it to the uttermost farthing! Cursed be of God, these sons of hell!”
The Government in London must make reprisals. They must destroy a thousand German children for every British child that had been destroyed!
Mona tries first to appease and then to reprove him. What good will it do the poor deadchildren in London that other children in Germany, now living in the fulness of their childish joy, should be massacred?
“The children are innocent....”
“Innocent? They’ll not be long innocent. They’ll grow up and do the same themselves. Oh my God, do Thou to them as with the Midianites who perished at Endor, and became as the dung of the earth!”
“Hush! Hush! Father! Father!”
“Why not? What’s coming over thee, woman? What’s been happening downstairs to change thee?”
At that word Mona feels as if a sword has pierced her heart, and she hurries out of the room.
After a while the mother-instinct in her comes uppermost. Her father is right. To make war on children is the crime of crimes. The people who do such things must belong to the race of the devil.
That evening she is crossing to the “haggard” when she meets Oskar Heine coming out of hiscompound. She does not look his way, but he stops her and speaks.
“You’ve heard what’s in the papers?”
“Indeed I have.”
“I’m ashamed. I’m sorry.”
“Never mind about sorry. Wait until the same is done to your own people, and then we’ll see, we’ll see.”
He is about to tell her something, but she will not listen, and goes off with uplifted head.
A week passes. Mona has seen nothing more of Oskar Heine. Being free to come and go as he likes, he must be keeping out of her way. She is feeling less bitter about that shocking thing in London. After all, it was war. It is true that all the victories of war are as nothing against the golden head of one darling child, but then nobody sees that now. Nobody in the world has ever seen it—nobody but He....
“Suffer the little children to come unto me....”
But only think! That was said two thousand years ago, and yet ... and yet....
Christmas is near, the third Christmas. Mona reads in the newspaper that it has been agreed by the Marshal and generals commanding on both sides of the Western Front that there shall be a four hours’ truce of the battlefields on Christmas Eve. How splendid! A truce of God in memory of what happened two thousand years ago! Why couldn’t they have it in the camp also? She suggests the idea to Oskar.
“Glorious! Why can’t we?” he says.
He will find a way to put the matter up to the Commandant, and then he will speak to the prisoners.
Since the prisoners have been set to work they have been living a more human life in their amusements also. Every compound has its band. The guards have their band, too. Mona hears from Oskar that the Commandant consents.
“It’s Christmas! God bless me, yes, why not?” he says.
The prisoners are delighted, and the guards agree to pray with them.
“Oh, they’re not such bad chaps after all,” the captain says.
At the beginning of Christmas week there is the muffled sound at night of the bands in various parts of the camp practising inside their booths. Oskar comes to the door of the farm-house to say that they intend to play in unison, and want the “Woman of Knockaloe” to choose the carols and hymns for them. Mona chooses what she knows. “Noël,” “The Feast of Stephen,” and “Lead, Kindly Light.”
“Splendid!” says Oskar. He is to be the conductor in Compound Three.
Snow falls, then comes frost, and on Christmas Eve the ground of the black camp is white and hard, and a moon is shining—a typical Christmas.
Mona has had a bustling day, but at nine she is finished and goes upstairs to sit with her father. The old man, who is in bed, has heard something of her activities, and is not too well pleased with them.
“What’s coming over thee, girl?” he keeps onrepeating. “What’s coming over thee anyway?”
“Goodness sakes, why ask me that, dad? It’s Christmas, isn’t it?”
Having three hours to wait, she sits by the fire and reads to him—from the Gospels this time:
“And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid.
“And the angel said unto them, Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
“For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord....
“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”
Mona stops. The old man is breathing heavily. He has fallen asleep.
At eleven o’clock Mona is in her own room. What a magnificent night! The moon is shining full through the window, making its pattern on thecarpet. Outside it is so bright that the entire camp is lit up by it, and there had been no need to switch on the big arc-lamps.
The camp lies white in the sparkling snow. For the first time for more than three years it is not distinguishable from the country round about. The white mantle of winter has made camp and country one.
It is quiet out there in the night. Not a breath of wind is stirring. A dog is barking in the Fifth Compound, which is half a mile away. There is no other sound except a kind of smothered hum from the inside of the booths, where twenty-five thousand men are waiting for the first hour of Christmas Day—only this and the rhythmical throb of the tide on the distant shore. The old man in the next room is still breathing heavily.
Mona, too, is waiting. She is sitting up on her bed, half-covered by the counterpane. At one moment she remembers Robbie’s watch and thinks of taking it out of the drawer and winding it up and putting it on, but something says “Not yet.”Although Peel church is nearly a mile away, she tells herself that on this silent night she will hear the striking of the clock.
She thinks of the battlefront in France. The truce of God is there too. No booming of cannon, no shrieking of shells, only the low murmur of a sea of men in the underground trenches and the bright moon over the white waste about them. Thank God! Thank God!
At a quarter to twelve she is up again and at the window. A dim, mysterious, divine majesty seems to have come down on all the troubled world. The moon is shining full on her face. She hears marching on the crinkling snow—the band of the guard are crossing the avenue to take up the place assigned to them on the officers’ tennis-court. Behind them there is the shuffling of irregular feet—her farm-hands are following.
Then, through the thin air comes the silvery sound of the clock of Peel church striking midnight, and then, clear and distinct, from the guards’ band the first bar of “The Feast of Stephen.”
“When the snow lay on the ground....”
After that another bar of it from the Third Compound (Oskar must be conducting):
“Deep and crisp and even....”
Then comes another bar from the First Compound, and then another and another from the distant Compounds Four and Five.
After that there is a second carol:
“Noël, Noël, born is the King of Israel....”
Then another carol and another, all played like the first, and finally, verse by verse, from near and far, the hymn she had selected:
“Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom.”
Mona is crying. Now she understands herself—why she suggested this to Oskar and why Oskar has carried it out. If only peace would come the barrier that divides them would be broken down! God send it! God send it!
Her breath on the window-pane has frosted the cold glass, but she is sure she sees somebody coming towards the house. It is a man, and he is stumbling along, half doubled up as if drunk or wounded. He is making for the front door.Trembling with half-conscious apprehension of the truth, Mona runs downstairs to open it.
The man is Oskar Heine. By the light of the lamp she had left burning on the table she sees him. He is clutching with one hand a bough of the trammon tree that grows by the porch, and in the other he holds a sheet of blue paper. His cap is pushed back from his forehead, which is wet with perspiration, his eyes are wild, and his face is ashen.
“May I come in?”
“Indeed yes.”
He comes into the house, never having done so before, and drops heavily into the old man’s seat by the fire, which is dying out.
“What is it?” she asks.
“Look,” he says, and hands her the paper. “It has just come. The post was late to-night.” His voice seems to be dying out also.
Mona takes the paper. It is in English, and, standing by the lamp, she begins to read it aloud:
“American Consulate—Mannheim.”
“That’s my home—Mannheim.”
“I regret to inform you....”
“Don’t! Don’t!”
Mona reads the rest of the letter to herself. It is from the American Consul, and tells Oskar that in a British air raid in the middle of the night the house in which his mother had lived with his sister had been struck by a bomb, and the wing in which his sister slept had been utterly destroyed.
Mona makes a cry and involuntarily reads aloud again:
“The child is missing and it is believed....”
“Don’t! Don’t!”
There is silence between them for a moment, only broken by Oskar’s low sobs and Mona’s quick breathing.
“Your sister?”
“Yes, I wanted to tell you about her that night of....”
“I know,” says Mona. With a stab of remorse the memory of what she had said has come back to her.
“Only ten. Such a sweet little thing—the sweetest darling in the world. Used to writeevery week and send me her sketches. My father died when she was a baby, and since then she has looked on me as father and brother too. And now.... Oh, it is too stupid! It is too stupid!”
Mona cannot speak, and he goes on saying:
“It is too stupid. It is too stupid!”
He drops his head into his hands, and Mona sees the tears oozing out between his fingers.
“Mignon! My little Mignon!”
Still Mona does not utter a word, and at last he gets up and says:
“I had to tell you. There was no one else.”
His face is broken up and he is turning to go. Mona can bear no more. By a swift, irresistible, unconquerable, almighty impulse she flings her arms about his neck.
Meantime, the old man upstairs had been awakened by the bands. He had raised himself in bed to listen. The carols out there in the night touched him at first, but after a while they made him feel still more bitter. He was thinking about Robbie. What was the good of singing about peace in themidst of war? Peace? There would be no peace until the righteous God, with His mighty hand and outstretched arm, had hewn His enemies to pieces!
He heard a heavy thud at the door downstairs, and then a man’s voice, with Mona’s, in the kitchen. His first thought was of “The Waits,” for which Manx girls stayed up on Christmas Eve, and then a blacker thought came to him.
He struggled out of bed, pulled on his dressing-gown, fumbled for his walking-stick, and made for the stairs. It was dark on the landing, but there was light below coming from the kitchen, and, making a great effort, he staggered down.
How long Mona and Oskar were in each other’s arms they did not know. It might have been only for a moment. But all at once they became aware of a shuffling step behind them. Mona turns to look. Her father is on the threshold.
The old man’s face is ghastly. His eyes blaze, his mouth is open and his lips quiver, as if he is struggling for breath and voice. At length both come, and he falls on Mona with fearful cries.
“Harlot! Strumpet! So this is what has been changing thee! Thy brother dead in France, and thou in the arms of this German! May God punish thee! May thy brother’s spirit follow thee day and night and destroy thee! Curse thee! Curse thee! May the curse of God....”
The old man’s voice chokes in his throat. His face changes colour, and he totters and falls.
Before Mona is aware of it some of the farmhands are in the house picking the old man up. She had left the outer door open, and they had heard her father’s cries.
They carry him back to bed, limp and unconscious. Mona stands for some moments as if smitten by a blow on the brain. A horror of great darkness has fallen on her. When she recovers self-possession she looks round for Oskar. He has gone.
The old farmer died, without speaking, a few days after his second seizure. Mona watched with him constantly. Sometimes she prayed, with all the fervour of her soul, that he might recover consciousness. But the strange thing was that sometimes she found herself hoping that he might never do so.
When the end came she was overwhelmed with remorse, but still struggling to defend herself. It was early morning, and she was alone with him at the last. In the wild burstings of affection, mingled with self-reproach, she cried:
“I couldn’t help it, father. I couldn’t help it.”
They buried her father at Kirk Patrick in the family grave of the Craines, which was close to the German quarter. Her relations from all parts of the island came “to see the old man home.” There were uncles and aunts and cousins to the third and fourth degree, most of them quiteunknown to her. When the service was over they went back to the farm-house, by permission of the camp authorities, to hear the will read by the vicar. It had been made shortly after the death of Robbie and consisted of one line only:
“I leave all I have to my dear daughter.”
The uncles and aunts and cousins, who had no claim on the dead man, were shocked at his selfishness.
“Is there no legacy to anybody, parson?”
“None.”
“Not so much as a remembrance?”
“Nothing. Everything goes to Mona.”
“We’ll leave it with her, then,” they said, and rose to go. As they passed out of the house Mona heard one of them say to another:
“It will be enough to make the man turn in his grave, though, if the farm goes to a Boche some day.”
That night, sitting late over a dying fire, Mona overhears a group of men and boys talking on “the street,” outside. They are her servants on the farm. Having heard her father’s denunciationof her on Christmas Eve they have since been circulating damaging reports, and now they are busy with their own plans for the future.
“She has killed the old man, that’s the long and short of it.”
“So it is.”
“I’m working no more for a woman that’s done a thing like that.”
“Me neither.”
A week later they came to Mona one by one with various lying excuses for leaving her. Asking no questions she pays them off and lets them go.
She has been alone for three days when the Commandant, with his kind eyes, comes to see what he can do. What if he sends some of the guard to help her?
“No, sir, no.”
“Some of the Germans, then?”
“N-o.”
“But, good gracious, girl, you can’t carry on the farm by yourself.”
“I’m strong. I’ll manage somehow, sir.”
“But sixteen cows—it’s utterly impossible—utterly!”
“Half of them are dry now and will have to go out to grass. I can attend to the rest, sir.”
“But won’t you be afraid to live in this house alone—a woman, with men like these about you?”
“I don’t think I will, sir.”
Half a year has passed. Mona has seen nothing of Oskar since Christmas. With a thrill of the heart she hears of the wide liberty he has won by his ability and good behaviour. But even in that there is a certain sting. He is free of the camp now as far as the barbed wire extends; why does he not come to see her? Sometimes she feels bitter that he does not come, but again the strange thing is that sometimes she is sure that if he did come she would run away from him.
All the same, she has a sense of his presence always about her. No matter how early she rises in the morning she finds that the rough work of the farm, unfit for a woman, has been done by other hands before she has reached the cow-house.
For a long time this sense as of a supernatural presence, unseen and unheard, helping her and caring for her and keeping guard over her, strengthens her days and sweetens her nights. But at length something happens which causes her courage to fail.
Rumour has come to the camp that a great enemy offensive is shortly to be made on the Western front. To meet the need of it the old guard of tried and trusted men are sent overseas, and their places filled by a new guard, which seem to have been recruited from the very sweepings of the streets.
The captain of this new guard assigned to the first three compounds (the nearest to the farmhouse) turns out to be a brute. His antecedents are doubtful. His own men, to whom he is a tyrant, say he has been a barman in a public-house somewhere, and that a few years before the war he was convicted of a criminal assault on a woman.
Mona becomes aware that she is attracting the attention of this ruffian. He is asking questionsabout her, following her with his evil eyes, and making coarse remarks that are intended to meet her ears.
“Fine gal! Splendid! What a woman for a wife, too!”
During the day he finds excuses to call at the farm-house and engage her in conversation. At length he knocks at her door at night. It is late, the camp is quiet, nobody is in sight anywhere. Before knowing who knocked Mona has opened the door. The man makes an effort to enter, but she refuses to admit him. He pleads, coaxes, threatens and finally tries to force his way into the house.
“Don’t be a fool, girl. Let me in,” he whispers.
She struggles to shut the door in his face. Her strength is great, but his is greater, and he has almost conquered her resistance when the figure of another man comes from behind.
It is Oskar. With both hands he takes the blackguard by the throat, drags him from the door and flings him five yards back into the road, where he falls heavily and lies for a moment. Then hegets up and shambles off, saying nothing, and at the next instant Oskar himself, without a word to Mona, turns away.
It is midsummer. The insular horse-racing has begun—an event in which the prisoners are keenly interested, but of which they are supposed to know nothing. Since the changing of the guard themoraleof the camp has gone down headlong. Drink has been getting in—nobody knows how. It is first discovered in the First Compound, commonly called the millionaire’s quarter.
Suspecting an illicit traffic the officers raid a tent occupied by a German baron, and find half a dozen men about a table, with champagne, cigars, brandy and every luxury of a fashionable night club. A searching inquiry is made by the Commandant. It has no result. The captain of the guard, who is zealous in helping, can offer no explanation.
Later it is discovered that still worse corruption is going on in the Second Compound. The sailors are quarrelling, fighting and rioting under theinfluence of raw spirits, generally rum, probably much above proof. Where does their money come from? And how does the drink get into the camp? For their work in the workshops and on the land the prisoners are paid, but their small earnings (less a tax to the camp and a small sum for “fag-money”) go into the camp bank, to be distributed when the war is over. Once more an inquiry is fruitless. The men refuse to speak, and the captain of the guard is bewildered.
One morning, on rising, Mona sees Oskar Heine in the avenue talking through the barbed-wire fence to a group of sailors in the Second Compound. The men are behaving like infuriated animals, clenching and shaking their fists as if vowing vengeance. A moment afterwards she sees the captain, with a quick step, as if coming from the First Compound, cross the avenue, disperse the men by a fierce command, and then turn hotly on Oskar. Mona is too far away to hear what is being said, but she sees that Oskar, without answering, walks slowly away.
An hour afterwards, when she is at work in thedairy, she hears harsh cries from the Second Compound. Going to the door she sees a shocking scene. The infuriated prisoners, whom she had seen talking to Oskar, augmented by at least a hundred others, are hunting a man as if with the intention of lynching him. They are shouting and gesticulating, and the man is screaming. They have torn his coat off, and the upper part of his body is almost naked. He is running to and fro as if trying to escape from his pursuers, and they are beating him as he flies and kicking him when he falls. The soldiers on guard at the gate of the compound are racing to the man’s relief and threatening with their rifles, but the rifles are being wrenched out of their hands and turned against them. The clamour is fearful. The whole compound is in wild disorder.
“The thief! The cheat! Search him! Strip him!”
Without waiting to think what she is doing, but with a frightful apprehension of danger to Oskar, Mona runs into the compound (there being no oneat the gate to prevent her), and with her strong arms, which are bare to the elbows, she struggles through the mob of drunken men.
“Stop! Stand back! You brutes!”
More from the sound of her voice than from the strength of her muscles the prisoners fall away and she reaches their victim. He is on the ground at her feet, bleeding about the face and head and crying for mercy.
It is the captain of the guard!
When the miserable creature sees who has rescued him he squirms to her feet and calls on her to save him. A body of the guard from another compound come running up and carry him away, and the infuriated men slink off to the cover of their quarters.
Later in the day Mona hears that six of the prisoners have been arrested and sent to the lock-up at Peel and that Oskar Heine is one of them. Still later she learns that they are to be brought up for trial in the morning.
What is Oskar to be charged with? Mona hasnot been summoned, but she decides to go to the trial. She has a presentiment of something evil that is to happen to her there, but all the same she determines to go.
Mona rises next day before the cows have begun to call, and as soon as her work in the dairy is done she hurries off to Peel. The court-house is as crowded as before with guards and townspeople. With difficulty she crushes her way into the last place by the door.
The proceedings have begun and the prisoners are standing in the dock with their backs to her—five unkempt heads of common-looking sailors and Oskar’s erect figure, with his fair hair, at the end of them. The Governor is on the bench, and he has the High Bailiff and the Commandant on either side of him. The captain of the guard, with a bandage across his forehead, is in the witness-box. He is answering the questions of the advocate for the Crown.
“And now, Captain, tell us your own story.”
Humbly saluting the court, with many “sirs” and “worships” and “excellencies,” the captaintells his tale. It was yesterday about this time. He had hardly entered the Second Compound in the ordinary discharge of his duty when he was set upon, without the slightest warning or provocation, by a gang of the prisoners. There must have been two hundred of them, but the six men in the dock had been the ring-leaders. Five of the six belonged to the Second Compound, but the sixth came from the Third, and he was the worst of the lot. Being a camp captain he was allowed to move about anywhere, and he had often abused his liberty to undermine the captain’s authority.
“How do you know that?” asks the High Bailiff.
“My guard have told me what he has said, your Worship, but I heard him myself in this case.”
“What did you hear?”
“I was behind the baron’s bungalow in the First Compound, your Worship, when I heard him telling the men of the second to lynch and murder me.”
The Governor leans forward and says:
“You mean that this sixth man has a spite against you?”
“A most bitter spite, your Excellency.”
“Have you given him any cause?”
“No cause whatever, your Excellency.”
“What is his name?”
“Oskar Heine.”
“Let Oskar Heine be called,” says the Governor.
As Oskar steps out of the dock Mona feels hot and dizzy. Being a prisoner he is not sworn.
He stands at the foot of the witness-box, but his head is up, and when he answers the questions of the advocate appointed to represent the prisoners he does not seem to be afraid.
“You have heard the evidence of the captain.”
“I have.”
“Is it true—what he says about yourself?”
“No, sir, not a word of it.”
“Did you take any part in the attack that was made on him?”
“None whatever.”
“Did you tell the other prisoners to do what they did?”
“No, I did not; but if I had known as much about the captain then as I know now I should have done.”
“Done what?” asks the Governor sharply.
“Told them to do what they did—and worse.”
“And what do you know now, if you please?”
“That he has been cheating and bullying and blackmailing and corrupting them.”
“And if you had known this before what would you have told them to do, as you say?”
“Thrash him within an inch of his life.”
“You admit that?”
“I do, sir.”
The Governor turns to the High Bailiff and says:
“Is it necessary to go further? The man denies that he took part in the actual assault, but no evidence could be more corroborative of the captain’s story.”
The High Bailiff appears to assent, and the advocate for the defence, who had intended to call the other prisoners, signifies by a gesture that he thinks it is hopeless to do so now.
“I ask for the utmost penalty of the law against the six prisoners,” says the advocate for the Crown, “for a brutal and cowardly assault on an officer of the army in the lawful discharge of his duty.”
There is some low talking on the bench which Mona, who is breathing audibly, does not hear, and then the High Bailiff prepares to give judgment.
“This is a serious offence. If such riots were to be permitted at the encampment all military discipline would be at an end. Therefore it is the duty of the civil authorities in dealing with civilian prisoners....”
The High Bailiff’s voice is drowned by a noise near the door. A woman’s tremulous voice is heard to say:
“Wait a minute, sir.”
At the next moment Mona is seen pushing her way to the front. The advocate for the Crown recognizes her, and thinking she comes to support his case, he rises and says:
“This is the young woman I spoke of in myopening as having saved the life of the captain from the fury of the prisoners. If it is not too late she may be able to say something that will throw light on the conduct of the men and on their motive.”
“No, not on the conduct and motive of the men, but on that of the captain,” says Mona.
There is further murmuring on the bench, and then the High Bailiff says:
“Let her be called.”
Being in the witness-box and sworn, Mona, with the eyes of the judges, advocates and spectators upon her, begins to tremble all over, but she answers firmly when spoken to.
“You wish to say something about the captain—what is it?”
“That he is a bad man, and a disgrace to the army.”
The Governor puts up his eyeglass and looks at her. Then he smiles rather cynically and says:
“You seem to know something about the army, miss. What is the medal you are wearing on your breast?”
“The Victoria Cross, sir,” says Mona, throwing up her head, “won by my brother when he died in the war, and sent home to my father by the King.”
The eyeglass drops from the Governor’s nose and his face straightens. After a moment of silence the High Bailiff says:
“What you say of the captain—is it from hearsay or from personal experience?”
“From personal experience, sir.”
There is another moment of silence and then the High Bailiff says:
“Tell us.”
Mona takes hold of the rail of the witness-box, and it is seen that her fingers are trembling. She tries to begin, but at first the words will not come. At length, lifting her eyes as if saying to herself, “Oh, what matter about me?” she tells the story of the captain’s attempt at a criminal assault upon her; how, late at night, when she was alone and unprotected he had tried to force his way into her house and had almost overcome her resistance when Oskar Heine came up and laid hold of him by the throat and flung him back into the road.
“So if there’s any spite,” she says, “it’s not Heine’s against the captain, but the captain’s against Heine.”
There is a dead hush in the court-house until she has done. Then the High Bailiff looks down at Oskar, who is still standing by the witness-box, and says:
“Is this true?”
Oskar answers in a husky voice:
“I’m sorry the young lady has said it, sir, but it’s true, perfectly true.”
“It’s a lie,” shouts the captain, tossing up his red face defiantly.
“Is it?” cries Oskar quickly. And then throwing out his arm and pointing to the captain, he says:
“Look at him. The marks of my hands are on his throat at this moment.”
Instantly the captain drops his chin into his breast, but not before everybody on the bench has seen the black stamp of four fingers and a thumb on the man’s red throat.
The advocate for the defence rises and askspermission (things having gone so far) to call the other prisoners.
One by one the five are called and tell the same story—that when the horse-racing began the captain, who went to Belle Vue nearly every afternoon, enticed them to trust him with their stakes; but though they found out afterwards that their horses had often won, he had always lied to them and kept their money.
“Heine advised us to complain to the Commandant, but we decided to strip the man and search his pockets, and having a drop to drink we went further than we intended.”
“It’s a pack of lies,” roars the captain.
“No, it’s not that neither,” says a voice from behind the prisoners.
It is one of the guard who had brought the men to court, and stepping out of the bench at the back of the dock, he says:
“Swear me next, your Worship.”
“Take care what you’re saying, Radcliffe,” cries the captain in a voice that is almost unintelligible from anger. “No lies here, remember.”
“No, I’ve told enough for you at the camp. I’m going to tell the truth for once, Captain.”
The soldier corroborates the evidence of the prisoners, and adds that the guard themselves have been similarly cheated, blackmailed and bullied.
“More than that, it’s the captain himself who has been bringing drink into the camp, especially into the millionaires’ compound. He is making a big purse out of it, too, and only two nights ago, when he was in liquor, he boasted that he had five hundred pounds in the bank already.”
After that the proceedings are brought to a quick conclusion, the Governor being afraid of further disclosures. The six men are sentenced to one day’s imprisonment, but having been as long as that in custody already they are acquitted.
And then the trial being over, the Commandant addresses the captain, telling him he is not to return to the camp, but to prepare to be sent over the water to-morrow morning.
“It’s a few men like you who give the enemy their excuse for saying we are as bad as they are.”
The court having risen, the prisoners are taken out between their guard. Oskar Heine passes close to the place where Mona is standing, but he does not raise his eyes to her.
Only then, her excitement being over, does Mona realize what she has done for herself. The townspeople are surging out of the court-house, and, as they go, they are casting black looks at her. She awaits until she thinks they are gone, and then, venturing out, she finds a throng of them, women as well as men, on the steps and about the gate, and they fall on her with insults.
“Here she comes!” “The traitor!” “It’s an ill bird that fouls its own nest.” “The woman might have held her tongue, anyway; not given away her own countryman to save a dirty Boche.”
A hiss that is like the sound of water boiling over hot stones follows her down the street and out of the town, until she reaches the country.
Half-way home she is overtaken by the Commandant in his motor-car. He stops to speak to her, and his kind face looks serious, almost stern.
“I’m willing to believe that what you did was done in the interest of justice, but all the same I’m sorry for you, my girl, very sorry.”
The six prisoners have arrived at the camp before her, and a report of what she has done at the trial has passed with the speed of a forest fire over the five compounds. As she walks up the avenue, hardly able to support herself, the brutal sailors of the Second Compound, the same that had formerly offended her by their vulgar familiarity, rush to the barbed wire to lift their caps to her. She does not look at them, but hurries into the house, overwhelmed with shame and confusion.
To get through the work of the day is hard, and when night comes she drops into her father’s seat by the fire and sits there for hours, forgetting that she has eaten nothing since morning.
It is all over. The secret she has been struggling so hard to hide even from herself, denying it over and over again to her conscience, she has proclaimed aloud in public.
She loves this German—she who had hated all his race as no one else had ever hated them!Everybody knows it, too, and everybody loathes her. And her father—if she had killed her father before, as people said, she has killed him a second time that day, covering his very grave with disgrace.
“I couldn’t help it,” she thinks, but that brings her no comfort now.
At one moment she tells herself that since she has renounced her race she must run away somewhere—she cannot live at Knockaloe any longer. But then she thinks of Oskar, that he must remain, and cries in her heart:
“I can’t! I can’t!”
And remembering what Oskar had said about her in court she throws up her head and thinks:
“Why should I?”
When the time comes to lock up the house for the night she finds a letter which has been pushed under the door. It is on prisoners’ notepaper and in a handwriting she has never seen before, and it contains three words only:
“God bless you!”
Instantly, instinctively, she lifts it to her lipsand kisses it. But at the next moment, as she is going upstairs, the old weakness comes sweeping back on her.
“I couldn’t help it! I couldn’t help it! God forgive me!”
It is Christmas week again—the last Christmas of the war. Two Swiss doctors, appointed by the warring nations to inspect the Internment Camps throughout Europe, have arrived at Knockaloe.
After going the rounds of the five compounds they come to the farm to test the milk. They are pleasant men, and Mona asks them to take tea.
Sitting at the table in the kitchen they talk together, not paying much attention to Mona, of the complaints made by the prisoners, particularly by one of them, who had said he had not been able to eat the potatoes provided because they had been full of maggots, whereupon the sergeant of the guard, who had been showing them round, had cried:
“Don’t believe a word of it—the man’s a liar,” and then the prisoner had said no more.
“I dare say the fellow was lying all right,” saysone of the doctors, “but that sergeant is a bit of a beast.”
“Is it like that in all the camps—in Germany, for instance?” asks Mona.
“Worse there than anywhere. Some of the officers in German camps are barbarians without bowels of compassion for anybody, and some of your British prisoners are living the lives of the damned.”
“But that’s the devilish way of war. It seems to make martyrs and heroes of the men who lose by it, and brutes and demons of the men who win.”
“Not always, my friend.”
“No, not always, thank God!”
After that they turn to Mona, congratulating her on the cleanliness of her dairy, and asking her what help she has to keep things going. Being afraid to speak of Oskar, she tells them she is alone.
“Wonderful!” says one of them. “But it’s what I always say—one person working with his heart will do more than ten who are working with their hands only.”
“It’s the same on the battlefield,” says the other. “And that’s why this country has won the war, and the Germans have lost it.”
“Lost it?” says Mona. “Is the war over, then?”
“It soon will be, my girl. Your enemy may make a last kick, but the war cannot last much longer.”
Mona’s heart leaps up. Can it be possible that the war is coming to an end? Then it will soon be well with her and Oskar.
It is not because Oskar is a German, but because the Germans are at war with her own people that her people look black at her. It is war, not race, that is the great obstacle to their love, and when the war is over the obstacle will be gone.
“O Lord, stop the war, stop it, stop it,” she prays every night and every morning.
There are to be no carols this Christmas, but special services are to be held in the camp on Christmas Day, and a great Lutheran preacher is coming to conduct them.
On Christmas Eve Mona is carrying a bowl ofoats to a young bull she has put out on the mountain, when she hears the singing of a hymn in the prison chapel and she stops to listen. It must be the prisoner-choir practising for to-morrow’s service, and it must be Oskar who is playing the harmonium.
“Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott....”
The language is unknown to her, but the tune is familiar; she used to sing it herself when she was in the choir of the Wesleyan Chapel:
“A sure stronghold our God is still....”
The same hymn, the same religion, the same God, the same Saviour, and yet.... How wicked! How stupid!
On Christmas morning Mona has finished her work in the dairy when she hears the far-off sound of the church bells in Peel, and looking out over the camp she sees groups of the prisoners (Oskar among them) making their way to the prison chapel.
Suddenly, as she thinks, a new thought comes to her. If it is the same religion, why shouldn’t shego to the service? If the guard will permit her to pass, why shouldn’t she?
Almost before she is aware of what she is doing she has run upstairs, changed into her chapel clothes, and is crossing the avenue towards the gate of the Third Compound.
The camp chapel (half church, half theatre) is a large wooden barn with a stage at one end, no seats on the floor. On the stage, behind a small deal table, the Lutheran pastor, in a black gown, is reading the lesson from his big Bible. On the floor in front of him are five or six hundred men, all standing in lines. They make a pitiful spectacle—some young (almost boys), some elderly (almost old), some wearing good clothes, some in rags, some well shod, some with their naked feet showing through the holes in their worn-out shoes, some with fine clear-cut features, and some with faces degraded by drink and debased by crime. Every eye is on the pastor, and there is no sound in the bare place but the sound of his voice.
The silence is broken by the lifting of the latchof a door near to the stage. At the next moment a woman enters. Everybody knows her—it is “the Woman of Knockaloe.” She stands for a moment as if dazed by the eyes that are on her, and then somebody by her side (she knows who it is, although she does not look at him) touches her arm and leads her to a chair, which has been hurriedly brought in from an ante-room and placed in the middle of the front row.
When the lesson is finished the pastor gives out a hymn. It is the same hymn as she heard last night, but after the man from the door has stepped forward and played the overture on the harmonium, she finds herself on her feet in the midst of the prisoners.
In full, clear, resonant voices the men are singing in their German, when suddenly they become aware that a woman is singing with them in English—the same hymn to the same tune.
“Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott....”
“A sure stronghold our God is still....”
The voices of the men sink for a moment, as if they are listening, and then, as by one spontaneousimpulse, they rise and swell until the place seems to throb with them.
When the hymn comes to an end Mona sits and the pastor begins his sermon. She can understand only a word of it now and again, and her eyes wander to the door. Oskar is there. His head is up and his eyes are shining.
“O Lord, stop the war, stop it, stop it!”
Summer has come again; the sun rises and sets, the birds sing and nest, the landscape preserves its solemn peace, but still the war goes on. The last kick of the enemy, which the Swiss doctors had foreseen, has been made and it is over. After a devastating advance, there has been a still more devastating retreat.
The prisoners in the camp know all about it. Their spirits had risen and fallen according to the fortunes of their armies at the front. At first they were truculent. They talked braggingly about vast German forces marching upon London, blowing up Buckingham Palace, putting an end to the British Empire, and then turning their attention toAmerica. Afterwards they were sceptical. If the English newspapers reported German defeats they knew better, having received their German newspapers which reported German victories. Now they are sullen. What is the war about, anyway? Nothing at all! In ten years’ time nobody will know what was the cause of it!
Mona is in a fever of excitement. Is the war coming to an end at last? What does Oskar think? Why doesn’t he come to her? Is he still thinking he has brought trouble enough on her already?
At length he comes. It is late at night. She hears his voice calling to her in a tremulous tone from the other side of the open door.
“Mona!”
He has never called her by that name before.
“Yes?”
She is standing on the threshold, trembling from head to foot, never before having been face to face with him since the night of her father’s seizure.
“It’s all over, Mona.”
“What is, Oskar?”
“Germany is beaten. The Hindenburg line is broken, and revolution has begun in Berlin.”
“Does that mean that the war will soon be at an end?”
“It must be.”
She hesitates for a moment, then she says, with a quivering at her heart:
“But surely you are glad of that, Oskar—that the war will soon be at an end?”
He looks into her face and then turns away his own.
“I don’t know. I can’t say,” he answers.
She looks after him as he goes off. Her eyes gleam and her heart throbs.
The tenth of November, nineteen hundred and eighteen. All day long there has been great commotion in the officers’ quarters. The telephone with Government Office has been going constantly since early morning, and there has been much hurrying to and fro.
An internment camp is like a desert in one thing—rumour passes over it on the wings of the wind. Before midday every prisoner knows everything. The Kaiser has been hurled from his throne by his own people; the German command have asked for an armistice, and the Allied Commander-in-Chief has given them until nine o’clock to-morrow to sign the terms of peace he has prepared for them.
If they do not sign within that time the war will go on to extermination. If they do, the news will be flashed over the world immediately. At eleven o’clock they will have it at Knockaloe. The gunswill be fired in the fort at Douglas, the sirens will be sounded from the steamers in the bay, and the church bells will be rung all over the island.
Mona is in raptures. The war is near to an end, and all she has prayed for is about to come to pass. Yet even at that moment she is conscious of conflicting feelings. When she thinks of Robbie, she wants to shout with joy that the war has come to a right ending, and the cruel enemy who made it, with all its barbarities and horrors, is humbled to the dust. But when she thinks of Oskar, she feels ... she does not know what she feels.
WhereisOskar?
She awakes next morning before the day has dawned and while the arc-lamps are still burning. The first thing she is aware of is a deep murmur, like that of the sea on a quiet but sullen day, which seems to come from all parts of the camp. It was the last thing she had been conscious of when she fell asleep the night before. The prisoners were then walking to and fro in their compounds, in andout of the sinister shadows, and talking, talking, talking. Could it be possible that they had walked and talked all night long?
What wonder? The day that was about to dawn might be the day of doom for them. When night came again their Fatherland might have fallen; they might be men without a country—mere outcasts thrown on to an overburdened world.
When the day breaks and the arc-lamps are put out, Mona sees the men moving about like wraiths in the grey light. But silence has now fallen on them. The ordinary regulations of the camp have been relaxed for the day, and they are not required to go to their workshops. When the bell rings for breakfast some of them forget they are hungry and remain in the open.
It is a November day like many another, fine and clear and cold and with occasional gleams of sunshine on the sea. The cows in the cow-house are lowing, the sheep on the hill are bleating. Nature is going on as usual.
Mona goes to her work in the dairy. When the men come for the milk, she can hardly bear tolook into their drawn faces. The prisoners in the First Compound are standing in groups, and if they are talking at all it can only be in whispers. The sailors in the Second Compound are standing together in crowds, but the old riotous spirit is gone; there is no more shouting or swearing.
The hours drag on. Looking beyond the barbed wire boundary of the encampment, Mona sees country carts rattling down the high road at a fast trot as if going to a fair. Somebody is on the church tower of Kirk Patrick doing something with the flagstaff.
At half-past ten the world seems to be standing still. The camp is on tiptoe. All over it men are looking towards Douglas. Their faces are grim, almost ghastly. They seem to be rooted to the ground. Sometimes one of them digs his foot into the earth like a restless horse tired of waiting, but that is the only movement.
Where is Oskar? What is he doing?
At length, at long length, there is a certain activity in the officers’ quarters. Mona distinctly hears the ringing of the telephone bell in theCommandant’s tent, which is not far from the farm-house. In the quiet air and the dead silence she believes she hears the Commandant’s voice.
“Hello! Who’s there? Government office?... Well?... Signed, is it? Good!”
At the same moment she hears the striking of the clock at Peel. And before the clock has finished striking there comes the deep boom of a gun.
There can be no mistaking that. It rolls down the valley from the direction of Douglas, strikes the hills on either side, and then sweeps over the black camp towards the sea.
A moment later comes the screaming of sirens, deadened by distance, then the ringing of church bells, now far, now near, and then the dull sound of wild cheering at Peel, where the people, who have been waiting from early morning in the market place, are going frantic in their joy, clasping each other’s hands and kissing.
The twenty-five thousand prisoners in the camp stand silent and breathless for a moment. The worst has happened to them—their Fatherland has fallen.
The strain is broken by a ridiculous incident. A terrier bitch belonging to a German baron in the “millionaires’” quarters leaps up to the roof of his tent and begins to bark furiously at the tumult in the air. The little creature’s anger becomes amusing. The men look at the dog and then burst into peals of laughter.
A few minutes afterwards the prisoners of the First Compound have recovered themselves and are shaking hands and congratulating each other. After all the war is over and they will soon be free! Free to leave this place and go back home—home to their houses and their wives and children.
The sailors in the Second Compound are going crazy with delight, and behaving like demented creatures. They are laughing and singing at the top of their lungs, punching each other and boxing, playing leap-frog and turning cart-wheels. What does it matter about country? Who cares about the Fatherland, anyway? All the world is their country—all the world and the sea.
Mona is standing at the door of her dairy, quivering with emotion. She is like a womanpossessed. What she has hoped for and prayed for has come to pass at last. Peace! Peace! Peace over all the earth! Never has the world had such a chance before. Never will it have such a chance again. The cruelties and barbarities of war will be no more heard of, and the senseless jealousies and hatreds of races will be wiped out for ever. And then ... and then....
All at once she becomes aware of somebody behind her. She knows who it is, but she does not turn. There is a moment of silence between them, and then, in a voice which she can scarcely control, she says, half-crying, half laughing:
“You, too, will be free to go home soon, Oskar. Aren’t you glad?”
There is another moment of silence between them, and then in a low, tremulous voice Oskar answers:
“No, you know I’m not, Mona.”
Mona drops her hand to her side, partly behind her, and at the next moment she feels it tightened in a quivering grasp.