knocking upon the great door re-echoed through the house. The countess
stood as if turned to stone; her heart seemed to stop. So soon! The
threat to her exalted, impassioned life of the past days paralysed her.
She could with difficulty cry to Marie to admit.
A German officer entered, a group of soldiers behind him. He saluted
with stiff ceremony.
"Madame, I regret you must leave this house at once!" His French was
painfully correct.
She faced him, tense.
"And if I refuse?"
"Then, madame, you leave me no alternative but to arrest you as a
suspect."
She cried an inarticulate protest. The dog, hitherto standing by her
side as though straining at a leash, sprang forward with an angry growl.
The German regarded the menace coolly, without moving a muscle.
"Schönes Tier!" he murmured. Then, turning to his men, he ordered:
"Secure it, one of you!"
Thunderously growling, with a puzzled look at his mistress standing
like a statue, the dog suffered a cord to be slipped through its
collar. The blood surged into the countess's face.
"Monsieur----!" The sense of outrage choked her.
"Madame," he interrupted calmly, "I need scarcely remind you that time
presses. You will not, I am sure, constrain us to violence."
She met his eyes, was confronted with inexorable necessity. Her hands
twitched.
"You will at least allow me a little time to collect a few clothes and
valuables?"
"A little time, madame."
She ran from the room, hearing as a last sound the dog choking as it
struggled on the leash. In the hall was Marie, haggard, her old body
shaking with excitement. She clutched at her mistress's arm.
"Madame! what is happening?" She lapsed into patois under the stress.
The countess replied also, without noticing it, in the language of her
childhood.
"I am arrested. They are letting me fetch some clothes."
The servant suppressed a cry. "Madame!" The old hands trembled upon
her. "The colonel!--a note to him--he will come--give it to me!"
"But Marie----" They looked deep down into each other's soul. With a
sudden movement of decision the countess ran into an adjoining room,
scribbled "_They are taking me. P._" on a piece of paper, thrust it
into the old woman's hand. "You are sure, Marie?" she asked wildly,
seeking condonation for herself.
"Chère dame!" was the brief, eloquent reply. The old woman disappeared.
The countess ran upstairs to her bedroom, the one word
"Delay!--delay!--delay!--delay!" beating in her brain.
Down in the salon the officer gave a few curt commands to his men,
ordered the dog to be taken into the yard. Left alone, he strolled
round the room examining the pictures, the bibelots, opening the
drawers of the secretaire. The minutes passed. The house was in deep
silence. He began to get impatient, to wonder if some trick----. But he
was sure of the vigilance of his men. A quarter of an hour had elapsed
when he heard a sharp little burst of fire from the German trenches
above. It was not answered. The valley resumed its unwonted quiet.
Exasperated at the delay he began to pace up and down the room, looked
at his watch, gave his prisoner yet another five minutes.
Suddenly his eye was caught by a little piece of folded paper on the
floor under the piano. He picked it up, opened it. It was a letter that
had evidently fallen from the countess's dress when she ran from the
room. He read it through, a gleam in his eyes. "So! meine Gräfin!" he
murmured, and smiled.
The colonel's passionate outpouring awoke no sympathetic thrill of
romance in his breast. The tip of a pink tongue protruding under
his fair moustache, his clever blue eyes alight, he turned it over,
pondering the signature. From many indications he deduced that the
writer was in the trenches on the other side of the ravine, was of
commanding rank. Even as he considered it there was a knock at the door.
"Herein!" A German soldier entered and saluted. He brought a message
from the trenches above. It explained the little burst of fire, warned
him. The officer stood for a moment in thought, then his face lit up
with a malicious pleasure. The clever blue eyes saw a sequence of
events--the messenger from the countess, whose sudden scramble over the
opposing parapet had drawn the German fire, imploring rescue of the
distressed; a French commander, intoxicated with love for a beautiful
woman, catching fire at the news, issuing wild orders, seeing only his
mistress in imminent danger; a reckless avalanche of French soldiery
sweeping down the sides of the ravine in a blind quixotic chivalry. He
saw----"Famos!" he ejaculated, and laughed softly to himself. He wrote
out an answering message, a long one, and handed it to the orderly.
When the countess returned to the room, garbed for departure, she found
him seated at the piano, playing gently with a sentimental touch. He
rose at her entrance, performed a polite bow.
"Madame, you appear to have a very interesting house," he said in his
stiff French; "would you do me the honour of escorting me over it?"
The countess stared at him, dumbfounded. Were her prayers miraculously
answered? Delay!--delay!--delay!
"If you wish, monsieur," she answered in a calm, controlled voice.
Following the twin thought in her brain, her eyes searched the carpet.
He noticed the glance, drew the letter from his pocket.
"I think you dropped this, madame," he said, handing it to her.
She took it from him. Had he read it? The blonde face that met her
questioning gaze was impassive under its smiling courtesy.
For an instant they confronted each other. With a cynical sense of
superiority, pleasant to himself, he read her delight at his unexpected
request, carefully though she tried to disguise it, read her quickly
banished doubt that he had penetrated her scheme, was counter-plotting.
He could almost phrase her thankful prayer to God--begging for a
continuance of the miracle--that the barbarian had thus delivered
himself into the strong hands of her lover. He would surely come! Both
as they stood thus silent were calculating the necessary minutes--but
his calculation was a double one. With the politest of bows, he opened
the door for her.
Together they went through salon after salon, candlelit since he
refused to have the shutters opened. In contrast with his previous
manner, he displayed not the least haste. Leisurely he lingered over
each piece, discussed it, appraised it with real connoisseurship
as though he were merely a cultured guest. She loitered willingly,
her brain on fire, every sense at strain. The precious moments were
accumulating. She found new treasures for his admiration, racked her
memory for rare objects that might hold him yet a little longer. He
handled them, was enthusiastic, with calm audacity regretted this
terrible war which imperilled so many beautiful things. Not once did
he depart from his attitude of studied politeness. And while he spoke
she was listening--listening--for the sudden shout, the quick close
detonations, which should announce her deliverance.
At any moment now! She glanced for the barbarian's weapon, her heart
praying for _his_ safety. Out there beyond the shuttered windows he was
coming in might at the head of his men. She seemed to see him--running
towards her, past the Cupid-crowned fountain. She exulted in the crass
absence of suspicion in the hatefully calm enemy at her side.
Out there in the twilight the precincts of the château were being
lined with grey-clad soldiers, settling themselves in hidden firing
positions. The officer saw them, with experienced second-sight. He
smiled, blandly. His prisoner loitered, desperately prolonging his
happy preoccupation.
When they returned to the salon it was to find another German officer
waiting. Unseen by her, they exchanged a significant look.
There was a sharp, hissing, ugly rush in the air and a loud crash in
the courtyard.
* * * * *
By a fortunate chance the colonel was near when the panting Marie
scrambled over the parapet to the accompaniment of a dozen rifle
bullets. On the point of collapse, the old woman sank into his arms,
stammered confused unintelligible words, gave him the scrap of paper.
Consigning her to the care of an orderly, he read the message, then
raised his head, his fingers crushing the paper. He stood motionless,
in intense thought. Slowly his eyes turned, fell upon the old woman
shaking more with fright from the narrowly escaped bullets than from
her exertions. Then his gaze lifted, fixed itself with frowning
concentration upon the clay wall of the trench. He saw only with an
inner vision. Around him no one spoke. His jaw set hard.
He raised himself upon the fire-step, gazed over the parapet through
his glasses. The opposing lip of the ravine, bare of undergrowth
a few yards from the top, lay silent, seemingly deserted. He
called up an officer, handed him his glasses, indicated a point,
ordered an unceasing watch upon it. Then he sent orderlies for his
chefs-de-bataillon and the artillery observation officer in all haste.
They came. The battalion commanders received definite instructions and
departed. The artillery officer remained with him. The ancient Marie
sat upon the fire-step of the trench, trembling but recovering. She
watched the saviour of her mistress with fascinated eyes.
The trench began to fill with soldiers. They crouched in their firing
positions, their heads kept carefully below the parapet. Here and
there little groups were busy about the machine-guns, fitted the long
comb-like strips of cartridges, huddled ready to hoist the weapon into
action. The watching officer called, without moving his head.
"Infantry are slipping into the ravine, mon colonel!"
The colonel, stern, impassive, ordered him to report when the movement
ceased.
The long trench filled with crouching riflemen lay in a hush of intense
expectancy. There was scarce a movement save the quick, involuntary
jerks of nerves at strain. The old woman's eyes began to wander,
puzzled, seeking comprehension. The wild rush forward she had imagined,
would it never come? She waited, breathless, for the inspiring command
of the colonel that should wake the tumultuous Hurrah! The watching
officer reported:
"Movement has ceased, mon colonel. About two hundred men."
The colonel drew his watch from his pocket, glanced at the dial. Beyond
that he made no movement. The old woman's eyes were fixed upon him.
Suddenly she noticed that he wore neither sword nor revolver. In a
flash she understood. She sprang up like a madwoman, crying at the top
of her voice.
"Soldiers! To the rescue! The Boches are taking away my mistress!
Now! Save her! Your colonel--her lover--abandons her! _Abandons her!_
Cowards! Cowards! Do you want an old woman to show you the way?"
She leaped in a frenzy upon the fire-step, tearing aside the soldiers
to make way for her with cat-like hands. There was a stir along the
trench. The soldiers knew her, knew her mistress, their generous
hostess. There was a murmur. The colonel stood like a statue carved in
stone. His face was that of an ascetic at the supreme moment. In his
eyes was the glow of a mystic who beholds a vision.
He turned to the old woman.
"Be quiet!" he commanded. His eyes rather than his voice quelled her.
She sank in a passion of hysterical weeping to the floor of the trench.
He glanced at his watch again, replaced it, waited. Age-long minutes
passed. He turned to the artillery officer.
"Now!" he said. "But be careful! As near to the château as possible
without touching it."
The officer shouted an order to the waiting telephonist. Overhead there
was the rush of a shell, from far behind the sharp crack of a gun.
Leisurely--one--two--three--four--the battery fired. The observation
officer looked over the parapet. The colonel mounted by his side,
watched also.
One--two--three--four--the battery fired again, repeated itself once
more. Down there among the trees was a faint drifting smoke.
The colonel counted the minutes as the well-placed shells dropped
around the château of his dreams. He saw, where none other saw, the
sudden alarm below; the prisoner hurriedly evacuated from her home,
dragged scrambling up through the dark trees into safety on the other
side. One--two--three--four. She should be out of harm's way.
He turned his face to the trench, shouted an order. As he turned his
gaze again swiftly towards the enemy he had a glimpse of something
upon the bare lip of the ravine--something white, quickly moving. He
had miscalculated! In a sudden agony, he shrieked rather than shouted
a countermanding order. Too late! His voice was drowned in one long
smashing detonation of a thousand rifles in an irregular volley
from the trench. From the battery behind came the rapid, multiplied
hammer-slams of the guns firing at their maximum speed.
He had a ghostly vision of an anguished woman's face, denying love.
The ravine was lashed by a tornado of shell and bullets. Caught in its
depths, unseen yet precisely imagined from above, men were clambering
in an agony of desperation to escape from the death that crashed
unceasingly overhead and hailed about them. The white shrapnel puffs
were countless against the dark background of the trees.
For a quarter of an hour the fierce fire continued, was answered in
bitter anger from the opposing trenches. Then on both sides it died
away. The dead in the valley lay in quiet.
The colonel, his face rigid, turned to walk along the trench. Suddenly
a dog trailing a cord leaped over the parapet, dashed at him in a
frenzy of joy. Then, perceiving the old woman, it jumped at her, nosed
around her with vigorously wagging tail.
The old woman shrieked. The colonel looked. There was blood upon the
dog's coat. The old woman drew herself up, held the colonel's eyes.
"_Murderer!_" she cried with the intensity of a curse, and fainted.
The colonel strode on.
* * * * *
On a bitter day in December, three months later, the colonel returned
from his morning tour of the trenches for which he was responsible.
They were trenches in another landscape, far from those whose memory
lay like a sear across his soul. At the entrance to the sandbagged,
wrecked farmhouse which served him as a home the soldier-_courrier_
was in the act of extracting letters from his wallet. The colonel took
the bundle destined for him. At the sight of the topmost envelope he
stopped as though he had seen a ghost. With trembling fingers he tore
it open, read:
"My hero! _I understood! I understood!_ Oh, didn't you know I
understood? How grand you are--more than a man! All these weary months
of imprisonment, trial, release and travel, I have been hungering to
tell you this. Home once more, France is more than ever France to me
since you ennobled me in sacrifice. Beloved!----"
The colonel hurried into his quarters to read the letter in solitude.
None might see his face.
THEY COME BACK
Whittingham Street, N., had benefited by the war. The long vista of its
windows flush with the pavement was decent with curtains of a cleanness
unwonted before the cataclysm. There were strange dots of reflected
sunlight from brass door-handles and knockers that were polished. These
things were symbols of the newly realised importance of Whittingham
Street's inhabitants in the scheme of society, an importance which,
swiftly translated into self-esteem, expressed itself with a uniformity
natural to life in a mean street. That house was poor indeed which did
not possess its gramophone. The womenfolk were curiously predominant to
those who remembered the old-time loungers at the corner "pubs," and
that womenfolk, disdainful of the feathers of the long ago, was arrayed
in startlingly smart, well-emphasized, cheap copies of the latest
fashions, oddly incongruous with the tall, smoke-vomiting chimneys of
Messrs. Hathaway's great factory which closed the vista of the street.
The sparseness of the men, immediately remarked, received a solemn
significance from the flag-hung shrine on the wall of the Council
School. The children who played in front of it--paper helmet, tin-can
drum and wooden sword--were vividly cognizant that this was a time of
War.
It was evening, and from the great gates of Messrs. Hathaway's factory
poured a ceaseless stream of women. But not this evening did that
stream flow down the street with its usual swift and uninterrupted
course. There were checks in it--obstacles of groups that talked
excitedly and forgot to progress--while others in eager haste eddied
round them. On the high wall by the gate, a bill-poster was covering a
"War Savings" placard with another of different meaning. A black cloud
of smoke drifted away from the tall chimneys and was not reinforced
other than by faint and lessening wisps.
A young woman, one of those whose urgent haste trifled not with
talk, hurried down the street, stopped before one of the neatest
house-fronts, tremblingly thrust a key into the latch, opened and ran
breathlessly upstairs.
A grey-haired old woman rose from a wooden chair by the side of a
cradle in a clean and modestly furnished room. At the entrance of her
daughter-in-law she laid a finger on her lips and looked warningly to
the infant. Then remarking an obvious distress, she changed colour.
"What's the matter, Ann?" she whispered, shaking with a sudden alarm.
She had to steady herself by the support of the table. "Not--Jim?"
The young woman shook her head, controlled her panting breath.
"Hathaway's!" she brought out. "Closing down!"
The elder stared speechlessly for a moment, then seated herself with
that blank mute resignation of the aged poor, long disillusioned of
any title to good fortune. The fingers of her unshapely hands twined
and untwined themselves tensely in her lap.
"Don't you hear, mother?" said the young woman irritably. "Hathaway's
are closing down!"
"Oh, dear!" the old woman raised a face that was strained with imminent
tears. "I knew it 'ud never last--I knew it 'ud never last!"
"What we shall do, 'Eaven knows!" said Ann, viciously accenting the
sole possible fount of knowledge. "They're all closing down--all of
'em, all round!" Her gesture, as she unpinned her hat and put it, with
an excess of energy, on the table, testified to the completeness of
the closed horizon. She stood looking at the sleeping child, her brows
bent, her mouth troubled. Then suddenly she flung herself on her knees
and buried her head in the old woman's lap, shaking with sobs.
"Oh, I did so want to keep it nice for Jim when 'e comes back! I did! I
did! All we've got together. And now it'll all go--bit by bit! And I've
worked so 'ard--so very 'ard! An' 'e'll never see, never know 'ow nice
it was! Oh--mother!" She could utter no more words, only inarticulate
sounds.
The old woman soothed her, stroking her hair.
"There, dear! there, dear! Don't take on! It'll all come right. I can
go out again an' do a bit of cleanin'. I daresay Mrs. Smith'll take me
on again. I ain't done no work for a long while--sitting 'ere eatin'
your bread--I've 'ad a nice rest, I 'ave--I'm quite strong again now.
We'll both get somethin', you see, dear!"
The young woman raised herself.
"No!--No!--No!--You shan't work any more!" She turned her head wearily.
"I can't make it out. _What's happening?_ Why are they all shutting
down like this?"
The old woman looked at her stupidly. The remote causes which made or
unmade her unimportant existence were beyond her comprehension.
"What's that?" cried Ann, jumping to her feet. "_What's 'e calling?_"
The raucous shout of a newsvendor floated up from the street. Ann
listened for a moment--and then, after a hurried search for a halfpenny
in her purse, dashed out of the door and down the stairs.
She reappeared after a bare minute, brandishing the newspaper,
wild-eyed, panting.
"Mother! Mother!" She could not wait to enter the door before
commencing her news. "It's Peace! _Peace!_" She struggled with the
unfolded paper, crushed it together again, searching eagerly for the
magic headlines. "Here it is! Listen!" The old woman, equally all
trembling eagerness, was standing at her side, pawing vaguely at the
arm which held the newspaper. Ann read out the great news. "'_The wild
rumours current during the past few days have received a startling
confirmation. It is announced that an armistice has been signed on all
the fronts. This undoubtedly means a general Peace. The end of the
war has come._' Mother! it's all over! it's all over--and Jim'll be
coming back! Oh, I can't 'ardly believe it! _It's all over!_ Oh, thank
God--thank God!"
"All over! My Jim! Safe and sound! Oh," the old woman commenced that
sniffling weep common to the aged and the young. "I can't 'elp it,
Ann--I can't 'elp it!--I must cry!"
Ann dashed down the newspaper and flung her arms round the old woman
in a close embrace. "Mother! Mother! I never was so"--and here a sob
checked her speech also--"so 'appy in my life!" Face against face,
the tears of the two women mingled--tears not of grief but of emotion
for which there was no expression. Somewhere down the street church
bells were ringing in joyous peal on peal. It might have been merely a
coincidence of practice, but to the two women whose simple souls beat
close together, in a swoon of intense feeling that obliterated the
sharp outlines of environment, this happy rioting of the bells seemed a
holy blessing on the moment.
"Oh, Ann dear, Ann dear," said the old woman, looking up. "What a
thanksgiving it'll be for all the poor anxious women!"
"Oh, we're very lucky--we're very lucky. Jim'll be coming back. Think
of it, mother!"
They kissed one another as if each were kissing the man who would come
back as son and husband.
"We've got to keep it for 'im," said Ann. "All the little 'ome. An'
'e'll soon be back to work for us an' the baby, an' we shan't never be
parted any more! Oh, mother, think of the poor women who won't 'ave
no one to come back to 'em! When they see 'em marching by! Oh--we're
lucky, we're very lucky!"
The old woman stood staring out of the window in vague thought, her
eye caught by the vivid red of the flags on the War Shrine.
"It'll be a different world, Ann, when they all come back," she said.
"Them what 'ave been left be'ind all through will find lots missing
what they look for. And them what come back won't come back the same.
It'll never be the same again, any of it; let's 'ope it'll be better."
* * * * *
_They_ were coming back. The Mother-City of the Empire woke, silent of
traffic, decked for a day that knew no sufficient parallel, the day
when the thousands of her sons--those who had gone in their ones and
twos, their single battalions--should march back from vast adventure in
the full majesty of their corporate soldier-life. The London Divisions
were coming back from the War, were marching for the last time at full
strength. And the London streets were tunnels of gay flags, walled with
black masses of citizens kept clear from the sanded roadways. From
every steeple the bells tossed out their exuberant rejoicing. In every
breast of the millions there congregated was a surge of emotion that
exhaled in one sustained murmur of the gladness for which there are no
words but which fills the eyes and chokes the throat.
They were coming! The thrilling blare of instruments of brass; the
heart-stirring tap and roll and beat of the drums; the intoxicating
rhythmic swinging lilt and crash; the brave gay runs of melody,
sublimely simple, that bring the tears; the solid, even tramp of
thousands who march as one--and the leading files were passing in a
storm of cheers, a madness of waving hands. For the last time they
passed shoulder to shoulder in the familiar ranks, marching as they
had marched for all the years of exile, marching as they had marched
down the fatal roads to Loos and Gommecourt, Guillemont and all those
rubble heaps where the bravest and the dearest of the greatest city of
the world died for the fragment of a village and for England. Rifles
at the slope, bare bayonets asserting the ancient privileges that they
had won, O so dearly, the right to flaunt, the heavy weather-stained
pack on the sturdy shoulders, the steel helmets awry with the tilt
of long-familiar use, the brown strong faces gleaming with their
smiles--so they marched, not any more under the thunder of the guns,
but in a frenzy of voices where the madly rioting bells were lost.