* * * * *
As the remainder of the incident is a matter of historical record I
shall not describe the advance of a portion of our Army into V——.
They found the garrison either surrendered, fled or under Tish’s fire in
the beer cellar, and were, I believe, at first seriously menaced by that
indomitable figure. It was also extremely difficult to rescue Aggie, as
at first she persisted in firing through the floor of the platform the
moment she heard any one ascending. In due time, however, she was
brought down, but as any mention of the tower for some time gave her a
nervous chill it was several weeks before we heard her story.
I doubt if we would have heard it even then had not Mr. Burton and Hilda
come to Paris on their wedding trip. We had a dinner for them at the
Café de Paris, and Mr. Burton told us that we were all to have the Croix
de Guerre. He insisted on ordering champagne to celebrate, and Aggie
had two glasses, and then said the room was going round like the weather
vane on the tower at V——.
She then went rather white and said: “The ladder was fastened to it, you
know.”
“What ladder?” Tish asked sharply.
“The rope ladder I was standing on. And when the wind blew——”
Well, we gave her another glass of wine, and she told us the tragic
story. She had fallen behind me, and was round a corner, when she felt a
sneezing spell coming on. So seeing a doorway she slipped in, and she
sneezed for about five minutes. When she came out there was nobody in
sight, and after wandering round she went back to the doorway and closed
the door.
There were stairs behind her, and when the counter attack came she ran
up the stairs. She knew then that she was in the church tower, but she
didn’t dare to come down. When the firing stopped in the streets a
soldier ran down the stairs and almost touched her. A moment later she
heard him coming back, so she climbed up ahead and got out on a balcony
above the clock. But he started to come out on the balcony, and just as
she was prepared to be shot her hand touched a rope ladder and she went
up it like a shot.
“It was dark, Tish,” she said with a shudder, “and I couldn’t look down.
But when morning came I was up beside the weather vane, and a sniper
from our lines must have thought I didn’t belong there, for he fired at
me every now and then.”
Well, it seems she hung there all day, and nobody noticed her. Luckily
the wind mostly kept her from the German side, and the sentry couldn’t
see her from the balcony. Then at last, the next evening, she heard him
going down, and she would have made her escape, but he had cut the rope
ladder below. She couldn’t imagine why.
Tish looked at me steadily.
“It is very strange,” she said. “But who can account for the instinct of
destruction in the Hun mind?”