UNDER FIRE
Yes, an awkward business, this, of a man and two girl cousins in a
country house. Phil was sensible of it as he started to walk back from
the station with Henriette, carrying her bag and his own.
"We have Jacqueline," she said, as if divining what was in his mind.
"A most dependable person, Jacqueline. Mother is quite safe and we
shall see the war. Besides, we simply could not leave Helen alone."
Coming to the top of a rise they stopped short. The steady thunder of
the guns became suddenly audible and against the green background of
distant woods little puffs of smoke that seemed born of nothing were
breaking and spreading into a mist which was as innocent-looking as a
fleecy cloud on a summer day.
"One cannot realise what is going on there," remarked Phil, "though we
shall if it comes to us."
"Then we go into the cellar, don't we, and wait?"
"I believe that is the rule," he said. "You've a good spirit."
"That is easy when a woman has a man along whom she can rely upon," she
replied cheerfully. "We have not been used to having a man at Mervaux."
When they entered the house they found that Helen was still absent.
Jacqueline did not know where she had gone.
"I suppose the first thing is to settle down again," said Henriette.
Phil took her bag upstairs. When he returned to the sitting-room Helen
was just entering.
"You!" she exclaimed. "I----" and she paused, no words coming to her.
When she had thought that the house, the world, and the battle were
hers came this intrusion by the one person whom she did not wish to see
again! She ought to welcome him and she could not break silence.
"We could not let you remain here alone when we heard that you were
going to stay," he explained. "In fact, could you expect any decent
cousin to do otherwise?" he added.
Her eyes which had been stonily dull gave their first signal. It was
smiling mischief, which developed into one of her laughs.
"It was such a surprise that I must have looked as if I were seeing
ghosts," she said. "It's a tribute to Jacqueline's omelets. You see,
I relied on them to keep the Germans from looting the house. I meant
to meet the invader with an omelet instead of an olive branch."
She carried the part off well once she was started, leaving him puzzled
and wishing that she would continue her mood--any mood that livened her
features.
"Oh, I didn't think I could stand at the door and defy the German
hosts!" he explained. "Only, being a man, well--I----"
"You were going to play the masculine part of protector. I do feel
more safe. Any woman must, being a woman and subject to conventional
sex inheritances"--this with a trifle of condescension, which was
shattered by utter astonishment as Henriette appeared.
"I did not mean to make you jump out of your shoes," said Henriette.
"Mother was aboard the train all right?" Helen asked.
"Yes; quite."
"Did she want you to come back, too?"
"No. What kind of a sister did you think I was, you brave, foolish
Helen? Did you think I would go to Paris and leave you here?"
She had slipped her arm around Helen's waist with a rallying burst of
affection, which concluded with a kiss and a nestling of her cheek
against Helen's as she looked at Phil. The two faces were close
together, Henriette smiling devotedly and Helen quite still in
contrast; the one at her best and the other at her worst. Then Helen
looked around at her sister studiously and back at Phil.
"I'm glad you both came," she said. "I--is there another train to
Paris?" she asked abruptly.
"No, that was the last," Phil answered.
"So we are here together, come what will," she said slowly, with an odd
emphasis. "I just came back for my drawing things. The French are
retreating along the road and the German shells are coming nearer. I
can't afford to waste a minute."
She took up her drawing materials from the table. As she turned to
leave the room, something in her attitude made Phil arrest her.
"You are not going into danger?"
"No, not in the least; to sketch is all," she replied.
"I think that my part is to keep watch of you," he said. "May I go
with you?"
"And I want to see, too!" Henriette put in.
"Come on, then. If you are going to look after us both we must not be
separated," said Helen.
She walked ahead, however, leaving them to follow. From the terrace
they cut across the fields behind the battery. Its commander was too
busy to pay any attention to them and the rider with the caissons
galloping over the field with more shells, careening and slewing as the
knowing hands guided the horses, did not give even passing notice to
the young man and two young women.
Helen dropped on the ground with her back to a shock of wheat and began
to sketch the battery. She was in action no less than the gunners of
the _soixante-quinze_, whom she made live in lines drawn by her swift
fingers on white paper. Phil, unable to tell what was the gunners'
target or which if any of the white balls of smoke in the distance were
made by the screaming messengers they sent, looked around at her and it
seemed quite in keeping that she should be present, her shoulders drawn
in, her lips moving, as she sketched, with Phil and Henriette in the
role of spectators.
"Now for the road!" she said, rising.
There, mistily through the dust, blue coats and red trousers showed in
a moving stream to the rear between intervals of transport. The guns
had had something of the splendour of war, but not these weary men
leaving the soil of France behind to the enemy, beards from four weeks'
campaigning white and brown with dust, eyes sunken, feet hobbling and
sore, plodding on to the rear.
From this point of high ground a small town was visible in another lap
of the hills, where French towns prefer to lie snug from the wind. The
air was clear; sound carried far. A scream different from that of the
shells from the mouth of French guns was heard; a scream that came
toward them and ended in a crash, as if a steel ball had split into
fragments, as it had. Over the house-tops of the town rose a cloud of
dust and black smoke. Then another, and, sound travelling slower than
sight, they again heard the rush of the projectile and its burst.
Henriette gripped Phil's arm, but said nothing.
An officer of infantry looked around and nodded at the burst over the
town in understanding. He spoke to an old colonel with white moustache
who seemed asleep on his horse. The colonel shook his head as much as
to say that there was no danger; that nothing could reach them at that
range.
Helen had not seen the bursts in the town. She was trying to get the
old colonel, the wounded men on the tops of wagons, the wounded on
foot, in lines which should tell of the meaning of retreat in the
suggestiveness of types.
"I'm not sure that we ought to remain here," said Phil.
"Why not?" asked Helen.
He pointed to the bursting shells.
"Oh, I couldn't go away!" was her only response.
Then the pencil dropped from her hand. Phil ducked as instinctively as
if some one had struck the back of his neck and Henriette clung close
to him with a cry of terror, for that approaching scream which had been
distant was coming straight for them in the growing volume of a horror
that froze the marrow. All the men on the road struck for one side or
the other, their ducking forms flashing immutably on the retina of the
eye in that awful second before a cloud of earth and dust spouted from
an explosion on the other side of the road.
They were still alive. It was miraculous that they should be when they
had died a score of deaths in that second. Helen tried to pick up her
pencil and Henriette moaned: this much of an impression before the
second shell came. It was nearer; death this time, without doubt. But
it burst a hundred yards in front of them and some fragments whizzed by
their ears.
Phil looked around for cover; for anything which would give them some
protection. There was nothing near except wheat shocks. He swung
Henriette around on the other side of him from the direction of the
shells and called out to lie down. He could think of nothing else
unless they ran. But which way should they run? The next burst was
between them and the house; the next on the other side of the road.
That was four. He remembered that batteries had four guns and fired in
salvos. The target was evidently the road and the thing to do, then,
must be to get away from the road.
"Run for it!" he cried. "That gully!"
Helen sprang up. Henriette tried to rise and could not. She was
numbed with terror. Her eyes in mortal appeal spoke her helplessness.
He was almost glad of this. It made him seem of some use as a
masculine being in face of this hellish burst of destruction, which
made unarmed men as feeble as a fly under a hammer. He did the natural
thing, picked her up in his arms. She seemed very light, very yielding
and trembling and strangely pale, beautiful, and trusting.
"Hurry on, Helen! I'll keep up with you, I'm so scared!" he called.
His voice sounded quite merry, as he meant it should. What travesty!
He wished that he were back in Longfield or Mexico, anywhere than in
that particular portion of France which a German battery was pounding.
Other figures were running, too. The world seemed full of skurrying
figures. Flight was the fashion.
More screams, ending in explosions, and with every one the figure in
his arms trembled. But each scream was farther behind them as they
hurried on. When he reached the gully he laid his burden on the grass
at the bottom of it. If the target were the road they ought to be
safe. At least, he could take a minute to decide what next to do. He
looked back toward the road and saw the soldiers forming line in the
fields under the direction of their officers. The old colonel sitting
erect on his horse still remained beside the road, shouting his
commands. A black cloud hid him and when it cleared away he and the
horse were gone and there was a hole in the road where they had been.
Then a crack overhead drew Phil's attention from the road. There was a
whizzing through the air and little spurts of dust rose from the earth,
and over all a puff of smoke like those he had seen in the distance
against the green hills. Phil understood that this was shrapnel and
the other which burst in the earth was a high explosive.
What next? The gully was not long. Should he attempt another run?
But a shrapnel bursting over the other end of the gully made him
hesitate. The two girls were hugging the bank and he dropped down
beside Henriette, who caught his hand in hers, trembling again with new
fear. Helen was lying face downward, holding fast to her portfolio.
She looked toward him and in her eyes was the mischievous challenge and
on her lips was playing the same humour he had seen across the table at
Truckleford.
"Now don't you wish you had gone on to Paris?" she asked.
"Not unless you came," he answered. "Look there!"
Another high explosive had burst, and where they had been sitting
beside the road a rising column of smoke showed a hole.
"I--I----" whispered Henriette, and her eyes spoke what her lips could
not.
But was the road the target? Another scream straight for them and
again they thought: "This is death!" The explosion twenty or thirty
yards short of the gully covered them with dust. A human something,
red and blue, half rolled, half tumbled down the bank at their feet and
lay there inert, stunned. A gash showed on the soldier's cheek and his
hand reached for his arm where the torn flesh was trickling red. With
the other he fumbled instinctively for a first field dressing.
Here was something positive to do. Phil, who had envied the cool
officers directing their men in the preoccupation of action, tore down
the sleeve and opened the dressing. There was silence now; no screams
in the air; no explosions. Yes, utter silence had settled over the
field except for the officer's commands. Drops of blood fell from the
soldier's cheek on Phil's hands as he applied the first aid and
Henriette's fingers were aimlessly hovering about trying to assist.
"You are a good spirit, Mademoiselle," said the soldier, happy in the
realisation of life and the cessation of the shell-fire.
"Yes, Henriette," Phil added.
"I will go on," said the soldier, scrambling to his feet. "It is
nothing."
"But are you strong enough?" Phil protested.
"I was not hit in the legs. A little farther along the road I'll get
on a wagon," he said. "And you, Monsieur, you and the ladies run to
the nearest cellar. That one has fainted, Monsieur--and thank you!"
He was gone.
Phil turned to see Helen prostrate, her head on her portfolio. But she
recovered herself as he started toward her, looking up at him vaguely;
then with a surge of vitality and a gesture of disgust she sat up.
"It was the sight of blood," she said. "I could not bear that. I'm
very ashamed, but quite all right, now," she concluded, with a toss of
her head and a smile.
"I helped dress his wound, poor fellow!" Henriette murmured.