bridge-company, mopping a smudged and perspiring visage with a
handkerchief that shrieked for the wash.
"By the Great Brass Hat! so I have, but I'd forgotten all about it,"
said Franky, surveying the carnage in the golden sunlight of the
newly-minted day. "Look at these fellows in French uniforms. It's an
insult to the Allies to bury 'em like that. Couldn't we take off the
blue coats and red baggies before we stow 'em underground? And the
prisoners. What beauties! Whining 'Kamerad!' to our chaps, and putting
their hands up for mercy. Do they suppose----"
The speaker ceased, for the brother-officer who had commanded the
bridge-company was absorbed in looking through his binoculars at a
silvery speck in the western heavens. It grew into a British R.F.C.
scouting biplane, that came droning overhead at 4,000, circled, fired a
white rocket for attention, dived nearer, circled again, and dropped a
scrawled message in a leaded clip-bag.
"_Enemy-column--infantry with motor-lorries and two guns crossing
river--bridge a mile to the West of you--hurrying hell-for-leather
North. Dropped them two bombs. Bigger column advancing from North with
more motor-lorries and howitzers. Look out for squalls that direction.
Roads to South all clear._"
"Those crossing the bridge to west of us will be the gentlemen who came
round that way to leave their cards!" said the Lieutenant-Colonel
Commanding as the biplane sang itself away. "Probably a column detached
for the surprise from the bigger force to the north. Well, we seem to
have finished top-dog. Let's hope they won't tackle us again until the
men have had their coffee. 'Phone the Brigadier at Zille! And
'wireless' the news of the scrimmage to the Divisional Commander at Baix
and Marwics thirty miles south of us, and get a message through to Sir
Kenneth"--he named the General Officer Commanding the A.C. to which the
Brigade belonged. "And give details to the G.H.Q. at St. O., don't
forget! Not that we'll get much credit over this." The Colonel
scowled, surveying from the sandbagged window of Headquarters, situate
in the Factory, the long lines of stretchers being trotted off by the
R.A.M.C. bearers to the town Hospital. He rubbed his finger under the
bristles of his close-clipped moustache with a rasping sound that
conveyed his irritation as he went on: "That's the worst of these rotten
little Advance-guard actions! They're expensive, infernally expensive.
The casualties are heavy and the credit _nil_."
"Possibly, sir, but at any rate we've wiped out a lot of these Boche
beggars," said the Battery Commander, optimistically. "Halloa! Bird
over! And it's a Boche plane!"
A two-seated Taube, shining silver in the morning sunshine, had come out
of the golden mists to northward, rolling up the landscape under its
steel belly with wonderful steady swiftness. At some 3,000 above the
town, it hovered, making a queer buzzing noise.
"I've heard that song before," said the Adjutant, his eyes glued to his
binoculars. "You remember, sir, at Fegny?"
"The spotter our fellows christened the Buzzard. At his old
smoke-signalling tactics." The Colonel snatched the Field-telephone,
spoke, and from a gaping skylight at the top of the tall, square,
many-windowed Factory an extravagantly-tilted Maxim began to pump lead
skywards in a glittering fan-shaped stream. "Queer effect, uncommonly!
Looks as if it were raining upside down.... Gad!--I believe that hit
him!" he added, as a small dark object fell from the Hunnish monoplane.
But it was only the inevitable miniature parachute with the smoke-rocket
attached to it belching gouts of black vapour. The Buzzard ceased
buzzing, banked, and climbed gracefully out of view.
And then, with a leaping of green-white tongues of flame away in the
north, beyond a long sunlit stretch of level country fringed with
poplars and streaked with canals, and patched with brown cornfields and
golden-tinted woods and apple-laden orchards, and dotted with little
towns and villages, the heavy German field-guns and 11.2-inch Krupp
howitzers began to shower shrapnel and big steel shells of High
Explosive upon the devoted little town.
The Kaisermen had got the range from their spotter. Half of the single
Field battery of 18-pounder quick-firers were put out of action in the
twinkling of an eye. The little town became a storm-centre, canopied by
soot-black smoke, stabbed by the fierce blue glares of the shell-bursts.
The houses were toppling. The ruins were blazing. The gasometer near
the station was hit and blew up with a fearful explosion. The streets
were full of shrieking, stampeding, dying townspeople and children.
"Save us! Take us with you!" they screamed to the Englishmen. For the
Divisional Commander at Baix and Marwics had telegraphed "Retire," and
the battalion was preparing to evacuate the town.
A great shell wrecked the Factory, killed the Adjutant and many of the
machine-gunners, and slightly wounded the C.O. The Romanesque
church-tower, whose bells had shrieked alarm in the little hours of the
morning, rocked, staggered, and collapsed over its famous chime.
Again, men had melted as you laid your hands on them, blown into crimson
rags as their mouths opened shouting to you. It had been Hell, Franky
remembered, sheer, absolute, unvarnished Hell. The Battalion
Surgeon-Major had been dressing his wounded arm in the open street when
the Death-blizzard had broken upon them. A lump of shrapnel hit Franky
in the ribs on the right side and some R.A.M.C. bearers carried him,
vomiting blood, into the baker's shop. Possibly they were killed--for a
shell hit and burst, and wrecked the house in the instant of their
leaving it--and they never came back again. Their charge, in his
helplessness, had escaped death by a narrow shave. The plank flooring
of the upper room, dropping from the broken joist at the fireplace end,
had formed a penthouse over him--lying on the blood-soaked stretcher on
the tiled flooring--shielding him from the avalanche of household
furniture, glass and crockery, descending from overhead.
Thus he had lain, partially unconscious, when what was left of the
battalion marched out of the town. Most of the population followed on
the blistered heels of the British soldiers, helping to carry the
stretchers of the wounded and crippled men who under that blizzard of
fiery Death had been got out of the burning Hospital. Not all had been
got out. Franky, lying bloody and smothered with plaster, and helpless
under the penthouse of planking that had saved him, had heard the
screams of these--such pitiful, heart-rending screams.
Then the bombardment had stopped, and the mere relief from that
intolerable torture of outrageous sound was Heaven. The screams from
the burning Hospital had ceased, but when the earth had shaken with the
approach of a great host, and German cavalry in green-grey uniforms with
covered helmets had ridden through the ravaged streets, and the
tottering walls had trembled at the passage of colossal motor-tractors
dragging 11.2-inch Krupps and carrying huge loads of German gunners,
engineers, and infantry--and German voices had shouted harshly up and
down the streets--and German heads were thrust from open windows--and
the work of Pillage, so dear to the German heart, was being carried out
with German thoroughness--the screaming had begun again.--Cries of women
and children, shouts of men; pleas, expostulations, prayers for mercy in
French or Flemish, brutal laughter, German oaths, threats, and orders;
subsequently, to the accompaniment of "_Deutschland, Deutschland, ueber
Alles_"--the popping of corks and the breaking of glasses--Hochs for
Kaiser and Kronprinz, fierce disputes over the divison of booty, more
shrieks of women and girls.... To the funeral adagio of picks and
mattocks upon the cobblestones of the Market Square. A volley then, and
shots and more shots.... Subsequently Private of Infantry, Max
Schlutter, made these scrawled entries in his note-book; testifying to
the Sadism prevailing among the troops of the Attila of To-day:
"_October --th, 1914. Great day of loot and plunder! We shelled the
cowardly English--a whole Army Corps with a brigade of heavy
Artillery--out of the village of H----. The Hospital, Barracks, Church,
and many houses destroyed by our guns. The Mayor, the Burgomaster, and
the Registrar shot for harbouring our enemies. The priest tied up to
his church-door, tortured, and then burnt, for ringing the bells to warn
the English of our approach. Lieutenant Rossberg had a little girl
butchered like a pigling, and pounded the feet of some lame English
soldiers we found hiding, to teach the swine how to dance. They too
were shot. Decidedly the Lieutenant is a funny fellow. All the people
who had not run away brought out of their houses and shot. They filled
the air with their lamentations. After a grand gorge and a big swill,
we now all drunk and slept on the pavements by the light of a
magnificent silvery moon. Burned more houses, and continued the march
next day with a hellishly bad head._"
"How long before they find me out?" Franky had wondered. But the
plaster-whitened brown boots sticking stiffly out under the penthouse of
broken flooring must have looked as though they clothed the rigid feet
of a dead man. "Presently they will come!" he had promised himself. But
though they had sacked the baker's shop and visited the other rooms in
the dwelling, no one had entered the ravaged little parlour, split open
from floor to ceiling by the upburst of the High Explosive, and offering
its ravaged, worthless interior to the scrutiny of every passing eye.
Worn and spent with fierce exertion, hard fighting, and loss of blood,
delirious with the rising fever of his wounds, he was conscious in
whiffs and snatches. The conscious intervals made fiery streaks across
broad belts of murky shadow, a No Man's Land wherein Franky wandered,
meeting things both beautiful and hideous, knowing nothing real except
thirst, racking cramps, and stabbing pain.
The second day passed. At sun-high a distant fury of guns broke out.
Through the terrible drum-fire of Prussian Artillery he fancied he could
hear the British field-guns, hammering out Death in return for Death.
Suffering agonies for lack of water, he sustained life with scraps of
chocolate broken from a half-cake carried in a breast-pocket. To move
one hand and carry it to his mouth was possible at cost of ugly pain.
Night fell, a night that was rainy, and windy, full of cool drippings
that wet Franky's clothes without visiting his baked lips, and still the
cannonade went on ceaselessly--so that the crazy walls that sheltered
him shuddered and the earth vibrated, and the eeriness was made more
eerie with the sliding of tiles from broken rafters, and the creaking
and banging of broken doors, slammed by ghostly, invisible hands. Pale
splashes of light,--reflected stabs of fire from the muzzles of those
unsleeping guns in the south and west, made the darkness yet more
dreary. Rats scrambled and squeaked, close to him in the obscurity,
evoking horrible suggestions of being gnawed and bitten as one lay
helpless there.... He gritted his teeth to keep back the cry that
nearly broke from him as one rodent crossed him, its hooked claws
rattling against his straps and buttons, its cold hairless tail sliding
snakily over his hand. He fancied that he saw its eyes shining in the
darkness--he was certain that it had moved and lopped round behind
him--he felt its whiskered snout cautiously approaching the throbbing
artery beneath his ear.... Then his nerve left him, and he croaked out
feebly, though it seemed to him that he shouted:
"S'cat, you brute! Get, you beggar! Halloa; Halloa! _Belges au
secours_! _Ici un Anglais, grievement blesse_! Is anybody there?"
But there came no answer save the muffled thunder of guns in the
distance, the crackle of fire in houses that were burning, the gurgling
of a broken water-main, and the distressed miaowing of a cat. It came
nearer. There was a rustling sound, and the light descent of a furry
body on padded feet; Pussy had jumped in where the window had been,
alighting not far from Franky. He could see a pair of green eyes
lamping in the darkness, and called, seductively:
"Pussy, pussy! Come here, old girl!"
The purr came near. Franky, with infinite torment reached out a hand,
felt and stroked a warm, furry body. He said, cautiously feeling for
the appreciative, sensitive places at the nape of a cat's neck, and
under the jaws:
"Good old girl. Don't know what they call cats in Flemish, but Pussy
seems to be good enough for you. Stop and scare the rats away, give 'em
fits, eh, Pussy? You're agreeable? Good egg! Oh--I say!"
For Pussy had walked, loudly purring, on to the chest that heaved so
painfully, and proceeded to knead the surface scientifically,
preparatory to curling down. Franky set his teeth, and bore the ordeal.
Thus they kept company until morning, when Pussy, who proved to be a
lean white Tom with patches of sandy tortoiseshell on flanks and
shoulders, withdrew by the fanged opening where the window had been. A
moment later Franky heard his late companion lapping noisily from a
street-puddle and knew envy, in the anguish of his own unrelieved
thirst.
He wandered then for a space of hours or instants, in the days of his
own lost childhood. He was in the night-nursery at Whins, suffering
from some feverish ill. He felt the prickling as of innumerable ants
running up his limbs and the sweat upon his forehead, and called
meaningly to Nurse for drink. But it was his mother in her
dinner-dress, with shining jewels crowning her dark hair, and wreathing
her neck and starring her bosom, who came to the bedside and leaned over
him, put the rumpled hair from his hot forehead, and held to his lips
the cup of milk. Then a droning sound made the room vibrate, and he was
back with his company in the hastily-dug trench across the mouth of the
west-running thoroughfare, and church-bells were clanging and the
telephone-buzzer was calling for the reserve to double out and reinforce
the men in the trench enfilading the bridge....
Then he was awake and the sun was high. Those guns in the west were
silent now, though from the south and south-east came heavy thuds and
long vibrations. Through the rents in the flooring above him by which
the rain had dripped upon him in the night, he was looking at the blue
sky. A big white bird hovered there. Not a bird--a Taube. _The_
Taube, and he had not dreamed the buzzing after all.
Oh, but it was queer to lie there under the keen scrutiny of that eye in
the heavens! It made the prickly ants swarm up Franky's thighs and
sides until the sensation grew unbearable. Hate, fierce hate of the
murderous, beautiful thing droning up there in the azure sky above its
curious misty circle made him see everything red, made him want to yell
and shriek. For Margot was in danger, somehow--somewhere--while one lay
helpless as a log....
"Steady, old child!" whispered Franky to himself, warningly. "You're
going off your chump. Hold still!"
And he held still. The Buzzard ceased to buzz, and floated on, droning.
He fancied that he felt its shadow darken and pass over him, moving from
his head to his feet. The noise of the tractor stopped. Reflected in
the area of a skewed wall-mirror he saw the machine volplane down, and
alight without a falter in the Market Place--before the smoking ruins of
the Town Hall.
*CHAPTER LXI*
*LYNETTE DREAMS*
Upon that same night in October nearly five weeks following the breaking
of the Woe Wave, Lynette Saxham had a strange dream.
It seemed to her that she saw piled up in one colossal heap the riches
of all the world, the world we know and the world we have forgotten; the
treasures of all ages piled up higher than Kilimanjaro, or Aconcagua, or
the cloud-mantled peak of Mount Everest. To her feet as she stood
spell-bound amongst the foothills, rolled jewelled crowns, and huge
barbaric torques and diadems of rough gold, precious cups, vases, and
chargers; outpoured treasures of precious stones and wrought gems of
inconceivable beauty and vileness, wondrous fabrics, marvels of
sculpture, weapons, armour and coins of age beyond the ages--rude discs
of tarnished gold, stamped with the effigies of forgotten kings.
Orders, decorations, the paraphernalia of Pomp, the stage-properties of
Power, the symbols of every religion, save One, were mingled in the
stupendous pile, and a terrible Voice cried:
"Gone is the age of pride in possession! Chattels and fardels are no
more! The days have spilt like pearls from a broken necklace! Time has
eaten the years as the moth a garment of wool! Foredone, foregone,
finished! Who now will gather riches from the Dustheap of the World?"
And as new avalanches of treasure rolled downwards to the reverberation
of that thunderous shout, a Hand of Titanic proportions hurled down upon
the heap a war-chariot of beaten gold, with great scythed wheels, and
jewelled harness; and that vision changed, and the dreamer was drowning,
deep down in clear green seas, under the rushing keel of a huge barbaric
War-galley that was all of gold, arabesqued and bossed with jewels, and
coral, and pearl.
And the sense of suffocation passed, and a wonderful cool peace flowed
in upon Lynette. She seemed to be led by a beloved hand that had been
dust for years, into a bare walled place through which a thin breeze
piped shrilly. Someone was there, doing some manual labour. He turned,
and with a shock of unutterable rapture Lynette was looking in the face
of her lost boy.
Bawne had grown thin and seemed taller. His temples had hollowed, his
plume of tawny-gold hair hung unkempt over his wide white forehead. But
his blue eyes were as sweet as ever. She had never realised how like
they were to Saxham's in shape and colour, and in expression, until now.
He thrust his lower jaw out and knit his brows slightly, as though her
face were fading from his vision, and he wished to fix in mind the
memory of its well-loved features:
"Stay, Mother! Oh! Mother, don't leave me!" he cried, and stretched
out his hands to her, and she awakened, weeping for sorrow and joy.
It was broad day. Her husband was not there. She rose and bathed in
the cold water she loved, and dressed in the simple Quaker-like grey
that set off her fairness, and went out to Mass.... The day's
Preparation was taken from the noble prayer of St. Ambrose, Bishop and
Confessor:
"_And now before Thee, O Lord, I lay the troubles of the poor; the
sorrows of nations, and the groanings of those in bondage; the
desolation of the fatherless; the weariness of wayfarers; the
helplessness of the sick; the struggles of the dying; the failing
strength of the aged; the ambitious hopes of young men; the high desires
of maidens; and the widow's tears. For Thou, O Lord, art full of pity
for all men: nor hatest aught of that which Thou hast made._"
He even loved von Herrnung, who had taken her boy, and kept him in
slavery, and robbed the joyous light from his sweet eyes, and set
amongst his red-brown hair one sinister streak of white. She saw the
bleached forelock dangling before her eyes when she shut them and tried
to pray for the Enemy:
"Oh God! forgive that evil man, and turn his heart towards mercy and
pitifulness, and give me back Thy precious gift, for the love of Her who
is Thy Mother!"
It was yet early when she returned to Harley Street and passed at once
into the Doctor's consulting-room. There, where her lips had first
kissed him, sleeping in his chair, she found Saxham sitting at his
table, with his sorrow of heart revealed in the stoop of his great
shoulders, and his greying head resting upon his hands. Not a sound did
he utter, but the attitude was more than eloquent:
"Oh my son!" it said. "Oh me!--my little son!"
"Owen!" she said, coming to his side and touching him. Then, as he
started and looked up: "Bawne is alive!" she cried. "I have seen him in
a dream, and he has spoken to me. He was in a bare high place with
corrugated iron walls, whitened. It made me think of the Hospital at
Gueldersdorp in the old days, and of a hangar.... His clothes were
soiled and torn, and his hands were blackened. One other thing I
saw--but I will not wring your heart by telling you.... It is enough
that I have seen our boy.... alive. Oh! thank God!" She stopped, and
the rose of joy faded from her cheeks, and only the tears were left
there. Her eyes widened with a terrible doubt. "You _knew_! ... It is
in your face! You had heard ... something, and you did not tell me!"
"I had not the courage. Despise me, for I deserve it! I had news of
Bawne at the end of August. He is with that man who stole him--" He
clenched the hand that rested on the table until the knuckles showed
white upon it and his hair was wet upon his forehead and his mouth was
twisted awry. "Taken with him on errands of aerial
reconnaissance--carried helplessly into battle as a Teddy bear or a
golliwog might be fastened on the front of a racing-plane. And, when I
remember that I bade him risk that journey--" Saxham broke off, and
turned his face away. She came nearer to him and said:
"But he is alive!--alive, even though he be in danger. My dream was sent
to tell me so. Did not the Mother come to me in my sleep and lead me to
him? Just as when she came and sent me here to you. Now I will atone
for these days of selfish grieving. Only give me work to do!"
"Have you not enough upon your hands already? Too much, I have
sometimes feared."
"Only the Hospice and the Schools," she answered eagerly, "and the
Training Houses for the elder women. And, thanks to you, these are
excellently staffed. If I were to die it would make little difference.
Things would go on just the same."
"Would they?"
She stooped, lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it. He looked at
her keenly as she did so, and the over-bright flush upon the thin cheeks
and the hollows about the beautiful eyes, like the burning touch of her
hand and of her lips, told him their tale of woe.
"Not for you. Nothing would ever be the same for you or for Bawne.
Therefore--give me more work."
"There is plenty of work, unhappily," he said, "because of this calamity
that has fallen upon the nation. We have notice that a hundred wounded
men from the Front--many of them cot-cases--will arrive at SS.
Stanislaus and Theresa's at three this afternoon."
"I shall be there!"
"I am not going to try to dissuade you. I will not keep back what God
has given to me from those who have given so much for England. There is
another quarter where you will be of use." His eyes were on the
triptych frame before him. "I speak of that little Lady
Norwater--Patrine's friend--I think you have not met?"
"Oh, but I have. We were made acquainted with each other some weeks ago
at the Club." Her delicate face contracted. "That day when the news
came about the British losses. Just before that poor child Brenda
Helvellyn blurted out the dreadful truth. Owen, it was tragic. She had
known it from the beginning----"
"And the sister forbade her to breathe a hint of it. That is the
attitude of the fashionable Sadducean," said Saxham bitterly, "who not
only denies the Atonement and the Resurrection, but will not admit of
Death."
"But," she asked him, "what of Lady Norwater? Patrine tells me she is
ill."
"She is ill. Lord Norwater--at first reported missing after an action
north of Ypres on the --th is now said to have been killed."
Lynette was silent. Her husband knew why her head was bent and her
white fingers sought a little Crucifix she wore. She was praying for
the dead man. Presently she said:
"He was very brave, I believe?'
"He had been recommended for the Victoria Cross for a special service of
great gallantry--rendered during the Battle of the Aisne. He was a
brave and simple young man, and very lovable. His wife received the
official intelligence of his death yesterday. They 'phoned Patrine, as
you know, and sent for me later. Lady Norwater is expecting her
confinement at the end of November--and they were alarmed for her."
"Poor little soul! Her baby will be a comfort to her!"