Tab. "One runs a chance of getting decapitated--travelling fast at
night--or in foggy weather--without a jigger of this sort. Let me stick
this cushion at your back and tuck the rugs about you. There's a
Thermos in the pocket with hot coffee--and sandwiches in a box. Don't
restrain your appyloose if you feel at all hungry! The grub was put in
specially for you. No: you won't hear the guns yet, except at
intervals, and rather faintly. Fact--I've heard 'em in the South of
England more distinctly than one does here! But at St. O--,
twenty-eight miles from the Front--they're loud enough at times--though
there's nothing much doing. Things have been as dull as ditch-water and
none of us'll be sorry when the Boches get a move on again. No--thanks,
I'm not coming inside! Responsible for your safety. Advise you to tuck
up and go to by-by!"
The car settled into its speed when the ups and downs of the old town
had been left behind, and the belated activities of the Base Port had
died into a distant hum. It slackened pace when the blaze of its
headlights showed long black columns of laden motor-lorries upon the
wintry roads ahead of it--or horse-drawn transport waggons--or droves of
animals, the steam of whose breath and shaggy hides hung over them in a
cloud--or bodies of men in heavy marching order--French and British
soldiers wearing the new steel headpiece,--shaped after the fashion of
Mambrino's helmet, like a basin turned upside down.
And sometimes there were the halts at barriers or patrol-posts near
towns or villages, where the light of swung lanterns reddened the
moustached faces of gendarmes of Chasseurs. But usually when Patrine
cleared a space upon the misty window-glass, the snow-covered landscape
would be flying past under the fitful moonlight, with the elongated
shadow of the grey Staff car galloping beside it like a demon dog.
Midnight was striking from an ancient church-tower when, passing the
guarded barriers of a town of old-world houses, and stopping in a street
running from a Place bathed in frosty moonlight, and dominated by a vast
cathedral, Red Tab, with icicles on his clipped moustache and fur
collar, got down and tapped upon the rimy glass.
"Sorry to wake you up, Miss Saxham!" he said, opening the door as
Patrine sat up, straightened the dented brim of her hat and blinked
denial of her slumberousness, "but here's the end of your journey. This
is the Ursuline Convent of St. O--, where we've arranged for you to
billet to-night. The Superioress is a frightfully hospitable old lady,
and my uncle--I mean Sir Roland--thought you'd be more cushy with the
Sisters than at a common hotel!"
"Sir Roland is always kind. But you, Captain Smyth-Howell?" She looked
out at her red-tabbed escort with compunction as he tugged at the chain
of a clanging bell, and beat his mittened hands together, stamping upon
the pavement to warm his frozen feet.
"Me? Oh, I'm pushing on to Divisional Headquarters--twenty-five miles
from this place and five miles north of the Belgian frontier. You'll be
sent on to Pophereele in the morning, first thing. The French Chaplain
of the Red Cross Hospital there is staying for the night with the Bishop
at the Palace here. A tremendously agreeable old bird the Chaplain--and
a Monsignore of the Vatican. I've met him--and he said he'd be
delighted to look after you. Don't get down--it's frightfully
slippery!"
But the tall, womanly figure was already standing beside him on the
snowy cobblestones, tilting a round white chin towards the sky, and
narrowing long eyes--"queer eyes" he mentally termed them--to see the
better through her veil.
"What glorious stars!"
He liked the soft warmth of her voice, as he answered:
"Magnificent, aren't they? Look at Draco blazing away, high over the
north transept of the Cathedral. And that would be Aquila--I rather
fancy--lowish on the horizon, over that ruined tower. That's a bit of
their famous Abbey----"
"Great Scott!"
"Did anything startle you?" he asked. "You said----"
"I know I said it, but I didn't mean to. There, again--" She pointed
as forked tongues of pale rainbow-tinted fire leaped up from the
northern horizon, throwing into momentary relief the Cathedral's stately
bulk and the huddled housetops.
"Those are Boche fireworks!"
"Fireworks?"
"Star-shell, rockets, and so forth. They regularly treat us to a
display before they begin to pound us again. Where are we fighting?
Oh, pretty busy north--as far as Ypres and as far south as La Bassee.
French on our right--French and Belgians on the left of us. More French
holding Verdun. My hat! what gorgeous fighters! Men of steel with
muscles of vulcanised rubber. And we thought the Gaul an
absinthe-drinking degenerate. I tell you we wanted this War to open our
eyes for us. Perhaps they did too! Here's one of the Sisters coming
now!"
Hurrying felt slippers with rope soles shuffled over stone pavements.
The key grated and the bolts shot back. A little Sister Portress in a
close guimpe and flowing black veil, with a blue-checked apron tied over
her habit, swung back the heavy door, holding her lantern high.
Just Heaven, upon how cold a night Madame had arrived from England!
Madame must be perished. But there was coffee, and soup _tres chaud_
not only for Madame but for M. l'Officier. And also the chauffeur.
Madame _la Superieure_ would never permit that either should proceed
without nourishment. If M. l'Officier and his attendant preferred not
to enter, the Sister would wait upon them in the car.
And so Patrine, after taking leave of her red-tabbed escort, was led
away to the Mother Superior, a little, bright-eyed, kindly Religious,
full of solicitude for Mademoiselle, who, confessing to having emptied a
Thermos of hot coffee, and a box of sandwiches during the later stages
of the transit, was borne away from the guest's refectory up and down
several crooked flights of ancient stairs to a white-washed apartment,
containing a _prie-dieu_ and a big plaster Crucifix, a great walnut bed
with faded _Directoire_ curtains, a minute washstand,--a faint smell of
scorched wood, emanating from the perforated metal registers of a
_calorifere_, and a bad little coloured print of Lord Roberts, within a
stitched border of yellow _immortelles_ and faded laurel-leaves, that
had been green and fresh six months before....
Patrine spent a white night in the town where the old brave heart of the
great soldier had given its last throb for England. Not because those
thudding guns in the north and east kept her wakeful--or because she had
never stayed in a convent before.
She was going to Sherbrand--her Flying Man--who had been supposed to be
dead and found to be living,--and who had written to say that he did not
want Patrine. The letter lay against her heart, and her hands were
folded tightly over it, as she lay staring with shining eyes at the
drawn curtains flapping in the chill breeze stinging through the open
window that had been fastened with a nail when the English guest
arrived.
*CHAPTER LXXI*
*LIVING AND DEAD*
"PATHETIC ECHO OF AIR-TRAGEDY. SHERBRAND, R.F.C., NOT DEAD OR PRISONER.
RESCUED BY AMERICAN RED CROSS AMBULANCE. IN HOSPITAL NEAR YPRES. WILL
RECOVER, BUT BLIND FOR LIFE."
The clamorous headlines had followed close on a telephone from Sir
Roland. Patrine had learned what it means to cry for joy--an
unforgettable experience. She had discovered that one who kneels down
to thank God for a boon so marvellous, has no words left to offer Him,
nor even tears and sighs.
She had written again and again to Sherbrand, saying only "_Let me come
to you!_" Passionate, pitiful, tender letters, answered after weeks of
delay by one page in the stiff, neat handwriting of the American Red
Cross Nursing Sister who acted as amanuensis for the blind man.
"_April_, 1915.
"You have said that you wish to visit me in my blindness. I thank you
for the expressed desire, but I cannot receive you here! I have never
been the kind of man who bid for pity from women, and the ties that you
broke, voluntarily, six months ago, I do not wish to renew. My mother
has been here to bring me some things"--the French and Belgian
decorations, guessed Patrine--"and has gone away again. She understands
that it is best for me to remain here, because, although the War is over
as far as I am actively concerned, I can hear the guns and breathe the
breath of battle, and know when the 'planes pass overhead, and follow
them in thought. There is little else a blind man can do, except make
toys or baskets! Do not think me bitter or discontented--I am
neither--quite O.K. I wish people had been told I brought down the
Zepp., that's all! With gratitude for your kind and friendly
remembrance,
"Yours most sincerely,
"A. S."
A formal letter, but between the cold, stiff lines Patrine had read
reproach, and love, and yearning. An unkind letter--but could she judge
him harshly, her poor blind eagle, sitting in darkness never to be
lifted, listening to the guns, and the battle-song of the Birds of War,
drifting down out of "his sky"?
There was Mass in the Convent chapel at seven next morning. A military
chaplain offered the Divine Sacrifice, and the rush-bottomed chairs were
occupied by soldiers, French Chasseurs and Zouaves, Senegalese and
Negroes, English Guards and Irish Fusiliers, Highlanders and a German or
two,--all patients from the Hospital under the management of the
Ursuline Sisters--a big building next door to the Convent, that had been
a young ladies' boarding school in the days before the War.
The chapel was a dusky place. So dusky that though the red carnations
and white Eucharis lilies in the Altar vases struck vivid notes of
colour in the light of the Altar candles, the ruby spark of the
Sanctuary lamp and the bright flame of the Paschal candle were barely
visible in the brooding gloom. You could only tell the place to be
crowded, by the deep-toned chorus of masculine voices joining fervently
in the _Confiteor_ and _Credo_. Pale green flashes momentarily lit up
the crimson and purple and tawny tracery of the round east window, and
the distant thudding of the guns at the Front made an accompaniment to
the sacred rite.
The French priest officiating was a lean, short, elderly personage with
brilliant eyes set in a mask of walnut-brown wrinkles and a resonant
voice that was illustrated by beautiful, illuminating gestures as he
preached.
"Let none say in your hearing, unrebuked, that this War is an unrelieved
misfortune," he said to his hearers. "Recognize with me, my French
compatriots, the Divine Mercy as extended particularly to France in this
fiery ordeal! Her towns and villages have been destroyed,--her buildings
have been shattered, her sons in countless thousands slain, but her
national character has been purified--the soul of her people has been
raised from the mire. If there is one here present among you--whatever
may be his nationality,--who is conscious of loving Virtue better and
loathing Vice more intensely, since the beginning of this War--then the
War has been a blessing--to him--and not a curse! Acts have been
performed--and are repeated hourly--acts of a sublime and touching
selflessness and an almost Divine tenderness,--not only by men and women
who are mild and gentle, but by the roughest and the most abandoned of
either sex. The good seed was sown in time of peace--ah yes, my
children! but it might have perished. And now Our Lord, who loves
flowers, has caused these pure and exquisite blossoms to spring for Him
from the field of War."
After his tiny sermon, delivered in French, and repeated in English, he
hesitated a moment before turning to the Altar and said, with emotion in
his mobile face and quick utterance:
"I have to ask a favour of you this morning. It is that at the
Commemoration of the Departed you will unite with me in a mental act of
prayer. Prayer for the soul of one to whom the gift of Faith, not being
sought, was not given. A soul that has passed forth in darkness into the
presence of Him who is the Light."
He turned away and began the _Credo_. As the deep chorus of male voices
followed, Patrine found herself agreeing with the preacher's discourse.
"What was it," she asked herself, "that led me out from overheated,
crowded rooms, oppressive with the scent of flowers and perfumes of
triple extract--where the Tango and the Turkey Trot were being danced by
half-clad, painted women and effeminate young men--and set my feet upon
a mountain-slope with the free winds of heaven blowing upon me? I must
answer--It was the War!"
As the great waves of the _Credo_ surged and beat against the old brown
rafters she went on thinking:
"What has made me quicken to the call of Humanity--awakened me to the
knowledge of my sisterhood with my fellow-women? What has taught me how
to live without dissipation and do without useless luxuries? Again--the
War! And oh! what has taught me the meaning of Love in all its fulness,
and set within the shrine of my heart this great sacred sorrow, and
kindled in my soul the pure altar-flame of Faith? The War, the terrible
War!"
She prayed for Sherbrand at the Commemoration of the Living! A somewhat
incoherent petition that her Flying Man might be helped to bear his
blindness, and find some happiness in her unchanged love. And the
thought of the dead Agnostic haunted her. Who was the man, and what had
brought about his ending? Was he a patient in the Ursuline Hospital?
A French, an English, or a German soldier? By a subtle change in her
mental purview, recollections of von Herrnung began to occupy her mind.
"I will not think of him!--I will not!" she said to herself desperately.
Then the obsession assumed an acute form. All that she most wished to
forget in her relations with the Kaiser's Flying Man was being revived
in her memory. Scene by scene, sentence by sentence, she was forced to
live over the hated Past again.
She must have risen from her knees and left the chapel, so unbearable
became the torment, but that the sacring bell rang its triples, the deep
tones of the _Sanctus_ answered from the turret, and the Host was lifted
up. Then her tense nerves relaxed. The almost tangible presence of
evil withdrew itself. She breathed more freely, and peace flowed in
balmy waves upon her stormy soul. In prayer for herself and those who
were most dear to her, she lost the sense of the unseen hands plucking
at her garments and the soundless voice whispering at her ear. And
presently at the _Ipsis Domine_, when supplication is made by priests
and people for the departed, she prayed for the soul of the Denier--that
the Divine Mercy might reach and enfold him, and lead him yet into the
Way of Peace.
"_Christ is risen who created all things, and who hath had pity upon
mankind.... Purchased people, declare His virtues, alleluia! Who hath
called you out of darkness into His admirable light._"
To Patrine the Call had come.
It was Easter Week and there were many communicants. The nuns and the
French and English Red Cross nurses helped the lame to reach the
Altar-rails and guided the blind. When a tall, blond young English
Officer with bandaged eyes and an empty sleeve was led up to his
Master's Table, Patrine was grateful that the chapel was so dusk.
She was to meet the Chaplain of the Pophereele Stationary Hospital after
Mass, the Mother Superioress had said. Thus, guided by an Ursuline
Sister, she passed from the chapel into a long, whitewashed cloister
looking on the garden, its open arches facing the doors of what had been
class-rooms, and now were wards. Another Ursuline, the Sister
Superintendent of the Hospital, with a young, gentle face framed in her
close white guimpe and flowing black veil, sat writing in a big book at
a plain deal table. Near her were some shelves with rows of bottles and
a chest of drawers with measuring-glasses upon it, and a pestle and
mortar and druggists' scales. Above the table a black wooden Crucifix
hung against the whitewashed wall.
"This is Soeur Catherine, who keeps the Hospital accounts and dispenses
the medicines, and posts the register in which we set down the names of
all the wounded received and discharged. Take care, Mademoiselle! That
paint is new and comes off!" cried the chaperoning Sister, snatching
aside the skirt of Patrine's long blue V.A.D. coat.
She had brushed, in passing, against a wooden tablet that leaned against
the wall near the door through which she had come. A big square of
black-painted deal surmounted by a gabled and eaved Cross of German
pattern, and bearing an inscription in white Gothic lettering:
"HIER RUHT IM GOTT
EIN DEUTSCHER FLIEGENDE OFFIZIER."
"That is for the grave of the German officer who died yesterday. One of
the Bavarian soldiers is painting it. He has not finished--he has only
gone away for a moment to get some more _ceruse_ from Mother Madeleine."
Sister Catherine offered the explanation. She added, as the tall
English girl glanced at something that lay on the deal table beside the
register:
"That is his flying-cap, poor man! and the belt that shows his _rang
militaire_. They will be placed upon the pall when they carry him to
the cemetery. But pardon! One should have observed before that
Mademoiselle was suffering! What! Mademoiselle is not ill, not even a
little fatigued? Then what Mademoiselle needs is a _petit dejeuner_."
And Patrine was whisked away to the guest's refectory to be refreshed
with _pistolets_ and coffee. Monseigneur would follow a little later.
Madame la Superieure had arranged for Monseigneur to take _dejeuner_
with M. l'Aumonier. Later, Monseigneur hoped for the pleasure of meeting
the English Mademoiselle.
Mademoiselle's tall rounded figure, ushered by the little active
Ursuline Sister, had barely passed through the glazed swing-doors
leading from the cloister to the Convent, when the short, spare, elderly
priest who had celebrated Mass entered from the chapel, followed by the
Convent Aumonier, who had served him at the altar. Even as the nun rose
from her table, the vividly clear eyes of Monseigneur, set in the mask
of dry walnut-brown wrinkles, dropped on the painted head-board propped
against the wall.
"That is for him?"
The supple right hand of Monseigneur waved towards the chapel, then
extended itself to the Sister, who curtsied and kissed his amethyst
ring.
"For him, Monseigneur," answered the Aumonier, to whom the question had
been addressed.
"_Dieu veuille avoir son ame!_"
The left sleeve of Monseigneur's decidedly rusty serge soutane bore the
well-known brassard. Its scarlet and white peeped between the folds of
his heavy black mantle as he made the Sign of the Cross.
"His name is missing from the inscription," he commented, producing a
battered silver snuff-box and helping himself to a generous pinch.
"Why, might one demand?"
"The initials will be painted in presently, Monseigneur. There will be
no name--by desire of the deceased!"
"He preferred anonymity?" The amethyst ring of Monseigneur's prelacy
flashed violet as he dusted the brown powder from his upper-lip with a
blue checked handkerchief. "The Pere Aumonier tells me," his
startlingly clear eyes were on the Sister, "that terrible as were his
injuries, he might have recovered--that his death occurred suddenly and
unexpectedly."
"But yes, Monseigneur, he might have recovered!" The fair face framed
in the narrow guimpe was shadowed and troubled. "The _coup d'obus_ had
spared the brain, arteries, and vertebra. His sight was uninjured--M.
le Commandant and his colleagues had achieved wonders in the partial
restoration of the visage. Speech was difficult--but we could
understand him--unless he was sullen and would only speak German to us.
But at those times a Bavarian soldier interpreted--he who has painted
the headboard for the grave."
"He--the German officer--was grateful to those who nursed him?" inquired
Monseigneur of the Aumonier.
The stout little Chaplain visibly hesitated. It was the Sister who
answered in her clear and gentle voice:
"Alas! no, Monseigneur! He was arrogant, even brutal. But then--he
suffered so terribly, in mind as in body--one could not be angry at
anything he said. He could not resign himself to his disfigured
condition. It was intolerable, he would cry, that he should now be an
object of horror to women--women who had worshipped him almost as a
god!"
"Chut--chut! Eh--well! One presumes he meant a certain type of women,"
observed Monseigneur.
"Possibly so, Monseigneur." The simplicity of the fair face in the
narrow guimpe was touching. "For when we assured him that we did not
regard him with horror he would say to us: 'That makes nothing! I speak
of women. You are only nuns.'"
"But nuns are women," objected Monseigneur.
"Monseigneur, he said not. When his condition seemed to him most
miserable he found relief in saying things--abusive--outrageous--about
nuns. We didn't mind. We pitied him--poor Number Twenty! But the
French and English officers in the same ward resented this. They
entreated us to remove him to a separate room. This we did, and at his
request the Bavarian was placed in the same apartment--he has been an
officer's servant--and is active and useful, even though he has lost a
leg. Thus things went better. Poor Twenty seemed more contented. He
even looked forward to leaving the Hospital!"
"And then? A change?--a relapse?" suggested Monseigneur.
"A change. He became more gloomy--more violent after a letter arrived
for him from England at the _Jour des morts_. Since two days comes
another letter. We heard him raving of perfidy, the folly of his
agents--the injustice of his Emperor--the revenge upon the Englishwoman
that he would never have now! ... Then all was quiet. Towards morning
the Bavarian came out of the room and called an orderly. The Herr
Hauptmann was sleeping, he said, in such a queer way.... From that
unnatural stupor he never awakened. All his letters and papers were
torn up and scattered in fragments. There was a little cardboard box on
the night-table and a pencil _billet_ for me. I am to send a ring he
always wore to the address of a noble young lady at Berlin. She was his
_fiancee_, I believe, Monseigneur. He thanks me for the little I have
been able to do for him!--he begs the Sisters to pardon his rudeness....
He wishes no name upon his grave--but to be forgotten.... Poor broken
body--poor rebellious heart--poor stubborn, desperate soul!"
"You think, then, that--he killed himself?" asked Monseigneur with
directness.
"I dare not think!" She was searching in her table drawer with tears
dropping on her hands. "I can only pray that the autopsy of the surgeon
will not reveal that the death was not natural. Look,
Monseigneur!--this is his ring. A big black-and-white pearl. And under
the pearl, which lifts up--is a little box for something.... A relic
perhaps--or a portrait, or a lock of a friend's hair."
"It might serve as a reliquary--at need, my child," said Monseigneur,
examining the platinum setting. He gave one swift glance at the
unsuspicious Aumonier and another at the innocent nun. He peered again
narrowly at the empty hiding-place, to the shallow sides of which a few
atoms of glittering grey dust were adhering. He lifted the ring to his
nose and sniffed, tapped the little box on his thumb-nail, and touched
his tongue to one of the glittering grey specks. Then he hastily spat
in his handkerchief, and thunder-clouds sat on the furrowed forehead
over the great hooked beak.
"Listen!"
The nun started and grew paler still. She hurried to the glazed doors
opening on the garden and threw them wide apart. As the chill outer air
rushed in, sporting with the scant white locks of M. l'Aumonier,
fluttering the purple lappets at the throat of Monseigneur, and tugging
as with invisible hands at the Sister's thin black veil, approaching
footsteps crunched over the sloppy gravel of the cloister walk.
The small stout figure of the Sister-Keeper of the mortuary headed the
small, solemn procession. She held up her habit out of the slush, and
carried as well as a mammoth iron doorkey, a small bunch of spring
flowers.
A stretcher-squad of the French Red Cross followed the Sister of the
mortuary. In life the man they bore must have been a magnificent
specimen of humanity. In death the length of his rigid form appeared
phenomenal. The black velvet pall, over which had been draped the
black-red-white German War Ensign, was far too short to cover the stiff
blanket-swathed feet. That they projected beyond the stretcher-end with
an effect of arrogance and obstinacy, was the thought that occurred to
one of the three people gathered in a little group upon the threshold of
the cloister-doors.