suppressed but eager accents. "It is Number Twenty. They are taking
him to the mortuary. The Sister-Keeper promised to carry flowers as a
sign that all was well. You understand, do you not? The surgeons have
decided--thanks be to God!--that the poor man did not poison himself!"
She dropped to her knees and began to say a decade of her Rosary, the
wooden beads running between her fingers like brown water as she prayed.
The priests made the Sign of the Cross silently as the body was borne
past. When the last feather of the Black Eagle had vanished, and the
crunching of footsteps on sloppy gravel had thinned away in distance,
the nun rose.
"You feel happier now, my sister, do you not?" Monseigneur asked kindly.
"Much happier, Monseigneur," she said, "for now I may pray for him!"
Monseigneur, who had retained the ring, shut the hiding-place with a
decided click, snapped into its slot the end of the bar that held the
magpie pearl in place, and said as he restored the bauble to the nun:
"Who knows but that some ray of Divine Grace may yet shine upon that
darkened soul! Do as the owner begged of you, and pray for him by all
means!"
"That I will!" she said fervently. "And you also, will you not pray for
him? the poor, proud Pagan who believed no resurrection possible--unless
one were to exist again as a vapour or a tree. Alas! I fear I have
sinned much in yielding to the feeling he inspired in me!"
She added, meeting the keen glance of Monseigneur's vivid eyes:
"The feeling of repugnance. Of horror, Monseigneur! Here comes the
Bavarian to finish the inscription. Well, my good Kuehler, you have got
some more ceruse?"
The glass-doors had been darkened by the shape of a one-legged man on
crutches, a black-haired, swarthy fellow dressed in the maroon flannel
uniform distinctive of the Hospital. A little pot with a brush in it
dangled from one of his big fingers. He glanced up under his heavy
brows, with a muttered word as he passed the Sister, and returned the
greeting of Monseigneur with a clumsy attempt at a salute.
"You are better? You are getting on?" said Monseigneur to him in
German.
"Better, _mein Vater_, and getting on."
"That is well! And you have only a little bit to do, and then your work
is done?"
"Done, _mein Vater!_" echoed the one-legged man.
He went to the head-board where it was near the door leading to the
chapel, leaned his crutches against the wall, and began cautiously and
painfully to let himself down. Monseigneur and the Aumonier hurried to
his assistance, saw him safely squatted upon his folded sack, took leave
of the Sister, who knelt to receive the blessing of the hand that wore
the amethyst ring,--and vanished through the farther door at the urgent
summons of a bell.
The Sister turned again to her big ledger. A list of articles
appertaining to the deceased would have to be checked and verified. Two
pairs of binoculars--surely the one bearing the name and address of an
officer in a British Guards regiment ought to be sent to the Allies'
Headquarters at St. O--. Two purses, one full of English sovereigns, a
stout roll of French bank-notes in a pigskin case, and so forth. When
next she looked round, the Bavarian was wiping his brushes. The
finished inscription now stood:
"HIER RUHT IM GOTT
EIN DEUTSCHER FLIEGENDE OFFIZIER
_T. v. H._
30 YAHRE ALT."
"You are sorry for him, are you not, my good Kuehler?" the nun asked
mildly as the Bavarian scrambled to his solitary foot, and stood
supporting himself against the wall.
"Sorry, my Sister?" He spoke in thick Teutonic French, and looked at
her under his lowering black brows as he reached his crutches out of the
corner and tucked them under his arms. "Why should I be sorry? He's
dead--and so an end of him. _Total kaput_ for another officer!" He
saluted the Sister and stumped out.
*CHAPTER LXXII*
*LOVE THAT HAS WINGS*
Under a blue sky--the forget-me-not blue of April--tiny blizzards--mere
dust of snow--alternated with slashes of sleet. The road running east
from Pophereele was villainous; bad _pave_ in the centre, and on either
side morasses of mud from which rose at irregular intervals, scraggy
poplars hacked by shell-fire and barked by the impact of innumerable
iron-shod wheels.
An almost continuous line of transports bumped over the abominable
_pave_. Staff cars with British Brass Hats and red French _kepis_
gold-braided, motor-guns and caissons, motor-lorries, motor-ambulances,
motor-cyclists, pedestrians--chiefly Belgian peasants in tall peaked
caps and long blue blouses, caked to the knees in sticky mire. Odd
detachments of French Artillery, a squadron of Chasseurs in the new
uniform of sallow blue--a half-battalion of magnificent, singing
Canadians, loaded on the dark green motor-buses that used to run from
Holloway to Westminster Bridge.
Where French police were posted at cross-roads and a working-party of
British Engineers were mending the highway--filling up shell-pits, and
the cunningly-concealed emplacements where a battery of French 75's had
been in action a few months before, and the shrapnel-riddled houses of a
small village yet harboured a few wizened Flemish peasants, was the
point whence you first caught sight of the towers of the ancient capital
of Western Flanders, rising above a bank of grey mist, sucked from the
thawing earth by the warmth of the April sun.
An historic city of gabled houses, a city on a river long lost and
vaulted over--a city as famous through its industries of cloth-weaving,
and the exquisite manufacture of cob-webby lace of Valenciennes, as
precious to students of Art and Literature by reason of its stirring
history, and the wonders it enshrined. A matchless city, the glory of
Flandre Occident, with its Cloth Hall of the marvellous Early Gothic
facades, its Renaissance _Nieuwerk_ and ancient _Stedehuus_, its
glorious cathedral on the north opposite the Halles, with the unfinished
tower by Marten Untenhove, and the triumphal arch in the West porch by
Urban Taillebert.
Since October, 1914, when a British Brigade with two battalions of
another B.B., had successfully withstood the desperate attacks of the
flower of the Prussian Imperial Guard, the beautiful old city had
suffered bombardment, furious, purposeful, desultory, or intermittent,
from the enemy's 11.2-in. long range Krupps. That First Battle--fought
upon a line extending from a few miles north-east of the city--had been
succeeded after the partial lull of winter, by a second, a stubborn and
sanguinary renewal of the struggle, rendered hideous by the use of the
Boche's trump-card, flaming oil-jets and asphyxiating gas.
Now the pride of Flandre Occident stood as it stands to-day, like the
heart of a martyr calcined but unconsumed in the cold ashes of the pyre.
Its sad and stately dignity was marvellously beautiful, under the blue
April sky, with its lashes of wintry sleet. Its gardens were dressed in
green spring livery, the grass was peeping between the cobble-stones,
the scorched and broken chestnut-trees that had shaded the promenades on
the site of its ancient ramparts were thrusting out their pinky-brown
finger-like buds. And above the shell-pitted waste of uncut brass now
representing the Plaine d'Amour,--where the reviews used to take place
and the Kermesses, and athletic Club competitions--where the aerodrome
is cut by the line of the canal that receives the waters of the
subterranean river--a lark was singing joyfully as it climbed its airy
spiral, and a blind man was standing by the twisted ruins of a British
aeroplane drinking in the music that rained from the sky.
In the battered Rue d'Elverdinghe, behind a block of the ruined prison,
the car that had brought Sherbrand waited. A grey car with the Red Cross
and a miniature replica of Old Glory on the bonnet. The Belgian
chauffeur smoked cigarettes and read the _Independence Belge_
industriously; the American V.A.D. orderly smoked also, surveying the
wreckage at the end of the wide thoroughfare, between whose gaunt and
roofless walls was revealed a vista of the Grand Place,--where the west
facade of the Cathedral reared, a calcined skeleton above the ruined
Halles,--and the Belfry whose massiveness defied the genii of
destruction for a few weeks to come. Yet he kept his eye on his charge,
solicitously. No creature is so utterly unaided by the senses, so
pathetically defenceless as a recently blind man.
Drives were part of the treatment prescribed for Sherbrand by the
American surgeon of the Hospital at Pophereele. The chauffeur and the
attendant were instructed to humour him, and his humour craved solitude
and the sense of space. This excursion to the plain lying north-west of
the stricken city where Death and Ruin were Burgomaster and Bishop was
not the first by several. The few remaining inhabitants--the pale women
who made lace in the shelter of broken doorways, the feeble old folks
from the almshouses, who peered from their cellar-refuges at the crunch
and grind of armoured wheels upon the bricks and timbers heaped upon the
littered thoroughfares--dully wondered at these visits of the blind
Englishman.
They had seen many strange things of late, the red-eyed, meagre,
ague-bitten old people, since that day in early October when fifteen
thousand Kaisermen, chanting the German War Song, had defiled for six
mortal hours through the streets of their ancient town.
"There are a great many of you gentlemen," some of the old folks had
ventured to say.
"That may be so," they had been told, "but we have millions waiting to
follow. We are sure to win; the French are cowards, and the English
stupid fools. As for you--you are now all Belgo-Germans, our Kaiser has
said so! When we leave here we are going to Calais, Paris next, and then
London--it's nothing at all to get to London in our magnificent
Zeppelins!"
Then suddenly the Germans had gone away--and with them trains of waggons
crammed with booty. A week later, amidst the vivas of the people,
twenty-one thousand British had poured into the town. They had rolled
down the streets like a tawny river singing lustily:
"Here we are--here we are--here we are again!
Hallo! Hallo! Hallo! HALLO!"
And the crowd had been quick to catch up the chorus, responding:
"Eeeweea--eeweea--eeweea--eggain!
Allo! Allo! Allo! ALLO!"
And the British Headquarters had established itself in its spider-web of
Intelligence at the house of the Burgomaster, and the very next day a
Boche aviator had tried to drop a bomb on it, and had been winged by a
clever shot from an anti-aircraft gun, and brought crashing down on the
Plaine d'Amour. And there had been rejoicings on the part of the young
people who were thoughtless. But the wise old folks had known quite
well that many more Taubes would come.
What an autumn it had been, dear Lord! thought the trembling old people.
The first Sunday in August, with its decorations, processions, hymns,
and litanies, all in honour of Our Lady of Thuyn, had been turned into a
demonstration of penitents. The Kermesse had been prohibited with the
other festivities. No use baking honey-cakes and marzipan. Nobody
would have bought them. The Yprais were too busy listening to the
distant firing of terribly great guns. All the window-panes rattled and
shivered, and the earth vibrated without ceasing. Each morning brought
dreadful news, contradicted every afternoon, and confirmed at night.
Towns bombarded, townsmen shot, hung, or burned, children and
women--even nuns--violated and murdered. Villages wiped out--these were
the stories that found their way into the deafest ears. Crowds of
refugees evacuated from these towns and villages presently began to
throng in. Soon the streets were full from wall to wall. Spies moved
everywhere, and no lights dared be shown at night-time. Bread grew
scarce, the dreadful sound of the guns drew nearer. Wounded, Allies and
Germans also, were brought in, in thousands, by the ambulance-cars. The
hospitals and hotels and convents were full--all the schools--and many
of the private houses. Terrible rumours gained ground of a great battle
about to be fought in the neighbourhood of the town.
Peering from garret-windows by day or night, one could see great banks
of black smoke towering on the north, east, and west horizons, pierced
by broad licking tongues of cherry-coloured flame. Taubes and Allied
aircraft fought battles in the heavens. Bombs were dropped upon public
buildings. Death had begun to be common in the streets when the first
Krupp shells fell and exploded in the moat behind the Abbey Church of
St. Jacques. Ten minutes later--upon the doomed city fell the direst
fury of the German hate.
It had been as though hell had opened, as under that hail of iron and
fire the troops and transports of the Allies, and the long processions
of townspeople afoot and in carts and carriages had rolled out of the
town. Even the dogs had left, following their owners. Like the
cats--who clung to their familiar surroundings, and had to be removed by
force, if they were to be taken--the old folks resisted the sturdy hands
that tugged at them. "Leave us! ..." they quavered. "We are so old!
... We can never bear the journey! ... We should only die upon the roads
if we were to go!"
Many did go, and many died, and of those who stayed behind them, Steel,
Iron, and Fire claimed a heavy toll. But in the Northern quarter, some
yet dwelt in cellar-basements, feeding on mouldy flour, and frozen
potatoes. Sleeping on sacks of straw, covered with rugs or blankets,
warming their lean, shivery bodies at braziers, choking behind masks
taken from slain men through deadly gas-attacks,--creeping up between
bombardments for a breath of purer air. Venturing forth to kneel upon
the littered pavements of roofless churches, and pray to Our Lord before
His vacant tabernacles and shattered Crucifixes--for an end to the
dreadful War.
And no answer came, it seemed, for all their praying. They had grown
used to the dampness underground. Their eyes were now accustomed to the
gloom, as their ears to the stunning crashes of the bombardments--and
the perpetual whirr and buzz and whine of the aircraft in the sky. So
natural had become to them the abomination of desolation that they
actually resented the occasional visits of the Red Cross car from
Pophereele.
"Behold him again," they grumbled, "the tall, blind Englishman. What
does he seek here? Hardly to view our ruins that he has no eyes to see!
And now in another big grey car arrive a French priest and a woman,
asking, wherever they meet a soul to ask, if the blind Englishman is
here? The priest is a Monseigneur--Old Ottilie swears to the ring and
the purple collar. The woman is English, it appears. Perhaps she is
the blind man's wife?"
The car moved on where the roadway was not broken by trenches, crawling
painfully over litter and wreck. In the shadow of the ruined prison,
while yet the sun was high, they halted. Their chauffeur nodded to his
Belgian compatriot, the Red Cross orderly, interrogated by Monseigneur,
pointed to the tall brown figure standing on the grass beside the
twisted wreckage of a British aeroplane.
"I will wait here for you, Mademoiselle," said Monseigneur, getting out
and assisting his fellow-traveller. She was very tall and of supple
figure, and wore a long blue coat with the Red Cross shield-badge, and a
felt hat banded with the V.A.D. ribbon, pulled down over luxuriant
masses of hair--hair that had been cloudy-black as storm-wrack and had
been bleached to the hue of wintry beech-leaves, and now had darkened to
the brown of peat-earth, deepening in colour every day.
She gave Monseigneur her hand, thanking him, and suddenly he thought her
beautiful, although the tall young woman had not previously appealed to
the sense of beauty in Monseigneur. Her long eyes under their widely
arching brows were stars, her mouth was smiling. When she moved away
over the snow-patched grass, she seemed to tread on air....
Throughout the drive Patrine had been torn with horrible misgivings.
"What shall I say or do," she had wondered. "How shall I bear it if the
look upon his face should tell me, when Alan first hears my voice--that
I was wrong to come?" But the chilly fit had passed with the first
glimpse of Sherbrand. The rich, warm flood rising in her veins had
swept her doubts away.
Here on this shell-pitted expanse of turf you felt the War-pulse
beating. French 75's were putting over a furious barrage from the
south. North of the City of the Salient the British guns were slogging,
and through the chain-fire of the enemy's 77 mm.'s, his 11.2-in.
howitzers bellowed at short intervals, and sent in 600-pound shells.
The smoke of a train rose north-west in the direction of Thourout
Junction. That the train was a German train, carrying troops and guns
and munitions for War purposes, did not at once occur to Patrine. All
was well. Not a doubt remained. She was near her Flying Man again
after months of separation. Here at last was food for her hungry eyes
and drink for her thirsting soul.
"He has grown thin, poor dear!" she thought, seeing how the war-stained
khaki hung in folds on his tall figure. The broad shoulders stooped.
The chest had sunken, and he leaned upon a heavy walking-stick. The
beloved face was turned away, the line of the cheek was careworn. She
choked upon a sob and stopped short, fighting her emotion down.
The song of the soaring lark broke off. The bird dived to earth and hid
itself amongst the frosty grasses as the snoring whirr of aircraft came
out of the distance high in the sky to the west. Now the shape of a big
biplane gleamed pinky-white as a seagull, beating up against the thrust
of the snow-tanged easterly breeze.
Nearer and nearer flew the 'plane. Now one could see it distinctly. A
French machine by its blue-white-red rings, and a Caudron by its great
square tail. A silver-grey monoplane scurried in its wake, a Weiss by
the backward curve of its wing-tips. The whirr of its tractor and the
blatter of its machine-gun wakened the echoes sleeping among the leprous
white ruins of the city. The Caudron wheeled and circled beautifully,
and the trac-trac of its mitraille answered the machine-gun, and spent
bullets began to patter on the Plaine far below.
Suddenly the Frenchman banked and began to climb. The Weiss, its
aluminium sheathing glittering in the sunshine, climbed too, so rapidly
that the enemy's purpose was foiled. Then, at a great height they
circled round each other, and the crack and flare of explosive
revolver-bullets began to mingle with the blatter and trac-trac, and
little blobs of something that blazed and sputtered wickedly began to
drop with the bullets that tumbled out of the skies. It was the
prettiest sight. It suggested the amorous dallying of two big
butterflies, the squabble of a pair of hawking swallows, and yet the
issues were Life and Death. Suddenly the Weiss took to flight. A second
Caudron had showed upon the distance and the Kaiser's flier was not
taking any more on. Waiting for his countryman to come abreast, the
Frenchman hovered like a kite-hawk. And at the familiar buzz of the
horizontal screws a visible thrill went through Sherbrand. He took off
the smoked glasses that he wore, and turned his blind eyes upwards
towards the sound, and on his haggard face was stamped the anguish of
his despair.
"My poor boy!" nearly broke from Patrine, and hot tears scalded her
eyelids. He started, though she had uttered no word, and brought down
those unseeing eyes. His nostrils expanded as he inhaled the air. His
thick fair brows contracted. The first Caudron, exchanging signals with
the second, had ceased hovering and floated onwards, but Sherbrand's
thoughts had been brought down out of his sky.
"What is it? ... Why?" said the intent and frowning look. He snuffed
the air again and pondered still, and suddenly Patrine comprehended.
Some waft of perfume from her hair or clothes had reached the sense made
keener by his blindness, evoked some once-loved image, roused some
memory of her.
She crouched low, and looked up at the lean, lined visage yearningly.
Dear heart! how changed he was to-day from her young Mercury of the
Milles Plaisirs. And yet this altered face of his, marred by the broad,
new-healed scar that traversed the left cheek and temple, and the cloudy
look of suffering in the prominent grey-blue eyes, was dearer than ever
to Patrine.
How bravely the ribbon of the Croix de Guerre and the purple, green, and
silver of the Belgian Order showed against the war-stained khaki. What
woman living would not glory in such a lover, welcome the sacred charge,
rejoice to be his guide and minister! ... "Oh, my blind eagle, to sit
mateless in the darkness shall not be your fate, God being good to me!"
Some words like these were on the lips of Patrine.
But the words were unspoken. He was turning those cloudy, troubled eyes
towards his unseen sky again as though trying to project the vision of
his soul through the depths of aerial distance. Then he desisted as
though wearied by the effort. His stern face softened to dreamy
tenderness. His lips moved. Very quietly, but with infinite
wistfulness, he uttered her own name:
"Patrine! Patrine!"
He was thinking of her--he was dreaming of her--he was still her lover.
She knew a joyful shock, a checking of the pulses.... Then her blood
whirled on its crimson circle as though arteries and veins were brimmed
with wine. Her bosom heaved, her eyes were misty jewels, and out of the
wonderful silence about them came to her the low, sweet soughing of her
long-lost Wind of Joy.
She moved to Sherbrand, kissed him full upon the mouth, and called him:
"Alan!" And a great cry broke from him--a cry of wonder, triumph, and
joy. As his arms swept out to enfold her she knew that she had
conquered. She had not been deceived in reading love between the formal
lines.
"Life has nothing more to give!" was Patrine's thought as his arms held
her. It seemed that Death would be a tiny price to pay for such a
wonderful moment as this.
"My love, my love! Did you really think we could live without each
other?" she stammered through his eager kisses. "Didn't you know I
would have to come and carry you back home by the hair of your head?
Did you dare to dream that I or any of the people who love you could get
on without you? Your mother, and Aunt Lynette--and Bawne and Uncle
Owen--and Sir Roland--who managed things for me to come to you!--and
Margot and her boy ... for there is a boy--a regular topper--born last
November--with eyes just like poor Franky's! And you're to come back
and be kind to him and his mother--because you promised Franky you
would! So that old ghost of your succession to the Viscounty is
laid--and I'm glad of it! Another stone heaved out of the way that leads
me back to you!"
She went on, holding him as he held her embraced, pouring herself out in
a swift rush of eager utterance:
"Come back and help us readjust values. Everything's
changed--everything's altered--since the beginning of the War. We women
have found out--even the idlest and the vainest of us--that the things
we used to live for really meant nothing! What we have called Society
is a box of broken toys. The plays we have laughed or cried at--the
books we have read--the music we have gone rabid over--the frocks we
have sported--the flirtations we have revelled in--the scandals we have
discussed--none of these mean anything, count for anything--weigh
anything! Nothing is real but Life--and Love--and Death. Not life like
the life we used to know--nor love like the love we talked of. A life of
work, and help, and prayer, and hope--and courage--and the kind of love
that has wings and doesn't crawl in the mud. Nothing like the Death we
used to dodge and blink and dread so, but something nobler. Something
that leads through the Gate of the Grave--to God! Don't you see that
the War was sent to change us?--don't you see----"
He cried out: