It was then we bumped straight into Wickham Brand, who was between a
small boy and girl, holding his hands, while a tall girl of sixteen or
so, with a yellow pig-tail slung over her shoulder, walked alongside,
talking vivaciously of family experiences under German rule. Pierre
Nesle was on the other side of her.
“In spite of all the fear we had--oh, how frightened we were
sometimes!--we used to laugh very much. _Maman_ made a joke of
everything--it was the only way. _Maman_ was wonderfully brave, except
when she thought that Father might have been killed.”
“Where was your father?” asked Brand. “On the French side of the lines?”
“Yes, of course. He was an officer in the artillery. We said good-bye
to him on August 2nd of the first year, when he went off to the depôt
at Belfort. We all cried except _maman_--father was crying too--but
_maman_ did not wink away even the tiniest tear until father had gone.
Then she broke down so that we all howled at the sight of her. Even
these babies joined in. They were only babies then.”
“Any news of him?” asked Brand.
“Not a word. How could there be? Perhaps in a few days he will walk
into Lille. So _maman_ says.”
“That would be splendid!” said Brand. “What is his name?”
“Chéri. M. le Commandant Anatole Chéri, 59th Brigade artillerie
lourde.”
The girl spoke her father’s name proudly.
I saw a startled look come into the eyes of Pierre Nesle as he heard
the name. In English he said to Brand:
“I knew him at Verdun. He was killed.”
Wickham Brand drew a sharp breath, and his voice was husky when he
spoke, in English too.
“What cruelty it all is!”
The girl with the pig-tail--a tall young creature with a delicate face
and big brown eyes--stared at Pierre Nesle and then at Wickham Brand.
She asked an abrupt question of Pierre.
“Is my father dead?”
Pierre Nesle stammered something. He was not sure. He had heard that
the Commandant Chéri was wounded at Verdun.
The girl understood perfectly.
“He is dead, then? _Maman_ will be very sorry.”
She did not cry. There was not even a quiver of her lips. She shook
hands with Brand and said:
“I must go and tell _maman_. Will you come and see us one day?”
“With pleasure,” said Brand.
“Promise?”
The girl laughed as she raised her finger.
“I promise,” said Brand solemnly.
The girl “collected” the small boy and girl, holding their heads close
to her waist.
“Is father dead?” said the small boy.
“Perhaps. I believe so,” said the elder sister.
“Then we shan’t get the toys from Paris?” said the small girl.
“I am afraid not, _coquine_.”
“What a pity!” said the boy.
Pierre Nesle took a step forward and saluted.
“I will go with you, if you permit it, mademoiselle. It is perhaps in a
little way my duty, as I met your father in the war.”
“Thanks a thousand times,” said the girl. “_Maman_ will be glad to know
all you can tell her.”
She waved to Brand a merry _au revoir_.
We stood watching them cross the Grande Place, that tall girl and the
two little ones, and Pierre.
Fortune touched Brand on the arm.
“Plucky, that girl,” he said. “Took it without a whimper. I wonder if
she cared.”
Brand turned on him rather savagely.
“Cared? Of course she cared. But she had expected it for four years,
grown up to the idea. These war children have no illusions about the
business. They knew that the odds are in favour of death.”
He raised his hands above his head with a sudden passionate gesture.
“Christ God!” he said. “The tragedy of those people! The monstrous
cruelty of it all!”
Fortune took his hand and patted it, in a funny affectionate way.
“You are too sensitive, Wicky. ‘A sensitive plant in a garden grew’--a
war-garden, with its walls blown down, and dead bodies among the little
daisies-o. I try to cultivate a sense of humour, and a little irony.
It’s a funny old war, Wicky, believe me, if you look at it in the right
light.”
Wickham groaned.
“I see no humour in it, nor light anywhere.”
Fortune chanted again the beginning of his Anthem:
“Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher of the Boche.”
As usual, there was a crowd about us, smiling, waving handkerchiefs
and small flags, pressing forward to shake hands and to say, “_Vivent
les Anglais!_”
It was out of that crowd that a girl came and stood in front of us,
with a wave of her hand.
“Good morning, British officers! I’m English--or Irish, which is good
enough. Welcome to Lille.”
Fortune shook hands with her first and said very formally, in his
mocking way:
“How do you do? Are you by chance my long-lost sister? Is there a
strawberry-mark on your left arm?”
She laughed with a big, open-mouthed laugh, on a contralto note that
was good to hear.
“I’m everybody’s sister who speaks the English tongue, which is fine
to the ears of me after four years in Lille. Eileen O’Connor, by your
leave, gentlemen.”
“Not Eileen O’Connor of Tipperary?” asked Fortune gravely. “You know
the Long, Long Way, of course?”
“Once of Dublin,” said the girl, “and before the war of Holland Street,
Kensington, in the village of London. Oh, to hear the roar of ’buses in
the High Street and to see the glint of sunlight on the Round Pond!”
She was a tall girl, shabbily dressed in an old coat and skirt, with a
bit of fur round her neck and hat, but with a certain look of elegance
in the thin line of her figure and the poise of her head. Real Irish,
by the look of her dark eyes and a rather irregular nose, and humourous
lips. Not pretty, in the English way, but spirited, and with some queer
charm in her.
Wickham Brand was holding her hand.
“Good Lord! Eileen O’Connor? I used to meet you, years ago, at the
Wilmots--those funny tea-parties in Chelsea.”
“With farthing buns and cigarettes, and young boys with big ideas!”
The girl laughed with a kind of wonderment, and stood close to Wickham
Brand, holding his Sam Brown belt, and staring up into his face.
“Why, you must be--you must be---- You are--the tall boy who used to
grow out of his grey suits, and wrote mystical verse and read Tolstoy,
and growled at civilisation and smoked black pipes and fell in love
with elderly artists’ models. Wickham Brand!”
“That’s right,” said Brand, ignoring the laughter of Fortune and
myself. “Then I went to Germany and studied their damned philosophy,
and then I became a briefless barrister, and after that took to writing
unsuccessful novels. Here I am, after four years of war, ashamed to be
alive when all my pals are dead.”
He glanced at Fortune and me, and said, “Or most of ’em.”
“It’s the same Wicky I remember,” said the girl, “and at the sight of
you I feel I’ve gone back to myself as a tousled-haired thing in a
short frock and long black stockings. The good old days before the war.
Before other things and all kinds of things.”
“Why on earth were you in Lille when the war began?” asked Brand.
“It just happened. I taught painting here. Then I was caught with the
others. We did not think They would come so soon.”
She used the word They as we all did, meaning the grey men.
“It must have been hell,” said Brand.
“Mostly hell,” said Miss O’Connor brightly. “At least, one saw into
the gulfs of hell, and devilishness was close at hand. But there were
compensations, wee bits of heaven. On the whole I enjoyed myself.”
“Enjoyed yourself?”
Brand was startled by that phrase.
“Oh, it was an adventure. I took risks--and came through. I lived all
of it--every minute. It was a touch-and-go game with the devil and
death, and I dodged them both. _Dieu soit merci!_”
She laughed with a little throw-back of the head, showing a white full
throat above the ragged bit of fur. A number of Frenchwomen pressed
about her. Some of them patted her arms, fondled her hands. One woman
bent down and kissed her shabby jacket.
“_Elle était merveilleuse, la demoiselle_,” said an old Frenchman by my
side. “She was marvellous, sir. All that she did for the wounded, for
your prisoners, for many men who owe their lives to her, cannot be told
in a little while. They tried to catch her. She was nearly caught. It
is a miracle that she was not shot. A miracle, monsieur!”
Other people in the crowd spoke to me about “_la demoiselle_.” They
were mysterious. Even now they could not tell me all she had done. But
she had risked death every day for four years. Every day. Truly it was
a miracle she was not caught.
Listening to them I missed some of Eileen O’Connor’s own words to
Brand, and saw only the wave of her hand as she disappeared into the
crowd.
It was Brand who told me that he and I and Fortune had been invited to
spend the evening with her, or an hour or so. I saw that Wicky, as we
called him, was startled by the meeting with her, and was glad of it.
“I knew her when we were kids,” he said. “Ten years ago--perhaps more.
She used to pull my hair! Extraordinary, coming face to face with her
in Lille, on this day of all days.”
He turned to Fortune with a look of command.
“We ought to get busy with that advanced headquarters. There are plenty
of big houses in these streets.”
“_Ce qu’on appelle unembarras de choix_,” said Fortune with his rather
comical exaggeration of accent. “And Blear-eyed Bill wants us to go on
beating the Boche. I insist on a house with a good piano--German for
choice.”
They went off on their quest, and I to my billet, which had been found
by the Major of ours, where I wrote the story of how we entered Lille,
on a typewriter with a twisted ribbon which would not write quickly
enough all I wanted to tell the world about a day of history.