miserably under heavy jocularity. He knew instinctively that his life
was saved to him; but the assurance of safety was conveyed in a jeer,
and at the moment (so oddly are we made) the jeer hurt more than the
assurance of safety relieved him. He had mastered his anguish and
strung himself up--to be treated as a figure of fun; the spectacled
clerk at the writing-table was laughing so heartily that he had to
remove his glasses and wipe them before he continued his labours.
William tingled all over with helpless rage as Griselda tingled beside
him. But yesterday he would have told you loftily that both he and his
wife were inured to public, above all to official, ridicule; but it is
one thing to brave ridicule with an approving audience in the
background, another to face it unapplauded, uncrowned with the halo of
the martyr.... They reddened and quivered whilst incomprehensible
witticisms passed between the captain and his clerk. It was an intense
relief when a nod and a brief order signified that the jest was
sufficiently enjoyed and their audience with the captain at an end.
They were too thankful even to resent the roughness with which Heinz
collared his man while his comrade collared Griselda.
*CHAPTER IX*
One of the features of the interview that struck William later on was
this--during all the long minutes that it lasted Griselda had spoken no
words. For once the tumult and amazement of her soul was beyond her glib
power of expression and it was only as they came into the open air
that--for the first time since she had seen the hostages die--she
unclosed her lips and spoke.
"What are they going to do with us?" she asked. Her voice was husky and
uncertain, and the words came out in little jerks.
William gave the question no answer: for one thing because his ignorance
of their destiny was as thorough as his wife's; for another because
speech, by reason of Heinz's firm grip on his collar, was so difficult
as to be almost impossible. The man had his knuckles thrust tightly
between shirt and skin; William purpled and gasped as he trotted down
the street with a collar stud pressing on his windpipe. Behind him when
he started came Griselda and her guard; as he could not twist his head
to look over his shoulder he had no suspicion that the couples had
parted company, and it was not until his captor turned him sharply to
the right down a by-road leading to the station that he discovered, in
rounding the corner, that his wife and her escort were no longer
following in his footsteps. The momentary sidelong glimpse he caught of
the road gave him never a sight of Griselda; she had vanished without
word or sign. For a moment he could hardly believe it and walked on
stupidly in silence; then, the stupor passing, his terror found voice
and he clamoured.
"Where's my wife?" he cried out and writhed instinctively to free
himself. His reward was a tightening of the German's strangle-hold,
some most hearty abuse and some even heartier kicks. Under the
punishment he lost his foothold and would have fallen but for Heinz's
clutch upon his collar; when the punishment was over he was brought up
trembling and choking. In that moment he suffered the fiercest of
torments, the fire of an ineffectual hate. He hated Heinz and could
have torn him; but he had been taught the folly of blind wrestling with
the stronger and, for Griselda's sake, he swallowed his fury and
cringed.
"Where is she?" he begged most humbly and pitifully as Heinz thrust him
forward again. "For mercy's sake tell me what you have done with my
wife--with my wife? ... If you will only let me know where she is?
That's all--just to let me know."
He was answered by the silence of contempt and a renewed urge along the
road; he obeyed because he could do no other, whimpering aloud in the
misery of this new and sharpest of misfortunes. As he pled and whimpered
terrible thoughts came hurrying into his brain; all things were possible
in these evil times and among these evil men--and there was a dreadful,
hideously familiar phrase anent "licentious soldiery": a phrase that had
once been just a phrase and that was now a present horror beating hard
in his burning head. He stumbled on with the tears running down his
cheeks, and discovered suddenly that he was whispering under his breath
the name of God--all things else having failed him. He did not realize
that he was sobbing and shedding great tears until halfway along the
road when a German soldier met them. The man as he passed turned his
head to laugh at the sight of a face grotesque and distorted in its
wretchedness; whereupon there flared up again in William that new sense
of blood and breed and with it an instant rush of shame that he had wept
before these--Germans! He gulped back his tears, strove to stiffen his
face and clenched his hands to endure.
He had need in the hours that came after of all his powers of endurance
alike of body and of mind. The day that already seemed age-long was far
from being at its height when Griselda was taken away from him and all
through the heat till close upon sundown he was put to hard physical
toil. Level with the village the railway line had been torn up and the
little wayside station was a half-burnt mass of wreckage; a detachment
of retreating Belgians had done their best to destroy it, had derailed
an engine and half a dozen trucks and done such damage as time allowed
to a stretch of the permanent way. In its turn a detachment of Germans
was hard at work at removal of the wreckage and repairs to the line; and
into their service they had pressed such villagers as had not fled at
their approach. A cowed, unhappy band they toiled and sweated, dug,
carried loads and levelled the broken soil; some stupidly submissive,
some openly sullen to their captors, some pitiably eager to please: all
serfs for the time being and all of them ignorant of what the next hour
might bring forth of further terror or misfortune.
To this captive little company William Tully was joined, handed over by
Heinz to its taskmaster--to become of them all the most pitiable,
because for the first time in all his days set to bend his back and use
his muscles in downright labour of the body. What to others was merely
hardship, to him became torment unspeakable; he wearied, he sweated, he
ached from head to heel. When he pulled at heavy wreckage he cut his
soft clumsy fingers; when he dragged a load or carried it he strained
his unaccustomed back. His hands bled and blistered and the drops of
perspiration poured off him; when he worked slowly because of his
weariness or lack of skill, authority made no allowance for either and a
blow often followed a curse. Sometimes incomprehensible orders were
shouted at him and he would run to obey confusedly, for fear of the
punishment meted out without mercy to the dilatory--guessing at what was
required of him, sometimes rightly and sometimes wrongly. The day
remained on his mind as an impression of muddled terror and panic
intense and unceasing.
When he thought he was not being watched he would lift his head from his
toil and strain his eyes this way and that in the hope of a glimpse of
Griselda. Unspeakably greater than his fear for himself was the measure
of his fear for his wife. He knew that somewhere she must be held by
force in the same way that he was held, otherwise she would have sought
him out long ere this, and, even if not allowed to approach or speak
would have managed to see him and make him some sign that his heart
might be set at rest. His brain was giddy with undefined horror and
once or twice he started and raised his head imagining that Griselda was
calling to him. Once when he looked up his eye caught the bluff
towering over the valley and he remembered with an incredulous shock
that it was only yesterday that he and his wife, stretched out on the
turf, had watched the galloping of the ants of soldiers beneath it--that
it was not a day since they had listened indifferently to the mutter of
guns in the distance and talked with superior detachment of manoeuvres
and the folly of militarism. Side by side on the short-cropped turf they
had watched unmoved and listened without misgiving. Only yesterday--nay,
only this morning when the sun rose--the world was the world and not
hell.
He knew though, engrossed by his private agony, he did not give it much
heed, that all the afternoon there was heavy traffic on the road that
ran through the village, traffic going this way and that; now and again
through the clatter of the work around him its rumble came to his ears.
Noisy cars went by and heavy guns, regiments of infantry and once or
twice a company of swift-moving horse that sped westward in a flurry of
dust. As the hot, industrious hours crawled by even his terror for
Griselda was swallowed up in the numbing and all-pervading sense of
bodily exhaustion and ill-being, in the consciousness of throbbing head,
parched mouth and miserable back. At midday when the captives were
doled out a ration of meat and bread he lay like a log for the little
space during which he was allowed to rest; and, resting, he dreaded from
the bottom of his soul the inevitable call back to work. With it all
was the hopeless, the terrifying sense of isolation; he was removed even
from his fellow-sufferers, held apart from them not only by the barrier
of their alien speech but by his greater feebleness and greater physical
suffering. Only once during those sun-smitten and aching hours did he
feel himself akin to any of the men around him--when a flat-capped,
sturdy young German soldier, taking pity on his manifest unfitness for
the work, muttered some good-natured, incomprehensible encouragement and
handed him a bottle to drink from. The sharp taste of beer was a liquid
blessing to William's dry tongue and parched throat; he tilted the
bottle and drank in great gulps till he choked; whereat the flat-capped
German boy-soldier laughed consumedly but not unkindly.
It must have been well on in the afternoon--for the shadows were
beginning to lengthen though the sun burned hotly as ever--when over the
noises of the toil around him and over the rumble of traffic on the road
the persistent beat of guns became loud enough to make itself
noticeable. All day William had heard it at intervals; during his brief
rest at midday it had been frequent but distant; now it had spurted into
sudden nearness and was rapid, frequent, continuous. A little group of
his fellow-toilers looked up from their work as they heard the sound,
drew closer together and exchanged mutterings till an order checked them
sharply; and even after the order was rapped out one square-shouldered,
brown-faced countryman continued to stare down the valley with
stubbornly determined eyes.
William's eyes followed the countryman's, and for a moment saw nothing
but what he had seen before--cliffs, the river and the hot blue sky,
without a feather of cloud to it; then, suddenly, away down the valley,
there puffed out a ball of white smoke, and before it had faded another.
The man with the stubborn eyes grunted something beneath his breath and
turned again to his work; William, continuing to gaze curiously at the
bursting puffs, was reminded of his duties by a louder shout and the
threat of a lifted arm. He, too, bent again and with haste to his work;
to look up furtively as the thunder deepened and see always those bursts
of floating cloud down the valley or against the hot horizon.
He knew, or rather guessed, in after days when his sublime ignorance of
all things military had been tempered by the newspapers, by daily
war-talk and by actual contact with the soldier, that the sudden
appearance of those bursting puffs had indicated some temporary and
local check to the advancing German divisions, that a French or Belgian
force must have pushed or fought its way across the triangular plateau
between the Meuse and its tributary; must have driven before them the
Germans in the act of occupying it, must have brought up their guns and
commanded for the moment a stretch of the lateral valley and the line of
communications along it. It was not left long in unmolested possession
thereof; nearer guns answered it swiftly from all directions, from other
heights and from the valley; shells whined overhead, from time to time
the ground shook, and it dawned upon William, as he looked and listened,
that what he saw was a battle.
At first he was more impressed by the thought than he was by the
actuality--since the effects of the conflict were not in the beginning
terrible. True there was something threatening in the near-by thudding
of a German battery when first it made itself heard. But such harm as
it inflicted was unseen by William, and for the space of an hour or so
it drew no returning fire and the village stood untouched and undamaged.
But as the evening drew in the thunder deepened and quickened; both
sides, it would seem, had brought up reinforcements, and guns opened
fire from new and unexpected places, from heights, from behind garden
walls. Down the road along which William had been urged with
ungentleness by Heinz a gun-team clattered and jingled at breakneck
speed; it pulled up close to the railway line, not fifty yards from the
spot where the prisoners were working in the shadow of a clump of young
trees; the gun was placed swiftly in position, the horses were led away
and after a momentary interval the men began to fire--steadily, swiftly,
on the order. William watched them with his mouth wide open till
reminded smartly of his idleness; they were so swift, precise and
machine-like. It required an effort of the imagination to remember what
they were doing.
"Killing," he said to himself, "those men are killing!" And he found
himself wondering what their faces looked like while they killed?
Whether they liked doing it? ...
He supposed later (when that first ignorance of things military was a
little less sublime) that the firing from the immediate neighbourhood of
the village had at first inflicted but little damage on the opposing
forces on the heights; at any rate it remained practically unanswered
till close upon sunset, the French or Belgian gunners concentrating
their fire upon enemies nearer, more aggressive, or more vulnerably
placed. Perhaps (he never knew for certain) they had got the better,
for the time being, of those other more aggressive or more vulnerable
opponents; perhaps they had received reinforcements which had enabled
them to push higher up the valley or had at last been punished by a fire
hitherto ineffectual; whatever the cause, as the sun grew red to the
westward, a first shell screamed on to the dusty road outside the
village and burst in a pother of smoke and flying clods. William heard
the burst and saw the cloud rise; he was still round-eyed when another
shell screamed overhead to find its billet in a garden wall a few yards
behind the battery, scattering the stones thereof and splintering the
boughs of an apple-tree. A shower of broken fragments came pattering
about the station; William was perhaps too much stupefied by pain and
weariness to understand the extent of his danger but several of his
fellows stirred uneasily and two of them threw down their spades and
started in headlong flight. They were brought up swiftly by the threat
of a bayonet in their path; one of them came back sullenly dumb, the
other whimpering aloud with a hand pressed to his face. William saw that
his cheek was bleeding where a flying fragment had caught it. He was
looking at the man as he nursed his torn face and bemoaned himself when
a third shell struck what remained of the station roof.
William did not know whether he fell on his face instinctively or was
thrown by the force of the explosion; he remembered only that as he
scrambled to his feet, half-deafened and crying for help, he saw through
a settling cloud of dust the disappearing backs of some three or four
men who were all of them running away from him. He was seized with a
mortal terror of being left alone in this torment of thunder and
disaster; he believed he must be hurt, perhaps hurt to the death, and a
pang of rage and self-pity went through him at the thought of his
desertion by his fellows. He started after the vanishing backs, calling
out to them to wait, abusing and appealing, and stumbling over ruin as
he ran. The distant gunners had found their enemies' range, and he had
not made half a dozen yards when he ducked to the threat of another
shell that burst, as he thought, close beside him. He cringed and
shivered for a moment, covering his eyes with his hands; then, finding
himself uninjured, darted off at an angle, still shielding his eyes and
gasping out, "God, oh God--for mercy's sake, oh God!" He knew in every
fibre of his trembling body that he was about to die, and his prayer was
meant not only for himself but for Griselda. As he ran on blindly, an
animal wild and unreasoning, a hand caught him above the ankle and he
screamed aloud with rage and terror at finding himself held fast.
"Let me go," he cried struggling; then, as the hand still gripped, bent
down to wrest himself free and looked into a face that he knew--a young
plump face with a budding moustache surmounted by a flat German cap. It
was twisted now into a grin of agony, but all the same he recognized the
face of the German boy-soldier who had dealt kindly with him that
afternoon in the matter of the bottle of beer. He was lying on his back
and covered from the middle downwards with a litter of broken beam and
ironwork blown away from the ruin of the station. The effect of the
recognition on William was curiously and instantly sobering; he was no
longer alone in the hell where the ground reeled and men ran from him;
he was no longer an animal wild and unreasoning, but a man with a
definite human relationship to the boy lying broken at his feet. He
began to lift the wreckage from the crushed legs and talked as he did
so, forgetting that the wounded man in all likelihood understood not a
word of his English.
"All right, I'll get it off, I'll help you. You were good to me giving
me a drink, so I'll stay and help you. Otherwise I oughtn't to wait,
not a minute--you see, I must look for my wife. My first duty is to
her--she's my wife and I don't know where she is. But I won't leave you
like this because of what you did for me this afternoon." He wrenched
and tugged at the shattered and entangled wreckage till the boy shrieked
aloud in his torment--the cry terrified William and he desisted,
wringing his hands. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it. God
knows I didn't mean to hurt you and if I could be gentler I would, but
it's so damnably, damnably heavy. Oh God, if some one would come and
help me, if someone would only come! You see it's so heavy I can't move
it without hurting you."
He explained and apologized to ears that heard not for the boy had
fainted in his pain; his deep unconsciousness made extrication easier
and William tugged again at the lumber until he had tugged it away. One
of the wounded man's leg's was a wrenched and bloody mass; William
shuddered at the sight, looked down stupidly at the dead white face and
wondered what was to be done--then, feeling that something must at least
be tried, put his arms round the inert body and strove to lift it from
the ground. The only results were breathlessness on his part and a
groan from the unconscious German. William dropped him instantly on
hearing the groan, trembling at the idea of inflicting yet more
suffering, torn by the thought of Griselda, longing to go and yet
ashamed to leave the boy-soldier without aid. He might have hesitated
longer but a for fresh explosion and crash of falling masonry; it was
followed by a long-drawn screaming intolerable to hear--an Aie, Aie, Aie
of unspeakable bodily pain. With a sudden sense of being hunted, being
driven beyond endurance, William turned and shook his impotent fists in
the direction of the unseen guns. "Can't you stop one moment?" he
screamed idiotically, hating them and dancing with rage. "Can't you
stop, you devils--you devils! Don't you see I'm only trying to help
him?" If he had ever made any distinction between friend and enemy
artillery, he had lost all idea of it now; the guns for the moment were
a private persecution of himself, and he was conscious only of being
foully and brutally bullied by monstrous forces with whom he argued and
at whom he cursed and spat.
It was the sight of what had once been a horse that brought him again to
his senses. His eye fell on it as he danced in his mad ineptitude at
the side of the helpless German; it had been one of the team that
galloped a gun down the by-road and was now a pulp of raw flesh, crushed
bone, and most hideously scattered entrail. He stared for a moment at
the horror, incredulous and frozen--then sickened, turned and ran from
it in a passion of physical loathing.
For a minute or two he ran he knew not whither--straight ahead, anywhere
to be away from the horror; then, as his shuddering sickness passed,
there rushed back the thought of Griselda, and he reproached himself
that he had halted even for a moment and even for a purpose of mercy;
all his energies both of mind and body were turned to the finding of his
wife. They must die, he was sure of it; he prayed only that they died
together. The way he had taken lay outside the walled gardens between
the village and the railway line; and as he ran he called
her--"Griselda, Griselda!"--in a voice that he hardly caught himself, so
persistent was the uproar of the guns. When he fled from the
neighbourhood of the dismembered horse he had left behind him the path
leading directly to the main street of the village--which it was his aim
to reach since there he had last seen Griselda. Seeking another way to
it, he halted when he came to a door in the wall, wrestled with the
latch and flung himself angrily against it; it resisted, locked, and he
ran on again, still panting out his wife's dear name. Twenty yards
further on he came to another door in the wall and this time it opened
to his hand.
In the garden beyond was no sign of the chaos that had overwhelmed his
world since the morning. An orderly border of orderly flowers,
espaliered walls and a tree or two ruddy with apples; and on a shaven
plot of the greenest grass an empty basket chair with beside it a white
cat reposing with her paws tucked under her chin. The white cat may
have been deaf, or she may have been merely intrepid; whatever the cause
her nerves were unaffected by the fury of conflict and she dozed
serenely under shell-fire, the embodiment of comfortable dignity. She
opened a warily observant eye when William rushed into her garden; but
being a well-fed cat, and accustomed to deference, she took no further
precaution. She stirred not even when he hurried past her to her
dwelling-house, and as he entered it by an open window her nose
descended to rest on her folded paws.
The room he ran into through the open window left no impression on the
mind of William Tully; it was dark after the sunlight outside, and he
supposed it must have been empty. He went rapidly along the short
passage beyond it, making for the front door; he met no one, heard no
one, and his fingers were touching the latch when he saw, through an
open door to the right of him, the figure of a kneeling woman. She was
stout, dressed in black and grey-headed and she knelt leaning on a chair
in the middle of the polished floor; her eyes were closed, her lips
moved, and her hands were clasped under her chin. The sound of
William's feet did not reach her through the tumult of fighting without,
nor did he stay to disturb her. When he lived in the world and not hell
it would have seemed to him strange and unfitting that he should intrude
on an old woman's privacy and secret prayer; now nothing was strange,
nothing unfitting or impossible.... He supposed that she was the white
cat's mistress, noted without emotion that her cheeks were wet with
tears and thought vaguely that her face was familiar, that he had seen
it somewhere before. Afterwards it came to him that he had seen it when
the hostages died in the morning, that it was she who had prayed in the
road with folded hands and pressed her crucifix to the mayor's long grey
moustache. He wondered, then, what became of her and her well-fed
indifferent cat.