To see Christmas in an English vicarage is to see Christmas indeed; and
the love and charity and beauty of it sank deeply into the exiles'
wounded hearts.
But one day came the summons to return to Belgium. It was a peremptory
order from the German Governor of Brussels to all owners of house or
property to return to their country with the least possible delay. The
penalty of disregarding this summons would be the confiscation of all
and any property owned by them in Belgium.
Louise stood in Chérie's room with the open letter in her hand, aghast
and trembling.
"To return to Belgium? They ask us to return to Belgium?" Louise could
scarcely pronounce the words. "Do you realize what it means, Chérie?"
"It means--going home," whispered the girl, with downcast eyes and a
delicate flush mounting to her pale cheeks.
"Home! Do you remember what that home was when we left it?" cried
Louise, her eyes blazing at the recollection.
"No," said Chérie, "I do not remember."
"Home! Home without Claude--without Florian! with half our friends
killed or lost ..." cried Louise, and the easy tears of weakness flowed
down her thin cheeks. "Home--with Mireille a silent ghost, and you--and
you--" Her dark passionate eyes lit for an instant on the figure of her
sister-in-law, and horror and shame seemed to grip at her throat. "Let
us never speak of it again."
And she flung the paper into the fire.
But the memory of it she could not fling away. The possibility of
returning to Belgium, which before had seemed so remote, the idea of
seeing their home again which they had deemed lost to them for ever, now
filled her mind and Chérie's to the exclusion of every other thought.
That harsh call to return rang in their hearts by day and by night,
awakening home-sickness and desire.
At night Louise would dream a thousand times of that return, a thousand
times putting the idea from her with indignation and with fear. Every
night she would imagine herself arriving at Bomal, hurrying through the
village streets to the gate of her house, entering it, going up the
stairs, opening the door to Claude's study....
Little by little home-sickness wound itself like a serpent about her
heart, crushing her in its strong spirals, poisoning with its virulent
fang every hour of her day. Little by little the nostalgic yearning,
the unutterable longing to hear her own language, to be among her own
people--though tortured, though oppressed, though crushed by the
invader's heel--grew in her heart until she felt that she could bear it
no longer. The sense of exile became intolerable; the sound of English
voices, the sight of English faces, hurt and oppressed her; the thought
of the wild English waters separating her from her woeful land seemed to
freeze and drown her heart.
A week after she had told Chérie never to speak about it any more she
thought of nothing else, she dreamed of nothing else, but to return to
her home, her wrecked and devastated home, there to await Claude in
hope, in patience, and in prayer.
She would feel nearer to him when once the icy, tumbling waves of
the Channel separated them no more. She would be ready for him when
the day of deliverance came, the day of Belgium's freedom and
redemption--surely, surely now it could not be far off! Claude would
find her there, in her place, waiting for him. She would see him from
afar off, she would be at the door to meet him as she always was when he
had gone away even for a few days or hours. His little Mireille, alas!
was stricken, but might she not before then recover? His sister--ah! His
sister!... Louise wrung her hands and wept.
Late one night she went to Chérie's room. She opened the door very
gently so as not to wake her if she were asleep. But Chérie was sitting
near the fire bending over some needlework and singing softly to
herself. She jumped up, blushing deeply, as Louise entered, and she
attempted to hide her work in her lap. It was an infant's white cape she
was embroidering, and as Louise saw it her own pale cheeks flushed too.
"Chérie," she faltered, "I have been thinking ... what if we went home?"
"Yes," said Chérie quietly, with the chastened calmness of those whose
mission it is to wait.
"Let us go, let us go," said Louise. "We will make our house ready and
beautiful for those who will return."
"Yes," said Chérie, again.
"They will return and find us there ... waiting for them ... even though
the storm has passed over us...." Her voice broke in a sob. "Mireille
will recover, I know it, I feel it! And you--oh, Chérie!"--she dropped
on her knees before the trembling girl--"you, you will be brave," she
cried passionately, "before it is too late ... Chérie, Chérie, I implore
you...."
Chérie was silent. It was as if she did not hear. It was as if she did
not understand.
In vain Louise spoke of the shame of the past, of the woe and misery of
the future. To all her wild words, to her caresses and entreaties,
Chérie gave no reply. Her lips seemed mute, her eyes seemed distant and
unseeing as those of the mindless, wandering Mireille.
At last she rose, and stood facing Louise, her face grave, inexorable,
unflinching.
"Louise, say no more. No human reasoning, no human law, no human
sanction or prohibition can influence me. No one may judge between a
woman and the depths of her own body and soul; in so grave a matter each
must decide according to her own conscience. What to the one is shame,
hatred, and horror, to the other is joy, wonder, and love. To me,
Louise, this suffering--tragic and terrible though it be--is joy,
wonder, and love. I do not explain it, I do not justify it; I do not
think I even understand it. But this I feel, that I would sooner tear
out my living heart than voluntarily destroy the life which is within
me, and which I feel is part of my very soul."
Louise was silent. She felt herself face to face with the great primeval
instinct of maternity; and words failed her. Then the thought of their
return to Belgium clutched at her heart again.
"But if we go home! Think, think of the shame of it! What will they say,
those who have known us? Think--what will they say?"
Chérie sighed. "I cannot help what they say."
"And when Claude returns, Chérie! When Claude returns...."
Chérie bowed her head and did not answer.
Louise moved nearer to her. "And have you forgotten Florian? Florian,
who loves you, and hoped to make you his wife?..."
The tears welled up into Chérie's eyes, but she was silent.
Louise's voice rose to a bitter cry. "Chérie! Think of the brutal hands
that bound you, of the infamous enemy that outraged you. Think, think
that you, a Belgian, will be the mother of a German child!"
But Chérie cared nothing, remembered nothing, heard nothing. She heard
no other voice but that child-voice asking from her the gift of life,
telling her that in the land of the unborn there are no Germans and no
Belgians, no victors and no vanquished, but only the innocent flowers of
futurity--the white-winged doves of Jesus, and the snowy lambs of God.
BOOK III
CHAPTER XX
Feldwebel Karl Sigismund Schwarz lay on the internal slope of a crater
under a red sunset sky. His eyes were shut. But he was not asleep. He
was making up his mind that he must move his left arm. Something heavy
seemed to be pressing it down, crushing and crunching it. He would move
it, he would lift it up in the air and feel the circulation return to it
and the breezes of heaven blow on it. Never was there such a hot and
heavy arm.... Yes. He would certainly lift it in a moment.
After this great mental exertion, Feldwebel Schwarz went to sleep for a
few moments; then he woke up again, more than ever determined to move
his arm. What did one do when one wanted to move one's arm? And where
was his arm? Where was everything? Where was he, Karl Sigismund
Schwarz?... There was evidently a 'cello playing somewhere quite close
to him; he could hear it right in his head: "Zoom ... zoom-zoom ...
zoom-zoom."
He said to himself that he knew where he was. He was in Charlottenburg,
in the Café des Westens, and the Hungarian, Makowsky, was playing on
the _Bassgeige_. Zoom ... zoom-zoom.... The rest of the orchestra would
join in presently. Meanwhile, what was the matter with his arm? He
groaned aloud and tried to raise himself on his right elbow. He could
not do so; but in turning his head he caught sight of a man lying close
beside him, a man in Belgian uniform lying flat on the ground with his
profile turned to the sky. This convinced Schwarz that he was not in
Charlottenburg after all. He was somewhere in Flanders near a rotten old
city called Ypres; and he was lying in a hole made by a shell. He
glanced sideways at the Belgian again. Then he cried out loud, "See
here, what is the matter with my arm?" But the man did not answer, and
Schwarz realized that he probably did not understand German. Probably,
also, he was dead.
So Karl Schwarz lay back again, and listened to the 'cello buzzing in
his brain.
The red sunset had faded into a drab twilight when in his turn the
Belgian opened his eyes, sighed and sat up. He saw the wounded German
lying beside him with limp legs outstretched, a mangled arm and a face
caked with blood. The man's eyes were open, so the Belgian nodded to him
and said, "_Ca va, mon vieux?_"
"_Verfluchter Schweinehund_," replied Karl Schwarz; and Florian Audet,
who did not understand that he was being called a damned swine-hound,
nodded back again in a friendly way. Then each was silent with his
thoughts.
Florian tried to realize what had happened. He tentatively moved one
arm; then the other; then his feet and legs. He moved his shoulders a
little; they seemed all right. He felt nothing but a pain in the back of
his neck, like a violent cramp; otherwise there seemed nothing much the
matter with him. Why was he lying there? Let him remember. There had
been an order to attack ... a dash over the white Ypres road and across
the fields to the south ... then an explosion--yes. That was it. He had
been blown up. This was shock or something. He wondered where the
remains of his company was and how things had turned out. There were
sounds of firing not far away, the spluttering of rifles and the booming
of the gun.
He tried to rise to his feet, but it was as if the earth rose with him.
He could not get his hands off the ground--earth and sky whirled round
him, and he had to lie down again.
Soon darkness came up out of the thundering east and blew out the
twilight.
Meanwhile Feldwebel Schwarz was again in the Café des Westens; the
orchestra of ten thousand _Bassgeigen_ was booming like mad, and he was
beating on the table with his heavy arm, calling for the waiter Max to
bring him something cold to drink. Max came hurrying up and stood before
him carrying a tray laden with glasses--huge cool Schoppen of Münchner
and Lager, and tall glasses of lemonade with ice clinking in it. Which
would he have? He could not make up his mind which he would have. His
throat burned him, his stomach was on fire with thirst, and he could not
say which of the cool drinks he wanted. He felt that he must drink them
all--the iced Münchner, the chilly Lager, the biting lemonade--he must
drink them all together, or die. Suddenly he noticed that the
_Wasserleiche_--you know the _Wasserleiche_, the "Water-corpse" of the
Café des Westens--the cadaverous-looking woman whose face is of such a
peculiar hue that you would vow she had been drowned and left lying in
the water for a couple of days before they fished her out again--well,
she had come up to the waiter and was embracing him, and all the glasses
were slipping off his tray. Ping!--pang!--down they crashed!
Ping!--pang! smashing and crashing all around. You never heard glasses
make such a noise. There was nothing left to drink--nothing in the wide
world.
Then Feldwebel Schwarz began to cry. He heard himself moaning and
crying, until Max the waiter looked at him and then he saw that it was
not Max the waiter at all that the Water-corpse was embracing. She never
did embrace men. It was her friend Mélanie, who stood there laughing
with her mouth wide open, showing the pink roof of her mouth and her
tiny wolfish teeth--the two eye-teeth slightly longer than the others
and very pointed.
Karl Schwarz knew that if he wanted anything to drink he must be amiable
to Mélanie. He would sing her the song about "Gräfin Mélanie," beginning
"_Nur für Natur_...."
But he could not remember it. He could only remember the Ueberbrettel
song--
"Die Flundern
"Werden sich wundern...."
He sang this a great many times, and the waiter Max, who was lying on
the floor among the broken glasses, applauded loudly. You never heard
such clapping; it went right through one's head. But Mélanie did not
give him anything to drink, and the Water-corpse--he suddenly remembered
that she never allowed any one to speak to Mélanie--turned on him
furiously and bit him in the arm. He howled with pain, and then Mélanie
bent forward showing all her wolfish teeth, and she also bit him in the
arm. They were tearing and mangling him. He could not get his arm away
from the two dreadful creatures. "_Verdammte Sauweiber!_" he shouted at
them, and his voice was so loud that it woke him.
He saw the star-strewn sky above him, and beside him the prostrate
figure of the Belgian as he had seen him before. Probably, he said to
himself, Mélanie and the Water-corpse had been at this man too. To keep
them away he had to go on singing with his parched throat--
"Die Flundern
"Werden sich wundern...."
* * * * *
"Die Flundern
"Werden sich wundern...."
He imagined that these words possessed some occult power which must keep
the two horrible women away from him.
So he continued to repeat them all night long.
Between two and three o'clock Florian Audet opened his eyes and turned
his head to look round. The wounded German's voice had roused him from
sleep--or from unconsciousness--and he lay there vaguely wondering what
that continually repeated cry might mean.
"_Die Flundern werden sich wundern...._" The words sank into his brain
and remained there. Perhaps, he mused, it was some kind of national
war-cry, a shout of victory or defiance ... "Death or liberty!..." or
"In the name of the Kaiser," or something like that.
From where he was he could see the outstretched figure lying to the
left of him, the limp legs, the helpless, upturned feet in their thick
muddy boots; and he heard the sound of the rattling breath still
repeating brokenly, "_Die Flundern werden sich wundern_...."
An overwhelming sense of pity came over him; pity for the broken figure
beside him, pity for himself, pity for the world. With an immense
effort, for he felt as if every bone were broken, he turned on his side
and, struggling slowly along the ground, dragged himself towards the
dying man. When he reached him and could touch him with his outstretched
hand he rested awhile; then he fumbled for his brandy-flask, found it,
unscrewed it and held it near the man's face.
"_Tiens! bois_," he said. But the German did not move to take it; and
soon the rattling breath stopped.
Florian wriggled a little closer, slipped his right arm under the man's
head and raised it. Then by the grey April starlight he saw something
bubble and gush over the man's face from a wound in his forehead. The
German opened his eyes. What were those fiendish women doing to him now?
Pouring warm wine over his head.... Through the tepid scarlet veil his
wild eyes blinked up at Florian in childish terror and bewilderment. A
wave of sickening faintness overcame Florian; his arm slackened, and his
enemy's ghastly crimson face fell back upon it as Florian himself sank
beside him in a swoon.
There they lay all through the night, side by side, like brothers, the
living and the dead; the German soldier with his head on the Belgian
officer's arm. And thus two German Red Cross men found them in the
chilly dawn as they slid down the crater-side, carrying a folded
stretcher between them. They were very young, the two Red Cross men;
they had not finished studying philosophy in the Bonn University when
the war had broken out, and they had left Kant and Hebel for a quick
course of surgery. The youngest one, who had very fair hair, wrote
foolish Latin poems, said to be after the style of Lucretius.
They dropped the stretcher and stood silently looking down at those two
motionless figures in their fraternal embrace, whose attitude told their
tale. Florian's hand, holding the open brandy-flask, lay on the dead
German's breast; the ghastly dead face of their comrade was pillowed
easily on the enemy's encircling arm.
Something rose in the throat of the two who gazed, and the younger
one--the one who wrote Latin verse--bent down and laid his hand lightly,
as if invoking a blessing on Florian's pale forehead. Then he turned
with a start to his companion. "He is alive!"
The other in his turn touched the man's brow, then lifted the limp hand
to feel his pulse. They knelt beside him and poured brandy down his
throat. Then they worked over him for a long while, until a breath of
life fluttered through the ashen lips, and the vague blue eyes opened
and looked into theirs.
The Germans rose to their feet. The Belgian, when he had lain
unconscious with his arm around their fallen comrade, had been to them a
hero and a friend. Now, alive, with open eyes, he was their foe and
their prisoner.
They spoke to him at first, not unkindly, in German; then, somewhat
brusquely, in French; but he gave them no reply. His brain was benumbed
and stupefied. He could not speak and he could not stand. So they lifted
him and placed him on the stretcher.
"Poor devil!" murmured the younger man as he extended the two limp arms
along the recumbent body and pointed out to his companion the right
sleeve of the Belgian uniform sodden and stiff with the German soldier's
blood.
"Poor devil! What have we saved him for? To send him to the hell of
Wittemberg!..."
"Hard lines," murmured the other one.
"_Gerechter Gott!_" exclaimed the foolish fair-haired poet, "I wish we
could give him a chance."
* * * * *
They gave him a chance.
Florian never knew how it was that he found himself lying on a blanket
on the stone floor of a half-demolished farm building, a sort of
dilapidated cow-house.
As he raised his aching head he saw that milk, bread, and brandy had
been left on the floor beside him; also a packet of cigarettes, some
matches, and a tablet of chocolate. He drank greedily of the milk; then
he took a sip of brandy and staggered to his feet. Though giddy and
trembling, he found he could stand. And as he stood he noticed that he
was stripped to the skin. There was not a stitch of clothing on him, nor
was there a vestige of his own uniform anywhere to be seen. There was
nothing but a pair of muddy yellow boots standing in the middle of the
floor--boots that reminded him of those he had seen on the dying German
on the hill-side. These and the grey blanket he had lain on were all
that one could possibly clothe oneself in. Nothing that had been his was
there. Even the brandy was not in his own flask.
Florian looked round the deserted place, the crumbling walls which bomb
and shell had battered. There was a rusty, broken plough in a corner, a
few tools and some odd pots and pans. After brief reflection Florian put
on the boots; then he finished the bread, the milk, and the brandy.
Finally, having knotted in one corner of the blanket the chocolate, the
cigarettes, and the matches, he wound the rough grey covering round his
body and stepped out to face the world.
It was an empty, desolate world; a dead horse lay not far off on the
muddy road leading across the plain. By the sun, Florian judged it to
be about seven o'clock in the morning. He seemed to recognize the
locality; it might be a mile or two from the fighting ground of the
preceding day. Yes. There to the left was the straight white road from
Poperinghe to Ypres; he recognized the double line of trees ... where
was he to go? In what direction were the Belgian lines, he wondered. He
still felt weak, and his knees trembled; his mind was vacant except for
a jumble of meaningless sounds. The words the dying German had repeated
through the night rang in his head continually. He found himself
murmuring over and over again, "_Die Flundern werden sich wundern_...."
He also had to make a strenuous mental effort to realize that he
actually was wandering about the world in nothing but a pair of boots
and a blanket. Everything seemed like an insensate dream. Perhaps he was
still suffering from shock and dreaming all this? Perhaps he was really
lying in hospital with concussion of the brain.... Who on earth could
have stolen all his clothes and left him in exchange the milk, the
chocolate, and the cigarettes?
There was something base and treacherous in robbing an unconscious man,
he said to himself. On the other hand, there was a touch of friendliness
and kindness in the chocolate and the cigarettes. The whole thing was
absurd and fantastic.
"Either," reasoned Florian, stumbling along in his blanket in the
direction of a distant wood, "either I have been the prey of some
demented creature, or I am at this very moment light-headed myself...."
"_Die Flundern werden sich wundern._" He had to make an effort not to
say those crazy words aloud. He felt he would go mad if he did so. As
long as he kept them shut up in his brain he was their master; but if he
let them out he felt they would get the better of him, and he would go
on saying them over and over and over again like the delirious German.
Decidedly he was weak in his head, and must try to keep a firm hold on
his brain. "_Die Flundern ... werden sich wundern._"
A few moments later he saw some mounted soldiers riding out of the wood;
he saw at once that it was a German patrol. He thought of turning back
and hiding in the shed again, but it was too late. They had caught sight
of him, and were riding down towards him at full speed.
Well, the game was up, said Florian to himself; he would be taken. He
could neither kill others nor himself with a piece of chocolate and a
packet of Josetti.
So he stood stock-still, folded his arms, and awaited their arrival.
("_Die Flundern werden sich wundern...._")
As the eight or ten men galloped up, Florian noted from afar their
looks of amazement at the sight of him. They hailed him in German, and
he did not reply. He stood like a statue; he said to himself that he
would meet his fate with dignity. But he had not reckoned with the
ludicrous effect of his attire. Two of the men dismounted, and one of
them addressed him in German with a broad grin on his face; but the
other--a young officer--silenced the first one abruptly, and turning a
grim countenance to Florian, asked him in French why he was in that
array.
"What have you done with your uniform?" he asked, scowling.
Florian scowled back at him, and gave no reply. He had made up his mind
that he would not speak. ("_Die Flundern werden sich wundern._")
The officer gave an order, and two soldiers took him by the arms and
dragged his blanket from him. He stood there in his muddy boots, bare in
the sunshine, his face and hands and hair caked with mud. But he was a
fine and handsome figure for all that.
The officer and the men had turned their attention to the knot in the
blanket. They undid it and took out the contents of the improvised
pocket.
Then they looked at the figure before them and at each other. The
chocolate was German; the cigarettes were German; the boots were German.
What was the man?
"_Meschugge_," murmured the lieutenant in explanation, not of Florian's
nationality, but of his condition of mind.
"_Meschugge! Meschugge!_" repeated the others, laughing.
The officer seemed uncertain. He turned and spoke in a low voice to the
others. Florian knew they were discussing him. Would they arrest him as
a cunning Belgian who had discarded his uniform, stolen the boots and
the blanket, and was shamming to be insane and dumb? Or would they think
him a German gone daft and send him to an infirmary? He hoped so. It
would be easier to make one's escape from an infirmary than from a
German prison. A German prison! Florian clenched his teeth. He saw that
the officer seemed inclined to adopt this course.
"_Die Flundern werden_--" He almost said it aloud. The sound of these
guttural German voices round him seemed to drag the words out of him. He
felt his lips moving and he saw them watching him closely.... Suddenly
the crazy words ran out of his mouth. "_Die Flundern werden sich
wundern!_"
He was not prepared for the effect of those words. The soldiers burst
into loud laughter; even the officer's hard face relaxed and he smiled
broadly. The others repeated it with comments. "Did you hear? '_Die
Flundern_'!... He has the Ueberbrettel on the brain!" And they roared
with laughter and clapped him on the bare shoulders and asked him in
what _Kabarett_ he had left his heart and his senses.
Florian understood not a word, but he knew he was safe. At least, for
the present.
Whatever the words were, they had saved him, and he made up his mind
that for the time being he would use no others. A little later he added
one other word to his repertoire, and that was _Meschugge_, which is
Berlin dialect for mad. He himself had no faint idea of what it meant,
but he heard it pronounced, evidently in regard to himself, by the
Prussian Lieutenant in whose charge he was conducted back to the German
lines.
"_Die Flundern werden sich wundern_," and "_Meschugge_." With those six
words, murmured at intervals once or twice in a day, he got through the
rear lines of the German army, and through a brief stay in a camp
hospital, and finally into a Liège infirmary. Those who heard him knew
there could be no mistake. He was no Belgian and no Frenchman. Of all
words in the rich German vocabulary, of all lines of German verse or
song, no foreigner in the world could ever have hit on just these. None
but a true son of the Fatherland--indeed none but a pure-blooded
_Berliner_--would have even known what they meant.
"_Ein famoser Kerl_," was this young Adonis, who had turned up from
heaven knows where in a blanket and a pair of boots. "_Ein ganz famoser
Kerl!_" And they clapped him on the shoulders. "_Er lebe hoch!_"
Thus it came about that the Water-corpse and Mélanie of the Café des
Westens unwittingly saved the life of a gallant Belgian soldier. And as
this is the only good deed they are ever likely to perform, may it stand
to their credit on the Day of Judgment when they are summoned to account
for their wretched and unprofitable lives.
CHAPTER XXI
On the 1st of May the Ourthe and the Aisne, each with a crisp Spring
wave to its waters, came together at Bomal. "Here I am, as fresh as
ever," said the frisky little Aisne.
"Oh, come off the rocks," grumbled the Ourthe, elbowing her way towards
the bridge, "and don't be so gushing."
"There's a stork passing over us with a May-baby in his beak," bubbled
the Aisne.
"A good thing if he dropped it. Here I am very deep," quoth the Ourthe.
The Aisne, who was not deep at all, did not understand the quibble. "How
very blue you are!" she gurgled. "What is the matter? Is it going to
rain?"
"If it does, mind you keep to your bed," retorted the Ourthe
sarcastically.
"I won't. I am coming into yours," plashed the Aisne; and did so.
"Oh! The Meuse take you!" grumbled the Ourthe foaming and swelling.
And they went on together, quarrelling all the way to Liège, where the
Meuse took them both.
The stork flew across the bridge, and stopped over Dr. Brandès's house.
"Open your eyes, little human child," said the stork. "This is where you
are born."
* * * * *
"Rockaby, lullaby, bees in the clover...." sang Nurse Elliot, of the
American Red Cross, rocking the cradle with her foot and looking
dreamily out of the window. From where she sat she could catch a glimpse
of the Bomal church steeple and the swaying tops of the trees in the
cemetery.
"Perhaps this poor lamb would be better off if it were already asleep
over there under those trees," reflected Nurse Caroline Elliot. And as
if in assent, the infant in the cradle uttered a melancholy wail.
Nurse Elliot immediately began to sing Bliss Carman's May-song:
Day comes, May comes,
One who was away comes,
All the world is fair again,
Fair and kind to me.
Day comes, May comes,
One who was away comes,
Set his place at hearth and board
As it used to be.
May comes, day comes,
One who was away comes,
Higher are the hills of home,
Bluer is the sea.
The baby soon gave up all attempt to compete with the powerful American
contralto, and with puckered brow and tiny clenched fist went mournfully
to sleep again. He had been in the world just seven days and had not
found much to rejoice over. Life seemed to consist of a good deal of
noise and discomfort and bumping about. There seemed to be not much
food, a great deal of singing, and a variety of aches. "I wish I were
back in the land of Neverness," wept the baby, "lying in the cup of a
lotus-flower in the blue morning of inexistence."
The stork, still standing on one leg on the roof resting from its
journey, heard this and said: "Never mind. Cheer up. It is not for
long."
"For how long is it?" asked the baby anxiously.
"Oh, less than a hundred years," said the stork, combing the feathers of
its breast with its beak.
Then the baby wept even more bitterly. "Why? Why, for so short a time?"
it cried.
"You bother me," said the stork; and flew away.
And the cradle rocked and the baby wept and Miss Caroline Elliot sang.
* * * * *
They had arrived in Bomal ten days before--Louise, Chérie and
Mireille--after a nightmare journey, through Holland and Flanders. At
the station in Liège, Chérie, who was very ill, aroused the
compassionate attention of the American Red Cross nurses and they
obtained permission to bring her in a motor ambulance to Bomal. Nurse
Elliot, a tall kind woman, accompanied her, and was permitted to remain
with her and assist her during the ordeal of the ensuing days.
On their arrival Louise had not come straight to the house. She had not
dared to bring Mireille to her home. She feared she knew not what. Would
the child recognize the place? Would the unconscious eyes perceive and
recognize the surroundings that had witnessed her martyrdom? What effect
might such a shock have on that stricken, sensitive soul?... Louise felt
unable to face any new emotions after the fatigue and misery of the
journey and the hourly anxiety in regard to Chérie.
So she accompanied Mireille to the home of their old friend, Madame
Doré.
Doubtful of the welcome she would receive, fearful of the changes she
might find, Louise knocked with trembling hand at the door of her old
friend's house.
Madame Doré herself opened the door to her. But--was this Madame Doré?
This haggard, white-haired woman, who stared at her with such startled
eyes?
"Madame Doré! It is I--Louise and little Mireille! Do you not recognize
us?"
"Hush! Come in." The woman drew them quickly into the passage and locked
the door. Her eyes had a roving, frightened look, and every now and
then a nervous spasm contracted her face.
"Oh my dear, my dear," said Louise, embracing her with tears.
Locked in Madame Doré's bedroom--for the terrorized woman had the
obsession of being constantly watched and spied upon--Louise heard her
friend's tragic story and recounted her own. With pitying tears Madame
Doré caressed Mireille's soft hair and assured Louise that it would be a
joy for her and for Jeannette to keep her with them.
"Dear little Jeannette!" exclaimed Louise. "How glad I shall be to see
her again. Is she well?"
Yes. Jeannette was well.
"And Cécile--? You say she is in England?"
"Yes. She went with four or five other women from Bomal and Hamoir. She
could not live here any longer; her heart was broken. She never got over
the murder of her brother André"--the painful spasm distorted the
careworn face again--"you knew that he was shot by the side of the poor
old Curé that night in the Place de l'Église?"
Yes. Louise knew. And she pressed the hand of her old friend with
compassionate tenderness. They talked of all their friends and
acquaintances. The storm had swept over them, wrecking, ruining and
scattering them far and wide.
"Hush, listen!" whispered Madame Doré, suddenly grasping Louise's arm.
Outside they could hear the measured tread of feet and the sound of loud
voices, the loathed and dreaded German voices raised in talk and
laughter.
"Our masters!" whispered Madame Doré. "They enter our houses when they
choose, they come in the middle of the night and rummage through our
things. They take away our money and our jewels. They read our letters,
they order us about and insult us. We cannot speak or think or breathe
without their knowledge and permission. They are constantly threatening
us with imprisonment or with deportation. We are slaves and
half-starved. Ah!" cried the unhappy woman, "why did I not have the
courage to go with Cécile to England? I don't know ... I felt old, old
and frightened.... And now Jeannette and I are here as in a prison, and
Cécile is far away and alone."
Louise soothed her as best she could with caresses and consoling words.
But Madame Doré was heart-stricken and desolate, and the fact that they
had never met Cécile when they were in London caused her bitter
disappointment. Perhaps some evil had befallen Cécile? Did Louise think
she was safe? The English were kind, were they not?
Yes, Louise was sure Cécile was safe. And yes, the English were very
kind.
Even as she spoke a rush of longing came over her; a feeling that
resembled home-sickness in its tenderness and yearning. England!--ah,
England! How safe, indeed, how safe and kind and cool in its girdle of
grey water!...
Perhaps, mused Louise, as she hurried home alone, meeting the
inquisitive glance of strangers and the insolent stare of German
soldiers in the familiar village-streets, perhaps it would have been
better after all if they had remained safely in England, if they had
disregarded the warning of the invader and allowed him to confiscate
their home. Thus at least they would have remained beyond the reach of
his intrusions, his insults and his cruelty.
Meanwhile, in Dr. Brandès's house the energetic and capable Miss Elliot
had not been idle. A quick survey of the ransacked abode had shown her
that, although most of the valuables and all the silver and pictures had
been stolen, the necessary household utensils, and even the linen, were
left. Briskly and cheerfully she settled Chérie in a snow-white bed,
brushed and braided her shining hair in two long plaits, gave her a cup
of bread-and-milk and set resolutely to work to clear away some of the
litter and confusion before Louise should arrive.
There were dirty plates and glasses, and empty bottles everywhere; there
were muddy mattresses on the floor. People seemed to have slept and
eaten in every room in the house. Tables, carpets and beds were strewn
with cigar and cigarette-stumps; drawers and wardrobes had been emptied
and their contents scattered on the floor; basins of dirty water stood
on cabinets, sideboard and chairs.
Caroline Elliot brushed and emptied and cleared and cleaned, and drew in
the shutters, and opened the windows, and lit the fires; and by the time
she heard Louise's hurrying footsteps, was able to stand aside with a
little smile of satisfaction and watch Louise's pale face light up with
emotion and pleasure.
It was home, home after all!
And Louise, looking round the familiar rooms, felt a tremor of hope--the
timid hope of better days to come--stir in the depths of her thankful
heart.
CHAPTER XXII
The child was three weeks old and still Chérie had not seen either
friend or acquaintance, nor had she dared to go out of the house. She
felt too shy to show herself in the day-time, and after nightfall the
inhabitants of Bomal were forbidden to leave their homes. Chérie dreaded
meeting any of her acquaintances; true, there were not many left in the
village, for some had taken refuge abroad and others had gone to live in
the larger cities, Liège and Brussels, where, rightly or wrongly, they
hoped to feel less bitterly their state of subservience and slavery.
It was a sunny afternoon towards the end of May that Nurse Elliot at
last packed her neat bag and made ready to leave them.
"I cannot possibly stay a day longer," she said, caressing Chérie, who
clung to her in tears. "I must go back to my post in Liège. Besides, you
do not need me any more."
"Oh, I need you. I need you!" cried Chérie. "I shall be so lonely and
forlorn."
"Lonely? With your child? And with your sister-in-law? Nonsense," said
the nurse briskly.
"But Louise hardly speaks to me," said Chérie miserably. "She hates the
child, and she hates me."
"Nonsense," said the nurse again; but she felt that there was some truth
in Chérie's words.
Indeed, it was impossible not to notice the almost morbid aversion
Louise felt towards the poor little intruder. Louise herself, strive as
she would to hide or conquer her feeling, could not do so. Every line
and feature of the tiny face, every tendril of its silky pale-gold hair,
its small, pouting mouth, its strange, very light grey eyes--all, all
was hateful and horrible to her. When she saw Chérie lift it up and kiss
it she felt herself turn pale and sick. When she saw it at Chérie's
breast, saw the small head moving, the tiny hands searching and
pressing, she shuddered with horror and repugnance. Though she said to
herself that this was unreasonable, that it was cruel and wrong, still
the feeling was unconquerable; it seemed to spring from the innermost
depths of her Belgian soul. Her hatred was as much a primitive
ingenerate instinct, as was the passionate maternal love an essence of
the soul of Chérie.
"She hates us, Nurse Elliot, she hates us," asseverated Chérie, pressing
her clasped hands to her breast in a pitiful gesture of despair.
"Sometimes if for a moment I forget how miserable I am, and I lift the
little one up in my arms, and laugh at him and caress him, suddenly I
feel Louise's eyes fixed upon us, cold, hostile, implacable. Yes. She
hates us! And I suppose every one will hate us. Every one will turn from
the child and from me in loathing and disgust. Where shall we go? Where
shall we hide, I and this poor little baby of mine?" She turned a
tearful glance toward the red-curtained door that hid her little one,
awake and cooing in his cot. Nurse Elliot had finished packing and
locking her bag, had rolled and strapped her cloak, tied on her bonnet
and was ready to go to the station.
"Chérie," she said gravely, placing both her hands on the girl's frail
shoulders, "whatever is in store for you, you will have to face it. And
now," she added, kissing her on both cheeks, "if you love me a little,
if I have really been of any help or comfort to you during these sad
days, the moment has come for you to repay me."
"Oh, how--how can I ever repay you?" cried Chérie.
"By putting on your hat, taking your baby in your arms and accompanying
me to the station."
"To the station! I! with--Oh, I could not, I could not!" She shrank back
and a burning flush rose to her brow.
At that moment Louise entered the room dressed to go out.
"You will accompany me to the station," repeated Nurse Elliot firmly to
Chérie. "You, and your sister-in-law, and the baby will all come to see
me off and wish me luck."
"Don't--don't ask that," murmured Chérie.
"I do ask it," said Caroline Elliot. "And you cannot refuse. I have
given you many days and many nights out of my life, and much love and
tender anxiety. And this is the only thanks I shall ever ask." She
stepped close to Chérie and placed her arms around her. "Can you not
see, my dear, that sooner or later you will be forced to meet the ordeal
you dread? You cannot imprison yourself and the child for ever between
these four walls. Then take your courage and face the world today; now,
while I am still with you."
Chérie stood pale and hesitant; then she turned to Louise. "Would
you--would you go with me?"
There was so much humility and misery in her voice that Louise was
touched.
"Of course I will," she said; "go quickly and get ready."
Chérie ran to her room. She put on the modest black frock she had worn
on the journey from England, but she dressed the baby in all his
prettiest clothes--the white cape she had embroidered for him, and the
lace cap with blue ribbons and the smartest of his blue silk socks. She
lifted him in her arms and stepped before the mirror. After all it was a
very sweet baby, was it not? People might hate him when they heard of
him, but when they saw him....
Trembling, blushing and smiling she appeared at the gate where Miss
Elliot and Louise stood waiting for her. She stepped timidly out of
doors between them, and very young and very pathetic did she look with
her flushed cheeks and shining, diffident eyes. Whom would they meet?
Would they see any one they knew?
Yes. They met Mademoiselle Veraender, the school-mistress, who looked at
them, started, looked again and then, blushing crimson, crossed to the
other side of the road. They met Madame Linkaerts and her daughter
Marie. The girl recognized them with a cry of delight, but her mother
took her brusquely by the arm and turned her brusquely down a
side-street. They met four German soldiers strolling along who stared
first at the American nurse, then at Louise, then at Chérie with the
baby in her arms.
One of them made a remark and the others laughed. They stood still to
let the three women pass, and the one who had spoken waved his fingers
at Chérie. "_Ein Vaterlandskindlein?--nicht wahr?_" And he threw a kiss
to the child.
Three or four street-urchins who had been following the soldiers,
imitating their strutting gait and sticking their tongues out at them,
noticed the greeting and interpreted it with the sharpness which
characterizes the gutter-snipe all the world over. They also began to
throw kisses to Chérie and to the baby, shouting, "_Petit boche? Quoi?_"
A lame elderly man passed and taking in the situation at a glance, ran
after the boys with his stick. Others passed, and stopped. Many of them
recognized the women, and some looked pityingly, others contemptuously
at the flushed and miserable Chérie. But no one came to speak to her, no
one greeted her, no one smiled at the child in its embroidered cape and
its cap with the blue ribbons. A few idlers making rude remarks,
followed them to the station.
Nurse Elliot left them. It was a sad leave-taking. Then they returned
home in silence, going far out of their way to choose the least
frequented streets.
As they came down the shady lane behind their house Louise glanced at
Chérie, and her heart melted with pity. What a child she looked for her
nineteen years! And how sad and frightened and ashamed? What could
Louise do to help her? What consolation could she offer? What hope could
she hold out?
None. None. Except that the child should die. And why should it die? Was
it not the child of puissant youth, of brutal vitality? Did it not drink
its sustenance from the purest source of life? Why should it die?
No; the child would live; live to do harm and hurt; to bring sorrow and
shame on them all. Live to keep the flame of hatred alight in their
hearts, to remind them for ever of the foul wrong they had suffered....
Chérie had felt Louise's eyes upon her and turned to her quickly. Had
not her sensitive soul perceived a passing breath of pity and of
tenderness? Surely Louise would turn to her now with a word of
consolation and compassion? Perhaps the sight of her helpless infant had
touched Louise's heart at last....
No, no. Again she caught that look of resentment, that terrible look of
anger and shame in Louise's eyes; and bending her head lower over her
child she hurried into the house.
CHAPTER XXIII
The house seemed very empty without Nurse Elliot. Chérie seldom spoke,
for she had nothing to speak about but her baby, and she knew that to
such talk Louise would neither wish to listen nor reply.
Other mothers, reflected Chérie bitterly, could speak all day about
their children, and she, also, would have loved to tell of all the
wonderful things she discovered in her baby day by day. For instance, he
always laughed in his dreams, which meant that the angels still spoke to
him; and the soles of his tiny feet were quite pink; and he had a dimple
in his left cheek, and a quantity of silky golden hair on the nape of
his neck--all things that Louise had never noticed, and Chérie did not
dare to speak about them. There was silence, pitiless silence, round
that woeful cradle.
In order that the child should not disturb Louise, Chérie had given up
her own bedroom and chosen for the nursery the spare room on the floor
below--the room with the red curtains--which, strangely enough, seemed
for her to hold no memories. One afternoon as she sat there nursing her
child, Louise, who hardly ever crossed that threshold, opened the door
and came in.
Chérie looked up with a welcoming smile of surprise and joy. But Louise
turned her eyes away from her and from the slumbering babe.
"I have come to tell you," she said, "that Mireille is coming home. I am
going to fetch her this evening."
Chérie drew a quick breath of alarm. "Mireille!... Mireille is coming
here?" she exclaimed.
"Surely you did not expect the poor child to stay away for ever?" said
Louise, her eyes filling with tears. "I have missed her very much," she
added bitterly.
"Of course ... of course," stammered Chérie, "I am sorry!... But what
is ... what is to become of me? I mean, what shall we do, the baby and
I?"
"What _can_ you do?" said Louise bitterly.
Chérie bent over her child. "I wish we could hide" ... she said in a low
voice, "hide ourselves away where nobody would ever see us."
Louise made no reply. She sat down, turning away from Chérie, and tried
not to feel pitiless. "Harden not your hearts ... harden not your
hearts ..." she repeated to herself, striving to stifle the sense of
implacable rancour, of bitter hatred which hurt her own heart, but which
she could not overcome.
"Mireille will come here!" Chérie repeated under her breath. "She will
see the child! What will she say? What will she say?"
Louise raised her sombre eyes and drew a deep breath of pain.
"Alas! She will say nothing, poor little Mireille! She will say
nothing." And the bitter thought of Mireille's affliction overwhelmed
her mother's soul.
No; whatever happened Mireille, once such a joyous, laughter-loving
sprite, would say nothing. She would see Chérie with a baby in her arms,
and would say nothing. She would see her mother kneeling at her feet
beseeching for a word, and would say nothing. Her father might return,
and she would be silent; or he might die--and she would not open her
lips. This other child, this child of shame and sorrow, would grow up
and learn to speak, would smile and laugh and call Chérie by the
sweet-sounding name by which Louise would never be called again, but
Mireille would be for ever silent.
Chérie had risen with her baby in her arms. Shy and trembling she went
to Louise and knelt at her feet.
"Louise! Louise! Can you not love us and forgive us? What have we done?
What has this poor little creature done to you that you should hate it
so? Louise, it is not for me that I implore your pity and your love; I
can live without them if I must; I can live despised and hated because I
know and understand. But for him I implore you! For this poor innocent
who has done no harm, who has come into life branded and ill-fated, and
does not know that he may not be loved as other children are--one word
of tenderness, Louise, one word of blessing!"
She caught at Louise's dress with her trembling hand. "Louise, lay your
hand on his forehead and say 'God bless you.' Just those three little
words that every one says to the poorest and the most wretched. Just say
that shortest of all prayers for him!"
There was silence.
"Louise!" sobbed Chérie, "if you were to say that, I think it would help
him and me to live through all the days of misery to come. It is so sad,
Louise, that no one, no one should ever have invoked a benediction upon
so poor and helpless a child."
Louise's eyes filled with tears. She looked down at the tiny face and
the strange light eyes blinked up at her. They were cruel eyes. They
were the eyes she had seen glaring at her across the room, mocking and
taunting her, at that supreme instant when her prayers and little
Mireille's had at last succeeded in touching their oppressor's heart.
Those eyes, those light grey eyes in the ruthless face had lit upon
her, hard as flint, cruel as a blade of steel: "The seal of Germany must
be set upon the enemy's country----"
Those eyes had condemned her to her doom.
"I cannot, I cannot," she said, and turned away.
CHAPTER XXIV
Dusk was falling and a thin grey mist crept up from the two rivers as
Louise, with a black scarf over her head, hurried out of the house to
fetch Mireille. She was about to turn down the narrow rue de la Pompe
which led straight to the house of Madame Doré without passing the Place
de l'Église, where at this hour all the German soldiers were assembled,
when she noticed the hunched-up figure of a Flemish peasant coming
slowly along the small alley. He seemed to be mumbling to himself, and
looked such a strange figure with his slouch hat and limping gait that
in order to avoid him she turned back and went through the Square where
the soldiers lounged and smoked. They paid no heed to her and she
hurried on.
In her heart a wild new hope had sprung. She was going to bring Mireille
home. For the first time since that terrible morning of their flight,
Mireille would find herself once more in the surroundings that had
witnessed her martyrdom.
What if the shock of entering that house again, of being face to face
with all that must remind her of the struggle in which her agonized
child-spirit had been wrecked, what if that shock--Louise scarcely dared
to formulate the wild hope even in her own mind--were to heal her? Such
things had happened. Louise had heard and read of them; of people who
were mad and had suddenly been restored to reason, of people who were
dumb and had recovered their speech through some sudden powerful
emotion.
With beating heart Louise went faster through the silent streets.
The man she had seen in the rue de la Pompe had limped on; then turning
to the right he had found himself in front of Dr. Brandès's house.
He stopped and looked up at the windows. They were open, wide open to
the cool evening air, and at the sight, joy rushed into his heart. The
house was certainly inhabited. By whom? By whom?... Had they reached
Bomal after all? He had heard from Claude that they had left England to
return to their home. Had they arrived safely? Were they here?
The hope of seeing them again had inspired him to attempt and achieve
his daring flight from the Infirmary at Liège, and his temerarious
almost incredible journey across miles of closely-guarded country. The
vision of Chérie had been before him when at dead of night, with
bleeding hands, he had worked for hours to loosen the meshes of wire
nets and entanglements that surrounded the hospital grounds, where--half
patient, half prisoner--he had been held under strict surveillance for
nearly a month. It was Chérie's white hand that had beckoned to him and
upheld him through the long hungry days and the dreary nights, when he
was hiding in woods, crouching in ditches, plunging into rivers,
scrambling over walls and rocks until he had reached the valley of the
Aisne--passing indeed, quite near to Roche-à-Frêne where, he remembered,
she had gone for an excursion on her last birthday.... It was the
thought of Chérie that had inspired and guided him through untold risks
and dangers. And now, perhaps, she was here, here in this house before
him, within reach of his voice, within sight of his eyes, just beyond
those joyous open windows....
He remembered how on her birthday-night less than a year ago he had
clattered up on horseback through the quiet streets and had seen these
windows wide open as they were now.--Ah, what destruction had swept over
the world since then!
He remembered the sound of those laughing, girlish voices:
Sur le pont
D'Avignon
On y danse
On y danse....
He glanced quickly round, then he raised his head and softly whistled
the well-known tune.
Chérie had remained alone. She had heard Louise leave the house, closing
the outer door, and the sound of her quick footsteps had reached her for
a while from the street. Then silence had fallen.
Louise was going to fetch Mireille. Soon they would come back together,
and Chérie must decide what she would do. How should she face Mireille?
No; she must hide, hide with her child, so that Mireille should not see
him. For what would Mireille say when she saw the child? True, as Louise
said, she would say nothing--nothing that ears could hear. But what
would her soul say? How could any one know what Mireille saw and what
she did not see? Who could tell but what she might not see and remember
and hate, even as Louise hated? And that silent hatred would be still
more terrible to bear. Yes; Mireille would surely know when she saw
those very light eyes that opened so widely in the tiny face; she would
remember the man who had tortured her, who had bound her to the iron
banisters with her face turned to the bedroom door--this very door,
close by, draped with the red curtains--Yes. The memory and the horror
of it all would come back to her wandering spirit every time she saw
those strange light eyes, now half-closed as the small head nestled
sleepily at its mother's breast.
Chérie bent over her child and kissed the fair hair and the drowsy eyes
and the sweet half-open mouth. What if every one hated him? She loved
him. She loved him with the love of all mothers and with the greater
love of her sorrow and despair and shame.
"Child of mine," she whispered, "why did they not let us both drift away
into eternity on that May morning when you had not yet crossed the
threshold of life, and I was so near to the open doors of death? We
could have floated peacefully away together, you and I, out of all this
trouble and sorrow. How simple and restful it would have been."
But her baby slept and it was dusk and bed-time; so she rose and carried
him to his cradle in the adjoining room, pushing the red curtains aside
with her elbow as she entered.
While she did so she found herself vaguely thinking of her
birthday-night, of the dance with Jeannette, Cri-cri, Cécile. Like a
bright disconnected thread that memory seemed to run through her dark
thoughts. What had brought it into her mind? Why was she suddenly living
over again that brief happy hour before the storm broke over her and
wrecked her life?
The gay senseless words of the old dance kept ringing in her mind.
Sur le pont
D'Avignon
On y danse
Tout en rond....
A thrill passed through her as she realized that some passer-by was
whistling it in the street. Tears gathered in her eyes at the memories
which that puerile tune evoked.
Sur le pont
D'Avignon
On y danse
On y danse,
Sur le pont
D'Avignon
On y danse
Tout en rond.
Soft and clear the whistling still persisted. Chérie placed the baby in
its cradle, stooped over him and kissed him. Then she went to the window
and stood on tiptoe to look out--for the window was high and round, like
a ship's porthole.
The whistling stopped. Somebody standing in the shadow of the wall
stepped forward.
And Chérie's heart stood still.
CHAPTER XXV
She staggered back from the window and looked wildly round her. It was
Florian. It was Florian! What should she do? The child--where could she
hide the child?
The low whistle outside was repeated, there was a note of haste, of
urgency in it. She must let him in. How had he got here? Surely he was
in danger, there in the open street....
Chérie looked at herself, looked down at her loose white gown still
unfastened at neck and breast--the child's warm white resting-place.
Louise's black shawl lay across a chair. She took it and flung it
hastily round her shoulders; holding it tightly about her as she ran
down the stairs and opened the door.
Florian stepped quickly into the passage, closing the door behind him.
He looked strange in his oil-skin coat and slouch hat. The glimpse
Chérie caught of his face as he entered showed it hard and thin and
dark. Now in the shadowy passage she could not distinguish his features.
He caught her hand and pressed it tightly in his own. "Chérie!...
Chérie!" His voice was hoarse with emotion. "Who is here with you?" he
whispered.
"Nobody," she replied.
"What? Are you alone in the house?"
"Yes," faltered Chérie, withdrawing her hand from his. "I mean...." and
she stopped.
"Surely," he whispered anxiously, "you are not living here alone? Where
are the others? Where is Louise?"
"She is here--she has gone out. She will soon come back."
Florian drew a sigh of relief. "Let us go upstairs," he said; and
stretched out his hand to take hers again. "What a cold little hand! And
how you tremble!" He bent down and looked closely into her face. "Did I
frighten you?"
"Yes," said Chérie.
"You look like a ghost." Suddenly a different note came into his voice,
a note of anxiety and alarm. "What is the matter, have you been ill?"
"Yes," breathed Chérie.
He asked nothing more but put his arm round her, helping and hurrying
her up the two flights of stone stairs. He threw open the sitting-room
door and looked round the familiar place. "The Saints be praised," he
murmured, and drew her into the room.
He flung down his torn felt hat and threw off the long oil-skin coat.
Under it he was dressed in a dark linen suit, such as she had seen some
of the wounded Germans wear. He drew her to the window seat; the soft
May twilight fell on her pale face and glittering hair.
"Tell me, Chérie, tell me all the news; quickly. I cannot stay long," he
added, "it would be dangerous for you and for me. I have escaped from
the Infirmary at Liège; they will be hunting all over the place for
me--and for the ploughman's clothes," he added with a smile that for a
moment made him look like the Florian of old.
"The Infirmary? Have you been wounded?"
"No. I have been blown up. The Germans found me; they think me a Boche,
and _meschugge_--that is Berlinese for crazy. They have kept me with
ice-bags on my head for three weeks," he laughed again. "Perhaps I was
really off my head at first--but tell me, tell me about you. How are
you? How is Louise?"
"She is well."
"Is the little girl here too?"
"Mireille?" There was a pause. "Yes, Mireille is here."
Something in her voice startled him. "What is wrong? Has anything
happened?"
She was silent. His steel-blue eyes tried to pierce through the pallor
of her face, through the black-fringed, drooping eyelids, to read in her
soul. He suddenly felt that this shrinking figure in its white gown and
black shawl was aloof from him and draped in mystery. "What is it?" he
repeated. "What is wrong? Where has Louise gone to?" and he looked round
the familiar room with a sense of misgiving.
"She has gone ... to ... to fetch Mireille...." Chérie stammered. Then
she suddenly raised her wild blue eyes to his. "Mireille is not as she
used to be."
"What do you mean?" Florian suddenly felt sick and dizzy.
"She does not know any one. And she does not speak."
"Not speak?" echoed Florian, and the sense of sickness and dread
increased. "What has happened to her?"
"She was frightened...." Chérie's voice was toneless and he had to bend
close to her to catch her words. "She was frightened ... that night you
left ... my birthday night." ... There was a silence. She could say no
more. And suddenly Florian was silent too.
His silence seemed to fall on her heart like a heavy stone. At last she
raised her eyes to his face.
"Speak," he said, "speak quickly."
"That night ... they ... they came here...."
"I know. I know _they_ came through Bomal." The cold sweat stood on his
brow. "Did they--come to this house?"
"Yes," said Chérie.
Again there was silence--heavy and portentous.
Then he rose to his feet and stood a little away from her.
"They were in this house," he repeated. His lips and throat were arid;
he had the sensation that his voice came from afar off. "What--what
happened to Mireille? Did they hurt her?"
"No. She was afraid ... she screamed ... and they tied her to that
railing. There"--she pointed with her trembling hand to the wrought-iron
banister.
And again Florian's silence fell upon her heart like a rock and lay
there, heavily, crushing the life out of her.
After a long while he moved. He stepped back still further from her, and
his lips stirred once or twice before the words came.
"And you? Did they--harm you?"
Silence.
He waited a long time, then he repeated the question; and again he felt
as if his voice came from miles away.
Chérie suddenly dropped her face in her hands. He was answered. He
sprang forward and seized her wrists, dragging them away from her face.
"It is not true," he cried; "swear that it is not true!" And even as he
spoke he felt and hated the soft limp wrists, the feminine weakness, all
the delicate yielding frailty of her. He would have liked to feel her of
steel and adamant, that he might break and shatter her, that he might
crush and destroy.
Now she was at his feet, sobbing and crying; and he had clenched his
fists so tightly in order not to strike her that his nails dug deep into
his palms. He looked down at her shimmering hair, at the white nape of
her neck, at her fragile, heaving shoulders. The enemy had had her. The
enemy had had her and held her. She whom he had deemed too sacred for
his touch, she whom he had never dared to kiss on cheek or hair or lips
had quenched the brutish desire of the invader!... The foul,
blood-drunken soldiers had had their will of her--and there she lay
sullied, ruined, and defiled.
With a cry like the cry of a wounded animal he raised his clenched fists
to heaven, and the blood from his lacerated palms ran down his wrists,
and the tears, the hot searing tears that corrode a man's soul, rolled
down his gaunt, agonized face.
There she lay, the broken, helpless creature, there she lay--the symbol
of his country, his wrecked and ruined country!
Lost, lost both of them--broken, outraged and defiled.
Not all his blood, not all his prayers, could ever undo the wrong that
had been done to them, could ever raise them in their pristine glory and
purity--the sullied soul of the woman, the outraged heart of his land.
In the grey gloaming that fell around them, veiling with its shadows the
shame of her face, she told him what was still left to tell.
He said never a word. He sat with bowed head, his eyes hidden in his
hands. He felt as if he were dead in a dead world. All the flames of his
anger and despair were spent. His soul was turned to ashes. Nothing was
left. Nothing was left to live for, to fight for, to pray for.
For a long time he seemed to hear none of the stricken woman's words, as
she knelt sobbing at his feet. Then one word, constantly recurring, beat
on his brain like a hammer on red-hot iron.
"The child ... the child"--every other word that fell from her lips
seemed to be "the child."
"If only I could die," she was crying, "I should love to die were it not
for the child. It is such a forlorn and desolate little child. Nobody
ever looks at it, nobody ever smiles at it or wishes it well.... Not
even Louise, who is so kind.... No, she is cruel, she is like a fury
when she looks at the child. Oh, God! what will our life be in the midst
of so much scorn and hatred? Not that I care about myself; but what will
become of the little child? Perhaps I should have done as Louise
did.... I should have torn it from me before it came to life."
A deep shudder ran through Florian.
"But I seemed to hear a voice in my soul--the very voice of God, calling
aloud to me: '_Thou shall not kill._'"
Florian rose to his feet and looked down at the bowed figure. This was
Chérie, the laughing, dimpling, blushing Chérie--his betrothed!... He
bent over her and laid his hand on her shoulder, but she paid no heed.
"Ah, if only we could slip out of life together, the child and I! But
how? How? When he looks up at me and touches my face with his tiny
hands, how can I hurt him?" Her tear-flooded eyes looked up at Florian
without seeing him. "Should I strangle the little tender throat with my
hands? Or stifle the soft breath of his mouth?... Why should he not live
like other children, and laugh and play and be happy like every other
child? What has he done, poor innocent, that he should be accursed,
among children, an outcast, hated and despised?"
"Chérie!" he said, but she did not hear or heed him. Nor did she heed
the braggart peal of trumpet and clarionet passing under the windows
with the din of the "Wacht am Rhein." She heard nothing, she cared for
nothing but her own and the enemy's child.
The soldier's blood rose within him.
"And is this all you have to say to me when I come to you out of the
very jaws of death? Is this all you can think of when our land is wrung
and wracked by the enemy, torn to pieces by the foul fiends that have
violated her and you? A thousand curses on them and on----"
"No--no--no!" she screamed, springing to her feet and covering his mouth
with her hands. "No--no--not on him, not on him!"
"In the name of Belgium," roared the maddened Florian, "in the name of
our outraged women, our perishing children, our murdered men, I curse
the child you have borne! In the name of our broken hearts, in the name
of our burned and ravaged homesteads--Louvain, Lierre, Berlaer, Mortsel,
Waehlen, Weerde, Hofstade, Herselt, Diest----" The names fell from his
lips, fanning his heart to fury; but the woman closed her ears with her
hands so as not to hear the tragic enumeration of those sacred and
familiar names--Belgium's rosary of martyrdom and fire.
She held her hands over her ears and wept: "May God not hear you!... May
God not hear you!"
But he raised his voice and continued the appalling litany: "Malines,
Fleron, Wavre, Notre Dame, Rosbeck, Muysen----" Suddenly he stopped. A
sound had struck his ear--what was it?
It was a cry--the short, shrill cry of an infant.
The man stood still as if turned to stone; his blood-shot eyes,
starting from their sockets, stared at the red-draped door from which
the sound had come.
Chérie was at his feet, sobbing and wailing, her arms flung round his
knees. "Have pity, have pity!" she sobbed, shaking with terror of him,
blind with the fear of his violence. "Do no harm, do no harm! Kill me,
trample upon me, but do no harm to the child."
And still Florian stood motionless, as if turned to stone. He heard none
of the wild words that fell from the terrified woman's lips; he heard
nothing but that querulous cry, the cry of the newly-born. The world
seemed to ring with it. Above the wailing voice of the woman, above the
din of soldiery, the clash of arms, the roar of warfare, rose that
shrill cry of life, the cry of humanity. And that cry pierced his heart
like a sword. In it was all the helplessness and misery of the world. It
seemed to tell him of the uselessness and hopelessness and sadness of
all things.
Anger, grief and despair, the passion of vengeance and the desire to
kill, all dropped out of his soul and left it silent and empty. The
terrified woman before him saw those fierce eyes soften, saw the stern
lips tremble.
He bent forward and raised her to her feet. "Poor Chérie!" he said.
"Poor little Chérie!" He took her pale, disfigured face between his two
hands and looked into her eyes. "Say good-bye to me. Say good-bye. And
may the Saints protect you."
"Where are you going? What will you do?" she sobbed as she saw him
turning away from her, making ready to go out into the darkness--out of
her life for ever.
"There is much for me to do," he said and his eyes wandered to the
window whence the sound of the German bugles could still be heard.
And as she looked at him she saw that Florian, the comrade and lover of
her youth, had vanished--only the soldier stood before her, the soldier
aloof from her, detached from her, the soldier alone with his stern
great task to do.
But in her the woman, the eternal, helpless woman, was born again, and
she clung to him and wept, for passion and love returned to her soul and
overwhelmed her.
"You will leave me! You will leave me! Florian, oh, my love! What will
become of me? What shall I do? What shall I do?"
As if in answer, the feeble cry of the infant rose again.
The man said not a word. He raised his hand and pointed silently to the
red-draped door. Then he turned from her and went out into the night.
Chérie stood still, gazing at the empty doorway through which he had
passed.
* * * * *
Then as the child still wept, she went to him.
Humbly she went, and took her woman's place beside the cradle.
CHAPTER XXVI
The bugle bidding the inhabitants of Bomal to enter their homes and lock
their doors blew shrilly as Louise hurried through the darkening,
deserted streets, holding Mireille's chilly hand in hers. She spoke in
soft, hurried tones, as if the child could hear her, as if she could
understand. "You shall see, Mireille, you shall see when you enter your
home--you will recognize it and remember. When I open the door and you
step suddenly into the familiar place, I shall see the light break in
your eyes like a sudden dawn. You will turn to me and you will smile--or
weep! I do not know which will give me the greater joy--your tears or
your smile. Then you will open your sweet lips--and speak...."
"What will your first words be, Mireille? Will you say, 'Mother'? Will
you greet me as one who returns from a long journey, as one who wakens
from a long dream?... Or, even though your voice be given back to you,
will you be silent awhile, able yet not daring to speak?... Or will the
first sound from your lips be a cry of terror when you remember what you
saw that night?... Mireille, Mireille, whatever it be, I know that this
evening I shall hear your voice. It is as if God had told me so."
They went more quickly through the sombre streets.
Far away over the hills of the Ardennes the great May moon arose. As
soon as Louise caught sight of the house she saw that the gate to the
courtyard was open. Could any one have entered during her absence? She
glanced up at the windows. They were open, but dark. The sense of panic
that was never far from her heart since their return to Belgium clutched
at her like a cold hand. Could anything have happened? Why had Chérie
not lit the lights? Who had left the gate unclosed?
Then the thought of Mireille, the hope, the wild prescience of her
recovery which had suddenly grown into a delirious certainty flamed up
in her heart again, and all else was forgotten. She and Mireille were
alone in the world.
She and Mireille were alone.
She kept her eyes fixed on the small vacant face as she led her past the
gate--that gate through which the child's dancing feet had twinkled
throughout the care-free seasons of her infancy.
But not a quiver rippled over the childish countenance, not a gleam of
light flickered in the dreamy eyes, and with a low sob Louise grasped
the small passive hand more tightly and drew her across the courtyard to
the hall-door.
That door also was ajar, as if some one had hurriedly left it so,
regardless of the invader's orders that at sunset all doors should be
locked. One moment Louise thought of calling to Chérie to make sure that
she was in the house; but again the need to be alone, face to face with
Mireille's awakening soul, restrained her. She drew Mireille into the
hall and turned on the light.
"Mireille ... Mireille...." she whispered breathlessly. "Look,
darling ... don't you remember? Don't you remember?"
The girl's pale eyes roved from the tapestried archway to the panelled
doors, from the ornamental panoply to the Van de Welde winter landscapes
hanging on the wall before her. No ray of recognition lit the unmoved
face, which was fair and still as a closed flower. With beating heart
Louise placed her arm around the girl's narrow shoulders and guided her
light, uncertain footsteps up the stairs. The door to the sitting-room
was open; Louise stretched out her hand, and the brilliancy of the
electric light lit up the room.
With a gasp Louise felt Mireille falter on the threshold ... she stood
breathless and watched her. Surely, surely she must recognize this
scene: there to the right, the large Flemish fireplace; there beyond it
the old-fashioned oak settee; and there the shallow flight of stairs,
with the wrought-iron banisters running right down into the room, facing
the door with the red-tapestried curtains.... Surely, with this scene
of her martyrdom brought suddenly before her, the veil of
unconsciousness would be rent from her soul. Louise felt it. Louise knew
it. Already she could almost hear the cry with which her child would
turn to her and fall into her arms....
Nothing. Nothing happened.
For an instant a vague expression, a pale light as of dread, had
flickered over the tranquil countenance. She had faltered, and stood
still, with her eyes fixed on the red drapery of the closed door. Then
the pale flicker of emotion had faded from her face as if blown out by a
gust of wind.
Nothing more. With limp, pendant hands and vacant eyes she stood before
Louise in her usual drooping posture--pale, ethereal and unreal, like a
little weary seraph walking in its dreams.
The flaming torch of hope in the mother's heart was dashed to the
ground.
And all was dark.
CHAPTER XXVII
Chérie, kneeling beside her child's cradle, had heard them enter the
adjoining room. She rose slowly. She must go and meet them; she must
greet Mireille and tell Louise that Florian had come; had come ... and
gone!
The profound silence in the adjoining room struck her. She wondered, as
she hesitated at the door, why Louise did not speak. For did she not
always talk to Mireille in that low, tender voice of hers, as if the
child could understand? Now there was not a sound. It was if the room
were empty.
Suddenly she understood. Louise was waiting, hoping that the miracle
might be accomplished--that Mireille might speak. Then Chérie also stood
motionless with clasped hands, and waited, waited for a sound, a word, a
cry.
But the silence remained unbroken.
At last she heard the sound of Louise's weeping; and, soon after, their
soft, retreating footsteps on the carpeted stairs. Then utter silence.
And Chérie still stood at the closed door, leaning her forehead against
its panels.
They had gone. Louise was taking Mireille to bed. She had not called
Chérie. She had not said good-night, nor asked her to come and see
Mireille. No. Chérie was not needed. Louise, even in her great sorrow,
did not think of coming to Chérie. She had gone with Mireille to her
room, and she would stay there and weep all alone, and sleep at last,
never knowing that Florian had been, never knowing that he had gone away
for ever, never knowing that Chérie's heart was broken!... With a rush
of passionate grief Chérie drew back from the door and fell on her knees
beside the cradle.
And there the great May moon, rising like a golden disc over the hills
of the Ardennes, found her and shone down through the round window, upon
her and her sleeping babe.
* * * * *
Louise, lying awake in the dark, heard the church clock strike eleven.
She lay quite still in the silent room, listening to Mireille's soft
breathing. Then she thought of Claude, and prayed for his safety; but
not for his return.
At last, exhausted, she slept.
But Mireille, though her soft breathing never varied, was not asleep.
She lay motionless in the dark, with her eyes wide open. She was
listening to something that had awakened within her--Memory!...
The church clock struck half-past eleven. Louise still slept, with the
occasional catch in her breath of those who have cried themselves to
sleep.
Mireille sat up. The room was quite dark, the shutters closed and the
curtains drawn. But Mireille slipped from her bed, a slim, white-robed
spectre, and her bare feet crossed the room without a sound. She found
the door and opened it noiselessly; she crossed the landing, and her
small feet trod the carpeted staircase as lightly and silently as the
falling petals of a flower.
Where was she going to? What drew her through the dark and silent house?
Terror--and the memory of a red-draped door. Nothing else did her
haunted eyes perceive, nothing else did her stricken soul realize, but
that red curtain draped over a door. She remembered it with a vague,
horrible sense of fear. She must see it again.... Had she not once stood
before that draped door for hours and years and eternities?... Yes. She
must see it again. And if that door were to open--she must die!...
She went on, drawn by her terror as by an unseen force, until she
reached the last shallow flight of stairs--three steps skirted by a
wrought-iron banister--and there she stopped suddenly, as if fettered to
the spot. For though the room was plunged in darkness she knew that
there, opposite her, was the door with the red curtain....
And thus she stood, in the self-same attitude of her past martyrdom,
feeling that she was pinioned there, feeling that she must stand for
ever with her eyes fixed in the darkness on that part of the room where
she knew was the door--the door with the red curtain....
* * * * *
Chérie heard the clock strike eleven; then the quarter; then the
half-hour. And still she lay on the floor with her face hidden in her
arms.
For her all was at an end. Her resolve was taken. Her mind was clear.
Now she had seen Florian there was nothing left to wait for. What good
would she or the child ever do in the world? Nobody wanted them. Nobody
ever wanted to see them or speak to them. They were outcasts. Not even
Louise could look without loathing at the hapless little child. Not even
Louise could invoke a benediction upon him. He was ill-omened, hated and
accursed.
Chérie rose to her feet and went to the window--the old-fashioned
circular window like a ship's porthole--and opened it wide.
The level rays of the moon poured in, flooding the room with light.
"Good-night, moon," said Chérie. "Good-night, sky. Good-night, world."
Then she turned away and went to the cradle. She bent over it, and
lifted her sleeping infant in her arms. How warm he was! How warm and
soft and tender!... He must not catch cold.... Instinctively Chérie
caught up her wide blue silk scarf and wrapped it round herself and the
child. They were going out into the night air, out into the chilly
moonlight; they were going to cross the bridge over the Ourthe, and then
go up the lower bank of the river, up through the dank grasses, past the
old mill.... There, where the bank shelved down so steeply she would run
into the water.
She knew what it would feel like. Last year, had she not run into the
rippling waves at Westende every morning? She remembered it well.
Yes; she would feel the cool chill embrace of the water rising from her
feet to her knees ... to her waist ... to her breast ... to her
throat.... Then she would clasp her arms tightly round her child,
putting her lips close to his so as not to hear him cry, and her last
breath would be exhaled on the sweet warmth of that little mouth, the
dear little open mouth that seemed always to be asking for the balm of
milk and kisses.
She raised her eyes once more to the open window. "Good-bye," she said
again to the sky, to the world, and to life. Then she resolutely turned
away from the shining circle of light.
She drew the long blue scarf over her own head and shoulders, crossing
it over her arms and wrapping the infant in its azure folds as she held
him to her breast. Then she opened the door.
The red curtain fell in a straight line before her, and she pushed it
softly aside; it slid smoothly back on its rings.
Clasping her infant in the shimmering folds of blue, she took a step
forward--then stopped and stood transfixed in the doorway.
Some one was there! Some one was standing silent, there in the dark.
Who was it?
_Mireille!_
* * * * *
Mireille had stood motionless, almost cataleptic, with her fear-maddened
eyes fixed upon the dark spot which was the door. Now--now it was
opening! it was opening! A white light had streamed suddenly under the
curtain.
Yes. The door was opening.... Now Mireille would die! She knew it! What
she was going to see would kill her, as it had killed her soul before.
Gasping, with open mouth, with clenched hands, she saw the gap of light
widen beneath the moving curtain.... Now ... now.... The curtain had
slid back. There was a dazzling square of light....
And in that light stood a Vision.
Bathed in the rays of the moon, swathed in shimmering azure stood a
Mother with her Child. Behind her head glowed a luminous silver circle.
Ah! Well did Mireille know her! Well did Mireille remember her. All fear
was gone, all darkness swept away in the rapture of that dazzling
presence.
Mireille stretched out her clasped hands towards that effulgent vision.
What were the words of greeting she must say? She knew them well ...
they were rising in her throat.... What were they? What were they?
She wrung her clasped hands, with a spasm in her throat, but the words
would not come. She knew them. They seemed to burst open like flowers of
light in her brain, to peal like the notes of an organ in her soul, yet
her lips were locked and could not frame them.
The vision moved, seemed to waver and tremble.... Ah! Would she fade
away and vanish and be lost? Would Mireille fall back again into eternal
silence and darkness?
Something seemed to break in Mireille's throat. A cry--a cry, thrilling
and articulate--escaped her. The sealed fountain of her voice was opened
and the words of the immortal salutation gushed from her lips:
"_Ave Maria!..._"
Did not the shimmering figure smile and move towards her with extended
hand?... Fainting with ecstasy, Mireille sank at her feet.
Louise had started from her sleep at the sound of a cry.... Whose voice
had uttered it?
Though the room was dark, she felt that it was empty; she knew that
Mireille was not there. Yes, the door was open, showing a pale glimmer
of light.
Swift as an arrow Louise sped down the stairs, then--on the landing of
the last flight--she stopped, dazzled and spell-bound by what she saw
before her.
There in the moonlight stood the eternal vision of Maternity; and before
it knelt Mireille.
And Mireille was speaking.
"_Benedicta tu...._"
Clear, frail and silvern the words fell from Mireille's lips.
"_Benedicta tu!_"
The blessing that Louise and all others had withheld, now fell like a
solemn prophecy from the innocent's lips, rang like a divine decree in
that pure voice that had been hushed so long.
Mireille was healed! Healed through Chérie and her child of sorrow and
shame.
A wave of exalted emotion overwhelmed Louise, and she sank on her knees
beside Mireille, repeating the hallowed benediction.
With flowing tears Chérie, clasping her baby in her arms, wavered and
trembled like a holy picture seen in moonlit waters....
* * * * *
And so farewell--farewell to Mireille, Chérie, Louise.
They are still in their Belgian village awaiting the dawn of their
deliverance.
Around them the fury of War still rages, and the end of their sorrow is
not yet.
But upon them has descended the Peace of God which passeth all
understanding.
THE END