"Yes, Mackenzie? What now?"
"I've brought ye B14, sir."
"Why don't you show him in, then?"
"Well, sir, I'm thinking he's no' altogether to be trustit. I thought maybe if ye'd permit me to be in the room—"
"Trusted? Nonsense, man! I'm not made of glass. Bring him in at once." And as Mackenzie turned reluctantly to obey, the Governor added: "You can stand in a corner and see fair play, if you like. But I don't think a little whippersnapper like our friend would make much of it if he tried to tackle me, eh, Mackenzie?"
"Well, sir, maybe no," said Mackenzie, with his slow smile.
Captain Harding, a lean Anglo-Indian, all bone and sinew, got up and posted himself with his hands under his coattails, back to the fire. He felt the cold, and there was a blaze in his grate on many a chilly summer evening. His room was comfortably furnished with a Turkey carpet and deep leather arm-chairs. To many a prisoner it had seemed a glimpse of paradise. B14, however, took no notice; his apathetic face did not change, only he edged surreptitiously towards the hearth. "You can come near the fire if you like," said Harding, eyeing him sharply; and as Gardiner stumbled forward he put a hand on his shoulder. "What's the matter with you? Are you sick?"
Gardiner raised his eyes; in their darkness shone a metallic feral glare. "I'm perfectly well," he said, on the sullen verge of insolence.
"He's for the hospital, sir," said Mackenzie from the background, with an apologetic cough.
"Sit down," said the Governor shortly. He sat down himself, at his table, and turned over some papers. "Your name is Henry de la Cruz Gardiner?"
"De la Cruz," Gardiner interrupted, correcting him as he had corrected Lettice—how long ago?—only in those days he had not spoken in that tone. Again he edged nearer to the fire. He was cold to the marrow of his bones, colder than he had ever been in his life.
"Ah! Well, Gardiner, I'm sorry to say I have some bad news for you. I've received a letter from your father. It is against the rules for me to give it to you; but I can either read it or give you a summary. Shall I read it?" Gardiner made no sign; he was staring sullenly into the flames. Captain Harding, after another sharp glance at him over the top of the sheet, cleared his throat and began.
"'My own darling boy—'"
The prisoner stirred; that address touched some chord in his mind.
"'My own darling boy, I have two pieces of very bad news for you. I have been making inquiries at Headquarters in Town from all refugees, but for a long time could hear nothing of your part of the country. Last Friday, however, they wrote me that a man had come in from Bouillon. I went up at once, and heard the whole story from his lips. Alas! my dear boy, I am grieved to tell you that your friends have suffered most cruelly from Those Brutes. The village of Rochehaut was burned on 28th August, and a large number of the men were massacred. Your friend the Curé was cut down with the Sacred Vessels in his hands. I could learn nothing of the fate of the Women of the village, but it seems that in the outlying farms and cottages every kind of abomination was committed by Those Devils. I asked particularly about your hotel, and oh my dear dear boy, he tells me that it has been burned to the ground. Those Devils Incarnate (God punish them) first stole everything they had a mind to, and then set fire to the building. He saw it burning with his own eyes, as he escaped through the woods. He says that all the servants had left on the outbreak of war, and that no one was left in it but a caretaker. I do not know whether this was your little friend Miss Merion-Smith, but I should be afraid so, as she has not returned to England. What makes it particularly sad is that we hear (and this is my second piece of bad news) that poor Denis Merion-Smith is among the missing. He was sent on a bombing raid to Aix-la-Chapelle, and failed to return. One of his companions fancies that he was hit by Anti-Aircraft fire; when last seen he was "flying rather wild," but his machine seemed to be still under control. Oh my dear dear boy, my heart bleeds for you. I wish I could see you. These senseless rules and regulations make my blood boil, in times like these. I have written to the Home Secretary, but he is no good at all; he seems incapable of understanding the simplest thing. I wonder what we pay him for. It is too, too dreadful to think of the fate of that poor girl, and of poor Denis. This awful war is breaking all our hearts. May God never forgive the wicked Author of it. Tom writes that he is "going strong"—whatever that may mean; I wish he would not use this American slang. Of course he does not tell me where he is, but I believe it is somewhere on the River Aisne. God keep and comfort you, my own dear boy. From your loving Father.'
"That is all," said Captain Harding, folding the sheet.
Gardiner's lips moved; he muttered something inaudible. "What's that?" asked the Governor sharply. The murmur was repeated; it sounded like, "I killed"—him or her, uncertain which. Captain Harding could make nothing of it. He looked dubiously at the hunched-up figure, crouching into itself, staring vacantly at the carpet. Scott's pet patient—yes; but it was a hard case, no doubt of it. "You must keep up a good heart," he said kindly. "Many of the missing turn up again safe and sound, you know; and I've heard that flying officers are particularly well treated by the Germans when they fall into their hands. No use going to meet trouble half-way and believing the worst before you know it's happened."
"I killed her," muttered the prisoner again.
"You what?"
"I killed her. I sent her out there to her death. I killed her—"
Harding laid hands on the chair and wheeled it round to the light. "What's that? What are you talking about?"
"Nothing," said Gardiner. His eyes blinked stupidly in the sunshine. "May I—may I have my letter?" he asked, half stretching out his hand.
"I'm afraid that's against the rules, but I can read it to you again, if you like."
The hand dropped.
"Is there any question you want to ask?"
"No," said Gardiner; adding, as an afterthought: "No, thank you, sir." It was the first time he had used the title of respect. Certainly a hard case, and the Governor was very sorry for him, and not quite satisfied; but there was nothing to be done. He looked at Mackenzie, and Mackenzie touched B14's arm. Stumbling to his feet, he got out of the room and down the passages somehow to his cell, where he dropped face downwards on the bed.
"I'll be round in twa-three minutes to take you to hospital," said Mackenzie, preparing to withdraw.
"Mackenzie."
"Well? What ails ye now?"
The prisoner had struggled up on his elbow. "Tell Dr. Scott I want to see him."
"Ye'll be seein' him in half-an-hour."
"I want to see him in half-a-minute."
"He's awa' at his lunch," said the warder. "I've disturrbed him at his breakfast for ye already the morn; can't you let him get a bite in peace? I wouldna be hard on ye, but ye must be reasonable."
"Mackenzie!"
Again the prisoner called him back. He had swung his feet to the ground; he looked wild and dangerous enough for anything. "You bring Scott along. You'll be sorry for it if you don't."
"I tell you he's awa at his—"
"Man, man! What's that to do with it? You fetch him here double-quick time, or I tell you you'll be sorry for it—you'll be sorry all the days of your life! Will you go?"
Mackenzie caught that green glitter, and he did not like it; he did not like it at all. It sent him off, shaking his head, hotfoot to the doctor's quarters, to face again the redoubtable Katie. Meanwhile the prisoner sprang up and paced his cell, up and down, with the strength of fever. When the doctor came in, he was standing in the middle of the floor, his stool held by the leg in one hand, in the other a small object which he thrust violently forward.
"Here, Scott, catch hold of this! You've been long enough coming—you're only just in time!"
Scott looked down at the splinter of glass. "So that was how you meant to do it, hey?"
"Yes, that was how I meant to do it. And don't you let me get hold of it again, and don't you send me to that damned hospital of yours, unless you want murder done. I've had about as much as I can stick. I won't be herded with a mob of filthy jail-birds. Keep off—if you lay a finger on me I'll bash your brains out against that wall!"
Scott with absolute fearlessness stepped forward and caught his wrist.
"Drop that stool—drop it! That's better. Now, listen to me. I'm not going to leave you here—wait! I've not done—and I'm not going to send you to hospital either. You'll go to the padded cell."
"The padded cell?" echoed Gardiner, "the padded cell? I never thought of that. You have some sense in your head, Scott. See here"—his face had changed, relaxed into something like humanity; he seized the doctor's hand and spoke rapidly, earnestly—"I'm sane for the moment; for heaven's sake listen to what I say! Five minutes ago I was crazy to kill myself. Five minutes hence I shall want to again, and if by any hook or crook I can, I shall. So you put me in that padded cell, and you keep me there! Don't you let me out—don't you let me out on any pretext whatever! I shall beg and pray you, I shall howl like all the devils in hell, I shall invent excuses I haven't the ingenuity to imagine now, but whatever I say or do, don't you listen! It's these next twelve hours I'm afraid of. If you'll keep me in there, hermetically sealed, till to-morrow morning, I shall be all right. Will you do it?" Scott did not answer; he had drawn him towards the window, and was looking and looking into his eyes as if he would have probed his inmost soul. "It's a risk? Yes, but it's that either way. Let me go down fighting, Scott!" Still no reply. "You a Christian and afraid!" Gardiner scoffed.
"No, I'm not afraid," said the little man curtly. He released him. "I'll do it."
"You will? You swear you won't let me go?"
"My word's my bond."
He went out. The prisoner fell back on his pallet and threw his arm across his eyes. "Now I've done it!" he murmured with a long breath. "Now I've burned my boats! Are you satisfied, Lettice? My life for yours: is it a fair exchange? You always wanted this—well, fair or not, it's the best I can do...."
The padded cell, for weak-minded criminals, resembles on a large scale one of those lined work-boxes which young ladies used in the seventies, except that stout yellow canvas takes the place of quilted satin. Padding a yard thick covers walls and floor. There is a small window under the ceiling; a squint, as usual, in the door; and another, high up, commanding every corner of the cell. No furniture, not so much as a bed.
Prisoners have been known to get their nails under the canvas and rip it from the walls, at a cost to the British taxpayer of some sixty pounds. B14 did not do that; but within half-an-hour he was raving, as he had foretold. Warders passing outside could hear the thump of his body flinging itself against the padded door, and his shrieks filled the ward. There was nothing out of the way: prisoners were often brought in raving in delirium tremens, whose yells were quite as loud, and their language a shade worse. The man on duty contented himself with periodic peeps to make sure that B14 was not damaging the canvas.
Scott was unable to listen with the same equanimity. Yet he could not keep away; again and again, on one pretext or another, back he came to Ward B. Once he peeped through the spy-hole, just before he went off for the night. The prisoner was crouching under the door; his cries had for the moment sunk into whimpers: "Scott, let me out—let me out, Scott!" Scott fled from the place as though the devil were at his heels.
Returning at daybreak, he entered the prison just as breakfast was going round. Chief Warder Mackenzie greeted him with a cheerful good-day.
"Ye're early abroad, sir."
"Yes," said Scott; "I was restless. What sort of a night have you had with B14, eh?"
"Well, sir, they do tell me he was terrible noisy at first, but he's quieted down a bittie now. Maybe ye'll like to take a look at him?"
"I should," said Scott, falling in beside the big man. Mackenzie walked along, discoursing amiably about the war and his nephew in the Black Watch, without seeming to notice his companion's silence. All was quiet in Ward B; nobody shrieked or moaned any more.
"He won't have much appetite for his breakfast, I'm thinkin'," remarked the warder, leisurely unlocking the door. "Ye'll go in, sir?"
Scott stepped lightly across the spongy canvas. B14 was lying in a heap under the window, his arm across his face; he did not stir. Scott's heart gave one great throb and seemed to stop; he drew away the arm.
Gardiner's dark eyes were looking up at him with a faint gleam; his voice came, the mere ghost of a whisper.
"Sucks for—Satan—this time—doctor!"
CHAPTER XXVIII DEUTSCHLAND ÜBER ALLES
Lettice and Dorothea arrived at the Bellevue in May. By the end of July their guests were scattering like autumn leaves, and on the day of the ultimatum Lettice took matters into her own hands, sent off the servants and shut the hotel. She did not in the least want to follow them—Lettice was not fond of running away; but for Dorothea's sake she was making up her mind to that sacrifice, when she discovered that Dorothea herself had other views. She go and hide? Rather not! She was going to stay and see the fun. (At that time it was still possible for the Dorotheas of this world to talk of seeing the fun.)
"I can nurse, you know," she said, sitting on the dresser in the big deserted kitchen, her hands in her tweed pockets, her brown legs swinging, her eyes sparkling with agreeable excitement. "I've got every old certificate and medal the Red Cross people give. It was the one thing I was let do as a kid—go to nursing lectures; uncle was always fancying himself ill, you see, and I had to look after him. Oh yes, I can nurse like billy-o! Go back to England and knit socks? Not for this child!"
But, but—but it's not safe," objected Lettice, pensively rubbing her nose.
"Safe? Nonsense! What do you suppose is going to happen to us? The Germans will never get within miles of this, and even suppose they did we're non-combatants—we should be all right. This isn't the Dark Ages. Besides, if we run away, who's to look after the hotel?"
Lettice said nothing.
"Suppose they quartered soldiers here? It's just the place they might. The poilu's a darling, and I love him madly, but what do you think Mr. Gardiner's furniture would be like after a week of him? There simply must be somebody to clear the rooms and see to things. You sent over specially to be in charge, and then want to go and run away! I'm surprised at you, Lettice. But whoever else shows pu-pusilianinimity" (there were some words Dorothea really could not get!), "I shall always be found ready to die at my post."
"But—" said Lettice. Dorothea jumped down in a whirlwind and shook her by the shoulders.
"Oh, pooh! I won't go home—I won't—I won't—so now! Do you understand that? And you know perfectly well you don't want to either. As if I couldn't see! You're saying this simply for my sake; and now you know I'm not going in any case you may as well give in without any more fuss. I'm tired of arguing with four buts and a grunt!"
"Well—" said Lettice, varying her formula with an eighth of an inch of smile, and allowing herself to pretend to be over-persuaded.
So they stayed.
In common with many other people, Dorothea was not happy in her predictions. On Friday, 21st August, a French army passed through Bouillon. On Saturday a battle was fought near Maissin, in which twelve thousand Germans were put out of action. On Sunday began the retreat of the French towards Sedan. And on Monday, 24th August, the French commander warned M. Hunin, burgomaster and proprietor of the Hôtel de la Poste, that it would be prudent to evacuate the town. All the bells in Bouillon rang the tocsin, and many people fled, abandoning their houses as they stood. A few hours later the Germans entered the city.
The abandoned houses were at once broken open and systematically plundered. Wine, beer, bedding were commandeered; pictures and valuables of all sorts were packed up and sent to Germany. More careful than their comrades at Louvain, the victors here secured and stole the famous library of the Trappist monks of Cordemois. Next morning a notice defining the duties of the inhabitants was posted up in the market-place, on the walls of the hotel where the last French Emperor had slept on the night before Sedan.
PROCLAMATION!
1. The town of Bouillon will pay a War Levy of 500,000 francs.
2. Belgian or French soldiers must be handed over as Prisoners of War before 4 P.M. Citizens failing to obey this order will be sentenced to Penal Servitude for Life in Germany. Every soldier found after that hour will be Shot.
3. Arms, powder, dynamite must be handed over before 4 P.M. Penalty, to be Shot.
4. Interdiction to be out in the streets During the Hours of Darkness. All houses must be completely Open and Lighted. Groups of more than Five persons are Strictly Forbidden.
5. Citizens must salute every German officer with respect. Failing this, the officer is entitled to extort it by Any Means in his Power.
6. If any Hostile Action is attempted the town will be Burnt Down and a Third of the Male Population will be Shot; without distinction of persons, the innocent will suffer with the guilty. The people of Bouillon must understand that there is no crime greater or more terrible than to endanger the existence of the town and its inhabitants by hostile action against the German army.
The under-mentioned have been taken as Hostages for the good behavior of the town.
The Commander of Division.
Followed a list of forty names, including both the priests. Fined, pillaged, terrorized, Bouillon yet thought itself lucky when the news came in from the country.
From Rochehaut no one had escaped; the warning did not come in time. Uhlans rode into the village on Monday afternoon and calmly took possession. Rochehaut was cringingly terrified, slavishly obedient. Not a dog could lift his tongue against the invaders without being zealously throttled; and when Madame Mercier's fat sow got in the way of the colonel, madame bundled out after her right under the horse's hoofs, to save, not her pig, but the dignity of a German officer. Alas! in spite of all, the colonel took a billet de parterre on the nearest dung-hill. He got up swearing, and for one awful moment Rochehaut trembled; but he went into the Petit Caporal to change, and Rochehaut breathed again, and went to pick up madame. That peril was averted.
For two days nothing happened, and the villagers crept out of their shuttered houses, and began timidly to go about their work of getting in the harvest. On the third morning, Thursday, 28th August, a poacher in the woods near the river let off his gun at a rabbit. He did not hit, and he was a Botassart man; but Rochehaut was the nearest village, and Rochehaut was held responsible. Moreover, that morning a patrol of Uhlans had gone out, to come back with ten empty saddles. French cavalry had laid an ambush for them in the woods near Vresse. Somebody must have given information to those French cavalry. It was necessary to make an example.
As a preliminary, a cordon was drawn round the village, and the people were collected in the square. Of the men, some thirty of the youngest were marked off for deportation to Germany, where they might be made use of for gathering in the harvest of the Fatherland; the remaining twenty found an end to their troubles in a trench under the churchyard wall. The women and children, who had been confined in the church during the fusillade, were let out to dig the general grave, and then suffered to go—not to their homes, however, for these were condemned. "They wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the rocks, being destitute, afflicted, tormented." Poor old Madame Mercier, whose leg had got broken in her struggles with the colonel's horse, had been overlooked in the general confusion and left behind in her cottage. She could not get downstairs, but she dragged herself to the window and shrieked for help to the soldiers who were setting fire to her kitchen. The colonel, riding down the street, was annoyed by her cries; he looked up, and recognized the frightened old face. "One of you stop that old woman's noise!" he shouted. After all, why not? It was her own fault; why had she not obeyed orders, and gone to the church with the rest? "Es ist unsere Pflicht," said the Uhlans.
It was Lettice's turn that afternoon to fetch the daily loaf from the Boulangerie Lapouse, opposite the church. Her path led over the hill past the crucifix, across the fields and through a corner of Gardiner's enchanted wood, which here ran down quite close to the village. She toiled along, as usual with her head in the clouds, but her dreams were broken and her steps stayed by a sudden burst of firing. She paused in the fringes of the wood.
All down the street men in gray were systematically spraying the houses with petrol; others were taking their choice of the furniture. The shops and cafés of the square were already in flames. The colonel sat his horse looking on. Suddenly a boy of fifteen bolted like a rabbit out of one of the blazing doorways and down the blazing street. He too had disobeyed orders. A laugh, a leveled rifle, and the poor little rabbit bounced into the air with a squeak like a mechanical doll, legs and arms jerking, and then went flat on the ground, its defeatured face in the midden. The flaxen poll became a crimson blob. Lettice saw that. Her first impulse was to rush forward and attack the murderers with her bare hands; the next sent her running blindly back through the woods by the way she had come. She was not frightened—it was far too vast a thing for personal fear; but she was sick with loathing, as at the sight of some monstrosity which ought never to have been allowed to see the sun.
The world never looked quite the same to Lettice after that day. Blind and deaf, her mind blasted bare of thought, she crossed the fields and scrambled down the orchard, and came round the corner of the house into the courtyard. There she was brought up with a cold hand at her heart. Several wagons were drawn up at the door; men in gray, that accursed field-gray which has been hated as no uniform before, were loading them under the direction of an officer. And Dorothea? Faint with foreboding, seeing crimson blobs in patches on the flags, Lettice groped towards the side door—and was met by Dorothea herself coming out, her face all pink and white with tears.
"Oh, Lettice, Lettice!" she said, "they're going to burn the house—they give us a quarter of an hour to turn out!"
Lettice put a hand on her arm, partly for support, partly to make sure of her reality; and by common consent they turned, as they stood in the doorway, to watch the lading of the carts. All went by clockwork. To one, the soldiers were bringing out the contents of Lettice's linen chest, her blankets, sheets, etc.; to another the furniture and plate. They packed like professional movers. There were tarpaulins ready to cover the carts when full.
"There's my chest of drawers," said Dorothea under her breath. "Oh, Lettice, oh, Lettice! what is that man doing with my best crêpe de Chine nighties? Oh, look, he's packing them all up—he can't be going to wear them himself, he must be taking them for his best girl in Germany, and they're every single one embroidered with my name in full—oh, good gracious, how can he?" She broke into a hysterical giggle. "Oh, really, I do think Germans have funny sort of minds! Oh, look, look, there's your bureau out of the den—"
Lettice's bureau—it was Gardiner's bureau, the one he always used, the very one he had bought from Madame Hasquin in Lettice's presence; he loved it too much to let it out of his own room. The officer, staying his men with a word, began to look through the drawers, presumably for valuables. The file of Lettice's household bills he tossed aside; letters and other papers he skimmed, before rejecting them.
Lettice's hand fell from Dorothea's arm. She walked straight across the courtyard to his side. "What are you doing with that bureau?" she asked.
"Requisitioned for the army," was the curt reply.
"You mean, you want it yourself," said Lettice. "It's stealing; and you and your men are just thieves and murderers."
He turned, then, and looked at her, while Dorothea plucked at her sleeve, whispering frantic entreaties. But only a firing party could have silenced Lettice at that moment.
"No, madam, it is not stealing, it is war," said the German in an altered voice. "You are conquered; you have no longer any property or any rights but what we choose to allow you. You would do well to remember that. And let me advise you in future to be more careful of what you say. Not all my compatriots have an English education to look back upon."
Then Dorothea pulled her away, still reluctant; and it was Dorothea, in the nightmare minutes that followed, who sorted and packed in wild haste all she thought they could carry. There was not much left to take. She stuffed some clothes into a couple of pillow-cases, and dragged the silent Lettice out at the back, past some soldiers who with the same deadly method were smashing the windows in turn and spraying the interior. These men wore broad belts to which were attached a hatchet, a syringe, a small shovel, and a revolver. On the belts were the words, "Company of Incendiaries," also, "God with us." As Dorothea had said, Germans have funny sort of minds.
Crouching at the top of the orchard behind the house, the two girls watched the last of the Bellevue. First the petrol caught, an amethystine aura flickering insubstantial. Then the woodwork kindled, and yellow flames began to twine among that ghostly harebell blue. Orange pennons slid softly through the empty window frames; tiny golden curls started out along the eaves, small and even as a row of gas jets. The flames lengthened, they united, they rippled and flapped up the sky like a banner. They grew many-tinted, according to their fuel—gold, silver, ruby, emerald, amethyst, topaz, metallic blue. Lastly the roof fell in, and a great foursquare of fire puffed up to heaven, with streams of starry sparks, and clouds of glare, and floating flakes of gold. Dorothea was crying; but Lettice, her lips set grimly, watched to the end the destruction of Gardiner's hotel, the home he loved, which he had confided to her care.
Night came, but not darkness. Rochehaut was burning, Poupehan in the valley flared with half-a-dozen haystacks and a house or two, Corbion church was a beacon of tall flames on the hill, Alle's martyrdom showed as a pulsing glow of dusky rose in the overhanging cloud. On the far side of the valley, marching home with their booty down the road from Corbion to Bouillon, the soldiers of the Fatherland were singing, Deutschland über Alles.
CHAPTER XXIX THE GOOD HOURS
" ... All villages, châteaux, and houses are burnt down during this night. It was a beautiful sight to see the fires all round us in the distance. In every village one finds only heaps of ruins and many dead. Now come the good hours...."—Diary of German private, 4th Comp. Jäger Btln., No. 11., Aug. 23-27, 1914.
When the dawn came, crystal-bright and pure, the two girls left the ruins of the Bellevue and wandered off among the hills. They had no food. They did not know where they were going. They did not know where they wanted to go. Soon rain came on, and fell in floods all day. They lost themselves in dim green valleys; they pushed through dripping copses of hazel; they sank ankle-deep in spongy mosses, and waded through unnamed torrents. Once they crouched among the bracken while a gray patrol rode by, shouting and singing, uproariously drunk. A little later they came on a lonely cottage with a dead girl lying across the threshold. She had been bayoneted, and worse. A baby of two years was strung up by the neck to the door handle; another, of only a few weeks, wailed feebly in a pool of blood and water beside the mother. Dorothea darted upon it with a cry; cradling it in her soft arms, against her breast, she stepped over the girl's body into the hut, forgetful of the horror of death in the claims of this minute piece of life. The man of the house was inside. He had been surprised at his dinner, and had defended himself with the carving-knife. He had taken a good deal of killing, as the floor and walls bore witness; nevertheless, the murderers had kicked his body into a corner, sat down at his table, and finished his meal.
Dorothea was searching the shelves for milk or any other food, when she heard a shout outside, followed by a cry—the oddest little cry she had ever heard. She caught up the knife with which the man had defended himself, and ran out. It was Lettice who had made that odd little sound; she was struggling with an Uhlan, very drunk in the legs but very strong in the arms, who was trying to force her down. Dorothea stuck the knife into his neck from behind, dragged it out and stuck it in again. The man dropped Lettice and wheeled round, firing his revolver; but his hand wavered away, and the shot went into the ground. He sank down with a grunt and lay there between them, the bright blood pumping out scarlet. Dorothea looked at Lettice; her eyes flamed; she held the baby still clasped to her breast.
"I've killed him," she said. "I'm glad."
Lettice did not speak; her hands were at her throat, mechanically settling her tie; she turned and reëntered the forest without a word. "Wait half-a-minute!" Dorothea called after her; and Lettice waited, in the brake, back turned to the house. She had to wait a good many minutes; whether one or sixty, it was all the same to her. Then Dorothea came running up, breathless. "I've found just a drop of milk, and this, see," she said, displaying one of the long Belgian loaves. Lettice was to suppose she had spent her time in ransacking the larder. In point of fact, she had been rolling, hauling, pushing the dead German into the well; she did not wish his body to be the excuse and the signal for a fresh campaign of vengeance.
They spent that night in one of the limestone caves of the Semois. In spite of the milk, in spite of Dorothea's sheltering arms, the baby died of exhaustion in the cold hour before the dawn. Dorothea wept bitter tears, and left it lying covered with ferns, on a bed of moss; she could not bear to pile stones on the tender little limbs and ivory face. A turnip-field gave them a breakfast more sustaining than hazel nuts and blackberries, but for the most part they kept to the woods; they were afraid of the open country. By this time they had lost all sense of direction. The rain still fell hopelessly. There was no sun to guide them; the hills were all hidden in mist; and the Semois, when they came on it in its wild and twisting valley, seemed never to flow twice in the same direction. Yet they wandered on, because they had begun wandering and had not spirit to stop.
Towards sunset they came suddenly to the edge of a hill, and saw below them, deep buried in a cup-like hollow, a farm. From where they stood an orchard sloped steeply to the group of white buildings, beyond them the green meadow fell away to a brook; the opposite slope was a stubble field, crowned with a line of firs.
"Why," said Dorothea, "why—"
They had wandered in a circle and come back to their starting-point. It was the Ferme de la Croix.
Lettice, who had not spoken for hours, found her tongue. "Don't go down," she said, "we shall only find somebody else dead."
"We might find something to eat," said Dorothea, more hopeful. "The house does look all right, and I'm sure Madame Hasquin would give us the supper off her own plate, if she hadn't anything else. But oh, my good gracious! how we must have wandered! I'd hoped we were half-way to Mezières by now. And yet, you know, I did think the country seemed to be looking familiar somehow this last half-hour. Don't you come down, Lettice; you stay here with the things while I go and explore."
Lettice, who was possessed of a dumb devil that day, shifted her bundle from her left hand to her right and said nothing. Slipping from tree to tree down the orchard, Dorothea peeped at the house from under cover. All was still, except the joy-song of a hen which had just laid an egg. Live fowls and live Germans being incompatible, Dorothea came out of hiding and walked boldly up the pebbled path to the door. On either side bloomed roses, dahlias, lavender where the bees were humming. The evening sun came out, and shone peacefully on the white walls. Dorothea rapped. No answer; only a sandy cat ran out of the bushes and twined round her skirts. She knocked again, then pushed open the door and entered.
A spotless white passage with a dark, uneven, shiny floor and doors on either side, old and irregular. Dorothea opened the first. She saw a pleasant parlor, low-pitched, with lattices facing the sunset; a carved oak press; an eight-day clock, still ticking; a table laid for dinner with beef-steak, gray in its gray greasy gravy, stewed pears, pommes sautées, salad in a china bowl, golden country beer in a large decanter. Glasses stood half empty, knives and forks were crossed on half-eaten plates of meat, chairs had been pushed back anyhow. There was no living creature but the cat, who sprang up on the window ledge, with a low crooning purr, among the red geraniums in the sun.
A hand fell softly on Dorothea's shoulder, and she turned with a great start; but it was only Lettice, who had toiled after her with both bundles, and had come up noiseless behind, as her custom was.
"That's panic," she said, nodding towards the deserted table.
Room by room they explored the house; the kitchen with its vast open fireplace, the queer uneven stairs, the tiny bedrooms, so tempting with their carved bedsteads and spotless linen and scarlet wadded quilts ("je tiens à mes lits"—poor Madame!), their white-washed walls and deep-set lattices framed in jasmine; the round tower, dark save for the swords of sunshine that pierced its western loopholes, and rustling with fowls; the well-filled storeroom. Everything was there but the owners. They had heard a bruit and a rumor, and they had fled; had stampeded in abject terror before the advance of Germany. And so lonely was the farm, hidden in woods and served only by a cart track, that neither ravager nor refugee had found it. The wanderers sank into its deep peace and slept.
It could not hope to escape permanently, however, for Germans work by the map; so on Dorothea's advice the first thing they did next morning was to make a cache of provisions in the orchard. Well for them they thought of it, for that very afternoon they were visited by a wandering party of Uhlans. Dorothea, washing her skirt in the yard, heard them coming, and had just time to escape with Lettice to the woods. There being nobody to kill, the visitors had to content themselves with sacking the house, which they did with zest. It was odd to see chairs and mirrors come hurtling out of the bedroom windows, odder still to see a drunken Uhlan parading about in Madame's voluminous best chemise. They wrung the necks of the fowls; they drove off the two mild cows; they set fire to the ricks, and tried to burn the house as well, but luckily they had no petrol, this being a private venture not a military operation, and its massy walls defied them. It was not the first time they had stood fire. Finally, they killed the sandy cat, who was misguided enough to greet them as she greeted Dorothea. She had been a lean, hard-flanked, and indiscriminatingly amiable creature, with a vulgar loud purr; still, it was distressing to see her tied to a tree and shot to death with table-knives.
After this they rode off, singing the inevitable Deutschland über Alles with more noise than melody, and the girls came out of hiding to take stock of the damage. It was extensive. The German soldier had by that time learned to loot effectually, and what they had not stolen they had smashed. The poor pretty garden was trampled into mire. The kitchen was ankle-deep in broken crockery. A half-killed pig was squealing its life out in the passage. The mattresses had been slit open and spread with filth from the stable. They had wiped their boots on the tablecloth; they had used the coffee-pot as a spittoon; they had covered the white-washed walls with what the expressive French idiom calls des saletés; they had done other things which need not be described. In fine, they had contrived, within the space of a summer afternoon, to be so ingeniously filthy and destructive that not a corner of the house was habitable.
Lettice and Dorothea camped that night in the barn. Next day, while trying to cleanse their pigsty, they were surprised by a fresh party of visitors; but these were sober, and the officer in command was the same comparatively humane person who had burned the Bellevue. His mission now was not to strike terror, but to make an inventory of all domestic animals; and he did not look pleased when he fell over the dead porker in the passage. Hastily suppressing Lettice, who remained impracticably hostile, Dorothea made her appeal to the honor of the German army. She used her tongue and her beautiful eyes so well that, after listening to her tale, the officer gave her what she wanted—a sort of permis de séjour, exempting the farm from further requisitions. Indeed there was little left to take.
After this they had peace, and settled down to a strange, precarious, isolated life. For some weeks they hardly set foot outside the farm. This extreme seclusion was not really necessary; for times had changed and the policy of the conquerors now was not to scare the country folk away, but to coax them back to their homes and their ordinary work. The German reign of terror in Belgium seems to have been based on the theory that one German soldier is worth x Belgian civilians. Therefore when sniping took place (or when they fancied it had taken place, or feared it might take place, or thought a locality needed a lesson to teach them what to expect if it did take place) the order went out to kill. "Without distinction of persons, the innocent will suffer with the guilty." Much of the ravaging was done deliberately, by order: as at the sack of Rochehaut. Much was done by an equally deliberate relaxation of orders: as at the cottage in the woods. In part the German plan succeeded, for it certainly stamped out sniping. In part it recoiled upon itself. To strike terror is a very fine thing, but the results may be embarrassing to an army of occupation. Besides, it really looked so very bad to neutrals!
Lettice and Dorothea, however, did not concern themselves with this change of policy. The cottage in the woods had cured them of any wish to wander. Even Dorothea had had her fill of adventures. It was long before she ventured as far as Poupehan, to ask for news; and when she did, she wished she had stayed at home. The fall of Namur, the fall of Brussels, the coming fall of Paris—how long before they heard of the capitulation of London?
CHAPTER XXX CONFESSIO AMANTIS
Not so very many miles from Rochehaut, in an empty loft, Denis was studying a map spread out on a packing-case. On the other side of their table Wandesforde sat writing a letter on his knee. Partly by good luck, and partly because Wandesforde was an expert in the art later known as wangling things, they had contrived to keep together almost from the first; at present they were in the same squadron, and sharing the same billet, much to Denis's advantage. For Wandesforde, wherever he was, on the principle of the conservation of energy, drove at making himself comfortable. He used to say that Denis would have put up in a pigsty without troubling to turn out the pig. Two months of war had made them more intimate than five years at Bredon.
"And that's that," said Wandesforde, licking the flap of his envelope. He got up and stretched himself. "Ho! I'm tired. I think I shall turn in. Four-thirty to-morrow, isn't it? Ungodly hour to rout you out on a chilly morning!"
"Been writin' home?" asked Denis without looking up.
"Yes. Haven't you?"
"Haven't any one to write to."
"Well, I rather wish I hadn't either," said Wandesforde. He looked over Denis's shoulder. "What are you studying that for?"
"Reasons."
"Want to make sure whereabouts Aix is?"
"No," said Denis. "Ever flown over this bit of country?"
Wandesforde bent lower to follow his finger on the map. "What's the name of this bloomin' corkscrew? The Semois? No, I can't say I have. Not much doing that way, is there?"
"Not as a rule. But we shall be pretty near it to-morrow."
Wandesforde, in the act of lighting one of his big cigars, looked inquiringly at his partner. He knew next to nothing of Denis's private affairs, and on principle he never asked, but he was always open to hear. Denis lay back with his long legs outstretched.
"I may as well tell you," he said with deliberation, "if my bus comes to grief to-morrow, as I rather expect it may, that's the place I'm goin' to make for."
"You expect your bus to come to grief? Been drilling holes in the tank, what?" Denis made no reply. "Oh, Lord! is it one of your rotten presentiments?"
"I was dreamin' of muddy water last night," said Denis with a slightly defiant air.
"Well, turn that stinking lamp down, then. Lord only knows when I shall get the bath fixed, and I've worn these pyjamas a fortnight already, I can't afford to get 'em any blacker," said Wandesforde irrelevantly. "Have some cake. Home-made, best dripping and a bit sad in the middle. Specially recommended against presentiments. You won't? You don't know what's good. So you think you're going to glory to-morrow, do you? Bet you a fiver you don't."
"Done with that. If I lose, I'll not be called on to pay," said Denis, with a wintry smile. Wandesforde lay back in his comfortable bunk—he had swung himself a hammock made of curtains, and stuffed it with straw—and folded his arms under his head.
"Well, all I can suggest is you dream of a filter and square things up that way. I wouldn't like to go out yet. I want to bring down a Hun or two first. We shall be doing them in by dozens before we're through. Did I tell you I ran into Tommy Wyatt yesterday? He was very full of a new French dodge for firing a machine gun through the propeller. Silly business to get killed when there's so much fun on hand, what? Think better of it, old thing."
"I never said I was goin' to get killed. I said my bus would come to grief, which is quite a different thing. It's not likely we shall both of us get back, is it? Bombing Zeppelin sheds isn't a healthy job. We're safe to get Archied; and from Aix it's an uncommonly long run home."
"You're in a cheerful mood to-night."
"Sorry. What I'm tryin' to drive into your thick head is that if I do have to come down, I shall make for Rochehaut."
"Of course if you've made up your mind to come down—"
"I've not made up my mind to come down. But I feel like it," said Denis obstinately.
"All right, all right. But I can't see how you think you'll ever get the chance of making for Rochehaut or whatever you call the place. An internment camp in the Fatherland is the common fate." Denis again preserved silence. "Oh, you and the bus are going to alight in some conveniently uninhabited spot? That the idea?"
"It's possible, isn't it?"
"You feel like it?" suggested Wandesforde, with a broad grin.
"Yes, I do feel like it. And it'll probably happen. I may be wrong but I never am," retorted Denis.
"Oh, quite. Well, I shouldn't dream of offering advice, because I know you never take it, but I wish to point out that in the hypothetical circumstances I should make for the Dutch frontier myself. You'll never get through the lines."
"I don't propose to get through the lines. If instead of scintillatin' with wit you'd ever by any chance allow me to finish what I'm saying, I should have told you before that I want to go to Rochehaut because I know the place, and because my cousin Lettice is there—if she's still alive."
"Oh ah. Yes. I remember."
Wandesforde had heard as much as that. He did not dare offer sympathy, because Denis's glacial eye was upon him, forbidding it. Denis went on with his most intransigent air: "And I may add that if I get the ghost of a chance to go I'm goin', and if I get into a row for it afterwards I do not care. I want you to know this now because, if things fall out as I expect, I shall be very much obliged if you'll see my pal Gardiner next time you're home on leave, and tell him."
"The chap that's in prison?"
"Yes. Sorry to put you to so much inconvenience, but I can't write it, because his letters are read."
"Quite. What do you want me to say?"
"Tell him I'm goin' to Rochehaut to look up Lettice. It's more his affair than mine." Wandesforde scribbled down the message in his pocket-book. "And tell him—" Denis's voice unexpectedly failed.
Wandesforde held his pencil ready.
"Say I've changed my mind, and I'm goin' to settle up my own affair too, if I'm let. He'll understand."
Wandesforde did not, never having heard of Dorothea in this connection. He had never known Denis make a confidence before. There was a pause; but he still waited. If he knew anything of the signs of the times, more was coming. He was right. The never-ceasing thunder of the guns accompanied and illustrated Denis's next speech.
"Wandesforde, do you believe in a future life?"
Three months earlier, Wandesforde would have answered with a shrug. His point of view had changed. "More or less got to out here, haven't you?" he said soberly.
"I didn't—for the best part of this year."
"What, that time you were playing about with the fair Evey?"
Denis lifted his head. "You knew? Well, I suppose you would. It never struck me—"
"Everybody knew, old thing," said Wandesforde, with an irrepressible grin. He was more touched than he would have cared to admit by Denis's rather truculent confidences, but he could not for his life help finding him deuced funny! "And nobody could think what on earth you were after! It was so very much out of your line, and, if you'll forgive my saying so, you made such a shocking poor hand at it!"
"I don't lay claim to your experience," said Denis forbiddingly. He attacked his confessions once more. "I had rather a rough time of it last autumn, one way and another. I—it—I—"
"You lost your faith," suggested Wandesforde, still grinning. "Lord bless you, my dear chap, I know! You left off going to Bredon and listening to the little blighter with the mustachios. He came to me about it—funked you, I suppose—and I had to send him off with a flea in his ear. Oh, Denis, when you go off the rails all the world stands to admire. Nobody would make a song about it if I stopped going to church. And then Evey Byrne appeared on the scenes, and there was a hectic interlude which ended in your both vanishing. You went back to Bredon, I know that; but what on earth did you do with her?"
"She went into a convent."
"No! did she really? Rum ending to an affair of that kind."
"It was not an affair of that kind."
What an expressive face his was, when he was not on guard! and how it changed at mention of Mrs. Byrne! Wandesforde could not imagine himself taking Evey Byrne very seriously, but he felt like a bull in a china shop among the reserves and scruples and delicacies of his partner's mind. He was, quite simply, very fond of Denis. He disliked serious scenes; in candid truth, he dreaded them; they did not do, when to-morrow you were flying to Aix and to-night you had been writing cheerful non-committal letters like that now lying on the table. But it was evident that Denis was quite beyond ragging and being ragged. The moment had come, his tongue was loosed, and he must speak. Wandesforde touched him gently on the shoulder.
"Go ahead, old Denis. I'm off rotting."
Denis looked up, and Wandesforde to his consternation saw that his eyes were full of tears.
"Wandesforde, did you ever hurt a woman—badly?"
"No," said Wandesforde. "No, thank the Lord! that I never did."
"I have. Twice."
"You, Denis?"
"Oh, not that way. Worse, I think. I did the beastliest thing—it was an insult—"
"Evey Byrne you're talking of?"
"Yes. And for all return she—she came and kissed my hand. She said I was too good for her. After what I'd done! She—she loved me, Wandesforde. You can't think what it was like. It made me feel so sick—"
He made a long break.
"I saw after that I'd been on the wrong tack. There is a God, and He does direct things."
"Yes," assented Wandesforde.
"And of course that set me thinkin' of the other again. Lettice said I'd been hard on her. I didn't want to be hard—I'd no right to be hard on anybiddy. Especially not on another woman. But I didn't see how things could ever be as they were before. I thought about it a lot, but I couldn't get it straight. I am a duffer when it comes to people, you know. All that time, too, I was feeling pretty queer—a bit under the weather; I dare say I'd not got over the shock. It wasn't till the war came, till I realized she was out here in all this awful danger, that I might never see her again—"
Another long break.
"So now I'm goin' to her, if I'm let; and I think I shall be," Denis wound up simply.
Wandesforde was aware that he had been no more than a communicating channel between Denis and his friend in prison. He did not guess, Denis himself did not guess, that but for his interposition this chronicle of the heart, such as it was, would never have been told. Denis had tried to put it down on paper, and had not succeeded; still less would he have succeeded by word of mouth. Gardiner knew too much, saw too much. Wandesforde was a neutral medium. It is often easier to confess to a stranger than to the friend of your bosom.
So Wandesforde, feeling shy, and a good deal more uncomfortable than Denis himself, put up his pencil and prepared to take counsel with his pillow.
"You're a rum chap, Denis," was his conclusion.