Mothers of men

CHAPTER XXXVI

In the château, Madame and Marie, together with the old Breton woman, were the only ones left. After Paulette's departure they searched for Antoine, but found that he had gone, as Marie knew he would be.

The long day had worn away somehow. Madame went up to her room and shut herself in. Marie's nerves, almost at the breaking-point, sent her feverishly wandering about the house and grounds, up and down and back and forth, never seeming to find a place to rest. Once or twice she came back to the gate-house and tried to talk to Angéle, but the girl, her eyes red and swollen, her face mottled with weeping, splashed and scrubbed the already immaculate floor in a frenzy of industry, her conversation limited to monosyllables, and Marie turned back again to her own room.

She had brought with her from Paris materials for the little layette that would be needed, but her hands shook so over the tiny garments that the needle ran deeply into her finger and the blood stained the white linen. She stared at the red spot with wild eyes. What a horrible omen, she thought, what a frightful thing. Blood stains on her baby's clothes! Did that mean that her efforts at reparation had come too late?

She threw aside the bit of linen as though it scorched her fingers, and fell on her knees in agony.

"Holy Mother," she began. Surely the blessed Virgin would hear a woman who longed so sincerely to right whatever wrong she had done.

When she rose from her knees it was with renewed courage and hope. The one poignant remorse that stabbed her was that when Gerome had told her of his love, she had not bared to him her life in Vienna. How much sorrow, how many endless days of regret are caused by the first deception practised from a false sense of pride or for the purpose of hiding some truth about ourselves which if disclosed might cause us at the time embarrassment, or pain. Often whatever is gained is paid for a hundredfold by the humiliation and grief that follows when the truth must be told.

To Marie, pacing her room, came the full realization of this. If she had only confided in Gerome, he might have forgiven her and they would have been almost as happy as they had been, without this dreadful suffering being possible. She could then have denounced Von Pfaffen when she had found herself face to face with him again.

The burning tears coursed down her cheeks, and with all her soul she prayed to be given the opportunity to tell her husband everything.

Toward evening Madame knocked at her door.

"Let us go down to the salon, dear," she said. "I shall bring little Angéle up to the house and we will stay together to-night."

"Yes, Maman," answered Marie, through the door; "I shall be down directly."

As Madame's footsteps died away, she hastily smoothed her hair and refreshed her face with water, then went downstairs to join the others in the long vigil that was before them.

All night long the voice of the guns rose in deafening crescendo, making sleep impossible, while on the horizon, orange, crimson, and mauve flashes broke the darkness.

All night long the four women sat together in the little salon, waiting for what they dared not put into words.

Madame sat silent and tragic in her great chair, her delicate hands clasped loosely in her lap. Her eyes looked far away, beyond to-night, beyond to-morrow, even beyond this world.

Angéle whimpered in her corner.

Marie staring from one to the other, wondered what they would say when they knew everything.

The roar of the guns was incessant, rolling, thundering, like mighty waves beating against granite cliffs, deafening, appalling, filling all the air with an agony of sound. Then just before dawn, suddenly, as though a giant hand had intervened, the tumult ceased and was followed by a breathless hush. The women looked at one another. There was something in this unusual stillness that was ominous, fearful, more terrible than had been the pandemonium of sound.

Far away a cock crowed and was answered by another. The wind stirred among the leaves and set them to whispering. Then they heard a distant, intermittent rattle, sharp, spiteful, venomous, unmistakable to anyone who had ever heard it. It was the sound of rifles and machine guns. Instantly they understood. That which shot and shell had begun, the bayonet was to finish. The artillery had ceased, to permit the men to come out of the trenches! To go over the top! To charge!

As the light grew, the staccato rattle of the distant rifle fire was interrupted every now and again by a dull boom. The enemy was answering.

Several times a terrible detonation roared in their ears, the windows shook with the concussion, the very rafters of the old château shivered and trembled, and across the fields a great column of black smoke and dirt spouted wildly in the air where a shell had struck and burst.

Madame, standing tall and erect by the window, vibrated with every sound of the distant battle. She was fighting by the side of her men, this woman, reared in luxury, in whose veins ran the blood of her country's best, whose indomitable will lifted her above all difficulties, leveled all obstacles and knew no fear. A worthy mother of a noble son!

Old Nanine sat dry-eyed, seemingly unconscious of the sounds of the conflict about them. Centuries of passive obedience, of unreasoning sacrifice, had left its heritage of outward indifference. Stolid, emotionless, she waited, but in the core of her heart burned the unquenchable flame of mother-love for the last son, out there, where flesh and blood was holding its unequal contest against steel and iron.

Silent, with white cheeks, and lips tightly compressed sat Marie, every nerve strained taut, as her imagination carried her into the battle. Each shot that was fired seemed aimed at her own heart, each sound in the air shrieked aloud of some calamity to Gerome. She knew that she would gladly have undergone whatever tortures could be given her to know that he would come back to her, maimed, torn, bleeding, no matter how, but only come back to her!

As the reverberations grew louder and more terrifying, she rose to her feet, and went to the window beside Madame.

"God give them victory!" she breathed at last.

Madame stared at the ridge of the hill where the road wound over to Draise.

"My husband is there," she said, with calm exultation, "my brothers are there; my son is there."

Marie flung out her arms, an agony of longing in her eyes.

"Gerome," she cried, "Gerome!"

"And somewhere out among it all," went on Madame, in that strange, vibrant voice, her eyes never leaving the horizon, "somewhere out there is my little Paulette, my baby, gone from our shelter to the man she loves."

"She is taking to him much more than her love!" murmured Marie, but Madame did not seem to hear her.

"And now," she said, wondering, "even Antoine is gone!"

Marie closed her eyes with a shudder of horror. Antoine! How she loathed even the mention of his name. His going had brought about all this! For the thousandth time she asked herself if it would not have been better to have denounced him at once.

"Antoine left without a word, without a sign. Even he must fight for his country," went on Madame's steady voice.

Marie rose to her feet and paced up and down the room.

"When will it be over?" she cried. "When will it be over?"

Madame turned her eyes from the ridge which lay incongruously sparkling in the early sunshine, while the air shook with the terrific thunder of the guns, shouting their message of death and destruction.

"We women must watch and wait," she said. "Daughters of men! Wives of men! Mothers of men!"

Marie stopped in her restless pacing.

"Mothers of men!" she whispered. When the day of reckoning came, what would she say to Gerome's child, if it should be a son? Would he be able to look into her eyes with pride, or would her memory be hateful to him?

Madame looked at her with tender understanding.

"It is for that, dear," she said, "we women must watch and wait!"

To watch and wait! If that were all! This great struggle must end some day. And to each of these women would be given her measure of sorrow. The agony of suspense would be over.

But for her it was different.

No matter what the consequences were of her effort to circumvent the enemy, the fact of her having withheld the truth from her husband might never cease to bear its harvest of evil.

She threw herself face down again on the couch, her shoulders heaving convulsively, her slight frame torn with the bitterness of her sorrow.

Nanine looked at her stolidly.

"There are others of us," she said, "who have our griefs."

"Poor Nanine," said Madame sympathetically, "you have given two sons, and now the youngest, Jacques, is out there!"

The old woman's eyes were dry, her face was set.

"Yes, Madame," she said; "what are women for? In peaceful times the country takes our money for the army, and when war comes we must give our men who've earned the money!"

Marie lifted herself from among the pillows and stared at her wonderingly through her red, swollen lids.

"And you'd give all?" she asked, "everything you care for, everything, for your country?"

"But yes," the old woman's answer was a matter of course; "what else is there to do?"

"We all would!" Madame spoke with the voice of France. "Our men are not fighting for material gain, but in defense of our homes. The enemy's heel is on the breast of our beloved country, and to remove his hated tread that defaces our sacred soil, we will give our loved ones to the last man!"

Her words woke in Marie's heart the eager, breathless emotion that comes into being with the sound of martial music.

"I'm beginning to understand what all that means," she said. "This wonderful love that came to me seemed greater than anything in the world; it made me happier than I ever dreamed of being. If this cause for which he is fighting is more glorious, I want to give him to it. I want to make the sacrifice. But oh, it's hard, it's terribly hard!"

Madame put her arm about the shaking shoulders.

"You are not strong," she said, gently smoothing the girl's hair as she let her weep against her shoulder. After a moment she went on, "Don't you think that I know the wonder, the beauty of a great love? Don't you think I realize what it means? Every woman does, from Nanine here, and little Angéle, to the greatest queen, but each of us sees it differently. Real love is unselfish, it makes you want to give as well as receive. It will not let you choke with clinging arms!"

The old woman had followed her mistress' words with wonder, not understanding, but feeling the thought that lay back of them with the intuition of universal womanhood.

"Even when a poor peasant woman like me cares for her man like I cared for mine," she said, "you fight for him, with him, but you don't hang onto his coat-tails when he wants to fight for himself."

Madame rose and crossed to the window, where she stood looking in the direction from whence came the incessant thunder of the guns.

"I'd rather have my boy die out there," she said proudly, "fighting in defense of his country, than to know he did not have the will to go."

Marie stumbled across the room and threw herself at Madame's feet, her arms about her knees.

"You wonderful woman," she cried. "His mother, can you forgive me? How different everything would have been if my own mother had lived!"

Madame tried to raise her.

"Marie dear," she pleaded, "don't; there is nothing you have done, excepting love my boy too much. Come, don't ask my forgiveness for that!" but Marie clung about her knees, still weeping bitterly.

"You don't know," she sobbed, "you can't know how much I love him! And I am so unworthy!"

Madame stooped and lifted her to her feet.

"You must not feel unhappy because you are of our enemies' blood," she said; "no one questions your loyalty to our cause!"

But Marie covered her ears to shut out the sounds that grew louder and louder every minute, and sank miserably into a chair.

Angéle's fingers were busy again with her rosary, her lips with a prayer, and old Nanine crossed herself.

At the window Madame stood watching, her soul in her eyes. Over the brow of the hill long lines of gray motors were crawling, on the sides of which she could just make out a blood-red cross.

A spasm of pain touched her heart. The never-ending line of ambulances, what agony, what misery they carried. An hour ago splendid young manhood, now shattered wrecks!

And going in the opposite direction swung a long blue column of marching men. Strong, virile, filled with courage! Forward! Onward! For France!

Faintly, through the dull roaring, came the sound of the Marseillaise.

She stretched out her arms to them in an ecstasy of patriotism. Her voice clear and sweet as a bugle.

"March on," she cried. "March on—to victory or death!"

CHAPTER XXXVII

The morning wore on. The firing grew nearer, louder, more insistent. Madame, watching at the window, suddenly uttered a cry. The others rushed to her side.

Outside on the road an ambulance had stopped, gone on again, and through the gates came two soldiers bearing a stretcher.

Slowly, tenderly, they carried their burden toward the house.

The women stared through the window with an agony of apprehension, each with the name of the one she loved best trembling on her lips. Was it Gerome—the General—Jacques?

The men entered through the long window the women opened for them, and laid their burden on the couch. As they did so, the fainting man revived and lifted his head. With a cry Nanine stumbled to his side.

"Jacques! Jacques! Couldn't I save one of the three?"

The boy turned his eyes toward her.

"I'm all right, mother," he said bravely.

The old woman fondled him, the slow tears following the wrinkles down her cheeks.

"My boy," she cried, brokenly, "my last one; is it bad?"

He turned his head on the cushion she had placed under it.

"I'm a sergeant, mother," he murmured, his eyes lighting up.

Little Angéle was standing staring down at him, her pretty mouth quivering, her breast fluttering. She was afraid, somehow, to speak, to call his attention to herself.

Marie looked on helplessly, with a feeling of detachment. She felt as one in a dream. These men who had stared death in the face within so brief a time, seemed unreal to her.

Madame turned to one of the stretcher-bearers.

"What is happening out there?" she asked.

He looked at her, his eyes, in his square, mud-plastered face, bloodshot from lack of sleep.

"We don't know, Madame," he said, removing his cap; "we can't tell, we can only hope."

She turned to the other man and recoiled slightly.

He wore the field-gray uniform of a German private soldier. His face was pale and expressionless, a red stubble covered his cheeks and chin. Under one eye was a gash with the blood blackened on it and surrounded by purple discolorations. There was a bloody rag around his closely cropped head, and his spiked helmet sat upon this in a grotesquely jaunty fashion.

"What is this man doing here?" she asked.

"He is a prisoner, Madame." The orderly hunched an expressive shoulder toward Jacques, "he helped bring him in."

Madame's eyes were on the bloody bandage.

"You are hurt, too," she said.

The man smiled, a wan, crooked smile.

"Yes, Madame," he said in guttural French. "It is not serious." The orderly frowned as he looked from one to the other.

"They both need patching up," he said; "can you get water and bandages and perhaps something to eat?"

Nanine was still bending over Jacques, and Angéle, too, was on her knees beside the couch as Madame turned to go.

Marie touched her arm.

"Let me help," she said.

"Yes, dear, you go," she said softly. It would do the girl good, she thought, to be occupied in this service. "Bring water and some food."

Suddenly the pale face of the German soldier went a shade whiter, he staggered a step toward the couch and put out a shaking hand to steady himself. Nanine, suspicious of his uniform, made a quick gesture of protection over her wounded son, but the boy looked up quickly.

"He's all right, mother," he said; "he's my friend."

"Your friend," said Madame in astonishment. To these women the uniform this man was wearing was symbolic of everything barbarous.

Jacques held up a feeble hand and clasped the one the German held out to him.

"I wouldn't be here, if it weren't for him," he said brokenly. "We charged early this morning. We reached their first trench. I got this," he laid his free hand on his side. "I didn't know anything for awhile. When I came to, the rest of our boys had gone on and left me behind. God, I was thirsty—I tried to crawl——" the horror of it all twisted his face in an agony of memory.

"Hush, mon lapin, hush," whispered his mother, but the boy went on:

"I tried to crawl," he panted; "I couldn't! Over me, around me, beside me—dead bodies—everywhere——" He tightened his grasp on the German's hand; "then he dragged himself over to me—he had some water—I believe I got most of it—he opened his kit and gave me first aid——"

Madame looked on in astonishment.

"One of the enemy to do such a thing!" she wondered. It was incredible to think that two men who only so short a time before had been striving for each other's lives should now call one another "friend."

Through the door came Marie with a tray of bread and coffee, and a basin of water and some bandages.

The German put his hand against the bloody rag about his head.

"We are not enemies now," he said in his guttural French, "only fellow-sufferers!"

"Fellow-sufferers," Marie echoed the words from the depth of her heart, as she handed the man a cup of the hot coffee.

The German took it with a polite bow.

"You are good to me," he said simply.

"In spite of the uniform you wear," said Madame, "we will do our best for you."

He shook his head sadly.

"It is our countries who are at war," he said, "not we!"

Marie's eyes turned toward the far horizon where the rumble of the guns still thundered unceasingly.

"It is the countries who are at war," she echoed, "and between them men's bodies and women's hearts are broken!"

Jacques was lying on his pillow, white-faced and with closed lids.

His mother leaned back on her heels and looked at him.

"Yes," she said, and her voice broke, "it is the people who suffer."

Her mistress' white head raised itself proudly.

"Here in France," she said, "the people and the country are one. We are fighting to preserve that unity."

For a moment there was silence, then Marie turned to fill the German prisoner's cup.

"Oh, the pity of it all," she said under her breath.

The man caught her words.

"You are right, Madame," he said, "war is pitiful! It is terrible and it is unnecessary!"

Madame looked at him wonderingly.

"You speak our language well," she said. The tales of German efficiency, their ability to do all things, had not been exaggerated.

"I was one of the professors of languages at Heidelburg," he said wistfully. "I thought to spend my life in instruction, not destruction."

Jacques stirred at his voice.

"He was good to me, mother," he muttered.

"Yes, yes, mon chéri," soothed Nanine. "I know! Lie quietly!"

As she spoke the thunder of the guns seemed to come nearer. The women shuddered and the orderly shook his head.

"We seem to be getting in range," he said. "I advise you all to leave this place, and go further to the rear."

Nanine's eyes were on her son.

"How can we move him?" she asked.

"Where can we go?" questioned Madame.

The orderly went to the door and peered out.

"He will be all right," he said. "I'll hail one of the passing ambulances. It can take us all in." He left the room and hurried down the driveway to the gate.

Angéle had Jacques' head against her breast now, and old Nanine rose to her feet.

"Oh, Madame," she pleaded, "let us go quickly. I must save this one."

Her mistress looked about at the house and garden where she had spent so many happy years, and which, the loud roars of bursting shells warned her, might be laid in ruins at any moment.

"Very well," she said resignedly, "the General will know we have tried to reach safety. He will understand."

The orderly at the gate had stopped a passing ambulance.

"Hurry," he called.

"Come," said Nanine to the German, "help carry him. Be careful! Don't hurt him."

As they started through the door, the boy turned and smiled into his mother's face.

"I'm all right, mother," he said, and they went out to the waiting motor, little Angéle at their heels.

With a feeling of utter hopelessness Marie watched them go, the empty coffee pot in one hand, the plate of bread in the other. All this could mean only one thing. The battle had been lost. Paulette had been too late, or had perished on the way. Before her wide, horror-stricken eyes was a vision of Gerome, dead on the field, his forgiveness lost to her forever.

Madame put a gentle hand on her arm.

"Marie," she said hurriedly, "there is no time to lose." At her words the girl seemed to waken as from a trance.

"No," she cried, "no—no—no!"

"You must come," pleaded her mother-in-law, but the girl shook her head wildly.

"I am not going," she cried. Life, for her, was finished and over. The elder woman tried to urge her, half dragging her through the door as the terrific roar of a shell bursting quite near the château, thundered in their ears, but the girl struggled and broke away.

At that moment the air seemed to split with a deafening explosion, a splintering of glass, a flash of flame. The acrid, bitter smell of powder and smoke was stifling.

Madame staggered against the door as the orderly, his head held low, came running through the courtyard. He grasped her by the hand and dragged her out to the waiting ambulance.

Marie, half fainting, fell on the couch, her head buried deep in the cushions.

Her last conscious thoughts were:

"Let the house fall upon me, the ruins cover me deep! They cannot bury my grief!"

CHAPTER XXXVIII

For awhile she lay motionless, half stunned by the force of the explosion. When full consciousness returned to her the firing had grown fainter, more infrequent. She rose to her feet and went to the window. Out in the courtyard a great hole gaped where the shell had struck. Glass from the windows lay scattered about, a garden bench was splintered and overturned. Havoc and ruin stared back at her. Had Madame and the rest escaped? Or had they been killed, and she, alone, left untouched?

She stood in the center of the room, dazed, her fingers clutching nervously, her chin quivering. It seemed years ago that she had arrived here with Gerome to be in the shelter of his home, to be with his people in her hour of need, and now she was alone.

She seemed to see France, like the bleeding body of a woman, lying dead at her feet. Her wild eyes visioned Gerome's white, upturned face, staring vacantly at the sky he loved. She tore at her breast, panting for breath.

"God! God!" she cried. "What have I left in all the world? Why am I not lying out there with Gerome? Gerome, I will not go on without you, I can't!"

She stopped her hysterical crying. Her hands dropped to her sides, her mouth set. She remembered seeing a pistol in the drawer of the little desk when the General had opened it searching for some papers.

She walked slowly toward it now as though propelled by some force outside of herself. With shaking fingers she pulled open the drawer and for a moment stared down at the weapon. After a hesitating effort she forced herself to pick it up, but the touch of the steel set her trembling.

"It's cold," she shuddered. "It's horrible," and then after a moment she closed her eyes and whispered a prayer for strength.

Her pitiful weakness disgusted her. With nothing left to live for she was even afraid to die. Slowly she raised the pistol to her heart, her eyes tightly shut, her lips pressed in a stiff blue line.

Suddenly she stopped, her eyes sprang open. Footsteps were coming up the path, running, stumbling, heavy footsteps. Marie wheeled, the hand with the pistol hidden behind her back.

Someone came through the outer door and crossed the hall. She backed against the wall, her hand still behind her. The door was kicked open. A man stood on the threshold, dusty, bloody, spent with running. His face was twisted with hate, his lips drawn back from his teeth.

"You she-devil," his voice was curiously low; "you thought to trick me, didn't you? You thought by giving me the wrong information you'd be rid of me! Do you know what you have done? You have killed hundreds, thousands of your countrymen. You have sent them to their death in vain!"

She was following his words, shaking, sinking almost to her knees, cringing before the blow she knew was coming.

The man's fury was blinding him. He took a step toward her. She must be tortured for what she had done to him.

"You let me take that information to my superiors," he cried hoarsely; "they acted upon it. You brought ruin to my cause, disgrace to me. My career is ended. Did you imagine you could deceive me and no harm come to you?"

In Marie's breast a faint suspicion of what had taken place was awakening. She scarcely dared voice it, even to herself.

"I gave you information," she panted, but Von Pfaffen burst in upon her words with a string of vile oaths.

"But wrong! Wrong!" he shouted. "Twenty miles wrong!"

She lifted her head, a breathless, wondering hope in her eyes.

"And the French have won?"

His face was black.

"Yes, damn them and you!" he swore. She still leaned against the wall, the blood throbbed in her fingers clutching the pistol behind her back, but through her heart surged a wave of joy, of thankfulness. Paulette had been in time!

"Everything has gone wrong," he snarled, "even that message I sent the other night never reached its destination."

"There was no message sent," she said in a clear, distinct voice.

He stopped in the step he was taking toward her. The look of sheer hatred that burned across his face would have set her cowering with terror at another time, but now, the knowledge that she had helped France, and aided her husband's cause, lifted her above the thought of fear.

"I took that tracing when your back was turned," she went on in the same clear voice. "I burned it!"

The man made a sound in his throat as though he were choking, his face turned purple, his brilliant eyes burned with the fury of a maniac.

"You who did that!" he gasped.

She looked at him defiantly.

"Yes, I did it!" she said, "and I knew the information I gave you yesterday was wrong. I sent you to a place twenty miles away from where I knew the attack was to be made. I sent the word after you that warned Sains, that brought victory to my husband's cause!" And then something of the look that had been in Madame's eyes when she had echoed the Marseillaise flashed into her own, and she finished in a ringing voice, "for my own cause!"

Von Pfaffen was quite close to her now. The veins in his neck were swollen and throbbing, the whites of his eyes shot with little lines of red. There were spatters of foam in the corners of his thin lips.

"So that's what you did!" he hissed. "You devil! I'll make you wish you had never been born! I'll make your husband, if he is still alive, despise you! I'll make his people turn you out of their house! I'll make your own people shoot you as a spy if ever you cross their border."

She was watching him like a cat watches a vicious, brutal dog that she knows is going to spring as soon as he has finished worrying her. Her teeth were tearing at her under lip, the fingers of her free hand picked at her gown. Why didn't he kill her and end it all, she wondered? His nearness sent a wave of sickening nausea surging over her. The blood was pounding in her ears. His words came to her through it all.

"I'll force you into the streets where you belong," he shouted in her face.

Her eyes narrowed.

"If my husband were here," she said slowly, "he would kill you for that!"

Von Pfaffen flung a vile oath at her.

"When your husband sees you again," he said, "if he ever does, it will be to find you dead, and glad of it!"

Marie laughed a clear, ringing laugh, cold and absolutely mirthless.

"Do you think I fear death?" she said. "If my husband comes back I am going to tell him everything, and when he knows the truth he will kill you like a rat."

The man stopped and looked at her a moment, insolently, arrogantly.

"Oh, no, he won't," he said, quite calmly; "I've planned differently."

"What do you mean?" she whispered.

"Do you think you are going to leave this room alive?"

"I'm not afraid of death!"

He looked at her venomously.

"You're not afraid," he sneered. "Do you know what I am going to do?" His eyes were so evil that she cringed back against the protecting wall. "After I have killed you, I am going to tell your story in my own way," his meaning was only too plain.

"You devil," she whispered. A wave of red surged up staining her white throat and pale face.

A horrible smile broadened his wicked mouth. He had touched her.

"There will be more than one man concerned in the story I shall tell."

"You know that's a lie!"

He laughed.

"How do I know? There may have been a dozen before I found you."

So that was what he would tell Gerome, that would be his revenge!

"You coward!" she panted; "you monster! I'm glad you failed! Thank God your cause has failed; I——"

Beside himself with rage, he sprang toward her, clutching his hands about her throat.

"You're glad, are you?" he hissed; "you're glad!"

She struggled in his grasp. Suddenly there was a flash, a sharp report, then breathless silence.

For a moment the man stared horribly into her eyes, his hands at her throat clutched spasmodically once, twice, almost shutting away her breath before they loosened. He coughed, a queer, sputtering cough, straightened his thin shoulders jerkily, and then grotesquely spun about and fell sprawling to the floor, where he lay quiet.

Marie looked down at the smoking pistol that hung in her limp hand. She stared at it fascinated as though seeing it for the first time.

He had fallen quite close to the threshold of the door and keeping her eyes carefully averted from his sprawled body she walked slowly over to the little desk.

Scarcely realizing what she was doing, she placed the pistol in the drawer and covered it up with papers; then she shut the drawer and securely locked it. Her mind was curiously numb, as she turned and looked down at the dead man.

For a moment she swayed irresolutely, then with a supreme effort went over to where he lay. Shuddering, her whole soul revolting at her task, she stooped and dragged the body across the threshold and out into the hall.

He was a horrible sight. The sneer of hate had frozen on his face. His eyes stared wide, and his coat hunched about his shoulders where she had clutched it in dragging him through the door.

With a stifled scream she ran back into the salon, closing and locking the door; then she turned, leaning against the barrier between herself and what had been her evil genius.

"Thank God," she cried, "I'm free!"

CHAPTER XXXIX

When there has been a shade or promise of evil hanging over our lives, when we have waked each morning with the dread of what the day may bring, and go to bed at night to toss and turn in fear of the morrow, and then, suddenly, we find that the thing we feared has happened, instead of the appalling terror and the horror of its consequences that we anticipated, very often there is a sense of infinite relief, that now no worse can come, for the worst has happened.

So it was with Marie. With the closing and locking of the door on the dead body of Von Pfaffen, a great, numb calmness enveloped her. He was dead. She had killed him. Nothing mattered. There was nothing to matter. The world, for her, was finished. She wondered in a curious subconscious way why she did not care. She had taken a human life, yet she felt no remorse, no fear. All emotion was dead in her heart. She only knew that she was tired, terribly tired. Her knees seemed to give way under her. She stumbled, dragged herself with the help of her icy hands, hanging onto the chairs, groping along the edge of the table. She only knew she must reach the couch, which seemed so far away, where she could rest. Her mouth was dry, her tongue felt swollen. It was an effort to close or raise the heavy lids over her burning eyes. A dreadful sense of dizzy nausea struck her. Suffocating waves of blackness seemed to beat up from her heart and surge across her vision.

With a supreme effort she made a last tottering step toward the haven she was trying to reach, and pitched headlong across the couch, a great darkness wrapping her close.

The day wore on, the cannonading had rumbled off into silence, the frightened birds had come back, and here and there, through the garden, they twittered nervously to one another.

The sky was overcast now, the air had grown heavy with the promise of a storm. Every now and then a little gust of wind, pungent with the smell of powder, blew in along the terrace and through the shattered windows. It shook the curtains, fluttered across the unconscious head of the woman, lifted a lock of disheveled hair, eddied among the papers on the little desk, stirred about the disordered room and died away.

Marie was mercifully shut away from the world, her strained nerves had snapped. She could bear no more.

Outside in the hall, behind the locked door, the dead man lay, staring horribly, a tiny stream of blood staining the marble floor.

* * * *

When Gerome jumped from his dusty, battered motor, late in the afternoon, it was with a heart full of foreboding that he found the great gates open. The terrible havoc wrought by the bursting shell frightened him. He dared not ask himself what he might find.

He hurried up the gravel walk, his head splitting and pounding from a gash across his brows, which had been bound up hastily. His face was grimy, and there were discolored circles about his eyes. He ran along the terrace and past the entrance door, knowing he would find whoever was left in the house here, in the little salon.

At the window he paused, his quick eye took in the disorder, the signs of the struggle, the body of the girl lying inert across the couch, her dress crumpled and torn, her yellow hair, loose from its pins, hanging in a long loop over her shoulder. With a cry he ran across to her and lifted her in his arms.

"Marie," he cried, but her head fell back heavily against his breast.

Gently he laid her down on the cushions, a dreadful fear in his heart that this might mean death. The bowl of water and the bandages that had been brought for Jacques were on the table. Hastily he wet a cloth, and kneeling by the girl's side brushed back the hair from her brow and moistened her closed eyes and lips.

Presently she stirred, her lids fluttered.

"Marie darling!" he said. "Tell me, what is it?"

The girl opened her eyes and looked into his.

"Gerome," she whispered, "is it really you?" Her eyes were devouring him hungrily, lovingly, the man she had never hoped to see again.

Suddenly she became conscious of the bandage around his head.

"Gerome!" she cried, "you are hurt!"

"It's nothing," he hastened to assure her, "only a scratch. I have glorious news! We have won! It's victory for France!"

"Victory!" she repeated dully, then after a moment, "God is good to us!"

He drew her to him tenderly.

"I had word that mother and the servants were safe," he said, "but when I learned that you were not with them, I was mad with fear that you might be injured. I got leave to come and find you, and thank God, I have!"

He had come back to her, but it was too late, her hands were stained with blood. An overwhelming sense of what she had lost swept over her. She turned her face against his sleeve, weeping hopelessly.

"Hush, dearest," he whispered, "luck was with us, don't you hear? We struck just where the enemy's lines were weakest. Our aviators reported them massing their troops at Sains, but the attack there was a complete failure. The town must have been warned!"

Sains had been warned!

That was something to weigh against the heavy burden of sorrow she had to bear!

Holding her close he listened, while she told him of their experience in the château during the battle, and then for a long while they sat silent, their arms about one another, cheek against cheek. Death had been so close to both, might take one of them to-morrow, but he had her now in his arms, warm, palpitating, trembling with the love he knew was for him.

The light began to fade, the silence broken only by the distant muttering of the guns.

"Little Sainte Marie," he whispered, "to me you are symbolic of everything that is good and pure!"

Across Marie's mental vision flashed the picture of Von Pfaffen's body lying out beyond the locked door. He was dead. There was no need that anyone should ever know of her past with him. Everyone else who knew was dead. Her word would be sufficient. She had only to say that she had discovered him to be a spy; that he had come back and, finding her alone, attacked her, and in defense of her honor, she had killed him.

She had sinned, yet she had suffered. Had she not paid the price in full? Must she drain the cup of bitterness to the last dregs? Surely heaven did not expect this sacrifice. Would it not make Gerome more unhappy to know the truth? Would it not, indeed, be wrong of her to confess? It was written, "Let the dead past bury its dead!" Why draw this grisly skeleton into the light of day? She had suffered enough. She wanted happiness, and to tell Gerome meant to crucify that happiness. Surely, other women in the past had erred and then married and lived contentedly, without discovery or confession. She had been so young, so innocent, so unprepared. It was her inexperience that was to blame, not she herself. In heart she had always been pure, her desire had always been to be good. Her conscience acquitted her. Her decision was made. She would not tell.

Gerome's eyes held hers. At all costs she must keep the love she saw shining there. She answered his look with one of passionate adoration.

"Marie," he said softly, "thank God that you are safe. I dare not even imagine what it would have meant to me if I had come back and found anything had happened to you."

There was a long silence.

"How wonderful it is," he said at last, "to have an ideal realized. You are everything I ever dreamed a woman should be. If I should die to-morrow, it would be with the knowledge that the woman I loved had been worthy of my implicit faith."

Faith! The word sank into her heart. It stirred and brought to life again, conscience. What was it to have implicit faith? How did one deserve that?

He looked gravely into her eyes.

"All human happiness is founded on faith!" he said.

He believed in her. Oh, God, the pity of it! He believed in her, and how had she repaid his trust?

She had hidden her past from him, and lived a lie all these days of her marriage, in order to shield herself and keep his faith in her.

To tell him meant to lose his love. But could she go on like this, living a lie? How glorious, how beautiful it would be, what inexpressible joy, if she only were the woman he thought her. If she only had come to him with clean hands. If the exchange had only been equal. But the fact that this was not so, could not be eradicated. She was what she was, what circumstances had made her. She knew that she was cheating him. Again, she brought her soul before the judgment bar of her conscience, and this time the verdict was "Guilty!"

Cost what it may, she must tell him.

The pitiful weakness of her character that had made her drift, postponing the inevitable day of reckoning, had passed. She must flay her very soul, and stand before him as she was.

She became conscious of his voice telling the story of the battle, of his love for her, of their future happiness.

Their future happiness!

"Gerome," she said slowly, her voice vibrant with suppressed emotion, "there is something I must tell you, something I have been too cowardly to let you know before. I'm tired of lying! Tired of hiding! Ashamed of accepting your love, when I know it is undeserved. I am not what you think me!"

He looked at her, startled.

"Marie——" he began.

"No—don't stop me," she said quietly, but firmly, "let me tell you everything. When you married me you thought me a pure young girl, coming to you from the convent, untouched by the world. I wasn't—I—there was another man in Vienna."

He clutched her arm in a grip that made her wince with pain.

"What do you mean?" His voice was hoarse and strange.

She drew away from him.

"I knew you would shrink from me! I knew you would loathe me when you learned the truth. I'm not trying to exonerate myself, not trying to make excuses. I was young, scarcely more than a child. I told you I had never known my mother. When my father died, I was left penniless, without friends, without the knowledge of how to support myself. I was unused to the fight, unequal to it. One day I met a man who singled me out, a smile on his lips, black lies in his heart. He promised me what I longed for, protection, a home, marriage—and I believed him!"

Her words swept over Gerome in a devastating wave, leaving his face livid. The bandage across his forehead reddened with the fresh bleeding of his wound.

"Go on," he whispered hoarsely, "tell me everything!"

"He found me singing in a little Bohemian café; it was the only thing I could do to earn my living. He befriended me, was kind to me, and before I knew where I was drifting, it had all happened. Too late, I realized what I meant in the scheme of his world, a plaything, a new toy for a day to be tossed aside when my novelty had worn off. When I knew the truth, I left it all. I came to Paris, where I had distant relatives. I threw myself on their mercy. They were good people, as you know. They took me in. I tried to forget! I never wanted to see anything of the old life again. As the months passed I believed myself safe, and then you came," her voice lifted, rang clear; "you, the man I had dreamed of, whom I thought could not exist outside of dreams. All the love, all the passion, all the adoration a woman is capable of, I gave to you. The rest of my life you know, every minute, every thought of it, up to—up to the day you brought me here. I was so hungry for happiness. You were my world. I couldn't bear to think of losing you. I decided not to tell you. I would make amends in a hundred ways for the deception. I tried to! I thought the past was dead, dead and buried. God, how I deluded myself! When we arrived here, here in your father's home, all the sunshine, all the joy went out of my life, for I came face to face with that man!"

"Here? You're mad!" The gentleness, the refinement had vanished from his expression, leaving the face of primitive man thirsting to get his fingers on the throat of his enemy. "Who is he? Tell me his name!"

She kept her eyes on his.

"He was known in this house as Antoine," she said.

"Antoine!" his lips curled with unutterable loathing, "Antoine! A servant!"

"He was not a servant. He was a spy in the service of the enemy!"

Gerome dropped her arm as though the touch seared his fingers, horror and amazement in his face.

"A spy! Good God! Then what are you?"

She nerved herself. The look in his eyes spelled death for her, but she must go on.

"When I saw him, I was wild with terror. He offered me a price for his silence. I was to get some information he wanted. What was I to do? What could I do? I only knew that I loved you, that I wanted to keep you. I only knew that I was going mad with the fear of losing you! I promised to do what he asked!"

"What was it?" His voice was low, even, deadly. She knew there could be no hope for her, but the oblivion of death would be welcome.

"I made you tell me where the attack was to be made. This was the information he wanted."

He recoiled, his eyes fixed on her with a look of unutterable horror.

"You sold my honor, my country!" he said at last. "You, whom I trusted with more than my life. Well, there's only one thing to do. Both of us must die!" Slowly he drew his pistol, his face cold and white as marble.

"Wait," she whispered. "I'm ready, I'm willing to die, but before, I want you to know everything." He lowered his arm and looked at her. "I knew that if I defied him he would get his information some other way. I knew I must seem to play into his hands, and thwart his purpose. I gave him information, but wrong, twenty miles wrong! It was I who sent the warning to Sains! And I know it reached there in time!"

"How do you know that?"

"Because he told me!"

"Told you? Where? When? Where is he now?" His face worked, his lips were drawn back from his teeth, his voice hoarse with passion.

For a moment she stood rigid, then she stepped to the hall door and threw it open.

"He is here!" she said.

Together they looked at the dead man at their feet. Gerome raised his eyes to hers.

"You——?" he said.

She nodded slowly.

"He came here, just before you did, to be revenged upon me. He said I had deliberately given him the wrong information. He taunted me with the past. He, who had caused it all! He threatened my life, said he would force me out of your arms and into the streets, where I belonged. So I killed him!"

Gerome threw his arm up across his eyes. His shoulders shook with dry sobbing.

"Marie, Marie," he cried. "Oh God! my world lies shattered at my feet!"

"And mine—and mine," she whispered.

CHAPTER XL

Night had fallen, dull, black, the sky overhung with great masses of heavy clouds. Like a ghost of herself Marie sat staring out of the window into the depths of the deserted garden. Still, calm with the calmness that comes after storm, her unseeing eyes gazed straight ahead of her. How long she had sat there she knew not. She was filled with that curious, numb quiet that comes to one when all fear, all hate, all terror has departed. She was resigned to anything fate might decree for her.

When she had told Gerome all the bitter truth, he had left her without a word. Later she had heard vague shuffling sounds in the hall, the closing of the outer door, his steps crunching on the gravel. Her staring eyes had tried vainly to pierce the velvet blackness outside the window. Instinctively she knew what errand had taken him out into the garden. She could almost hear the thud of earth falling on the dead face of Von Pfaffen.

The guns still muttered and boomed, lighting the black horizon with sullen, intermittent flashes. As she sat waiting her whole brief life unfolded before her. The years at the convent, her unhappiness, her struggles with poverty, the tragedy, as she saw it now, of her lost honor, her escape from it all, the new, peaceful life, and then the coming of wonderful happiness, the happiness of requited love, the culmination of which was the knowledge that she was to be the mother of Gerome's child. She knew that, although she had drained the cup of bitterness and misery to its very dregs, still the pendulum had swung as far the other way. She had had those few short months of supreme joy. The price had been a heavy one. But in the light of retrospection she knew that it was worth it.

Far into the night she sat thinking, dreaming, staring out into the blackness. Then she heard Gerome's step again on the path, heard him stumble in the darkness of the hall. After a moment he came in and sank heavily into a chair. The clouds had lifted, and an ominous red moon had risen, and by its faint light she could see him sitting, his chin in his hands. He was thinking, brooding, comparing. Almost as though he spoke them aloud, she could follow his thoughts.

After the first bitter shock that had sent his idol crashing to earth he had been shaken, frenzied, filled with a curse for God and man. But Marie's voice, as she told him more of her story, had calmed him in spite of himself, and some of the terrible rage and horror he had felt had been laid with the body of his enemy in the grave he had dug in the garden. Alone, by the side of that little mound he had battled with himself, fought as great a fight with his soul as that being waged by his country. It became plain to him that in a small way his problem with this woman who was his wife reflected the mighty struggle going on outside, which was to decide the destiny of nations. It was as though he stood apart and looked down from some height on a warring world. Clearly the great issues that were at stake rose before him, this terrible war, which was to bring about perpetual peace, establishing now and forever the brotherhood of men, which was to build anew mankind and the arts of civilization, was a baptism of blood out of which would arise a new creation. Through the vision he became aware of the smallness of all things else.

Marie, sitting silently in the chair by the window, timidly broke into his revery, hesitatingly, as one who fears to waken a dreamer.

"Gerome," she whispered, "Gerome!"

Across the silent garden, up from the distant horizon, came a louder roll of guns, a fitful crash of bursting shells, and then silence. He sat motionless, inert, as though he heard only his own thoughts, as though he were deaf to outward sounds.

After a moment she began again:

"I had no one to tell me—no one to advise me. I was alone, more alone than you can ever understand. At first just being happy was a thing so wonderful, I clung to it, desired it above all else in the world. But there was something more than that." Slowly he turned his head toward her. She went on, her voice firmer, steadier, "I realized that another life was to come into the world, for whose happiness I would be responsible! The glory of it—your child!"

Across the mind of the man sitting motionless in his chair flashed something of what she had suffered. This child, the symbol of the love that had seemed so perfect! Perhaps it would be a daughter who must be spared the sorrows, the privations, the lack of protection, that had been her mother's undoing. He began to see more clearly that in his first wild grief and disappointment in her he had failed to fully understand. She had not succumbed to temptation. What she had done had never attracted her. She had been like one who wanders alone in a wilderness, and who falls a prey to wild beasts, or is overcome by fatigue or hunger. That she had sinned was not her fault, rather it was her misfortune. He became conscious again of her voice, low, vibrant.

"In the beginning I withheld the truth from you because I feared to lose your love. Then when I realized that a new life was to come into the world, I could not bear that our child should know of its mother's guilt. I tried to save it the bitterness that knowledge would bring. Gerome, it was for that!"

His thoughts raced on. She had been tempted, then, not to shield herself, but because of her great love for him, and to save one who was wholly innocent, perhaps a lifetime of unhappiness. He listened while she told him little by little of her starved life, her empty childhood in the colorless walls of the convent, the far-between visits of her father, of those short months of happiness in the little house in the Blumen Strasse. Her voice shook a little when she told of her father's illness and his death, and her terror at facing the world penniless and alone. She went over all her short life, her home with the kind old Schultzes, her struggles to find employment, finally, her singing in the café, her meeting with her evil genius.

Sitting there, touched by the soft moonlight, motionless, calm, without a shadow of the tears that had so long been her refuge, she told her story with the simple directness of a child.

Seeing her, hearing her story in its completeness, realizing some of the pity that Christ must have felt for the penitent Magdalene, more of the bitterness died in Gerome's heart. Had he not, in his blind fury, judged too hastily this woman, whose weakness and ignorance had made her the victim of unscrupulous force and who had kept her sin secret through the generous motive of saving him and his unborn child, sorrow, shame? Perhaps, after all, if regarded in its true light, her soul was as pure as he had believed.

Secure in his own strength, firm in his own knowledge of right and wrong, had he not condemned her too quickly?

The muttering of the guns on the distant horizon again reminded him of the struggle his country was undergoing. If strength could reproach weakness for being overwhelmed by a force greater than itself, then Belgium, ravished, devastated, bleeding Belgium, deserved the reproach of the world, rather than its pity.

The night was lifting; he looked at her silhouetted against the gray square of the window. Her white dress was crumpled and torn, her yellow hair hung loose over her shoulders. She seemed to him a symbol of Belgium, ravished, buffeted, beaten.

The greater part of human unhappiness is the result of misunderstanding. This terrible war, some of the horrors of which were printed indelibly on his soul, had come because of the misunderstanding that existed between man and his brother. Titanic force in combat with Titanic force simply destroyed itself. If the world was to endure, the great problems of man must be answered by some other means. There would be a New Heaven and a New Earth to take the place of those that had passed away. Out of the ashes of this war must rise a new era. Old traditions were falling away. Superstition with regard to the Divine Right of Kings, that Old Man of the Sea, which mankind had carried on his back for so long, retarding his efforts, using his strength and substance, would be cast aside forever, and with the freedom of unimpeded, reborn youth, man would rise to that plane of development which was to fulfill his destiny.

Surely then, since the life and history of each individual was a world in itself, he and this woman who was his wife could begin again, awaken into a resurrection that would break the shackles of prejudice and tradition and with that mutual understanding which comes after such a storm as that through which they had passed, work out their destinies with a more certain knowledge of the things in life which really make for happiness.

He rose to his feet and came and stood before her. Silently she waited, motionless, still. Her sentence was about to be pronounced. She was ready.

"Listen," he said at last; "out there the old world is destroying itself in a flood of fire and hate. Old ideals are passing away. Ambition, greed, love, even hope itself is tottering into nothingness."

Hopelessly she echoed his words.

"Nothingness!"

"Marie, I have been thinking all night, and because of the sorrow and suffering through which I have gone, things seem clearer than ever before. My rage has been terrible. My unhappiness almost unbearable. When you told me what you had done, I thought life was not worth living another day. I had determined that both of us must die. But all that has passed away. After this great struggle which is going on between the nations of the earth is over, something new and better must come. Shall we be part of it, begin life afresh, and see if, after all, there is not some happiness left for us?"

Her face was transfigured with a great light.

"You can say that to me?" she asked.

He took both her hands in his, his voice gentle, through his suffering and hers.

"Shall there be a resurrection that shall be built on perfect understanding?"

"Gerome," she whispered.

The vigil he had kept with his soul through this long and terrible night, the task he had made for himself when he buried Von Pfaffen's body in the garden, the knowledge of her ordeal, of her lifting of herself above the weakness that had threatened to engulf her, the strength that had made her confess when there had been no need of confession, had shown him what the new life for both of them might mean.

"A resurrection," he went on, "where it shall be clear that the world can live only so long as love shall live."

She lifted her eyes to his.

"'Love shall wipe away all tears,'" she whispered, almost as though she were uttering a prayer.

Gerome held her hands against his breast.

"You and I, dear," he said earnestly, "shall we start anew, and when we reach the far horizon look back on this hour as a story that is told? For to understand all is to forgive all!"

The traces of her bitter suffering were still on her face, but she looked at him happily.

"An hour ago," she said softly, "I thought I had nothing left to live for, but the doors of life are just opening. Look——" Together they turned toward the window.

Toward the West, the clouds hung black and ominous, the last draperies of departing night, from whence came the persistent thunder of the guns, where men strove, destroying the old world in a hell of blood and steel. But on the Eastern horizon, turning all the hills to ruddy gold, was the rising sun.

Somewhere in a hidden thicket a bird twittered on its nest.

She looked up into his face, the light of her great love shining in her eyes, and whispered almost as though it were a prophecy:

"I can see the light of a new day!"

THE END