CHAPTER LII

THE RAVENING WOLF

How hard it must be for the soldiers to remember chat there ever was Summer! How far off, how unreal are those burning, breathless days that saw the fighting round Namur, Termonde, Antwerp. Here in Flanders, in December, August and September seem to belong to centuries gone by.

Ugh! How cold it is!

The wind howls up and down this long, white, snow-covered road, and away on either side, as far as the eyes can see, stretches wide flat Flanders country, white and glistening, with the red sun sinking westward, and the pale little silvery moon smiling her pale little smile through the black bare woods.

In this little old Flemish village from somewhere across the snow the thunder and fury of terrific fighting makes sleep impossible for more than five minutes at a time.

Then suddenly something wakes me, and I know at once, even before I am quite awake, that it is not shell-fire this time.

What is it?

I sit up in bed, and feel for the matches.

But before I can strike one I hear again that extraordinary and very horrible sound.

I lie quite still.

And now a strange thing has happened.

In a flash my thoughts have gone back over years and years and years, and it is twenty-eight years ago and I have crossed thousands and thousands of "loping leagues of sea," and am in Australia, in the burning heat of mid-summer. I am a schoolgirl spending my Christmas holidays in the Australian bush. It is night. I am a nervous little highly-strung creature. A noise wakes me. I shriek and wake the household. When they come dashing in I sob out pitifully.

"There's a wolf outside the window, I heard it howling!"

"It's only a dingo, darling!" says a woman's tender voice, consolingly. "It's only a native dog trying to find water! It can't get in here anyway."

I remember too, that I was on the ground floor then, and I am on the ground floor now, and I find myself wishing I could hear that comforting voice again, telling me this is only a dingo, this horrible howling thing outside there in the night.

I creep out of bed, and tiptoe to the window.

Quite plainly in the silvery moonlight I see, standing in the wide open space in front of this little Flemish Inn, a thin gaunt animal with its tongue lolling out. I see the froth on the tongue, and the yellow-white of its fangs glistening in the winter moonlight. I ask myself what is it? And I ask too why should I feel so frightened? For I _am_ frightened. From behind the white muslin curtains I gaze at that apparition, absolutely petrified.

It seems to me that I shall never, never, never be able to move again when I find myself knocking at the Caspiar's door, and next minute the old proprietor of the Inn and his wife are peeping through my window.

"Mon Dieu! It is a wolf!"

Old Caspiar frames the word with his lips rather than utter them.

"You must shoot it," frames his wife.

Old Caspiar gets down his gun.

But it falls from his hands.

"I can't shoot any more," he groans. "I've lost my nerve."

He begins to cry.

Poor old man!

He has lost a son, eleven nephews, and four grandsons in this War, as well as his nerve. Poor old chap. And he remembers the siege of Paris, he remembers only too well that terrible, far-off, unreal, dreamlike time that has suddenly leapt up out of the dim, far past into the present, shedding its airs of unreality, and clothing itself in all the glaring horrors of to-day, until again the Past is the Present, and the Present is the Past, and both are inextricably and cruelly mixed for Frenchmen of Caspiar's age and memories.

A touch on my arm and I start violently.

"Madame!"

It is poor old Madame Caspiar whispering to _me_.

"You are English. You are brave n'est-ce-pas? Can _you_ shoot the wolf."

I am staggered at the idea.

"Shoot! Oh! I'd miss it! I daren't try it. I've never even handled a gun!" I stammer out.

I see myself revealed now as the coward that I am.

"Then _I_ shall shoot it!" says old Madame Caspiar in a trembling voice.

She picks up the gun.

"When I was a girl I was a very good shot!"

She speaks loudly, as if to reassure herself.

Old Caspiar suddenly jumps up.

"You're mad, Terèse. Vous êtes folle! You can't even see to read the newspapers, _You!_"

He takes the gun from her!

She begins to cry now.

"I shall go and call the others," she says, weeping.

"Be quiet," he says crossly. "You'll frighten the beast away if you make a noise like that!"

He crosses the room and peers out again!

"It's eating something!" he says. "Mon Dieu! _It's got_ Chou-chou."

Chou-chou is--_was_ rather, the Caspiar's pet rabbit.

"You shall pay for that!" mutters old Caspiar. Gently opening the window, he fires.

* * * * *

"Not since 1860 have I seen a wolf," says Caspiar, looking down at the dead beast. "Then they used to run in out of the forest when I was an apprentice in my uncle's Inn. We were always frightened of them. And now, even after the Germans, we are frightened of them still."

"I am more frightened of wolves than I am of Germans," confesses Madame Caspiar in a whisper.

We stand there in the breaking dawn, looking at the dead wolf, and wondering fearfully if there are not more of its kind, creeping in from the snow-filled plains beyond.

Other figures join us.

Two Red-Cross French doctors, a wounded English Colonel, la grandmère, Mme. Caspiar's mother, and a Belgian priest, all come issuing gradually from the low portals of the Inn into the yard.

Then in the chill dawn, with the glare of the snow-fields in our eyes, we discuss the matter in low voices.

It is touching to find that each one is thinking of his own country's soldiers, and the menace that packs of hungry wolves may mean to them, English, Belgian, French; especially to wounded men.

"It's the sound of the guns that brings them out," says a French doctor learnedly. "This wolf has probably travelled hundreds of miles. And of course there are more. Oui, oui! C'est ça Certainly there will be more."

"C'est ça, c'est ça!" agrees the priest.

"Such a huge beast too!" says the Colonel.

He is probably comparing it with a fox.

I find myself mentally agreeing with Madame Caspiar that Germans are really preferable to wolves.

The long, white, snow-covered road that leads back to the world seems endlessly long as I stare out of the Inn windows realizing that sooner or later I must traverse that long white lonely road across the plains before I can get to safety, and the nearest town. Are there more wolves in there, slinking ever nearer to the cities? That is what everyone seems to believe now. We see them in scores, in hundreds, prowling with hot breath in search of wounded soldiers, or anyone they can get.

We are all undoubtedly depressed.

Then a Provision "Motor" comes down that road, and out of it jumps a little, old, white-moustached man in a heavy sheepskin overcoat and red woollen gloves, carrying something wrapped in a shawl.

He comes clattering into the Inn.

His small black eyes are swimming with tears.

"Mon Dieu!" he says, gulping some coffee and rum. "Give me a little hot milk, Madame! My poor monkey is near dying."

A tiny, black, piteous face looks out of the shawl, and huskily the man with the red gloves explains that he has been for weeks trying to get his travelling circus out of the danger-zone.

"The Army commandeered my horses. We had great difficulty in moving about. We wanted to get to Paris. All my poor animals have been terrified by the noises of the big guns. Especially the monkeys. They've all died except this one."

"You poor little beast!" says the Colonel, bending down.

He has seen men die in thousands, this gaunt Englishman with his eye in a sling.

But his voice is infinitely compassionate as he looks with one eye at the little shivering creature, and murmurs again, "You _poor_ little brute!"

"Yesterday," adds the man with the red gloves, "my trick wolf escaped. She was a beauty, and so clever. When the War began I used to dress her up as a French solider,--red trousers, red cap and all! _I s'pose you haven't seen a wolf, M'sieur, running about these parts?_"

Nobody answers for a bit.

We are all stunned.

* * * * *

But the old fellow brightens up when he hears that his wolf ate the rabbit.

"Ah, but she was a clever wolf!" he cries excitedly. "Very likely the reason why she ate your Chou-chou was because she has played the part of a French soldier. _French soldiers always steal the rabbits!_"