Part 36

The Kaisermen had got the range from their spotter. Half of the single Field battery of 18-pounder quick-firers were put out of action in the twinkling of an eye. The little town became a storm-centre, canopied by soot-black smoke, stabbed by the fierce blue glares of the shell-bursts. The houses were toppling. The ruins were blazing. The gasometer near the station was hit and blew up with a fearful explosion. The streets were full of shrieking, stampeding, dying townspeople and children. "Save us! Take us with you!" they screamed to the Englishmen. For the Divisional Commander at Baix and Marwics had telegraphed "Retire," and the battalion was preparing to evacuate the town.

A great shell wrecked the Factory, killed the Adjutant and many of the machine-gunners, and slightly wounded the C.O. The Romanesque church-tower, whose bells had shrieked alarm in the little hours of the morning, rocked, staggered, and collapsed over its famous chime.

Again, men had melted as you laid your hands on them, blown into crimson rags as their mouths opened shouting to you. It had been Hell, Franky remembered, sheer, absolute, unvarnished Hell. The Battalion Surgeon-Major had been dressing his wounded arm in the open street when the Death-blizzard had broken upon them. A lump of shrapnel hit Franky in the ribs on the right side and some R.A.M.C. bearers carried him, vomiting blood, into the baker's shop. Possibly they were killed--for a shell hit and burst, and wrecked the house in the instant of their leaving it--and they never came back again. Their charge, in his helplessness, had escaped death by a narrow shave. The plank flooring of the upper room, dropping from the broken joist at the fireplace end, had formed a penthouse over him--lying on the blood-soaked stretcher on the tiled flooring--shielding him from the avalanche of household furniture, glass and crockery, descending from overhead.

Thus he had lain, partially unconscious, when what was left of the battalion marched out of the town. Most of the population followed on the blistered heels of the British soldiers, helping to carry the stretchers of the wounded and crippled men who under that blizzard of fiery Death had been got out of the burning Hospital. Not all had been got out. Franky, lying bloody and smothered with plaster, and helpless under the penthouse of planking that had saved him, had heard the screams of these--such pitiful, heart-rending screams.

Then the bombardment had stopped, and the mere relief from that intolerable torture of outrageous sound was Heaven. The screams from the burning Hospital had ceased, but when the earth had shaken with the approach of a great host, and German cavalry in green-grey uniforms with covered helmets had ridden through the ravaged streets, and the tottering walls had trembled at the passage of colossal motor-tractors dragging 11.2-inch Krupps and carrying huge loads of German gunners, engineers, and infantry--and German voices had shouted harshly up and down the streets--and German heads were thrust from open windows--and the work of Pillage, so dear to the German heart, was being carried out with German thoroughness--the screaming had begun again.--Cries of women and children, shouts of men; pleas, expostulations, prayers for mercy in French or Flemish, brutal laughter, German oaths, threats, and orders; subsequently, to the accompaniment of "_Deutschland, Deutschland, ueber Alles_"--the popping of corks and the breaking of glasses--Hochs for Kaiser and Kronprinz, fierce disputes over the divison of booty, more shrieks of women and girls.... To the funeral adagio of picks and mattocks upon the cobblestones of the Market Square. A volley then, and shots and more shots.... Subsequently Private of Infantry, Max Schlutter, made these scrawled entries in his note-book; testifying to the Sadism prevailing among the troops of the Attila of To-day:

"_October --th, 1914. Great day of loot and plunder! We shelled the cowardly English--a whole Army Corps with a brigade of heavy Artillery--out of the village of H----. The Hospital, Barracks, Church, and many houses destroyed by our guns. The Mayor, the Burgomaster, and the Registrar shot for harbouring our enemies. The priest tied up to his church-door, tortured, and then burnt, for ringing the bells to warn the English of our approach. Lieutenant Rossberg had a little girl butchered like a pigling, and pounded the feet of some lame English soldiers we found hiding, to teach the swine how to dance. They too were shot. Decidedly the Lieutenant is a funny fellow. All the people who had not run away brought out of their houses and shot. They filled the air with their lamentations. After a grand gorge and a big swill, we now all drunk and slept on the pavements by the light of a magnificent silvery moon. Burned more houses, and continued the march next day with a hellishly bad head._"

"How long before they find me out?" Franky had wondered. But the plaster-whitened brown boots sticking stiffly out under the penthouse of broken flooring must have looked as though they clothed the rigid feet of a dead man. "Presently they will come!" he had promised himself. But though they had sacked the baker's shop and visited the other rooms in the dwelling, no one had entered the ravaged little parlour, split open from floor to ceiling by the upburst of the High Explosive, and offering its ravaged, worthless interior to the scrutiny of every passing eye.

Worn and spent with fierce exertion, hard fighting, and loss of blood, delirious with the rising fever of his wounds, he was conscious in whiffs and snatches. The conscious intervals made fiery streaks across broad belts of murky shadow, a No Man's Land wherein Franky wandered, meeting things both beautiful and hideous, knowing nothing real except thirst, racking cramps, and stabbing pain.

The second day passed. At sun-high a distant fury of guns broke out. Through the terrible drum-fire of Prussian Artillery he fancied he could hear the British field-guns, hammering out Death in return for Death. Suffering agonies for lack of water, he sustained life with scraps of chocolate broken from a half-cake carried in a breast-pocket. To move one hand and carry it to his mouth was possible at cost of ugly pain. Night fell, a night that was rainy, and windy, full of cool drippings that wet Franky's clothes without visiting his baked lips, and still the cannonade went on ceaselessly--so that the crazy walls that sheltered him shuddered and the earth vibrated, and the eeriness was made more eerie with the sliding of tiles from broken rafters, and the creaking and banging of broken doors, slammed by ghostly, invisible hands. Pale splashes of light,--reflected stabs of fire from the muzzles of those unsleeping guns in the south and west, made the darkness yet more dreary. Rats scrambled and squeaked, close to him in the obscurity, evoking horrible suggestions of being gnawed and bitten as one lay helpless there.... He gritted his teeth to keep back the cry that nearly broke from him as one rodent crossed him, its hooked claws rattling against his straps and buttons, its cold hairless tail sliding snakily over his hand. He fancied that he saw its eyes shining in the darkness--he was certain that it had moved and lopped round behind him--he felt its whiskered snout cautiously approaching the throbbing artery beneath his ear.... Then his nerve left him, and he croaked out feebly, though it seemed to him that he shouted:

"S'cat, you brute! Get, you beggar! Halloa; Halloa! _Belges au secours_! _Ici un Anglais, grievement blesse_! Is anybody there?"

But there came no answer save the muffled thunder of guns in the distance, the crackle of fire in houses that were burning, the gurgling of a broken water-main, and the distressed miaowing of a cat. It came nearer. There was a rustling sound, and the light descent of a furry body on padded feet; Pussy had jumped in where the window had been, alighting not far from Franky. He could see a pair of green eyes lamping in the darkness, and called, seductively:

"Pussy, pussy! Come here, old girl!"

The purr came near. Franky, with infinite torment reached out a hand, felt and stroked a warm, furry body. He said, cautiously feeling for the appreciative, sensitive places at the nape of a cat's neck, and under the jaws:

"Good old girl. Don't know what they call cats in Flemish, but Pussy seems to be good enough for you. Stop and scare the rats away, give 'em fits, eh, Pussy? You're agreeable? Good egg! Oh--I say!"

For Pussy had walked, loudly purring, on to the chest that heaved so painfully, and proceeded to knead the surface scientifically, preparatory to curling down. Franky set his teeth, and bore the ordeal. Thus they kept company until morning, when Pussy, who proved to be a lean white Tom with patches of sandy tortoiseshell on flanks and shoulders, withdrew by the fanged opening where the window had been. A moment later Franky heard his late companion lapping noisily from a street-puddle and knew envy, in the anguish of his own unrelieved thirst.

He wandered then for a space of hours or instants, in the days of his own lost childhood. He was in the night-nursery at Whins, suffering from some feverish ill. He felt the prickling as of innumerable ants running up his limbs and the sweat upon his forehead, and called meaningly to Nurse for drink. But it was his mother in her dinner-dress, with shining jewels crowning her dark hair, and wreathing her neck and starring her bosom, who came to the bedside and leaned over him, put the rumpled hair from his hot forehead, and held to his lips the cup of milk. Then a droning sound made the room vibrate, and he was back with his company in the hastily-dug trench across the mouth of the west-running thoroughfare, and church-bells were clanging and the telephone-buzzer was calling for the reserve to double out and reinforce the men in the trench enfilading the bridge....

Then he was awake and the sun was high. Those guns in the west were silent now, though from the south and south-east came heavy thuds and long vibrations. Through the rents in the flooring above him by which the rain had dripped upon him in the night, he was looking at the blue sky. A big white bird hovered there. Not a bird--a Taube. _The_ Taube, and he had not dreamed the buzzing after all.

Oh, but it was queer to lie there under the keen scrutiny of that eye in the heavens! It made the prickly ants swarm up Franky's thighs and sides until the sensation grew unbearable. Hate, fierce hate of the murderous, beautiful thing droning up there in the azure sky above its curious misty circle made him see everything red, made him want to yell and shriek. For Margot was in danger, somehow--somewhere--while one lay helpless as a log....

"Steady, old child!" whispered Franky to himself, warningly. "You're going off your chump. Hold still!"

And he held still. The Buzzard ceased to buzz, and floated on, droning. He fancied that he felt its shadow darken and pass over him, moving from his head to his feet. The noise of the tractor stopped. Reflected in the area of a skewed wall-mirror he saw the machine volplane down, and alight without a falter in the Market Place--before the smoking ruins of the Town Hall.

*CHAPTER LXI*

*LYNETTE DREAMS*

Upon that same night in October nearly five weeks following the breaking of the Woe Wave, Lynette Saxham had a strange dream.

It seemed to her that she saw piled up in one colossal heap the riches of all the world, the world we know and the world we have forgotten; the treasures of all ages piled up higher than Kilimanjaro, or Aconcagua, or the cloud-mantled peak of Mount Everest. To her feet as she stood spell-bound amongst the foothills, rolled jewelled crowns, and huge barbaric torques and diadems of rough gold, precious cups, vases, and chargers; outpoured treasures of precious stones and wrought gems of inconceivable beauty and vileness, wondrous fabrics, marvels of sculpture, weapons, armour and coins of age beyond the ages--rude discs of tarnished gold, stamped with the effigies of forgotten kings. Orders, decorations, the paraphernalia of Pomp, the stage-properties of Power, the symbols of every religion, save One, were mingled in the stupendous pile, and a terrible Voice cried:

"Gone is the age of pride in possession! Chattels and fardels are no more! The days have spilt like pearls from a broken necklace! Time has eaten the years as the moth a garment of wool! Foredone, foregone, finished! Who now will gather riches from the Dustheap of the World?" And as new avalanches of treasure rolled downwards to the reverberation of that thunderous shout, a Hand of Titanic proportions hurled down upon the heap a war-chariot of beaten gold, with great scythed wheels, and jewelled harness; and that vision changed, and the dreamer was drowning, deep down in clear green seas, under the rushing keel of a huge barbaric War-galley that was all of gold, arabesqued and bossed with jewels, and coral, and pearl.

And the sense of suffocation passed, and a wonderful cool peace flowed in upon Lynette. She seemed to be led by a beloved hand that had been dust for years, into a bare walled place through which a thin breeze piped shrilly. Someone was there, doing some manual labour. He turned, and with a shock of unutterable rapture Lynette was looking in the face of her lost boy.

Bawne had grown thin and seemed taller. His temples had hollowed, his plume of tawny-gold hair hung unkempt over his wide white forehead. But his blue eyes were as sweet as ever. She had never realised how like they were to Saxham's in shape and colour, and in expression, until now. He thrust his lower jaw out and knit his brows slightly, as though her face were fading from his vision, and he wished to fix in mind the memory of its well-loved features:

"Stay, Mother! Oh! Mother, don't leave me!" he cried, and stretched out his hands to her, and she awakened, weeping for sorrow and joy.

It was broad day. Her husband was not there. She rose and bathed in the cold water she loved, and dressed in the simple Quaker-like grey that set off her fairness, and went out to Mass.... The day's Preparation was taken from the noble prayer of St. Ambrose, Bishop and Confessor:

"_And now before Thee, O Lord, I lay the troubles of the poor; the sorrows of nations, and the groanings of those in bondage; the desolation of the fatherless; the weariness of wayfarers; the helplessness of the sick; the struggles of the dying; the failing strength of the aged; the ambitious hopes of young men; the high desires of maidens; and the widow's tears. For Thou, O Lord, art full of pity for all men: nor hatest aught of that which Thou hast made._"

He even loved von Herrnung, who had taken her boy, and kept him in slavery, and robbed the joyous light from his sweet eyes, and set amongst his red-brown hair one sinister streak of white. She saw the bleached forelock dangling before her eyes when she shut them and tried to pray for the Enemy:

"Oh God! forgive that evil man, and turn his heart towards mercy and pitifulness, and give me back Thy precious gift, for the love of Her who is Thy Mother!"

It was yet early when she returned to Harley Street and passed at once into the Doctor's consulting-room. There, where her lips had first kissed him, sleeping in his chair, she found Saxham sitting at his table, with his sorrow of heart revealed in the stoop of his great shoulders, and his greying head resting upon his hands. Not a sound did he utter, but the attitude was more than eloquent:

"Oh my son!" it said. "Oh me!--my little son!"

"Owen!" she said, coming to his side and touching him. Then, as he started and looked up: "Bawne is alive!" she cried. "I have seen him in a dream, and he has spoken to me. He was in a bare high place with corrugated iron walls, whitened. It made me think of the Hospital at Gueldersdorp in the old days, and of a hangar.... His clothes were soiled and torn, and his hands were blackened. One other thing I saw--but I will not wring your heart by telling you.... It is enough that I have seen our boy.... alive. Oh! thank God!" She stopped, and the rose of joy faded from her cheeks, and only the tears were left there. Her eyes widened with a terrible doubt. "You _knew_! ... It is in your face! You had heard ... something, and you did not tell me!"

"I had not the courage. Despise me, for I deserve it! I had news of Bawne at the end of August. He is with that man who stole him--" He clenched the hand that rested on the table until the knuckles showed white upon it and his hair was wet upon his forehead and his mouth was twisted awry. "Taken with him on errands of aerial reconnaissance--carried helplessly into battle as a Teddy bear or a golliwog might be fastened on the front of a racing-plane. And, when I remember that I bade him risk that journey--" Saxham broke off, and turned his face away. She came nearer to him and said:

"But he is alive!--alive, even though he be in danger. My dream was sent to tell me so. Did not the Mother come to me in my sleep and lead me to him? Just as when she came and sent me here to you. Now I will atone for these days of selfish grieving. Only give me work to do!"

"Have you not enough upon your hands already? Too much, I have sometimes feared."

"Only the Hospice and the Schools," she answered eagerly, "and the Training Houses for the elder women. And, thanks to you, these are excellently staffed. If I were to die it would make little difference. Things would go on just the same."

"Would they?"

She stooped, lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it. He looked at her keenly as she did so, and the over-bright flush upon the thin cheeks and the hollows about the beautiful eyes, like the burning touch of her hand and of her lips, told him their tale of woe.

"Not for you. Nothing would ever be the same for you or for Bawne. Therefore--give me more work."

"There is plenty of work, unhappily," he said, "because of this calamity that has fallen upon the nation. We have notice that a hundred wounded men from the Front--many of them cot-cases--will arrive at SS. Stanislaus and Theresa's at three this afternoon."

"I shall be there!"

"I am not going to try to dissuade you. I will not keep back what God has given to me from those who have given so much for England. There is another quarter where you will be of use." His eyes were on the triptych frame before him. "I speak of that little Lady Norwater--Patrine's friend--I think you have not met?"

"Oh, but I have. We were made acquainted with each other some weeks ago at the Club." Her delicate face contracted. "That day when the news came about the British losses. Just before that poor child Brenda Helvellyn blurted out the dreadful truth. Owen, it was tragic. She had known it from the beginning----"

"And the sister forbade her to breathe a hint of it. That is the attitude of the fashionable Sadducean," said Saxham bitterly, "who not only denies the Atonement and the Resurrection, but will not admit of Death."

"But," she asked him, "what of Lady Norwater? Patrine tells me she is ill."

"She is ill. Lord Norwater--at first reported missing after an action north of Ypres on the --th is now said to have been killed."

Lynette was silent. Her husband knew why her head was bent and her white fingers sought a little Crucifix she wore. She was praying for the dead man. Presently she said:

"He was very brave, I believe?'

"He had been recommended for the Victoria Cross for a special service of great gallantry--rendered during the Battle of the Aisne. He was a brave and simple young man, and very lovable. His wife received the official intelligence of his death yesterday. They 'phoned Patrine, as you know, and sent for me later. Lady Norwater is expecting her confinement at the end of November--and they were alarmed for her."

"Poor little soul! Her baby will be a comfort to her!"

Saxham remembered under what circumstances he had made the acquaintance of Lady Norwater, and his look was rather grim. In his mind's ear he heard again the sweet little voice saying in its fashionable slang jargon:

"Oh no! I rather cotton to kiddies. It's the bother of having 'em doesn't appeal. It puts everything in the cart for the Autumn Season."

Still, the recent remembrance of her piteousness softened the Doctor's never very adamantine heart towards her, the humming-bird broken on the wheel of implacable Fate. Not unnatural, after all. More of a woman than one would have thought her. How she had clasped her tiny hands together and entreated him, when the worst was feared for her, to save, to save her child.

"Franky's child. Perhaps--the boy he hoped for. Oh! to have to say _hoped_, hurts so dreadfully. Yes, yes! I will be brave and good and quiet.... I will do everything that you say. Ah, now I know why all these days I have felt Franky near me, and seen his eyes looking at me out of every stranger's face."

Margot did not cry out in her pain and loneliness for her friend Patrine to come to her, though she sent loving, grateful messages whenever Pat called or 'phoned. But she had said to Saxham, only that morning: "Doctor, I met your wife at the Club not long ago. She is more beautiful, but so much sadder than the portrait you showed me. Ah, yes! I remember why. When I am better, would she come and see me? Perhaps it is inconsiderate that I should ask. But the world is so huge and coarse and noisy and empty"--the little lip had quivered--"and there is something in her face that is so sweet, I have been fancying that it would"---she hesitated--"be good for me and for my baby if she would sometimes visit me. Do you think she would mind?"

Saxham had answered:

"I will ask her." Now he gave the piteous message, and Lynette warmly agreed:

"Of course I will go. Whenever you say I may!"

"Not for some days. She is to see no one yet, and your hands are full with Madame van der Heuvel and Marienne and Simonne." The Doctor referred to an exiled Belgian lady and her young daughters, who had been received at Harley Street as guests. "And--there is the Hospital--and to-night you have to address this Meeting of Suffragists at the Royal Hall. It is the only decision of yours, let me tell you," said Saxham, "that I ever felt tempted to dispute. My wife upon the same platform with Mrs. Carrie Clash and Fanny Leaven! A triple force of Metropolitan Police on duty, and detectives at all the exits and amongst the audience. It's--" Words failed Saxham.

"It is unspeakably hateful in your eyes. Dear Owen, I know it. But I should be hateful in my own sight if I were to break my word. On the day I first met you we spoke of these views of mine. I hold them still. Marriage has not altered them. It is not in me," said Lynette, "to change!"

"You are the soul of faithfulness in all things!"

"Then do not be grieved that I keep to my given promise. Those who have honoured me by asking me to address them are aware that my convictions are opposed to theirs at points. But while I oppose I admire their ruthless devotion and their magnificent, unswerving policy of self-sacrifice----"

"But these felonies," he protested, "these incendiary attacks upon property----"

"In nine cases out of ten, and I believe the authorities know it as well as the W.S.S.S., such outrages have not been committed by Suffragists at all."

"By whom, then?"

"Have we no enemies without our gates even now when we are at War?"