Part 41

Von Herrnung shrugged contemptuously, though his keen ear did not miss the fact that the guns were coming nearer: "That must go on--for a little!--until the last show of resistance is broken down. If it be a military virtue not to be aware when you are beaten--your big-jawed, dull-brained, short-headed British bull-dogs of soldiers have that virtue, of course. But comes the awakening! The Russian Navy has been blown off the Baltic, the Czar has accepted our Kaiser's ultimatum--the Belgian Government has made its submission--the Belgian Army has laid down its arms. Our 17-inch siege-howitzers are bombarding the shores of England from their emplacements at Calais. The Army of Invasion is embarking--your British Navy--the floating bulwark of your Empire--lies at the bottom of the North Sea. Ministers run from one end of England to the other, begging, coaxing, persuading--your proletariat. There is panic in the English War Office, and despair at Buckingham Palace; rebellion in the streets of London, _debacle_ in the City, and stampede in the West End. To-morrow the Emperor of Greater Germany and the Crown Prince, Viceroy of the Brito-German Possessions, will, with the Empress enter Paris. Ten miles of films will record for all Posterity this colossal and magnificent scene. The London pageant of triumph follows. Well may you weep, my unlucky fellow, over the collapse and ruin of your proud country"--for tears were really trickling from the puckered eyelids of the now flushed and quivering face. "_Himmelkreuzbombenelement_! You are not weeping. You are laughing, you dirty English swine!"

"What else do you--expect--when you're so--dashed amusin'?" gasped Franky painfully. "Roll along with some more of it--why don't you, Anatole?"

"You do not believe me, no? You think that I am rotting," von Herrnung shrugged his huge shoulders and laughed with forced heartiness. "Always to rot, that is the English custom." He added, with a cruel relish: "_Desto besser_, you will die more pleasantly. For of course you will die. This is the third day you have lain here, _Alter junge_, and you have the smell and colour of gangrene. You are a lump of carrion, Norwater, not worth the taking away!"

"Possibly not!"

The eyes met his calmly, though their laughter had died out. It angered von Herrnung to be baulked of the ferocious enjoyment he had promised himself. He finished the Cognac slowly, seeking in the fiery drink a spur to inventiveness, and sucked his moustache slowly as he capped and pocketed the flask.

"I am hellishly sorry, I assure you, Norwater," he said, adopting a bluff and hearty manner as he sucked the stump of the nearly finished cigar. "One is hardened to death and wounds in War, but one is human. And I have been on friendly terms with many Englishmen and _Angenehme Englanderinn_ such as Lady Wathe, whom I have known for years, and that superb brunette, Mees Saxham. We flirted desperately that night in Paris. Later on, in London, she became my mistress----"

"You lie, you aeroplane-stealing cad!" said Franky, feebly but with great distinctness. Von Herrnung swore and spat, full in his face. Its nostrils winced disgust, but the brown eyes were indomitable. And from the blue lips came a mere thread of human utterance, pregnant with scathing irony:

"I--say to you what the--Belgian woman said to your Kaiser--when his--horse splashed her. '_This kind of filth--wipes off!_'"

"You think so, eh? You----"

Von Herrnung clenched his fist, and might have dashed it in the eyes that defied him, but for a sudden, significant change in the sound of those distant guns. The barrage of the German Field Artillery was becoming intermittent. The slogging of the British had increased in energy.

A flare of red spurted into the Kaiserman's pasty cheeks, and his hard eyes lighted eagerly. He forgot his rule of sleeping off liquor before again taking to the air. With a confidence in his own powers largely justified by his successes, his mind leaped to the scene of conflict. Now, when the German batteries were weakening, was the moment for the arrival of a pilot-aviator of the Imperial Field Flight, skilled as aerial observer and signaller, and known to be indifferent to risk.

Here was the chance one had hoped for. Restitution of the forfeited decoration. Restoration to the Emperor's favour. Reinstatement in the lost place upon the regimental roster. Promotion--the bestowal of new honours--danced before him like little, gaudy demons, drowning with their buzz the voice of prudence, luring him to the essay.

"I am compelled to leave you now, Norwater," he said smilingly to the man on the stretcher; "thanks so much for our interesting chat! I shall carry away a pleasant recollection, and leave you also a memento in the shape of a bomb, which I shall drop on you when I have climbed to a suitable height. So _Gut Abend, Alter junge_. Though before I go there is a trifling formality----"

He knelt down by the stretcher, and without unnecessary gentleness rifled the pockets of the wounded man. The victim had swooned when von Herrnung rose, transferring to his own person a small purse, heavy with English sovereigns, and a pigskin case full of crisp French banknotes, with a thin gold wrist-watch that had a luminous dial, and a coroneted monogram upon the back.

Sheer waste, according to the German War Book, issued by the Great Staff for the use of German officers, to leave upon the person of the fallen opponent articles likely to be of use to the conqueror. He rinsed his hands in the water-can, and dried them on his clothing, pulled up his helmet, fastened it, and buttoned his pockets, straightened his bandolier, nodded pleasantly at the reflection of his giant person in the skewed wall-mirror, jumped lightly through the window-gap, and went upon his way.

The slight figure lying so still upon the stretcher had never been remarkable for beauty of proportion. The sharpened face with its hue of old wax, the discoloured stains and the hair and grime upon it, had never been handsome even in health. But thrown back and tilted upwards, with the rosy glow of the setting sun touching the high brow, and violet shadows framing the sealed eyelids and close-shut mouth, it did not lack the quality of nobility. There was something knightly about the still form.

He revived to pain and loneliness and burning thirst, the squalor and abomination of desolation, the louder, nearer thudding of the German drum-fire, and the dogged reply of the unweakening British guns. He might have deemed the events that had taken place illusions born of weakness and fever, but for the testimony of the looking-glass that hung away upon the wall. There was the familiar vista of the Market Square, with the charred ruins of Town Hall and Clock Tower, yet sending up thin columns of bluish smoke into the radiant air. You could even make out a corner of the great stack of stiffened, blackening bodies. Nothing was wanting but that the Taube should still be resting on the cobblestones like a drowsy white vampire-bat glutted with human blood.

But the Taube was not there. From high overhead the buzzing note of the hoverer came down to Franky. He could see through the rents in the penthouse of broken flooring the white, winged shape hanging poised overhead. He even fancied he could descry the helmeted, goggled head of von Herrnung peering over the bulwarks of the bird-body, the jut of his elbow and the pear-shaped wire cages in which the bombs hung ready to his hand.

The thought of Margot and the child was an exquisite agony. The thirst for life, delectable life, revived in Franky ragingly. In dreadful expectation of the deafening crash, and the rending pang, and the burning bite of the greenish flame, the haggard eyes were straining upwards, when the terror went out of them, and their lids flickered down.... Let the fellow do his worst. Where was the good of hating? Christ had prayed for His murderers when they nailed Him on the Tree. The numb hand feebly made the Sacred Sign, and the tension passed with the terror.... There was a dull boom high overhead, and some heavy objects fell in a neighbouring backyard. Little bits of metal rattled on Franky's plank penthouse, and some warm drops pattered on Franky's face and wetted the hand that lay upon his breast. Not rain, but something sticky and thick, with a sickly, well-known odour. He lifted the hand. Oh, horrible! The heavens were raining blood.

Too weak to even guess at what had happened, he fell again into a stupor. The hollowed chest heaved at longer intervals beneath the First Aid bandaging over which had been thrown the khaki coat. Long cold breaths expired through the panting nostrils, the eyes showed a glassy line of white between the parted lids. He was dreaming....

Dreaming of being borne along in a shadowy boat under starless skies, through clear lucent darkness, over another darkness unfathomable, and yet diamond-clear. Perhaps no more water than the atmosphere above it was air, both possibly, elements unknown.... The boat crowded with seated shapes, three of them feminine.... A tall, black-hooded, black-mantled figure in the sternway seemed to impel the vessel with a single oar.

"Is this stuff water?"

The quiet voice of a man seated beside Franky had asked the question. Franky slipped his hand over the boat's low side and withdrew it shining, but not dripping, thinking:

"It is and it isn't. Fairly odd! Wonder where we're bound for? That fellow sculling.... Reminds me of old Charon, in the Sixth AEneid, when I swotted Virgil at School."

"Me too!" Thought seemed to pass current as speech, for though Franky had not voiced his reflection, the tall man who sat next him had answered instantly:

"But if this is the Ninefold--what about the '_cold and venomous waters, consuming iron and breaking the rarest vessels_.'" The speaker dipped his hand over the side and brought it up all shining but not dripping, and touched his lips with it, and went on, smiling: "Besides, if you and I are alive, where are our golden boughs, and if we're dead, where are our oboli? We ought to have 'em! It wouldn't be good form not!"

"Why, you're Braythwayte of Ours! How is it I didn't know you? Why did I suppose--" Franky broke off, for Braythwayte's very recent exit from the stage of life had been performed after a highly coloured fashion, when the Germans had showered heavy shells of high explosive upon the little Belgian town. "That fellow sculling," he said to cover the slight embarrassment. "Somehow I fancy I've seen him before."

"Ah! Now I recollect." Braythwayte was answering the thought of the previous moment. "I did get crumped up pretty badly. Should have come off lots worse hadn't it been for Cruse. He threw himself in front of me when the shell dropped so near us." He spoke of the Sergeant-Major of his Company who had been killed at the same moment. "Don't you recognise him? Cruse is the man who's sculling. I caught a glimpse of his face just now--it can be nobody but Cruse."

"Beggin' yer pard'n, Sorr." The soft South Irish brogue sounded more apologetic than contradictory. The thick, sturdy figure of the speaker, uncertainly descried in the clear obscurity, leaned anxiously over from the opposite seat. "'Tis Father Walsh--may Those Above reward him for an ould, bould gentleman!--that kem crawlin' out on his four bones to the Advanced threnches at a place they did be callin' La Bossy or suchlike--to give Holy Absolution to meself and Hanlon an' two other boys av' the Loyal Irish Rifles that wor' in a bad way. Wouldn't I swear to his skin on a gate, or the bend of his beak anywhere"--the voice hesitated--"barrin' for the mimmory I have that Thim Wans was afther pluggin' him through the head--and himself just layin' the Blessed Sacrament on me tongue!"

"Beg pardon." A woman's voice joined in the conversation. "Sorry to interrupt, but I know him, really. It isn't the Surgeon-Major--or Father Anybody!" Franky recognised in the clear obscurity the flowing white head-dress and grey Red-Cross badged cape of an Army Nursing Sister, as she went on: "It's just our Civil Surgical Specialist--who died of double pneumonia (septic) at the Harfleur Military Hospital. Had a touch of influenza--and would get out of bed to operate on one of the Sisters--a sudden case of appendix trouble with typhoid thrown in. Oh, yes! the operation was successful, but the Sister didn't recover. Still, the C.S.S. gave his life for hers all the same!"

"Good egg, him! But are you quite sure there's no mistake with regard to our friend there?" Franky nodded towards the tall, black-hooded, black-mantled figure plying the oar, upright in the stern. "Because just now I caught a glimpse of his face, and I could have sworn it was my grandfather--by a long sight the finest man I've ever come across! He dived over the yacht's side and saved my life when I was drowning. It was the Cowes Season of 1894. I was a cheeky nipper of eight--and he was seventy-one. And the chill and the excitement brought on a stroke or something. He was dead in his cabin-berth next morning, when his man went in with the mail."

"Oh, you funnies!" This with a clear little trill of laughter in the voice of a small girl--Franky could see her bright eyes dancing as she peeped at him from her niche between the Army Nurse and the small, black-habited elderly figure of a Sister of Charity in a deep starched _guimpe_ and wide-flanged cornette. "As if it could be anybody but my Dada--who pulled the soldiers out of the train that was all smashed up and burning! When me and Mummy----"

"_Taisez vous donc, Raymonde!_" whispered the nun reprovingly. "It is not _convenable_ that _petites demoiselles_ should interrupt their elders thus. Remember where you are, and in what Presence!"

"Please don't scold her!" coaxed Franky, the devout lover of children. The nun smiled, meeting his entreating eyes. He smiled back and went on: "Right or wrong--we seem all agreed that our friend in the stern is a near relation--or a close acquaintance of nearly every one of us. In every case a supreme benefactor----"

"Surely, monsieur!" she gave back in a hushed tone. "But surely, monsieur! The Helper--the Benefactor of us all!"

As the keel grated on unseen bottom, she folded her hands with a beautiful devoutness, and sank upon her knees, drawing with her the child. The man of the Loyal Irish followed her example. Franky found himself kneeling with the others--and as the boat's prow ploughed into sand or shingle, and the Ferryman, shipping his oar, moved shorewards with a shepherding gesture, the voyagers rose with a thrill of expectancy, and followed with one accord.

He stepped ashore--dropping the great black mantle--turned and faced them, spreading out His Arms. Beauty Divine, glory unspeakable----

*CHAPTER LXVII*

*THE QUESTION*

"Have I been honest?" Patrine asked herself over and over, kneeling by the open window, staring into the darkness. "Have I been just towards the man who never was a friend even when he played the lover? Did not my own attitude of cynical curiosity towards secret, hidden things, bias his line of conduct towards me? Might not even von Herrnung have respected a girl who showed no inclination to flutter moth-like, about the flaming torch of Sin? No! he would not. But I could have saved myself even from scorching--I, who approached the flame too closely, and shall carry the scars of my burning to the grave."

Drip, drip, drip! Water, oozing from the box that stood upon the table, was dropping on the carpet with the small, insistent sound.... At the west end of the Catholic Church where Patrine had told her story to a priest in the Confessional there was a great black Crucifix, bearing a white thorn-crowned Figure gashed with gory-seeming wounds. She had fancied that the blood from them dripped down upon the pavement as she had sat staring at the High Altar, and wondering whether it were true that wilful sin committed by men and women for whose salvation Christ had bled and died might not cause Him suffering even now?

She had been willing to sin for Sherbrand, and said so in her hour of madness. Yet the renunciation of her lover as a husband had been an act of the purest love. Perhaps God would overlook the one thing for the sake of the other? Perhaps He had really spoken by the mouth of that old priest whose tears had dropped upon his withered hands....

Drip, drip, drip! Patrine began to suspect the source whence the sound proceeded. The people who had packed the roses--they must be roses--had wetted the cotton-wool too heavily, the fools! The inlaid table and the carpet would suffer if the wet were not mopped up. One ought to ring for Mrs. Keyse or Janey, or better still, see to it oneself.

She half-rose with this intention, then sank down again nervelessly. It was half-past ten. The October night leaned close over London, Harley Street was muffled in velvet darkness. The veiled gleam of electric lights showed at its junction with Cavendish Square. The rumble of the tube train came from Portland Place, the faint shriek of the Northern Express sounded from Euston. A Brocken Hunt of motor-buses screeched and clanked up the Marylebone Road and faded into distance. The rumble and roar of Oxford Street showed signs of diminution. It was possible to hear stray sentences spoken by people passing upon the pavement below.

"I don't care!" This from the shorter of two female figures that had halted before the house. The edge of light-coloured skirt showing below her cloak, and the gleam of white cuffs framing the gloved hands with which she gestured, suggested a Hospital nurse to Patrine. "Taxation without Representation is a crying injustice--and the men will wake up to it one of these days.... And Mrs. Clash may be a noisy person--and Fanny Leaven may drop her haiches--I do myself when I get stirred up. But they're in earnest--and they've suffered--cruel!--for their convictions. Look at this Petrell--that one that always takes the Chair. She's a physical wreck--with the treatment she's had--and I know what I'm talking about! Haven't we had Suffragettes brought to the Hospital for treatment over and over--after they'd been pitched out of Political Meetings by Stewards and half-throttled by Police. What I say is--Moses! how late! ... We shall get locked out of the Home if we don't run for it!"

And their light hurrying footsteps and the unmistakable frou-frou of starched print accompanying, passed away up Harley Street. They must have come from the Mass Meeting of Suffragists that had taken place at the Royal Hall.

It had been a memorable evening. The atmosphere of the Royal Hall, thronged not only with the members of the W.S.S.S. but with representatives of many other Women's Unions and Associations and Societies and Leagues, was highly charged with electricity. Mrs. Petrell, resolute-lipped, quiet-eyed, clear of diction and composed of manner, knew, as she sat in her chair beside the little table in the middle of the crowded platform, and better even than the plain-clothes police among the audience--that at any moment the storm might break.

She had advocated with all her much-tried strength an armistice for the War-period, involving a temporary abandonment of militant methods and inflammatory addresses, in favour of a policy of active help and practical sympathy, alike honourable to her head and heart.

Other Societies, Unions, Leagues, and Associations might have followed the lead of their Presidents. But would the W.S.S.S. accept her programme? Militancy had been its motto and the breath of its nostrils through all these troubled years. Since the outbreak of War, Flaming Fanny had busily sown the whirlwind, advocating fresh Demonstrations in conjunction with a system of Unlimited Strikes. Woman must hold her hand, now that her help was needed. Man, the Oppressor of all time, must be coerced by Woman's flat refusal to take part in Relief Work, or War Work, or Work of any kind whatever, into yielding the withheld right. And Mrs. Clash sided with Fanny--and others, nearer home.

Little wonder then that Pressmen, sensing the imminence of riot, had turned out in their shabbiest tweeds and left their watches and tie-pins at home. Little wonder that Medical Students, who had not already joined the Service, with betting-men and patrons of the pugilistic Prize Ring, found themselves baulked of anticipated entertainment, or that loafers and crooks, pickpockets and rowdies, disappointed of a pleasurable evening, expressed themselves in unmeasured terms regarding that Mass Meeting at the Royal Hall.

A melodious speaking-voice can be a magical wand, wielded by the mouth of a plain woman. But when the woman is beautiful and intellectual, when soul breathes through her words, and strength and tenderness, then she becomes a Force to reckon with, a Power to move mountains and bring water of tears from the living rock of the hardest human heart.

The officially-checked lights of the Hall shone down upon a sea of threatening faces. The electric battens over the speaker's head showed her to be a tall, fair, slender woman, dressed in filmy grey, veiling soft clinging silk of the same shade. The simplicity of her dress was unrelieved by ornaments other than a chain of pearls about her long throat. The red-brown hair seemed heavy for the little Greek head, the lovely pale face with the sensitive lips, wore a look of patient sorrow, the eyes she turned upon the audience--a seething mixture of irreconcilable elements--had in them courage, sympathy and understanding, and knowledge too. Before she spoke she had created an impression. Strangers were ingratiated by her beauty and evident refinement. Those who best knew her were among the wildest and most reckless there. They had quieted, when she had risen up in her unnoticed corner of the platform, and moved forwards to the speaker's place opposite the Chair, as though oil had been cast upon the waters of a stormy sea.

"When God Willed this War that we call Armageddon," she had said to them--"for without the permission of the Most High the earthly Powers that planned and prepared it could not have plucked the fruit of their desire--it came in time to prevent the declaration of a War even more terrible. War, to the Death, between Woman and Man."

In a few trenchant words she painted the dire results of such hostility.

"That unnatural horror has been mercifully averted," she said to them. "The old sore is healed, there is no hatred nor rancour left. We women have learned what a price has to be paid for the Franchise of Manhood. It is the brave blood that is drenching the soil of Belgium and France and Poland--that will flow in rivers as wide as the Thames at Vauxhall Bridge before Peace is proclaimed again. They have answered the Call. They are pouring into the recruiting offices--in thousands of thousands--those who have given up their loved ones, their homes, their hopes of success in Arts or Sciences, professions or businesses or trades. Will women be as unselfish and as generous when their Call comes? For it will come. It is coming while I stand here!"

They were strangely quiet, under the spell of the beautiful voice, and the eyes that were luminous and deep with tenderness:

"There are faithful Christians among you; brave earnest souls who have prayed to GOD for guidance among the difficulties that beset the way for working-women, and weaker souls have been maddened to frenzy and plunged into unbelief by the intolerance and the injustice, the shrieking wrongs and the unpurged evils that Man, who enters upon his heritage the world, by the Gate of Motherhood, has ignorantly accumulated upon the shoulders of the sex he professes to respect."