Part 44

"Good of you not to mind. But a shame to keep you waiting. No--we go out at this gate. I've got a car waiting. More cushy than a crowded railway-carriage--unless you'd have preferred going by train?"

The grey landaulette waiting in the side-street presented no more unusual feature than unusually heavy armoured tyres, and a guard of razor-edged steel bars protecting the front seat.

"In case of barbed wire--strung across country roads," explained Red Tab. "One runs a chance of getting decapitated--travelling fast at night--or in foggy weather--without a jigger of this sort. Let me stick this cushion at your back and tuck the rugs about you. There's a Thermos in the pocket with hot coffee--and sandwiches in a box. Don't restrain your appyloose if you feel at all hungry! The grub was put in specially for you. No: you won't hear the guns yet, except at intervals, and rather faintly. Fact--I've heard 'em in the South of England more distinctly than one does here! But at St. O--, twenty-eight miles from the Front--they're loud enough at times--though there's nothing much doing. Things have been as dull as ditch-water and none of us'll be sorry when the Boches get a move on again. No--thanks, I'm not coming inside! Responsible for your safety. Advise you to tuck up and go to by-by!"

The car settled into its speed when the ups and downs of the old town had been left behind, and the belated activities of the Base Port had died into a distant hum. It slackened pace when the blaze of its headlights showed long black columns of laden motor-lorries upon the wintry roads ahead of it--or horse-drawn transport waggons--or droves of animals, the steam of whose breath and shaggy hides hung over them in a cloud--or bodies of men in heavy marching order--French and British soldiers wearing the new steel headpiece,--shaped after the fashion of Mambrino's helmet, like a basin turned upside down.

And sometimes there were the halts at barriers or patrol-posts near towns or villages, where the light of swung lanterns reddened the moustached faces of gendarmes of Chasseurs. But usually when Patrine cleared a space upon the misty window-glass, the snow-covered landscape would be flying past under the fitful moonlight, with the elongated shadow of the grey Staff car galloping beside it like a demon dog.

Midnight was striking from an ancient church-tower when, passing the guarded barriers of a town of old-world houses, and stopping in a street running from a Place bathed in frosty moonlight, and dominated by a vast cathedral, Red Tab, with icicles on his clipped moustache and fur collar, got down and tapped upon the rimy glass.

"Sorry to wake you up, Miss Saxham!" he said, opening the door as Patrine sat up, straightened the dented brim of her hat and blinked denial of her slumberousness, "but here's the end of your journey. This is the Ursuline Convent of St. O--, where we've arranged for you to billet to-night. The Superioress is a frightfully hospitable old lady, and my uncle--I mean Sir Roland--thought you'd be more cushy with the Sisters than at a common hotel!"

"Sir Roland is always kind. But you, Captain Smyth-Howell?" She looked out at her red-tabbed escort with compunction as he tugged at the chain of a clanging bell, and beat his mittened hands together, stamping upon the pavement to warm his frozen feet.

"Me? Oh, I'm pushing on to Divisional Headquarters--twenty-five miles from this place and five miles north of the Belgian frontier. You'll be sent on to Pophereele in the morning, first thing. The French Chaplain of the Red Cross Hospital there is staying for the night with the Bishop at the Palace here. A tremendously agreeable old bird the Chaplain--and a Monsignore of the Vatican. I've met him--and he said he'd be delighted to look after you. Don't get down--it's frightfully slippery!"

But the tall, womanly figure was already standing beside him on the snowy cobblestones, tilting a round white chin towards the sky, and narrowing long eyes--"queer eyes" he mentally termed them--to see the better through her veil.

"What glorious stars!"

He liked the soft warmth of her voice, as he answered:

"Magnificent, aren't they? Look at Draco blazing away, high over the north transept of the Cathedral. And that would be Aquila--I rather fancy--lowish on the horizon, over that ruined tower. That's a bit of their famous Abbey----"

"Great Scott!"

"Did anything startle you?" he asked. "You said----"

"I know I said it, but I didn't mean to. There, again--" She pointed as forked tongues of pale rainbow-tinted fire leaped up from the northern horizon, throwing into momentary relief the Cathedral's stately bulk and the huddled housetops.

"Those are Boche fireworks!"

"Fireworks?"

"Star-shell, rockets, and so forth. They regularly treat us to a display before they begin to pound us again. Where are we fighting? Oh, pretty busy north--as far as Ypres and as far south as La Bassee. French on our right--French and Belgians on the left of us. More French holding Verdun. My hat! what gorgeous fighters! Men of steel with muscles of vulcanised rubber. And we thought the Gaul an absinthe-drinking degenerate. I tell you we wanted this War to open our eyes for us. Perhaps they did too! Here's one of the Sisters coming now!"

Hurrying felt slippers with rope soles shuffled over stone pavements. The key grated and the bolts shot back. A little Sister Portress in a close guimpe and flowing black veil, with a blue-checked apron tied over her habit, swung back the heavy door, holding her lantern high.

Just Heaven, upon how cold a night Madame had arrived from England! Madame must be perished. But there was coffee, and soup _tres chaud_ not only for Madame but for M. l'Officier. And also the chauffeur. Madame _la Superieure_ would never permit that either should proceed without nourishment. If M. l'Officier and his attendant preferred not to enter, the Sister would wait upon them in the car.

And so Patrine, after taking leave of her red-tabbed escort, was led away to the Mother Superior, a little, bright-eyed, kindly Religious, full of solicitude for Mademoiselle, who, confessing to having emptied a Thermos of hot coffee, and a box of sandwiches during the later stages of the transit, was borne away from the guest's refectory up and down several crooked flights of ancient stairs to a white-washed apartment, containing a _prie-dieu_ and a big plaster Crucifix, a great walnut bed with faded _Directoire_ curtains, a minute washstand,--a faint smell of scorched wood, emanating from the perforated metal registers of a _calorifere_, and a bad little coloured print of Lord Roberts, within a stitched border of yellow _immortelles_ and faded laurel-leaves, that had been green and fresh six months before....

Patrine spent a white night in the town where the old brave heart of the great soldier had given its last throb for England. Not because those thudding guns in the north and east kept her wakeful--or because she had never stayed in a convent before.

She was going to Sherbrand--her Flying Man--who had been supposed to be dead and found to be living,--and who had written to say that he did not want Patrine. The letter lay against her heart, and her hands were folded tightly over it, as she lay staring with shining eyes at the drawn curtains flapping in the chill breeze stinging through the open window that had been fastened with a nail when the English guest arrived.

*CHAPTER LXXI*

*LIVING AND DEAD*

"PATHETIC ECHO OF AIR-TRAGEDY. SHERBRAND, R.F.C., NOT DEAD OR PRISONER. RESCUED BY AMERICAN RED CROSS AMBULANCE. IN HOSPITAL NEAR YPRES. WILL RECOVER, BUT BLIND FOR LIFE."

The clamorous headlines had followed close on a telephone from Sir Roland. Patrine had learned what it means to cry for joy--an unforgettable experience. She had discovered that one who kneels down to thank God for a boon so marvellous, has no words left to offer Him, nor even tears and sighs.

She had written again and again to Sherbrand, saying only "_Let me come to you!_" Passionate, pitiful, tender letters, answered after weeks of delay by one page in the stiff, neat handwriting of the American Red Cross Nursing Sister who acted as amanuensis for the blind man.

"_April_, 1915.

"You have said that you wish to visit me in my blindness. I thank you for the expressed desire, but I cannot receive you here! I have never been the kind of man who bid for pity from women, and the ties that you broke, voluntarily, six months ago, I do not wish to renew. My mother has been here to bring me some things"--the French and Belgian decorations, guessed Patrine--"and has gone away again. She understands that it is best for me to remain here, because, although the War is over as far as I am actively concerned, I can hear the guns and breathe the breath of battle, and know when the 'planes pass overhead, and follow them in thought. There is little else a blind man can do, except make toys or baskets! Do not think me bitter or discontented--I am neither--quite O.K. I wish people had been told I brought down the Zepp., that's all! With gratitude for your kind and friendly remembrance,

"Yours most sincerely, "A. S."

A formal letter, but between the cold, stiff lines Patrine had read reproach, and love, and yearning. An unkind letter--but could she judge him harshly, her poor blind eagle, sitting in darkness never to be lifted, listening to the guns, and the battle-song of the Birds of War, drifting down out of "his sky"?

There was Mass in the Convent chapel at seven next morning. A military chaplain offered the Divine Sacrifice, and the rush-bottomed chairs were occupied by soldiers, French Chasseurs and Zouaves, Senegalese and Negroes, English Guards and Irish Fusiliers, Highlanders and a German or two,--all patients from the Hospital under the management of the Ursuline Sisters--a big building next door to the Convent, that had been a young ladies' boarding school in the days before the War.

The chapel was a dusky place. So dusky that though the red carnations and white Eucharis lilies in the Altar vases struck vivid notes of colour in the light of the Altar candles, the ruby spark of the Sanctuary lamp and the bright flame of the Paschal candle were barely visible in the brooding gloom. You could only tell the place to be crowded, by the deep-toned chorus of masculine voices joining fervently in the _Confiteor_ and _Credo_. Pale green flashes momentarily lit up the crimson and purple and tawny tracery of the round east window, and the distant thudding of the guns at the Front made an accompaniment to the sacred rite.

The French priest officiating was a lean, short, elderly personage with brilliant eyes set in a mask of walnut-brown wrinkles and a resonant voice that was illustrated by beautiful, illuminating gestures as he preached.

"Let none say in your hearing, unrebuked, that this War is an unrelieved misfortune," he said to his hearers. "Recognize with me, my French compatriots, the Divine Mercy as extended particularly to France in this fiery ordeal! Her towns and villages have been destroyed,--her buildings have been shattered, her sons in countless thousands slain, but her national character has been purified--the soul of her people has been raised from the mire. If there is one here present among you--whatever may be his nationality,--who is conscious of loving Virtue better and loathing Vice more intensely, since the beginning of this War--then the War has been a blessing--to him--and not a curse! Acts have been performed--and are repeated hourly--acts of a sublime and touching selflessness and an almost Divine tenderness,--not only by men and women who are mild and gentle, but by the roughest and the most abandoned of either sex. The good seed was sown in time of peace--ah yes, my children! but it might have perished. And now Our Lord, who loves flowers, has caused these pure and exquisite blossoms to spring for Him from the field of War."

After his tiny sermon, delivered in French, and repeated in English, he hesitated a moment before turning to the Altar and said, with emotion in his mobile face and quick utterance:

"I have to ask a favour of you this morning. It is that at the Commemoration of the Departed you will unite with me in a mental act of prayer. Prayer for the soul of one to whom the gift of Faith, not being sought, was not given. A soul that has passed forth in darkness into the presence of Him who is the Light."

He turned away and began the _Credo_. As the deep chorus of male voices followed, Patrine found herself agreeing with the preacher's discourse.

"What was it," she asked herself, "that led me out from overheated, crowded rooms, oppressive with the scent of flowers and perfumes of triple extract--where the Tango and the Turkey Trot were being danced by half-clad, painted women and effeminate young men--and set my feet upon a mountain-slope with the free winds of heaven blowing upon me? I must answer--It was the War!"

As the great waves of the _Credo_ surged and beat against the old brown rafters she went on thinking:

"What has made me quicken to the call of Humanity--awakened me to the knowledge of my sisterhood with my fellow-women? What has taught me how to live without dissipation and do without useless luxuries? Again--the War! And oh! what has taught me the meaning of Love in all its fulness, and set within the shrine of my heart this great sacred sorrow, and kindled in my soul the pure altar-flame of Faith? The War, the terrible War!"

She prayed for Sherbrand at the Commemoration of the Living! A somewhat incoherent petition that her Flying Man might be helped to bear his blindness, and find some happiness in her unchanged love. And the thought of the dead Agnostic haunted her. Who was the man, and what had brought about his ending? Was he a patient in the Ursuline Hospital?

A French, an English, or a German soldier? By a subtle change in her mental purview, recollections of von Herrnung began to occupy her mind.

"I will not think of him!--I will not!" she said to herself desperately. Then the obsession assumed an acute form. All that she most wished to forget in her relations with the Kaiser's Flying Man was being revived in her memory. Scene by scene, sentence by sentence, she was forced to live over the hated Past again.

She must have risen from her knees and left the chapel, so unbearable became the torment, but that the sacring bell rang its triples, the deep tones of the _Sanctus_ answered from the turret, and the Host was lifted up. Then her tense nerves relaxed. The almost tangible presence of evil withdrew itself. She breathed more freely, and peace flowed in balmy waves upon her stormy soul. In prayer for herself and those who were most dear to her, she lost the sense of the unseen hands plucking at her garments and the soundless voice whispering at her ear. And presently at the _Ipsis Domine_, when supplication is made by priests and people for the departed, she prayed for the soul of the Denier--that the Divine Mercy might reach and enfold him, and lead him yet into the Way of Peace.

"_Christ is risen who created all things, and who hath had pity upon mankind.... Purchased people, declare His virtues, alleluia! Who hath called you out of darkness into His admirable light._"

To Patrine the Call had come.

It was Easter Week and there were many communicants. The nuns and the French and English Red Cross nurses helped the lame to reach the Altar-rails and guided the blind. When a tall, blond young English Officer with bandaged eyes and an empty sleeve was led up to his Master's Table, Patrine was grateful that the chapel was so dusk.

She was to meet the Chaplain of the Pophereele Stationary Hospital after Mass, the Mother Superioress had said. Thus, guided by an Ursuline Sister, she passed from the chapel into a long, whitewashed cloister looking on the garden, its open arches facing the doors of what had been class-rooms, and now were wards. Another Ursuline, the Sister Superintendent of the Hospital, with a young, gentle face framed in her close white guimpe and flowing black veil, sat writing in a big book at a plain deal table. Near her were some shelves with rows of bottles and a chest of drawers with measuring-glasses upon it, and a pestle and mortar and druggists' scales. Above the table a black wooden Crucifix hung against the whitewashed wall.

"This is Soeur Catherine, who keeps the Hospital accounts and dispenses the medicines, and posts the register in which we set down the names of all the wounded received and discharged. Take care, Mademoiselle! That paint is new and comes off!" cried the chaperoning Sister, snatching aside the skirt of Patrine's long blue V.A.D. coat.

She had brushed, in passing, against a wooden tablet that leaned against the wall near the door through which she had come. A big square of black-painted deal surmounted by a gabled and eaved Cross of German pattern, and bearing an inscription in white Gothic lettering:

"HIER RUHT IM GOTT EIN DEUTSCHER FLIEGENDE OFFIZIER."

"That is for the grave of the German officer who died yesterday. One of the Bavarian soldiers is painting it. He has not finished--he has only gone away for a moment to get some more _ceruse_ from Mother Madeleine."

Sister Catherine offered the explanation. She added, as the tall English girl glanced at something that lay on the deal table beside the register:

"That is his flying-cap, poor man! and the belt that shows his _rang militaire_. They will be placed upon the pall when they carry him to the cemetery. But pardon! One should have observed before that Mademoiselle was suffering! What! Mademoiselle is not ill, not even a little fatigued? Then what Mademoiselle needs is a _petit dejeuner_."

And Patrine was whisked away to the guest's refectory to be refreshed with _pistolets_ and coffee. Monseigneur would follow a little later. Madame la Superieure had arranged for Monseigneur to take _dejeuner_ with M. l'Aumonier. Later, Monseigneur hoped for the pleasure of meeting the English Mademoiselle.

Mademoiselle's tall rounded figure, ushered by the little active Ursuline Sister, had barely passed through the glazed swing-doors leading from the cloister to the Convent, when the short, spare, elderly priest who had celebrated Mass entered from the chapel, followed by the Convent Aumonier, who had served him at the altar. Even as the nun rose from her table, the vividly clear eyes of Monseigneur, set in the mask of dry walnut-brown wrinkles, dropped on the painted head-board propped against the wall.

"That is for him?"

The supple right hand of Monseigneur waved towards the chapel, then extended itself to the Sister, who curtsied and kissed his amethyst ring.

"For him, Monseigneur," answered the Aumonier, to whom the question had been addressed.

"_Dieu veuille avoir son ame!_"

The left sleeve of Monseigneur's decidedly rusty serge soutane bore the well-known brassard. Its scarlet and white peeped between the folds of his heavy black mantle as he made the Sign of the Cross.

"His name is missing from the inscription," he commented, producing a battered silver snuff-box and helping himself to a generous pinch. "Why, might one demand?"

"The initials will be painted in presently, Monseigneur. There will be no name--by desire of the deceased!"

"He preferred anonymity?" The amethyst ring of Monseigneur's prelacy flashed violet as he dusted the brown powder from his upper-lip with a blue checked handkerchief. "The Pere Aumonier tells me," his startlingly clear eyes were on the Sister, "that terrible as were his injuries, he might have recovered--that his death occurred suddenly and unexpectedly."

"But yes, Monseigneur, he might have recovered!" The fair face framed in the narrow guimpe was shadowed and troubled. "The _coup d'obus_ had spared the brain, arteries, and vertebra. His sight was uninjured--M. le Commandant and his colleagues had achieved wonders in the partial restoration of the visage. Speech was difficult--but we could understand him--unless he was sullen and would only speak German to us. But at those times a Bavarian soldier interpreted--he who has painted the headboard for the grave."

"He--the German officer--was grateful to those who nursed him?" inquired Monseigneur of the Aumonier.

The stout little Chaplain visibly hesitated. It was the Sister who answered in her clear and gentle voice:

"Alas! no, Monseigneur! He was arrogant, even brutal. But then--he suffered so terribly, in mind as in body--one could not be angry at anything he said. He could not resign himself to his disfigured condition. It was intolerable, he would cry, that he should now be an object of horror to women--women who had worshipped him almost as a god!"

"Chut--chut! Eh--well! One presumes he meant a certain type of women," observed Monseigneur.

"Possibly so, Monseigneur." The simplicity of the fair face in the narrow guimpe was touching. "For when we assured him that we did not regard him with horror he would say to us: 'That makes nothing! I speak of women. You are only nuns.'"

"But nuns are women," objected Monseigneur.

"Monseigneur, he said not. When his condition seemed to him most miserable he found relief in saying things--abusive--outrageous--about nuns. We didn't mind. We pitied him--poor Number Twenty! But the French and English officers in the same ward resented this. They entreated us to remove him to a separate room. This we did, and at his request the Bavarian was placed in the same apartment--he has been an officer's servant--and is active and useful, even though he has lost a leg. Thus things went better. Poor Twenty seemed more contented. He even looked forward to leaving the Hospital!"

"And then? A change?--a relapse?" suggested Monseigneur.

"A change. He became more gloomy--more violent after a letter arrived for him from England at the _Jour des morts_. Since two days comes another letter. We heard him raving of perfidy, the folly of his agents--the injustice of his Emperor--the revenge upon the Englishwoman that he would never have now! ... Then all was quiet. Towards morning the Bavarian came out of the room and called an orderly. The Herr Hauptmann was sleeping, he said, in such a queer way.... From that unnatural stupor he never awakened. All his letters and papers were torn up and scattered in fragments. There was a little cardboard box on the night-table and a pencil _billet_ for me. I am to send a ring he always wore to the address of a noble young lady at Berlin. She was his _fiancee_, I believe, Monseigneur. He thanks me for the little I have been able to do for him!--he begs the Sisters to pardon his rudeness.... He wishes no name upon his grave--but to be forgotten.... Poor broken body--poor rebellious heart--poor stubborn, desperate soul!"

"You think, then, that--he killed himself?" asked Monseigneur with directness.

"I dare not think!" She was searching in her table drawer with tears dropping on her hands. "I can only pray that the autopsy of the surgeon will not reveal that the death was not natural. Look, Monseigneur!--this is his ring. A big black-and-white pearl. And under the pearl, which lifts up--is a little box for something.... A relic perhaps--or a portrait, or a lock of a friend's hair."